{"id":15079,"date":"2014-01-03T10:14:36","date_gmt":"2014-01-03T15:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=15079"},"modified":"2014-01-03T10:19:08","modified_gmt":"2014-01-03T15:19:08","slug":"artful-bullies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/artful-bullies\/","title":{"rendered":"Artful Bullies"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"'Imperial<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “Imperial Art Appreciation: Blue,” by JD Hancock on Flickr<\/a>. (Used under a Creative Commons license.) For more information, see the note<\/a> at the foot of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From\u00a0whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

We are not transparent to ourselves. We have intuitions, suspicions, hunches, vague musings, and strangely mixed emotions — all of which resist simple definition.\u00a0We have moods, but we don’t really know them. Then, from time to time, we encounter works of art that seem to latch on to something we have felt but never recognized clearly before. Alexander Pope identified a central function of poetry as taking thoughts we experience half-formed and giving them clear expression: “what was often thought, but ne’er so well expressed.” In other words, a fugitive and elusive part of our own thinking, our own experience, is taken up, edited, and returned to us better than it was before, so that we feel, at last, that we know ourselves more clearly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Alain de Botton and John Armstrong [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’m Working on the World<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m working on the world,
\nrevised, improved edition,
\nfeaturing fun for fools,
\nblues for brooders,
\ncombs for bald pates,
\ntricks for old dogs.<\/p>\n

Here’s one chapter: The Speech
\nof Animals and Plants.
\nEach species comes, of course,
\nwith its own dictionary.
\nEven a simple “Hi there,”
\nwhen traded with a fish,
\nmake both the fish and you
\nfeel quite extraordinary.<\/p>\n

The long-suspected meanings
\nof rustlings, chirps, and growls!
\nSoliloquies of forests!
\nThe epic hoot of owls!
\nThose crafty hedgehogs drafting
\naphorisms after dark,
\nwhile we blindly believe
\nthey are sleeping in the park!<\/p>\n

Time (Chapter Two) retains
\nits sacred right to meddle
\nin each earthly affair.
\nStill, time’s unbounded power
\nthat makes a mountain crumble,
\nmoves seas, rotates a star,
\nwon’t be enough to tear
\nlovers apart: they are
\ntoo naked, too embraced,
\ntoo much like timid sparrows.<\/p>\n

Old age is, in my book,
\nthe price that felons pay,
\nso don’t whine that it’s steep:
\nyou’ll stay young if you’re good.
\nSuffering (Chapter Three)
\ndoesn’t insult the body.
\nDeath? It comes in your sleep,
\nexactly as it should.<\/p>\n

When it comes, you’ll be dreaming
\nthat you don’t need to breathe;
\nthat breathless silence is
\nthe music of the dark
\nand it’s part of the rhythm
\nto vanish like a spark.
\nOnly a death like that. A rose
\ncould prick you harder, I suppose;
\nyou’d feel more terror at the sound
\nof petals falling to the ground.<\/p>\n

Only a world like that. To die
\njust that much. And to live just so.
\nAnd all the rest is Bach’s fugue, played
\nfor the time being
\non a saw.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Wislawa Szymborska [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from\u00a0whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Monologue of a Dog Ensnared in History<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are dogs and dogs. I was among the chosen.
\nI had good papers and wolf’s blood in my veins.
\nI lived upon the heights inhaling the odors of views:
\nmeadows in sunlight, spruces after rain,
\nand clumps of earth beneath the snow.<\/p>\n

I had a decent home and people on call.
\nI was fed, washed, groomed,
\nand taken for lovely strolls.
\nRespectfully, though, and comme il faut<\/em><\/span>.
\nThey all knew full well whose dog I was.<\/p>\n

Any lousy mutt can have a master.
\nTake care, though — beware comparisons.
\nMy master was a breed apart.
\nHe had a splendid herd that trailed his every step
\nand fixed its eyes on him in fearful awe.<\/p>\n

For me they always had smiles,
\nwith envy poorly hidden.
\nSince only I had the right
\nto greet him with nimble leaps,
\nonly I could say good-bye by worrying his trousers with my teeth.
\nOnly I was permitted
\nto receive scratching and stroking
\nwith my head laid in his lap.
\nOnly I could feign sleep
\nwhile he bent over me to whisper something.<\/p>\n

He raged at others often, loudly.
\nHe snarled, barked,
\nraced from wall to wall.
\nI suspect he liked only me
\nand nobody else, ever.<\/p>\n

I also had responsibilities: waiting, trusting.
\nSince he would turn up briefly, and then vanish.
\nWhat kept him down there in the lowlands, I don’t know.
\nI guessed, though, it must be pressing business,
\nat least as pressing
\nas my battle with the cats
\nand everything that moves for no good reason.<\/p>\n

There’s fate and fate. Mine changed abruptly.
\nOne spring came
\nand he wasn’t there.
\nAll hell broke loose at home.
\nSuitcases, chests, trunks crammed into cars.
\nThe wheels squealed tearing downhill
\nand fell silent round the bend.<\/p>\n

On the terrace scraps and tatters flamed,
\nyellow shirts, armbands with black emblems,
\nand lots and lots of battered cartons
\nwith little banners tumbling out.<\/p>\n

I was adrift in this whirlwind,
\nmore amazed than peeved.
\nI felt unfriendly glances on my fur.
\nAs if I were a dog without a master,
\nsome pushy stray
\nchased downstairs with a broom.<\/p>\n

Someone tore my silver-trimmed collar off,
\nsomeone kicked my bowl, empty for days.
\nThen someone else, driving away,
\nleaned out from the car
\nand shot me twice.<\/p>\n

He couldn’t even shoot straight,
\nsince I died for a long time, in pain,
\nto the buzz of impertinent flies.
\nI, the dog of my master.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Wislawa Szymborska [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Why I Write
\n(excerpt)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course I stole the title for this talk, from George Orwell. One reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write. There you have three unambiguous words that share a sound, and the sound they share is this:<\/p>\n

I<\/em><\/p>\n

I<\/em><\/p>\n

I<\/em><\/p>\n

In many ways writing is the act of saying I<\/em>, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind<\/em>. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions — with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating — but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Joan Didion [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

_____________________
\n<\/a>
\nAbout the image:<\/strong> photographer JD Hancock has posted a series<\/a> of (currently) nine images on Flickr. (Capsule description: “Greetings, stormtrooper cadet. Sign up now for the Art Appreciation class at Death Star Academy.”) Each image features a\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>\u00a0imperial-stormtrooper\u00a0action figure holding up a placard on which appears the name of a color, and the plain gradient background is lit and\/or colored accordingly. The \u00a0text accompanying each photo purports to be the text of a lecture in this “academy,” on the same color. The one on “blue” ruminates on various associations with the color, and concludes:<\/p>\n

“So … is blue good, or is it bad? This one is hard to call, cadets. I must admit, it’s a bit of a stumper. In that light, my advice to you is this: if you get confused about the color blue, don’t let it get you down.”<\/p>\n

Today’s lesson: We’re stormtroopers, and we don’t get blue<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[back to top<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Imperial Art Appreciation: Blue,” by JD Hancock on Flickr. (Used under a Creative Commons license.) For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.] From\u00a0whiskey river: We are not transparent to ourselves. We have intuitions, suspicions, hunches, vague musings, and strangely mixed emotions — all of which resist simple definition.\u00a0We have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,405,593,250,5,251,372],"tags":[921,1514,2959,3703],"class_list":{"0":"post-15079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-nature","9":"category-history-in-the-news","10":"category-art","11":"category-06_writing","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"category-style-and-craft","14":"tag-wislawa-szymborska","15":"tag-joan-didion","16":"tag-alain-de-botton","17":"tag-jd-hancock","18":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3Vd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15079"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15091,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15079\/revisions\/15091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}