You Know, You Should, Like, Speak with Conviction?

This video does more in a few minutes on this subject than I've done in years:

Ouch! Why My Generation is Lame

From the 9.12.10 column by Thomas Friedman in the NYT:

Ask yourself: What made our Greatest Generation great? First, the problems they faced were huge, merciless and inescapable: the Depression, Nazism and Soviet Communism. Second, the Greatest Generation’s leaders were never afraid to ask Americans to sacrifice. Third, that generation was ready to sacrifice, and pull together, for the good of the country. And fourth, because they were ready to do hard things, they earned global leadership the only way you can, by saying: “Follow me.”

Contrast that with the Baby Boomer Generation. Our big problems are unfolding incrementally — the decline in U.S. education, competitiveness and infrastructure, as well as oil addiction and climate change. Our generation’s leaders never dare utter the word “sacrifice.” All solutions must be painless. Which drug would you like? A stimulus from Democrats or a tax cut from Republicans? A national energy policy? Too hard. For a decade we sent our best minds not to make computer chips in Silicon Valley but to make poker chips on Wall Street, while telling ourselves we could have the American dream — a home — without saving and investing, for nothing down and nothing to pay for two years. Our leadership message to the world (except for our brave soldiers): “After you.”

Wacko Conservatives and Why Obama Should Go After Them

From the 9.12.10 Frank Rich column in the NYT:

In June, the Business Roundtable chairman and Verizon chief executive Ivan Seidenberg gave a speech so rank with self-victimization — he claimed that government was “reaching into virtually every sector of economic life” — that the normally polite Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein reviled him as “a corporate hack” peddling “much-discredited country-club nonsense.”

Seidenberg was soon topped by a multibillionaire Republican contributor, Stephen Schwarzman, who likened Obama’s modest financial regulatory package to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” Among the clients of Schwarzman’s private equity company, Blackstone, is Goodyear, which signed on in 2004 to get advice on “optimal business configuration” and announced it was shipping more jobs to Asia the following year. That narrative, one of countless like it, might have come in handy last week when Obama was speaking in Ohio, just 30 miles from Goodyear’s headquarters.

. . . .

Only the crazy right confused F.D.R. with communists for taking on capitalism’s greediest players, and since our crazy right has portrayed Obama as a communist, socialist and Nazi for months, he’s already paid that political price without gaining any of the benefits of bringing on this fight in earnest.

Artists: Just Do It!

In The Name of the World, a novel by Denis Johnson, a character says this about art: "And I realized that what I most required of a work of art was that its agenda -- is that the word I want? -- not include me."

I've been pondering the nature of art. What makes something art? What makes you care about my opinion on this? You cannot hope to find some revelatory expertise here. You're hoping for an artful expression of unoriginal ideas.

Anyway, AG and I have tussled over whether the preparation of food can be an art form. She says certainly and I have been reluctant to agree. However, EC sees a measure of "pretentiousness" in certain dishes she's been served in the San Francisco area. It's as if she dismisses the artistic ambitions of chefs or friends adept in the kitchen. I push back here, too, and I'm left to wonder where I stand between AG and EC.

Who cares? Well, the greater question is, "What is art?" or "What makes some endeavor an artistic project?"

I like Denis Johnson's understanding: It's not a definition, not an attempt to answer the question, but it certainly does, for me, provide a guidepost for what I consider great art.

Food wouldn't qualify in this definition because chefs presumably want me to be delighted by their work. I am clearly part of their agenda. And, of course, this applies to most artists who must respond to the market to some extent if they want to do art.


In the movie "Big Night," the proprietor of a very busy, but schlocky Italian restaurant gives the proprietor of what we would now call an "artisinal," struggling Italian restaurant, the following advice: "Give them what they want and then you can give them what YOU want." Trouble is, once artists start compromising, they not only stop doing what they feel they must do, they also forget it. Or if they haven't forgotten it, they're so out of practice that they lost the ability.

So there's art and there's art. AG is right: The culinary arts are arts. EC is right: Chefs can risk pretentiousness.


However, we're a creative species. We try to turn everything into an art form. We add a flourish to the mundane and so, for example, walking eventually becomes dancing. Watch how kids innovate when playing a game. We want to be creative, beautiful, cool.

And we want to be acknowledged for our creative take on the quotidian. We want approval. At the same time, we tend to honor those artists who stay radically true to their vision without attending to the tastes of the day. Yes, we also think them jerks sometimes.

When I appreciate a work of art -- a novel, some music, something visual, and, yes, a meal, or skateboarding tricks, etc. -- my appreciation is serendipitous for the artist unless I'm part of a fairly predictable demographic targeted by the artist. I hope that the artist is creating whatever she needs to create and that I am happily responding to it. I don't want to think that she's pandering to my demographic or my tastes. I'd rather the artist do what she needs to do. And then, if I like it, great. If not, let's hope someone else will so that this artist can eat and work.

So art is best when the artist's agenda does not include me. And if the artist's agenda does speak to me . . . . good for the artist. I hope.

AG . . . Happy?

The College Essay: Who Are You and How Do You Know?

Look over to the right for the College Essay tag or link or whatever. Go there.

Cool Website to Play With

This is a bit like creating your own virtual, animated, Bobby McFerrin choir. Hard to describe and there's no reason to really. Just go to the site. Play.