Stop, Thief!

This is in response to the case of an allegedly "stolen" Van Gogh currently in Yale University holdings.

The argument comes down to the legal apparatus by which this private property was nationalized and then sold. Was that government ultimately, "objectively," truly legal?

Unlike the terms of war reparations that return artwork stolen from a targeted, localized community of Jewish individuals in Nazi-controlled territories,

1. There is no language demanding that the ex-Soviet Union make reparations to any one.
2. The "theft" or nationalization was of all things, of all possessions. (At least at face-value.)

I don't want to be a Soviet apologist, but I don't think it's right for this "purported" great-grandson of Morozov's to privatize this painting and hang it on his living room wall, where no one can see it, where, likely, the conditions of care will not be correct and the painting will fade and die.

Or for him to privatize the painting so he can turn it around and sell it to a private collector for the appraised $120-$150 million. There would be no law suit if this was a no-name painting that didn't figure into myths of art history and "beauty."

What claim does this great-grandson have to the piece? Did Morozov himself promise it to this Konowaloff before his death, before the nationalization? How else could he fight off all of the other great-grandchildren's claims to the piece?

If we are going to give back anything nationalized at the start of the Soviet Union, I will want to see everything nationalized to be given back. All things. All heritages. Which means the Yusopovs get their mansion back; which means the Romanovs get their throne back.

And if we're going to play that great-grandchildren automatically inherit from their ancestors, I will demand legal action for all those who carry the blood guilt of their ancestors' past atrocities.

Image: Isabella Gardner Museum, Boston, MA. "The Most Famous Art Theft in History"

Rhymes with Philanthropy

Let's, for a moment, pretend that the capitalist oppressors and thinkers are correct, and capitalist-model democracy is the be-all, end-all of human institutions. And yet even in this "ultimate state" of human endeavors we see laziness, greed, black desires (cheating, stealing, etc., etc.) So if there is a teleological bend to some Great Story we haven't yet guessed, hopefully this isn't it. But we're operating under the hypothesis that it is.

Scarily, it would make sense with what we know of the physical world. Life is the #1 cause of death. The second law of thermodynamics: a percentage of all reactions is transformed into entropy, or unusable energy.

Perhaps capitalism is the be-all, end-all. Perhaps it's entropy.

<3

Drunk

Image: The Communist Party, available at threadless.com.

(You get the irony, right? I'm...pimping...an internet seller...aw, forget it.)

Hieronymus Bosch

A reminder that Bosch is a genius, from Eduardo Galleano's "Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone"

“A condemned man shits gold coins.
Another hangs from an immense key.
The knife has ears.
The harp plays the musician.
Fire freezes.
The pig wears a nun’s habit.
Inside the egg lives death.
Machines run people.
Each nut dwells in his own world.
No one meets up with anyone.
All are running nowhere.
They have nothing in common, save fear of each other.
“Five centuries ago, Hieronymus Bosch painted globalization,” to quote John Berger.”
(Eduardo Galleano, 108)

Heritage

I asked Storm: "Why is it that, some three thousand years after its construction, the Parthenon is still the paradigm of Classical beauty? What would it take to reestablish our standards?"

We laud the Parthenon for its purity, its geometric excellence, the systematization of its orders. This is all because of our modern vanities. We believe the Parthenon to have always looked the way we now see it.

How would our perception change if we saw, not a bare and abstract form, not the "culmination of the Doric order," but a temple with Elgin marble intact, statuary and religious rites complete, the hustling crowds of worshiping masses, the colors and the vibrancy?

It would be busy. We would speak more to the tiny diagrams of processing parades that no one can see, the poor engineering of the meandering approach, and wonder if the reason the interior/exterior colonnades are different styles isn't because of a systematic hierarchy, but because the Parthenon was actually a Hellenic-Mannerist piece that fused multiple styles.

Oh, how I'd love if everything we ever thought about classical orders was based on incorrect interpretations of Greek architecture by Vitruvius et al.

<3

Drunk

Coffee and Croissants

Delightful quotes to enjoy in a cafe, from Eduardo Galleano's "Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone"

A Cuppa Joe:
“The British Crown decreed that its colonies had to pay an unpayable tax. In 1773, furious colonists in North America sent forty tons of London tea to the bottom of the harbor. The operation was dubbed the Boston Tea Party. And the American Revolution began.
Coffee became a symbol of patriotism, though there was nothing patriotic about it. It had been discovered who knows when in the hinterland of Ethiopia, when goats ate the red fruit of a bush and danced all night, and after a voyage of centuries it reached the Caribbean.
In 1776, Boston’s cafes were dens of conspiracy against the British Crown. And years later, President George Washington held court in a café that sold slaves and coffee cultivated by slaves in the Caribbean.”
(Eduardo Galleano, 177)

The First Cafe:
“The croissant, another symbol of France, was born in Vienna. Not for nothing does it bear the name and form of a crescent moon, which was and remains the symbol of Turkey. Turkish troops had laid siege to Vienna. One day in 1683, the city broke the siege and that same night, in a pastry shop, Peter Wender invented the croissant. And Vienna ate the vanquished.
Then Georg Franz Kolschitzky, a Cossack who had fought for Vienna, asked to be paid in coffee beans, which the Turks had left behind in their retreat, and he opened the city’s first café. And Vienna drank the vanquished.”
(Eduardo Galleano, 194)

Forever and Ever, Amen

Atlantis. Camelot. Lemuria. El Dorado. Kitezh.

What is the appeal of a lost city? There must be an appeal, the amount of thought and dreaming we've put into the Atlantises, Alexandrias, Babylons... Yes, they all have become mythic heavens-on-earth. Yes, each has an aspect of Star Wars-ian "Long-ago-but-somehow-in-the-future" trope.

I think we're more excited because for once, in these lost cities, we escape the process of urban renewal. There can be no porosity - no unfinished projects, no abandoned dreams, no future hopes, no lost monuments, no decaying ruins, no bad paint jobs or plasterwork. There is just holy stagnation, frozen perfection.

There is a utopia. By which I mean a total and absolute war on time itself.

<3

Drunk

Image: N. Roerich, "The Fall of Atlantis" 1929

Charity

Millions of dollars were raised via text messaging for Haiti this past week. A victory, surely? Maybe not. I believe that one or more of the following logics are at play when we give money to some big, over-advertised foreign charity:

1. “Good” people give money to charities. I want to show myself I am a good person.
2. “Bad” people don’t give money to charities. I want to reassure myself I am not a bad person.
3. My friend/enemy/mom/co-worker/favorite celebrity/priest gave money. I should too.
4. I want to be able to truthfully tell others that I gave money.
5. I feel guilty about having money/comfort [and still complaining about my life]. I will feel less guilty if I give money to some “good” cause.
6. I don’t actually want to help other people. It’s too hard. Texting 50 dollars is easy.
7. When I give money to charities at home, I can see that they aren’t making a huge difference. This charity is so abstract and corporate it will seem more like a happy success when we give money.
8. I believe that only rich white countries can ultimately make a difference in the world. That’s why I like being an American. I feel powerful when I make a difference.
9. Thinking about how bad things are in poor, damaged, foreign countries makes me feel good because I can remember that my life isn’t that bad. If I give money to this charity I can think about this to my hearts content without feeling guilty.
10. Thinking about how bad things are in poor, damaged, foreign countries makes me feel good because I feel reassured when things are “evil” in the old-fashioned religious, Hitler, slavery sense. It’s easier to think about, and I don’t have to think hard about what to do…it’s obvious.

We humans like simplicity, easy answers, feeling good. We have to somehow make taking responsibility for ourselves and avoiding easy solutions into the paths that feel “good,” that give us pleasure [but not easy happiness or pride or empty mind]. If we don’t, we’ll keep on being as foolish in the world as we are towards Haiti.

And Those We Leave Behind

The head curator at one of my host museums passed away, unexpectedly, on Orthodox Christmas.

The spectacle of death has such permutations of stage directions, as I briefly mentioned in my last revelation. A death in the US will warrant a wake, a funeral, a buffet spread, and then only the closest family members will visit the gravesite forever and ever, amen. The most "communal" thing might be a general epithet on mortality:

Remember me as you pass by
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, so must you be
Prepare for death and follow me.

The socially accepted performances here are different. Flowers propagate whenever anyone thinks kindly upon a soul. The gravestones are beautiful, polished granite and marble, engraved by photographic likenesses of the dearly departed in place of Anglo-American cherubs and urns. The performance doesn't depend on personal knowledge of the deceased, but on the amount of respect an individual bears towards that person. Fresh flowers adorn Esenin's (after 85 years), Pushkin's (after 137) feet. I was urged to make a trip to Fayetteville, to J. William's tomb, to make a public display of my appreciation and gratitude for my opportunity to study.

Take this as a living will. When I die, at whatever ritual ceremony takes place, I want a series of eight full-length mirrors to inscribe a semi-circle around my casket, and I want a candle to burn on a low table in front of each (for inspiration, cf. the apparatus used towards the end of the Dr. Who episode "Turn Left"*), and my body, and everyone who sees it, will be reflected. We shall flaunt the tradition! Everyone will see their soul! Everyone will know that they, too, must live and die! Exclamation point!

I think it could be a powerful moment.

<3

Drunk

* 2008, BBC One. Directed by Graeme Harper. Written by Russell T. Davies.

Lego Pirates

You know those Lego kits with instructions? Think, for example, of the Lego kit designed to be constructed in the shape of a pirate ship—with masts, poop-deck-style windows, eye-patched faces, parrots, treasure chests, and palm trees. Although that kit comes with a few “pirate-themed” accessories, only an idiot would believe that rest of the kit, with its many many simple brown and white, rectangular Legos, could ONLY be used to build a pirate ship. Only and idiot would believe that the standard little blocks could NOT, for example, also be combined into a fairytale castle, a dream house, a monster, a mountain, and that the pirate-themed parrots and treasure chests could NOT alternatively, for example, adorn this dream house or mountain.

And yet, for some reason, most of us continue to be idiots. The mere fact of being packaged and sold “as a kit” does not change or limit the purpose of standard Legos. They are MULTI-purposed building blocks, designed specially for the purpose of creative, self-expressive building and re-building.

This is a good way to think about the relationship between our bodies and the identities-that-we-are-told-correspond-to-these-bodies. Our bodies and biologies are like Legos: the building blocks of our identities. Although the colors, shapes, patterns of these building blocks are fixed, and may have been presented to us [marketed to us] as a part of some over-arching kit [a “woman” kit, a “black” kit, a “white” kit] the pieces themselves have a wide variety of different uses. We can construct our own identities with our bodies, we don’t have to follow the instructions. Just as we can rip apart the tragically packaged “LEGO PIRATE” box and build those brown Legos, white windows, palm trees, and bearded faces into a fanciful dream house so can we decide that pale skin, male genitalia, and no-estrogen mean something other than that “white male” ordered by the instructions.

I Confront My Own Mortality

How do historians relate to death and dying? Our profession, after all, is almost entirely (with a very small percentage of exceptions) about those who have already passed beyond the maya curtain - escaped the cave - fled their mortal coil - etc. etc.

Am I supposed to be encouraged by those who pass in bravery, or at peace, or as paradigms of wisdom? Am I supposed to learn my lesson from those whose utopian visions included immortality for themselves or others? Am I supposed to harden myself, scold myself over the visceral reaction I feel when I see photographs of my architects' gravesites and remember that these people, whose hopes and dreams fill the vast majority of my reading, are now gone?

Is the historian the lonely child who comes up with imaginary friends for himself, at the cost of ostracizing himself from the living? Or is he a sensitive, an individual in touch with his Zeitgeist, but with sympathy to Those Who Have Peaced™, and can approach (if never reach) a reconciliation between the two?

I think the empathic connections I pretend to make with dead people are probably on the unprofessional side of things. But seriously - the phenomenon of death is weirdly different in this country. In any given cemetery there are huge pictures, not just of famous people, but of anyone who has passed! (Look at the background graves in this image).

<3

Drunk

Cheaters

Someone asked me the other day: “why do people “cheat” in relationships?” Sometimes I think every question about human behavior can be explained with the four simple words: “because it feels good.” Yes, as creatures, we are just that hedonistic. So why cheat? Perhaps people are tempted to be unfaithful because it makes them feel like they have some agency in their life again.

Monogamy (and especially marriage) is so mythically over-determined that it begins to feel and look like a social obligation or inevitability. After a relationship is “secured,” it begins to feel “normal”—in other words: not an individual choice, but a social “thing.” In fact, every action between individuals—every word, relationship, touch—is a unique individual choice, and must be accounted for accordingly. This all sounds a little menacing. But I believe that if we thought of our identities [male, white, black, single, married, with children] as being made up of different kinds of individual choices and actions, we would not only act more responsibly and considerately towards others, but we would inhabit our lives more fully [actively, presently] and [most importantly] with more pleasure.

Oh ord-Lay ive-us-Gay our essings-Blay

(Why do I keep writing about films? The world will never know.)

The movie Avatar* takes us on an intergalactic colonial quest to the forest moon, Pandora, of a distant planet (which, although it resembles Uranus or a blue-tinged Yavin IV [of Star Wars fame], is in fact named "Polyphemus." This goes unmentioned in the film). The audience-surrogate and main character, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is a paraplegic who infiltrates the alien society in the form of one of the titular Avatars - an alien-human hybrid without a consciousness or soul of its own, which he controls via a mental bridging device.

In one of Jake's first interactions with a native (Neytiri, Zoe Saldana), he watches as she stabs a knife through the chest of a wounded jackal-analogue and says words over the corpse. He - and we, through his eyes - assume that Neytiri has said a prayer for the animal's soul (which we later discover to be for good cause; all of Pandora is, literally, wired together - and the natives' god is a manifestation of the sum totality of the planet's electromagnetic and metaphysical energy).

Here I come at odds with myself. Everything I've learned and know about studying history, cultures, humans (or fictional aliens) is screaming that I-Jake-we can't take Neytiri's physical actions (stabbing with a knife, saying words) as immediate evidence that she is praying for the animal's soul. We don't know that! And we can't seek better understanding of one another unless we accept that cultural subjectivity (this is Sociology 101, and basic, I know - but the point stands).

As a movie-goer, however, I accept the action as such, and am later rewarded for doing so (because that assumption, in Cameron's universe, is correct). This is little different from the basic adage for writers: "show, don't tell." (And all of its variations: Twain's "...bring on the fat lady and make her sing," Woolf's "It is plain enough to those who have done a reader's part..." Lukeman's "A guy shouldn't have to say, 'Ow, I'm bleeding,'" etc. etc.)

I think this internal conflict is the same as that which we can chart between "academia" and "the real world." For example:

-An attack on the "useless" jargon and opaque prose of academics, which later becomes
-A mocking contest on "Bad Writing", meriting
-A belated response from one of the upper windows among the parapets of the cliched Ivory Tower.

At my entry level position, in the guest lodgings among the servants' quarters in the basement of the Tower, I can see that we must bridge this disconnect. I'm just not sure how yet.

-Drunk

*2009, 20th Century Fox. Directed and written by James Cameron.

500 Days of Summer

I watched the movie 500 Days of Summer* on a recent plane ride. Despite the treatment it received in the Moscow-based entertainment magazine, Afisha, as an art film, 500 Days of Summer is a romantic comedy or, in common parlance, a "chick flick." The tag line for the movie is: "Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn't."

In this non-linear production, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a drone making greeting cards, dreaming of someday returning to his true ambition, architecture, and of finding L'Amour Parfait™. He is infatuated with the very idea of being in love with a temp at the greeting card company, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), who doesn't understand why men become puppies in her presence, and who doesn't believe in Les Amours Parfaits™ that Tom espouses. Throughout the film, we see Tom as a manic-depressive, perhaps clinically neurotic individual whose stress-management skills include mechanically throwing dishes onto the ground and writing huge to-do lists in chalk on a wall of his apartment. Summer, conversely, is dead-pan and more-or-less serene even in the most emotional moments of their break-up.

The process at work here seems to be the following. The filmmakers have acknowledged gender stereotypes in a romantic comedy - they should make the man tall, dark, and handsome (or, to put it in the words of a British television actress: "Gorgeous, and he doesn't speak a word! My kind of man.") and ought to imbue the woman with emotional and stereotypic obsessions. They then attempt to reject the stereotypes by crafting characters who are the polar opposites.

But this thought process still hinges upon

1) the concept of a binary of gender
2) the definitional stereotypes of each gender in that binary.

Rather than refuting anything, the filmmakers have solidified the pre-existing stereotypes. A creative individual cannot play with forms if the initial shape of those forms changes. Without the stereotypes, their creation of polar-opposites makes no sense. The polar opposite of a Thing, then, eventually returns back to the very Thing itself.

-Drunk

*2009, Fox Searchlight Pictures. Directed by Mark Webb. Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber.