Tag: books

Jazz, Photography, and Playing with Light

Jazz and photography are probably my two favorite art forms so I was thrilled to receive as a Christmas gift a very cool book from my aunt and uncle: Jazz by Jim Marshall, which is a collection of photographs of great jazz musicians including such giants as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Thelonius Monk often captured off-stage in moments when those icons of jazz music were mostly just being themselves, or in some cases, onstage in such a way that you can hear their music coming out of the image, such as with the breathtaking image of Monk that graces the cover or the image of Ray Charles silhouetted on a bass drum. The book has little text and is mostly just beautiful photography and captivating images of some of the most important and influential musicians taken between the 50s and the 80s.

As I enjoyed the book, I couldn’t help but think about the Ansel Adams exhibit that I had just seen a few days previously. Something that I read on the display card next to “Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico” stuck in my mind. It mentioned that several prints had been made by Adams and there were variations in the way he had chosen to do it each time, bringing out certain nuances here, obscuring details there.

When I got home, I looked up the section of his book Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs that details “Moonrise.” Adams wrote, “The printed image has varied over the years; I have sought more intensity of light and richness of values as time goes on.” This fascinated me since I always assumed that he just made one print and that was the image as it would be.

I’ve spent many hours in darkrooms trying to acheive an ideal print of some particular negative, but I usually threw away the prints that I didn’t think were perfect (well, okay, as good as I could do) because it never occurred to me then to have different versions.

Staring at the images in Marshall’s book and thinking about the subject matter, I remembered an analogy between photography and music that Adams, who was a classically trained pianist, had made in which he said the negative was like the score and the printing was the performance. This approach to photography goes nicely with the improvisational nature of jazz.

A photographer may spend hours in the field or perhaps just seconds composing a particular image, essentially writing sheet music in light, but the work isn’t finished until it’s performed. The image is then performed in the darkroom and depending on the filters and settings and quality of the chemicals and paper, the photographer takes the initial composition and improvises with it to create something of the moment. A year later, the same negative and same photographer might produce a very different image. Or perhaps exactly the same one.

I really like this idea that there doesn’t have to be one correct version, that there can be many, each existing momentarily like a saxophone solo that changes from night to night, each time sounding new and timely, but also part of something recognizable. And each of those slightly varying solos or images when taken as a whole might tell a fascinating story about the person who made them. It’s this active, living-in-the-moment aspect of these two forms that I so enjoy and admire.

All of this makes Jazz a great book for lovers of jazz or photography to get lost in while listening, perhaps, to Monk work the keys.

More Arrogance! More Power!

December 28, 2005 • James Brush • Leave a comment

I’m not an historian so we’re more in brainstorming and questioning mode than anything else here, but some lingering thoughts about The Arrogance of Power (which I posted about yesterday) come to mind. So here we go.

As a proposed solution to the Southeast Asia question, Fulbright advocated a withdrawal from Vietnam that would have allowed the US to better protect its interests elsewhere while demonstrating that it can be magnanimous as only a great nation can be. We’ll never know if his plan for withdrawal from Vietnam would have worked, but it doesn’t seem that cutting our losses in 1966 would have produced a far different outcome.

I’m not convinced that this is the appropriate solution in Iraq, and this is where the Iraq-Vietnam similarities seem to fall apart because to withdraw from Iraq and leave a power vacuum at this point could actually impact our national security in ways that withdrawing from Vietnam in 1966 would not have.

Our conundrum, of course, is that everyone wants Iraq to be free and democratic while Saddam Hussein pays for his hideous crimes. That’s a good thing, but the problem for me is that a nation’s first responsibility ought to be to its own people, so I’m inclined to agree with Fulbright that by ensuring that our own house is in order first, we become a stronger force for peace and change in the world.

Fulbright quotes John Quincy Adams saying that, “America should be ‘the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all’ but ‘the champion and vindicator only of her own'” and suggests that this kind of policy is the way to avoid the traps that come with the arrogance of power. Cold as it may sound, a nation’s first duty is to its people and our people were not served by invading Iraq or even Vietnam for that matter.

Invariably, the favorite question comes: What about World War II? Should we have stayed on the sidelines while so many suffered? My answer is at first no, but then it seems like a false comparison because in that case the threat to our freedom and security was real, it was not a unilateral intervention, and we came to the aid of our allies who were fighting for their lives in Europe. In the case of the Pacific, we properly responded to a direct attack.

This leads to another question: Did we intervene in World War II to stop the holocaust? I don’t think we did, in which case it seems inappropriate to say we were justified in intervening to end the holocaust unless you accept that the end result justifies the original argument whatever it might have been. A strange assertion since we can’t know how things will end. I do think that it would have been an acceptable reason to intervene, but how many Americans would have signed up for that? Does this mean that any humanitarian intervention will require lies and misdirection to get Americans to go along and give up our comfortable lives?

Naturally another question arises: How do we decide where we intervene? Intervening for humanitarian reasons in some places while looking the other way in others is very problematic for me. It’s like sparing some people on death row but not everyone.

So do we intervene only when the people being oppressed have oil? Do they have to be of a certain religious or ethnic group? Do we only intervene when we think the oppressors are weak? How should this be calculated and what should we sacrifice in terms of creating the best possible life for our own citizens?

I don’t support an isolationist foreign policy, but I can’t for the life of me see why we have to have a finger in every pie either. It feels like we’re caught in a vicious circle whereby we maintain a forceful presence overseas to protect our liberty, safety, and way of life which are threatened by people who are angry that we maintain a forceful presence overseas.

There has to be a place in the middle there somewhere between endless wars fought on the whims of questionable leadership and total disengagement from the world and its concerns.

The Arrogance of Power

December 27, 2005 • James Brush • 2 Comments

I’ve just finished reading The Arrogance of Power by Senator J William Fulbright, which is at once both timely and dated. Written in 1966, it is first and foremost a critique of US foreign policy, especially our involvement in Vietnam. In that regard, it’s an interesting look at a variety of “what-might-have-been” options that have since been rendered moot by history.

Where the book is timely is in Fulbright’s treatment of the conflict inherent in the dual nature of the American character. He describes this dualism along the lines of humanitarian vs. puritanical, which lately seems to have been simplified to the level of team colors – blue vs. red – now that radical Islam has replaced communism as the core threat to the nation. Of course the extremity of the 9/11 attacks is vastly different from anything that preceded our involvement in Vietnam, but when one separates (as I think one should) Iraq from 9/11, we can see Iraq as just the sort of Vietnam-style intervention that Fulbright advises against.

The Iraq-Vietnam parallel emerges when we view our involvement in Iraq as a policy based on a reverse domino theory (if Iraq becomes democratic then other middle eastern countries will follow) instigated by the puritanical impulses in our nature, which want to fight evil, spread the word and save the world, by force if necessary. With this in mind, Fulbright’s book becomes an excellent jumping off point for studying a dangerous tendency in our national character that when combined with extreme power creates a self-destructive arrogance that unchecked can lead to ruin.

Fulbright argues that the puritan mindset carries a tendency to allow fear to guide decision-making when dealing with our enemies. This fear, Fulbright argues, is a major factor in our implementation of short-sighted and self-defeating policies such as intervening in foreign nations when our interests might be better served by not intervening, to take my-way-or-the-highway positions, to break our own laws, to violate our standards of conduct, to intimidate our citizens, and refuse to engage in real thought about the roots of the problems we face. In the sixties, it was fear of communism that led to the above problems; today, it is fear of radical Islam. We have much to be afraid of today, but I agree with Fulbright that we should let reason and our laws dictate our policies.

In this regard, I think Fulbright’s book provides contemporary readers with a useful tool for analyzing the mindset that led to our invasion of Iraq, which I think Fulbright would say was a direct result of the arrogance of power that plants “delusions of grandeur in the minds of otherwise sensible people and otherwise sensible nations,” causing them to engage in policies where more is bitten off than can be chewed, followed by an unwillingness to recognize mistakes.

Unfortunately, the answer to the Iraq question will not be found in a forty-year-old book. It will require much debate including questions about why we went in; however, the arrogance of our current leadership has led us to a place where debate has been reduced to with-us or against-us divisions in which a significant number of Americans have bought the line – the myth – that might makes right and that dissent is somehow unpatriotic when in fact it is, as Fulbright correctly asserts, the highest patriotism.

As Fulbright tried to remind Americans in 1966, we can change polices and directions but only if we see clearly the ways in which flawed polices contribute to and exacerbate our problems. Unfortunately too many of us, so hurt by 9/11 and carrying a hope that our service men and women will not have died in vain, are unwilling even to consider the possibility that we aren’t always right in our actions, that sometimes a great nation such as ours can make terrible errors in judgment and do unspeakable damage when driven by fear rather than reason.

Sometimes a great nation must admit and face its errors and then work realistically to correct them rather than continue them. That ability to see reality for what it is rather than what we want it to be is one of the few things that can save a nation from its own sense of greatness, allowing its people to understand that they can live peacefully and play a part in lifting up mankind by not trying to forcefully remake the world in their image. This would take great humility of the kind that Fulbright advocates and that George Bush promised back in 2000 but never delivered.

Perhaps, Fulbright suggests to those readers of the mid-60s, it is time to listen to the humanitarian side of the American character and vigorously question the ideas and policies advocated by our puritanical half. In this regard, I think he is still correct and The Arrogance of Power still very timely.

Pepys’ Diary

December 1, 2005 • James Brush • 1 Comment

I’ve recently finished “reading” a second audiobook as a distraction from rush hour traffic. The tape-tome loaned to me by my parents was Pepys’ Diary, by Samuel Pepys (read by Kenneth Branagh).

For the most part, Pepys briskly chronicles the ordinary day-to-day events of his life as a Royal Navy administrator in seventeenth century London, and the events are as ordinary as one might expect:

Up and I to the office by water, then home to my wife for dinner, back to the office until dark, and then home and so to bed.

Okay, I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea. Listening to this, my mind drifted in and out as his ordinary experiences intermingled with mine, the exception being his description of The Great Fire of London (1666), which commands the listener’s undivided attention as Pepys laments the destruction and describes his efforts to save his home and property.

Apart from the fire and his business dealings, much of the drama comes from the fact that Pepys was a man with an eye for the ladies. Amusingly, he tends to veer off into a strange Spanglish (with perhaps a bit of French thrown in) whenever he describes his extramarital affairs. I don’t know if this is an unwillingness to openly acknowledge what he was doing, since he seemed to feel somewhat guilty about it (at times) or simply a code to prevent his wife from reading it if she should find his diary. Perhaps both.

He discontinued his diary in mid-1669 out of concern for his failing eyesight, but it seems a great source of information for anyone interested in English life during this period. I’m not sure I would have picked this up and read it in book form, but it made for fascinating listening and would probably be a good read (in the traditional sense) as well.

Overall, an interesting window into life in seventeenth century London juxtaposed by life in twenty-first century Texas crawling slowly along outside my car windows. And so I home, and to bed.

A Dying Language

November 27, 2005 • James Brush • 3 Comments

Yesterday’s Austin American-Statesman ran this story:

NuSrvc2OffrGr8Litr8trOnYrFon
Loose translation: Get classic literature in text-message form

Ouch. Dot Mobile is selling its service as a new way for students to cheat avoid reading prepare for tests without having to dirty their fingers with Cliffs Notes. The service will initially provide plot summaries and important quotes from the likes of Shakespeare, Austen, and Golding without all the extra words, sentences and subtlety that only confuse students anyway.

Eventually Dot Mobile intends to offer the complete works of Shakespeare and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. CNN also had a story on this including an excerpt from Milton’s Paradise Lost which begins with, “devl kikd outa hevn coz jelus of jesus&strts war.” The various authors can be heard spinning in their graves.

Initially, I was saddened because I knew that the effect of this would not just be another way for students of literature to avoid reading it, but would also continue the ongoing destruction of the English language, but then in the section of the article offering interpretations, I saw and reflected on the advice Nick remembers receiving from his father in the opening of The Great Gatsby:

WenevaUFeelLykDissinNe1,
jstMembaDatAlDaPpinDaWrldHvntHdDaVantgsUvAd

I read this several times over and remembered that hez rite cuz itz lyk hez sain we all gotta b open n shit cuz who r we 2 judge.

River Out of Eden

November 26, 2005 • James Brush • Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, catching up on my Discover magazines, I read an interesting article about a Sir Richard Dawkins, described in the magazine as “Darwin’s Rottweiler.” Among other things, the article praised Dawkins’ gift for writing for the nonscientist as well as his adamant stance concerning the truth of evolution.

Hmmm, I thought, I’d sure like to read something by Dawkins. When I got home that night, my bookshelf served up one of its many gifts: River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life by Richard Dawkins. There’s nothing like having a bunch of books I’ve never read, but I digress.

True to Discover‘s word, Dawkins’ writing is erudite and imaginative. The book is short (161 pages) and accomplishes its lofty goal of explaining the workings of evolution and natural selection at the genetic level. This being a popular science book, Dawkins relies on arm-chair logic to make many of his points, and he does so with wit, all the while conveying a sense of wonder at the natural world, whether he is describing the behavior of bees or the evolutionary functions of the eye.

I’ve read and heard ID proponents try to argue that the eye is too complex a thing not to have been designed by an intelligence, but Dawkins counters nicely:

Thus the creationist’s question-“What is the use of half an eye?” – is a lightweight question, a doodle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 percent better than 49 percent of an eye, which is already better than 48 percent, and the difference is significant.

From there he details a variety of eye-types in the fish, insect, and mammal worlds, all of which represent “eyes” that we might consider half an eye or less, from eyes that do nothing more than track movement or show a difference between light and dark to eyes as complex as birds’ eyes. Ultimately, he argues that an eye (or any other aspect of a creature’s biology) will be only just good enough for the purpose it is intended to serve.

Throughout the book, Dawkins defends the truth of evolution with a seeming twinkle in his eye and smile on his face. Dawkins clearly relishes sharing his love of the natural world as much as he enjoys shooting down anti-scientific positions making this a surprisingly fun book (unless, I suppose, you’re dead-set against evolution). The most memorable aspect of the book, though, is his discussion of ancestry, a poignant reminder that we are all related, all cousins.

River Out of Eden is an engaging book that provides a wonderfully lucid counter to the unscientific claims of the (embarrassingly antiscientific) Intelligent Design movement. It’s also a good book just to remind us of the many wonders of the natural world.

Call Me a Dork, but…

November 18, 2005 • James Brush • 2 Comments

The following are links to some interesting Harry Potter related commentary and analysis:

This is a pretty thorough and convincing analysis of Snape’s background and why he is, despite murdering Dumbledore, still working for Dumbledore’s cause.
“Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy” is the abstract (I can’t seem to access the whole article, but the abstract is still worth a read) to a law review article about the Ministry of Magic.
ASL Library contains a series of links (including the one listed above) to more law-oriented articles about the world of Harry Potter.

Anyways, I still have Potter on the brain and will until I see Goblet of Fire.

As an antidote, I think I’ll be reading a nice short work of nonfiction next: River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins.

Ok, JK, How Long for Number Seven?

November 16, 2005 • James Brush • 2 Comments

Be advised, not pissed: If you haven’t read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but wish to do so, you might not want to read this as it contains spoilers.

I finally finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last week. I’ve been on a Potter streak lately, and now I am finally caught up. This book wasn’t the kind of page-turner that Order of the Phoenix was with all its intensity and downward-spiraling chaos, but it easily kept my attention for the pieces of the past that Harry discovers with the aid of the great wizard Dumbledore. Their trips into the pensieve to witness the past and learn the story of how Tom Riddle became Voldemort paved the way for Book Seven in which Harry will have to face Lord Voldemort and either destroy him or be destroyed.

Half-Blood Prince jogs along at a relatively slow pace as most of the big action in the book takes place in the past. The present Hogwarts story concerns the love lives of Harry, Ron, and Hermione and their awkward efforts to find romance and do a little snogging. Much of the book is quieter than the previous books, but it is by no means boring. Rowling does a fantastic job of keeping tension seething just beneath the surface through news of the world outside the school and Harry’s growing paranoia, which contrasts sharply with the relatively peaceful year at Hogwarts following two incredibly tumultuous ones. The peace, of course, is all on the surface. All of the characters are terribly afraid and unable to articulate their fears, which set everyone on edge, ready to jump down each other’s throats at only slight provocations. Throw teenage hormones into the mix, and Rowling has created a pretty tense atmosphere.

Throughout the novel, Rowling does an excellent job humanizing the insufferable bully Draco Malfoy. One even begins to pity him the dark and mysterious task about which he is obviously conflicted and yet trapped into. At the novel’s beginning, the unpleasant Professor Snape (still apparently working as a double agent spying on Voldemort’s Death Eaters for Dumbledore) is forced to make the Unbreakable Vow to finish whatever task Malfoy has been set if he is unable to accomplish it. I assumed it would be to kill Harry. How Snape would get around the Vow was one of the things that kept the book exciting. Of course we learn the plot was to murder Dumbledore and when Malfoy can’t do it, Snape does thus proving that all along Harry was right about Snape’s lack of commitment to Dumbledore’s cause. Or does it?

I had a suspicion that Dumbledore wouldn’t make it through the book considering that someone had died in each of the previous two books with the importance of the death escalating each time. With Harry’s godfather, Sirius Black, killed off in the last book, who could be more important to Harry than Dumbledore? I also knew that ultimately Harry would have to face Voldemort utterly alone, but I still couldn’t believe Dumbldore died, nor that Snape was the one to kill him. Like Dumbledore I had always believed Snape, bastard that he is, was not working for Voldemort, and I still wonder about that.

Dumbledore knows Malfoy won’t kill him. Can’t kill him. Doesn’t have it in him. Dumbledore has also demonstrated time and again that he will do whatever he needs to do, offer any sacrifice to destroy Voldemort as was seen when he made Harry force him to drink the poison that would reveal Voldemort’s Horcrux. I can’t help but wonder if Dumbledore knew that Snape had to make the Unbreakable Vow to keep his cover. Knew that Snape would have to kill him if Malfoy couldn’t. Then at the scene of Dumbledore’s death, as Malfoy has the opportunity to kill a weakened and trapped Dumbledore, Dumbledore works on him, stalls him, because Dumbledore believes that there is good yet in Malfoy, that Malfoy, though a bully, isn’t a murderer. It is as if Dumbledore has, as Harry did, seen Malfoy in the bathroom crying, agonizing over his terrible mission. When Snape arrives, he kills Dumbledore as Dumbledore knows he must, thereby preserving Malfoy’s innocence (barely) and Snape’s cover, which of course could prove invaluable to Harry, though Harry doesn’t know it.

It would be just like Albus Dumbledore to sacrifice his life to save one student (Malfoy) from evil and set in motion a chain of events that will help Harry destroy Voldemort. It would also be just like Dumbledore (and Rowling) for none of this to be revealed until the end of Book Seven.

As I mentioned in my previous Potter post, I am still constantly amazed by the way in which Rowling grows her characters through adolescence and into young adulthood. By the end of this book, though he is more passive than in previous books, Harry has seen too much, fought too hard, lost too much to really be thought of as a boy-wizard anymore.

When in the last chapter Harry defiantly proclaims to the Minister of Magic that he is still “Dumbledore’s man, through and through,” the operative word has suddenly become ‘man.’ Book Seven will be the story of Harry finally confronting his destiny.

These books are great fun and much more engaging than I ever imagined they would be, and now I’m left pacing around the room thinking, “How long do we have to wait, Ms. Rowling?”

My Own Psychedelic Picnic

November 15, 2005 • James Brush • 2 Comments

I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook version of Kinky Friedman’s The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic: A “Walk” in Austin, enjoyable especially because of Kinky’s profound love of this city that he clearly relishes sharing with the reader (ok, listener), making one happy to be an Austinite.

At one point, Kinky names his twelve favorite Austin restaurants and that, of course got me hungry. So for what it’s worth, in no particular order and in honor of the Kinkster, my top twelve:

Kim Phung – tofu lemongrass vermicelli…mmmm
Castle Hill Cafe – the menu always changes, what’s not to like?
Chuy’s – rellenos made with Hatch green chiles (nature’s most perfect food) rather than the more typical poblano
Vivo’s – micheladas
Guero’s – the South Congress vibe, the enchiladas
Las Manitas – mas enchiladas
Thai Passion – the hottest tofu noodle dish I’ve ever had
The Clay Pit – ok so the service was bad last time, but what a curry
Hut’s – whether a veggie burger, buffalo burger, or somewhere in between it’s always the Wolfman Jack
Katz’s – never closes, there’s always parking, and has the best bloody mary, what else is needed?
Thundercloud – of course
The Salt Lick – for the sides and suasage and the guy playing old outlaw country tunes on the porch

So there it is. Right now, but likely to change tomorrow, my top twelve Austin comfort food establishments, and I’m already wondering how I forgot Mongolian BBQ, Dirty’s, Kerbey Lane, The Magnolia Cafe, Thai Noodle Bowl, Etc., The Texas Chili Parlor… oh my cup runneth over! What an embarrassment of riches we have here.

“He Ain’t Kinky. He’s My Governor.”

November 15, 2005 • James Brush • Leave a comment

At least that’s what the bumper sticker on a truck cruising I-10 outside Beaumont said.

I was surprised to see that Kinky’s campaign to be the first independent governor of Texas since Sam Houston had reached outside the Austin area. I know he’s been all over the state campaigning, but I assumed it was only in Austin and perhaps the Hill Country that anyone would have heard much about him.

Kinky has been asking, “How hard can it be?” for nearly a year now, and based on Governor Perry’s half-assed performance, I can only assume that it’s not that hard. Come and Take it! has a nice piece on why he has an uphill battle (assuming he can get on the ballot, which is a chore in and of itself), but provides hope that someone will have the backbone, honesty, and wit to serve up the public humiliation that Rick Perry so richly deserves.

This post is provoked by finally listening to an audiobook that my dad loaned me over the summer. The book is Kinky’s The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic: A “Walk” in Austin and so far (about half a CD in) it’s an amusing, irreverent, and fairly accurate picture of the Austin that was (from the days of founder President Mirabeau B. Lamar through Willie, Stevie, and on towards Dell), is, and will be as told by someone who loves this town deeply (and unfortunately read by someone who does not pronounce words like ‘Guadalupe,’ ‘San Jacinto,’ ‘Burnet,’ or ‘Waylon’ – as in Jennings – like he’s spent much time here).

So to make a rambling post shorter, I was driving on Mopac yesterday, crossing the river and listening to the Kinkster spin the tale of Austin’s founding and the tensions between Lamar and Sam Houston over whether or not this beautiful settlement on the river in the heart of Comanche country should be the capital of the republic, and I decided that Kinky is far more deserving of life in the governor’s mansion than Perry or whatever poor sacrificial lamb the feckless Texas Democrats throw out there. Kinky understands the Texan love of big stories, big myths and big talk that gets Texas politicians elected, but he also seems to get the fact that we live in the modern world and we have very real, very big problems that the Republicans have shown they have no interest in or ability to solve.

I don’t know if Kinky can solve them, but at least he seems honest about trying when he talks about them. And he’s funny. And listening to his book, he reminds me all over again why I love Austin.

As his campaign materials ask, “Why the Hell not?”