Monthly Archives: February 2013

Staying in Touch in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

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My dear To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing this letter to you to explain why I write letters. Since the new year started, I have hand-written 50 or so letters, postcards, thank you notes and other cards. In spite of this, I receive no mail back. If I get a response…

(Wode Toad iletterss telling me to stop whining and feeling sorry for myself, Wode_Toadand to get on with it. He is right, I have gotten letters from my daughter every week, two letters from Walter, one from Brandon, and an incredible origami artwork from Josie.)

As with most of my writings, I am both typing this and writing it out by hand, so I will send the handwritten copy to the first person I get a letter from after I post this.

In 1935, the philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote a famous essay entitled “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” He explores how being reproduced changes the nature of a work of art. Of course, art has always been copyable, but the possibility of large scale mechanical reproduction and the development of forms of art such as photography and film which specifically rely upon this ability change how exactly we interact with art. Benjamin is writing as a child of the 19th century in the earlier 20th century, observing as large scale mechanical reproduction is becoming more and more common, but is not yet ubiquitous.

For Benjamin, there is something that is lost in the transition between an original work of art and a reproduction, and, in fact, with reproduced art there is not even a clear distinction of “original.” Although we can speak of “Master copies,” there is no real way in which the first copy of a film has any sort of privilege over copies. Benjamin calls that which is lacking in reproductions an “aura.” This aura included such things as a certain authority, an ability to stand back and consider this one artifact as the authoritative version of this work; in addition to this, a work of art is located within a specific time and place having been brought to that time and place through a specific history.

Furthermore, it is located–enmeshed–within a specific tradition. The mechanical reproduction, by contrast, floats independently and unattached. Although there is only one original work, it is open to perspective, allowing its few viewers to walk around it and see it from several sides, standing face to face with the work of art, reacting to it and–in the case of performed art–being reacted to. By contrast, mechanically reproduced art forces its mass viewers to assume a certain viewpoint–that of the camera operator or editor. While the observer is absorbed in the original work of art, the purpose of the mass produced reproduction is to distract.

One of the biggest changes in perception in the age of mechanical reproduction is that reproduction by sheer volume will eventually become the norm, and at one point we will not be able to even see a difference. What Benjamin didn’t foresee was the primacy of mass media, that at some point mechanical reproductions would not only have primacy over original, unique art, but that at some point reproduction would come to seem more real than the reality it represented and reproduced.

I am not entirely sure I agree with Benjamin, I love cinema and photography as art forms, and am unwilling to write them off. I definitely think he attributes a little too much to the mysterious aura of the art object–even using the language of religious mysticism and magic, but there is something different to created art as opposed to reproduced art. I have seen many of the great painting & sculptures that I also saw reproduced as little pictures in my textbooks, but also as posters and prints. The magic–and I really cannot think of another adequate word–of standing before Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in Amsterdam of Van Gogh’s Starry Night in New York or within an actual Cathedral is inexpressible. I am not sure what the aura of the authentic work is, but there definitely is something. Performed art can be made more perfect through multiple takes and editing, but there is something raw and beautiful that makes a live musical or theatrical performance so wonderful. I have a recording of Townes Van Zandt singing “If I Needed You.” I also saw him perform it live. The recording is actually better–his voice was pretty much shot by the time I saw him in 1990–but there was something about hearting Townes himself sing it, 100 or so feet away, under the July stars in Nashville. There is an aura, an authenticity, to an original work shared directly.

If I needed you would you come to me,
Would you come to me, and ease my pain?
If you needed me
I would come to you
I’d swim the seas for to ease your pain.

That is why I like to send hand written letters. Putting my words here onto the glowing screen sets them into an inorganic detached place, a place without history or writing1context. Even as watch myself type them, the words become as indifferent to me as an article on Wikipedia. As you read them, you are reading them at a remove from me. The paper of a letter does not remove my words from me the way the screen does. They remain mine (and, given the nature of my handwriting, clearly, uniquely, and irrefutably mine), and when you read my letter they are still my writing, my marks, my words, but in your hand: they are now ours. Like the bread I have brought to your house, we are now sharing.

Where is the text I sent you?
To whom does it belong?
Where is the note you sent me on Facebook or in an email or by text? It might be in the cloud or on a mainframe somewhere, or on your phone, but are those real places?
Can you put a text in your shirt pocket next to your heart, or keep it under your pillow?

Although we strive to live authentic lives in this 21st Century world, we have given up the very things that allow us to be authentic: knowing the person who grew our food, or even the person from whom we buy it, having our food reproduced for us rather than shaping it and making it ourselves, and investing ourselves (in my case, often a little blood) in our food, sewing our own clothes or working on our own houses and yards. In our jobs we are simply tools of mechanical reproduction, and in our lived lives we are allowing ourselves to become works of mechanical reproduction.

Furthermore, most of us are losing the ability to even recognize the difference: we do not know what it would be like to grow our own food, and we do not even recognize what it looks like before it is our food–on the vine or on the hoof. We do not know how to talk to a vendor at a road side stand or a butcher. Many of us do not know–or have only a faint childhood memory or the reminiscences of our parents and grandparents–what we have lost by eating “prepared” food rather than slow food cooked from scratch. Many of us have never owned an article of clothing that is unique, which could not be worn by hundreds, even thousands of others who went shopping around the same time. Soon, we might no longer remember what it felt like to connect with a friend–or even a stranger–in genuine conversation, or, if we do, it will be a distant memory, something else we experimented with when we were in college but have left behind.

The last hope of authenticity is also the first foundation of being human: being in touch with our fellow human beings. And so, to be authentic, we must try to restore authentic modes of staying in touch: genuine face to face (or side by side) conversations, eye contact and common courtesy, playful interaction, and open, honest conversation.

Since we live in a world in which we are increasingly separated from writing2our friends and family, we must cultivate ways of staying in touch which have the same aura of authenticity. That, my dear to whom it may concern, is why I still write letters by hand. Yes, an email, a Facebook post, a tweet, even an abrev’d text can have the same touching quality as a letter or even a heart to heart face to face, but if we never write and seldom talk, it is more likely that all our interactions will become inane twitter, or even the interpreted signage of Pinterest, instead of becoming more like conversations. If, however, we continue to write, to take the time to form our own words and to send them, perhaps that aura of authenticity will inform even our humblest text.

Vegetarian Cottage Pie

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Dear Marissa,
How are you? I am fine, as things go. How was the upper mid-west? I hope your Christmas was great, or, at the very least, not terribly stressful.

Cottage PieOur dear Meg has brought it to my attention that you feel I should pass on the recipe for the cottage pie that I baked on that other great holiday, National Talk Like a Pirate Day. This will be difficult, since most stew-type things are largely improvised, left unrecorded, etc., but I will make an attempt. All measurements are estimates.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups TVP (texturized vegetable protein)
  • 2 tsp. Onion Powder
  • 2 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 1 tsp Worcester Sauce
  • 2 tsp soy sauce
  • 1/2 red wine
  • some olive oil
  • 1/2 lb sliced mushrooms
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 2 chopped carrots
  • some (to taste, maybe one small) diced potatoes
  • 2 Tbsp imitation beef stock (I have found some really cheap Mexican stuff that doesn’t actually contain beef, but has some good flavor; bullion will work, too)
  • 1/2 cup pearled barley
  • 1/2 red lentils
  • 1/2 cup frozen or fresh peas
  • 1 pastry pie crust or tube of refrigerator biscuits
  • 1/2 cup cheddar cheese (I prefer Dubliner or Cabots, both of which are rennet free)
  • 3 cups or so of mashed potatoes
  • hot water as needed

Step 1, Prep the Protein: (nb: this is my standard imitation ground beef recipe. I also use it in chilli, and, with some sage, as the basis for my biscuits and gravy recipe) Mix the TVP, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, Worcester sauce, soy sauce and wine. Add enough boiling water to just cover, stir and set aside to lest the TVP absorb the liquid.

Step 2, frying: in a pot, heat a little oil and add the sliced mushrooms and onion. After they are browned, add the protein mixture and stir fry it a bit. Add the chopped carrots and potatoes.

Step 3, stewing: add water (Wode Toad suggests stout or red wine) to cover, along with the fake beef stock, pearled barley and red lentils. Stir and bring to a bubble, then cover and allow this to simmer for 30 minutes or so, while you prepare the pie shell and mashed potatoes.

Step 4, shelling: of course, you don’t need this. The pie is actually OK without any crust, or, of course, you can actually bake a pastry pie shell. What I did was to buy the extremely flaky tube-biscuits, preheat the oven as directed, butter a pie tin or casserole, and then peal the biscuits as thin as I could and cover (line) the tin, putting them in the oven as directed and baking them until browned.

Step 5, mashing potatoes: my great, great grandmother made mashed potatoes for folks starting the Oregon Trail in Western Pennsylvania. It’s what made this country great.

Stout Vegetable PieStep 6, putting it all together: fill the pie tin with the stew, sprinkle with some sharp cheddar, Top with mashed potatoes, broil the top of the potatoes a bit, and there you go.

I hope this will do, and that it finds you well.
If you think of it, remind our mutual friend that she really could return the dish from the last cottage pie I made her.Dr_-Bear looking left

Your friend,
Dr. Bear

Things to consider if acquiring a Philosopher

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Dear Giedra,
Thank you for your question.
If you are considering acquiring a philosopher, there are many things you should know first, and many things to consider.

Know ThyselfOver the twenty five centuries they have been around, many different breeds–perhaps hundreds–have developed. Some are bred for hunting, some for fighting, others, especially in the academy, are quite domesticated. Others have gone feral, and can be found roaming freely in bookstores & coffee shops (or, in my case, both). Some archaic breeds still flourish, some are virtually extinct. I can’t remember the last time I saw a wire-haired Leibnizian, but Spinozists seem to resurface every few years. There don’t seem to be many pedigreed Hegelians anymore, but many of the popular 20th Century breeds had some Hegelian blood.

Some philosophers are witty and urbane, sophisticated and conversational, fluent in several languages and capable of stylish dress, able to speak knowledgeably about art, literature, poetry, history and pop culture, interested in fine food and sparkling conversation, or, on the other hand, they can be analytic.

Either way, a word of caution: if they start using really long, confusing words like “equiprimordial,” “temporality,” “transcendental,” or “Being,” hit them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. This sort of behavior may seem minor or even cute at first, but trust me: in the long term it must be stopped.Dr Bear in Vest

The charm of having a philosopher is their strange relationship to the world of ideas. Remember how in a fairy tale everything–even the very air–is charged through and through with magic? For your philosopher, everything–even time and space (OK, maybe especially time and space)–is charged through with ideas. Ideas animate the world, hold it together to allow us to make sense of it, and allow us to reassemble it to see that might be, and sometimes even what should be.

Philosophers are generally interested in, fascinated by, even obsessed with patterns and connections. What sort of connections or patterns are there in the universe? In being itself, or just in the way we perceive or conceive our world? How about the connection that links statements about the world in such a way that if the statement “if this, then that” (or A → B) is true, and if “this” (A) is true, then “that” (B) is true, or why it is that if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal.

An important detail which you will notice is that your philosopher will pay a lot of attention to logic. More than anything else, folks assume that philosophers spend a lot of time in vague bleary abstraction, and that isn’t the case. The core, the very heart of Philosophy is logic, and proof is really as important to the writing of philosophy as anything. This is one of the reasons why learning about the “History of Ideas” is so misleading: it is all summary of the conclusions, whereas Philosophy is really much more about the path to the conclusions than about the product. There are also clear standards and procedures. The philosopher’s goal is to spend time in precise bleary abstraction. Precision, logic and clarity are to philosophy what living a sinless life is to Christianity: very important and generally ignored.

CategoreisAnother important detail is that your philosopher probably will not take a great deal of interest in details or specifics. Individual things are only interesting in what they reveal about a class of things as a whole, or about the categories of things into which a philosopher seeks to divide the world. The underlying connections or substance, the huge patterns, the universals are of interest to them, the particulars are only a tool to get to what is true of all things. Specifics are for the sciences.

In general, an easy thing about philosophers–if Philosophy Strandthey are house-broken–is that they won’t bother you with pesky demands for attention, or to be walked or groomed or have a ball thrown for them. If you can provide them with a steady supply of books, they will generally manage to entertain themselves.

One final word: many question why, in this sophisticated age of Farmville and Furbys, and tablets that can deliver information or entertainment (or that terrible gorgon which is their mutant offspring, “info-tainment’–trust me, I am not infotained!) instantly, why should we still have philosophers. My reply that they are mostly harmless, but still serve an important function: to question and argue, and–if they are good philosophers–make us question and argue. Yes, 2000 later folks are still arguing over what Jesus said, and talking about Julius Caesar, but 2500 years later, folks are still arguing with Socrates, still engaged in the same endeavor–systematic wonder–with which Sophia–Wisdom–first captivated him. all philosophy

Yours, affectionately,
Dr. Bear.

Pumpkin Carrot Beet Muffins

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PCB muffins 3Like many recipes, this one has a bunch of dry ingredients, and a bunch of wet ingredients which eventually come together.

 

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups flour (Whole wheat, white, both, as you wish)
  • ¾ cup of sugar
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 2 tsp. cinnamon
  • ½ tsp mace (this gives it a little bite, but can be left out or replaced with ginger)
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ cup brown sugar (it will clog the sifter).
  • ½ pound shredded carrots (or carrot  & beets mixed) I have a scale, but you can also sort of figure out half of a 1 lb. bag of carrots.
  • ½ cup raisins (Golden raisins are better; sometimes, if the raising are really dry, I soak them in rum or coffee or warm water)
  • ½ cup walnuts
  • (optional, ½ cup pumpkin seeds)
  • 2 cup pumpkin
  • 3 eggs
  • ½ cup oil (it might work without this, I liked making it with coconut oil.)
  • 2 tsp. vanilla

Step 1, Prepare Ye the way: Preheat the oven to 350°, shred or grate the carrots and/or beets, either grease the muffin tins or put in the cupcake liners (I usually spray a little canola oil in the bottom of these to make things come out easier). I get 2 dozen medium sized muffins out of this mix.

Step 2, sifting the dry ingredients: In one bowl crumble up the brown sugar, then sift (mix if you don’t have a sifter) in the flour, white sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, mace, and salt. Mix thoroughly.

Step 3, mixing the wet ingredients: In another bowl, mix the shredded root vegetables, raisins, walnuts, pumpkin, eggs, oil and vanilla.

 Step 4, combining the big mess: Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and mix well. You want to make sure the individual bits of carrot & beet are each coated to keep them from getting too clumpy. The consistency should be much firmer than batter, but a little more liquid than cookie dough. I used pumpkin from a vegetable my daughter had slaughtered, but canned pumpkin is a but less wet, so you might have to add a little liquid, like 1/4 cup of orange juice.

Step 5, baking: Fill two dozen or so muffin tins. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. I never wrote the time down, but it is at least 20 minutes and probably less than 35. See how they look. Stick a toothpick in one and see if it comes out battery.

PCB muffins 1Enjoy! These are perfect breakfast, for leaving at the back door of good friends, for sneaking across the counter to gorgeous barristas, for setting on the desks of helpful librarians, for sending to Brooklyn with couch-surfing college girls; you name it.

The silly, silly meaningfulness

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 Valentines Baloons 2That silly, silly meaningfulness; the language game of love

Shake ShackWhen night is almost gone, but before the next dawn has come, sometimes, you can see a brilliant star, the brightest star, in the eastern sky; it is the morning star.

What do we talk about when we talk about the morning star? Believe it or not, this kind of question was the sort of thing that dominated discussions within earlier 20th Century Linguistic Philosophy. You see, the morning star isn’t really a star, nor does it particularly belong to the morning. The referent—the object that the phrase refers to—is the planet Venus. Strangely enough, Venus is also occasionally the evening star, depending upon when you see it. Obviously, although they both refer to the planet Venus, the phrases “morning star” and “evening star” don’t mean the same thing at all. Regardless, however, of this quirk of words, both phrases mean something, and we understand both. Language doesn’t always work in clear equivalence or rules.

What do we talk about when we talk about love?GCC3

Nothing. If we analyze the things we say to people we love, most of the things we say are meaningless in themselves, and many of the things we say are downright silly. From Shakespeare’s Orlando calling upon the Thrice-Crowned Queen of Heaven to bear witness to his love to MacBratney’s Nut Brown Hare loving his little bunny to the moon and back, the words don’t really “refer” to anything in a meaningful way. From “My love is like a red, red, rose…” to “Love you more!” they are games we play. What the words do is connect the participants in a specific conversation as players in a game—the only important game—in a distinct, intense and very personal way.

What do we talk about when we talk about love?

Like playing a game of “Keep It Up” with a red balloon, the point of the language game of love is to keep the ball in the air, the game in motion, the participants connected, the love alive, and the beloved loved.

What do we talk about when we talk about love?GCC1

Of course, we can give our loved ones bread and soup, or bake a Valentine’s Day Ginger and Chocolate Chip Cake for our co-workers, but there are an infinite variety of ways to play this game. The language game of love can be an individualized school lunch packed with care, the Marx Brothers routines my dad and my uncles did for each other and for my grandma after my grandpa’s funeral, a game of catch with a child or dog, and, of course, the mystically silly dance of sex.

What do we talk about when we talk about love?

Of course there can be the cliché red roses and chocolates of Valentine’s Day, or of locking a padlock with you and your lover’s heartlocknames on it on a public place, but there is so much more. The language game of love is the gestures and questions of still being curious about the stranger you have lived with 20 years, standing up to meet a lover at the end of an exhausting day, or washing the dishes, pots, and pans for somebody who has cooked your supper. It is shining your shoes, buying a new tie or putting on lipstick to win the heart of someone you see every day.

These things have no logical content and they are not sentences that can be diagrammed or translated into the IFFs, tildes & horseshoes of Logical Language L.
Yet they are the most important things we ever say, ever have said, or ever will say.

So, speak of love. Tell someone something silly, silly, and meaningful today.

Gingerbread Chocolate Chip Cake

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Gingerbread Chocolate Chip Cake for Valentine’s Day

IGCC1ngredients:

 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1  tsp.  baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbs ground ginger
1 tsp.  ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground pepper. cloves or red pepper (depending on how much adventure you like)
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 cup oatmeal stout or Guinness Stout
1 cup dark molasses (not blackstrap)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp freshly grated ginger
3 large eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
Powdered  sugar for dusting

Step 1, Prepare ye the way: Preheat the oven to 350, grease & flour the pan or pans; I think this makes one Bundt cake, two smaller cakes and two or three loaves.  Also assemble all the ingredients on the counter.

Step 2, sifting the dry ingredients: In a large bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, salt, dry ginger, cinnamon, and pepper or nutmeg. Set aside.

Step 3, mixing the wet ingredients: in a medium saucepan (leave room; there will be foam), heat the stout. Take it off the burner, and carefully (!) add the baking soda (this is like the elementary school volcano experiment, but also like my soft pretzel/laugen recipe), whisking it smooth. After the foaming subsides, whisk in and dissolve the brown and white sugars, then, as it cools,  the ginger, the eggs and the oil.

Step 4, combining:  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, maybe about a third at a time, mixing thoroughly. You don’t want pockets of dry, floury ingredients.

Step 5, putting it in the pan/pans: Add half the mixture to the prepared pan/pans, sprinkle this with half of the chocolate chips, then pour in the rest of the mixture and sprinkle with (you guessed this, didn’t you) the rest of the chips. They should sink into the batter.

Gingerbread Chocolate Chip Cakes in OvenStep 6, pop it in the oven for baby & me: bake the pans at 350 for 25 to 35 minutes, or until you can stick a toothpick in it and pull it out without it being covered with batter. Take it out, let it sit for a minute or so, then take it from the pan onto a wire rack to cool all the way.GCC5

Step 7, decorating and serving: Once it is cooled, you can dust the whole thing with powdered sugar, or come up with some sort of delicious icing. I plan to powder it, then decorate it with little bits of chocolate.

A word about irony.

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Hipsters in Washington HeightsHey.
I’m not a hipster, although my life has had some “Bobo” elements.
I started wearing fedoras because I wanted to be cool like Bogart. At the time, everybody was trying to look like the BeeGees
(ask your mom).
I grew the facial hair to look scruffy like Springsteen and Dylan.
I started wearing boots because I wanted to be cool like Sid Vicious.
(Do you even know who Sid Vicious was?)
I found I liked all these things, and I added vests because I liked them. They also give me a place to keep my watch.Dr Bear in Vest
I’ve never read On the Road; although I think we used to pretend we had.
A long time ago, I used to carry around copies of Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, but some of that was posing, too. I do think that reading Turgenev might have changed my life, but I am certain that it changed my wardrobe.
I like locally owned microbrews because they are really good beer.
I buy cheap beer because I cannot afford locally owned microbrews.
I love irony–I had forgotten my youthful fondness for irony & symbols until I recently found a picture of me in my 20s wearing a Mickey Mouse Tshirt with safety pins in MIckey’s ears. I also….

wode toad(Wode Toad tells me that I am digressing,
and need to get back on track…)
Because I value wit, I also value irony. It is a useful & fun form of expression. It also seems an antidote in a world that is filled with people who are way too serious.
But look, irony also involves a failure to commit; something said, or even just hinted at, ironically can be disowned or dismissed if it gets too close to being called out.

So here’s my advise:
Don’t.
Stop it right now!
Stop trying to be ironic.
Don’t speak ironically, speak honestly and passionately; don’t flirt, love. The original hipsters viewed the quotidian society with irony, but threw themselves into life, into dancing to bebop, into loving the women and men they were with, onto the road.
Tear it up.
“Sound your barbaric Yawp over the roofs of the world!”
Throw yourself into where and what you are; learn to be, and do not be ironically.

Photo courtesy of EGS feet courtesy of the divine meg

Photo courtesy of EGS
feet courtesy of the divine meg

You are being ironic because you are afraid of being silly, but why? If living fully, if experimenting with life makes you look silly, then own it; everybody looks silly the first dance, the first time stepping on a long board, the first step into freezing water at the beach, but they look sillier if they hesitate.
Jump into life, even if it seems silly.

(Besides, I’ve seen your little hats and your mustaches; you already look silly.)
Stop being ironic right now!

No, that’s too harsh: Tshirts, bumper stickers, & memes can be ironical. Jokes among friends can be ironical; comments whispered about other people can be ironical, especially when to do otherwise would be cruel.

Just don’t be ironic to people; always be honest to people.
Especially yourself.

PS: also learn to use the word “ironic” correctly. You are killing me kids.