From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #135 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Tuesday, June 13 2000 Volume 02 : Number 135 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Dharma dharma ["Jennifer Stevenson" ] Re: b/dharmaupdate ["David S. Bratman" ] m/modernism. very, very modernism. ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: m/modernism. very, very modernism. [GHighPine@aol.com] b/deirdre faith ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/buffypress3 ["Donald G. Keller" ] o/alchemy & mysticism ["Donald G. Keller" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 04:52:58 -0500 From: "Jennifer Stevenson" Subject: Dharma dharma Don, I agree with Ken. Write it. But I disagree about the footnote issue; I would footnote everything =as you write it= and not put it off until you're asked to do that. Believe me from long experience I say that the proper notes will fall completely out of your head by that time. Retrofitting 'em is a bugger. I would outline it as you describe, but save a section of the book version for smaller essays--stuff that isn't part of your grand theory but you still have enough for a short essay / chapter on it. The four elements look good to me. > such other commentators as Lord Raglan and Otto Rank. Where these > last two fail to correspond (no divine birth, no upbringing in > exile), my contention will be that Buffy is in those ways more in line > with the superhero. Here is where my research is weakest and I may need > help or collaboration. You're on your own in comicbookland. I know from superheroes nada. Ken writes, > Matters such as space limitations, assertions that would have to be footnoted, and the like are for your editor and you to hash out. > > DEADLINES, on the other hand, are NOT. And an essay not written won't make the book any better. And that's the truth. So do it. Begin on one section, a smallish one that's fairly self-contained (i.e. not going to mutate hideously because of one show airing late in this season, after you've written it). When that's done, do the intro you've roughed out here discussing basic superstructure of the dharma thing, talking to a lay person who doesn't know from anything. - -Jennifer ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 06:40:53 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/dharmaupdate Don, I notice that your musings segue from "the contents of a full-length book" to "the minimum needed to make a coherent essay". I think you either have to decide whether you're writing an essay, a book, or a series of essays that will make up a book; or decide that you're not going to decide, and let it seek its own length. Leaving aside length, I think your structure of this multi-part myth/dharma essay seems sensible. The parts all interconnect and/or look at the show from the same angle. If, put together, it becomes book-length, you have a coherent book. If it isn't book-length, I think you'd need _all_ the other subjects you discuss to make a coherent book on "Aspects of _Buffy_", because, say, one long section on dharma and one shorter one on the show as "light horror" would look imbalanced and not have a coherent logic to it. You probably know more than I do about how book proposals are put together, and you certainly know more about your own work habits, viz. how well you work from outlines, but I suppose ideally you have one chapter (which, if "Dharma of" is anywhere near book-length, will be one part of your multi-part essay) and an outline to submit as a book proposal. Once you finish a chapter, you'll have some idea of whether "Dharma of" is a whole book by itself or simply a long section in an "Aspects" book. If you were an academic, or even that you're not, you could also consider publishing chapters as journal articles. I bet Mythlore would take some. Remember that Darrell published chapters of his Dunsany study this way. Two more points: I trust you realize the risks of writing considered criticism (as opposed to reviews and interim sketch judgments) of an as-yet-incomplete work of art. Jennifer mentioned an introduction for the lay reader. This can be very tricky. The body of the work could be sufficiently complex that no introduction, however long, would carry a lay reader through the rest; and the introduction could be long enough that any reader could get impatient and say "OK, when do we get to _Buffy_?" Also, to do that one needs not only to have the knowledge and the ability to explicate it, but the special teacher's knack of being able to explain it in simple terms. This is actually a rare skill, and I'm not sure if it's yours. Better, perhaps, to plunge in - you're not abstruse enough to fall into the pits inherent in _that_ approach - and explain as necessary as you go along. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 12:43:33 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: m/modernism. very, very modernism. Continuing my partial attendance of the San Francisco Symphony's "American Mavericks" festival, last night I attended the George Antheil concert. I picked this one not so much because I didn't know any of Antheil's work from his high-modernist period, the mid-1920s when he was living in Paris, but because "Ballet Mecanique" was on the program. This very rarely heard work is so famous, or infamous, that nobody as interested in music history as I am should miss the opportunity to hear it once. It turns out that until last year, "Ballet Mecanique" was never heard the way the composer intended. The score included 16 (!) player pianos, and in the 1920s it was impossible to hook up or synchronize player pianos properly. So what caused the riots in Paris and New York back then was actually a stripped-down version. But in these days of MIDI and Disklaviers such things are finally possible once someone goes to the trouble of programming the whole score in. Last year someone did, and there they were, ranged across the back of the stage, 16 Disklaviers, making the stage look like a Yamaha store. By the side, a desk with a computer terminal to control it all. In front, the human instrumentalists, armed with two pianos, four xylophones, four bass drums (yes, four), a siren, and recordings of assorted ambient noises. What does Antheil sound like? Mix together large quantities of early Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Add in essense of Lisztian over-virtuosity (the kind that, when fermented, gives you Liberace). Stir in lumps of Henry Cowell tone clusters. Bake in a very hot oven until burned to a crisp. Then sprinkle with sugared jazz and ragtime. Antheil was the prime agent of the movement for music that sounded like machines. One things of Honegger's "Pacific 231", the railroad music; or of Prokofiev, whose pianistic technique got him the nickname "Man of Steel". They are nothing compared to Antheil. Even the other works on the program, a violin & piano sonata (with a short part for drums played bongo-style at the end) and "A Jazz Symphony" (for piano & jazz orchestra, which had several amusing quotes, trumpet and banjo solos, and a large section of utter schmaltz) were amazing for their heavy-fisted quality, especially in the piano parts. But "Ballet Mecanique" was utterly brutal. There were but traces of harmony in the tone-cluster filled player-piano parts, and the rhythms were far too complex for the ear to follow. At the end, the performers got a huge standing ovation, possibly just for having had the nerve to play something like this. I read somewhere that "Ballet Mecanique" is the loudest piece of classical music ever written. This may well be, but it wasn't half as loud as something Berni and I heard the day before. Jerry Sanders, flamboyant head of AMD, the computer chip maker, decided to celebrate the company's upturn and the millennium by holding a big party for all his employees, and as Berni is one of them we got to go. It was held in the San Jose Arena, where the hockey team plays, and also where concerts are held by everyone from the Who to the Three Tenors. Jerry invited Faith Hill. Nobody plays in the Arena whom I'd pay its typical ticket charges to hear, and I had (well-justified, it turns out) doubts about the acoustics. But for free, I was definitely curious. We stayed in the arena proper for about half a song. The music was OK, if you could make out anything through the bright concrete reverb. But the volume was intolerable. I thought I listen to music too loud on my headphones, but that was nothing compared to this. Lots of people sat happily through it, though. I guess this is what's considered normal now. But I'm certainly never attending anything like this again without my industrial strength earplugs, which might bring it down to an actually pleasant level. We retreated to the club level, where through the doorways the music drifted un-obnoxiously, and ate of Jerry's bounteous cornucopia. I have never seen so many jumbo shrimp in my life: I have never eaten so many jumbo shrimp in my life. Oof. One more adventure: on Sunday morning, before going to the Antheil concert, I visited the SF MOMA for their special Magritte exhibit. He's my favorite painter, but I'd never seen his paintings in person before. Unlike some painters, his work actually looks drabber in person than in reproductions. But I was happy, because I got to see a number of very interesting paintings I'd never seen reproduced, and a few famous originals, including "The Treachery of Images", which is the one with the caption reading (in French) "This is not a pipe." The catalog explained that there were two ways to take this. One, of course, is "It's not a pipe; it's a _picture_ of a pipe." (Usually - thank you, Scott McLeod - it's a _reproduction_ of a picture of a pipe, but this time it was the picture.) The other way to take it - to put the catalog's point in my own words - was as something akin to the bumper sticker reading "Question Authority." (To which I always reply, "Why?") ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 14:15:15 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: m/modernism. very, very modernism. In a message dated 6/12/00 9:50:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time, dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: << akin to the bumper sticker reading "Question Authority." (To which I always reply, "Why?") >> To consider whether it is legitimate authority legitimately exercised, to consider possible weaknesses in and alternatives to ideas and worldviews given by authority, to simply exercise one's capacity for thinking independently ... for a start. Why not? Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 17:31:51 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: m/modernism. very, very modernism. When a bumper sticker says "Question Authority" and I reply "Why?", what I am doing is taking the sticker's advice, and applying it to its own authority. This was perhaps not clear. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 21:01:48 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: m/modernism. very, very modernism. In a message dated 6/12/00 2:39:17 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: << When a bumper sticker says "Question Authority" and I reply "Why?", what I am doing is taking the sticker's advice, and applying it to its own authority. This was perhaps not clear. >> Okay. Guess it never occurred to me to consider a bumper sticker "authority." Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 21:26:47 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: m/modernism. very, very modernism. At 09:01 PM 6/12/00 EDT, you wrote: >In a message dated 6/12/00 2:39:17 PM Pacific Daylight Time, >dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: > ><< When a bumper sticker says "Question Authority" and I reply "Why?", what > I am doing is taking the sticker's advice, and applying it to its own > authority. This was perhaps not clear. > > >> > Okay. Guess it never occurred to me to consider a bumper sticker >"authority." > > Gayle Wow. You two really go out of your way, don't you? +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 22:44:15 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: m/modernism. very, very modernism. In a message dated 6/12/00 6:32:44 PM Pacific Daylight Time, meth@smoe.org writes: << Wow. You two really go out of your way, don't you? >> Huh? (Must be my day for not getting jokes.) Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 00:23:59 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/deirdre faith Just got off the phone from a long conversation with my daughter Deirdre. I was telling her that a couple weeks ago we'd been talking about Faith coming from Boston and therefore probably raised Catholic, and it made sense her parents would have named her Faith... ...and I had suddenly remembered that that was Deirdre's middle name! (Deirdre Faith Keller) Deirdre's reply (as exactly as I can remember): "Duh! How quickly we forget! I never really liked my middle name that much, but I've been thinking that now there's this cool chick on TV named Faith--yeah, she's psychotic, but she really kicks ass." So I guess if I had to do it all over again... Deirdre has a question, and I don't know the answer. Having just seen "Passion" for the first time (and two of her friends had the same reaction) she wonders...how did Angel get into Giles' apartment? As far as I can remember, there never was an onscreen scene before that where Angel was at Giles', and certainly not where he was invited in. (Do we ever see Giles' apartment before "The Dark Age," for that matter?) Deirdre also pointed out to me something I'd =completely= missed in "Restless" (and no one here called me on it!). A blemish in my synopsis, in fact. In the little scene in Xander's Dream where he rushes in to Giles' where Giles and Buffy and Anya are standing around...=Willow is in a chair, choking=. Never noticed it in =several= viewings of the episode. Weird. In re the idea that Buffy was dreaming some of the same stuff that Faith did in "This Year's Girl" (how come Buffy didn't know Faith was waking up, etc.), I told her that Joss Whedon wasn't following the rules I'd set up for him--which she thought was really funny. At several points in the discussion she was saying things like "Joss! Whatever! You're so confusing!" I was amused to hear her go on about how fed up she was with Buffy's princess-like attitude, like she's better than everybody, all this season (which she brought up to point out that Buffy =hasn't= had doubts about being the Slayer this year, at least between "The Freshman" and "Restless"), especially in relation to the Initiative. (Not that she was =wrong=, mind you. But Buffy's =never= wrong...) We had a nice long runthrough on "Restless" and lots of the details I went into here (many of which she had noticed), and talked about the hints for next season. Always a kick to discuss the show with her; can't imagine how it could be that she watches it the same way I do... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 00:25:33 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/buffypress3 Ran across a page I'd torn out of (probably) =Entertainment Weekly= (no folio visible anywhere on either side), obviously from sometime in 1997. Here's why I saved it: "Infinitely more entertaining than the cute but forgettable 1992 movie it's based on, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (The WB, March 10, 8- 10 p.m., then Mondays, 9-10 p.m.) is this mid-season's most distinctive and sharply written new how. Sarah Michelle Gellar (formerly =All My Children='s delightfully horrid Kendall) is Buffy, the plucky, perky, and pulchritudinous high school student who is also the only person who can save a small California town from a rash of demons and bloodsuckers. Aided by a rambling suitor (Nicholas Brendon) and a shy computer hacker (Alyson Hanigan), Buffy takes on the monsters with a combination of Valley Girl put-downs ("You look like DeBarge," she tells a vampire in '80s duds) and Xena-style butt kicking. High school provides its own horrors, like Cordelia (=Malibu Shores=' Charisma Carpenter), the dread Popular Girl who speaks primarily in insults ("Nice dress. Good to know you've seen the softer side of Sears"). Not since 1989's bleak comedy =Heathers= has the juxtaposition of adolescent angst with maimings and murders been such a good time." --Kristen Baldwin I think that's a really dead-on assessment, that early, on the basis of one episode (maybe a couple, but all the quotes are from the premiere). Especially noting the =Heathers= heritage. And here's more recently from this week's =TV Guide=, an "Editor's Choice" sidebar about the rerun of "Hush": [Subhead] A Standout Episode "This episode from December really caught everyone's attention during the 1999-2000 slaying season. In this innovative, dark and largely dialogue-free offering from creator Joss Whedon, Buffy and Co. are silenced--literally--by a mysterious force. 'I was just trying to expand the use of TV as a visual medium,' says Whedon, who was inspired by silent horror films. Whedon says the episode features 'the scariest [villains] we've ever done.' These beings, called The Gentlemen, steal Sunnydale's collective voice in order to harvest organs from the populace. With Sunnydale in a quiet riot, it's up to Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) to bring in the noise." Apart from the hard-rock fetish...nice writeup, especially the soundbites from the boss. This may be the place to thank Meredith for the award-show description, which did in fact crack me up. (I'm sure SMG was joking about the pervert part.) I read that SMG also won an award for her part in =Cruel Intentions=. Much as I admire her, of course, Reese Witherspoon was significantly better in that film. And Selma Blair is =so= funny. I'm actually taping the forlorn last few episodes of her so-so sitcom =Zoe=. Hope she gets some good work soon... I'm also taping what they're broadcasting of a new-but-already-gone series called =M.Y.O.B.=, because it stars Katharine Towne, who is not only the daughter of famous Hollywood screenwriter Robert Towne, but played Sunday in "The Freshman." The show is written by the guy who wrote =The Opposite of Sex=. The first episode was...OK. I might not save it, but I thought it was worth a look. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 00:27:06 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/alchemy & mysticism I got a really swell book the other day. It's called =Alchemy and Mysticism=, edited by Alexander Roob, subtitled "The Hermetic Museum" (which is also the title of a Renaissance collection of alchemical texts, translated into English and reprinted by A.E. Waite in 1893; his edition was reprinted by Samuel Weiser in 1990). =This= "hermetic museum" was published in 1997 by Taschen, the German art-book publisher; it's a trade paperback about 5 1/2 x 8, and printed on heavy, slick art stock so that its 700+ pages are about 2 1/2 inches thick. I'd seen it at the library (reference section only!), and was lucky enough to find it at the Strand. Basically, it's a collection of illustrations from alchemical texts, many of them in color, organized by topic; a profusion, a riot, of stuff. Pretty dizzying. Also some sparing commentary. It has, for example, 33 of the 50 emblems from Michael Maier's =Atalanta Fugiens= (the most interesting of the texts I've seen) and a bunch of others I've run across other places; it's nice to have them in one place. The most striking illustration I came across was this: remember we were discussing that weird image of the Virgin Mary with the green lion in her lap, etc. etc.? There are =two= pictures here of the green lion taking a bite out of the sun (remember the Sun-Maiden), and the one that is in color has blood dripping down from the sun. (Proto-vampirism, as Phaedre and I were saying.) Really really weird stuff. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #135 *****************************