A Woolf in Sheep's Clothing

Das Rheigold, the first opera in the Ring Cycle (or, to be pedantic, the Prelude to the three operas) begins tonight at 6:30. Radio Two frequencies across Canada are here, or you can just listen from your computer from here.

Now then, on to a couple of things.

For those of you still wedded to the notion that the CBC only favours the likes of Noam Chomsky and Fidel Castro, you would have been overjoyed to have heard the patrician voice of Theodore Dalrymple (it's a pen name) talking about the decline of British civilization being the result of, wait for it, liberalism.

A quick googling of his name reveals that he's well published in conservative circles, and he's an articulate voice who I, tree-hugging, identity-politics loving prole that I am, actually found enjoyable to listen to and to read.

Did I buy a word he was saying? Well, sort of, until I stumbled on his article blaming Virginia Woolf for the decline of Western Civilization. Yes, you heard that right - those damn Bloomsburians screwed it all up for us.

I think his appeal is that he, like so many conservatives, plies his trade on the myth of the decline, and that we need to recover those old values to save civilization. This is why someone like Woolf could be a target, because she didn't support her man and pop children from her womb like a just-filled Pez. Instead, she made love to women and wrote difficult modernist fiction.

It's not just conservatives who buy into this myth - it has wide appeal across the political spectrum. But I believe the myth of the decline is essential to a particular strain of conservative thought, and it also happens to be the one that, when properly tapped, gets conservatives elected.

The golden era usually called to mind is the 1950's, a time when huge numbers of men had just returned from Europe having seen friends blown to bits, and the reality of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust behind them. Has anyone ever considered what kind of an effect that, in addition to their military training, led to the creation of a highly organized, stratified society in the immediate aftermath of the war? Or that this is what, if nothing else, people wanted projected back to them by their mythmakers in the media?

I know it's an armchair theory, easily refutable, but the notion of decline is so pervasive that it's worth taking a moment to wonder if there are any explanations for this myth. Again though, it's those "elites" according to Dalyrmple who've screwed everything up for the rest of us, and ruined the lives of the common people.

I actually agree with his sentiment that there's something fishy about someone who wants to spend enourmous amounts of tax dollars feeding and clothing the poor yet can't stand to look at them on the street, contempt worn on their faces like a new suit.

However, I would argue that there are a whole vast class of "elites", or which Dalrymple is most certainly one, all with different needs and interests and beliefs about the world and its people, who don't make up any kind of homogenous unit, who frame and dictate the terms of many of our political and intellectual debates. These people are to the right and to the left of us, and the struggle for power is still, to a great extent, their struggle.

****

On a completely different note, while Toronto (and by extension, Canada) waits for the Ring, it seems to have escaped the English media, with the exception of Paul Wells, that Montréal shut down, pealed bells, and generally made a big deal of the fact that their main orchestra, the OSM, had a new conductor. They showed us Torontonians what city pride can be about, celebrating yet another of Canada's myriad "cultures".

Here my friends, is the difference between us Anglos and our Gallic cousins - they don't appear get all hostile and resentful about so-called high culture. Reading Le Devoir on Saturday, with it's unabashed Culture section, as opposed to the mashed up high and low culture sections of most English dailies, was also a treat. Here's to keeping those worlds apart, each with aspects to enjoy and savour, but rarely placed on the same table for comparison.

Yet another thing we can learn from the French...no wonder everyone resents them.

You can listen to the OSM concert performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony here (English CBC take note - please follow the lead of Radio Canada and the BBC and start to leave concert performances up for a little while)

All Wagner, All The Time

A quick note to everyone that the Canadian Opera Company's long-anticipated production of Richard Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen begins tomorrow. CBC has gone all out, broadcasting not only the cycle this week live, but packing Radio Two with more Wagner than you can twirl a baton to!

But if the stage drama isn't enough for you, this article in the Star reminds us not only of the sheer pressure of performing the Ring, but also that there's more drama off stage than ever makes it into performance.

I won't be in town for the first performance, but I will try to catch it on the radio, and I hope you do to! And for those of you who don't like Wagner, now's your chance to JOIN US!!! My suggestion to newbies is to tune into the opening of Das Rheingold tomorrow, listen to the first 15 minutes, tune out, come back about two hours later, and listen to the end.

If that music doesn't affect you, then I can only conclude that you're some kind of heartless zombie, or you've learned your lessons from the pop music marketing industry too well. If that's the case, I feel sorry for you.

If not, and you enjoy it, then come back here and I'll suggest some other snippets to catch for Die Walkure, the second opera in the series. And please do leave comments to let me know what you think.

Also on tap this week on JS will be some food reviews and perhaps a photo essay (hopefully).

CBC - The Frosted Side: The Nature of Things

Named after Lucretius' Epicurean epic Dē rērum nātūrā, The Nature of Things continues to teach the willing and infuriate the ignorant. going strong at 46 years, it is CBC's longest-running television program, and continues to be an important contribution to our nation's cultural life.

For instance, a recent episode featured Dr. Mark Winston of Simon Fraser University talking about bees, and the intersection of his scientific work with that of an artist, Aganetha Dyck, who used bees in her practice.

It was a busy show. There was plenty of scientific discussion, like how half the honey bees in Canada died last year. (Funny this doesn't make the news, given just how important bees are in pollinating crops and supporting our ecosystem.) However, the spotlight was on Dr. Winston, also known as the Bee Man, and his tremendous work as an apiary advocate.

It was the character study of a man of science exploring how the artistic practice could contribute to scientific inquiry and vice versa. And, at the height of his powers, it turns out he's leaving the lab and pursuing other personal interests. In short, it was positively gripping television.

It sounds strange, perhaps, that a biologist who works with bees would be such powerful stuff, but it was. The Nature of Things is documentary filmaking at its finest, and we are lucky to have it.

The Nature of Things broadcasts during the summer on Sundays and Wednesdays.

Princes' Gates - Thoughts and Pictures

I had wanted to speak a bit about what I think needs to change in the civic debate for Toronto to stop fretting about its greatness and begin to recognize and enjoy that, for the most part, we are already in the promised land.

So I was going show you how a slightly different approach to revitalizing the city points the way towards beautifying the city. I originally had quite a bit to say on this.

However, it turns out that both Christoper Hume, the architecture columnist for the Toronto Star and the Mayor, David Miller, had already said most of it here. So I'm just going to show you some of what they were talking about. Think of this as a photoblog on the simple and elegant transformation of a well-known Toronto space - here are the new Princes' Gates.

Hmmm....anyone who lives here will wonder what I'm talking about. They look as they always have, since their Royal Highnesses opened them in 1927.


All I can say in response is, look down.

The asphalt is gone, and has been replaced by tiles. There are also these very attractive light sculptures, entwining their way upwards as their halogen bulbs shine downward.

 

And then there are these blocks, each for each province and territory. This is the Canadian National Exhibition, after all.

The provincial mottoes are inscribed in the pavement next to the granite towards the gate. The photos I took didn't come out very well, so you'll just have to come and see them for yourself.

 

What about the gates themselves? They haven't been changed, and remain their old Neo-classical selves:

 

A modest homage to Giornale Nuovo (I would have never bothered to look at these if it weren't for the amazing work there!)

 

So despite the strange landscaping in the picture below, I don't think it's quite time to put this piece of Toronto's architectural history to rest.

 

A Goildbergian final shot, nearly the same as the first, but transformed by one's knowledge of the new space.

***

The downside of this transformation is that despite the city's attempts to brand it as a piazza, it will never be much more than pavement for people on their way to the Ex or the Home Show. There will be people like me who live close enough to enjoy the new space, but we will always be few and far between, so Piazza San Marco will it never be.

That's too bad, but I'm hopeful that the quiet elegance of the space will be an inspiration to citizens and city planners. This is a subtle yet dramatic transformation of a beloved public space, and a grander solution to the problems of an unattractive city than building or rebuilding galleries and roadways. This kind of solution signifies a change in mindset here, where open spaces needn't be filled with trees or nature, but can instead be home people and commerce. We've begun to realise this kind of approach with Yonge-Dundas Square, but all I can say is, we need more piazzas!

Creating piazzas (or squares if you disdain the pretension) is a way to improve local neighbourhoods cheaply and effectively. More piazzas, encircled by shops and restaurants, with people seeing each other watch each other eating ice cream on a warm summer's eve would go some way toward undermining the constant sense here in Toronto that we've really botched something.

CBC - The Frosted Side

It occured to me, that when criticizing the CBC, one has to tread carefully, because those of us who love the CBC, or the idea of public media, are in danger of producing enough bile out of frustration (or is it misplaced idealism?) for it to look as though Professor Watson and I are on the same side.

That's a horrifying thought. So, in the interests of distinguishing myself from the CBC Watchers and WASP Financial Post columnists, I'm beginning a regular Tuesday series in this space on great CBC programming. My inaugural selection is And Sometimes Y.

Hosted by Russell Smith, And Sometimes Y is a 10-part summer radio series on language, its uses and its abuses. This week, they discuss translation. From the site:

"Exactly what does get lost in translation? We find out how different languages do the same job -- i.e. allow people to communicate -- and talk about the cultural quirks implied by these differences."

This is good stuff. Funny, smart, unafraid to assume its listeners are either smart or curious about more than what the behind the scenes of a reality starmaker show (sorry, I couldn't help it!).

It's on tonight, and repeats on Saturday (repeats - the upside of being cash-strapped!). Enjoy!

Prima la liturgia, poi le parole?

Some thoughts of Gawain about the decline in church attendance being the result of a lack of art in the church struck a familiar chord. I was a choir director for a number of years at a Lutheran Church. The Lutherans are a funny lot, liturgically speaking. They have all the liturgical traditions of their closest denominational relatives (Anglicans and Catholics), and yet one would be hard pressed to find this rich liturgical inheritance practiced with any regularity here in Canada.

There is no equivalent movement in Lutheranism to rival Anglo-Catholicism, so the only option for those Lutherans who are more liturgically inclined is to either move to Waterloo, Ontario, where the Lutheran community is large and diverse, and you have great men like Pastor Paul Bosch concerned about liturgy, or, failing that, attempt to bring the liturgical practices that have been there all along, right in pages of the Lutheran Book of Worship they crack open every Sunday, into their own church.

This, my friends, is also known as "pissing into the wind".

For five years, the church pastor and I attempted to bring art and liturgy pack into cold, empty space that was the church. The members of the congregation who were most opposed to these changes also happened to be the most vocal. Support for the reintroduction of weekly communion or the presence of an altar cross would be whispered to us, as though people feared for their lives if their views got out.

The strangest part about the entire exercise was that the main objection to the changes, most of which were very minor, was that we were changing their traditional ways of worship. But here's the thing, and I wonder if others who have been in protestant churches in the past 25 years have noticed the same thing - there are no traditional ways of worship in most churches outside the liturgical orbit of Catholicism. If you asked one group what the liturgical tradition for say, Christmas was, you'd get one answer. You asked another group, you'd get a completely different answer. Many of the immovable "traditions" were things they had only started doing a few years before. Which led us to believe we were working with a blank slate. What a blunder.

So why did they object so much to what amounted to, in effect, a kind of liturgical Counter-Reformation? A return to their own lost traditions.

The only answer we could ever come up with was that they didn't like what they took to be the "Catholicisation" of their church. Most of these people had grown up still firmly under the impression that the Catholics were all going to hell and that a service that resembled theirs would perhaps imply to God that we too were a popish lot, and God might send us to hell too. For celebrating the Eucharist every week. Never mind that in 1997, Lutherans and Catholics signed a document that from a theological perspective, ended the Reformation.

***

How does one explain this kind of thing? I recognize now that, as someone who wasn’t a Lutheran, just how important these things were to them. What was so important to these people, that were they willing to tear the church apart to keep it out? It was art.

Contrast this with all these wonderful posts over at Heaven Tree about Bali, their culture, and how their life is infused with a kind of aesthetic sensibility, where cab drivers become kings and bureaucrats become gods. Here was a group, upper-middle class and quite worldly, for whom the thought of a more dramatic service or a more colourful church was anathema. These people completely lacked the aesthetic sense so palpable in other parts of the world. For them all that mattered was the Word, and even then, a sermon with too much metaphor and cadence was tut-tutted at coffee hour.

The pastor and I worked to change the services precisely because we believed that if anything was going to “save” the church, it wasn’t going to be jacking up the fees for using the parking lot, or changing more for weddings and funerals (this was the church consensus – revenue generation as solution to spiritual ills). Instead, it was going to be by restoring the active participation of the congregation in the church services they attended. The only way to do this was through a return to the magic and mystery of the ancient rites, because they were the only thing that could attract people who didn’t care for God back into the church.

In other words, we wanted to turn the church into the Bali Arts Festival. And how bad would that have been?

Why oh Why

did I do it?

Why did I find myself this morning checking out the National Post?

I haven't been over there since they put up the paywall. I used to enjoy reading Mark Kingwell, and let's be honest, when that paper was born, neo-con zaniness aside, the arts and culture section couldn't be beat by any newspaper in the country.

But....that was so long ago. The paper seems a pale, yet strangely angry, shadow of itself. Funny too, that anger, given they've got Steve Harper in Ottawa now. Corcoran's still peddling his missives that would make the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal blush, but, true to my own form, and this blog, the article I found myself reading was the following screed by William Watson, who happens to be an economics professor at McGill.

The title let me know I was going to be in for a 1990's right-wing anger fest - "Let social activists pay for the CBC". Aaaaah....the old "activists" trope. Boy, I haven't heard that one in years. I thought it kind of died out, what with Steve Harper, of National Citizens Coalition fame, being PM.

One would think a Yale-trained economist who writes for the Post would have received the memo that "activist" is a word that should be used sparingly, what with all those corporatist bagmen, like the PM and his Secretary, Jason Kenny, formerly of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, running the country. (Don't you love those quaint populist names for these tax the poor, free the rich social activist groups?)

But I digress. So, let's get back to what this Yale-trained economist has to say about CBC radio. He poses a nice, clear question: "Why should we be subsidizing what so often amounts to social activist radio?"

Well, let's see - I take it Professor Watson here is going to now answer this question by providing evidence of CBC radio's "social activism" (what a wink wink nudge nudge term "social activism" is - it's akin to a conservative secret handshake, like "special interest" and "the poor" - the latter always said with just a dusting of approbation).

So what does the dear professor take social activism to be? Everything he heard on the CBC that day. It's just that simple. Really.

I won't bore you with rehashing the litany of things he found distasteful about the CBC that day, because it's just one of those things about the right-left divide in politics. I look at the list and go, hey, what a bunch of interesting things to learn about - and he goes, why aren't we discussing what a dream globalization is? Or why aren't there more Hayek and Friedman discussions on the CBC? In other words, why is Professor Watson's kind of social activism not being discussed?

And in it's own way, it's a good question. The CBC should have "free-market supporters" (read here corporatist windbags, these guys wouldn't know a free market if they wound up standing in the middle of one looking for a pair of socks - they all have an all too narrow view of equality) like William Watson on, and let him go head to head with Judy Rebick or someone like that.

I mean, it's not as though Watson and his kind don't have a pulpit (The National Post, and to a lesser extent, the Globe and Mail), but sure, let them, even more often than they already are, on the CBC - because then all the social activists are there, like Professor Watson, free market activist, and no one can use that old, tired phrase, because the social activists are paying for the CBC

Then we can actually get on to a discussion about what's really wrong with the CBC, which isn't much of CBC radio One (Professor Watson doesn't appear to know there are two CBC Radio stations). Oddly enough, the problems stem from the fact that the CBC has adopted a lot of the 1990's neo-con corporatist psychobabble and has essentially refashioned itself into precisely what these guys wanted institutionally, except that in doing so it has lost much of what made it utterly different from private broadcasting.

That Professor Watson couldn't even identify the real problem on CBC Radio, Radio Two, just goes to show how out of touch he is with things here in the public world - perhaps he should climb down from his ivory tower and spend a bit more time checking things out before proclaiming that social activists like him should be paying for the CBC.

And here's the irony - I suspect that Professor Watson and I would agree on something - that the death of an elitist streak at the CBC over the past 15 years has been perhaps the greatest blow to its strengths, and has helped to make foes from friends and deliver it to the very enemies of anything public, like William Watson.

I mean this - I would love nothing more than to find some hard-core institutional economist wipe the floor with Professor Watson's rehashed, tired, one-sided musings about the glories of the free market and competition. (I understand this is hard, seeing as most good economists spend their time doing research instead of penning anti-CBC smears that look like they were written in 1992).

I'd love to see intellectual rigour brought back to every nook and cranny of the CBC - because it's exactly what this country needs to stem the damaging of discourse by smart men peddling shallow ideas.

The Naxos Music Library

So I was returning some books to the Music Library at the University of Toronto, and I espied a sign that said "the Naxos Music Libary is now available to students".

My thoughts turned - does that mean what I think it does? After coffee with my chums, I settled down to my work computer, and after finding the proper link (they make it nice and difficult to find), I found myself logged into this.

Good freaking Lord! Holy Mary Mother, Mother of the Sweet, Sweet Baby Jesus!

Since discovering this er, yesterday afternoon, I've listened to Iranian Classical Music, the Ramayana monkey chant, operatic overtures by Franz Schreker, the First book of Madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi, as well as his Ballo Delle Ingrate and Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. Right now, I'm listening to the Preludes of Charles Valentin Alkan.

This is serious. It will change my relationship with my family and friends - there will never be a lack of new, obscure music playing in my head or my house.

Now I know there are some of you out there, lurking, saying, "Naxos is the Wal-Mart of classical music! Your love of this is condoning the very things you despise in other spheres of cultural life!"

The availability of this kind of knowledge, where I can sit my toddler son down and teach him more about classical music aurally than I could have dreamed of doing myself in all my years as a student is exactly the kind of thing I wish there was more of in our capitalist society - this is precisely the place where, if capitalism works, more power to it. If dumping the riches of western civilization onto the Internet is profitable to Naxos, hey, who am I to complain? If classical musicians, some of whom I know, make some money by recording for Naxos, hey, all the better - it's not like they're whipping Indonesians children into finishing up that last batch of porcelain nativity scenes.

This is really all a meandering way of saying that if you have institutional access to this service, use it, and if you don't, the monthly cost is fairly reasonable for what you get in return.

And to completely scare the last of you off, this also means there's going to be a lot more music talk on this site!!

Why the Financial Times is my Weekend Paper; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Liberalism

Does everyone, at some point, realise they've come to a certain place in their life where it's both a social and personal necessity to have the newspaper delivered to their door?

It happened so innocently. This young boy, clever and confident, came to my door last summer with an offer I couldn't refuse - a 7-day subscription to the Toronto Star at a price lower than the cost of weekend paper at the news stand!

This boy, who I'm sure will one day sell air conditioners in Iqualuit (if only that were a description of his future prowess as a merchant), dashed off to an idling mini-van where, I presume, his parents or local paper kingpin (or both) produced the required paperwork to put him one sale closer to a free Schwinn bike (with tassels) or bubble hookah.

And I waited eagerly for that first paper. Then, one morning, a dull thud at the porch. The paperboy! Or, more accurately, the paperguy in his mid-40's with the paisley bellhop's hat. I rushed downstairs, opened the door, and there it lay - my first paper. It wasn't in swaddling or a basket, but for the next few minutes, this paper was my baby.

Unfortunately, unlike the real baby I was home looking after, the daily Toronto Star soon became a pile of unread scrolls left to dessicate at the bottom of our entranceway. Some days we wouldn't even bring the thing inside until the following day. Some baby- some parent.

Then there was the weekend paper. Am I the only one who has trouble reading the Saturday Toronto Star? This enormous beast, a giant prop for the local car manufacturing and real estate industries, and the sheer number of pages devoted to selling you things, or telling you where to buy things, or what kinds of new things there are out there to buy, or where you can go eating while you shop for those new things, or...

Like the previous paragraph, the Saturday newspaper quickly became a burden best abandoned. The only bright spot in all of this was the Sunday Star - Not only could you finish the paper, but there were actually moments when the Star managed to climb out of its intellectually wishy-washy over-earnestness and produce something genuinely interesting.

So I decided, after four short months, to abandon all but the Sunday edition, which is compact, with lots of articles and is overall a decent attempt to raise the intellectual and cultural bar of the paper.

Alas, I needed to fill the newspaper vacuum. I starting buying the Saturday Globe and Mail, but, like any rebound, I enjoyed immensely it for a while but soon found myself bored and looking for something a bit more sophisticated, more exotic. And I found it in the Financial Times.

“Wuzzah?” I hear you saying in your head, “I thought you were some kind of post-structuralist Marxist – what’s a guy who knits his own hemp socks doing buying the Financial Times?”

Well, dear readers, I’ll tell you – it’s a great paper! Despite the title, it bears little resemblance to that corporatist Pravda, the Wall Street Journal. It does have stock prices, but it also has well-written editorials which present a well-thought out, decidedly liberal view of the world. All this on that distinctive salmon-coloured newsprint. Most importantly, and this is who brought me to the paper in the first place, it has Tyler Brûlé.

But that’s for another time.

Joining the Conversation

I'm immensely enjoying the debate between Theo and Gawain and Conrad over at Heaven Tree and the Varieties of Unreligious Experience, although I cannot help but think that they’re not really arguing, in the sense that one is asserting X and the other not-X. Instead, I’m seeing this as the putting in to play of two (of many) competing kinds of philosophical method.

To lay my cards on the table, I have a great sympathy for Conrad’s defence of Plato. Although I’ve never read him in Greek (does that make me illiterate?) I enjoy Plato for the same reasons I suspect many people do – he’s a great writer.

Does he have the occasional straw man? Ion comes to mind, but as Conrad notes, if you can make your way through Parmenides (I found it harder than Wilfrid Sellars), it’s remarkable to watch Plato turn his dialectical guns on his own vaunted Theory of Forms, laying the groundwork for Aristotle’s later criticisms. Plato was a formidable, unrelenting thinker.

My own thoughts about Plato is that had he had the logical tools available to him, perhaps he would have realised that the reason he could not pin down terms like “truth” or “beauty” via definition was because the ways in which these terms can be used exceeds our ability to define them. That is, the fact that the meaning of beauty is to some extent undecideable isn’t a strike against beauty as a useful or important word, but a reflection of the place the word occupies in the logical and conceptual space of human life.

I’m trying to walk a fine line here – I’d like to affirm that Gawain’s (phenomenologically-inclined?) naturalised view of aesthetics has promise, but that this has little bearing on the fact that there are also very likely many unnatural ways for things to be beautiful, and that these unnatural ways can be shaped and guided by the forms of discourse we participate in. There’s a normative element here that I’m not sure Gawain’s approach can, or will ever capture. And my friend, this isn’t a strike against you in my eye, just part of the fun.

So this is where my sympathies with Conrad’s claim about the importance of Plato in talking about beauty lie – Plato set us down a methodological path that, like it or not, has shaped the way in which debates about beauty are conducted, scientific ones included, in much the same way Descartes, in his Meditiations, set the agenda for epistemological debates for hundreds of years. And within these debates, we may find new kinds of beauty, kinds that will never find their way into the realm of experimental psychology.

Moreover, definitions are important, aren’t they? Knowing what beauty is, or perhaps more importantly, what beauty is not, will have a great influence in how one would go about coming up with experiments to determine how people deal with beauty.

Much, no all, of philosophy is wrestling with texts, taking on their histories and their concepts, living them and responding to them in a meaningful kind of way. To my mind, the best part about philosophy is that Plato is still relevant, that we can enjoy him on an intellectual level, watching Socrates in the agora corrupting the young men of Athens, and finding ourselves ensnared by the same thoughts they were.

Although I don’t share Richard Rorty’s relativism, I’m not so bothered by his talk about philosophy as a kind of conversation, an engagement, to which I’d like to add, in the words of A.P. Martinich, can give birth to a science. This is one of the wonders of philosophy, that in the constant churning and working out of thoughts, one can rise from their armchair and make their way out to the world, to the lab, to life.

This has been a fascinating discussion that has forced me to think in new ways. I don't know about all of you, but that's all I really need right now!