And now accept a little truth by way of thanks! I am old enough for it!
Swaddle it up and hold its mouth: otherwise it will scream too loudly, the little truth."
"Give me, woman, thy little truth!" said I. And thus spake the old woman:
"Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!"—
Thus spake Zarathustra.

I think he may be genderizing his apollonian and dionysian distinction. But maybe he is also poking some fun.

Schopenhauer apparently did not appreciate noise, interruption ('never interrupt as the 11th commandment') and especially the "infernal"cracking of whips, he called it the assassin of thought, which was prevalent at the time, used by carters, porters, and messengers, and all this cracking apparently drove Schopenhauer to distraction. Whips were a prominent feature in his essay:

On Noise (A Schopenhauer)
https://youtu.be/h0Ctf-cFJzA

Hammering, the barking of dogs, and the crying of children are horrible to hear; but your only genuine assassin of thought is the crack of a whip; it exists for the purpose of destroying every pleasant moment of quiet thought that any one may now and then enjoy.

It is not known if there are any other self conscious beings capable of thought in the Universe, but we are part of the universe, the result of its evolution. Man is how the Universe became aware of itself. We are part of nature so our history is natural history, a history which could not exist without us.

Man thinks therefore the universe is.

(Y)

Just trolling along:

If something categorically does not exist, how are we able to talk about it?

Invent a new category, such as virtual reality.

My point is that a woman's top time today would have won a big margin against top male runners back in the day, look at the time difference.

Not as ugly as this:

Perhaps they intend to demonstrate the breath taking beauty of the form of a pregnant woman's body. Demi Moore's photo in Vanity Fair was thought to be very scandalous at the time, and it was displayed in a white paper wrapper. Far fewer will be scandalized by Williams photo, but there are some as demonstrated in this thread.

Williams photo was done by Annie Leibovitz, a very well known and well regarded photo artist.

You've been to Rome?

Well they have a lower center of gravity which means gives them better balance. I've been told by rock climbers that it is only a matter of time before women overtake them and I would certain rather watch a woman skater or gymnast or volleyball player...over a man doing these things.

Woman actually had to fight to be able to run in marathons. Not until 1972 in Boston Marathon and 1984 in the Olympics.

The men's marathon record is 2:02:57. The women's records is 2:17:01.

Historically women didn't compete much in sports, it was not until the 20th Century that they competed in any numbers, and really only in the last half of the last Century they really became involved in sports to the extent that men were involved. I don't think men or women are physically that much different, but the culture of physical training has changed them dramatically. The Men's Olympic Marathon winner in posted a time of 2.29 in 1950.

John McEnroe might actual be able to beat Serena Williams currently:

Cage's goal for th33e piece in a direct way. So this is why 4:33 is conceptual: the value of the piece exists solely in the concept because the concept is so self-conscious that it prevents a direct, immediate experience (an aesthetic experience). It has an aesthetic goal, but the aesthetic is only achieved through apprehension of the concept, not through direct experience. The aesthetic is the idea, as I think you alluded to at some point.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

I have always wondered where Art resides... in the subject, the object, in both or perhaps in their relationship. Maybe this is the wrong question and 'art' is not something stored on a CD or hung on the wall, but rather, similar to reading a book, it's an active experience that we enter into with our imagination. We suspend reality and we become 'absorbed in' a reality created by an author.

Performances act out what the artist has conceived to enable an audience's imagination to understand the work and to hopefully to become 'absorbed in' it. It is a system similar to a language system where meanings are developed within the system. In conceptual art like 4' 33 the artist has set the stage, has established the context which is social, and has put in place a formal methodology from which its performance can become meaningful. The sounds are as you said

... meditative; instead of focusing on musical notes, you focus on ambient sounds around you; the audience rustling, a leaky drainpipe, your own heartbeat

These sounds are 'natural', they are ego-less, simple ambient sounds, which are not ordered nor exactly chaotic since their aspect is limited by the stage, by its social context, by our own physicality. Cage wants the audience to meditate using these natural ambient sounds to be enable it to become present to its own awareness, a kind of purposeless purpose or unfocused focus. I think meaning in Cage's system is achieved by the experience of a clarity, similar to the affect of meditation, but here the clarity relates the experience of sounds in silence.

His record label must hold the copyright. Frank Zappa did a cover of it and paid royalties, and Classical Graffiti, did a cover, called it 'A One Minute Silence' but they did not pay to use it and they were sued by the record label. The Classical Graffiti said that you can't copyright silence but parties settled out of court, and the settlement was rumored at $100,000.

If Rowe's definition is to be accepted, that prompts the question as to what to call those who believe that whether or not God exists is in principle knowable, but is in practice currently unknown (to quote Jodie Foster's character from Contact: "there's no data either way").

Delusional.

Isn't this, at least traditionally, an epistemological question and not an existential question.

I guess the question is "Is there something in waking life that cannot be dreamt, and if this is not the case, then how can we distinguish being awake from dreaming one is awake?"

Ok, but at least for 4:33...it's a purely conceptual piece, right? It does explore form as you say, but ultimately the idea is "Listen to what you hear. Is what you hear music?" That's conceptual.

The question is "is it art" or perhaps "how is it art"? Cage was chasing the pure experience of silence, if you remove the aesthetic from a work of art all that remains is the form of the work, the score, the three piece movement here the comprehension of the work is only available through thought. Cage's choice of work was based on his desire to recreate what he heard in the sensory deprivation tank he had tried.

Isn't minimalism a natural consequence of conceptual art,? If the aesthetic functions as ornament for the conceptual artist, then the less ornament the clearer the concept. I don't agree with taking this route, but it is certainly there.

I think art tries to be original (even when it cannot be good) its movement seems to be best described as dialectical and perhaps Conceptual Art arose from Art's :P need to be original, and not be associated with the past. Abstract Expressionism was the major art movement around the time of Cage's 4'33. I see Abstract Expressionism as magnificent aesthetic overload in which the aesthetic uses emotive force to overpower the conceptual.

Conceptual Art's reaction is very unemotional, indifferent to emotion. I think that Conceptual Arts ability to disrupt (as when Warhol's Brillo Boxes hit Danto over the head) makes itself art by its ability to disrupt the way it does. Perhaps the dignity in all art lies in its ability to disrupt and change or challenge the way we experience life.

Only by means of its sense (how it relates to other words in a language system), since there is no actual or real referent.

The idea that males and females are essentially the same (except reproductively), or are essentially different in many ways is clearly cultural, and will remain debatable until the evidence is in, one way or the other.

Gender roles are learned, biological differences are just that biological differences. conflation of biological processes with normative processes, I think is mistaken.

But there are female bricklayers.

Slavery and its associated roles in society were 'given' for almost 300 years in USA, but these assumptions are no longer given in society.

Gender roles are learned.

OK, so if I understand what you are saying, gender/sex is confirmed at birth, but gender role is socially constructed, it is not given at birth and it is malleable.

You are conflating 'nothing' with something...potentiality.

The word 'Nothing' has sense, but it has no referent.

How does the form and matter have a "say"?

Well at the bottom it is the matter, regardless of what that matter is, that is formed by the artist into the work of art. The artist's idea provides the form, what the artist is using, words, paint, sound or whatever have their own limitations, advantages, needs, requirements, which in execution can over ride the artists original idea/plan.



Michelangelo's Prisoners are prisoners of their matter, and they (perhaps) are not fully realized because they are as much bound to their matter, as we are.

When you create music don't the specific instruments you include in your work form both its limitation as well as its freedom. Do instruments have an affinity for certain sounds, certain notes, certain other instruments?

The spirit of the work, in my estimation, is how the artist's idea for the work gets sorted out by the materials the artist uses in execution of his idea. How form/matter fit together may have more to do with the way the materials will/can allow them self to be composed. The artist's plan is not typically a set course and problems arise in execution, tensions build, and a new plan evolves out of the 'spirit' of the work as the work has evolved. Things have to 'fit' together in the spirit of the work or the work wont work.

Some stories are plot driven some are character driven. Plays, novels and other works that are character driven like Hamlet can lose their plot to character development/evolution.

I think the characters in Hamlet took over the play, and forced its conclusion on Shakespeare, only sex starved Gertrude made it out alive. The ghost is the author.

The piece itself, the form and matter have a say in what happens in making a work of art. The spirit of the work leads to its own accomplishment when successful. The characters in a novel may rebel against the author's plot. I see and I feel the drive to accomplish the spirit of the work to make it what it demands, how it ought to come out, resolving the tension of form and matter.

"Spiritual Drives", yea well maybe but when I think of this I think more of what the piece itself demands.

I have mixed feelings about conceptual art.

So do I, but and I think it is important, until conceptual art came along art was, and to a large extent still is representational. Du Champs, Warhol et al made art that was overtly metaphorical, giving it a representational facade with a metaphorical referent. Doing this was very different from what went before it, which is not to say there were no metaphorical works of art, only they were not structured to be overtly metaphorical such as Warhol's Campbell Soup Cans, or Roy Lichtenstein's works such as

3- How would you live if you were immortal? (Invulnerable biologically and / or extra-corporealy)

As a point.

I think Duchamp's Fountain established the artist's right to say "this is art" within the 'art world'*. It also was the first piece of Conceptual art as such. His basic ideas were not picked up until Andy Warhol went to work, and after him Joseph Kosuth laid the theoretic foundation for Conceptual art, whose penultimate culmination (at least for me) was the placing of instructions on the wall of a museum as the work of art.



The thought that the artist's idea is the art work fell apart after this, although it remains persuasive as a narrative, in my opinion.

It is not too surprising that the visual artist puts a brief description about his work in a gallery or museum, otherwise people might be totally mystified by some modern works of art. The practice started in the 1990s. Curators today have become the new 'artists' in the visual arts, and the installation itself has become a work of art. The curator controls who gets into the museum or gallery, how the work is placed within the museum, what other works or themes are presented.

The art world controls what is seen, heard and read, what is considered art or not. The artist's creation is only his to the extent that he is responsible for making the work. The art world, the society(ies) in which the artist was nurtured bear most of the responsibility for the creations of any artist. Note how certain theories are developed independently and contemporaneously such as Leibniz/Newton's creation of calculus, or Darwin/Wallace's theory of Evolution. These are not anomalies, I think they point to the 'fact' that we all think and act with cultural narratives, conceptual frameworks (call it whatever), it controls, it guides, and it is difficult to get outside of, maybe why Gauguin took off for Tahiti.

There is a lot more to say, but...I wondered about your term "new classical music", what does that mean?

*The Artist's Visual Arts Act, the Berne Convention attempt to protect works of art after the artist has transferred ownership. It might have prevented Rockefeller from destroying Diego Rivera's mural.

Dude comes into the emergency department burned extra crispy.

I can't imagine. How long have you done this, and does it make you indifferent to the disaster, are you only interested in the mechanism or how does that work?

Like I said, I can't imagine doing what you do.

Honky Tonk Women, less twang & more base

Stones version:

Gay lyrics? Check out last verse, latter Mick and Bowie apparently had a fling. This is an alternate version of the song.

Strollin' on the boulevards of Paris
Naked as the day that I will die
The sailors, they're so charming there in Paris
But I just don't seem to sail you off my mind

The thing is, whether it's music or buildings or poetry or people, is "beauty" one aspect of the whole, or is a summation of the whole?

I didn't see a complete answer to this question. One of the reasons why Adorno railed against Toscanini is that he accented the 'beautiful parts' of musical works, the flourishes over the rest of the work. (Adorno was an opinionated snob, but an absolutely brilliant theoretician).

A musical work, work of poetry, film or some other processional work of art has parts, and some parts may be beautiful and other parts ugly as pointed out. Nietzsche thought the ugly is the source of the beautiful, which may be why we might find it scary. I think it may be more of a dialectical relationship.

Among School Children
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Full poem here

The last stanza of the poem is fantastic in my opinion. The poem takes off slow in the beginning and it reaches a kind of vast crescendo at the end....(ha)

VIII

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

If language is use, how do we distinguish between the kind of communication that animals utilize, and what humans do with words?

When you say language is use, how is language used...is language's primary use for communication or is its primary use as a conveyance for thought? It seems that most of us talk to ourselves all the time, and we only communicate with others some of the time. The conveyance of thought is its primary use and its communicative use is secondary

Perhaps this its the difference between us and animals who may 'talk' to others but they don't seem to talk to themselves at all, at least not in any sort of behavior we can understand.

Chomsky said language is "a computational system" one month ago, at 4.40 into the following.
https://youtu.be/OPCGmsUTAlc

No, I don't agree with that, for the reasons given by John Searle

I think his concern is that a computer can't understand what it does with its code. Machines simply manipulate symbols, no disagreement on my part, however that's not my point. If a machine can digitize language and generate meaningful translation, then at some level it suggests that language, as a system of symbols, is reducible to simple computational symbols (I believe Chomsky holds this position), and perhaps our semantic ability developed out of some very basic inherent computation abilities.

I don't think that you can be better at finding beauty through training. What you are talking about is rather appreciation for the work behind the piece, and that derives from a deep knowledge of music. I believe that beauty is something else, a more subtle quality that is there and doesn't depend on complexity. Beauty does not come with taste, and you cannot train yourself to find it, mabye to create it, but not find it. Moreover I think beauty is often confused with other feelings, for instance pleasentness or attraction.

I think in learning, training and experiencing we broaden the connections (in our imagination) and that affects how we experience what we experience, connections that we would be difficult to imagine otherwise. The beauty that strikes us in a work of art depends on how sensitive we are to what we are experiencing and that sensitivity can be learned, trained and broadened in most cases (it is normative). If someone is tone death, no amount of training will enable them to sense the beauty in Ravel's music

The biologic/somatic component is a necessary part of beauty. Matter's ability to enable us to see new possibilities must be driven emotively and intellectually. The more we learn, experience and understand the broader our ability to be affected what is beautiful. Taste is developed, fine tuned, & cultivated, it is not available in the same measure to all; even the most knowledgeable may lack the somatic sensibility of some much less knowledgeable. It is why I am not a fan of Thomas Kinkade "Painter of Light".

But I think both experiences of beauty are possible; intrusive beauty and hidden beauty; exoteric and esoteric.

Yes, but I think what we find, what is hidden is only available to us based on our understanding of the narratives surrounding what we experience. You might find 12 tone beautiful because it appeals to some theoretical conceptualization that you understand and thereby can find beautiful, but I have a hard time with it.

But when I first saw Michelangelo[s Pieta, Picasso's Guernica , Van Goth's Starry Night or read Huckleberry Finn, For Whom the Bells Tolls...I was astonished by their beauty, drawn into them, they intruded themselves on me, and how I experienced them change me.

You are a musician, what you hear is the same as what I hear, but perhaps because of your training, experience, and practice you hear more than what I can hear, what you find beautiful in the music you find beautiful is more than my unsophisticated taste. That what is hidden from me is not hidden from you the sounds that entrance you may not affect me.