Four more years of a nation led by criminals. I was making coffee with one eye on CNN when the news broke, and I called my dad, a man who’s spent many years fighting for good things, sometimes at great personal cost.
“Get over it,” he said, “The way you feel now is exactly how I felt when Nixon won a second term — crushed. I just couldn’t believe America was that stupid. “But remember what happened to Nixon that term.”
“Change comes from discontent,” he said. “And right now, there’s a lot of discontent.”
Month: November 2004
Point Zero
I just read Point Zero: Creativity Without Limits by Michelle Cassou.
I liked it. I’m a little cautious about it though. Because Cassou seems to think she knows everything there is to know about True Creativity and how it works and where it comes from and where it’s going.
I would recommend it to anyone who wants to get a peek at how to do art just for its own sake — to just let images come out of you and onto the paper, receiving them yourself as they come, not planning and executing them according to a preconceived agenda. Such “getting out of the way and letting it happen” creation is tricky, and prone to creative “blocks,” and the book is all about resolving such blocks.
Points on which it agrees with what I had been thinking about artistic creativity from a mindful perspective:
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It agrees that a minimal level of skill is not a sine qua non and that practiced expertise can have negative effects by locking you into preconceived ways of doing things.
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It mistrusts preconceived plans and canned procedures.
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It emphasizes process over product.
Points on which it disagrees:
- Whereas Langer would say that the solution to mindless adherence to a particular way of looking at or doing things is to practice looking at or doing things in many different ways, from different perspectives, Cassou prefers trying to negate a given preconceived way of understanding things in order to move back past it to “Point Zero,” a place of all possibilities, where Creativity can show you the way to go on your Creative Quest.
I think that Cassou’s way of doing things is a way to promote mindful creativity; it is certainly dedicated to detecting and escaping mindlessness; but I think that it might be limiting on its own.
Still, a very good book for someone who wants to make their art something almost like a spiritual path, and a great guide if you want to really move in an original direction, following rather than leading your art.
Oh, Cassou’s first book, which I haven’t yet read, is Life, Paint, and Passion. At the end of Point Zero is a curious note to the effect that the partnership mentioned in Life, Paint and Passion has dissolved and each one has gone their separate way with their own philosophy. This makes me wonder what changed there and what happened to the partnership.
little more than a placeholder: Fear and loathing
little more than a placeholder: Fear and loathing
The best I’ve been able to come up with so far is the analogy of a battered spouse. Many of those who voted for the monster in the White House acknowledge that he has misled them over Iraq, and realise that he is presiding over an ailing economy, but vote for him regardless. Yet they return to him however much he hits them.
[…] This country is a political mess beyond my fathoming. NPR ran interviews over the weekend with people who seemed to agree with Kerry on every policy, believed Bush had lied (and was wrong) about Iraq and yet were going to vote for him “because he acts on principle” and “because Kerry can’t be trusted”.
Kerry Presidency would be damage control at best now.
I would be very happy to see Kerry take the presidency after all, because I believe that a Bush presidency will mean significantly more war, torture, killing, exploitation of the poor for the sake of the rich, and assault on civil rights than a Kerry presidency. Not to mention the scary Supreme Court possibilities under Bush.
But that said… America has spoken, and it has spoken with a voice of fear and hate. Bush has the popular vote, even if Kerry pulls Ohio out of his ass by some miracle. The Rethuglicans have a stranglehold on Congress. 11 states passed proposals in favor of discrimination against homosexuals.
In the big picture, the illiberals have won and decency and civility has lost, whichever way Kerry goes.
And while, again, I would be thrilled with a Kerry presidency for the reasons given above, it would be damage control, and it would set Kerry up as a scapegoat, framed to take the blame for the myriad economic and military fiascos of the Bush administration. And the Rethuglican congress would prevent him from doing anything worthwhile. I would not enjoy seeing that.
So either way, America and the world loses.
Gillmor on the Election
Dan Gillmor writes:
The networks, falling into line under pressure from the Republicans, have all but declared a Bush victory. If the numbers hold up, as they seem likely to do, that will be accurate.
The Republicans have almost certainly expanded their congressional majority. (As I write, the Republican in South Dakota has declared himself victor without all the votes all being counted.) There is nothing good about this election for the Democrats.
More tomorrow. But I sign off with this thought: We will not recognize America in four more years. That will make half of America giddy. It will terrify the other half.