Author: Nadreck

Ex-game industry, ex-dbx, currently technical writer turned tools developer. Sucker for learning random things. Tends to talk about social computing, online identity, internet culture, and life.

Annotation: The Hidden Words

I’m not exactly sure how to define The Hidden Words. They aren’t prayers (though you could use them as such), nor are they stories, or rules (per se — some feel like they come close). I suppose they could be considered meditations or explorations, and that would come closest to defining where they fit as a collection of writing.

I’m going to have to do some digging to see if this is the complete “Hidden Words,” or if it’s a selection from them: the title is a little ambiguous, in my opinion. The book is fairly small, with a small but readable typeface, and really trims away anything extraneous: the introduction/preface is one page, most of which is taken up by explaining how the book is arranged, and it doesn’t bother with an actual table of contents. The first half is a collection of Hidden Words translated from Arabic. The second half is a collection of Hidden Words translated from Persian. A few pages at the end discuss the basic principles of the Baha’i Faith and the rules we live by, and a brief biography of who Baha’u’llah was.

Of the two collections, I far prefer the Persian translations. The Arabic seems more terse, and almost accusatory compared to the Persian Words. I am not sure if this is because they were written at different times, or if it is just part of the nature of the differences between the two languages. Despite the Persian Writings being longer and more complex, I found them easier to read and understand by a significant margin. While I suppose part of this is perhaps the quality of translation, I think there is something more to it as well. I felt less like I was getting admonished and more like I was getting informed, which is a pretty significant difference, in my opinion.

Allusions to the past seem to interest me in particular, so it should be no surprise that the selection that most caught my eye was one Baha’u’llah wrote reflecting in the covenant made on Mount Paran when Muhammad gathered his army of 10,000 men to take back Mecca. It reads:

O MY FRIENDS!
Call ye to mind that covenant ye have entered into with Me upon Mount Paran, situate within the hallowed precincts of Zaman. I have taken to witness the concourse on high and the dwellers in the city of eternity, yet now none do I find faithful unto the covenant. Of a certainty pride and rebellion have effaced it from the hearts, in such wise that no trace thereof remaineth. Yet knowing this, I waited and disclosed it not. (Baha’u’llah, 71)

After reading this passage, I became curious as to what exactly he was talking about, finally managing to track down that Mount Paran is a mountain in Pakistan, and is a key holy place in Islamic scripture (though they are not necessarily the same mountains… it is a source of great debate, according to http://www.google.com). The gist of the quoted passage, as far as I can tell, is a rather directed indictment of the Imams and other religious leaders of Islam, stating that the true intent and nature of Islam has become corrupted and changed. I am definitely intrigued by the concept of searching through other comments such as these and discovering more and more back story as to what exactly Baha’u’llah was referencing.

I may be jumping the gun in saying this, but I do expect that I’ll be returning to the Hidden Words on more than one occasion, as my depth of understanding grows, reassessing what I’ve already read. I do strongly suspect that there is a lot more buried under the surface of these writings that is worth examining.

Baha’u’llah. The Hidden Words: Selected Writings of Baha’u’llah. Baha’i Publishing Trust.

Annotation: Abdul-Baha, Einstein, and Ether

While not directly relating to spirituality or mysticism, I recently came across a small book about the Faith’s take on modern science, in particular the 19th century concept of Ether. It interested me, and seemed topical enough to read and comment on. The book is short, and consists of a great deal of reiterating the same point over and over again, the entire piece written as a counterpoint to some scientists’ refutation of Abdu’l-Baha’s infallibility (and by inference, Baha’u’llah’s infallibility), based on some statements Abdu’l-Baha made in reference to Ether around the turn of the century. Even the brevity of this book still felt too long to the point of irrelevance: it makes a valid point combined with defensive spin doctoring, which frankly I think could have been addressed with a single page containing Abdu’l-Baha’s actual commentary and an explanation thereof.

The whole hullabaloo is silly. The concept of Ether (the mechanical, physical medium found in space which facilitates the passage of light, not the chemical) has been largely discredited for years, disproved shortly after the turn of the century by Einstein with a specialized application of the Theory of Relativity. Unfortunately, Abdu’l-Baha made several references to Ether over the course of his Guardianship (along with a variety of other scientific breakthroughs that have all since proven to be true), and this has been apparently an arguing point for scientists to disprove the claims of Baha’u’llah’s divinity (since Abdu’l-Baha was Baha’u’llah’s son and the Guardian of the Faith after Baha’u’llah passed on, he was theoretically infallible).

It’s true, he comments on Ether on several occasions. The only issue here is that the scientists who are arguing against the Baha’i Faith are ignoring the fact that he also explicitly qualified the use of the term as an intellectual concept, not a mechanical medium. Much in the same way that there is a current push to return to using the term ether (or aether) as a conceptual terminology for the space-time “fabric.” Abdu’l-Baha applied precisely the same attributes to Ether as Einstein did to his Space-Time fabric: it is a difference in terminology, not in idea.

That’s all. It’s really that simple. What I just explained in two paragraphs is really all that Matthews says. He just says it over the course of a few pages (albeit with a bit more background, explanation, and quotes from relevant sources), and then reiterates the exact same information again, repeating this process for a good 40 pages (as I said, this was not a very long book). He comments on the independent conclusions found by a group of scholars examining the subject down in Australia. He adds quotes from the Universal House of Justice’s take on the matter, which is just another reiteration of the same information, namely that Abdu’l-Baha was talking about a concept, not the physical medium known as Ether. He adds quotes of various prominent scientists, Einstein included, who use the term Ether in exactly the same way.

I understand that he really wanted to hammer his point home, but to a certain extent it felt like he was just padding the length in order to justify the cost of the book. Not only was it lengthened by the heavy use of quotes and citations, but the references list of where he got his information was easily an extra 6 pages. I will admit that I have a certain bias in favor of brevity, thus I do think that sometimes you just need to know where to stop.

Matthews, Gary L. Abdu’l-Baha, Einstein, and Ether. Stonehaven Press.

Annotation: The Demon and The Angel

[As a form of protest over books written in this style, this informal annotation will be remarkably lacking in flowery rhetoric. While I appreciate a robust vocabulary and smart imagery as much as the next person, some books simply and absolutely rub me the wrong way. The purpose of communication is to communicate, which I think some authors of an “academic” bent fail to acknowledge, resulting in page upon page of “words for the sake of words.” — Nabil]

Edward Hirsch is, first and foremost, a poet. He has published several books of poetry, and teaches poetry at the college level at the University of Houston. He also wrote the bestseller, “How to Read a Poem.” It shouldn’t be too surprising, then, that his book on “Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration” (the subtitle of the book) should focus so heavily on poets and the terminology for creativity established by poets. He latched onto Frederico Garcia Lorca early in the book (the first few pages, in fact), and never really let go for the rest of the book.

I have nothing against Lorca, mind you, nor his usage of the term “Duende.” I think it’s a remarkably well suited term, in fact. It is far less tied to an aspect of “good” and “evil” than “demon” or “angel” is, and has less stereotype baggage than the concept of the Muse. I think the concept of doing battle with a creative source is far more accurate than that of pampering and cuckolding a timid creative potential (from my own experiences, anyway). Additionally, I rather enjoy what little poetry I’ve read by Lorca, and feel it was a crying shame that he was killed so early in his career. I DO have a problem with purchasing a book in good faith based on the book description on the dust jacket and reading through the table of contents, only to discover that the book is not in fact very relevant to its purported topic. I was commenting on this to my brother, and his response seems particularly fitting: “It sounds like he sat down to write what he said he would write, then wrote what he actually wanted to write.” The sums up the book pretty well. It feels like he made a pitch to his publisher, and then discovered that he wanted to write about something else, leaving this book as the compromise between the two.

It IS a compromise, though, not entirely a “bait and switch.” While it feels sometimes forced, he does address the concept of creativity and uses several artists and poets as anecdotal case studies into how different artists treated the concept of creativity. While he tended to fall back on duende as his catchall concept, he also addressed Biblical angels, the origins of the demon concept and how they are in fact closer to the concept of duende, daimon (greek), and daemon (latin).

Hirsch also spent quite some time discussing Rilkean Angels and the Duino Elegies. I found his quote from The Seventh Elegy particularly interesting:

For each of you had an hour, or perhaps
not even an hour, a barely measurable time
between two moments –, when you were granted a sense
of being. Everything. Your veins flowed with being.
(“The Seventh Elegy,” 42-45)

I can’t put a finger on why this passage in particular caught my eye compared to some of the other quotes the author uses in his book, but I do think that perhaps it has something to do with my own preoccupation with a healthy sense of wonder and free suspension of disbelief. Regardless of the reason for it striking me as it did, it certainly helped redeem a book that I distinctly felt like I’d been wading through up to that point, and made the second half of the book flow far more quickly.

Or perhaps the reason the second half of the book went faster was because it covered a wider variety of subjects. The first half of the book tended to focus on poets, which had bothered me while reading it, because I felt like I was getting a very narrow view of what felt like a much broader topic. The second half the book expanded into including music and painting, in particular paying attention to the “black periods” of several artists (Motherwell, Goya, and Pollock, notably), which in his opinion exhibited a strong sense of duende. I started to get a distinct sense that in general, Hirsch tied a sense of mortality and death to the sense of duende. While I agree with him on some pieces, and conceptually I can see where he is coming from, I think he neglected to address the pieces that still establish a sense of duende while keeping things a bit lighter: emotive without being morbid. By this point in the book, though, I’d come to accept that this book was primarily just the opinions of the author, and as such was entitled (to a certain extent) to focus on what he wanted.

This book managed to make something quite clear for me, though I hate to say it: I am lazy. I am looking for an easy exploration of creativity and how to revitalize and nurture it. I am looking for someone to come along and tell me, “Oh, that’s simple, it’s…” in such a way that I immediately and completely grok it. Instead, I find myself (perhaps partially justifiably) unsatisfied with other authors’ exploration of the topic, and disappointed with the current level of dialogue about it. It feels to some extent that the majority of the artistic community has taken to heart the concept of not looking too closely at the source of creative inspiration (lest they lose it), and as such refuses to REALLY look at it and discuss it with others. What books and dialogue there is seems invariably vague and unsatisfying. At least, it is unsatisfying to me.

Hirsch, Edward. The Demon and The Angel. Harcourt Press.

Annotation: The Kitab-i-Aqdas

The Kitab-i-Aqdas is the most holy book in the Baha’i Faith, declaring the rules and guidelines for man to live by for the next thousand years. It was originally written in formal Persian by Baha’u’llah, and was later mostly translated into English by Shoghi Effendi, his great grandson. After Shoghi Effendi’s death, the Universal House of Justice (the guiding body for the religion) finished the translation. Unlike (for instance) the Bible, the rules to live by are not related through stories or analogy: they are straightforward, direct and to the point. I’m not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing: while it is far more precise (a good thing when the rules have to last a thousand years), I feel a little frustrated at the lack of new information, the unlocking of the mysteries of our relationship with God and the higher existence. While I understand that those were released in other tablets, I guess I was still expecting at least a small nod to the spiritual side of things.

The particular edition of the Kitab-i-Aqdas that I read also included elaborations and explanations collected by the Universal House of Justice, as well as two introductions (one written by the House, the other written by Shoghi Effendi). This was kind of frustrating because both introductions essentially talked about the same things: when it was written, why it was withheld for nearly 20 years after it was written before Baha’u’llah released it, and a basic summary of the key items to pay attention to. You would think, considering how much the introductions (the House one especially) build up the Kitab-i-Aqdas, that the book itself would be rather large: it’s 70 pages, followed by another 70 pages of some questions answered by Baha’u’llah and some accompanying texts, and then 90 pages of “notes” collected by the House to clarify things brought up in the previous text.

The actual text of the Kitab-i-Aqdas is rather readable. While the translations are somewhat colloquial to the era (lots of “thee”s “hath”s and “verily”s), the messages Baha’u’llah was trying to convey are very clear and to the point. A great deal of the text is taken up with negating or altering the rules of the work that came before (though, true to form, it primarily deals with the rules of the most immediately previous religion, which in turn dealt with the rules of the previous religion before that, et cetera). The guidelines for inheritance, burial, and marriage are also addressed directly and at length, several of which were particularly interesting. For instance, while it does explicitly allow the possibility of having two spouses, it places a caveat of absolute equality and fairness for both wives (for instance) that effectively precludes current society’s use of that law. There are a few rules and guidelines like that throughout the work, things that Baha’u’llah felt necessary to explicitly include, but likewise was sure that we were not yet ready to deal with. This does suggest, though, that at some point in the next thousand years, we WILL reach a point of social maturity to handle it.

The emphasis of most of the rules is on the family. He makes a point of frowning heavily on divorce, but acknowledges that sometimes it is necessary, and provides specific provisions to follow if divorce is necessary. Adultery is explicitly damned, but with a monetary punishment, not physical. (19 mithqals of gold… roughly 2.227 troy ounces. This cost doubles every time it happens.) I consider this rather forward thinking compared to the punishment for adultery in previous religions. As a counterpoint to the lack of physical punishment in situations such as that, Baha’u’llah is quite explicit on the penalties for murder and arson, encouraging the death penalty for those actions. In the questions and answers, he elaborates that life imprisonment is also acceptable.

I’ve digressed. Returning to the family emphasis in the writing, it is rather clearly exhibited in the guidelines for inheritance, which in fact take up several pages of the primary body of text, detailing a share based system of division. Once the cost of the funeral arrangements have been made (the deceased is to be wrapped in clean silk or cotton with a ring on one finger that is inscribed with the saying “I come forth from God, and return unto Him, detached from all save Him, holding fast to His Name, the Merciful, the Compassionate.”) and the huququllah is paid (“the Right of God,” a bounty paid to the Universal House of Justice in certain circumstances), the rest of the estate is divided up with the children receiving the largest share, followed by the wife, then the siblings, et cetera, all the way out to teachers. I do find it interesting that Baha’u’llah takes so much time to work out such a specific detail for inheritance when there is also a provision that all individuals upon reaching adulthood should make a will for themselves — the rules for inheritance in the Kitab-i-Aqdas are only for cases where there is no will or that the will enters attestation.

I’m not really sure what my reaction to this book is. On one level, I really appreciate the succinct nature of it, but at the same time, it does very little to satisfy my curiosity as a spiritual seeker. I am left very much in the same sentiment that I’ve been in for some time: while I believe in the message, I am to some extent a “lapsed Baha’i,” choosing to operate very much on my own amalgam of beliefs with only a loose structure provided by the Faith. While it was good to gain the insight of the original text and to know precisely what is expected of me from the religion, I find that I am losing my sense of wonder in the world, and worry a great deal that I won’t recover that very vital aspect of who I am. It is an incredible sense of loss that religion, as yet, has not assuaged.

Baha’u’llah. The Kitab-i-Aqdas: The Most Holy Book. Baha’i Publishing Trust.

Travel Music

America, by Simon and Garfunkel.
Road Trippin’, by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Take Me With You, by Morphine
Sleep Alone, by Moby
Thela Hun Ginjeet, by King Crimson
Life is a Long Song, by Jethro Tull
Postcard Day, Ian Anderson
Ride Across the River, by Dire Straits
Space Oddity, by David Bowie
Five Years, by David Bowie
#34, by Dave Matthews Band
Where Do I Begin, by The Chemical Brothers
No Distance Left to Run, by Blur

Please, add your favorite “travel music” to the list. Feel free to argue some of my choices, too.

Copyright Wake-up Call

I just had an interesting conversation with some folks on IRC. (I know, shocking, eh?) While reaffirming that it IS in fact a vast wasteland, it was interesting to see what sort of misconceptions are out there about copyright law.

First off, everyone hates the RIAA, myself included. Their behavior is reminiscient of the Gestapo of Nazi Germany, and they need to be stopped. Their reactionary behavior simply feeds the fire, and exacerbates the problem.

Next, many of these “pirates” believe themselves to be safe by being in another country. To quote some, “Thats why I love living in Canada. Downloading music here is legal … see in canada we pay a tax on all music anyway … and the RIAA has no jurasdiction here” and “[copyright] can be international only if the country accepts it, and very few do. Thats why they can’t do shit to people in canada denmark finland and the like.”

Let’s not forget this concept that the RIAA is snooping everyone’s computers, so if you don’t keep pirated music on it, they can’t see it. “If I burn my mp3s to a cd, they can’t trace it!”
Continue reading “Copyright Wake-up Call”

Identity

I’ve been thinking about the concept of identity a lot lately (with my essay due in two weeks, this isn’t too surprising). I’ve noticed that I’ve been pretty strung out the past few days, frustrated by pretty much everything. (It’s been a viscious cycle: I have to psyche myself up to progress with the convention and make contacts out here… I manage to do it and finally feel comfortable and happy with the process, email in what I’ve done… after reading the responses, I’m back to being frustrated as hell.)

I’ve been spending time on IRC (I leave it open in another window while I write and occasionally glance at it to see if anything interesting is being talked about), and have found myself getting more and more pissed off by it. I’ve kept coming back to IRC intermittently ever since I originally started being online, and invariably I end up getting frustrated and leave. Looks like this will be another one of these occasions. I just can’t seem to help but get irritated when I frequent a channel for more than a week: the mishmash of young teens (and the angst and stupidity that goes with it), college-age elitists, and a thin layer of talented, intelligent, caring people that are generally silent for about 95% of their time online… it’s just frustrating.
Continue reading “Identity”

The Visceral Experience

Let me explain to you something about me, that I certainly hope explains at least somewhat why I write what I write on this site. (When I write anything beyond Site Maintenance, I mean.)

Some people don’t understand this, but it holds true for me: the viscera of life is a priority to me. The feeling on your face as the weather shifts from still, muggy, saturated air, to the turbulence and refreshment of a summer storm. The excitement and childlike joy that fills me when I see lightning and a thunderclap almost simultaneously, the fascination and eagerness of feeling those large, swollen droplets of rain splash onto my face.

The feeling of the heat of hot pavement on a summer’s day, scorching your feet, making you feel like a lizard, skittering along on it so as not to be burned. The feeling of trudging around in three feet of wet snow, warm in your snowgear, watching clumps of snow fall from the trees, listening to the activity that dwells within a sense of stillness.

The crash of the waves on a beach, a thunderous subsonic crescendo of noise, felt in your bones. The soft rustle of dry autumn leaves being walked through, hands in jacket pockets, keeping warm in the brisk air. The peace of lying down in a patch of moss, in a fern surrounded glen, listening to moisture drip from the trees, listening to things grow all around you.

This is what is important to me. This is what fills me with wellbeing, and happiness. I wish I could share it. I wish more people wanted to SEE.

Essay: Digital Photography: A Different Media

This will hardly be an essay that most people at this point and time will agree with. Nevertheless, it is how I feel, based on what I’ve seen and done over the past few months. There is an underlying animosity towards digital media and computers in a great deal of the traditional artistic community (photographers included), much in a similar fashion as there was when photography was introduced. This is further exacerbated by the unwillingness of the photographic community to accept digital photography in the same fashion that it did with film. They consider it to be “modified” from the original print, meddled with and thus relegated in general to digital awards. My hypothesis is that perhaps they are not entirely incorrect. Digital photography in many ways is a different medium altogether from film.

Digital Photography is a multistep process. Like film, it involves a camera. Like film, it involves exposing a sensor (film being the sensor in film’s case). They both record an image. But really, they start to diverge at the point of recording the image. In one case, it involves an emulsion, light sensitive chemicals recording the image displayed. In the other case, however, it records it as data, collecting the color information for a particular point. While the image may look the same in the end, the process itself is the beginning of divergence. For instance, because of the difference in recording method, it is possible to counteract the reciprocity factor of film to do multiple or extended exposures on the same piece of film, to great effect. With digital media, that just isn’t possible: once a sensor is saturated with data, all that is added from an extended exposure is noise. It is VERY difficult to get an extended exposure digital image that is not noisy to the point of making the image unusable. Because of this, you simply cannot do multiple exposures in the same shot with a digital camera. At least yet — I’m sure a method at some point will be discovered.

We persist in treating digital photography as the same as traditional photography, because of the similarity in output. But technically, there is a great deal that can be done with digital photography that is unique to the medium, that doesn’t get touched upon, because of this mindset. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that there is a difference between a cyanoprint and a photograph, and likewise, there is a difference (albeit more subtle) between a digital image and a photograph. There is data within a digital print that could be used to great effect, if the appropriate tools were created. Instead, though, we restrict ourselves to trying to get it to look as much like a traditional photograph as possible. What about applying ourselves to finding ways of getting the images to look like various painterly techniques? The information is there to do so, we simply have to elect to do it.

I suppose what I am trying to say, is that I would like to see digital media not put in the corner in the art community. If people would stop being so arrogant and close-minded about it, they would see that it has as much validity as an artistic medium as any other. It is what is DONE with the medium that matters, not the medium itself.

Annotation: The Mind’s Eye

As much as he gets talked about, and as much as I love his photography, I must say I’m not too impressed with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s writing. The Mind’s Eye is a collection of writing that Henri has done over his career about photographers and photography. Unfortunately, Henri is french and as such thinks in French. Different languages foster different modes of thought and different styles of communication. Personally, I found his writing style very quotable in small vignettes, but lacking greater substance when taken as a whole. This is further exacerbated by the relative shortness of each piece, the average length being 3-5 pages. Since it’s so many short pieces, it isn’t really worthwhile, in my eyes, to address each. Instead I’ll address my views on the three major topics: “The Camera as Sketchbook”, “Time and Place”, and “On Photographers and Friends”.

“The Camera as Sketchbook” was the most coherent and pertinent section of the book, in my opinion. It discusses the process of photography, using it to capture those decisive moments about topics you are passionate about. It also has the title essay, “The Mind’s Eye”, which discusses developing your inner senses, learning to be in tune with your surroundings so that you are both aware and prepared for when a key moment comes. These tidbits would be more useful, of course, if he bothered saying more on possible methods to develop one’s abilities, how to capture the decisive moment, how to work your passions into your photography, how to refine the mind’s eye, instead of just saying they are necessary. This was when I first started to become disappointed in this book; when you realize you are halfway through a book and keep on waiting for the author to get past summary and to the rest of the content, it’s probably a sign that it’s not the proper book for you.

“Time and Place”, you would think, would discuss time and place as it pertains to photography. Perhaps a discussion on when and where it is appropriate to photograph, and when one should just set aside the camera and appreciate it as a personal moment, perhaps that would make sense for such a chapter header. Perhaps Cartier-Bresson just had a really bad editor who gave the collections poor titles. Because it was just a collection of his writing on his photographic escapades to various places at pivotal times in history (Mao’s march in China, for instance). This was not really what was described and sold to me as. I felt vaguely betrayed by Aperture (the publisher) for describing the book in one fashion on the cover and in the book leaf, and then having it actually being a significantly different book.

“On Photographers and Friends” was really pretty boring. It had even less continuity than the previous sections, which either segued from one topic to another relatively smoothly, or was done in some semblance of chronological order. This section, however, had none of that. It was just a mishmash of eulogies or statements on various friends Henri has had over the years, like André Breton, and Robert Capa. It’s nice to hear his thoughts on these influential people, but come on. That said, each commentary is extremely brief, and really isn’t very useful in any sort of scholarly sense. To put it into perspective: Henri discussed 15 photographers and friends, which took him 29 pages of large, spacious type in a small book, including pictures and copies of his handwritten letters (where applicable).

I hate to say it, but I really do feel like this was a case of Aperture collecting the random ramblings of an old man, feeding like vultures on the carcass of fame. This sort of obsessive capitalization on the fame of an individual is something that is truly offensive to me. It gluts the market with wasted time and wasted shelf space, and obscures the truly effective and useful books from the inexperienced reader (and how is one to know what books to seek and what books to avoid? You can only make a guess, albeit a somewhat more educated one as you go along). Between this and other books I’ve read published by Aperture, I really am beginning to develop a strong distaste for them — a shame, since they are such a large publisher of photography and I feel like I should do what I can to support such endeavors.

Cartier-Bresson, Henri. The Mind’s Eye. Aperture, 1999.