Making Bricks: Gathering Data on the Concern of "Connecting"

The idea of connecting, or connections, has concerned me for a long time, on all planes of subjective and objective questioning and theorizing. And now I would like to know what others think. Let your responses be as free-wheeling as you please, or answer some questions I will list here and go from there.

1.) What does "connecting" mean? What does it mean to you?

2.) What forms do connections take?

3.) What helps connecting? What inhibits it? Something personal, technological, social, political, geographical, temporal?

4.) What is the good of connecting? What is the evil?

5.) What are examples that come to mind, whether from the news (politics, crime, weather, etc.), art, etc.?

And so on. I will keep things anonymous, unless you specifically want credit (and if you reference or allude to a newspaper, or speaker, or of the like). After a week or so (pretty much whenever I feel like it), I will synthesize all of it together, including my own thoughts, into something portentous. I hope.

You may post your replies as a comment on this post, on my Facebook page (Christian Hendricks), my Twitter (XtianHendricks), or email (composingpenguin@gmail.com).

The Person Behind the Artist; or, Throwing Out Baby and Bathwater

Caravaggio...Gesualdo...Wagner... These are a few names that come immediately to mind, artists of striking, severe originality, whose creations invoke supreme emotion and depict stunning vistas of humanity. They were also capable of awful things: Caravaggio was an excessive brawler who killed a man, perhaps intentionally; Gesualdo murdered his wife while his henchmen killed her lover, and later killed his baby, finally dying in an extremely tortured state of mind; Wagner had no problem living off others gifts, sleeping with his friends wives, and practically codifying and intensifying European anti-Semitism in such essays as Das Judentum in der Musik. I would not want to know these men personally. Their works, however, know me intimately, and I rate Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg as one of my favorite operas.

"As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular." - Oscar Wilde

"Never trust the teller, trust the tale." - D.H. Lawrence

I am, usually, much less interested in the personal lives of artists than in their creative lives. Naturally, the two arenas have overlap, but it is easy for me to, say, ignore Wagner's ideas on Jewry in music and focus on the real and deep human achievement in his one (great) comic opera. That is part of the essence of the above quote by Lawrence, and of the handful of admonitions I take to heart, mind, and soul; whatever a person says, postulates, theorizes, it little matters compared to what he does, or to be more exact, what he achieves. Gesualdo was, to be scientific, looney, at one point taking a cue from Macbeth and having the forest surrounding his castle mown down; even today, strangeness attends his name (see Werner Herzog's excellent movie on him, Gesualdo). Yet, there stand his six books of madrigals, which take the madrigal to its disturbing limits and conclusion (the madrigals of Monteverdi serve as an epilogue, bridging from the madrigal to the new-old art form of opera). More particular to my case, and returning to Wagner, the German master wrote much on music and art, postulating this theory and that ideal. To me, none of it matters until the works matter (which naturally the operas of Wagner do); theory should follow, not lead.

In enlightening upon the relevance of the quote by Wilde, I come to the recent controversy surrounding the novelist Orson Scott Card, known for Ender's Game and related books. I have not read his works, and am only slightly interested in doing so; something, though, tells me he is hardly of the caliber of the geniuses I listed above. He has only gained recent notoriety, however, now that a major movie has been made of his blockbuster book, bringing to light some truly horrendous opinions of his, particularly those on marriage equality; simply put, he is vehemently against it, even calling for secession should the gays get the marriage. Meanwhile, I did not care about his opinions before, I do not care about them now, and the future contains too much possibility to waste on dithering over them then. Nor do I particularly care to see the movie. But, my disinterest has nothing to do with his opinions. To put it differently, I will not boycott the movie because he is anti-gay; if it can be said that I am boycotting at all, it is because I am anti-spending-good-money-on-things-I'm-not-all-that-intrigued-by. If the movie, or the book were anti-gay, then I would certainly boycott, just as I refuse to endorse Das Judentum in der Musik. Such views are vulgar, and art should have nothing in it that is itself vulgar (this is different from depictions of vulgarity, which is a necessity). Wickedness is fascinating: usually what we attribute as wicked is something that our more disturbing parts wish to pursue. Boycotting the movie, as this group wishes to do, is to affix wickedness to it (by proxy of it's writer), and will make it all the more interesting for people to see; in other words, any publicity is good publicity. But, should we treat him, or his ideas at least, as vulgar, we lose interest as quickly as we lose interest in stinky trash. I hold it would have been better to ignore Card's personal opinions altogether, only addressing as the need should arise.

Personally, Card and the whole cadre of anti-gay activists and opinionators do not hurt me; their way is down and out, and they will be--already are--irrelevant. Card has already made money from his books, Ender's Game having been first published in 1985, and he will continue to do so, especially now from the movie. May he make money from his art. May all artists make money from their art. May he earn nothing from his vulgar opinions. May all people earn nothing from their vulgar opinions.

N.B. Orson Scott Card was recently hired by D.C. Comics to write for the digital Adventures of Superman. The artist who was to draw the issue, Chris Sprouse, withdrew from the project, saying the controversy crowded out the work at hand.

Also, the New York Times called out Geeks OUT for their boycott.

(Thanks to the blog Joe.My.God. for the compiling of the articles concerning the matter.)