[Xmca-l] Re: Verismo and the Gothic

[Annalisa Aguilar]

David!

You made me chuckle in the presentation of your opera which was a nice present!

What was also amusing is the posting of a 2+ hour opera (from youtube), which makes the trend of posting large objects to the list writ large! :)

Of course I do not mean to substitute the kitsch for the original, by asking for an orientation to the work of Bloch (what you are calling executive summaries) Just access, as a starting point, a "you are here" in the present moment!

And by the way I'm still reading the Marvakis paper! 

Also, I'll have you know that by solicitous magic carpets I received the second volume of Bloch in my email box and so if anyone would like it please email me. Technology can be magical after all! I even received the Principle of Hope in German (Das Prinzip Hoffnung)!!!! Even Aesthetics and Politics (1977) which includes essays by Bloch, Brecht, Benjamin, Lukács, and Adorno (111 pages) in a kind of dialogic presentation of writing which looks quite intriguing… Last, the piece de la resistance, Bloch's On Karl Marx (1971)!!! Again there is nothing but bounty out there!

I am sorry that Bergson would bar you from the men's room at the other end of the mall! But it would be like a dualist to split things up with distances; dualists do that kind of long division. I would be suspicious of Catholics for the reason and that moment they spring up unannounced in Monty Python skits, stealing the show!

Moi, I am still (perhaps naively) of the conception that Vygotsky is always referencing the moment of change which can only be in the present moment, he is always open to possibility that something new can happen. This is the aesthetic experience. Some might interpret that anticipation as hope, I'm OK with that. But you are the one who is saying (in the present moment -- that is in relation to this xmca post as I am reading it now, which is a different now than when you wrote it) that Bergson is accepted by Vygotsky. Now, for my edification, is this historical or theoretical or hypothetical?

In Vedic thought, we would say that anything that changes is not real; anything that does not change is the only thing that is real. So it all depends upon how one defines what is real. Is what is real what we label as real? (Ceci n'est pas un pipe.) Or is there anything true about this concept of what is real, at all?

In terms of individuation, apparently there are likely different forms of mediating between lower psychological function and the higher. I am not persuaded that higher ones are solely linguistically mediated. Though there may be a kind of language, or pattern which negotiates this mediation. I believe there is plural room for other plural forms. 

Vygotsky was exceptionally gifted in linguistically mediated higher forms and so he was sensitive to seeing that in the world, in others. And these were socially mediated, so I am not refuting that. But then, is it not possible to have higher forms of psychological processes which are not linguistically mediated? If not, then why not? That seems like attempting to prove a false positive (á la Weapons of Mass Destruction leading to a Mission Accomplished).

As someone who thinks in metaphorical pictures, as well as "affective pictures," I don't experience these as lower psychological functions, and so perhaps there is too much privileging of "linguistically mediated" higher ones. Frequently I might have an immediacy of concepts as derived conclusions, but it is difficult to actually put them into words. But this poignancy isn't less potent thinking (or lower), in fact it is the case that the words just do not serve well enough to explain the form of thinking. The meaning is implicated rather than explicated.

Mozart was not a genius of words, but perhaps a genius of what might be called "musical pictures" or "musical sentences" however one might want to represent that. We know that Einstein imagined in pictures as well, I would protest to describe his thinking as happening in the neighborhood of lower psychological processes.

I always loved in the movie Australia, (OK it is Hollywood... sorry about that), the aboriginal notion (as represented in the movie) of "I sing you to me," or, "You are nothing if you do not have your song." Or something to that effect. 

Which definitely seems to apply to Opera, but in the West, tends to kill off all the divas. Oh well…(feminist note-taking …) But let's keep singing anyway.

I have commented in the past that the scientific revolution did contribute to the dualism of the rational and the affective and these coincide with Realism and Gothicism in art. This is why I find art such a great touchstone, because it is the evidence of the MIND of the times.

In terms of your analysis of Wally's mind, any of these positions and situations cannot but happen in the present moment, even if it is displayed in an opera (as the staging of an imagination), because we can only imagine in the present moment while watching the opera (on youtube, no less) . Imagination of the past is a memory, in the future an insight or premonition, in sleep a dream. Despite these mental states in motion, we can never leave the present moment even if our minds astro-travel through time-traveling machines called books, which offer to us the means of visiting other people's imaginations!  :)

If you disagree about the present moment being the only location for imagining (past or future), then please explain to me how to eradicate the present moment to explain these different kind of imaginings *without* the present involved? I welcome that explanation! 

However I cannot even imagine that because, here I am in the present moment, still!

And now still!

Kind regards,

Annalisa