Re: [xmca] Update on Tony Whitson

[Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>]

Thanks David.
I cannot comment on the Chinese piece but the poem is a wonderful take
on Freirian pedagogy indeed!
Robert

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:08 AM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

> This is really a kind of banal Chinese operatic rumination on collective
> monologue, dialogue proper, and the Cecil Day-Lewis poem (It's just the
> sort of thing I think of while I am in the gym; I don't know if it will
> interest Rob or try Tony's patience).
>
> Tianxianpei is an opera in the Huangmeixi tradition. It is sung in a
> dialect of Anhui Chinese that hardly anyone outside Anhui understands, but
> the actress in this opera (Yan Fengying) sings in standard Chinese, with
> unmistakable MELODIES from the original dialect (and of course there are
> subtitles, because as I said before opera is really an artform of WRITTEN
> speech in China!).
>
> Huangmeixi is a tradition that comes from a corner of richer Hubei
> province that borders on the famine lands of Anhui, and the theme of going
> out in bad times and returning home when things get better is central to
> every opera. In Tianxianpei this theme goes cosmic: a young goddess, the
> seventh fairy daughter of the Jade Emperor of Heaven, decides to revolt.
> She descends to earth to marry a commoner, Dong Lang, who has sold himself
> into slavery in order to by a coffin for his deceased father.
>
> Together, they outwit the slave-owner (through a scheme curiously similar
> to Rumpelstiltskin, by spinning bad stuff into gold brocade) and win early
> release. And here they are returning home to the land that Dong Lang had
> thought he would have to sell. They sing:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5mdi7wZWN8&NR=1&feature=endscreen
>
> 树上的鸟儿成双对
> 绿水青山带笑颜
> 从今再不受那奴役苦
> 夫妻双双把家还
>
> 你耕田来我织布
> 我挑水来你浇园
> 寒窑虽破能避风雨
> 夫妻恩爱苦也甜
>
> 你我好比鸳鸯鸟
> 比翼双飞在人间
>
> She: See the birds on the boughs in pairs!
> He: Green ponds, blue hills, smiling with leaves!
> She: From today, we'll never taste forced work again.
> He: Wife and husband, hand in hand, we'll have our homestead back.
> She:  You shall plow the soil, and I shall weave our clothes
> He:  I shall carry the water, and you shall irrigate the garden.
> She: Our winter nest will be threadbare, but it will keep out the wind and
> rain
> He: To husbandly love and wifely devotion, even bitterness shall taste
> sweet
>
> (The last two lines are delivered in close, but not perfect synchrony,
> which is a fairly rare feat in Chinese opera, for reasons I will get to in
> a moment.)
>
> She: You and I, closer than mandarin duck and drake
> He: Closer than their two wings, traversing the realm of men
>
> Yan Fengying donated the proceeds for this opera to buy a fighter jet for
> the Korean war (Mao donated his only surviving son--they had a very
> different idea of how leaders fight wars in those days). And then Yan
> Fengying was severely criticized during the Cult Revolt (by the Maoists, of
> course) for singing this paean to private life....
>
> But is that really what it is? And what exactly is the alternative? Today
> on the opera channel, there was a lesson in how to sing Yuju, the opera of
> Henan, and they had one of the great masters of the art.
>
> The particular aria they were singing was not actually this one. It was
> the kind of sketch of everyday life that I love most in opera (one of my
> favorite operas features a scene where a wife is trying to decide whether
> to cover a sleeping husband with her own--woman's--cloak that goes on for a
> full eighteen minutes!)
>
> An old lady is lying in bed, it is (we are told repeatedly!) the 23rd of
> January, and snow is falling. The party secretary comes to give her a
> blanket, saying that Chairman Mao especially sent him with this, and she is
> moved to tears. I watched it while on the treadmill in the gym and tried to
> sing along. I wondered why the gym emptied out so quickly!
>
> But it wasn't entirely my fault, you know. The master, while a brilliant
> performer, was a really TERRIBLE teacher. It was the kind of teaching we
> had in China in art school: the master performs, and then the students all
> perform--TOGETHER. Individual performances are for the leader, and the
> leader alone. Students then perform a kind of Piagetian collective
> monologue, neither listening to each other nor to themselves.
>
> Our master had four students performing together. But since modulations
> are highly individual, the slight variations in modulation, each
> artistically adequate, nullified each other, and the result was insipid and
> colorless. The master couldn't figure out why this was, and so she kept
> getting the students to sing more and more expressively, and the result was
> flat, shrill, and vulgar.
>
> Compare that with Tianxianpei! The couple take turns, repeating but also
> varying, and when they finally do sing the last two lines (about husbandish
> and wifely unity) together, they are ever so slightly offset, so that you
> can clearly hear the modulations introduced by each singer.
>
> So it seems to me that what Cecil Day-Lewis says for dialogism
> between husband and wife holds even more true for teacher and student
> (which is, I guess, not that surprising, since he is really talking about
> poetry).
>
> But when we cease to play explorers
> And become settlers, clear before us
> Lies the next need – to re-define
> The boundary between yours and mine;
> Else, one stays prisoner, one goes free.
> Each to his own identity
> Grown back, shall prove our love’s expression
> Purer for this limitation.
>
> David Kellogg
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
>
>
> --- On Tue, 12/13/11, Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu> wrote:
>
>
> From: Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Update on Tony Whitson
> To: lchcmike@gmail.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2011, 6:34 AM
>
>
> Hi Tony and everyone, (Will someone please forward to Tony?)
>
> Here is a poem by Cecil Day- Lewis with commentary from David Kellogg.
>
>
>
>
> > There is a good poem about the relationship between meaning potential and
> > actual meaning by Cecil Day-Lewis. It's metaphorical, of course! He
> begins
> > by defining a sign for us, and pointing out that a tree is a sign too
> > (because it stands for itself, or if you want to be physiological about
> it,
> > it produces an image on our retina which is interpreted by our brains as
> a
> > tree.) But it's a sign without a system, without much unrealized meaning
> > potential.
> >
> >* This tree outside my window here,
> > Naked, umbrageous, fresh or sere,
> > Has neither chance nor will to be
> > Anything but a linden tree,
> > Even if its branches grew to span
> > The continent; for nature’s plan
> > Insists that infinite extension
> > Shall create no new dimension.
> > >From the first snuggling of the seed
> > In earth, a branchy form’s decreed.*
> >
> > You have to admit the Creator was original. He was certainly forceful in
> > his creativity. But rather limited, when you look at it; in His later
> career
> > He kept repeating Himself with only minor variations, and most of what
> was
> > new was not very good. Human creativity is a different matter!.
> >
> > *Unwritten poems loom as if
> > They’d cover the whole of earthly life.
> > But each one, growing, learns to trim its
> > Impulse and meaning to the limits
> > Roughed out by me, then modified
> > In its own truth’s expanding light.
> > A poem, settling to its form,
> > Finds there’s no jailer, but a norm
> > Of conduct, and a fitting sphere
> > Which stops it wandering everywhere.*
> >
> > Human creativity, unlike nature, is an embarrassment of riches; we need
> > rhyme (which you notice Day-Lewis adheres to quite rigorously) and meter
> to
> > keep us honest. As Adorno says, the bourgeoisie would like life to be
> > austere and art voluptuous, but we would really be much better off with
> > things the other way around: life full of actual meaning, and art full of
> > things left unsaid.
> >
> > Now here Day-Lewis notes that there is a third thing--and it is the thing
> > that Bakhtin wrote almost exclusively about, something that is neither
> > system of meaning nor instance of meaning making, something that is
> neither
> > signification nor purely individual sense: it is human relationships in
> all
> > their complex, meaty sensuousness.
> >
> > Are interpersonal relations more like intra-personal relations or are
> they
> > more like societal relations? Are they more intra-psychological or more
> > trans-psychological? Are more things to be left said or unsaid? Half
> said?
> >
> > Are these going to be austere or voluptuous? Will they depend on
> potential
> > or upon realization?
> >
> >* As for you, my love, it’s harder,
> > Though neither prisoner nor warder,
> > Not to desire you both: for love
> > Illudes us we can lightly move
> > Into a new dimension, where
> > The bounds of being disappear
> > And we make one impassioned cell.
> > So wanting to be all in all
> > Each for each, a man and a woman
> > Defy the limits of what’s human.*
> >
> > Voluptuous then, and almost intrapersonal--but this is a romantic, young
> > person's view. Day-Lewis wrote this late in life, after many years of
> what
> > we would have to call development. Human development is not like natural
> > development; it means creating more potential rather than simply
> realizing
> > it (and thus leaving less unsaid).
> >
> > *> Love’s essence, like a poem’s, shall spring
> > >From the not saying everything.
> >*
> > David Kellogg
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 11:29 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Herewith a poem that Tony may find satisfying to think with. It is
> usefully
> > followed up by a visit to the website of the Cluny Museum in Paris and
> the
> > tapestries that reside there, but it stands pretty well on its own.
> >
> > If this topic is interesting, there are some nice follow-ons.
> > mike
> > ------------------------
> >
> > The Unicorn by Ranier Maira Rilke
> >
> >
> >
> > This is the creature there never has been.
> >
> > They never knew it, and yet, none the less,
> >
> > they loved the way it moved, its suppleness,
> >
> > its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene.
> >
> >
> >
> > Not there, because they loved it, it behaved
> >
> > as though it were. They always left some space.
> >
> > And in that clear unpeopled space they saved
> >
> > it lightly reared its head with scarce a trace
> >
> >
> >
> > of not being there. They fed it, not with corn,
> >
> > but only with the possibility
> >
> > of being. And that was able to confer
> >
> >
> >
> > such strength, its brow put for a horn. One horn.
> >
> > Whitely it stole up to a maid, -- to *be*
> >
> > within the silver mirror and in her.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 4:29 PM, David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu>
> wrote:
> >
> > > Mike,
> > > I'll help with the archives work.
> > > Meanwhile, the only tangible thing I can think of that might bring Tony
> > > some pleasure is poetry.
> > > If anyone has a suggestion of a poem that seems relevant to Tony's
> work,
> > > or Tony's current situation, or to XMCA, or to what Tony brings to
> XMCA,
> > > send it on, and I'll forward to him on our behalf.
> > > David
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> > > On Behalf Of mike cole
> > > Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 10:21 AM
> > > To: Deborah Rockstroh
> > > Cc: Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition Internal List; eXtended
> > > Mind, Culture,Activity
> > > Subject: Re: [xmca] Update on Tony Whitson
> > >
> > > Great to hear from someone closer to the scene who would like to pursue
> > > the suggestions made by people so far. Perhaps everyone could start by
> > > going to Tony's web page, since he suggested it through you, Deborah.
> > > Its a pretty chaotic time for all of us, but the web allows us to
> pursue
> > > the matter in our own moments if not our "own ways."
> > >
> > > As soon as possible, we at LCHC will organize a systematic look at the
> > > xmca archive, but that takes time and labor and coordination, which
> > > makes the web page a common sense common goal.
> > >
> > > Anyone who would like to help pulling the relevant information from the
> > > archives, please contact me.
> > >
> > > mike
> > >
> > > On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 9:49 PM, Deborah Rockstroh
> > > <d_rockstroh@bigpond.com>wrote:
> > >
> > > > That's a lovely suggestion Mike, a very thoughtful way to keep Tony
> > > > and his interests in the forefront of our minds, at the very least;
> > > > and perhaps such discussions might trigger something to assist in his
> > > > recovery. I think David Kellogg's suggestion about attempting to
> > > > communicate with him in Chinese has potential too. Tony has
> > > > contributed much to these conversations and my thoughts and prayers
> > > > are with him and his family at this time also.
> > > >
> > > > He often directed us to his blog, so perhaps that provides an
> > > > additional avenue for understanding and framing his interests?
> > > > http://curricublog.wordpress.com/
> > > >
> > > > Deb
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Deborah Rockstroh
> > > > Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour Preferred email:
> > > > d_rockstroh@bigpond.com
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> > >
> > > > On Behalf Of mike cole
> > > > Sent: Monday, 12 December 2011 3:20 PM
> > > > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > > > Subject: Re: [xmca] Update on Tony Whitson
> > > >
> > > > There is a pretty large archive to topics tony has commented on in
> the
> > >
> > > > past few years at lchc when I google search. I am not competent to
> > > > download them all and order them but if it were possible to do so, we
> > > > might be able to take up some topics that are of interest to Tony as
> a
> > >
> > > > foundation of communication if he is so inclined.
> > > > mike
> > > >
> > > > On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > On Dec 11, 2011, at 2:00 PM, David H Kirshner wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > "Tony is not able to independently log on to this account yet or
> > > > > > read comments with understanding, but he seems to understand
> > > > > > spoken language perfectly, so we are reading the emails on this
> > > > > > account to Tony as they come in.
> > > > >
> > > > > This seems a powerful example of the way that compensation, that
> is,
> > >
> > > > > treatment and recovery from neurological damage, requires an
> > > > > external, social, moment. LSV wrote that "Research into the
> > > > > compensatory functions that develop in these disorders also shows
> > > > > that the objectification of a disturbed function, that is, bringing
> > > > > it outside and changing it into external activity, is one of the
> > > > > basic roads in the compensation of disorders".
> > > > >
> > > > > I hope that we at XMCA might together provide that external
> activity
> > >
> > > > > that will help Tony in his recovery.
> > > > >
> > > > > Martin
> > > > >
> > > > > __________________________________________
> > > > > _____
> > > > > xmca mailing list
> > > > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > > > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> > > > >
> > > > __________________________________________
> > > > _____
> > > > xmca mailing list
> > > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> > > >
> > > >
> > > __________________________________________
> > > _____
> > > xmca mailing list
> > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> > >
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> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
>
>
>
> --
> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.
> *Assistant Professor
> Social Foundations of Education
> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
> Georgia Southern University
> P. O. Box 8144
> Phone: (912) 478-5125
> Fax: (912) 478-5382
> Statesboro, GA  30460
>
> *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
> midwife.*
> *-*John Dewey.
> __________________________________________
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> xmca mailing list
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>



-- 
*Robert Lake  Ed.D.
*Assistant Professor
Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8144
Phone: (912) 478-5125
Fax: (912) 478-5382
Statesboro, GA  30460

 *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
midwife.*
*-*John Dewey.
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