έκτακτα [Exceptional]

Maslow describes a peak experience as a form of integration and as something exceptional. Csíkszentmihályi describes flow as full involvement. What we call art could be described as an attempt or effort to replicate this sense of integration or full involvement which appears to be triggered perceptually by the exceptional but is entirely internal.

ὡραῖος [Beauty]

Beauty originally meant ready, finished, complete, ripe. This would be an appropriate description of a woman. What would be an appropriate description for all of the other things we term beautiful? Exceptional or extraordinary seem good words. There is a very fine distinction between the two words. Extraordinary can best be defined as not ordinary. Exceptional can be best defined as a degree of magnitude that would fall some distance from one side or the other of two tipping point that would mark a typical instance or state. This leaves room for addressing ugly as well as beautiful. Finally, instances or states can be rank ordered and quantified which is normally done anyway .There is probably a psychological study that has tested this premise. If not, it would not be difficult to construct a valid study. Who is uglier?

εὐδαιμονία [Happiness]

"Beauty is the promise of happiness."...Stendhal
What exactly does this mean?Defining Beauty is
difficult. Defining happiness is just as difficult.
Aristotle defines happiness as an activity. Seeking
pleasure. This leads to ethics which requires a
definition of truth. Confusion over truth leads
to five different theories of truth. Kierkegaard
and Wittgenstein are both of the opinion that
truth is subjective and subliminal. Kierkegaard
was probably the greatest philosopher of the
nineteenth century and Wittgenstein was probably
the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century.
Truth exists but is external to us and can not
adequately be described by language because
it is experienced subjectively and subliminally.
Awe is probably the only available word.

Beauty

It should be clear by now that the word beauty has multiple meanings which are sometimes very far apart. Describing a woman as beautiful would depend upon the culture. Although, this fine distinction between cultures is beginning to disappear. Describing music, poetry, prose, painting,sculpture, a place, a thought or idea, a language, a religious experience, a sunrise or sunset as beautiful becomes interesting when you look for a commonality. The other interesting question about beauty that must be asked is are all of these things beautiful or representations of beauty. Finally, are there cultural differences?

Furuike Ya

furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

old pond
frog jumps
sound of water

As is often the case, with good haiku
there is a state change rather than a depiction
of a state which would be western.

The poem is in romaji because it is intended to be spoken.
The translation is mine after having read a multitude of other
translations. Old pond could be improved but I am uncertain how?

If anyone wants the Kanji then please let me know.

Momentary Beauty!

Art

Art is an attempt to replicate or communicate an exceptional experience. Craft is often art but is always useful.

Truth

Appears to be subjective and indescribable.

It is a constant that has very little to do with beauty which appears to be inconstant and momentary.

It is often confused with the experiential.

Language is inadequate for a discussion of truth.

This misguided quest for truth has been a major influence on Western Society.

It is interesting to imagine the west and intellectual thinking without this misguided quest for truth.

The Craft of Musical Composition

This is a work by Hindemith. There is a fine distinction between art and craft. Classical Greek sculpture was at the time it was created considered craft. Much of Bach's work,considered art today, was crafted to fill a particular need. During the nineteen twenties and thirties, decorative art reached a level that tended to blur any distinction between art and craft. Telemann blurred the distinction between art and craft with his Tafelmusik. Mozart and Handel wrote many wonderful pieces for special occasions.Stained glass is the perfect example of the problem involved in distinguishing between an art and a craft. Hindemith and Weill both considered utility as the distinction between art and craft. This did not stop either of them from writing beautiful useful music.Much art originally had a religious utility. Some of Bach's religious cantatas are exquisite works of art.

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and Abraham Maslow

Csíkszentmihályi, Mihaly (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.New York: Harper and Row.
Csíkszentmihályi, Mihaly (1996). Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.New York: Harper Perennial.
Csíkszentmihályi, Mihaly (1998). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life. Basic Books.
Maslow, A. (1970). Religion, values and peak experiences. New York: Viking.
Maslow, A. (1970). Religious Aspects of Peak-Experiences. Personality and Religion. Harper & Row: New York.

Socrates and Poetry

For Socrates, poetry was intuitive and not rational. Truth was rational. The only poet he would tolerate in the Republic was Homer. This becomes most interesting after looking at the Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard statements.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'...Keats

This verse is most interesting when viewed after looking at the Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard quotations.

Truth

"All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge."...Kierkegaard

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."...Wittgenstein

ϕ=1.61803399

Phi is a ratio. This is the classical proportionality.
cf. Phidias

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_works_designed_with_golden_ratio

Luca Pacioli's Divina Proportione

Incomplete List of Violist and Viola Website

http://www.viola.com/
John Graham
Patricia McCarty
Robert Vernon
Roberto Díaz
William Primrose(d)
Lawrence Dutton
Julia Adams
Noboku Imai
Pinchas Zukerman
Ludwig van Beethoven(d)
Johann Sebastian Bach(d)
Yuri Bashmet
Antonín Dvořák(d)
Paul Hindemith(d)
Jaime Laredo
Lionel Tertis (d)
Scott St. John

Directors Who Make Beautiful Movies

Zang Yimou
Ang Lee
Kurosawa
Miyazaka
Quentin Tarantino
Steven Spielberg
George Lucas
John Huston
Peter Jackson
Francis Ford Coppola

Beautiful Food

Kyoto
Provence
Tuscany

On Friday nights in Maine the local churches have Bean Suppers.
The price has gone from five dollars to seven. Homemade Pies are
often available by the slice or by the pie. Sometimes the pies
are auctioned.

A full Irish Breakfast with Irish Tea [Stash Kopili Estate].

Céilidh [A Beautiful Party]

Céad míle fáilte romhat!
http://www.capebretonfiddlers.com/
http://www.capebretonlive.com/
http://www.nataliemacmaster.com/
http://www.nollaigcasey.com/
http://www.alasdairfraser.com/
http://www.cranfordpub.com/book_indexes/
scottish_violin_index.htm
http://comhaltas.ie
http://www.fleadh2008.com/
http://www.irishfiddle.com/welcome.html
Slán agus beannacht leat!

Exceptional Beautiful Places

Cape Cod
Cape Hatteras
Cape Lookout
Acadia
Cape Breton
Deer Isle

World Heritage Sites

185 Countries have signed the convention.
The properties are in 145 states.
679 properties are cultural.
174 properties are natural.
25 properties are mixed.

Beautiful Thinking

Kierkegaard->Subjectivity and Authenticity
Cantor->Infinity of Infinities
Gödel->Incompletenesses
Wittgenstein->Silence
Turing->Computability
Nash->Equilibrium
Shannon->Information
Cook->NP-Complete
Einstein->Relativity

Viola and Piano

Any viola piece that incorporates a piano accompaniment usually results in the piano overpowering the viola. The piano tends to become another voice rather than an accompaniment.It is almost inevitable. An exceptional pianist can escape this problem. The two Brahms pieces are well worth study. The Hindemith pieces are excellent. Solo viola work requires a great deal from the performer.

Favorite Bach Pieces

The Art of Fugue arranged for String Quartet
Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin arranged for Viola
Cello Suites arranged for Viola

Éigse Éireann

Poetry Ireland
2 Proud's Lane, Dublin2
E-mail:poetry@iol.ie
Web:poetryireland.ie

Beautiful Greek

Job
Ecclesiastes
Psalms
Luke
Acts
John
John's Epistles
Paul's Epistles
Revelation

Göttingen editio maior Septuagint
Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece

Favorite Artists

Van Gogh
Constable
Turner
Hiroshige
Hokusai
David Bull Contemporary Tokyo Print Maker

Beautiful Prose

Moby Dick [Tony Hopkins should play Ahab in a coming movie]
Ulysses should be started on June 16th
Lear [Tony Hopkins will play Lear in a coming movie]
Don Quixote en español

Favorite Poets

Bashō
Issa
Buson
Li Po
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Yeats
Baudelaire
Rimbaud
Wallace Stevens
William Carlos Williams
Pablo Neruda
F. Garcia Lorca
Gary Synder
Mary Oliver
Robert Hass
Seamus Heaney

String Quartet,Fugue and Variation

A String Quartet consists of four voices playing together with distinct parts for each voice.
A Fugue is a contrapuntal composition for a fixed number of voices.
A Variation has a fundamental musical theme repeated in an altered form or accompanied in a different way.
Please notice that patterns are varied in an iterative way. Some of the most beautiful western music that was ever composed varies a pattern in an iterative way.
This same iterative variation is also evident in nature.
Goldberg Variations
Diabelli Variations
Art of Fugue
Well Tempered Clavier
Grosse Fugue

Double Helix
Logarithmic Spiral

Shostakovich String Quartets

1-String quartet no. 1 C major opus49
2-String quartet no. 2 A major opus68
3-String quartet no. 3 F major opus73
4-String quartet no. 4 D major opus83
5-String quartet no. 5 B flat major opus92
6-String quartet no. 6 G major opus101
7-String quartet no. 7 F sharp minor opus108
8-String quartet no. 8 C minor opus110
9-String quartet no. 9 E flat major opus117
10-String quartet no. 10 A flat major opus118
11-String quartet no. 11 F minor opus122
12-String quartet no. 12 D flat major opus133
13-String quartet no. 13 B flat minor opus138
14-String quartet no. 14 F sharp major opus142
15-String quartet no. 15 E flat minor opus144

The Emerson

WabiSabi

In Japanese wabi means taste for the simple and quiet; sabi means elegant simplicity. Together, they comprise the Japanese aesthetic. In the west, proportionality has been a governing principle.

The Japanese integrate the object with the universe. The western world separates the object from the universe and mounts it in a frame or on a pedestal. This separation sometimes makes western art inaccessible. Japanese art is always accessible.

Socrates was a stone carver before he became a philosopher. The aesthetic at the time was proportionality. His preference was truth over beauty. He did not want poets in the Republic. He felt that except for Homer they confused truth and beauty. For him, truth and beauty could be bounded, quantified and had no real relationship to each other. Beauty was impermanent and truth was eternal. This has subtly influenced western culture.

Japanese culture is grounded in animism. The spiritual pervades nature. There are no boundaries. The aesthetic is not framed in a western sense but is rather framed by the rest of the universe.

Around 1850, the west began to influence Japanese Art and Japanese Art began to influence Western Art. The Smithsonian has a wonderful collection that illustrates this. Landscapes and Seascapes became prime subject matter in the West.

My personal preference is for the stark, simple and elegant. This does not mean that I would discard western visual art. There has been a cross-fertilization in art between the two cultures since the end of the Tokugawa government.

Beethoven's String Quartets

1. Quartet in F major, op. 18, no. 1
2. Quartet in G major, op. 18, no. 2
3. Quartet in D major, op. 18, no. 3
4. Quartet in C minor, op. 18, no. 4
5. Quartet in A major, op. 18, no. 5
6. Quartet in B flat major op. 18, no. 6
7. Quartet in F major, op. 59, no. 1
8. Quartet in E minor, op. 59 no. 2
9. Quartet in C major, op. 59, no. 3
10. Quartet in E flat major, op. 74
11. Quartet in F minor, op. 95
12. Quartet in E flat major, op. 127
13. Quartet in B flat major, op. 130
14. Quartet in C sharp minor, op. 131
15. Quartet in A minor, op. 132
16. Quartet in B flat major, op. 133
17. Quartet in F major, op. 135

La Déconstruction d'un Poème

Avec

des brucelles

fabriquée spécialement

et

une loupe

fabriquie spécialement

s'il vous plait

detachez

très soigneusement

tous les sons

et

jetez-les

et

mettez

chaque mot

sur la table

dans le bon ordre

syntactique

avec igorez

de tons les lignes

et

après que

vous fassiez

la bonne syntaxe

vous devez

vous assurez

de classifiez

ce qui reste

comme un genre

d'insignifiance

et

de fictifive

prose

et

ne vous en faites pas

au sujet du

ci-dit nom

du poème

parce qu' il est parti

et

ne vous en faites pas

au sujet de chanter

parce que

la musique

est partie

et

ne vous en faites pas

au sujet de danser

parce que

la muisque

est partie

et

elle ne revient pas

bientôt

Rules for the Philosopher’s Club

Only solve the insolvable

Only discuss the indescribable

Only ponder the imponderable

Only strive for the unattainable

Only deal with important trivialities

Only look for meaning where there is none

Daily Aesthetic Experiences

aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html

aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.php

Copy and Paste these in your browser window or search engine.
Warning Label:
Do not look directly at the sun. Do not confuse sunrise and dawn. Dawn always comes first. However, it is alright to look directly at the Moon.It will not harm your eye sight.After extended periods of time gazing at the Moon you might experience lunacy.

Prose Poets

Matsuo Bashō
Charles Pierre Baudelaire
Arthur Rimbaud
Stéphane Mallarmé
Nikolai Gogol
Octavio Paz
James Tate
Mary Oliver
Robert Bly
Charles Simic