art XLIV

responding to literature

When you read Virginia Woolf's, The Waves, you have to resist the urge to try to make sense of what you're reading. I enjoy the feeling of not really understanding what I'm reading, as long as I have some understanding of it. If it's completely opaque, that's no fun. Some of Julia Kristeva's writing is like that for me. I like Kristeva though. She really makes you think. 

My favorite literary critic is Harold Bloom. I'm not sure why. What was it that first drew me to him? There's something very compelling about his ideas. Bloom posits that the mark of genius is strangeness and he also exemplifies that in his writing. It's so weird that, he has said of his work, The Anxiety of Influence - which was the first in a series of books about his central theory - that, reading it later in life, there are parts that even he doesn't know what he originally meant. And he's such a perceptive reader - and of course, he's reading his own work - that, if he doesn't get it, no one on earth is going to get it. 

It's indeterminate. That's kind of the point, actually. It creates a new meaning that belongs to it. The only thing that can elucidate a poem is another poem. 

cyberia

art XLIII

art XLII

art XLI

on being strong

Some people like to remind you in an admonishing way, that the Bible uses the phrase 'Do not be afraid', 365 times - once for every day of the year. It's a challenge they give you. They aren't afraid because that would be sinful, but they're challenging you about your fear. 

But I don't think we're called to be invulnerable on our own strength. In fact, the Bible tells us that God abhors that. Self reliance is specifically mentioned as something that God hates. God can't work in our lives when we rely on and are confident in our own strength and courage. When God says, 'do not be afraid', it's not in a heavy command-like way, but in a loving and kind way. It's comforting and encouraging. Because of God, we don't need to be afraid. 

The word that Jesus used for God was scandalous - it was blasphemy. He used the same word that little kids used for their father. 

When I first became a Christian, I had the idea that, as a Christian, I had to do things that I was incapable of doing on my own strength. I had to stand up and speak in front of groups. I had to talk to strangers and people I know, about God. I had to talk to everyone about God. I didn't need to think of what to say in advance because God would give me the right words. I constantly felt the pressure to do that. 

One day I had an epiphany. I was thinking about and feeling that urge to talk to people that had become so much a part of my life, and it dawned on me that God actually cares about how I feel about this. He didn't program instructions into me like a robot, which I then have to keep performing for the rest of my life. It made me stop for a minute and savor that moment. It was a moment of rest and realization....realization that this faith is about having a relationship - a real relationship - with God. 

art XL

art XXXIX

art XXXVIII

polar differences

I wonder who some books are written for. They take one side of a debate and their whole book is an attack on the other side. According to them there's nothing good about the other side. To me that seems pointless. To make a good argument, ironically, you have to give the other side some credit. If your argument doesn't engage with the opposing view at all, it's not going to be very convincing. 

Like, say if there was a group that believed that you're morally required to eat exactly 3 pieces of fruit a day. If you want to argue against them, you can't just dismiss their view. You have to understand why they think that and then explain why you disagree. 

A reasonable position would be, it may be a good idea to eat 3 pieces of fruit a day but it's not a moral requirement. Then you would consider why the group thinks it's a moral requirement and make an argument against that. 

Instead of that, we have people making statements and writing books about how it's so obviously stupid to require people to eat 3 pieces of fruit a day and anyone with that view is obviously depraved and actually dangerous. Like, what if people listened to them and started feeling morally obligated to eat 3 pieces of fruit a day? We have to prevent that ideology from spreading. Further, we know that fruit is just a codeword for something much more insidious, so we have to stop them from speaking or writing articles and books that refer to fruit, whoever refers to it. It's not that everyone who refers to fruit is a card carrying 3 fruiter, but they may still be a useful idiot, mindlessly conveying this poison to impressionable minds. 

People who are in favor of the 3 fruits always engage with media that produces a narrative in favor of that and against the non-3-fruiters, and likewise those against. So, it's kind of pointless. What's the point of all this media and content and books that confirm what you already think over and over and over again. It's not meant to change anyone's mind or to educate anyone, so what is the point of it? 

art XXXVII

art XXXVI

art XXXV

art XXXIV

art XXXIII

art XXXII

art XXXI

art XXX

art XXIX

art XXVIII

a theology of brokenness

I take encouragement from the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit. I am poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. I mourn. Blessed are the meek. I am meek. 

I've been crushed, but that's no obstacle to God. In the book of Romans it talks about how we actually rejoice in suffering because suffering requires us to persevere, which builds character, which gives us a hope that nothing can ever dash, because it's real - it's built into us. It becomes part of us. That's the meaning of suffering and that's why, contrary to what the world teaches us, suffering truly is a good thing. 

The book of Hebrews tells us to consider all the challenges we go through as discipline from God. He disciplines us because he loves us. 

Hebrews 12:10 - 11 reads:

They [our parents] disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

We go through challenges because God wants us to share in his holiness. It's always painful at the time, but it produces real strength and real life. It inevitably does that. 

art XXVII

art XXVI

threats and promises

I tend to focus on the ways that I'm not doing well instead of appreciating the ways that I am doing well. I think it's because I feel like I need to be aware of the threats, and not of the strengths and opportunities. 

It's like, if you're getting attacked by a tiger, that becomes your priority. But that fear-focused thinking doesn't lead anywhere good. 

I always think I need to worry. I need to think about the huge obstacles I'm facing. I'm stuck in a vicious cycle....my problem stopping me from being active, my inactivity feeding my problem.

My fears lie. Time and time again, something will happen and I will dwell on that thing and formulate disastrous scenarios in my mind and be weighed down by a crushing burden, and then it turns out that the reality of the situation is so much better than I had imagined. The problem I foresaw - what I saw as an obstacle - didn't exist. Things work out. There are so many miracles that go into just living through a day. 

the shape of thought

How can I focus so intently on the dark? 

You can't. The darkness is not a thing you can look at and discern. That's why my thinking is all questions - round and round - with no answer. 

How does thought work? 

How can thought take this shape that is so dynamic and full but that cancels itself?

It doesn't make sense. Like, if it's going to close me down, why is it always closing me down - always in the act of closing me down - but it doesn't close me down? It's a movement, a statement, an act, an event, a 'something'....about nothing. 

So, I need to learn something better - a new way. 

art XXV

under standing

A common mistake is to place more value than is probably warranted on the views of people who are smart or talented or successful. Why do we think that because someone is a good writer, or even a great writer, that they can comment with authority about social issues? Why do we give such weight to the views of some prominent scientists about whether or not God exists? How would they know any better than anyone else? Yes, they're very smart and they may be an excellent scientist, but when it comes to spiritual truths, they're no more expert than anyone else. 

People on both sides of the issue get worked up about what J K Rowling thinks about transgender people, but who cares what she thinks? Some people who really love Harry Potter feel betrayed. People on the other side feel vindicated and now invoke J K Rowling to support their argument. No offence to J K Rowling, but why are we attributing so much authority - for good and bad - to her views? She is no wiser than anyone else. A lot of writers are nasty pieces of work. I'm not saying J K Rowling is. 

Personally I find Lionel Shriver to be quite abrasive and unpleasant. I think she's deliberately provocative. She would probably agree with that assessment though. 

I understand this tendency. I do it as well. When some actor or writer or celebrity voices a view that I agree with, I think....yeah, that's right! Or, if they voice a view that I don't agree with, I feel kind of offended. 

Actually, whether it's from a celebrity or not, I feel very strongly when people voice views I disagree with. Something in me wants to argue. I can't rest with them holding a view that I disagree with. But I'm learning not to argue. It's sublimely pointless to argue. To have a discussion or a conversation may be productive, or even a spirited debate, but no one wins an argument. In the long history of arguments, has anyone ever convinced the other person of their view by continuing to argue? 

art XXIV

art XXIII

speak

I've always been interested in the eloquence of non-verbal communication. Like gestures, for example. A gesture - a mere position of the hand - can say so much. 

That's why I like the music video of Christina Aguilera's Fighter so much. You see the moth that's struggling to fly, then the feet of the ballerina and she's on her toes but it looks wrong and painful and she has some kind of crutches....and then the hands...with their intricate and precise, and yet chaotic, movements that are so expressive of pain....and beauty. Then back to the moth, and so on. It's a masterpiece. 

Even with words, the slightest intonation, the smallest modulation in a speaker's or singer's voice, can be so expressive. 

Some people are too polished. They know all the right gestures to make, how to stand, where to pause, but their performance is so tightly controlled that it's asphyxiated. Just like with art, how the materials need to be a little bit unmanageable, with teaching and public speaking, there needs to be an element of fear. 

That's what has made me love teaching so much, because I used to be terrified of speaking in front of people. So, when I was able to do it, it was a real thrill. And the fear was gone. When you've been afraid of something and then you can do it, it's such a buzz. 

It was becoming a Christian and how devastating that was that 1. drew me to education because I was starving for something good to grasp a hold of and 2. empowered me to teach by compelling me to overcome my fear of speaking in front of people, because when I became a Christian I thought I had to tell everybody I came in contact with about God. So, I learnt to speak even when it was the last thing I wanted to do and the most uncomfortable act imaginable. 

art XXII

pointillizm

It's ironic that doing creative stuff is not really about creating something new, at least in my experience and from what I've heard people say. It's about doing the same things over and over again and just giving it a different twist each time. 

An art style or a writing style evolves incrementally and it's built on a foundation of repetition. Just like the best thesis can be distilled to a very tiny point of thought that becomes tens or hundreds of thousands of words, so a spectacular explosion of fantastic art grows out of the mundane, pedestrian act of (literally or virtually) mark making. 

In clip studio paint, I have hundreds of brushes to choose from - I even bought a brush pack so I have even more - but for months now I have only used 3 - one pen, one pencil and a watercolor brush. I like those. I like what they do. I don't want to tinker with this system. I'm still learning what I can do with these. If I started randomly choosing different brushes, I wouldn't know what I was doing. 

To me, art is always a struggle in real time where you're battling for control, and the beauty of the art is a reflection of that struggle. A good example is watercolor painting. The paint is moving and you never really know where it's going to go and what it's going to look like, and that's the joy of it. 

So, with writing or with art, I just begin with doing things I know. Then, as it takes shape, I have an idea about how I can combine things in ways I never have before. I'm doing the same things but combining them in different ways. 

That repetition is very satisfying. Sitting there with a blank slate, an empty page, an empty canvas, and knowing what to do, because it's easy and familiar, but then your work becomes something beautiful or meaningful by some kind of magic. 

something made

I still don't make a lot of money from writing on Medium.com, but it's exciting just to be making anything, to be honest, and to be writing stuff that I feel is meaningful. Same with Redbubble. I've made very few sales. A friend of mine bought a few things when I first created my Redbubble shop, and I've bought a few things, mainly just to see how they turned out - whether they were any good. But again, it's exciting. I'm putting my art on products. 

A couple of years ago I didn't even know if I could do art. Not proper art. Yeah, I could create some weird experimental pieces that I enjoyed creating and may be interesting to look at, but not real art. Now I feel like, whether or not my art is good, it's art. 

I like this quote from Andy Warhol:

Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.

I don't like the first sentence as much as the rest of it. I don't think of art as something you 'just get done', or as something you don't think about. Thinking is part of it. But maybe what he's getting at is the dichotomy between rumination and action. The first sentence is strongly related to the rest of the quote. 

So, what I take from it is: don't think about how good your art is. Make art. Do what you want to do. Create. And keep creating. 

art XXI

naturally

If I understand my position correctly, I know that it's fitting for me to feel fresh and new, not tired, old, and washed out. I can conceive of that and I know it's where I'm going. 

What is teaching?

I've been reading a book called How Woke Won by Joanna Williams, and I wanted to respond to part of it:

Curriculum planners seek to second guess the next generation of workplace skills and, because this is impossible, they get children to ‘learn how to learn’. Teachers are no longer presented as a source of knowledge but as learners themselves, just like their pupils. And if teachers have no special knowledge to impart, they have little basis to command respect. Unlike passing on knowledge, learning to learn is morally and intellectually vacuous. This vacuum has been filled by woke. Given woke is the dominant outlook of teachers today, it is what they automatically reach for. This is not to say that teachers are so in thrall to identity politics that they no longer see subject knowledge as important. Rather, it is because cultivating subject knowledge is no longer seen as an end in itself that woke values are invited in to lend a sense of purpose to education. (Williams, Joanna. How Woke Won (p. 103). John Wilkes Publishing. Kindle Edition.)

I wanted to respond to this passage, not to defend 'woke', but to defend modern teaching practices. I strongly disagree that 'learning to learn' is vacuous. I think it's the single most important thing we can teach kids and that has always been the case. It's true that, now more than ever, we can't predict what skills students will need in the future. That's why it's so important to teach them to learn, and equip them with transferable skills, rather than just imparting 'knowledge' to them. 

The idea that the teacher is the authoritative source of knowledge on a particular subject and it's their job to convey that exact knowledge to students, is outdated. To be useful, your knowledge needs to be your own. Take history for example. The traditional approach was to learn a lot of dates and events - a lot of information. The teacher had all that information and they shared it with the students and the students memorized it and repeated it back in assessments as best they could. But that doesn't lead to real understanding, and it's not useful. Why do we learn history? Surely it's so that we can learn about and learn to think and communicate about important issues. 

This same logic applies to higher education as well. If you do a law degree, you're not meant to learn all the cases and statutes. You can't, and in any case, the law would have changed by the time you finish your degree. So, you learn some cases and you learn major trends, and most importantly, you learn how to ascertain what the current law is and you learn how to reason like a lawyer. The most powerful skill you are equipped with is how to learn. Like in any profession, when you finish your formal education and you start working in your field, it's like starting over. You have to get to know how all the theory you've learned works in the real world. And that's where the skills you've learned come into play. 

Also - on the point about teachers being learners themselves - absolutely! As a teacher, tutor and trainer, I really embrace the idea that I am a learner myself, just like my students. I think the best teachers are excited about learning and they engage in learning with their students. They aren't above their students, imparting wisdom to them like some kind of oracle. 

Teachers should be experts in their field, but good teachers don't command respect because of the weight of all their knowledge. They command respect because of the combination of the expertise they have about their subject(s) and their ability to teach those subjects effectively. 

Teaching is a great art. I think teachers should get paid more than they do because they do one of the most important jobs there is. 

the book I'm reading

I bought a very exciting book today - Biblical Critical Theory by Christopher Watkin. The hardcover is not even due out until June 2023, but I bought the e-book. 

This book truly fills a gap, I think. Sometimes I've wondered if it's even possible to reconcile critical theory and the Christian faith. People like Neil Shenvi would have you believe that the two are absolutely opposed - no question about it. They vociferously argue that critical theory is fundamentally unbiblical, opposed to Christianity, and that it represents a corrupting influence. 

Neil Shenvi is a theoretical chemist. James Lindsay, another widely respected figure of opposition to critical theory, has an academic background in mathematics. And Lindsay admits that critical theory is mainly about literature. So, what authority do these 2 have to talk about critical theory? I'm more of an expert in critical theory because I've done a degree with honors and some postgraduate study in English literature. I've spent years studying critical theory and I'm still learning about it. 

I'm a Christian. I love God. I love the Bible, and I believe the Bible is God's word. But I also love critical theory. That's why I'm really excited to read Biblical Critical Theory.

art XX

Open Your Eyes

natural gestures

The best songs have a minor element of natural innocence in them. Same with any performance really. But it's not a dominant thing. It's subtle, like a gesture...a single word or a note.

The creator positions their self as a master of their art, and they're so good that, in that position, they can relax. 

holeness

Maybe the people with mental illnesses are actually more sane than others. I don't really mean that though. Mental illnesses are debilitating and painful. But still, I don't think absolute sanity, whatever that is, is desirable either. 

I think we are all works of the Japanese art of Kintsugi. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery by filling the cracks with gold. The result is something finer. 

It's reassuring to think about that. When it seems like things are going wrong according to our logic, that's not the case. Things are actually going according to God's plan, laid out in perfect wisdom. 

when goals become habits

I've never really subscribed to the view that some people have that depression is something that is just a complete loss and that life is not worth living if you're severely depressed - that the only thing to be done is to recover, and then you can start living again. 

And now, after my experience in the last few years, I have an even more extreme view - that depression, anxiety and withdrawal are experiences that give you what nothing else can. 

I've made changes in the last 6 to 12 months that have deeply enriched my life, and they're changes that I have wanted and needed to make for many years and never would have made if I hadn't experienced the challenges I've been through. 

The most important thing to me is my relationship with God, and as the years went by, I really let that slip. I made some effort to fix it but could never seem to build any momentum and get into a good, healthy spiritual habit of spending time with God as a priority every day. But that's one of the things that has changed now. 

There are a lot of other things as well. The overall change has been from having the idea that it's good to have daily goals and it's good to do them, to thinking I have to do these things. I'm in hell and my daily goals are my way out. The only way for that change to come about was for me to be in that hell with no easy escape - no quick fixes. 

the gift

art XIX

imposing a narrative

Sometimes we look at historic and current events and impose a greater order on them than is/ was actually the case. People often do this in support of an ideological agenda. They'll say something like - in X historical development, Y political group tried to achieve Z but things went badly wrong because Y is misguided and their ideology is abhorrent. 

But real events are more chaotic and complex. Great power, either exercised overtly or covertly, is often attributed to certain political or ideological groups, that is probably exaggerated. It's an oversimplification. 

A recent example is conservative commentators using the Chinese Cultural Revolution as an example of what happens when the left wing mob has their way. They imply that there was some kind of unified will directing the Cultural Revolution and that this will was comparable to the agenda of modern left wing thinking, and that's why the results were so tragic, but the Chinese Cultural Revolution was not organized and orderly, and the tragedy was more a result of misguided zeal than altruistic idealism. It was driven by a spirit of rebellion against all authority, which Mao initiated and encouraged, and then it was like a fire that got out of control. 

you never know until you try

A lot of the time, it's more important that you make a start than it is that you know where you're going and what you're doing. 

I'm trying to think of ideas to make videos about, so I was brain storming, and one of my ideas was - things that God hates. But when I thought about it, I realized that that's not a good idea for a video. It made me laugh. Like, what sort of images am I going to use?

But then....I googled 'things that God hates' (there's a list of them in the Bible...things like 'haughty eyes' and 'a lying tongue') and I looked on Pexels for those things, and there were some really interesting and striking images. They're images that I want to use in videos, even though I don't know what the videos will be about yet. So, it made me think about how the creative process works. 

When I first started to actually make digital art, as opposed to thinking about doing it and making kind of half hearted attempts to do it, it was really just because I wanted to do it. I didn't have good ideas. I just thought, I want to create. 

Another example of this same principle is with books. Most of the books that I have read and really liked, it was kind of by chance that I read them. I didn't know that I was going to like them. A lot of them I had to read for uni. Others, I just happened to pick up the book and read it or someone recommended it. I know that I like classics so reading them is usually a good bet. But I've read some classics that I didn't like at all. 

So, when you're doing something creative, sitting down and trying to think of what you're going to create is not the way. You have to start creating and you will have ideas as you go. The creative work itself will fuel your creativity. 

Ways to have a better day

Where 2

unredeemed interest

When I was studying Barthes, I really enjoyed reading the biography by Tiphaine Samoyault (translated into English by Andrew Brown). It was so interesting and satisfying. I think it was partly because Samoyault had an excellent grasp of Barthes's theory and the whole field of literary and cultural theory in which he worked and she wove her discussion of that into the story of his life. So, I had that experience I always look forward to, of connections being made to other reading I've done and knowledge I have. And then there's the flow of the story and how evocative the writing is. 

It's important for non-fiction writers to make their work into a story - to have some kind of thesis - some points that they want to communicate and towards which the whole work builds. I've read books before, about historical events and the people involved, that I was really interested in, but I was dissatisfied, especially by the ending of the book. The one particular book I have in mind - the ending was really tragic, and what I would normally look for is some kind of meaning or lesson, but in this case, after building up to this climax for the whole book, the last part was just a relating of the facts - this happened and this happened, etc and like I said, the events were deeply tragic.

Maybe I'm being unfair. It was a very interesting book, and the actual events at the end were pretty hard to redeem with some kind of lesson or moral of the story. It was a book about the Jonestown massacre. It just hit me at the end....the lack of meaning...the utter sadness of the whole thing. 

I don't know if such a thing can be redeemed or given meaning by a writer. It's fascinating though. You can listen to the tapes online of Jim Jones's sermons and talks and meetings (both in the US and at Jonestown in Guyana). The Jonestown Institute of San Diego State University has compiled them. You can find them here and here - hours and hours and hours of recordings. 

But yeah - I really enjoyed Samoyault's life of Barthes. I didn't expect to. I've never really been a huge fan of Barthes, but his work was relevant to my thesis, so I was reading it, and I came across the biography in a bookshop. I thought it might be a good way of getting familiar with his ouevre, and I just got drawn in as I read it. 

Places to Go