A little bit of Theory

Wulf Barsch von Benedict once told me to go read Kandinsky’s Point and Line to Plane. It was the hardest thing I think I have ever read because the concepts were so incredibly simple. I gave a copy to Dan Muhlestein and I think it made his head spin too. Wulf said that in the Bauhaus, where he went to school, everyone had to go through what they called the Fundamentals, and no one touched a pencil until they had. Wulf decided that since Kandinsky taught him the fundamentals, Kandinsky might as well do the same for me. He did let me touch a pencil during that period though, if only to make up for lost time.

Kandinsky says that a point does not exist, at least not a geometric point. I’ll explain why: any given point on a plane is bound within a plane. A line is composed of the moving, changing point, or a collection of points composed in a linear fashion. Thus the point has one set property. Except in this form it is not a point. A point actually appears at the intersection of two lines, or two planes, if we’re talking about using the third dimension. Because this is the only existence of the point—at the intersection of two lines—the point both exists within the planes, but at the same time does not exist at all.

To an English major a point (.) is a period. In itself it means silence in language. In context it acts as a barrier between thoughts, to signify the end of one, and at the same time allows for the beginning of another. Thus it is part of language even though it doesn’t actually say anything. Kandinsky says this is the inherent nature of the point. That within it’s boundaries it exists for and to itself, yet like being on the inside of a window, it can still play a part in it’s surroundings merely through existence.

Keeping that in mind, what if time was linear? What if the timeline my high school history teacher made me draw was actually how time works? What if there was another line that moved down that timeline, through the events, and that line was me? I then have two lines and at the intersection is the present moment. And it is completely independent either line. On the vertical—time—there is all that has happened and all that will happen on either side of “now” and on the horizontal—self—there is every decision I have ever made and every lesson I have ever learned and on the other side is every decision I will make and every lesson I will learn. And where “now” rests is dependent on time and where my mentality is at the moment.

And what if that is broken? What if time isn’t right and what if I’m not making decisions at all? What will I use to define my present? What if the past is missing? That is why constructing the narrative is important. Because without two lines, the point does not exist. And so when, in war, the time aspect is completely incomprehensible, soldiers like O’Brien and Jimmy Cross are grasping at the physical materials because they exist and use them to find a bearing place in that linear system. And from there they can find a place on their linear self to use to define that point, to create a present and therefore have truth and all that other stuff that postmodernism is constantly trying to find.

Transverse Line by Wassily Kandinsky, 1923.

In Arcadia by Wulf Barsch von Benedict

After a long absence

I may take a moment to explain a few things. Just as Calvin may have crashed a golf cart into a tree last night.

"I'M TIRED AND I'M MAD THAT I HAVE TO DEAL WITH YOUR INAPPROPRIATE CHOICES EVEN NOW WHEN YOU ARE AN ADULT. IF YOU DON'T LIKE BEING LDS DONT CLAIM TO BE ONE BUT IF YOU DO, START BEING NICER, CONSIDERATE OF THE FAMILY AND RESPONSIBLE. I APPRECIATE YOU SERVING MIRIAM BUT YOU DO IT GRUDGINGLY SO IT'S NOT TO YOUR CREDIT, WHEN YOU FACE JESUS HE WILL ASK YOU WHY YOU DIDN'T DO BETTER AND I WILL BE THERE SAYING I TRIED TO RAISE HER BUT SHE MADE HER OWN CHOICES."

I may have copied and pasted this from an email my mother may have sent me last week. I may have cried because of it. I may have printed the whole thing out and may have handed it over to Dan Muhlestein in the hallway of the JFSB the next morning. I may have been angry and yelled and screamed. I may have vented to my brand new roommate on her second night.

I may have made Camille mad. I may have been rude. I may care less for her than I may about the roll of unprimed canvas leaning against my bed. I may know that it may make her cry, and I may feel that crying is good for a person. She may have caused me more tears than I may have her.

I may have taken an alcoholic to a grocery store to buy food where he may have bought beer. I may have gone to a coffee shop with him and may have let him smoke a cigarette while discussing religion, faith, agency, and reactivation efforts. I may have listened when he told me about going to counseling with a group of porn addicts. I may have invited him to church with me.

I may have texted Calvin the other day while I may have been sitting in a basement to give me an excuse to leave after I didn't leave when I may have had the opportunity. When I did leave, my friend may have been mad that I felt I may have had to make up an excuse. I may have not wanted to tell him it was because I might have known I shouldn't have been there.

Calvin may have told me something like "You gotta do this on your own" and he may have really meant it. I may have known he wouldn't bail me out, and I might have known all along why. I may have known I would do it myself even before I may have asked him.

I may have actively decided to fail Whalquist's class because it may have been a waste of time. It may be the most worthless class offered, and BYU may owe me tuition money back for it. I may be morally opposed to busy work, and I may not really have cared to go to class. I may have felt I had no other option but to go. I may have struggled to get out of bed every single morning, I may have pretended to care. I may have given each and every one of my teachers a fraction of an effort. I may have read a newspaper in the back of Tuttle's class. I may have learned absolutely nothing. Cronin may have told me that that was not an option for me anymore. She may have demanded that I retake her class in the Spring, and I may have taken that as an answer to prayer. I may have asked specifically where to start in my efforts of putting things right. I may have felt the Spirit.
.
I may have gone to see my bishop. I may have gotten a blessing. I may have scheduled my life as an attempt to fix it. I may have said I was sorry. I may have bruised my knees kneeling on tile when I prayed. I may have called on God to take care of my problems so that I didn't have to deal with them anymore, and I might have gotten a no. I may have gotten a trust me and you may get through them.

I may have spent my day working and reading and gaining my intelligence back. I may have written all over my copy of All The Pretty Horses as I read it, which Dr. Cronin may have told me to read instead of The Road. I may have spent the last couple hours at the library atoning for my lack of concern all of last semester.

I may have said I'm sorry, and I may know that for the most part it falls on deaf ears. I may be writing to a specific person knowing that I may have made them angry. I may be perfectly willing to face God for this post, and I may know that I might be better off if I leave it alone and let it be buried by silence. I may know this post unearths years of secrets that may all have been buried by silence.

I may just have needed to tell someone, and no one at the same time, because I may feel like I am betraying the trust of multiple people by yelling to the world "I HAVE A PROBLEM." I may be going in for counseling on Monday.

Or I may not.

Bittersweet Ambition

Ryan Brown was crazy. He wanted me to drop everything and go to Florence. That's in Italy. He's always been like that I suppose, but somewhere in our teacher-student relationship that quote just to the right by J Fettingist became more and more true, and I had stopped receiving all the things he was putting into my head and was blatantly objecting to them. I only did that because he was crazy. He wanted me to go to Florence.

I did learn from him though. He and Wulf Barsh von Benedict would give me theory articles to read. I was a good student then (a phrase which really 'means I read them'). One of the things Ryan harped on the most was taste. He would come in every morning with a liter of diet coke and crack something about how I was short (he's 6'2"), then he'd sit down for a couple minutes and give his lecture about whatever had pissed him off in the last 48 hours.

I have to make a side note here: you know how there are certain teachers you gravitate towards? Makayla knows, certainly, because she gravitates back to Dr. Cronin. Well, that was me and Ryan. I took Observational Drawing from him. Then the senior illustration course on gesture drawing. Then Intermediate Life Drawing. He pissed me off every single day, and yet at the beginning of every class, I was ready to face him again.

One day he sat down on the edge of the model stand with a stack of papers and handed them out. It was an article called "A Note on Taste." Actually, it was a section of a chapter, "Tone and Colour Design" in a book, Oil Painting, which I'm going to guess is by someone relatively old. Anyway, whoever wrote Ryan's inspiration of the day said that taste is determined by familiarity, and that good taste can be developed. What really seems to sum it up is the last sentence of the chapter, which says:

All good artistic work is new; but its newness is of the inevitable sort that naturally grows from sincerity; not the forced newness for the sake of difference, which characterises so much of the peculiarity that in theses days masquerades as originality.

His point in the whole thing was that it isn't so much about being as it is being while meaning something. And while someone can develop a taste for something, that doesn't mean the antithesis can't exist. It also means that on the individual scale, good and bad are entirely relative, but on the grander scale, they are definite. There is such a thing as skill, and whether one possesses it or not will determine if they are good or bad.

Ryan was huge on that because here's something of a little secret: art is not just about the idea. It has to have one, but there has to be a structure. I like to think of it as language. Movements change it, but it is rooted in a place that it draws upon for stability--for definition. The thing is, once you know what good art really is, crafted through study and reflection and skill, taste is redefined.

The hard part about writing this post is that I didn't drop everything and go to Florence. I stayed. I wont lie, there are days I sincerely wish I had gone. But what really sobers me is that Ryan taught me so much about life, art, humanity, God, and myself that it seems almost like I owe him something. It is a similar feeling towards Mully; but the fact is, Ryan shared what he felt and what he knew to be true on a daily basis. And some days he was completely off. I wont lie--he's an arrogant conceited jerk...but usually he was right. Ryan inspired me to be a great person. I studied every reference he gave me. I aimed as high as I could with every line until I stopped caring. And he said to me that June day in his studio, "Look at you! You're coagulating right in front of me! I don't know what happened to you, but pull yourself together. You don't even get dressed for the day."

I could hate him for that day. But the thing that I've realized as I sit with Makayla and discuss her relationships with Cronin and Muhlestein is that I miss every second of Ryan's influence in my life, and that I will always regret the day I walked out of his studio and never went back.

I didn't draw this. This is a photo of Ryan.

(My mother never knew what he looked like, but she hated him to the core.)

8:29 am. Monday

The people I went to high school with were...completely insane. No, really, they were. But on top of that, they were insanely brilliant. Their minds worked in ways I am only beginning to comprehend. I was the dumb kid. No really, I was. I really should have been in remedial everything, but I kept passing those stupid standardized tests.

The reason I mention this is because they would write this amazing prose and the title of it would be a date and time, in numeric form. They were big on time/space binaries. And good writing in general. I digress though; I figured that since I am not writing my paper that is due at 9, I may as well describe the moment for lack of something better to do.

***

They tell me I'm crazy for thinking "The Yellow Wallpaper" is about a woman's need for use-value. But they're all crazy for thinking it isn't. What I really don't get though, is why they teach us to make huge stretches of the imagination only to invalidate it with some crap theory by someone named Fish. The whole school thing seems incredibly counterproductive. Which is why I will not write my paper.

Actually, that is a lie. I am perfectly willing to write my paper, if someone actually cared. What difference does it make, I wonder, if all that is ever going to happen to it is some perpetual student of book-learning gives it a grade? I'll tell you. Once a teacher gives a student a grade, he creates a hierarchy of intelligent people he feels he can support in order to reproduce himself. If anyone was wondering, that is how teachers like Muhlestein and Cronin create their lists of favorites. They choose the people most likely to carry on their own ideals of academia, scholarship, and sense of humor. Which means, that in reality, the education system is really the source of corruption and evil...and the downfall of humanity, which I personally don't support--therefore I refuse almost violently to write my paper.

Or, maybe I'm just above writing papers in general. I detest them. They are the gross wad of three month old gum stuck to the underside of my desk that makes me puke inside when I happen to accidentally touch it. They are the bane of my existence. They are a useless form of busy work. I will not write my paper.

The truth of the matter is there is no reason for me not writing it other than I just don't want to. The greater truth is that I will eventually do it because I am trapped in an undemocratic institution that dictates that I do so. I do so or I fail and leave school. I fail and leave school for a life poorer and joyless life than I previously had. I fail or type, fail or write, fail or die in some miserable state....and all at 8:29 on a Monday morning.

I will not write my paper...yet.