The avante garde/ art and miscarriage

The blogosphere (I hate that word) has been buzzing with news of Aliza Schvartz, a Yale senior whose art show was supposed to day. According to the Yale Daily News:

...Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

My moral qualms with this are many, but I think Michael J. Lewis, in the Wall Street Journal, has pointed out some of the artistic problems with the piece:

Immaturity, self-importance and a certain confused earnestness will always loom large in student art work. But they will usually grow out of it. What of the schools that teach them? Undergraduate programs in art aspire to the status of professional programs that award MFA degrees, and there is often a sense that they too should encourage the making of sophisticated and challenging art, and as soon as possible. Yale, like most good programs, requires its students to achieve a certain facility in drawing, although nowhere near what it demanded in the 1930s, when aspiring artists spent roughly six hours a day in the studio painting and life drawing, and an additional three on Saturday.

Given the choice of this arduous training or the chance to proceed immediately to the making of art free of all traditional constraints, one can understand why all but a few students would take the latter. But it is not a choice that an undergraduate should be given. In this respect — and perhaps only in this respect — Ms. Shvarts is the victim in this story.

I think that Lewis is right—the option to stray into "making art free of all traditional constraints" should not be granted to undergraduates. On some level, it's a matter of mastering the fundamentals before moving on. (I would say this should be the case for not only the visual arts, but for the performing arts and writing, as well.) On another level, it's a matter of maturity—Ms. Shvarts, I think, suffers from pretension. This is true of most undergraduates...but it becomes problematic when it leads to inducing several miscarriages.

from W.

"Some on the left compare W. to Hitler. Nothing could be more wrong. It is our embarrassing distinction in the United States to have acquired a follower as our leader. You don't picture him on the podium at Nuremberg. No, you see him in the third row of the crowd on the rally floor. Look for his face, there, among the other sons!"

[from the story W. in n+1, a bi-annual journal you should subscribe to; photograph of young Adolf, 7 years old]

Reflections from Psalm 23

Below is my chapel talk that I gave to the students and faculty at the Stony Brook School. I really wanted to say this, but I'm not on too good terms with the administration, so I went for a more orthodox approach. (Posting a chapel talk? So much for the group blog idea...)

Many of you have asked me what life is like for a single teacher here at the Stony Brook School. Though it is often phrased a bit mockingly: “Why don’t you get a life, Michael?” or “You need to get a girlfriend instead of sitting in your apartment all night,” it might be phrased, “You don’t have to change diapers at night like almost everyone else, so what do you do with your free time?” My hobbies, reading, writing, and running—yes, I do really enjoy these activities—all take considerable time, and as any teacher here can tell you from experience, there isn’t really any free time the first year of teaching. So in the twenty minutes that I find here and there, I read blogs. For those of you who don’t know what a blog is, let me clarify: A blog is a website that is regularly updated with articles. I peruse dozens, whose subjects range from education, theology, design, literature, or even, in the case of one of my favorites, graffiti and street art in cities across the world.
Yesterday, I stumbled across a discussion of the recent American Idol special, “Idol Gives Back,” a benefit show to raise money for causes around the world. From what I understand, at the end of the show eight of the remaining contestants sang the song “Shout to the Lord.” Apparently, the folks at American Idol, afraid to offend, decided that it would be better to substitute the word “Jesus” for “Shepherd” because the contestants sang, “My Shepherd, my savior.” The alleged secularization of the song didn’t bother me at all, but I was surprised that “Shepherd” was deemed secular enough. The Bible, after all, is filled with many references to God as a Shepherd, perhaps the most popular of which is the 23rd Psalm, which we heard yesterday in the lectionary reading. When I hear the word Shepherd, my mind generally darts to that passage: “The Lord is my Shepherd.” But I have, you might say, a difficult relationship with the Psalm.

*

My father died when I was eighteen—my freshman year at college. In mid October, his stomach started to hurt. He was dead three and a half weeks later, a victim of cancer. He had spent the last week and a half of his life in our family room, wrapped in a blanket in front of the TV, barely speaking or eating. My sister had taped several Bible verses on the walls. Much like Psalm 23, they were encouraging verses, and my sister believed that if we prayed hard enough, if we believed the verses well enough, my father would live.
When I buried my father, my uncle, my father’s older brother, read Psalm 23. “The Lord is my Shepherd.” As a sniper in World War II, my uncle had faced the cruelties of war, even spending 6 months in the hospital after a German mortar destroyed the French theater that his tank battalion was occupying. Now he struggled to mouth the words of the Psalm as he wept bitterly. The Psalm was read again a couple hours later at my Father’s memorial service. “The Lord is my Shepherd.” I sat silently in the front row, too numb to think about the meaning, too numb to hear any words of comfort.
The next few months went very poorly. Of course, I was at Wheaton College, the Protestant Vatican, so there was no shortage of people to remind me that God would care for me. But I didn’t know where God was. I tried to find Him, like a boy trying to swat at a thick fog with a stick. As the great Polish Catholic poet Csezlaw Milosz wrote:
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked you, you know it well, that the statue in church
lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.

But there was no miraculous sign. I thought God had abandoned me. In my “small group”—an odd phenomenon of the Evangelical sub-culture in which people share far too much of their lives and then talk about Jesus—I would sit silently, declining to pray with the others. I was alone. I plummeted into a deep depression and swore off God. But as John writes in the first letter, “for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.”

*

I think that one of the most powerful moments in the New Testament occurs in the Gospel of John. After many of Jesus’ followers have left him, he turns to the disciples and said “Do you also wish to go away?” Peter responds by saying, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Like Peter, I did not know where else to turn. By the grace of God, I eventually returned to my faith. I did not know why God had allowed my father to die, nor did I suddenly feel filled with happiness. I did, though, find my faith deeper and stronger, and I found that I was able to empathize with others who were suffering.
God does not bring about our pain intentionally to achieve his will, for he is perfect and is Love and need not...no, cannot...create evil to bring about some greater good. But he can use it if it should occur.
There is something redemptive in suffering, as the lectionary reading from 1st Peter Chapter 2 makes clear: “For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”
In suffering, we learn to humble ourselves—willingly or unwillingly—just as Christ humbled himself to the point of a “death reserved for slaves.” In suffering we learn to empathize with others, to stop offering platitudes or catchy phrases or simple answers and instead, to listen. In suffering we learn that happiness is fleeting, but that the Lord can give joy in the midst of turmoil. But suffering can also be dangerous.
W.H. Auden said in an essay on Søren Kierkegaard that “the Christian who suffers is tempted to think this a proof that he is nearer to God than those who suffer less.” This is a peculiar temptation, the temptation to look upon others who may not have encountered difficulty and almost scorn them for living inauthentic lives. This was a temptation I have fallen prey to repeatedly. This is wrong. If suffering is to be beneficial, I think we must bear it humbly and meekly, not calling attention to ourselves or assuming that we are somehow more attuned to life than others.
Since autumn, I have spoken with many of you about suffering in your own lives. Some of you never had a father. Others have lost loved ones. Others have suffered the crushing weight of depression or anxiety.
It would be too easy to tell you that, in this lifetime, things always turn out for the best, that you may suffer now, but eventually you’ll be flourishing. Several years after the death of my father, I still sometimes struggle to believe the Psalm, to believe that God is constantly caring for me and looking out for my good.
This past summer , I buried two of my best friends, both committed Christians, both victims of suicide. I was studying on a fellowship in Berlin this summer, and I paused one weekend to go to Dresden to meet my friend Stephen, with whom I graduated college . We spent the weekend walking around the beautiful city, now rebuilt from the horrendous devastation that allied bombers wreaked upon it in 1945. On Sunday, after church, I took a train back to Berlin. Stephen, who was studying in a town called Gottingen, never made it back. I learned of his death a few days later when the American Embassy called to ask if I knew any details.
I came to Stony Brook in August, still grieving his death, though I don’t really think I had processed it. After my first day of teaching, I returned to my apartment wondering how I would make it through the year. I was greeted by a phone call from the mother of Luke, another of my best friends. A victim of bi-polar disorder, he, too, had battled depression for years, unsuccessfully attempting suicide a few times. During the week before I began teaching, I had spoken with Luke almost everyday as he spiraled further and further down. That Friday I called his parents to say that he was doing very poorly and that they should be watchful. On Monday, his mother called to say that “we had lost Luke.”
Let me be perfectly clear: I do not wish to convey the message that life is bad, that it is just a matter of riding out a long storm in which we are buffeted by wave after wave of hardship. No. Life is beautiful and holy. Though it can be difficult, life must be affirmed vigorously and joyfully.
There are, though, countless cases of people like this, people whose life seems to be marked by tragedy. The countless victims of disease or poverty who never see the rosy, halcyon days that we think are promised to us. And many are Christians. Where is the Shepherd, watching over his flock?

*

Over the past few months, I have spent several hours talking with the parents of each friend. Both couples acknowledge that the great pain and destruction caused by the death of their sons—it will decrease over time but it will never disappear. At least on this side of eternity.
And this is where we must return to the end of Psalm 23. It closes with the beautiful declaration that we “will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” The idea of eternity is difficult to grasp. Indeed, I doubt that we can grasp it. We can try to graph it, to mathematically represent it—the curve forever approaching the limit of infinity—but we are hard pressed to understand, even imagine eternity, let alone an eternity with God, an eternity of perfect joy. But this is what we are promised. In the face of such incomprehensible joy, the struggles of this earth fade away.
The hope that we have in Christ is too much for me to communicate. I, a mere teacher, cannot do justice to what the Psalmist so beautifully describes. I can only gesture at it, and repeat the closing words of the Nicene Creed: “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

Graphic Design and the War

I was reading an article on the future of Catholic Higher Education, over at the National Review. Now, though I imagine that the National Review is wildly unpopular in my generation (it is probably not much of an overstatement that all of the readers are probably over 40 and either work for defense contractors or make over $100,000 a year—and very educated), but I tend to fall into more of the conservative camp, at least on issues of religion and public life, and the magazine has thoughtful things to say here. However, I was bit turned off this afternoon when I gazed to the right of the text of said article and saw this add:

Of course, the people over at NRO are in favor of the war. But the design of this advertisement smacks of delight in war. And I don't even say "the war," as in the war going on now, but war in general. The stencil lettering above a tank shooting fire out of its barrel—its the sort of thing I might expect on the cover of a tank commander game.

I'm not wholly against the Iraqi war, but I do think that war, in general, is to be looked on with disgust, as a viable option but also as the last option. That is to say that it is perhaps necessary, at times, though it is never to be delighted in.

I understand that the graphic is mirroring the site's web address, but perhaps something a bit more tasteful is in order. It is the responsibility of the country, if it is to be in this war, to at least acknowledge the tragedy of war.

Mild Case of Necrophilia

Let's talk Pygmalion. Ovidian sculptor. From Cyprus. Falls for this sculpture he carves from ivory. Eventually, Venus (what an incredibly sexy name) takes pity on Pygmalion and brings the statue to life. They copulate and produce two offspring, women, human: Paphose and Metharme, names to which, historians steadfastly agree, Cypriot middle school was not terribly kind.

On a serious note (and what is not serious?), I mention this find because I think Shelly's account of a artist/artwork relationship much more devastating and far more realistic than Ovid's. Frankenstein's monster rebukes him, kills those he holds dear, and leads him on a chase that literally costs the troubled doctor his life. To see creation turning on its creator, one need go no further than the mall. Or any church. Or the art museum.

There is something about the artwork that makes the artist both wonder in awe and recoil in terror: its autonomy. It is not uncommon that the creations we make far outdo ourselves; that is, though they come from us, they can be far more powerful and catastrophic in singular capacities than ourselves (i.e. the atom bomb, the printing press, the machine gun, the song "Nobody Does it Better" by Carly Simon).

We cannot be taught to ask the question:

Can God sin? Is that sin, in fact, us? If we do ever get around to asking it, it is certain that no teacher can have asked it for us.

JMH

We're renovating...

Clay Shirkey, in a guest column for Penguin, wrote "Most user-generated material is actually personal communication in a public forum. Because of this personal address , it makes no more sense to label this content than it would to call a phone call with your mother "family-generated content." A good deal of user-generated content isn't actually "content" at all, at least not in the sense of material designed for an audience." The problem with this blog was that it was caught between offering up content and "personal communication in a public forum." Admittedly my job—teaching and coaching at a boarding school—has left me little time to write, but when I did stumble upon some time (usually by neglecting class prep), I was struck at the loneliness of the whole blogging bit. That is, there wasn't much of a conversation going on, which was my original intention for this blog, which I named after Auden's 1946 Phi Beta Kappa poem, "Under Which Lyre." The poem wittily describes the battle that Auden perceived on college campuses— the battle between the humanities and the sciences, the romantics and the pragmatists. The poem, which traces the success of the scientists, draws to a close with the resistance of the poets, the "sons of Hermes":

Lone scholars, sniping from the walls
Of learned periodicals,
Our facts defend,
Our intellectual marines,
Landing in little magazines
Capture a trend.

By night our student Underground
At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear;
Fat figures in the public eye
Collapse next morning, ambushed by
Some witty sneer.

Which, in some fantastical, delusional way, is what I originally wanted for this blog—a sort of cocktail party where ideas could be discussed. (Although in writing this, it sounds awful. I can taste the pretension, people casually alluding to books they've never read with an air of authority, the name dropping of professors or intellectuals that might have once said "hello.") But it didn't happen, really.

So I've decided to make this a group blog, a collective conversation, an idea I stole from a friend's similar endeavor, and the folks over at the American Scene. So I'm pleased to welcome Jason Harper, a student at Princeton and Die Freie Universität Berlin; James Hoey, a student at Chicago's divinity school; and Benjamin Ekman....who is from Sweden.

Over at ayjay's, I found a humorous section of an article by David Brooks, "The Great Forgetting." Here's the excerpt:

Society is now riven between the memory haves and the memory have-nots. On the one side are these colossal Proustian memory bullies who get 1,800 pages of recollection out of a mere cookie-bite. They traipse around broadcasting their conspicuous displays of recall as if quoting Auden were the Hummer of conversational one-upmanship. On the other side are those of us suffering the normal effects of time, living in the hippocampically challenged community that is one step away from leaving the stove on all day.

This divide produces moments of social combat. Some vaguely familiar person will come up to you in the supermarket. “Stan, it’s so nice to see you!” The smug memory dropper can smell your nominal aphasia and is going to keep first-naming you until you are crushed into submission.

Your response here is critical. You want to open up with an effusive burst of insincere emotional warmth: “Hey!” You’re practically exploding with feigned ecstasy. “Wonderful to see you too! How is everything?” All the while, you are frantically whirring through your memory banks trying to anchor this person in some time and context.

A decent human being would sense your distress and give you some lagniappe of information — a mention of the church picnic you both attended, the parents’ association at school, the fact that the two of you were formerly married. But the Proustian bully will give you nothing. “I’m good. And you?” It’s like trying to get an arms control concession out of Leonid Brezhnev.

Yes, David Brooks, I'm the bastard who peppers his speech with references to Auden, and, admittedly, enjoy gaining the upper hand in conversations with people by either remembering their name or casually pointing out the fact that we've met....several times.

Google does it again

I was about to write a blog questioning Google's introduction of "Custom Time," which the folks at Google say is a great way to pretend like you actually sent the email on time—helping solve the problem of missed anniversaries, etc. The opening page of gmail bragged about how useful it was, but then, paradoxically said that Google was limiting the number of custom time emails to 10 per year. Ah....so they know it's deceptive, thus the self-imposed limit. This is great, I thought—I haven't given anyone a self-righteous moral thrashing for a while. It's about time to utilize my wit in the service of morality and self-aggrandizement.


Then, as I read the testimonials, I came across that of Michael, an epistemology professor:

"This feature allows people to manipulate and mislead people with falsified time data. Time is a sacred truth that should never be tampered with."

And then I remembered it was April 1st—April Fools. And then I was filled with appropriate shame. Of course, I should have known better. Last year, on April 2nd, I tried in vain to access Google's paper email, was advertised, on April 1, as unlimited printing through Google.