http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCqeu3TgvSM
Last night while watching SUNY-Delhi's basketball team (19-2) outdistance a very strong team from Herkimer Community College (18-3), I was reading Paul Weiss's 1969 book, Sport: A Philosophical Inquiry (Southern Illinois UP). Weiss writes, "Because art and sport involve a controlled expression of emotions, making it possible for minds and bodies to be harmonized, clearly and intensely, they offer excellent agencies for unifying men" (39).
The book is written entirely about and for men, making its historical period rather clear (before Title IX).
As I sat there watching the young men on the court coast up and down fighting for control of the ball and making layups and not making 3-pointers, I thought about the difference between art and sport. Sport doesn't really attempt to make wider philosophical points with regard to life. It is simply a physical contest but also perhaps a spiritual contest. One player on the Herkimer team (#33), was holding their whole team together. He was scoring most of their points, and also getting the most assists and rebounds, but what was most remarkable was his spirit. It never broke. He retained equanimity throughout, and it was a joyful thing to watch to the extent that I admit I began to root for his team. In the closing seconds one member of his team (#24) flipped out, and cuffed a member of our team. The tie was then broken by two foul shots, and two technicals, which resulted in 3 points and sank Herkimer's chances. #33 remained stoic.
While there is philosophy inside of basketball, it doesn't itself express a philosophy. On the other hand, there is one very physically demanding art form: dance. My daughter says if ballet was ten times easier we would call it football. Recently she offered a dance recital having to do with Virginia Woolf's suicide (she walked into a lake on her property with stones in her pockets and drowned). Lola said she read that it was because Woolf feared she was losing her mind. I've also read that she feared a Nazi invasion (it was during WWII). Here is Lola's dance. She's only 13. I don't remember the name of the musicians who did the song about Woolf.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
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28 comments:
i don't know about anyone else
but
i'm afraid of virginia woolf
she seems rather lupey to me
She was lost.
Lola was practicing a move while Tristan and I watched the Knicks. She broke her foot. We spent the last two hours in the emergency room and the Radiology lab. That's the other side of high level athletics. Most end up in the hospital with breakages.
i've noticed for sometime that dance is becoming more and more athletic in it's form...more odd contortionist demands being made on human bodies....somehow forcing it to the breaking point holds some sort of beautiful romantic idea for people...the legacy of hip replacements in george balanchine's ballet reformation is legendary...and why?...so young girls can be swept away in some illusion of meaning that does now nor ever did exist
i repeat
dance has no place on the stage
we need to get dance off the stage and into the lives of people
breakdancing was such a movement
do kids still breakdance on the street on falttened out cardboard boxes
there was this brief moment in the 70s when our culture tried to convince everyone that dance was the epitome of elegance but it didn't last who remembers anything about dance
i once saw twyla tharp skip and swirl with mikhail barishnikov afterward i ended up at a restaurant with the dancers and i presented a poem to twyla
she was visibly moved
it's important that young people learn about their bodies and dance is a way that can happen but when they start trying to impress the world with bolemic stature and athletic prowess and the sort of aloof no-it-allness that dancers tend to evoke i get bored
bellydancing is good because it happens at the table of life ideally sort of an apertif
dancing with the stars is like trying to spin mars like a top
it's been proven that dancers of the elite troupes are spies
the KGB used them to convey intelligence through labanotation
i kid you not
we expect too much from sport and artists tend to think of themselves as little gods
and i get bored
very very bored
ho hum
jh
i've noticed for sometime that dance is becoming more and more athletic in it's form...more odd contortionist demands being made on human bodies....somehow forcing it to the breaking point holds some sort of beautiful romantic idea for people...the legacy of hip replacements in george balanchine's ballet reformation is legendary...and why?...so young girls can be swept away in some illusion of meaning that does now nor ever did exist
i repeat
dance has no place on the stage
we need to get dance off the stage and into the lives of people
breakdancing was such a movement
do kids still breakdance on the street on falttened out cardboard boxes
there was this brief moment in the 70s when our culture tried to convince everyone that dance was the epitome of elegance but it didn't last who remembers anything about dance
i once saw twyla tharp skip and swirl with mikhail barishnikov afterward i ended up at a restaurant with the dancers and i presented a poem to twyla
she was visibly moved
it's important that young people learn about their bodies and dance is a way that can happen but when they start trying to impress the world with bolemic stature and athletic prowess and the sort of aloof no-it-allness that dancers tend to evoke i get bored
bellydancing is good because it happens at the table of life ideally sort of an apertif
dancing with the stars is like trying to spin mars like a top
it's been proven that dancers of the elite troupes are spies
the KGB used them to convey intelligence through labanotation
i kid you not
we expect too much from sport and artists tend to think of themselves as little gods
and i get bored
very very bored
ho hum
jh
JH, these are all good points. I'm trying to get Lola to think about teaching and plumbing. I want my kids to think about probability. Even at the top dancers don't make much moolah. Teachers can at least support themselves and have summers off.
By the time BO is done we may all be in a Cuban type thing where the government pretends to pay us and we pretend to work, and we meanwhile scrape by on the black market.
Rikka's dance seemed like a combination of "modern ballet" moves and the "tumbling" routines you see kids do.
She seems pretty good at what she's attempting. Does she want to pursue this?
Except for the opening sequence, I didn't see much to do with Virginia Woolf. Woolf as a person--aside from her literary styles and skills--seemed fairly static. I don't think a dramatization of her life or suicide is really very fertile ground.
She's a mind-based artist.
The song is about V. Woolf. This is Lola, my daughter, not Riikka, my wife. Lola broke her foot last night practicing a dance move. She will not be able to dance for at least two months. I'm sure she will have many reevaluations over the next two months but at this juncture she's devoted to dance. I would prefer that my kids take a strong interest in math and science. Those are boring at least to me, but I think it's easier to get paying jobs with those specific skills in the bag.
Kirby,
I have some of the same reactions that Curtis did. I thought Lola did well, but some of the moves seemed like contortion for contortion's sake, or like what you'd see between tumbling passes in a gymnastics floor routine. In particular, I think she showed a good sense of line in the more ballet parts, but lost it during the floor-ex parts.
Injuries are part of athletics, especially gymnastics, which was my daughter's sport. We used to say that if you had a gymnast for a daughter, you knew an orthopedic surgeon on a first-name basis. Our's was Dave. Her major injuries included a compound fracture of an arm (bars), and a torn and inverted labrum (shoulder). Along the way, she had enough twisted ankles that she had her own personal stim machine. But she did compete for a year on a Big-10 team, and so lived a big part of the dream. And she's coaching now, and enjoying it. But it's not her day job.
But in terms of career paths -- kids will do what kids will do. It's one thing to want to steer them towards well compensated jobs, but that's not a guaranteed path to happiness. I'd argue for remembering two things:
1) If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life.
2) There are never enough world-class people doing what you want to do. Be one.
So I've mostly pushed my kids to aim for excellence in what they want to do, in the firm belief that if they achieve that, the other parts will work out, and only pushed back on what they want to do when there's no plausible career path.
the pragmatists ruined education demolished it it was just another in teh long line of reformations started by luther and they have all proved hairbrained at best
damn nominalists
the goal of education is wisdom
not necessarily socially viable skills
thomas aquinas was not all that socially viable
although now he seems to more pertinant than ever
the jesuit model suggests that guidance in education was one of challenge and correction...if a student was showing marked enthusiasm and concentration in one field - say science - it was the obligation of the mentor to guide the student into another area altogether - say classics - in order to assure a broad intellectual range
all artists should study theology
jh
I don't believe that Lola has read Virginia Woolf. She loved the song. She wanted to work on getting the rhythms right. Lola is very interested in acrobat contortion. I want to show her a film about a French acrobat named Fabrice Champion who collided with another acrobat and became a quadroplegic and then died from a cardiac embolism. I'm very worried about the contortion she's doing. She is so flexible that to my mind it's weird.
I don't quite know what move she was doing last night. She described it as a "fouette" which means a whip in French. I see her doing these unbelievable moves all the time. I was a pretty good athlete in high school. I was MVP of the soccer team, and played on a championship team as a starter. I also wrestled, and generally was All-Star material in baseball and other sports.
But the moves she is doing are unlike anything I've ever seen.
Not perhaps the ones in the film, but other ones she does at home.
She's a really bizarre kid and is taking things too far. I suppose this is normal to go too far when one wants to find some kind of surrealism in movement. V. Woolf was not to my mind the greatest artist. I did like her short story Kew Gardens. But it's the beginning of some kind of abstraction in art that I don't particularly like. Where the wording gets in the way of the topic.
You can find extremely acrobatic sentences in Corso, or in newer poets such as Dean Young where a certain recklessness is on display. And you find similar things in Japanese dancers such as Sankai Juku who took daring to new levels (one of their dancers fell off a seven-story building in Seattle in 1985 when his hemp rope snapped).
Dance has to take gravity into account.
Midgets are tossed or shot out of cannons. Is this art or is it a stunt?
You have stunt men in the movies. I saw one standing in for Nick Cage while they filmed a Disney film based on magic (sorcerer's Apprentice) a few years ago in NYC's Battery Park. The stunt double had to fall on his back on pavement fifty times in a row until they got the shot just right.
They did have a small rubber pad for him to land on. And inside his leather jacket there was more padding.
But as hard as bones are, I wouldn't mess with them. I think it's important to avoid hurting oneself for others' amusement. I'm basically against ballet as it asks you to stand on your toes. This is not something we're meant to do. When I worked at the dance division at the University of Washington long ago, all the dancers were complaining that they could barely walk from the years of ballet.
All sports seem to demand stupid things. Soccer demands that you "head" the ball. This is extremely stupid as it almost requires concussions. Boxing is similar. But even in comparatively mild sports such as badminton one can blow out a rotator cuff fairly easily. We're not really meant to push specific motions to the max over and over and over.
Probably even in poetry to continually push experimentation and reckless mental experience might create a sort of tendinitis of the brain. Sport and art ought to moderate themselves through promotion of milder and more manageable emotions and not constantly strain for risky and feverish emotions which get attention but at the price of harm to both artist and audience.
Acrobats make incredibly dangerous moves look easy and natural. Here is Fabrice Champion before he fell and fatally injured himself. When there are no mistakes it sure looks like "I could do this."
I couldn't do almost anything Lola was able to do in her dance and she was touching the ground through much of it.
Watch this and be glad we're mental workers rather trying to physically astonish others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrAfZ2FIyi4
As far as I know there is no online footage of his fatal collision (it took him several years to die from an embolism).
Trying to decide what the human is "supposed to do" is an interesting conundrum.
Lola should be allowed to follow her dream as far as she can.
I was pushed and pushed and pushed into math and science until my first year in college. I had excellent aptitude for simple algebra and geometry, but absolutely no further interest or talent. At 14, I was probably skilled enough in critical language and analysis of text that I could have done good reviews for any big city daily. But I was thwarted and told I was irresponsible and should abandon my interests and become an engineer. How incredibly stupid and wasteful. Wasted years.
All because my parents had been raised during the Depression and feared destitution. And hated egg-heads and hated art and political difference. Jesus (I mean Bob).
Art and literature was for sissies. My stepfather thought Ring Lardner and Raymond Chandler and Kenneth Roberts were the great writers.
Don't force your kids into living your dream. It's your dream, not theirs. You had your dream, either you realized it or you didn't. Don't suborn them into fulfilling your dream, or the one you didn't live. They'll hate you for it.
Actually, they'll hate you anyway. All kids do. Especially those who are likely to amount to something. They have to reject you first , in order to have their own identity.
The same with religion. One of your kids, Kirby, is almost certain to "lapse." Don't fight it. Roll with it.
Lola's 13 - her dreams are young, and are very likely to change.
When I was 13, I wanted to be an NBA basketball player and a neurosurgeon.
Then, when I was 16, I wanted to be John Denver.
Now, I want to be a screenwriter and play around in the mountains and win the championship with my rec. league basketball team.
Parents - y'all get weird when you think that what a kid is devoted to in their extracurriculars when they are 13 is what they are going to do when they grow up.
That's not the way life works.
Now, if, when it comes to school work, your kid is really into science vs. English, there MIGHT be a signal there.
Actually, APTITUDE is probably the most likely indicator - if they just aren't GOOD at a thing, yeah, it's unlikely that they're going to do that for a living... (I was good at everything schoolwise, so I got to choose!)
when I was 13, I was all into science, and then something about my brain changed at 15/16, and reading and writing bad poetry and having pseudointellectual conversations became a lot more fun. (some things don't change).
Stu's daughter was a dancer - but she's not a dancer in terms of what she does for a living (forgot what that was?)
My brother was a trackstar - now he's an engineer.
I doubt when you were 13 you were training to be a professor who went to Finland to marry someone way out of your league...
Your young kids are probably really into something - I don't know, maybe it's My Little Pony or Superman or whatever - but that's not what they're going to Be when they grow up.
That's kinda what being a 13 year old really into dance is like... And,
Heck, even if they go do that in college on scholarship, the chances are very small that it becomes a career (but might help pay for an education).
Maybe Lola will be one of those very rare few who does turn the hobby she's passionate about at 13 and make a career of it.
But it's just as likely that she'll be a teacher or a dentist.
But almost no one, when they're 13, spends their time playing 'be a teacher.'
If she did, that might be worrisome.
Leave her be to be interested in what she's interested in - just be wary of the standard trappings of certain hobbies' tendencies to skew ones worldview and selfview - whether it's football players who become overly aggressive, or people who write poetry thinking it's cool to be depressed, or dancers who smoke cigarettes to be thin, or drama kids who suddenly think that everything has to be full of conflict and drama and that they need constant adoration.
etc.etc.etc.
In any case, what she's 'into' could just as easily be drugs.
Dancing seems like a better option.
When my youngest brother was 13 he started competing in junior golf. There were two kids in the state who caused him to frequently take third place. One of them went on to captain the Arizona State golf team as a senior the year Mickelson was a junior. The other one played for Stanford and graduated the year before Tiger Woods arrived.
My brother's high school eliminated their golf team after he finished seventh grade due to budgetary constraints, so when he got to 10th grade he more or less singlehandedly revived the golf team by recruiting a friend of his from the country club who played and then talking three or four other kids from school, who didn't play golf but had some native athletic ability, into trying out. He then persuaded the pro at the golf club to serve as the team's unpaid coach, sponsor and adviser. The parents provided transportation for the league matches, most of which were hosted by the club where my brother was a junior member.
Without a golf team fielded by his school he would not have been eligible to compete in the district and state tournaments and thus would not have taken first in district and third at state his senior year. Nor would he have been allowed to enter the tournament for graduating seniors that allowed him to represent his state in the High School Coaches All-America at Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Golf Club in Orlando after edging the kid that went to Stanford by one stroke. Beating the kid that went to Stanford got him a last minute scholarship offer from Oregon State that didn't pan out, mostly because the system is designed for kids who sign letters of intent at the end of their junior year. He sat out for a year after the scholarship fell through and reverted to his original plan to play community college golf, where he won the regional championship in his second year. After the season was over he won the Tri-City Amateur that summer with a birdie, eagle birdie finish. He made the cut that year in the Pacific Northwest Open and placed second in the Eastern Washington Open behind a second generation pro who went on to win four times on the Canadian tour. He then turned pro and worked for five years as an assistant pro, essentially an apprenticeship, before applying to regain his amateur status. He had to wait three years before he could compete again as an amateur.
Once he regained his eligibility he worked in construction for my other brother and played every year in two local amateur tournaments that he won seven years running. This usually required beating a guy who was one of the top five golfers in the entire U.S. Navy. Now he's the head pro at the club where he played his junior golf and where he first worked as an assistant pro.
Lola has always enjoyed performing in front of gigantic groups. In summers she is in professional theatre. Sundays, she sings with a professional choir at an Episcopalian church. Just as long as she doesn't plan to become a professional acrobat I can mostly live with her interests.
Julian wants to be a math professor. He is 9.
Sofia wants to be in marketing. She is 6.
Tristan wants to be a professional basketball player. I explain to him that he has to be black, and that the only way to be a white professional is to be able to shoot 3-pointers with a hand as big as that of Metaworld Peace in your face. He might be a good college player. He takes over games on the playground and in 6th grade.
But come on. There are kids all over Harlem who would take his lunch. I think that if one gets behind in a subject such as science or math it might tend to fall to one side.
Aptitude can just mean taking the road of least resistance.
People have to swim upstream.
Many people might just say: the state will take care of me. Or, the state will take care of my children, and do nothing.
That's tantamount to communism.
I think if you want to just turn your marbles over to the state you might just as well move to Florida and see if you can take advantage of their death penalty, since you deserve it.
We have to think about incentives, people.
Many of you just apparently think we should let our kids follow their proclivities. If they want to drink, why give them a beer. If they want to be promiscuous, get them a condom. If they need an abortion, well, hasn't Obama promised us those in abundance at no charge as a reward for voting for him?
People should wear all white and not get a single smudge on them. They should practice celibacy. They should try to do the impossible tasks such as surgeon and magician.
We need someone with a brain again who is willing to be president and take on the smoothtalking left and the gauntlet of the MSM. Of course eventually the country will simply collapse from all the socialism and the egalitarianism that they proffer in the name of getting out the vote. but before the country becomes a bastion of Mugabe-esque Castrophic stupidity, we might still get someone in who can talk about fostering competition and daring-do in our young-uns and striving to do something you don't want to do. It starts with getting the kids to pick up their clothes and eat their vegetables.
It continues with forcing them to do their math and science.
It might mean getting them to skip dessert and doing jumping jacks instead.
It will also mean trips into major museums from the first birthday, followed by a quiz.
Otherwise, good luck finding lunch.
we
I never said they shouldn't DO math or science - I said that whether or not they will become a mathematician or whatever might be predictable based on aptitude more than interest.
Not sure who you're talking to, but yeah - let your kids have extracurriculars where they do hard things and learn hard lessons, and also make sure they get their school work done.
And, oh yeah, definitely make sure that kids have the time they need for creative, unstructured play.
SERIOUSLY - if your kids have grown up being able to get along well with others and play creatively without structure, they will have a HUGE advantage over the rest of their peers.
That is the single most important thing to give your children in this day and age.
From what I've gleaned from your writings, it Does seem like your kids have at least some of that -- Let 'em have it.
Don't shove math down their faces 12 hours a day.
That's downright communist of ya.
I'm trying not to shove anything down their face. I find that like everyone they are lazy and need reminders. But I don't want to break the relationship by yelling at them, and we don't hit at our house (it's against the law to hit a child for any reason in Finland).
So I try to make math into a game. They are competitive, and like getting answers quickly. So we do 3X=9 so X =? I also learned from one of the other math professors who used to come here that multiplication and division are mirror opposites, so I've taught them that.
It's easy for me to talk with the boys because we're all interested in sports.
It's harder to get a baseline conversation going with the girls as their interests are more like their mother's.
One of the funniest bits I've seen about vocation is Steve Martin's character's revelation in The Jerk that his true vocation was sex. He is thrilled to discover this.
But of course that's not really a vocation. A vocation is serving someone else.
Many on the left think that a vocation should be a vacation.
It's not that. It has to be work, and it has to be in service to others.
Even modelling is work, even acting is work.
Many think within writing that one should "write for oneself," as the modernist dictum went. Obviously this is like having sex when you're a dirtbag solipsist. It's something you're doing purely for yourself.
While part of life is that, learning to work for others, against your own inclinations, is where the Lutheran ethos of service to others can be found. It's not that easy to do.
Many on the left think no one should work. That everyone should just do what they want, and they throw a fit if the government's check isn't in the mail on the dot.
Against that ethos I see the right as more adult, and willing to stand up for themselves. They have courage. The courage to compete, and to innovate.
The left is lazy. They want life to be cotton candy. They want the government to feed them cotton candy for breakfast. Obama is willing, as long as he gets their vote. Rubio from Cubio said that he's serving broccoli. It doesn't taste as good but it is better for you in the long run.
I am myself somewhat lazy, and wouldn't mind getting the government check. Just so long as I can write. But now there are more and more people who want this. But we have to keep the entrepreneurs going. We need them.
Obama dimly realizes this, but his real idea is to hustle money for the lazy and then get their votes.
I want my kids to be able to innovate and come up with new ideas. New ideas are hard. Math and science are hard. Higher literacy is hard. I want them to know what it's like to work against one's inclinations, and to arrive somewhere.
But they get plenty of time to play. That's part of the deal, too. Also, I don't drag any of them to church with me. I talk with all of them about God. They like that. It helps them sleep. It is restful, and it's nice to think that even beyond their old man, there is another old man who's watching out for them.
Sex is God's way of reminding people that they need to make babies.
It feels good. Can't help yourself. It just feels so good.
Then we realize the girls are feeling the same thing. Surprise!
"Come here, sailor, let me show you something."
God wants more babies. He doesn't give you reasons. He gives you drives.
Sex isn't a vocation.
All we're saying, Kirby, is that you can't channel your kids into specific life identities, into specific professional paths. It doesn't work.
You can huff and puff about how to raise children, and you can give them the best home life, and encourage them to excel and interact and think ahead and be strong and decent, but in the end, they'll break away from you. It's like DNA splitting. It's painful, but necessary. And unless you're very lucky, one or more of your kids will really disappoint you, really make you feel grief.
But no matter what you do, you shouldn't force them to eat broccoli.
young people need to rediscover the huge potential in boredom
cut the distractions
make books hard to get
let them know that knowledge is a great privilege and a great responsibility
something to treasure
not just take for granted at the push of a button
miracle and mystery
must be provided in context
jh
Kirby/ "Even at the top dancers don't make much moolah" you say. I have no specific knowledge of the subject, but I find that hard to believe, if we're talking about something like The New York City Ballet. Those dancers don't make at least as much as the average professor? // Your daughter's truly agile and graceful, but I was watching the clip without sound (I didn't bring my earphones to this library) so I was viewing it only as pure movement, not story. // When I think of dancing daughters, I can't help thinking of Lucia Joyce. She was apparently highly esteemed by other dancers, but it is said that James and Nora wouldn't let her make a career of it. It's so unfortunate if that is true, and a man like JJoyce who knew very well the imperative to create--and was indeed very concerned about his Lucia--got in the way of this woman's destiny. That could hardly have helped Lucia's mental health, and then James J. is running around to Jung, etc., to try to find someone who might have an answer.
Kirby/ "Even at the top dancers don't make much moolah" you say. I have no specific knowledge of the subject, but I find that hard to believe, if we're talking about something like The New York City Ballet. Those dancers don't make at least as much as the average professor? // Your daughter's truly agile and graceful, but I was watching the clip without sound (I didn't bring my earphones to this library) so I was viewing it only as pure movement, not story. // When I think of dancing daughters, I can't help thinking of Lucia Joyce. She was apparently highly esteemed by other dancers, but it is said that James and Nora wouldn't let her make a career of it. It's so unfortunate if that is true, and a man like JJoyce who knew very well the imperative to create--and was indeed very concerned about his Lucia--got in the way of this woman's destiny. That could hardly have helped Lucia's mental health, and then James J. is running around to Jung, etc., to try to find someone who might have an answer.
We should try to discern salaries of major and minor dancers. I think it's very low unless you're at the Nijinsky level and your name is one to conjure marvels. Thank you for the compliment on my daughter. She is about as easy to influence as a runaway train. She has been a vegetarian since she was five. She has never veered. She's a pretty extreme kid.
Average Salary of Ballet Dancers is betwween 19 and 30 thousand per year and your career is over by age 30. Then it's endless anaesthetics to get over the painful aesthetics. It is alsso very competitive.
i wonder
should injuries sustained in dance
be accounted for in obamacare i mean of course that dancers serve the national interest so meaningfully
what about tongue tied poets
can they be covered can they get workman's comp
those two words together sound nice
obama care
ya man
obama
he care
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