Search
Ideas | Images Live Here

 

 

"Like" Facebook status $16 1665 1919 419 Advance Fee Fraud 72 virgins A Charmed Life accuracy Advaita Advaita Vedanta African carving afterlife Aki Kaurismäki Alberta Alcatraz Alchemist Alchemy algorithm all-knowing Andrew Keeling Andrew Rawlinson apparatchik Arab Spring archive art art criticism art theory Assam Assiniboine River atheism ATLAS auction baby names Battle of Marengo BB shot Ben Gurion betrayal Beverly Rowbotham Bible bicephalic Bing blenders blues Bollingen Bolsheviks Bourlon Wood Boxing Day Boxing Week Boxing Year Brahman brain brass table bricolage bubonic Buddhism bullshit bureaucrat Cairo California Guitar Trio Cambrai Memorial Canada Carl Matheson Carlos Fuentes cause centre of being CERN CG Jung Chagas Disease Charles Frederick Gray Charles Hartshorne Cheerios chimpanzee China Christmas Christopher Hitchens church CMS cocking a snook commentary Conrad Black conscience Consciousness Constancia core organic search cosmology Covid Covid-19 creativity criminal code critical realism crowds and power crowdsourcing crucifixion cruelty cuu chi Danielle Smith David Roberts DCM death Defoe degrangement democracy dentist died Distinguished Conduct Medal Drama Centre driftwood Eden Eduard Munch eduskunta effect Egypt election Elemental Particles elias canetti eon Epistemology era essay essayist existentialism F-35 Facebook fakhir falsehoods filter bubble finland First International Conference on Multiple Partonic Interactions at LHC First World War Franz Kafka Free Press Freedom of Association Friends Friendship Frippertronics fun G.I. Gurdjieff gamma waves gangs drug violence gender equality general strike Gethsemane Global Sunday Globe Mail God Golgotha Google gospel Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew government Guantanamo happiness Harry G Frankfurt Hartshorne Heritage Canada Higgs Boson Hill & Thomson hit hitting horse diaper Hosni Mubarak hunchback Huxingting Tea House hyper irony ideas immortality Income Tax infection innocence of muslims interpretation Ipsos Reid J.G. Bennett Jane Goodall Institute jean valjean Jesus Christ Jiffy John Owen Pritchard Journal of a Plague Year journalism Judas Iscariot juice Justin Trudeau kaivalya kalpa karma keisaku stick King Crimson Kingston kiss of peace La vie de Boheme Large Hadron Collider Lavengro Lawrence Hill left-handed leone vivante l'oiel de Gabes London love Lucian Freud Machiavelli malt manger Manitoba Mark Stobbe market Matthieu Ricard maudlin Maxwell's Sorting Demon metaphor Mexico millisecond mindfulness mokhtar belmokhtar monk murder Myanmar Nanosecond narcissistic personality disorder nativity Natural Person neuroscience New York Times newspaper circulation nihilism no loitering Northern River objet trouve ontological argument ontology opinion Osama bin Laden ouagadougou P.D. Ouspensky pain painter painting paintings panpsychism Paolo Gabriele parable Pentonville Peter Higgs Peter Miller phenomenalism philosophy photo filter Picosecond Pierce Brosnan Planck Time Unit Plato PMO post-truth Post-Truth.News powerful assemblage Prime Ministers Office Princess of Kashi Prismatic Pte 2361 public execution Public Safety pudding palace qatar quantum raccoon recipes Ramakrishan ramakrishna Rasputin Remembrance Day repeating names review Rhosgadfan Robert Fripp Rodeo roses Saint Nick Samuel Beckett sanskara Santa Claus Sars-CoV-2 Sarvapriyananda satori Savoy scotch whisky scream search engine optimization Second Law of Thermodynamics security Self SEO Sigma 5 sirhan sirhan skateboard snake snake samadhi Somme sorrow sotheby Soundscapes space flight Spinoza Standard Model Physics Statistics Canada Stephen Cave still life stolen Svedberg Syria T.S. Elliot Tahrir Square talisman Tat Tvam Asi television The Coon Hunters Handbook The God Particle The Simpsons The Wine of Silence The World's Happiest Man Thomson & Hill Tom Thomson top secret trial trout Trump Trump.Rodeo Truth in Advertising tyranny Ultimate Reality undefined University of Manitoba Upanishad Vedanta Via Dolorosa Vic Toews victims violence Viva Mi Fama voters vrittis wabi-sabi Welsh Guards Whole Grains wild fox koan Wildrose William Klassen Winnipeg Winnipeg Free PRess Wolseley women Wormwood Scrubs writer writing Yoctosecond Ypres Zen

 

     

tumblr visit counter
 

Entries in leone vivante (1)

Sunday
Feb102013

Cocking a Snook at Perfection

 

We have been pondering names that repeat and names that almost repeat.

Sirhan Sirhan is a perfectly repetitive name. José José and Fei Fei are repeating names too, as are Justo Justo, Miou-Miou, Rye Rye, Morris Morris, Morgan Morgan etc.

Then there are the almost-but-no-cigar repeating names such as Neil McNeil, Magnus Magnusson, Callum McCallum, Marky Mark, Jean Valjean and Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

Jean Valjean of course is a name given by Victor Hugo to the fortisimo character in one of the half dozen greatest novels in the world: Les Misérables.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar is the name given to baby Belmokhtar in 1972 by Mr. and Mrs. Belmokhtar. This one has since been handed various sobriquets: The One Eyed, The Uncatchable and Mr. Marlboro, which also has a nice bit of repetitive swang to it. We kept an eye out for him when we were in Tuareg country in the Western Sahara in 2013 just as, we suppose, he kept an eye out for us.

We prefer these almost repeating names to the perfectly repeating ones since the imperfect repeating names embody an aesthetic of Japanese wabi-sabi. It is precisely because the names are not symmetrical that they are beautiful.

In some languages the repeating of a name, or near re-duplication, cloning, and doubling of a name-sound, serves a grammatical purpose such as plurality or intensification. There is some creative play here, where the duplication and re-duplication interruptus is used to make a wild contrapuntal audible universe. Repeat this aloud and hear your voice land upon melody: Llewellyn Crikey Llewellyn Boutros Haidar Boutros Haidar Bushy Bush Dogg Doggy Snoop Mgoeing Mgoeing Lipp Lippi Renzo Renzi Sven Sven boyo boyo bach. Can you feel some wabi-sabi rhythm in that?

Underplayed and modest

But wabi-sabi is essentially simple, slow and uncluttered. And we learn from the architect Tadao Ando that it reveres authenticity above all. "Wabi-sabi is underplayed and modest, the kind of quiet, undeclared beauty that waits patiently to be discovered. It's a fragmentary glimpse: the branch representing the entire tree, shoji screens filtering the sun, the moon 90 percent obscured behind a ribbon of cloud. It's a richly mellow beauty that's striking but not obvious."

Which brings us in a roundabout manner to thoughts on the role of the paid art critic, theorist and ontologist. This sounds like the kind of gig where life is just one big brain party after another, all the time repeating mongo mongo. For example, consider the words of the late art theorist Leone Vivante: "In a cosmos in which number and quantity seem overwhelmingly predominant, art reveals quality as ultimately real in the very actuality of consciousness." And so, he says, in his Essays on Art and Ontology: "A work of art does not turn or depend on anything else for its reality, because, I repeat, it is an immediate actualization and revelation of an inextricable nucleus of values absolutely inherent in a present origin or in an intimate activity or in form ..."

Is it possible that some things do not hold up well on repetition? Let me say in reply that I have never, I repeat, never, made a perfect painting. They are all wabi-sabi and all perfectly mondo, chibi chibi and jar jar jinks.

 

Also, I have a birthday coming up and there is wabi-sabi in that fact too, because the crevices on my visage are longer and more deeply beautiful than before. Though I think I am starting to catch a whiff of the pudding palace that awaits at the top of the hill.

 

UPDATE: June 2017 - There were reports that Mokhtar Belmokhtar met his end in 2013. Then again in 2015 this was repeated. Repeated again in late 2016. So if you repeat something often enough it starts to mimic truth.

 

(Top Image: Visite du Vigile/Visit of the Watchman 11x14 watercolours by David Roberts)