Dog owners know that one of their urchin's favorite tricks is falling behind on a walk, supposedly due to some worthy distraction. Then they suddenly look up and realize they're too far away. This brings on a mad dash back to their owner; their paws sound as loud as the hooves of a galloping horse. Coffee Girl, my Australian kelpie, pulled that trick this morning.
But something was a little different this time. There was no wind to disperse her dusty contrail. It stayed intact a few feet off the ground and drifted away, ever so slowly. It seemed too solid for anything airborne, perhaps because the rising sun was illuminating the contrail, but not the field proper. It was cruise missile-like; in an earlier era we would have said that it belonged in a Loonie Toons cartoon. The contrail of dust, el camino del polvo, seemed like it was a part of her streaking body. Sigh, if only it had been possible to film a video of this, backlit by the morning sun.
At first I wondered if it was silly to be so affected by such a thing. Shouldn't I be focusing on loftier and more general forms of beauty?
Since I have little appreciation for the Arts, I can only compare this to a couple other things. Imagine a scholar writing a lengthy tome on humor, say, 549 pages with the last 64 pages being footnotes. He might lay out the history of humor, the main categories and sub-categories, and then contrast and compare one type with the other, and one previous author's opinion with another's. But the reader probably won't get much laughing in, while reading the book.
What if Mozart had preferred to write on musical theory instead of actually writing music and melodies. After all, musical notes are just details -- mere applications of his general theory of music.
The same day I saw one of George Will's editorials in a list of rival editorials on realClearPolitics.com. Regardless of whether you agree with his opinions, you couldn't help but notice how much more local and concrete his theme and treatment were, compared to the "big theme" articles of others. He has been writing editorials before some of the others were born. Maybe he has become bored with the Left versus Right shibboleths of the beginners.
One of Montaigne's translators, Donald Frame, praised him for writing with vivid concreteness. Orwell inveighed against generalities, particularly in political discussions. In Democracy in America, volume 2, de Tocqueville warned that general abstractions would overtake Americans in a way that it had not done to Englishmen.
"General" thinkers have a way of posing as great thinkers, advanced thinkers. In fact they are usually lazy thinkers, content with bandying platitudes and slogans that have grown stale. So I will stop thinking that melodies of light and motion, encountered outdoors, are too trivial to notice or write about.
But how do you tell the difference between "vivid concreteness" and picayune trivia?
But something was a little different this time. There was no wind to disperse her dusty contrail. It stayed intact a few feet off the ground and drifted away, ever so slowly. It seemed too solid for anything airborne, perhaps because the rising sun was illuminating the contrail, but not the field proper. It was cruise missile-like; in an earlier era we would have said that it belonged in a Loonie Toons cartoon. The contrail of dust, el camino del polvo, seemed like it was a part of her streaking body. Sigh, if only it had been possible to film a video of this, backlit by the morning sun.
At first I wondered if it was silly to be so affected by such a thing. Shouldn't I be focusing on loftier and more general forms of beauty?
Since I have little appreciation for the Arts, I can only compare this to a couple other things. Imagine a scholar writing a lengthy tome on humor, say, 549 pages with the last 64 pages being footnotes. He might lay out the history of humor, the main categories and sub-categories, and then contrast and compare one type with the other, and one previous author's opinion with another's. But the reader probably won't get much laughing in, while reading the book.
What if Mozart had preferred to write on musical theory instead of actually writing music and melodies. After all, musical notes are just details -- mere applications of his general theory of music.
The same day I saw one of George Will's editorials in a list of rival editorials on realClearPolitics.com. Regardless of whether you agree with his opinions, you couldn't help but notice how much more local and concrete his theme and treatment were, compared to the "big theme" articles of others. He has been writing editorials before some of the others were born. Maybe he has become bored with the Left versus Right shibboleths of the beginners.
One of Montaigne's translators, Donald Frame, praised him for writing with vivid concreteness. Orwell inveighed against generalities, particularly in political discussions. In Democracy in America, volume 2, de Tocqueville warned that general abstractions would overtake Americans in a way that it had not done to Englishmen.
"General" thinkers have a way of posing as great thinkers, advanced thinkers. In fact they are usually lazy thinkers, content with bandying platitudes and slogans that have grown stale. So I will stop thinking that melodies of light and motion, encountered outdoors, are too trivial to notice or write about.
But how do you tell the difference between "vivid concreteness" and picayune trivia?
Comments
A George Will at his best is capable only of clever prose.
Is this a reply? I don't know, it's early for me and I've just begun to savor my first cuppa.
Tom in Orlando