reflection on "the other" I think people have a deep seated need for people to have an overwhelming opposition, "the dark forces" that are working to oppose you and crush you. This is probably why fantasy is so popular, and some sci-fi like Star Wars, where there exists a very obviously evil enemy who is out to dominate. Who also tends to have overwhelming superiority (of numbers at least). Left, right, conservative, progressive, business person, environmentalist, probably all feel like they are beset, beseiged on all sides, by their particular enemy, never recognizing that in some areas, maybe they do have the upper hand. Maybe its true though, everyone who does not think like you is your enemy. The enemy of your friends is not your friend!

What does this say? Who knows. The recognition maybe that there is no absolute evils in the world -- or very few at least, and the people who have them are lucky. The rest of us need to look for those grays I think. How much of strife these days is due to a feeling of rightiousness, your cause being the only good one(sp?)?.

It sucks though no doubt about it, seeing both sides of a story. Its easier to be one sided, more comfortable. Most people recognize the gray though, I think, and so sink into fantasy novels to regain comfort perhaps...

war on iraq so congress has handed bush the keys. but thankfully this time some democrats stuck out there necks and spoke their mind, including a great speech by Peter Stark, rep from CA. Kudos also to Senators Byrd, Wellstone and Boxer (among others!).

Check out moveon.org for more information.

design rant going back to the eternal egypt exhibit for a sec... it did have terrible exhibit design. Not that the things were improperly displayed, but that the accompanying text was hard and tiring to read. The cards set in akward places in very small type. The large explanatory text, were set in white type on black, with really long line lengths.

I barely managed to take in a word I read without going back and forcing myself to read it slowly. It was hard.

I really don't get it, it should all be easy to read, in places that more than one person at a time could actually take in the text, and take it in quickly.

Does nobody care, I wonder?!

review tobias wolf by word for word. The concept of acting out a short story, word for word, sounds a little odd, at first. but if one considers the enjoyment garnered from reading aloud to children or to adults, then it is not so strange.

especially when it is done as well as the word for word troupe. Not just a reading, but an enacted reading. One could imagine this done pretty badly, but word for word is amazing. the choreography of reading -- who reads what lines (one character or several) is really brilliant for one -- there is no narrator figure, it is all done by the characters themselves, chiming in when it is most appropriate. the stage design and lighting was also tremendous.

lay this atop the great short stories of tobias wolf, you then have an amazing thing.

if you live in SF, go see it! They play til Oct 19 at the Magic Theater in Fort Mason

Word for word is a part of zspace

review eternal egypt at the legion of honor. a collection of objects brought over from the british museum. the exhibit was packed, people milling around pretty much every box and statue, so that it was hard to sit and take stock -- but there was a lot of stuff to take in so maybe that was a good thing. I had a good time, focusing on various things and sitting back and sketching (I'll upload some pictures later). I fell in love with the big heads, and some of the detailed hieroglyphics. They all had beautiful lips, and it was nice to see them up close and feel their power -- it was also good to get different perspectives from what you might find in books. They looked as impressive from behind as up front.

The exhibit purported to show the changes in styles over the centuries of Egyptian history. This has garnered criticism that a) it ain't art, it's just craft, that's handed down from tradesman to tradesman, and b) it ain't all that different between the centuries. But I don't buy these arguments. Whether or not it was done by craftsman with no thought at the time as to Art is beside the point. We know in this century see the beauty and majesty in these figures, and take it as art, and are affected by it as art. But also the argument falls down for me because Art is an incremental thing in general. student inherits the techniques of his master and if he's a genius, adds maybe a technique or two to the canon. It is never wholesale reinvention -- usually just reinterpretation.

Now you could of course say -- yes but looking over the past 500 years has seen much more change than several thousand years of Egyptian history. This may be true, but look at the vast differences between the times. Egypt is a relatively isolated place compared to rennaissance europe and later, there is no large scale exchange of ideas, no outside source to compare oneself to, and there were fewer people in general in the world. The "progression" of human knowledge is related to the number of people out there, and how well they exchange ideas -- which is a function of geography and technology. So yes Egpytian art seems to have evolved at a glacial pace -- is this any surprise?

But were they artists? Who knows. How many painters today are Artists? Are filmakers, songwriters, writers. Much of what any one of these people do is a "craft" a study of technique. The art element comes down to the idea. The craftsmen of Egypt set out to project the power of Egyptian pharoahs -- living gods. This they did well I think, because after several thousand years something of that power is still projected. It was an Art I think. Will the art of today last as long I wonder?