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Inside the Wire

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The Wire is held to be the greatest TV series of all time by some. An approval as ultimate as that would be a matter of taste, nevertheless The Wire depicts the human game at an epic scale and it does so more or less flawlessly. It is a grand achievement and can be compared to a classic novel series, Balzac´s Comédie humaine comes to mind, although The Wire is better than many of Balzac´s works. Revolving around drug trade and drug related crime in the city of Baltimore as the ultimate nexus The Wire depicts different institutions and social realms and their relationship to law enforcement in the five seasons of the series (illegal drug trade in season 1, the seaport system and trade unions in season 2, the city government and bureaucracy in season 3, the school system in season 4 and the media in season 5). It is a police/crime series as well as a social drama as well as it illuminates how things actually work (and is, in this respect, infotainment). The main interest of the series is to depict how individuals are formed by institutions and how individuals try to maneuver themselves through institutions for the better or the worse, for the greater good or for self promotion, for trying to improve their institutions or blow them up (with usually the anonymous institutition being the stronger one, swallowing, eating and digesting the individual – unless the individual is able to make career, which is a main endeavour/obsession of most of the characters). The main message I got is how policies and almost everything that happens in the human realm is the result of a compromise or a countertrade between different endeavours or between different logics in an effectively heterogenous world. Kissinger says that people usually do not understand politics as politics, in reality, means the choice between two evils. That is, somehow, a permanent message of The Wire; that the actual problems are dilemmas in nature, i.e. they cannot actually be solved just managed in a more or less clever and effective way.

Some (like Stephen King) said The Wire depicts human hell. In some instances that is about true, in general the situation is purgatory-like, although personal achievement or endeavour and what people want is frequently out of sync with what people get and how they are rewarded. The intelligence of the series lies, among other things, in depicting how both their endeavours and their rewards may be seen as just and fair from one perspective (e.g. the individual or the ethical perspective) and unjust and unfair from another (e.g. the institutional or the juridical perspective). There are few happy endings and resolutions in the individual storylines (which is uncommon for a TV series or movie), however there usually are organic developments and life trajectories (without much change in personality and character of the individuals however). Truly outstanding (or likeable) characters are few, if any, although most of them have their positive qualities and talents; the series does a great job at displaying the individualities of the characters and one is able to empathise with them, and after all even many of the gangsters don´t even actually seem that bad. The series does a good job at establishing not only various but truly individual perspectives – and it is actually magical how well and organic the performances are by the actors who were to a considerable degree not very prominent: all the characters appear incredibly real and convincing. The nexus, however, is „the game“ and „the corner“ that will „always remain the corner“, with individual humans only populating and being around the corner for a while until they get displaced by other individuals. In one of the more depressing scenes the death of Omar, the most idiosyncratic character of the series, is depicted as to not cause much interest or affection (yet however people trying to excel each other at inventing grotesque fairy tales about the circumstances of his death after a while); likewise as the infidel and unreliable McNulty gets told by his spouse Beadie that family may be the only one who actually cares when you are gone (McNulty, an assumingly terrible husband, is divorced from a wife that often exaggerates and is egoistic and he has two sons who don´t show exaggerated individuality). It is a „cold world“ in which we are living, as is effectively said on more than one occasion. The series starts with a police hunt on the criminal Barksdale organisation which displays a dangerousness and lethality hitherto unknown in Baltimore only to be, after it gets destroyed, replaced by the even more sinister Stanfield organisation (with a probable return to a more casual state of affairs in the Baltimore drug scene after the Stanfield organisation gets blown up). Yet the big wheel keeps on turning and it is almost meditative how the great flow is depicted by The Wire.

The creator of The Wire, David Simon, had a long experience with the drug scene and the law enforcement in Baltimore (and a vast perceptivity) which finally cumilated into the wisdom of the series. Jimmy McNulty, more or less the cental character of the series, is a portrayal of a cop who is not actually out there to help people or to empathise with victims of crime but to be able to feel intellectually superior to the criminals he is chasing (which, according to Simon, is not so uncommon among the personnel of law enforcement). McNulty is the most capable detective, but he is loathed by superiors for frequnently being disloyal and egoistic (although he always has a point (which usually carries a higher truth) in his soloistic maneuvers), and because of his pride and apparant shallowness in other psychological respects he is a failure in private (a notorious womanizer and alcoholic who does not seem to have true friends). Female officer Kima also has a rather wobbly private life, however that is because she likes the (inherently dangerous) occupation and she is a more balanced character (there is an indication that she likes to play the tough cop when she rather needlessly beats a drug dealer in one of the first episodes but such a suggestion of imbalance isn´t prominent later in the series); Kima is also one of the more complex and likeable characters. The elderly Lester Freamon is the most intelligent and wise officer of the team, despite his laid-back demeanour a kind of intellectual alter ego of McNulty who also has frequent trouble with authority. It is satisfactory to watch that he gets hot and sensible Shardenne as a spouse and they obviously live a harmonious relationship. Carver and Hauk are a kind of Laurel & Hardy team with Carver obviously becoming a good officer and Hauk degenerating into becoming an employee for Maurice Levy, the amoral lawyer for Baltimore´s drug kingpins (that Levy is jewish is not an antisemitic stereotype but due to the fact that many of those lawyers for Baltimore´s drug dealers are jewish, says Simon (himself jewish)). When, in an obvious attempt by superiors to sabotage the investigations against the Barksdale organisation, the special unit deliberately consists of especially lazy and incompetent officers at the beginning of the series Pryzbylewski is portrayed as brutal and stupid (and probably racist) but he soon proves his value as a code breaker and puzzle solver as well as a nice and unassuming guy who rather likes to work behind the scenes as he is too nervous (or so) for acting in the streets – which tragically proves true as he accidentally kills a fellow officer and then leaves the police and becomes a devoted maths teacher at the school for Baltimore´s troubled youth. Bunk is the firmest figure of the series as he is morally concerned (but not naive) and seems to be able to connect to everything and all the different realms without losing himself. Daniels also is one of the more ethical as well as effective officers who may be willing to sacrifice some of his career (and also his marriage) but gets overcompensated when he becomes useful for superiors – only to find out that as a police chief he would have to engage in unethical activities to please his political superiors (e.g. manipulating statistics) which causes him to resign and become a lawyer. The cholerical Rawls is depicted quite as devoid of personality as he maneuvers through the ranks and spills down the pressure that is exerted on him by higher ranks – a creature of the hierarchy.

D´Angelo Barksdale calls his subordinate dealer Wallace a good guy who, „unlike the other niggers“, has a heart and since both have some moral sense they prove as to frail as to effectively be gangsters – they meet their tragic end not as they break out of their criminal organisation but as they get liquitated as potentially untrustworthy by the superiors of the organisation. D´Angelo is probably the most tragic example of an individual who had become a gangster not by his own choice or because he is particularly bad and draws satisfaction out of what he is doing but because he was born into a family who runs a criminal organisation as a family enterprise with the individual family member´s worth being reflected in how much he is useful to this organisation. His uncle Avon, the head of the Barksdale organisation, is the offspring of a criminal and his brutally criminal ways rather seem to be a lifestyle to him he is accustomed to and the killings he orders a matter of ruthless professionialism – it is difficult to decipher how much psychopathological pleasure and narcissistic gratification he  may receive from upkeeping his image as a fearsome drug kingpin including a notorious womanizer or whether he just acts as a professional gangster inside a fiece battle of competition. When it is effectively too late and his organisation about to be blown up he however ruminates whether the approach of his partner Stringer Bell (to become businessmen not anymore directly involved with the drug trade on „the corner“) wouldn´t have been the more intelligent one. Stringer Bell is one of the most noteworthy characters of the series, a cerebral gangster who in his spare time studies business administration at the university (and recceives good grades and is obviously well liked by his professors with whom he intellectually conversates) and who wants the Barksdale organisation to finally engage in normal business and to buy political influence. Nevertheless he is as ruthless as Avon, he orders the murder of D´Angelo and finally betrays Avon whose gangster style he increasingly sees as dangerous and so (accidentally) blows the Barksdale organisation up – while at the same time he is betrayed by his „brother“ Avon and gets killed by Omar and Brother Mouzone whom he betrayed before – an almost Shakespearean end to the Barksdale organisation which collapses over itself (the fearsome hitman Brother Mouzone, who obviously belongs to the Muslim brotherhood and reads Harper´s magazine is also one oft he more remarkable characters of the series). Marlo Stanfield who starts a war with the Barksdale organisation is a young gangster who is primarily driven by lust for power and who is quite expressionless in most other respects. All he strives for is „wearing the crown“ and he is even more ruhtless in ordering killings for minor reasons than Avon. Proposition Joe embodies the „reason of state“ among the Baltimore drug dealers. Like most other dealers he simply wants to sell his drugs and refrains from brutality. Nevertheless he is clever at manipulating situations to his own advantage. A friendly fat uncle who officially repairs radios and watches he is almost a highly likeable character. He meets his end as he gets betrayed by his own nephew to Marlo who wants to take over Joe´s drug supply line via the organisation of the Greek and to take revenge for Joe´s accidental collusion with Omar. Omar Little is the most idiosyncratic (and, actually, a bit strange) character of the series. He lives by robbing other drug dealers (and, occasionally, giving away drugs to junkies for free) making him a bit a Robin Hood-like character. He is highly intelligent, fearless and feared by other drug dealers, homosexual and even seems to possess superhuman qualities and pain tolerance. Nevertheless he gets killed by 12 year old Kenard in the end, the probably most sinister and sociopathic character of the series (next to female/tomboy killer Snoop).

You have bad mothers in The Wire, like drug addicted Raylene who lets her husband living with her despite he had been sexually abusive towards his children in the past or De`Londa who becomes furious over her son Namond as he proves incompetent as a drug dealer. You have weak family ties, not only illustrated in the Barksdale family where they (sexually) betray each other but also in the case of McNulty. Chris Partlow, Marlo´s primary enforcer, on the other hand seems to be devoted to his family, despite he has the highest body count of all he cannot stand being spared from his family for a longer time (he gets desperate because of this when he is on the run from Omar) and he also displays geniune care for his subordinates. If he wasn´t a killer Chris also comes in as an example of being a somehow nice guy as well as a ruthless criminal. In the end he goes to prison for life after being assured by Marlo that his family will be taken care of. One of the more astonishing (and uncanny) scenes of the series is to see how little the gangsters seem to care about being thrown into prison for many years or for the rest of their lives, contrasting and effectively destroying their assumed struggle for a good life which made them criminals in the first place. The seaport workers (occasionally or more systematically) engage in petty crime, their trade union, led by Walter Sobotka, is forced to support the criminal activities of the organisation of „the Greek“ as they need to collect money for their political struggle in order to survive as the seaport is under threat from environmental legislation, prestige projects to use the territory for other purposes and, most of all, technological progress rendering more and more traditional jobs obsolete. It is depicted how Sobotka and his trade union (as an epitome for American labour) are alone in their struggle with nobody showing interest or affection for their concerns. The second season sets in as the trade union gets into a struggle for the approval of the church with the police, an actually petty feud which however causes officer Stan Valchek to react furiously on a personal level and, despite that, professional as he tries to investigate obvious criminal activities of the union. The Greek, an unassuming elderly gentleman, heads a criminal organisation which engages in various criminal activities from drug trade and smuggling to human trafficking. According to David Simon the Greek is an embodiement of unfettered capitalism, using and abusing American labour indirectly for the purpose of enrichment. The second ignition for season 2 is 13 young women from Eastern Europe found dead in a container in which they were shipped to become sex workers in America. Tommy Carcetti who is quick to run for major and, then, for governor, is an opaque figure and it is difficult to distinguish whether his actions as a politician are motivated from pushing his career or promoting the common good. As the series continues, Carcetti gets more and more swallowed by career motivations and what originally could be held as emanations of rhetoric talent sounds more and more unbearable as stereotypical and disposable statements of a career politician. One of the most memorable scenes of the series is when it is disussed in the city council about who is responsible for the dire financial situation and no one is willing to accept any responsibility. Dire straits is also the condition for the local newspaper which gets sandwiched between depleting funds and capitalist diktat from above making its editors turning a blind eye on unethical and sensationalist journalism in order to attract attention and secure their position (they finally get the Pulitzer Prize which they hope makes them more immune but it is foreseeable that the obvious flaws will sooner or later be uncovered). The most uncanny season is the fourth which depicts the situation at public schools for the children of the black lower class. The children are brutal, refuse to learn anything that is not of practical use for their future in the streets and, in most cases, obviously don´t even understand content that is more abstract (which is quite common among humans yet in that case comes in a more undisguised fashion). Nevertheless Pryzbylewski becomes a devoted teacher who cares for his pupils. Academics from the university try to set up programs to improve their situation but they eventually fail, not least to lack of funding (with the academics regarded as unworldly and quixotic by the police and Dr. Parenti, the sociologist being a bit a colourless figure who however is at least exited about how the scientific community will applaud his findings after the program got terminated).

Despite being suspenseful and exiting and, at its core, a great crime series, despite being informative, epic and pandemonium-like and despite high critical acclaim The Wire was a moderate success in commercial terms and proved a bit too complex for a larger audience. At the same time The Wire was popular all across the political spectrum as liberals, conservatives, Christians, Marxists, etc. were able to draw out something that seems to confirm their worldview. Simon however strongly opposes ideological dogma, according to him the main endeavour of the series was to show the complexity of the city, demanding a complex and multidimensional understanding of problems in order to effectively cope with them. Despite his strong standing against asocial neoliberal capitalism (Simon says the dimension of collective responsibility has become refuted, even viewed upon as obscene in nowadays America – the question of individual and collective responsibility in the makeup of a good society is something we accidentally just had in the note about Michael Neder) The Wire isn´t so openly and outspokenly critical towards neoliberalism in the end (maybe because the producers did not want to effectively polarise and repel the more conservative audience). The Wire does not tell why Balitmore became such a dangerous place (or why crime rates fell in many American (inner) cities in the later 1990s, excluding Baltimore) or why you have drug abuse in any Western city but usually not such high levels of crime as you have in many American cities. The Wire is, in the end, an overly pessimistic series. – But the big wheel keeps on turning, and as for now good night, po-pos. Good night, fiends. Good night, hoppers. Good night, hustlers. Good night, scammers. Good night to everybody. Good night to one and all.

Update about Notes about Art and Artists

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So my project about writing about art and artists has become more extended while I still haven´t written the notes about Bacon, Freud, Auerbach or the abstract expressionists, etc. Well, they´re soon to come, maybe gonna concentrate on notes about artists/painters this year and about music next year while doing other stuff as well of course.

Heinrich Füssli: Aphorismen über die Kunst

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“Die Wirklichkeit steckt voller Enttäuschungen für den, dessen Freudenquellen im Elysium der Phantasie entspringen.”

“Der hat Kraft, Würde und Feuer, der dem Nichtssagenden Bedeutung einzuhauchen vermag.”

“Alle Handlungen und Gebärden von Kindern sind anmutig, weil sie der Fülle des Augenblickes unmittelbar entspringen – der Affektiertheit bar und frei von aller Verstellung.”

“Viele Schönheiten in der Kunst entstehen durch Zufall und werden durch Wahl beibehalten.”

“In einer metaphysisch-symbolischen Komposition, die zahlreiche Einzelheiten umfasst, können viele statt einer gesetzmäßigen Verteilung der gegebenen Elemente nichts als fragmentarische Zersplitterung erkennen.”

“Die Mittelmäßigkeit erledigt ihre Unternehmungen schlecht und recht und frohlockt; der Mann von Talent gratuliert sich zum Erfolg seiner Bemühungen; das Genie allein trauert über unerfüllte Erwartungen.”

Francesco Hayez and Domenico Induno

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If we switch back to the Biedermeier era again let us proudly present Francesco Hayez as the leading painter of that time in Italy. Hayez melted the ideals of classicism with the sentimentality of romanticism. He was a historical painter yet relied on Renaissance style in an endeavour to give Italy a new and self-conscious identity. In the spirit of Risorgimento he was a democratic painter. He was heavily ideologically involved with the unification of Italy and the shaking off of the Hapsburg rule and expressed his melancholy about the failure of legitimate nationalist attempts in powerful paintings. On the internet it says: „Corrado Ricci describes him as starting as a classicist but then evolving to a style of emotional tumult“ – but unfortunately I was not able to further discover what emotional tumult would mean, in the history of art (Ricci´s Art in Northern Italy is from 1911). The expression of emotional tumult in Hayez` paintings, however, is obvious and Stendhal said about him: „rien moins que le premier peintre vivant“, „l´expression des personnages est vivre et profonde, on sent que ce peintre a de l´ame“, „m´apprend quelque chose de nouveau sur le passions qu`il peint“.

Francesco Hayez and his women

Domenico Induno was a pupil of Hayez and they had an intimate and warm relationship. In his more mature paintings the brushwork is more raw and seemingly spontaneous, his paintings seem somehow internally tattered and give quite an immediate sense of emotional tumult, convulsions, stress or despair in his characters and scenes. His paintings are rather suggestive than descriptive. Domenico Induno also was an adherent of Risorgimento (and his powerful Melancholy we have encountered in the Biedermeier exhibition) and became also critical towards society in post-unification Italy (The Return of the Wounded Soldier, indicating a strenuous past but also a bleak future for ordinaty Italians). Towards the end of his life his paintings became gloomy and melancholic.

Domenico Induno

Domenico Induno also had a younger brother, Gerolamo, who also was a painter who did some fairly cool stuff (which, however, was not shown at our Is That Biedermeier? exhibition).

Michael Neder, Hillbilly Elegies, Murderous Children, the Question about a Good Society

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If again we remember the Biedermeier era in Austria Micheal Neder comes to mind as a peculiar figure. He was born in Oberdöbling, then a suburb of Vienna, as a son to a shoemaker. Neither his father nor his stepmother treated him particularly well. Despite that he remained the most loyal portraitist of the lives and times of the common people and the lower classes. His talent as an artist was discovered when he went to school, he was sent to the academy and started a semi-successful career as a painter (Waldmüller, for instance, did not hold Neder in high esteem although he was well respected by others). Unsure about the solidity of his talent and whether it could earn him a living he abandoned art and became a shoemaker himself for a while and returned as a more mature painter to the art scene again some years later. For the rest of his life he remained a truthful portraitist of ordinary folks – craftsmen, peasants, maids, proletarians, etc. He depicted their sorrows, the monotony and repetetiveness of their lives, their occasionally empty eyes, as well as their joys, their innocence, their festivities or them becoming philosophers in their own right when sitting together with a beer. It is correct that Neder does not come in with the grandezza and majesty of the other renowned artists of this time, Waldmüller, Amerling, Danhauser and the like, his art was no Gedanken/Ideenkunst either but stemmed out of sentiment. There are no indications that Neder got heavily influenced by the intellectual life of this time, in a sympathetic way he stubbornly remained true to his vision. Although he of course mastered academic painting he deliberately remained „naive“ most of the time as the most adequate fashion to depict what he wanted to depict. That makes up for his special place in the history of Austrian art. He was an honest artist and his work radiates honesty.

Michael Neder´s humble beginnings and the torment he underwent as a child may, on this occasion, be associated with an article I read a while ago about the lives and times of the so-called white trash population in America, largely unknown territory for me before, so that I also read J.D. Vance´s book Hillbilly Elegy the article refers to (the other book I could not get so easily so far). Hillbilly Elegy is an illuminating and sympathetic book and helps you to better understand people and view them with some sympathy even if they are, effectively, broken. It effectively raises epistemological and sociopsychological questions as the hillbillies and the white poor in America are effective reality deniers, which serves the hygienic function of not effectively having to confront their misery but is dysfunctional in not offering them any help to find any way out of it. Deindustrialisation is one thing but the other thing is that, contrary to wide held opinion, there are plenty of jobs for these people which they cannot take for utter lack of discipline and manners. Contrary to his opinion, and the opinion generally held by the hillbillies (and others), J.D. found out that politicians usually DO care for their people and try to improve their lives, the problem is rather that, among humans, there are limits to what you can achieve with them (there are, of course, also voices who diss J.D., yet of course also they have to be handeled with some care). I would also like to help people and improve everyone´s life but I don´t know how to do it effectively. As it seems to me social problems are rather not the problem caused by a system but by a general culture and mentality among a people. And as it seems to me the people most intelligent at solving their problems are (among Western Europeans) the Swiss. I think the key to a good society is that there is a keen sense of individual responsibilities as well as a collective responsibility. The Swiss have both, due to Calvinism a „protestant ethics“ of capitalism and individual responsibility and due to the history of their defensive battles, where they had to stand, as different peoples/Kantone themselves united against foreign powers, notably the Hapsburg Empire, they have a strong sense of collective responsibility (and, as they were equal footmen who triumphed collectively over the aristocratic knights, a strong sense of egalitarity). See that the formation of a benign culture is contingent, and few people/s have the luck to get born in a supreme culture. I have to dive into this complex of thoughts deeper and will do so in the future.

Another story of outcast humanity is the case of „Child from Hell“ Mary Bell which attracted my attention via my Sociopathic Children Facebook group. In 1968 Mary Bell from Newcastle, England, strangled 4 year old Martin Brown shortly before her eleventh birthday, tried to murder the little sister of her friend Norma a little later and then, together with Norma, murdered and mutilated 3 year old Brian Howe. She (and Norma) boasted with what she/they did, cynically insulted family members of the dead boys and at the same time tried to confess to the police, one letter of confession they signed with Fanny and Faggot. No one believed them, notably as Mary was well known as a habitual liar and boaster who had a highly problematic relationship to most other children whom she hit, beated, bite in an obvious attempt to attract attention. As her ongoing cynicism about the murders became too blunt police took the hints more serious and began to interrogate the girls more systematically (with Mary trying to blame Norma for the murders at first). It turned out Mary was a deeply disturbed child and she got sentenced for manslaughter at Her Majesty´s Pleasure, effectively an indefinite sentence of imprisonment (Norma was absolved but got into conflict with the law later again and was then put under psychiatric supervision). She was released 12 years later, got married and gave birth to a child (the marriage was divorced later). She was granted anonymity but sold her story to the press for money years later, producing an outrage again (and putting her daughter who originally was unaware of her mother´s past in an uncomfortable position). Meanwhile Mary Bell is grandmother. In a book about her published years after the incidents it was thoroughly revealed how Mary was tried to be abadoned or killed several times as a child by her mother, as well as that her mother was a prostitute and dominatrix who forced Mary to engage in violently sexual acts with her clients. Her father was a petty criminal. When Mary was first sent to a community home she developed deep affection for the director whom she viewed as a surrogate father. When she was sent to a juvenile hall some years later (which got opposed by the director) she relapsed into her old habits, broke out of prison at one occasion (and at that occasion also lost her virginity). A female police specialist says girls are a minority out of children who kill, but when they do they usually start earlier and are more violent.

(And now, on occasion, I get reminded about the Winsconsin Death Trip, a documentary I recommend, not only for reasons of enhancing knowledge and awareness but also because the film has a very peculiar atmosphere. Mariana says the book is cool, but I have not read it so far.)

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

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All acts and gestures of children are graceful since they originate from the wealth and abundance of the moment and seemingly actualise the full potential of the moment, free, spontaneous, undisguised and bare of affection, says Fuseli/Füssli in his aphorisms about art. And Kierkegaard says in the moment the temporal and the eternal meet, each moment in time is a cut through the eternal and an epiphany of the eternal. And Schopenhauer says art has to illustrate and comprise entire humanity with no individuals, gestures or scenes being too profane or unimportant as art has to give an idea about humanity in its entirety and its manifoldness. I say graceful gestures uplift the soul and spotting graceful gestures save us from the emptiness that is frequently behind them. I like to spot graceful gestures; they give us an impression/idea of the moment and the transitory as a present that is fulfilled.

If we remember the Biedermeier era again Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller was probably the most prolific painter in Austria. He captured life. He was master at epiphany of the eternal in the transitory, ethical truth in desolation, dissolving heterogeneous and heteronomous realms of culture into a benign nature, etc. In his paintings you have to blossoming of the moment, of the event. Whereas his fellow great Biedermeier painter Amerling was more concerned about depicting the truth of physiognomy Waldmüller was more concerned about the truth in actions and gestures. „Sehr wahr im Ausdruck“ was the highest compliment Waldmüller could have for a painter.


As is common for the art genius Waldmüller had a spiritualised relation to nature. Apart from her beauty, manifoldness, productiveness and hidden treasures of the previously unseen nature strikes us as independent, autonomous, self-contained and original. It is that which predates us, surrounds us and outlives us i.e. giving us an idea of the harmonious whole into which we may immerse and into which we are immersed. To Waldmüller nature is „eternal truth“ and it is not mean or brutal. „The acts of people may occasionally be mean, the forms in which nature expresses itself never are.“

Waldmüller announces the actual endeavour of art is „the portrayal of man as the subject of action which in the form of beauty encourages the spirit of goodness“. Art is an ethical enterprise and is powerful in the respect as it stimulates imagination i.e. it adresses not only the mind but also the sensual and the soul. Negativistic shitheads may belittle the pastoral idyll Waldmüller frequently portrays as unrealistic if not phony. Let them be told that criticism was not encouraged in the Biedermeier era therefore artists had to be tacit. Waldmüller did make explicit social commentary and it may come in as quite powerful like the depiction of Exhausted Strengh of a single mother or in the paintings about the Seizure. The children Waldmüller frequently depicts (as children symbolise innocence, purity, vitality and playfulness and intimate contact with nature) often work or have to follow duties but seem vital, happy and blossoming, their clothes may be old and botchy but they are neat, they walk barefoot but their feet are clean, etc. They express dignity and integrity even under dire conditions. From a realistic perspective that is actually not what you get when you go to the countryside and among the poor; the countryside may be even worse than polis and the poor more degenerated than the rich, granted: but art is also about purification and refinement of man, therefore also about purification and refinement in the portrayal of man (which is largely forgotten today) and whilst Waldmüller´s pastoral idylls may not be realistic they carry (ethical) truth.

  Although dismissive of other genres in painting than the depiction of (ethical) man embedded in circumstances, saying that depiction of landscapes or still lives are merely for sensual pleasures, Waldmüller also was a prolific painter of portraits and landscapes. His portraits had similarity with them of Ingres. In the Biedermeier era the bourgeoisie was not interested in idealised and canonical portraits of themselves like the aristrocrats, proud of their acquired wealth and status they were longing for expression of their true individuality. As a painter of landscapes and unanimated scenery Waldmüller was primarily concerned with how light is truly reflected. That allowed him to depict people and objects in space more truthful, at times isolated objects become, due to their illumination and masterful depiction, even hyperrealistic, in later years he fell from grace in the Viennese academy (and got expelled) for his extremely immersive depictions of landscape in bright sunlight – a personal tragedy frequently to occur for the anti-academic genius iconoclast. After his death Waldmüller received praise particularly from impressionists and the Secessionists, yet although Waldmüller depicted the transitory and was analytical concerning colour he was not particularly a (proto-)impressionist since the contours remain valid and the draughtsmanship pronounced. Waldmüller´s depiction of nature was incredibly detailed, in his later paintings he seems to anticipate Klimt – although this is an auxiliary construction since it is difficult to decipher them ex post. Like any great painter Waldmüller was immersing his vision and the components of vision and the expression of vision into themselves so as they emerge in a new quality out of themselves (die Vision in sich hineintreiben, damit sie verstärkt und erneuert aus sich heraustritt, as I use to say but unfortunately cannot find an adequate translation for hineintreiben). It is true that Biedermeier paining remained „petty“ and local, isolated in itself and this is also true for Waldmüller who is, despite his greatness, not very well known. Yet it was Waldmüller who pushed the inside perimeter of Biedermeier art in Austria into the great wide open and the spherical. (Apart from that he makes it clear that WE have the best of nature; WE, hahaha! – I also remember a globetrotter who told me the most striking mountains on the globe are neither, for instance, the Andes or Himalaya but the ALPS. Hahahahaha!)

Occasional Note about Dichterwahnsinn

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Doing innovative art happens in a painful isolation, the artist does not know what he is doing yet senses what he is doing is right yet society may not be confirming, the artist cannot compare himself and his productions to others, individualisation reaches such a degree that the artist is more or less effectively cut off from the whole despite him being the one who effectively relates to the whole and not the others, communication is impaired, and these alienations may well be resemblant to neurosis. The intensity of the inner processes of the artist (including the permanent (contrasting) juxtapositions thrown up by his associative intelligence) may aggravate the situation into (quasi)psychosis or (quasi)psychotic depression. That is the reality behind so-called „Dichterwahnsinn“ („poet´s frenzy“).

If we push this to further extremes it may come to mind that a lady who knew Kafka said about him that this apparently highly neurotic individual was the only person who thought like a human should think and who felt like a human should feel. I.e. despite probably having an avoidant personality disorder Kafka was completely anti-neurotic. We may call the poet who is completely anti-neurotic and who is the only who thinks like a human should think and who feels like a human should feel the omega poet.

It is apparent that the vision of such an omega poet would be one of a bizarre nightmarish world where nothing and no one is and behaves how it should be, if the way they behave is not needlessly grotesque, absurd or brutal at all. And that´s what you have in the vision of Kafka.

Beauty in colours

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This is the coolest face I´ve seen in a while (within a cool mix of colours)

These are the coolest hands I´ve seen in a while (within a cool mix of colours)

This is the coolest butterfly on face I´ve seen in a while (within a cool mix of colours)

This is the coolest scenery I´ve seen in a while (within a cool mix of colours)

The sentient, creative inner child rejoices upon them impressions (and this is the cutest redhead I´ve seen in a while)

(Although I also dig that one)

 

Deleuze, Leibniz, Whitehead

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Referring back to the interrupted note about Pinsel and Deleuze and the fold a while ago we conclude that the Deleuzian fold is a somehow fuzzy concept, but that is usual business when Deleuze comes up with concepts. Deleuze´s concepts are open-ended and inexhaustive, non-exclusive and intensive, a kind of virtuality, since his philosophy is a metaphysics and cosmology of transformation, evolution and potentialities. Some (like Rancière) fail to appreciate this since Deleuze´s concepts (and his whole philosophy) is linked to a semi-private imaginary that may be alien to some, notably those inclined to more analytic philosophy. Deleuze is a synthetic philosopher and a primarily associative thinker. Despite that, Deleuze´s concepts/philosophy are, of course, clear-cut and precise and well-defined, respectively they are purely analytic concepts when viewed from the perspective of the phase space (not the quasi-static metaphysics related to analytic philosophy). – The concept of the fold was first introduced by Deleuze in his book about Foucault (1986) with reference to Foucault´s philosophical investigations of how subjectivity is constituted via power (outside forces) and his final ruminations about how autonomous existence would be possible. In contrast to Foucault´s somehow staunchly hermetic perspective Deleuze refers to the fold as how the „outside“ constitutes an „inside“, but may include autonomy, potentiality and variation („differentiatedness“ in itself). In his subsequent book about Leibniz and the Baroque (1988) he refers to the fold as a monad although it becomes a much more dynamic concept and rather the constituent of a monad. The fold is a relationship upon itself, both static and dynamic, in flux and self-preserving and it is constituted via prehensions, pre-individual singularities, events. It is transsubjective. Folding means making something implicit, via unfolding it becomes explicit. The fold is a „point of view“ upon existence and its „subjectivity“ does not primarily refer to idiosyncracy but objective vagueness and variety of the world. Once again, Deleuze tries to think and illustrate the univocity of being and how the One relates to the Many and how both are interrelated.

Such was also the undertaking of Leibniz, indeed. Leibniz refers to monads, single, atomised beings as the final substance of the world beyond which there are no emanations of existence i.e. no „truth“ beyond their ontological scope. The „dark fond“ (i.e. both potentiality and lack of consciousness) is inherent in the monads themselves, and is their own primal ground upon which they may actualise themselves. Monads are embedded in a universal interrelationship of cause and effect, with God being the primal (and final) cause and each monad being a „mirror of the world“. There is a kind of hierarchy among monads with only humans capable of apperceptions (as elevated upon mere perceptions) and soul. The higher the monad the clearer and more comprehensive are the apperceptions and the awareness of being a „mirror of the world“ and the more elevated is the soul. Despite offering a relatively static paradigm, Leibniz emphasises that monads contain entelechies and are subject to change. The highest goal of life is to gain the highest awareness possible of the „harmony of the world“ and being as a divine monarchy. Alongside this trajectory the monad does not progress to rational vision of the „thing in itself“ yet breaks through the material hyle and becomes maximally competent (as it, as we may say, becomes the „suject/monad in itself“). Leibniz´ Monadology and related writings are, by the way, cool the way they are sharp and precise, anti-logorrhoea and without word vomit. That is not of necessary occurence in philosophy.

In his major work Process and Reality Whitehead occasionally mentions Leibniz, though not extensively. Yet the parallels to Leibniz and his monadology are striking, so much as that Deleuze bluntly refers to Whitehead as a „diadoche“ of Leibniz. Whitehead takes „actual entities“ as the true substance of the world, they resemble monads but are inherently more dynamic. They´re embedded in a universal process of becoming (not merely „cause and effect“) under which they finally constitute themselves as monads. Whitehead refers to intensity of perception as the highest value: the more intense the perception the more qualities the perceived as well as the perceiver accumulate. Whitehead´s ontology does not refer to a specific beginning or a specific end of the world process and embraces a higher notion of chance and the merely processural as a value in itself: creativity as the ontological principle upon which the world unfolds. In his notion, God is the primal ground of all possibilities and potentialities and via processural reality God actualises himself (which puts Whitehead´s philosophy in an apparent relationship to pantheism respectively panpsychism though it is not the same since Whitehead´s God is rather to be understood as an ontological substrate as well as a reflection which relates to the univocity of being and the harmonious interrelatedness of a heterogenous world). Embedded in processural reality actual entitites, like monads, are a reflection of the whole world and nothing that has ever happened ever gets lost. However, no actual entity, and not God himself, can have a divine universal perspective on being since it progressively unfolds and actualises itself, constituting actual entities and constituting God. Whitehead is aware that there truly is negativity and destructiveness in the world but sees them as a necessary emanation or by-product of creativity. The quality of the world is rather aesthetic and probably should be seen as an artwork by God, through which God, however, preserves the actual entities and the process of the world. The ethical implications seem to indicate the need for a filigrane percpetion and understanding of the manifoldness of the world and an awe for the creative process. Despite being acknowledged as one of the most eminent metaphysicists of the 20th century, Whitehead is not very well known, and they say Process and Reality is terribly opaque. However, I cannot sense that, it is quite accessible. The thing may rather be that we do not really know what to do with a metaphysics that abstract (or so I guess), respectively Whitehead´s metaphysics and its apparent implications partially relate to both Western and Eastern mindsets (as they are about the progressively competent individual (Western) in a harmonious whole (Eastern) which is not transcendent (Western) but immanent (Eastern)) and we don´t know how to think them together, but we may learn to do so in the future.

The debated philosophies are about how to understand heterogenousness and oneness, epistemology and ontology, the subject-object dichotomy, relentless creativity and harmony, the relationship between man, world and God. Leibniz presents are relatively static, quasi-feudalistic world with harmony the supreme good, Whitehead modernises and cracks the monad up into the progressive and democratic, Deleuze comes up with the postmodern fold and transgresses the monad/monadology into nomad/nomadology. Whitehead emphasises that philosophical undertaking and approach cannot be absolute but is limited by our contemporarian understanding or the eternal limitations of the human mind and has to operate with concepts which may be both to abstract and too precise to fully comprehend realities. Nevertheless one has to do something philosophical to make us understand the (current) situation. It is apparent how these three metaphysical approaches are grounded in the supreme, gentle and creative human mind, somehow becoming its own theophany. Despite it is also my own intuition I doubt whether a monad is a mirror of the all, or whether things are preserved. Maybe chance and vagueness are inherent qualities the world (enabling „creativity“?) and being is not univocal. Of course metaphysics has to aware of what physics does reveal. I am quite curious about whether we live in a holographic universe, how the quantum realm relates to the macrorealm, how the different macrorealms relate to each other and how emergent phenomena can be explained. – Via Deleuze´s immersive writing metaphysics becomes a sexy and colourful thing. Leibniz makes me think of an elevated silver sphere which is stabilised in its own harmony, floating a little bit above me. Whitehead´s metaphysics makes me think of a giant web of little golden balls with flashy golden beams connecting between them. But reflecting about them all the vision of gazing into the metaphysical structure of the world now becomes one of quadratic zones, honeycomb-like, that fall into an indefinite ground of which you don´t see much and, presumably, does not carrying much to see. To save the vision and elevate it to a new level, respectively open it up into another dimension, I think it is indicated to ram a white spear perpendicularly into the structure. This should give Deleuze, Leibniz and Whitehead a pause. An event has happened, a koan. After that I think all the four of us will silently smile at each other and nod in consent.

Deleuze on Whitehead & Leibniz

Nikolaus Lenau´s Faust, Gilles Deleuze´s Proust, and Second Prelude to a Note about the Hyperset

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I have stated elsewhere (in the Book of Strange and Unproductive Thinking) that I find Faust a quite strange, annoying and unconvincing figure (as well as that Goethe < Büchner). Likewise – despite Faust is a character through which humanity is individualised (like Don Quixote, Yorick, K., Malone, Ishmael or Peer Gynt) – Nietzsche said that, upon reflection, probably all that remains of Faust is a bizarre, degenerated example of scientific man. Ibsen wrote his Peer Gynt as an allusion to Faust and someone said Ibsen´s Peer Gynt is a bizarre satire upon Goethe´s Faust. I find Peer Gynt a more convincing, direct epitome of humanity, also given the ethical implications of Peer Gynt, although I somehow think that the mirror image of Faust (who is, of course, the much more comprehensive character) is somehow necessary to make Peer Gynt truly shine. Otto Weininger was very fond of Peer Gynt and it was Otto Weininger who made me understand Peer Gynt so that I wrote my Rompf as an allusion and a bizarre satire upon Peer Gynt. Otto Weininger (wrongly) was somehow dismissive of Ibsen´s later plays and said that, if he had wanted, Ibsen could have become greater than Goethe (because he somehow didn´t like Ibsen´s progressive attitude towards women). Otto Weininger was also dismissive of Nietzsche and called him a genius of seventh (lowest) grade (because he missed the ethical component in Nietzsche´s philosophy). Otto Weininger mourned that there was no one around like Goethe anymore in his days. I think if Otto Weininger had stayed alive he would have become greater than Goethe and Nietzsche, but he was psychologically troubled and did not survive. I partially understand Otto Weininger´s psychological troubles (in the dimension of overexcitabilities common among geniuses) and as far as I can see I am the only one around who actually understands Otto Weininger as a philosopher. I also think Ibsen was at least a more convincing and powerful playwright than Goethe. I have written one play so far and it was a bizarre satire upon theater and theater audience. I wonder what would have become of Büchner if he had stayed alive. I think Büchner would have become a major existential philosopher like Weininger or Nietzsche, not a theorizer of colours like Goethe. Enter Nikolaus Lenau.

 

Nikolaus Lenau denied Goethe possessing a „monopoly“ upon Faust, instead understood the archetype of Faust as a creative common of mankind and wrote his own version of Faust (like Christopher Marlowe had already done before Goethe). Nikolaus Lenau is relatively obscure today although Wikepedia bluntly states that he was the greatest Austrian poet of the 19th century. His Faust is a somehow more dire figure than Goethe´s and is frantically and desperately motivated to understand the presumed „truth of it all“. As he gets thrown into the world of the living by the devil he neither finds fulfilment in elementary constructiveness (love, giving birth) nor in destructive passions and finally finds himself cut off from everything so that, in a metaphysically deluded reflection upon his emotional alienation, he kills himself (and falls prey to the devil´s plot). Lenau´s Faust finds himself in a heterogenous, emotionally detached world and, as long as he cannot be omnipotent, omniscient, omnisentient and sovereign rather chooses death, his endeavour to „weld together himself, world and God“ („Dich, Welt und Gott in eins zusammenschweißen“) a failure. Lenau´s Faust indeed does not have the universality of Goethe´s Faust, it is rather a reflecion upon Lenau`s inner world as he finds himself torn between a longing for a protective God and being embedded in nature and being an autonomous god himself, unable to find reconciliation and consolation between the two extremes. As Faust is an archetype for (metaphysically) struggling man, Lenau was right to weld his alter ego together with the Faust archetype. I came across Nikolaus Lenau´s Faust when Alexander Nitzberg and his companion Peter Sendtko made a theatrical performance of the poem/play at Roman´s atelier some weeks ago; it was really lovely.

I still have not read Proust´s Recherche, I bought a copy of Swann´s Way when I was 19 or so and finally managed to read it some years ago. As far as I understand, Proust is longing for closure within intensity too which he tries to achieve via realization of memory. Proust´s Recherche is also archetypical. Gilles Deleuze bluntly announces (in Proust and Signs) that the Recherche is not an undertaking directed into the past and into autobiographical memory but into the future and into learning where memory is the material through which the subject enriches itself and comes to itself. Neither the subject nor the world does express itself directly, the chiffres of the world are the signs (for instance social signs, romantic signs, etc.), and via understanding the signs the subject progressively deciphers the world. The purest signs are the signs of art as they are immaterial and spiritual. The signs of art are deeper than the subject or object that carries and sends out the signs and more elementary as they reveal the essence. The essence of an object is its true embeddedness in the world, that what is actualised about it and its potentialities, it is, with reference to the note about Deleuze and Rancière and as Angell de la Sierra puts it, the „meta-noumenon … nothing less than the existential ontology of the object, another way of expressing its circumstantial semantic content, now and later on, a mind´s view of ,objective reality`“. The essence of the subject is to become a „point of view“ upon the world, finally, as Deleuze notes, a de/transpersonalised „spider“ which reacts to and acts upon the vibrations within the world-net. In becoming a „point of view“ the subject becomes objectified, eternal and immortal and it is eventually via the artwork via which man is able to make sense of the world and establish identity. It is associative intelligence, not logical intelligence (which is the intelligence of Faust) which reveals essence. – Trying to live in this world with a pronounced artist´s intelligence is not easy of course, but I have to say that Faust´s problems are to a considerable degree alien to me. The arid character of the world gets compensated as before my inner eye as lose graceful gestures I occasionaly witness (for instance by birds, by twinkling stars or by children) get inflated into a graceful world and potentialities seem to pour out everywhere (despite being aware that that´s a kind of bluff package, yet only partially). I do not communicate much with people but I feel, in a way, in a communion with them much more than the chatterboxes out there commonly do. Memory is virtually present not in a fotographic, textual way but via a hypertextual monitor on which I can recall memories to a given sensual or intellectual stimulus via association, enriching both the stimulus and the memory content with additional meaning. That monitor kind of enwraps and cocoons me and gives me presence. Faust obviously lacks such a thing.

A while ago I have started to ruminate about the „hyperset“. The occasion was a diagram I saw which made me think of a, say, meta-diagram as a necessity to competently understand and process the diagram, as a, so to say, conscious reflection over the diagram. Likewise, I have observed that I seem to belong to many groups within the human realm which often venn very thin and marginally, or not at all, making the final intersection a set to which seemingly only I belong, in solitude, on this earth, maybe also in this history. However, I also seem to understand all the sets at a higher level than those who only belong to the respective sets, I have higher awareness, I have higher consciousness of them. That diversification and pluralism is a good thing is commonplace, that the one who only understands a single discipline actually doesn´t understand that discipline either is what they say. Pluralistic understanding is good. Deleuze (and Guattari) refers to transversality as a mode of establishing connection between heterogenous sets that make up reality. Transversality does not try to totalize and normalise heterogeneity but is affirmative towards difference, lets them resonate and explores interdependencies. It is experimental and reflects anti-logos and becoming, the associative method of the Recherche, the instability of the world and the object as well as the emergence of essence through the process of art. Artistic style (i.e. a subjective mode of expression which is of objective substance) is what holds heterogeneity together and is the correlate to the logos (Welsch takes „transversal reason“ as a model for reason in postmodernity). This is vibrant and humming and makes us think of a microcosmic reflection of macrocosm (which also Deleuze does in Proust and Signs). Remember, Otto Weininger says: „The ego of the genius accordingly is simply itself universal comprehension, the centre of infinite space; the great man contains the whole universe within himself; genius is the living microcosm. He is not an intricate mosaic, a chemical combination of an infinite number of elements; the argument in chap. iv. as to his relation to other men and things must not be taken in that sense; he is everything. In him and through him all psychical manifestations cohere and are real experiences, not an elaborate piece-work, a whole put together from parts in the fashion of science. For the genius the ego is the all, lives as the all; the genius sees nature and all existences as whole; the relations of things flash on him intuitively; he has not to build bridges of stones between them.“ That is, well, the purest emanation of the hyperset, not somehow clumsily (or, if you want, more cautiously and operational) as it appears before my inner eye or that of Deleuze, Guattari or Proust (not to speak of Faust). Unfortunately Otto collapsed psychologically under its airy weight.

Despite having written the First Prelude to a Note about the Hyperset months ago it seems that I have not progressed a lot about thinking about it further and deeper, which is, however, excusable since I have done other things. I wonder whether the „hyperset“ can be a mathematical object and how it could be modelled, maybe it could shed light on the incompleteness theorem. I also wonder whether consiousness could actually be understood as a hyperset, or what we refer to as the soul, or processes of „emergence“ in nature (which are, so far, little understood). It reflects however an elevated state of mind which is, in the same fashion, „grounded“. Maybe I also lose interest in the hyperset, though I don´t really think so because first I like the name and second I think it is actually a name and category that refers to something real and one day, after I am gone, they will jubiliatingly scream „the hyperset, the hyperset!“ when they´ve done something dilettante; but that does not differ from what I do and how I came to think of the hyperset.

Prelude to Note about the Hyperset