Modern Artists and the Occult

No longer just a strategy for art-making


I've been caught up with doing some fascinating research on the Human Rights Commissions, which I've been blogging about at Our Changing Landscape for the past several weeks.

This has taken my time away from Camera Lucida, and some themes I have been following recently, one of which is filmmaker Bruce Elder's latest book on modern artists and the occult.

Invariably this led me to W. B. Yeats and the occult. But I found Yeats' use of the occult far less harmful than Elder's. In fact, I think Elder uses his art to describe and pay homage to the occult, rather than use the occult to help him find a strategy to make art, which is how Yeats used it.

I will write more on this later, but I'm getting more and more convinced that much of art these days is a substitute, and even a re-creation, of religion and spirituality, and Elder's work seems to illustrate that.

Sarah Palin's Hypocrisy

And not facing up to her problems

 
Bristol Palin next to the father of her unborn, as of now illegitimate, child, ready for birth any day.

Sylvie, from the film Les Diablesses, next to one of the nuns when she enters the correction center for "lost girls", ca. 1950. Sylvie, and many girls like her, had their illegitimate babies in secret, and then were forced to give them up for adoption.

Images from an earlier post on Sarah Palin.
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Sarah Palin's daughter and her daughter's fiancé keep dominating the media. A few months ago, Levi went on various talk shows to discuss his relationship with Bristol, and how they broke up.

Now, it is David Letterman who made jokes about Bristol's propensity for getting pregnant.

What does Palin expect? She paraded her unmarried pregnant daughter at the RNC last year, where everything seemed under control with the fiancé also present. But they had never set a date for a wedding (although there were stories that Palin tried to get them married off before the RNC), and Levi's interviews later revealed that he was coerced into going to the RNC.

But, what is worse than that is Palin apparently had allowed the young teenager to stay overnight with his girlfriend at her home in Alaska.

Now, there is only one reason why Palin would allow this under her roof: to avoid her daughter from going somewhere else to be with her boyfriend.

In other words, her daughter was out of control, and only extreme measures such as this would keep her near her mother.

So, now when comedians, who always have the knack for catching underlying problems and make them into jokes, bring this up, she gets all indignant. In fact, she calls it an assault on a young girl's "self-esteem."

This is sorry language from a conservative woman. In fact, it is feminist language. But Palin is a member of a pro-life group which calls itself "Feminists for Life."

Now that her family's disorganized (and disastrous) life has been exposed, she resorts to the victim mentality rather than take full responsibility for all that went wrong.

Purple Flowers Again

Wisteria on gray wall

Iris growing in a Victorian yellow brick house garden

Columbines in a parking lot; Clematis have all summer to take over

Projects I'm Working On

The Pink flowering dogwood

The flowering dogwood

I started with the cluster above, and reduced it to just three flowers using photoshop.

I then moved the middle flower around,


then got rid of it altogether in the final image.


Here is the drawing,


and some brush strokes and colors I'm trying out for the watercolor.


I plan to add a small bird in the center between the two flowers, maybe one like this:

A yellow-billed magpie
 
Eventually, I will transform the whole image into a repeat design. I won't change the structure of the flowers much, except to work with placing the bird in front or behind the flowers.

Like Clockwork: Part III

This is becoming a Takuan Seiyo-style series


The purpose of my posts is not to denigrate writers, and their often heart-felt need to communicate their ideas in their own idiosyncratic styles.

I am an ordinary reader, whose background is definitely not writing, although I have spent a good deal of my life reading (mostly, 99%, fiction) to have been called a book-worm at one point.

So, it is a little surprising that I turned to the visual media as my training and profession. Perhaps I understood that a hidden obsession of many writers is to be a Hemmingway or Dostoevsky.  

Perhaps people who read the writers I have mentioned so far have also this secret desire to be great writers themselves, and are hungrily devouring every word as a way to find the clues to what they think might be good writing.

But, conservative writing, I believe, has taken on too much of this ego and idiosyncrasy.  

In any case, I will take on the Brussels Journal regular Takuan Seiyo, who has a (so far) twelve-part series:"From Meccania to Atlantis", at their website.

The first time I read Takuan Seiyo at Brussels Journal (Seiyo’s name reminds me of those Japanese cartoon characters which are the craze in video games - not a good image for a “seasoned” man), I literally skimmed the paragraphs to catch key-phrases of his never-ending 4,000-word article. I think it was Part 3 or Part 4.

After that, I simply lost interest, and I don’t think I read any more until perhaps the 8th or 9th article in the series, and again to skim through the last two or three paragraphs.

I wonder if Seiyo plans on publishing these in a book? I somehow don’t think so. I don’t think his wild trips into the modern world’s psyche make for a good book – they’re too repetitive and too exclamatory. But, what do I know. There are enough people who take the time to read his articles who might be game for a (paid) book version.

The interesting thing, though, is that at Gates of Vienna, Seiyo has a new article about the Vdare-featured Kevin MacDonald’s anti-Semtitic writings. And the title even has a normal ring to it: "Critique of the Culture of Kevin MacDonald."

Despite its close to 4,000 words (3,811, to be exact), Seiyo has avoided the screeching tone of his “Meccania to Atlantis” series to write something which reverberates as genuine and sincere.

Ironically, although writers may think they are connecting us with their "true self" when they let their ego or vanity dominate, the exact opposite actually happens.

Here are links to the first two parts:

Like Clockwork: Part I - Writers at Vdare show us something of their true nature

Like Clockwork: Part II - What exactly is Ilana Mercer?

Windows Adorned

A way to belong

Photos by David Wyman

The photo on the right is titled: "Beautiful security, Queen Street East, Toronto."

The photo on the left could be any barbershop in a more modest neighborhood in Toronto (many barbers are Italian). The barber has taken the time with make-shift signs, and painted the exterior a dynamic blue. Even the interior walls are filled with paintings and drawings, giving the store a personal touch

[click on the photos to see larger images]

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There is a long tradition of adorning shop windows so they reflect the business or the trade that they front. Some settle for simple decorations, others go for the more ornate.

But, there is nothing more depressing than a shop which makes no effort on its windows, not just to attract shoppers, but to brighten up its space by the sidewalk.

I think shopkeepers make this effort when they feel they are part of the street, part of that community and the neighborhood. This way, they show some pride and care in their store, which after all is an extention of themselves.

These days, there are an infinite number of convenience stores which have sprung up at every corner of every street (well, that's what it feels like). Its owners are often silent Asians, many Koreans and Chinese, who don't go through the preliminary greetings, and often don't even to call out the price of the item as they ring it in. 

Of course, part of this is their lack of English. But, I've experienced this with those more fluent. It is as though the shop is just a storage place for the goods they are to sell, which will bring them the income they need. Everything else is secondary.

Not only is this attitude visible in their shop exteriors, but often the interior is a heap of articles in narrow passageways, which simply encourages the shopper to get the item and leave as quickly as possible

Like Clockwork: Part II

What exactly is Ilana Mercer?


The interaction at David Yeagley’s blog, after his write-up on three non-liberal commentators, sparked a theme of mine I had been trying to broach for a while, but didn’t know how to do it without coming off negative and overly critical.

Patience usually rewards with opportunity, and these last few days, there have been plenty of opportunities.

The theme that I have been pursuing is the non-conservative nature of non-MSM (NMSM) conservatives.

This is my analysis of the situation:

1. NMSM so-called conservatives tend to form a clique against those evil liberals, so anything liberals say, however true (or false, it doesn’t really matter), is to be categorically dismissed and ridiculed. So truth becomes secondary to attacking liberals.

2. Many of these NMSM conservative commentators spend an inordinate amount of time "expressing" themselves with quaint writing styles, caustic expressions, clever turns of words with which to insults liberals, and an anger which is always present, which I’ve discussed is what often fuels their energy and writing. This results with writing full of ego, which I call vanity.

3. In reality, many of these NMSM conservative writers are not conservative at all. But they need somewhere to publish their works. So they depend on true conservative media sources which often have the largest readership. When a true conservative reads their material, he is left confused with what appears to be muddled, and at times incoherent, writings which don’t really support conservative ideas.

This actually supports point #2. If the truth (of conservatism) is not their main point, what then is their purpose? To write to "express" themselves, which ultimately showcases their vanities.

In my post "Like Clockwork", Peter Brimelow provided me grist for the mill, so to speak.

And more recently I linked to Ilana Mercer, to read some of her comments that David Yeagley wrote about in his article mentioned above.

I have maintained for a while that Mercer is no conservative. She calls herself a classical liberal (as a step closer to a conservative?) on her blog, but I don't think she's even that. But more on that a little later.

Mercer’s articles get published at Taki’s Mag (another "conservative" site I will leave for another blog post). The title to her latest article included an immature expletive, which was what the editors at Taki's Mag decided on (you can still see the full title in the web address).

Shortly after I saw that post, the expletive was deleted.

This article had been up for a couple of days before this word was removed, and most likely not until Taki's Mag fans had read it and the article.

Any self-repsecting writer would have asked immediately that the word be removed. Did Mercer do this? No, and even the later removal was the work of the editor. Mercer's excuse was that she has no control over this. Well, writers who say they have no control over such things are afraid of not getting published.  

I might be picking on an unnecessary detail here, but I think it is the same character revelation as Brimelow’s "strikingly handsome" quote. And this proves my point that writers form cliques, mainly to find places where they can get published, and principles are distorted or even discarded for the sake of the writing.  

Despite describing herself on her website as a classical liberal, Mercer’s article at Taki's Mag was reprimanding libertarians to not alienate their followers, and more importantly to act as good ambassadors for the Libertarian leader Ron Paul, whom she clearly supports. So, what exactly is Mercer, a conservative, a classical liberal, or a libertarian?

One final point. How can someone who talks, albeit rather confusedly, about conservatism, write for an online magazine whose editor regularly admits to his past adulterous, drunken and prison experiences?