Category: Arts and Culture

And people call Berkeley a political bubble, detached from the rest of the country? CNN: Students attend school’s first integrated prom.

The comments in the story are astounding. On the surface because of the underlying racism of Georgian culture, but also because of this weird sense that the endemic separatism isn’t necessarily coming from conscious decisions to maintain segregation, but rather a desire to maintain tradition, as if tradition ipso facto diminishes racism. Imagine a California teenager saying:

“The white people have theirs, and the black people have theirs. It’s nothing racial at all.”

People sometimes see tradition as inherently valuable, no matter how twisted its roots. Satisfying to see that even if children there aren’t being brought up to question racist traditions, they’re figuring out how to do it on their own.

Thanks baald

Dylan points to a dust-up amongst librarians sparked by a paragraph in the latest Newbery award-winning children’s novel:

“The Higher Power of Lucky” is the story of a 10-year-old girl in rural California and her quest for “Higher Power.” The opening chapter includes a passage about a man “who had drunk half a gallon of rum listening to Johnny Cash all morning in his parked ‘62 Cadillac, then fallen out of the car when he saw a rattlesnake on the passenger seat biting his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.” Librarians have been debating whether “scrotum” was an appropriate word for young readers, especially from a book with the Newbery seal.

The librarian was apparently not perturbed by the fact that the story covers a dude drinking half a bottle of rum — in his car — but by the inclusion of the medically correct term “scrotum.” Which made him think his readers could probably craft even better examples of inappropriate-for-kids content trailed by a “shocking” last word. He’s offering a copy of a Roald Dahl book to the weener, so jump in. I made a quick attempt on his site, but could have done better*. Bring it on, before I win that book.

* The idea of course is that the offensive content would not trigger prude radars, while the innocent word at the end would – my attempt fails the first part of that test.

Went with Miles yesterday to the exhibition of Bruce Nauman’s 1960s work, A Rose Has No Teeth, at the BAM (the title is a Wittgenstein reference, from the Tractatus: It is false that a goose has teeth, nonsensical that a rose should have teeth; non-intersecting language games yield nonsense, though syntax seduces us into thinking that a logical proposition is concealed in there somewhere).

In one small, empty room, opposing speakers leaked Nauman’s disembodied voice, hushed and garbled, intelligible words seeping out at intervals. Miles and I danced in circles to a-rhythmic ghost tones until the guard cast an admonishing glance our way.

At one point, a chair facing a sculpture. Miles looks up at me and asks, “Daddy, is it okay for me to go on this?” I answered, “Of course, it’s a chair!” He looked at it and then back at me. “Oh. I thought it was part of the artwork.” Poor pomo kid, confused by the boundaries between life and art before he’s had his first art history class.

Later, bought a copy of Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, back in print after 30 years. Grapefruit is a book of instructions and notes for conceptual performance pieces. Sat and read through some of the instructions with Miles tonight, including:

PAINTING FOR THE SKIES

Drill a hole in the sky
Cut out a paper the same size
as the hole.
Burn the paper.
The sky should be pure blue.

PRESCRIPTION PIECE

Prescribe pills for going
through the wall and have only
the hair come back.

Asked Miles if he could think of a performance piece. He came up with:

Turn a chicken into a ball and then the ball eats itself.

I think he “gets it.”