Posts & comments

I just posted a comment to Ron's most recent post--I don't know if such things aren't visible enough to enter the conversation (pretty new to this), but I thought I'd try. I'll do the same to Sam's soon.

Appropos of all this, I was part of an interesting conversation last evening at Jack of the Wood, where John Crutchfield, Landon Godfrey, Carolyn & Chuck (akk, last names escape me), and I gathered for a sort of Whiteness reunion at John's suggestion (that sounds a bit strange to the uninitiated, I know). Conversation turned to arts & humanities self-definition, marketing, and such. Art and commerce. Chuck, who is an architect, had interesting things to say about clients' resistance to new ideas. Landon talked about the fact that she works with a group that does web design and "branding" for select clients/companies. Really interesting issues of trying to make the advertising actually say something real about the product. Questions, too, of needing to be careful about how one defines oneself: the label may change the "labelee" (quote from Plato in Chaikin's Presence of the Actor: "The mask the actor wears is liable to become his face" (or something like that). Carolyn used to be Board Chair of Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, and talked about a mission statement that actually gave direction, defined purpose, provide a basis for choosing. Countered my skepticism about such stuff. Important thing was to be concrete rather than vacuous. (Now I'm remembering Havel writing about how to successfully overthrow the state: Keep demands absolutely concrete.) Stuff we've all talked about, I know, but interesting in light of the kind of conversation we're having. I think this kind of talk is not only fun at times but useful, too--if we can keep it real and not get caught up in our own bullshit. Always a challenge.

I think I'm missing most of the real good stuff from last night's conversation. Anyway, then John got up to join Wayne Erbsen and other musicians in an old time jam session. He stopped talking about this art business and actually did some. (Of course, I had to skeedadle right as they were to begin...)