Record and Teach

I was recently at a talk at the Oriental Institute on seal images from the Persian empire (4th to 7th century BC). I won’t belabor the role of the Zoroastrian religion in these images -- if you’re interested I suggest you look up the fire altars and the digs at Persepolis. But as the different images were put up on the screen showing people sacrificing animals or tending the fire altar, a comment was made that images show the everyday and writing shows the extraordinary.

The idea is fairly straight forward. Images have to be understood by the viewers, therefore they have to be familiar. Whereas, everyone knows the everyday so when something is committed to writing it is because it is out of the ordinary. I am not sure if I agree. Even from an archeological perspective there are a lot of examples of the everyday that get recorded, mostly in the form of commerce or fiction.

So where do music, science and philosophy fit in? Like fiction they are a dynamic. They can grow and evolve or can die and be forgotten. I think one of the things that our society has going for it is that we have so many ways to record and collect ideas. Maybe this is bad, because everything gets saved and has equal weight to future generations.

For example, the oldest recorded music is a song to Nikal, the wife of the Syrian moon god. -- Ok, maybe not what we think of recording, this song was inscribed on a tablet in Ugarit somewhere around 1400 B.C. and translated by Prof. Kilmer in the 1970’s. http://www.amaranthpublishing.com/hurrian.htm Unlike older verse that has been found, this tablet contained instructions to make and play the instrument. So the musical score was actually recorded even though we cannot hear the original version. But I digress.

We do not know if this song was common of the style and imagery of the day or extraordinary. We know some one took the time to really record the details. So it had some significance. But, what was the other music like?

I am of the opinion, that music, like fiction has to strike a common note that people will connect to it. Or it simply fades away. So if we go to Ras Shamra today will we hear evolutions of the same sound? I would expect that the answer is a “yes,” although we might not recognize it.

Consider “Eyes on the Prize” AKA “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize," which is a variant of the earlier "Gospel Plow", aka "Hold On", aka "Keep Your Hand on the Plow" etc… The latest version I heard was from Bruce Springsteen with a large dixi-land style folk band. The sound was fantastic. But it was very different from one man plucking six nylon strings. And, while on the subject of Mr. Springsteen let me say this: as he was doing these old folks songs, he added his own lyrics, contemporized them. So we see the evolution beginning.

Ok so now pull this idea back to science. Do we more often record the ordinary or extraordinary? We tend to skip the ordinary. Pick up any lab book and see how much common knowledge and practice is taken for granted. I once had a technician complain that the protocol was inaccurate, not her, because it didn’t say to cap the volatile solvents. Something I assumed everyone knew.

And do ideas grow, if they are not communicated in a way that the main stream can connect to them? For my part, I think not. Ideas will only live in their isolated community unless they can be put in a way that the society as a whole can grasp. So, in an uneducated society, complicated science will simply die out.

The upshot of this is: record in accurate detail and teach in a way people understand.

I will leave you this morning with Bill Withers. His professional career wasn’t very long only really running through the 70’s and mid 80’s. But in that time he wrote songs that could well find their way into the lexicon of traditional American music in a few hundred years. I realize it’s hard to predict what art will last into the future, but “Lean on Me” had that “always been around” feeling right out the gate. Like most great art it touches a genuine human emotion, and does it in a comforting way.

I expect it will undergo some evolution much like “Keep Your Hand on the Plow" because it is recorded and we all know what it means.

Peace and Happy Holidays,
Charles

New Song

Last week I went to hear Dan Navarro and a small venue in the north suburbs. I’ll refrain from commenting one whether I thought he was better or worse without Lowen, but I’ll say that it was frankly a great show.

And is typical after really good music, I found myself up all night with my own guitar writing a song. A good one I think. Uplifting. I’m writing it for a band I haven’t met and we’ll see what happens.

But, I mention it because music is what cleanses my pallet. I spend a lot of time with my research and inventions. And music just helps me re-center. And I think that’s a critical part of science.

In fact most of the really great scientists and inventors I have known have been musicians or artist as well. Or both. But all had all parts of their mind fed: creative, analytical, philosophical.

I don’t think it’s important that we be great at everything we do. But I think if we are going to be great at anything we need to do a lot. You cannot create without experiences.

Preston’s World would not exist if I hadn’t worked at drug stores as a teenager. Blue Blood Tracker would not exist if John Fischer wasn’t a hunter in addition to being forensic analyst. And don’t get me started on my songs.

That’s about all I have to say this morning. Oh yea… one more thing I actually wrote the important lines of the new song at the concert itself. So let me just thank Mr. Navarro now.

Until Later
Charles

Art and Science

Two years ago I was at an art fair in the park. One of the booths was from shop calling itself “fine art.” And not to say that the painting sin the tent were unpleasant, but I couldn’t tell what the painter was trying to say. So I asked.

The painter (and I’ll avoid the term artist) She said that she likes to let the viewer find their own meaning. This is not art. It may be a pretty image. But art needs something to say. It has to emote, or tell. Fine art, conveys a idea that the viewer understands; the better the artist the clearer the telling.

I see this as a common element in society. Would be writers string random words together, add some vulgarity and call it poetry. We went from the little engine that “thought it could” to “I want to be so I am.” And with it we loose meaning. Art, science, law, morality are all victims to this decline of meaning.

Consider the “true arte,” swordsmanship. Not a fine art to be sure, but a skill that requires training and deliberacy of intent. One cannot be a good swordsman without active training and skill. The same is true of painting, writing, sculpture … and the list goes on.

And before one gets the impression that fine art is trivial, therefore it doesn’t matter if it looses meaning and significance, I would ask that the impact of the artist’s eye be considered. Which brings me to the tie in to this blog.

In the course of my scientific career I have had the opportunity to work with some great product designers, researchers and criminalists. On the surface, it is tempting to say that the crossover is in the aesthetic. But it goes beyond that. Art and science are both about definition. They seek, among other things to answer the question what. And it is here that they cross over. And it is here that the sloppy impression of “fine art” is hurting the whole of society.

As a scientist, I have been able to hold my own with the top minds in many fields. I am by no means claiming the same skill or knowledge as men and women with decades more training and experience. But, I could understand what they did and how they did it well enough to follow or reproduce what they did.

Some of them follow an Aristotelian approach to definition. Others took a more conciliate approach. And some just compare to what they already know. But there is another way to define a scene.

One criminalist’s approach was different. He looked at a crime scene aesthetically. What should or should not be there was the discriminating factor in how he searched. Unlike most of his peers, he was an artist not a scientist, a Flemish Realist painter. And I came to believe that his approach was much more indicative, of his painting than an outward in definition.

More importantly, unlike most of the experts I had worked with over the years, I could not reproduce what he did. So, I decided to try and learn to think like a painter, add this to my tool box.

So, I have been trying to teach myself to paint. Start with the outline, build the shadow, then add the detail layer by layer. So of the detail in one layer will be hidden by subsequent layers, but they are still important as in some way they will shape and shade the final image.

This way of defining is different from my normal analytical approach. As a scientist, I think from general to specific and this was going from specific to general. But it in building an image this way, I found that I was getting as sense of what should be there. And by extrapolation, what should not.

I may never be a good painter, but the exercise has taught me a new perspective and isn’t that kinda the point?

Peace
Charles

p.s. If you want to see some of the paintings: http://www.prestons-world.com/abouttheauthor/artgallery.html