The Persistence of Memory

Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory"

I have some fond memories that persist; memories of Christmas and Easter Vacations from school and the things I did that were transformational, profoundly so, when I was away from the tyranny of the classroom and free to be off on my own exploring the world.

For some reason, from an early age I was simply entranced by Visual Art. And so, as I entered my teenage years and investigated Manhattan and the marvelous things to be found there, I made it a ritual to spend at least one day of each of those week-long school vacations at an art museum, most often the Museum of Modern Art. Back then, a 16 year old boy from  a relatively poor suburban family, could afford the bus and subway fare and museum fee, as well as a trip to the corner cart for a budget dirty water hot dog and soda and get back home to share his day's adventures with family; intact and far better for the experience. And so, I got to know close up, the likes of Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhole and Louise Nevelson and their peers and contemporaries. Salvador Dali, though, just blew me away. While I admired artists in general, and grew to want to be one myself, Dali was something more,  in a category by himself. He seemed to me to be part wizard, part mad scientist, and part movie star all rolled into one cool being. And truth be told, while I have come under the spell of many another wizard since, he has never lost his appeal to me. Could I have found anyone better to draw a bit of youthful inspiration from? Perhaps, I suppose, but Dali, for better or worse, was a spiritual infatuation that took hold of me back then and I don't regret it now.

Very fortunately for me, one of the Dali paintings the museum always had on display was The Persistence of Memory. How many times did I stand in front of this small work, feeling excited and tingly because it is so beautiful, so mysterious, and so subtly outrageous?  This painting has always seemed to me to conjure up a stillness, a quietness, and a sense of extreme spookiness, a sense that one shouldn't be seeing what it clearly shows us, kind of like seeing a ghost while being incapable of uttering a sound about seeing it. This, in the presence of dozens and dozens of others with whom I stood shoulder to shoulder peering at small pieces of canvas stretched on wooden frames and hung at eye level on walls a couple of feet in front of us.

The video above is from a series that calls itself "Art History in a Hurry" and, I suppose, if I were back in the classroom (I was a public school Visual Arts teacher for a good many years) I'd make use of this series and of this video in particular, which gives some of the skinny about this painting:

"The Persistence of Memory is the most famous painting of Spanish Artist, Salvador Dali (gives the correct, Spanish, pronunciation of his name with the stress on the final syllable of Dali)... This iconic painter is known for the bizarre, often disconcerting images in his work, as well as for his larger than life personality... inspired by dreams and visions, the Surrealist movement was based on the free association of mental images and unconscious thoughts and explored illogic... " and on and it goes on for 2 minutes and 40 seconds. Would it help me explain to my students just what it was I saw in this painting years ago when I spent so much time in front of it?

What's My Line? Salvador Dalí (1957)

Here's another video, one that literally kidnaps me and transports me (I have to admit willingly, although it could easily do so without my compliance) to a point in time a number of years before my teenage forays into the world of Art. I was what?.. 8?.. 9? then. But I certainly remember this show. Sure, TV was Black & White, offering flickering, cathode ray tube generated, low definition images, but it was still new and exciting. Programming? Well, I think this show was typical. It was basically a guessing game that appealed to millions and millions of Americans in a big way. The game was played by very charming, very articulate and sophisticated players and the 'twist' was that they sat just a few feet from the 'guest', whose identity they were supposed to guess from the questions they posed. I remember sitting with my parents as they watched this, totally engrossed in the show's hyper-simple proceedings. Above all, I remember that there was a 'sense' about this show as the game unfolded that something important was happening.

 

And something important WAS happening in this segment of "What's My Line?", I mean between the 30 second commercials for Geritol, Ipana toothpaste, and the new Ford Fairlane.  This wasn't just any person of interest trying to stump the panel of experts who were doing their best to figure out who he was by asking about his "line", his field of work. THIS was Dali, one of the most creative and influential 20th Century artists; a Surrealist who had dissected reality and reassembled it to reveal aspects of man's relationship to it that he had never imagined previously. But here he was... just another guest, the focus of the same silly game, and in the end, found out by questions about things like his famous mustache. In this clip, Dali, genius who devised ways to subvert The Rational, becomes a commodity for viewer consumption, a kinsman to toothpaste and automobile advertisements. And it all happened in the fleeting instant of a half hour, prime time game show staged and aired and watched and forgotten some 60 years ago.

But launch this video and as TV hosts of the time used to say while smiling into the camera, announcing to studio and home audience, alike, that the interlude of 30 second commercial spots was over for the moment, and that the real show was about to resume: "... Aaaaaaaaaaaand we're back!" And we are. We're back in 1957! Eisenhower is President! The Chevy Impala has tail fins! The Hula Hoop won't be invented, let alone 'sweep the nation' for another year, yet! 

No need for Surrealism, time IS a fluid, malleable phenomenon. Never mind the clock on your phone, the age spots on the back of your hand.... simply point your cursor and left click your mouse. YouTube will transport you, do whatever it is that it does so well to swap out realities and take our now selves back in time. The persistence of memory! 

IF the above is something the government doesn't want people to know, then I'm doing my part!

Anonymous 2015 - The November 5th Documentary
The text under this video states "... Million mask march, please Re-upload this Documentary and share it with the world. Expect us on November 5th 2015." And (throwing up my hands in a gesture of surrender) let me say,  OK, OK, mild-mannered, non-confrontational coward that I am, I am  Re-uploading this and sharing it with the world. I am NOT going to take on a million dudes who wear Guy Fawkes masks and who glower at the world menacingly (for good causes, or not) and besides, this Anonymous stuff, is damn interesting! 

First, I think I better give a little background. Like? Like, who WAS Guy Fawkes and what's the deal with November 5th? By the way, this is British stuff; these are references to British history and not something we know about in the US. Hell, we don't even know (or much care) about our own history, let alone history that happened long before our country was born.

Actually, it's pretty complicated, but the skinny is that Guy Fawkes led a conspiracy to blow up Parliament on its opening day (November 5th, 1605) and kill King James 1. This failed attempt was to be accomplished by setting off barrels and barrels of gunpowder which had been placed in the cellars below the building. Why? These were Catholics who were about to give the King his payback. Catholics had been repressed in England for a long time and when King James took the throne from the truly repressive Queen Elizabeth 1, it had been hoped that he'd give them some freedom of religion. But, NO..!  November 5th has ever since been a national event in England known as Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire night... in our times, it amounts to fun bonfires in the streets, fireworks, much drinking and partying. Good times!

What's all this celebrating about? I think that in the beginning it was a celebration of the plot having been foiled and the safety of the Crown and Parliament restored. But that was back when people believed in "The System" and "The Government" and (as simplistic as it may seem) that the Order of Things was just. Fast forward a few centuries and we've all come to believe that the world is a very corrupt place and that the "Little Guy" constantly has the wool pulled over his eyes by the "1%" who control everything and who want even more... or something like that. So now, it's more likely that Guy Fawkes Day is a celebration of the act of a righteous, ballsy guy whose rebelious "You better watch yer back, Mr. High and Mighty Bad Guy, 'cause we're on to you, you can only push us so far, we ain't taking no more of your crap!" behavior is taken as a model of what the people of the world need to do to set things right.

So just what, you may be wondering, does any of this have to do with Anonymous and its efforts to straighten out the world? Following an article from ABC News, in order to connect that dot we can look to the 2006 movie "V for Vendetta" an adaptation of a popular graphic which "...concocted a finale in which a whole movement of discontents wearing Guy Fawkes costumes watch the Houses of Parliament burn." Further, the article explains that "In 2008 the Fawkes mask was appropriated by the hacker group Anonymous as its public face." 

Where does one go to find Anonymous and listen to its message? YouTube of course! And this is one of the things I really love about YouTube. THIS is where revolution in our times takes place!  Go to the ANONYMOUS channel (I mean the one by that name. I point this out because it appears to me there are other channels claiming to be the Anonymous channel. And, frankly, it's hard to tell which is the real thing because, well, after all, the whole idea here is that the originators of these messages are, well... Anonymous)... At any rate clicking the "About" link leads to the following:

" 539,499 subscribers • 7,435,460 views
Joined Jan 17, 2012

Description

Anyone and everyone with a voice is anonymous, its not a group or movement, 
anonymous is an idea, an idea of exposing corruption within the system... 
YOU ARE ANONYMOUS! Help by spreading this information,and facts the government
doesn't want you to know. 
WE ARE ANONYMOUS.
WE DO NOT FORGET. 
WE ARE LEGION. 
EXPECT US.

OK, OK, guys... IF the above is something the government doesn't want people to know,
then I'm doing my part! 

Here we have another  video that is prominently displayed within the bosom of this channel. 
And this is some pretty heady stuff. I mean, just look at the title "Anonymous - We can Change the World"

I'm not quite sure what I think about this one. My feelings? Ah, I have more of a handle on that. It's a blend of Unsettled, Confused, and Inspired and Encouraged. And that's not an emotional recipe I often come across.

Is this genuine? I mean are these people playing or are they really taking on "___________?" Or are they giving themselves a good time, posing as bad-ass rebels in a world in which clearly defined villains are so hard to come by that they are most often conjured up from our fears and our misperceptions? I mean, here we have a video citing real actions by the government, giving real quotes by government officials, detailing how basic Civil Rights are being trimmed. And that's all good, conforms to well established traditions of journalism, reminds me of America's Founding Fathers posting self-published Broad Sides on walls, giving opinions about governmental tyranny, and doing it anonymously in the lead up to the American Revolution. And yet, if we, The People, are so truly facing the revocation of our rights, how is it that a message like this remains and racks up additional views from folks like me without being yanked by the oppressor?






Interesting, too, that this video, posted under the name Anonymous Official, that is about Anonymous, takes on the trappings, the production techniques of a Hollywood movie about a phenomenon like Anonymous. For me, that just makes it all the harder to figure out who put this one together and what its being up on the web means. And maybe that's the very clever point of it. And I suppose all of these questions are inevitable in the world in which we live, and less face it, it's a world that very much needs an Anonymous or something very much like it going by another name. And what a great idea it is, that a group of concerned humans might endeavor to re-assert the sort of rights and liberties that America's founding fathers conceived and fought so hard for, and to do so by adopting and using for all its worth, the single resource meaningfully available for this purpose in a time in which governments have become so powerful and almighty. Is YouTube the Kentucky Long Rifle of our times?

This video is a lesson for educators, an important lesson!

16 year old builds tiny home to guarantee mortgage-free future 

OK, I have some questions. Not for this kid. NO, I have questions for my esteemed colleagues. I mean those high profile decision makers who I sat alongside as a member of the Cabinet of the Deputy Chancellor of Instruction, of the New York City Department of Ed. - the school system's highest level of authority. You know who you are! .. Top ranking educational experts... Earners of high salaries... Shapers of the destinies of 1,100,000 New York kids. Yes, I sat next to you and witnessed your unimaginative busy-ness for a few years as you perpetuated the status quo of education in the country's biggest school system and did it in the name of good administration and school reform.

Questions? Let's start with the most basic. Do you understand what Education is and what it's for? I doubt it, esteemed colleagues. Education has little to do with credits earned or test scores. It has little to do with diplomas or being ready for college (God, I cringe when you guys assert that the best indicator of the success of school is a student's ability to.... DO MORE SCHOOL!)  No, on any planet where sane, rational people focus on Education, it has much more to do with learning life skills, things that will serve as students transform into people, people involved in that thing we call LIFE. Education shouldn't be the absorbing of 'stuff', stuff that can be 'demonstrated' by students on standardized tests, artificial little events designed to see how well 'the monkey has been trained', things you guys referred to again and again as measures of "Accountability." Bottom line, Doctorate validated hacks, what of true worth did you push for having those kids learn?

And does it have to be that way? In this video we see a kid, who, as a student in a public high school, has taken on something of true worth. Can you imagine? He's not only learned about how to build a house, but in doing that... he's actually BUILT A HOUSE!. Is that relevant? Are you F-ing kidding? What could possibly be more relevant? No, colleagues, this isn't just some Vocational Ed. lesson.  This is reality, and it’s education that's prepared this kid to cope with it, to flourish in it. What's involved? Reading & Researching; Analyzing and Reflecting; Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (lots of  these things); Planning, and Problem Solving; Applied Learning; and on and on... Real Education! Good Education! Assessment? Accountability? Impact? For Christ sake, this kid now has a place to live for years to come! He's prepared himself for adulthood and prepared himself to help others and contribute! How do you score that, hacks?

Why am I so angry? You know, when I’m faced with the evidence of what kids who pass through our schools can't do, I don't get so angry. No, I can't muster up much ire because kids in Finland run circles around ours in doing math exercises. But when I see what kids, CAN do, then I get angry! Why do we waste so much of their precious time making them chase after the foolishness that folks like my former colleagues label as Education?

This video is heartwarming. This is a fine young man who's been given a fine educational experience. He's done something relevant. Learned tons of important things. Been engaged up to his eyebrows, and not only is he the better for it, so are we all. Please don't bother yourself about the details.As a way to make education meaningful and valuable, this IS do-able and while not all kids can build their own house (or can they?) something on this order can be made to happen for them all. This video is a lesson for educators, an important lesson!

Just one word...

The Graduate: Plastics

Let me start by pulling out of the old memory bank a couple of memories from my youth that will be forever emblazoned in my mind. First, there was that fateful Saturday morning in the late '50s. On that day, as was my mother's perrennial weekly ritual, she drove us a mile or so from our apartment to a moldering old A&P supermarket where we'd buy our week's worth of groceries. I kind of liked this place; knew it was something special because it was so old school, really an oversized pre-WWII style grocery store.  And it looked it in all of its details. My mom liked it because the A&P had the lowest prices on food of any store around. I got a kick out of wheeling a shopping cart through the aisles and looking at the old fashioned shelves stocked with cheap canned goods, the old fashioned plywood bins for the common varieties of fruit and produce that were carried. I remember the ancient zinc basket suspended by chains below the produce scale  and the little magazine rack where Ladies Home Journal, TV Guide, and the like could be leafed through. At any rate, my reward for being a good boy and 'helping' mom for the hour or two we scoured the aisles for the things on her hand-written list, was to be taken across the street to the 5 & 10 Cent Store (Woolworth's? Kresge's?)... and if  my mom could muster up a spare nickel (not necessarily an easy thing for her in those days) I was allowed to pick out of the bin in this bare bones pre-cursor to a family dollar store, a shiny new 'Tin Soldier'.

These were actually miniature figurines of soldiers that had been made by casting lead into a mold and then hand painted with bright, shiny enamel paint. They just felt so good in your hand - the hefty weight of the lead, the shiny finish of the enamel paint - you just knew that they were special! And then, one day, oh, maybe I was 9 years old or something; they were gone. And in their place was an assortment of plastic, injection molded miniature soldiers instead. Yuck! The plastic version, although it was roughly the same size and shape as its enameled lead predecessors, just came off as thoroughly CRUMMY. I shied away from them instinctively and held them with the same regard I might a big glass of chocolate milk that looked so good, but when I finally got it to my lips, tasted strongly of milk that had soured. Ugh! THAT was my first lesson about Plastic. Worse, pretty soon all toys for kids were made of plastic; an unending tide of crappiness was spreading over the world and taking over. It may sound funny, but I've never recovered from the shock of encountering that first plastic soldier.  It was one of the first instances I can remember of finding out that life is not likely to be what all of  us kids had hoped for.

Fast forward 10 years or so, to a time when the lesson described above had been gotten over and internalized by myself and all of my peers. I was now a freshman in college and out to the movies with a girlfriend. We thrilled to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. It was so much about the world we were discovering we had inherited. And its heroes were college kids, just a couple of years older than we were. And then came THAT scene. The one at the fancy party for family and fiends and neighbors held by Benjamin, the hero's parents to celebrate and announce his graduation from college. This is a cultural icon of a scene, in which Mr. McGuire, some friend of the family or other, someone who's superficially known Benjamin all his life, someone who we surmise get's caught up in the moment and spontaneously decides that he just has to share some wisdom of high value with this kid who is just about to launch his life into the real world, the one he must navigate now that school is over for him. And what does he have to offer as the cutting edge "Answer" to what the world needs and wants and what a young man should devote his life to to become successful?

The pompous ass, with his arm round the kid's shoulder looks deeply into his eyes asking him if he's listening, because he's about to reveal something of great import, and he says "I just want to say one word to you, just one word... PLASTICS!" And in that instant we understand something dreadful. We understand that the adults who control the world are clueless and something is so wrong with the world's values that it is doomed! The inmates are running the asylum and the quality of Crumminess that overwhelmed me a decade before in the guise of a cheaper toy solder, the only kind that would be available from that point forward,  was about to swallow the world.


 

Fast Forward another half century and we come to this startling video (below) that warns and advises us about just what it is that we humans are reaping due to our having taken Mr. McGuire's advice about Plastics being "The Answer" so thoroughly to heart..

Watch this! Inform yourself! And take some sort of action.  Tell the lady at the check out counter that, NO, you don't want any plastic bags.  Do something! There just MAY be a little time left, maybe...