Hi John,

I think this past week has been highly successful in broadening the scope of sources/materials for interpretation.  Especially if we are going to style “leadership” as concept that has to be explored as “culture”.   Then many things that relate to this study also relate to other human activities/endeavors/forms of production/performances.  

But, there several hurdles or impediments to this “broadening”.  Some of these are part of the cultural we’re part of (embedded norms for “how to see” and what we might do as a result of that seeing”).   I think in a way our culture dulls people from actions of interpretation.   It makes them passive consumers of other people’s production.   Usually at a price and with a dulled sort of consciousness to the insight that they could be doing this for free on their own.  

And that spells out a kind of divide in the DA students and faculty as well.   It’s the difference between actively “doing” and “interpreting” versus a different kind of doing that’s oriented toward “finding” and “receiving meaning”.  

If there is anything useful to be realized about leadership I think it has to come through actively doing and interpreting.  And that is precisely the dominant mode of good stuff in the arts I think?  Or am I mistaken?  And it doesn’t cost anything since you can do and interpret anything anywhere you are.....   Just like thinking and reflecting.   These are choices.  

Educating is helping people become aware of their ability (LOL) (that they are doomed) to choose and that they themselves are the cultural repository that resists this the most (most often).

Allan

PS  I'm very interested in "Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird are twelve too many for someone who still believes that facts are born not made, and that differences of perception reduce to differences of opinion."  Clifford Geertz    Especially the last phrase....  it seems very important to me in the activity of the course as we're teaching it.  

art in the making

making art is a kind of human performance.... not always exactly like a performance on stage....but still per-forming.

i'm wondering about the relationship "art" to

in-forming

de-forming

per-forming

re-forming

what's the relation of "form" to art?

if we understood the experiential engagement with making/performing.....situationally...."originally" as it's made and  observed in particular situations in time....might we not get a better qualitative grasp of something interesting?

But the received categories for "grasping" seem to me to always carry a lot of baggage....a lot of givens that in fact most of us who perform and create don't really mean to subscribe to?

Below: From

Below:  From 

http://www.runninganddoing.org

The blog I'm maintaining with Kurt Stuke (also a DA Student).   Between Tl 600, ED 5010 at PSU, I've been allocating myself toward Kurt's Bog recently since the highlight of the blog is him running a marathon on Mt. Desert Island (hmmmm on the day of your wedding, is it 10/18?) and Grace and I will be over there the week before and that particular day there celebrating our 40th.)

Interesting.   Or I may not remember your date correctly?    However....below is a post by Kurt recently.   May be relevant to things we have going.   Once we get over the hump with his IS I know I'll be able to think about the great stuff you are posting here.....

Allan

-------  

Reflection - Bourdieu

I feel pulled to Bourdieu's thoughts as a result of our recent transactions...

“A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code into which it is encoded.”

“A beholder who lacks the specific code feels lost in a chaos of sounds and rhythms, colors and lines, without rhyme or reason…he cannot move from the ‘primary stratum of the meaning we can grasp on the basis of our ordinary experience’ to the ‘stratum of secondary meanings,’ i.e. the ‘level of the meaning of what is signified’, unless he posses the concepts which go beyond the sensible properties and which identify the specifically stylistic properties of the work.”

Truth seems impossible; meaning seems illusory .