Monster landscapes

This was too fun and too Halloween-y to not share. From the blog Twisted Sifter:

You know how thrift stores often have a load of outdated, sometimes decrepit landscape paintings for sale? A few artists thought they would breathe new life into them by painting in monsters (which, if you'll notice, they did smartly-- matching each painting's original brush stroke style, general color palatte, etc). If only I had inherited my mother's painterly skills....

 My personal favorite:

I've been busy...

Watching general conference with sickie Russell... I offered him tampons to stave off the runny nose, but he opted for manly TP.

Russell's sweet parents Gary and Carla took us to see the world's biggest movable radio telescope! It's in a valley in West Virginia, and the the whole town has no wireless devices or cell phones or anything of that nature because the dish would pick it up!!!

Imagine Dragons concert!!!

BYU v. UVA game. This was the only pleasant memory from that game. If you were there, or tried to watch it on tv, you know why.

Sunday afternoon trip to the Botanical Gardens! My favorite picture of us :)

A Few Thoughts on Faith and Doubt

There have been two excellent articles recently published about the entrance of doubt into the hearts of Mormons when historical information-- not all of it factual and much of it bereft of its context-- comes to light over the internet. I myself have fought that fight. I know the feeling. For me, that doubt has actually improved my faith, tempered it, made solid my foundation in God and Christ, and not in man.

Dr. Terryl Givens describes these trials of faith, or rather trials of doubt, saying, “Most of the impetus for disaffection does not come from new information per se [...] It comes from feelings of betrayal when church curricular materials are found to have presented an incomplete account of the Mormon past.” Once upon a time I wrote about my trial of faith here on this blog. I described it in this way:

I felt like a canyon had opened up in my heart, I walked like a zombie through church, hearing the same words I had heard before but just letting them all drop into the giant crevice. I am happy to report, though, that, through counselling and a good bishop and sheer force of mind, that rift healed over. It did not disappear. I keep the scar hidden, but I know I will have to show it to others some day who also struggled. I accepted the idea of having a shelf to put my questions on. I found answers or at least balm, little by little, which was most certainly extended to me in answer to sweet prayers uttered on my behalf by loving family members, and maybe a little in response to my own strangled prayers. Most importantly, I stomped down on feelings of guilt about certain choices I had made and refused to ever let them spring up again. I go to church and, the much more effective spiritual act for me, I go to the temple. That is my point of rest. 

And it still is. I go there and speak to God, and he listens. Just this past week he listened.

I found it interesting how closely my experience of doubt mirrored that described by Hans Mattson, a Swedish LDS leader, in the New York Times: “I felt like I had an earthquake under my feet, [...] Everything I’d been taught, everything I’d been proud to preach about and witness about just crumbled under my feet. It was such a terrible psychological and nearly physical disturbance.” A friend of mine posted Mattson's story on facebook with his own thoughts, which eloquently sum up my own feelings about it, too: 

I appreciated this look into some of the more questionable sides of my church. I'm saddened by many cover-ups that my church has performed; but I am uplifted by a more open honesty I see coming out of church leadership. The new introduction to the Second Official Declaration was just the opening of a floodgate. The more honest we are with our history, including the darkest chapters that have been destroyed or glossed over in the archives of the church's history department, the more we truly understand the nature of man, and how to become better followers of Christ.

To me, there is no such thing as blind faith, and we do ourselves and His chosen servants a disservice when we don't personally seek truth. There is not one thing I have faith in that does not have a personal physical manifestation or experience to support it. My faith is founded in my experiences and my personal connection to God, not to anyone else.

Sometimes, men are wrong, and there are countless examples in this dispensation of God's prophets and apostles being wrong. Does that mean we're excused from listening to them? Sustaining them? Does this mean we can pick and choose the commandments we're to obey? Absolutely not. But we are commanded to seek out truth in our own mind, to create a personal testimony. The spirit is the ultimate guide, and if we are truly in line with God's will, we will know for ourselves through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

I am grateful for the opportunity I have had to face doubt and work through it. The pain of that experience was real, and excruciating. But miraculously, I cannot feel it anymore. I believe that my Father in Heaven pushed a giant delete key in my heart, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and allowed me to return to peace and faith. Pioneer Day happened recently, and as members retold the many famous, tragic, and beautiful stories of physical hardship that those saints of the 19th century endured for their faith, I felt comforted and proud, knowing that my own way has had rocks thrown up, in the form of historical facts that cause doubt. I am proud to report that I have pushed hard and overcome and am still striving towards Zion, and that God still attends me on my journey.

One last thought: I found it interesting that Dr. Richard L. Bushman, probably the most famous and fair Mormon historian (not employed by the church, but in academia), opined that, “you could [not] prove there is more disaffection from Mormonism now than before.” I've had several friends point to the perceived rise in dissatisfaction among church members, and a concurrent silence from church leadership, as examples of the church's faultiness. To me, the presence of the Mormon blogosphere, the publishing of the Joseph Smith papers, the recent review of the scriptures' introductions and references, Michael Otterson's magnificent columns, the Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research (FAIR) and the Sunstone symposia all point to an active and faith-sustaining conversation rising among members. I also believe we are witnessing an improved and honest effort by church leaders to make bare past leaders' faults and yet affirm that this church, full of flawed members at all times, nevertheless contains God-given principles designed to bring the ultimate peace and happiness to man. 

"Doubt can be the beginning of deeper understanding, as it was for Mormonism’s founder," Terryl Givens reminded us. “It is true that more information has been the cause of the current controversies, but more information is also the answer,” said Richard Bushman. “We need to know everything we can about disturbing events and then put them in a broader perspective. Usually people can see that there is more than one way of understanding what occurred.” In last April's General Conference, Elder Holland asked, “Be kind regarding human frailty — your own as well as that of those who serve with you in a church led by volunteer, mortal men and women. Except in the case of his only perfect Begotten Son, imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to him, but he deals with it. So should we.”

In the words of historian Don Bradley, whose trial of faith took him out of membership of the church and back into it, “The central claim of Mormonism is not that God spoke to a fallible human being in 1820, the central claim is that God can and will talk to fallible human beings today. When we reach out to him, we will find his hand reaching out toward us, waiting.” I know this to be true. I'm headed to church today to affirm my belief in God and to ask for his help navigating the days and years. I love Him, I love His Son, and I am grateful for their patience and kindness, it makes the difference in my life.

iPhoto Blitz

In April, my darling boss gave me her old iPhone 4. I have put its camera to good use. In case you've wanted to know how my spring and summer have gone:

USA. Tailgating with a fuzzy patriot.

Some random lady gave me and three friends her pit passes, so we got to inspect the Richmond Intnl Speedway before the race started!

Turns out NAScars go through a lot of tires in one night.

Cobb gets cheesy in Botswana on Embassy Day.

Cobb refused to eat the Bostswanan grub offered to us (on fork). I had to do the deed myself.
Bleeeeeh!

Kathleen, my triathlon training partner! At the Lake Anna Half-Ironman.

My Half-Ironman relay team. Kirsti run, me swim, Ray bike.

The two Mo relay teams working it out after the race.

Mom and pops flew out for my graduation from GW! I'm finally DONE!!!!

Mom and I @ Chrissy's wedding in Fayetteville, NC.

Duck beach!! Pine Island!!!

Happy birthday Spencie!!

I love Corolla, NC. So much. My home away from home.

Driving back by my lonesome at 5 in the morning.

One Million Bones project out on the Mall.

Nannying baby Andy has devolved my sense of humor. I probably laughed at this for at least 15 minutes and  I'm not exaggerating. Hehe. Ipood!

Finally framed and hung all my art in my room!

I host So You Think You Can Dance parties every week and most the time it's me and a bunch of dudes.

The atrium of the Guggenhemin, as sculpted by artist James Turrell.

Everyone in the Gugg atrium looking up at the light installation.

This is Russell. He came to NYC with me on my birthday. We went on a walk down to the Highline Park in Chelsea.

And we looked good.

Smokeline BBQ on the Highline- possibly the best BBQ I will ever eat. PERFECT golden birthday dinner!!!!

We also saw Spiderman! (I give it a C- though. Lots of opinions to share but not here)

I came home to a beautiful bday surprise from Best Friend!!!!!!!!!!!!

Walking over the 14th St. bridge on the 4th of July. The fleet of boats waiting to watch fireworks was almost as picturesque as the fireworks themselves! 

... Almost.

USA! USA! USA!

I made him do it.

Tiny boyfriend and baby boyfriend and I at lunch. We are a happy group!!

Tiny boyfriend and I swimming at the club, our favorite thing :)

James Bond and the Sublime

I keep waiting for someone with a background in German philosophy to write about the obvious connections made between James Bond and the concept of the aesthetic sublime in Skyfall, but so far the entire internet is failing and so I take it upon myself to do the deed.

*PS There are movie spoilers in this post*

Now, I do need to get the obvious art in the movie out of the way before I go to the non-obvious art. Ahem. All art lovers, including myself, were delighted to see the British National Gallery in Skyfall, and enthralled when James Bond and his new quartermaster hold a hilariously frigid conversation about the 1839 painting The Fighting Temeraire by J. M. W. Turner:

C'est magnifique, non?

The 98-gun Temeraire was one of the most celebrated, vicious warships in the British Navy, playing a preeminent role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. I'm no war historian, but even I found the history of this ship alluring. In Turner's painting, the Temeraire is light and ethereal, a ghostly shell of its former beauty and brute force. It is conspicuously constrained behind the vivid, black, smoke-puffing steam engine--a very modern contraption-- that hauls it away for scrap after fourteen years of lethal service to the crown in 1812.

Throughout Skyfall there are themes of aging and anxiety about modernity, both of which are encapsulated in this painting. James Bond himself displays an ill-tempered longing for past glory and ability. I noticed that the director did lots of visual tricks to demonstrate the ideas of age and clouded vision. Skyfall messes with James Bond's eyesight, and ours, in various ways: light, dark, smoke, water, fire, and human frailty. For the first time, we wonder if James Bond is really as sharp, as righteous, as we have always assumed him to be.

Remember when he totally failed all this tests?

Couldn't get the bad guy that time.

Seeking a killer through a revolving maze of glass and neon.

There is a second entrance of the Temeraire in the movie, perhaps not as highlighted as the first, but just as thematically loaded. In the final scene, after M's death, James Bond chooses to continue his duties and trust his new leader Mallory, played by Ralph Finnes. We see this painting on the wall of Mallory's office:

It's Thomas Buttersworth's oil painting, H.M.S. “Victory” heavily engaged at the battle of Trafalga, from 1825. Sailing alongside Lord Nelson's ship The Victory is, you guessed it, The Temeraire! The past is present again! Ability is eternal! There is a connection to be drawn between M's death and Lord Nelson's death at the Battle of Trafalgar, but that's not really what this post is meant to dwell upon. Ok the obvious art has been mentioned, time for philosophy.

----

The concept of "the sublime" is a storied philosophical one. It's been around since antiquity, first appearing in the writings of Longinus, who used it to describe great and lofty powers of persuasion. It didn't became a lodestar of Western philosophy, however, until the 18th and 19th centuries, where it overtook almost every facet of British and German philosophy. Immanuel Kant is someone no art historian will ever be able to get away from ("Without Kant, you can't!" I believe was our favorite quip in Historiography) because he applied the idea of the sublime to aesthetics. I cannot emphasize this enough: the Sublime kind of ruled supreme in Western thought processes for over a century (I'd liken it to the current mood of secular relativism).

To Kant, there is a profound dichotomy of feeling when we view anything. Either a vision is beautiful,  and thus constrained (we see it, we love it, we take it into ourselves, the end), or it is sublime. A sublime sight is both terrifying and entrancing. It is boundless. We are without power to contain or describe what is before us. "Above all, the sublime [had] come to refer to the 'rush' of intense aesthetic pleasure paradoxically stemming from the displeasure of fear, horror or pain."*** 

The Romantics felt this was the infinitely more interesting experience, and sought a thousand different ways to recreate the sublime through art, particularly landscapes. Often, in German and British Romantic paintings, the sublime is represented by a natural disaster: earthquake, avalanche, stormy sea, etc. Later, when the artist Caspar David Friedrich ruled the German art roost, the sublime was also connoted by Gothic ruins of castles and cathedrals.

C. D. Friedrich. Monk by the Sea. Oil. 1809.

You can see how the ghostly Turner Temeraire painting fits into this schemata.

Often, landscape paintings of the sublime included a small person, back to us, viewing the intense and unfathomable scene. We are meant to symbolically inhabit his or her vision. We enter the experience of the sublime through their eyes:

Friedrich. Wander Above the Sea of Fog. Oil. 1818. Kunsthalle Hamburg, GER.

Myself, I always found the concept of the sublime to be a little self-indulgent. Like today's adrenaline junkies but more nerdy, philosophers of the sublime were captivated by the sensations within themselves as they viewed unstoppable forces outside of themselves. It wasn't REALLY about the sea, or the fog, or the moldering castle, it was about the dandy who viewed them.

One could argue that we are still subject to the powers of sublime today, as we find ourselves motionless before a car crash, or photographs of 9/11, or the Boston Bombings.

Despite my reservations about the writers and promulgators of the philosophy, the more modern interpretation of the sublime object-- something both beautiful and dangerous-- applies, with great ease and value, to the icon James Bond. Blue eyes, magnificent physique, kills without hesitation... he is the sublime personified. Why else would this one spy last 50 years in the cinema spotlight when countless others have been retired? (Val Kilmer's The Saint, we hardly knew thee...). Precisely because he lives out our greatest fantasies of both violence and passion.

In Skyfall, we get to gaze a little longer on the enigma of James Bond; we take a look at his past as he travels to his family's home, where an unknown disaster bereft him of his parents years before. There, the sublime is suggested through even more visual tricks:

Moldering, slightly tragic, stone home.

It's beautifully tragic, and the director had fun capturing its demise  from every possible angle and by every possible source: gunshots, invasion, fire...

This is the scene that first got me thinking about the link between James Bond and the sublime. It has an uncanny resemblance to Friedrich's masterpiece, Abbey in the Oakwood:

Oil on canvas. 1810. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

And, true to British cinema, they conclude the film with James Bond, acting as a stand in for the viewer, gazing out into the great metropolis of London, the true reincarnation of the sublime, of our present modernity, unfathomable and entrancing: