Coltrane: A Biography by Dr. Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins

the letter o wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 6:40 am Have A Bleedin Guess, Paul Hanley's Hex Enduction Hour memoir/dissection

How do you like it?

andyman wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 6:26 am Jim, have you read much Borges? Interested to hear what you thought of Invisible Cities in comparison, if so.

I read and loved the Labyrinths collection 30 years ago, and have Collected Fiction here.
Man, it is hard to beat those stories. I still think of Funes the Memorious or Pierre Menard in some connection pretty often, contemporary or otherwise.
I did have the feeling that much of the general feel of Invisible Cities was deeply indebted to Borges throughout the book and caught myself early on thinking roughly "Maybe I'd rather be re-reading Labyrinths", but started to appreciate it much more as its own thing about half-way in. I would like to go back and chew on it again. Making music, I often think of trying to make a sort of abstract dream city or space in a way, to make something abstract and ephemeral, conjure something up in the air that somehow evokes feelings of trajectories through a city, or exploring some sort of hyper-object, it's difficult to put into words. But the book also has a lot to offer there too, as inspiration.

jimmy spako wrote: Sun Oct 01, 2023 5:01 am

andyman wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 6:26 am Jim, have you read much Borges? Interested to hear what you thought of Invisible Cities in comparison, if so.

I read and loved the Labyrinths collection 30 years ago, and have Collected Fiction here.
Man, it is hard to beat those stories. I still think of Funes the Memorious or Pierre Menard in some connection pretty often, contemporary or otherwise.
I did have the feeling that much of the general feel of Invisible Cities was deeply indebted to Borges throughout the book and caught myself early on thinking roughly "Maybe I'd rather be re-reading Labyrinths", but started to appreciate it much more as its own thing about half-way in. I would like to go back and chew on it again. Making music, I often think of trying to make a sort of abstract dream city or space in a way, to make something abstract and ephemeral, conjure something up in the air that somehow evokes feelings of trajectories through a city, or exploring some sort of hyper-object, it's difficult to put into words. But the book also has a lot to offer there too, as inspiration.

Superb. I may have to revisit it myself through that lens then.

enframed wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 10:22 pm

the letter o wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 6:40 am Have A Bleedin Guess, Paul Hanley's Hex Enduction Hour memoir/dissection

How do you like it?

Just finished it! It is slim, but if you're after a firsthand breakdown of the detail and circumstances of the Hex recording, it won't disappoint. Lots of inter-band stuff laid bare with regards who wrote and/or performed what (with MES often taking credit anyway), and an informed stab at pulling out some of the lyrical inspirations and whatnot. For instance, this bit from Iceland...

Cast the runes against your own soul
Roll up for the underpants show
And be humbled in Iceland

Refers to MES enduring a luggage inspection by immigration officers in front of the rest of the band, his drawers being held aloft for all to see.

I enjoyed it.

the letter o wrote: Sun Oct 01, 2023 7:45 am

enframed wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 10:22 pm

the letter o wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 6:40 am Have A Bleedin Guess, Paul Hanley's Hex Enduction Hour memoir/dissection

How do you like it?

Just finished it! It is slim, but if you're after a firsthand breakdown of the detail and circumstances of the Hex recording, it won't disappoint. Lots of inter-band stuff laid bare with regards who wrote and/or performed what (with MES often taking credit anyway), and an informed stab at pulling out some of the lyrical inspirations and whatnot. For instance, this bit from Iceland...

Cast the runes against your own soul
Roll up for the underpants show
And be humbled in Iceland

Refers to MES enduring a luggage inspection by immigration officers in front of the rest of the band, his drawers being held aloft for all to see.

I enjoyed it.

Might get it just for those lyrical insights. Hahaha. Love that.

I’ve been burning through Dan Fante’s books. Nightmarish struggles with the bottle. Nothing about his books romanticize drinking. Truly some next-level self-flagellation.

kokorodoko wrote: Fri Sep 29, 2023 2:25 pmHegel: The Science of Logic

The aim set out, as mentioned previously in the Phenomenology, is to make philosophy scientific. What that means is being able to work fully within its own element, being able to develop from its own concepts, relying on nothing outside itself (i.e. something contingent) for its explication but strictly on the laws and principles of its own components (i.e. what is necessary in it).

All science, as Hegel sees it, aims at having its object becoming thought, at extracting a comprehensive account of its object's own operations, such that this account integrates with the world of which the object is in fact a part - in a word, becoming theory. Science universally speaking is in this regard essentially the same, regardless of the particular object. Regardless too of the fact that the empirical is a necessary step of the procedure, the final step ends up in thought. Thought is therefore the true and proper element of science, where any object of science is fully realized, develops into its full form. The resulting thought which is considered the truth of an object revealed through investigation, is not allowed to stand on its own as an expression of this truth, but must contain all the necessary preceeding steps which produced it. This entire chain is called the "concept" of the object. The concept is the thought which retains within itself a connection to its origin, to its object, to that which it is about.

Philosophy is uniquely placed here in that its object is thought itself. It therefore has itself for object. The proper element of a philosophy made scientific is therefore that which aims at explicating the real operations of thought, i.e. Logic. But a logic developed into a science cannot be merely algorithmic, but must account, in its explication of itself, for the fact that it operates within and upon its own medium.

When thought is put into the position of being the object, some curious things come to light. In all kinds of study, we are in the situation of a that which is to be discovered and a this which is to do the discovering. But as it turns out, both this and that are determinations of thought, given that their meaningful relationship is conceived as determinations in thought, even though one of them might be determined under this conception as beyond thought. In the case where thought is the object of study, this is clear from the outset. This and that are now identical. Except that they are also, unmistakably, separate and distinct. Moreover, that thought sets out to study itself means that it does not know itself, which appears very strange - knowing is after all an attribute of thought, a way of existing for thought, it *is* thought. Thought determines some objects to be beyond itself, which explains how they are unknown to it, but yet when thought itself is the object it can still appear to itself as unknown and foreign - even though it must know at the same time that its other is itself, since that is what is contained in the concept it has of itself, any object in thought is thought.

All these things - separation within itself, distinction within the identical, reflecting on itself, appearing itself as other to itself - must then be taken as essential determinants of thought.

Moreover, in relating itself to itself as something distinct from itself, and still comprehending this distinction, thought discovers that this distinction itself takes place within thought, a thought that is not an additional determination to those given, but rather the context of those determinations, and thus "negative" in relation to them.

Confusingly, this negative contextual thought must be taken as logically prior to the determinations, since it grounds and contains them, but at the same time as logically subsequent, since it is derived from them.

enframed wrote: Sun Oct 01, 2023 10:25 am

the letter o wrote: Sun Oct 01, 2023 7:45 am

enframed wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 10:22 pm

How do you like it?

Just finished it! It is slim, but if you're after a firsthand breakdown of the detail and circumstances of the Hex recording, it won't disappoint. Lots of inter-band stuff laid bare with regards who wrote and/or performed what (with MES often taking credit anyway), and an informed stab at pulling out some of the lyrical inspirations and whatnot. For instance, this bit from Iceland...

Cast the runes against your own soul
Roll up for the underpants show
And be humbled in Iceland

Refers to MES enduring a luggage inspection by immigration officers in front of the rest of the band, his drawers being held aloft for all to see.

I enjoyed it.

Might get it just for those lyrical insights. Hahaha. Love that.

I've read Steve Hanley's memoir (very good), MES's (uhhh), Brix's (me me me), and The Fallen. I thought I was done.

I haven't read Hagel, but I imagine that Godel, Bertrand Russell and Alan Turing had plenty to add when it comes to this matter of contingent knowledge and proof. Hagel wouldn't have suspected, but this quest to create a unified, formalised philosophy would seem to have Incompleteness Theorem and Halting Problem written all over it. If it breaks on maths, good luck applying it to ethics.