Our dog Michael, a big Pyrenees/shepherd mix with enormous teeth and even greater affection, simply cannot abide moose. This is a problem on several levels. On the lighthearted side, a nearby bank has a statue of a moose out front, and when we drive by, Michael hurls himself at the car windows. Michael doesn’t “get” statues, despite my efforts to explain. Come to think of it, however, most of us live amidst representations, and find ourselves beguiled, infuriated, and so forth, as the case may be.
I’m in the mountains, working insanely hard on an experimental, maybe impossible, book. It is a project that my friends and sometimes coauthors Doug and Mark and I have been struggling with for ages. But it is now or not. Some mountains don’t get climbed, some projects don’t get finished. I hate that, though, so I am working disturbed sleep cannot do simple tasks hard. Laundry! I’m writing this newsletter partially as distraction, and partially because I do not want your signal, gentle subscriber, to fade out altogether. One of our submarines is missing. I don’t even have the dogs with me, because I have files all over the floors in several rooms.
Last night, after writing as long as I could and walking in cold rain, I am drinking beer, making dinner, texting a cousin, listening to music. The usual. I’m waiting until a decent hour to go to sleep. I can’t even read. I poke my head outdoors, where it is still raining, and see this fine young bull. Moose are too big to get out of the weather; they just stand and take it. It looks miserable. But I’ve read that their major problem is keeping cool, because their digestive tracks generate a lot of heat. So perhaps the young bull welcomes the rain. After a while, he beds down on the other side of the driveway.
I have hundreds of pictures of moose, from newborns to huge bulls in aspens to old cows with snow on their backs. Have so far failed to finish the photo essay. Someday, Deo volante.
In July, I went to Ireland & Northern Ireland, mostly to meet with aforementioned friends and work on the book draft. We gave a multimedia/multiparticipant kind of conversation in the Sonic Lab at Queens College, in Belfast. We wanted to talk, and to encourage folks to contemplate the creation of “third spaces” for engaging present situations in the contemporary. Anthro theory stuff. It was sort of successful, and something of a podcast/film may emerge in due course, or maybe not.
After the session, a very French guy comes up and says you might like this:
Maxime Le Calve, an anthropologist working at Humboldt University Berlin, did this in real time. Mark is talking, I’m sitting with the glasses. (I don’t know the other people.) Maxime makes such images to capture the spatial relations of neuroscientists and surgeons in tumor conferences. He showed us some of them. They are witty, touching, somehow very humane. Like a nice Daumier, for doctors and the digital age? A book should be forthcoming. They should also be displayed in hospitals, as they capture the all too human problem of treatment. I think his stuff is brilliant, and am therefore singing his praises.
I’m a social media naif, but it occurs to me as I write this that I should do more of this, promoting other people’s work I find interesting. It’s easy to be generous (maybe the best thing about aging is it gets easier), and I often write nice notes. They might be even nicer if I made them more public.
Amy and I finished Progressive Corporate Governance Under Social Capitalism: Do the Right Thing or Share the Wealth? This article situates a couple of law review articles we’ve written together over the last few years, mostly about equity markets, in an understanding of US political economy that I’ve been developing since the financial crisis, well, maybe longer. This is pretty professional academic stuff. (“Please don’t tell anybody, I don’t do this very often.” Fatboy Slim) Even if you’re not a law professor, the form might be modestly interesting. It’s pretty technical in places, but much can be skimmed.
From the Ivory Tower to the Football Stadium will appear in the 200th anniversary issue of Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary. I argue that criticism of the university, including my own critiques, are often based on an idealization of a fundamentally different institution. As I phrase it, we tend to criticize a good dog for being a bad owl (the kind that flies at night). And dogs are indeed bad owls. But they might be good dogs, and what can we say about dogs? This is a start. (I circulated an earlier draft of this back in January. This is substantially revised/different and much better.)
I was hoping, but failed, to get any podcasts done over the last several weeks. See above, and I’ve paid attention to family. “Ah, the life or the work again, is that it, Mister?” James Cagney does Yeats. But you can catch up on my podcasts at David A Westbrook Intermittent Signal (Podcast). Please subscribe, it’s free. If only occasional.
I’m up before dawn. Last night’s rain dusted the high peaks, and the sunrise, when it comes, is glorious. Fall approaches.
Be well.
David A. Westbrook