The Tree of Jesse

In Christian iconology, the "tree of Jesse" refers to Isaiah 11:1, and the imagery it inspired.

The pertinent text (KJV) says: "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots".

In the Latin Vulgate, the passage reads: "Et egredietur virga de radice Iesse et flos de radice eius ascendet," so we see that a Latin term for a tender green shoot, "virga," [with the near-pun, obvious enough to western Europe for centuries before King James' day, to "virgo" or "Virgin"] became the sturdier-seeming "rod" in English.

But I'm thinking just now of the window in Chartres Cathedral in which a tree rises from a sleeping Jesse, and the rod, the trunk of the tree, consists of figures of David, Solomon, then two other crowned but uncertain referents, then Mary and at the tree's peak -- Jesus.

The 19th century French architect and theorist, Viollet-le-Duc, rhapsodized about this window, as an achievement in color. Then he turned to the issue of perspective -- not something, in his opinion, that can possibly enter into the particular form of art that produced this window.

"The radiation of translucent colors in windows cannot be modified by the artist; all his talent consists in profiting by it, according to a given harmonic scheme on a single plane, like a rug, but not according to an effort at aerial perspective. Do what you like, a glass window never does and never can represent anything but a plane surface; its real virtues even exist only on that condition. Every attempt to present several planes to the eye is fatal to the harmony of color, without producing any illusion in the spectator."

Shafer's Takedown of an Urban Myth

There's an urban legend in circulation about "pharm parties." You can read about it in David Emery's Urban Legends Blog for example.

The gist of it is that teenagers get together and mix up pills they've stolen from their parents' medicine cabinets into a big bowl, then they each grab pills from the bowl -- randomly of course -- and toss the fistful down their throats, with whatever high, or other consequences, might follow.

Now that I've just mentioned this legend, I'll say this: Please don't anyone cite me as a source for that! I have absolutely no reason to believe any such thing has ever happened anywhere!

What is fascinating, though, and sad, is the way such legends some times make it into the "mainstream press." At its most innocent, an easy example of this is the some-large-number-of-words-that-Eskimo-have-for-snow meme, which makes it into print because some lazy writer figures that "everyone knows" this. And when he puts it into print, that serves as a legitimate source for somebody else to do so.

But leave snow out of this, except perhaps for snow jobs. Jack Shafer of SLATE has been commendably industrious in dogging the legend of the pharm parties, devoting seven columns to the subject since June 2006. (That link will take you to the first of them.) Kids certainly steal their parents' pills now and then. That has been happening for at least as long as medicine cabinets have been a fixture in bathrooms. And even this business of mixing them in a bowl at a party -- for all we know it may have happened somewhere. The point though is that all the 'evidence' seems to be of the 'a friend of a friend went to one' variety, and that has become the basis for scary stories about a 'troubling trend.'

Here is Shafer's latest takedown of sloppy reporting of this variety.

This time it is the San Francisco Chronicle that's been caught using sloppy non-source sources because it makes a scary tale. I have done enough, in an Ed Sullivan kind of way, and I now ,move to the side of the stage so you can click on that link and enjoy Shafer's column for yourself.

A Bit On the History of Architecture

A random quote from Tom Wolfe's 1981 book, FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE.

"The battle to be the least bourgeois of all became somewhat loony. For example, early in the game, in 1919, Gropius had been in favor of bringing simple craftsmen into the Bauhaus, yeomen, honest toilers, people with knit brows and broad fingernails who would make things by hand for architectural interiors, simple wooden furniture, simple pots and glassware, simple this and simple that. This seemed very working class, very nonbourgeois....Theo van Doesburg, the fiercest of the Dutch manifesto writers, took one look at Gropius' Honest Toilers ... and sneered and said: How very bourgeois. Only the rich could afford handmade objects, as the experience of the Arts and Crafts movement in England had demonstrated. To be nonbourgeois, art must be machine-made."

collegiate gothic

I saw a neat story in the Wall Street Journal of yesterday, written by Catesby Leigh.

It concerns architecture and, in particular, the style known as "collegiate gothic." Despite the proliferation of modernist boxes on campuses, there is still an idea at large that the Ur-college building should have (Leigh's words) "picturesque asymmetries, crenellated towers, elaborate oriels, and eye-catching grostesquries."

The Hogwarts portrayed in the Harry Potter movies is prep school gothic, but it has such crucial features as the limestone and the high-ceilinged halls right.

Anyway, Leigh was writing as part of the Journal's Leisure and the Arts section, praising the architect of new construction on the campus of Princeton University. That architect is Demetri Porphyrios, who is scheduled to lecture on his designs today, in advance of the formal dedication of the new buildings tomorrow.

The new construction came about because Meg Whitman, the president and chief executive of eBay, donated milions to Princeton, and the new buildings, for both classrooms and dorms, were what the college decided to do with it.

The result? a resurrection of collegiate gothic, an "irregularly sloping landscape populated by an architectural ensemble that echoes in the imagination" and so forth.

And some of you thought there'd never be a good reason for a trip to New Jersey. Tsk.

Writing about music

Elvis Costello said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture, it's a really stupid thing to want to do."

That sort of comment is cute, but not especially perceptive. After all, in principle a dance could as easily be about architecture as it can be about, say, a children's Christmas Party or a beautiful maiden magically transformed into a swan.

People in Mr. Costello's line of work would presumably like to see "writing about music" limited to, say, press releases advertising their gigs. Its critical writing about music about which they get grumpy.

That is, of course, the set-up to the wonderful movie "Almost Famous," where an adolescent boy learns how to write about music, and how to get an interview.

What about jazz music? Writing on that subject seems especially difficult, since the content is uniquely slippery, jazz musicians being perhaps uniquely wedded to extemporaneous creation.

Here, though, is a forum on the subject:

http://www.jazzhouse.org/nlib/index.php3?read=writing1

My point? Don't ask. I'm thinking aloud, you're just listening in.