I wrote a quick blog post on Raise the Hammer in response to a New York Times article called Cities Compete in Hipness Battle to Attract Young. Hamilton has a lot to learn in this regard, as the many people who leave Hamilton when they get into their twenties attests – including some of you.

Drop by RTH and leave a comment if you wish.

[tags]urbanism, culture[/tags]

I have a website client who owns a fitness club in a small town here in Ontario. He recently asked me to update his website to advertise his latest offering: pole dancing classes, offered by a company called Aradia Fitness.

The poster he sent me as the basis for the update reads in part:

Ladies! As seen on TV, Pole Dancing for fitness classes have finally arrived! We offer you the most exhilarating and empowering experience – EVER! Learn pole dancing and sensual movement creating a fit, feminine body and a confident, liberated state of mind. For women, by women – any shape, any fitness level!

Pole dancing is not the only offering from this company. Their website is currently advertising “Xmas Themed Lapdance and Stripping workshops”, which are presumably also intended as a means of empowerment.

I happened to meet one of the founders of this company at a trade show back in the summer. She is a confident, independent, successful businesswoman, and in that sense is a model for what feminists have long sought to achieve.

On the other hand, her company’s offerings revolve around practices that many call exploitive and demeaning to women.

Is this an example of “taking something back” in the same positive way some people explain the use of the “n-word” by black people? Or is this simply commercial exploitation and perpetuation of demeaning roles for women?

There was a guest book in the apartment we stayed at in Rome. The first page had a note from the apartment rental company asking guests what they thought about their stay. The remaining pages were filled with comments left by guests in various languages.

Partway through the guest book I found this entry, which I copied down in my notebook. I have edited it a little bit for clarity and spelling.

———

October 14 – 18, 2005

You want me to say something about this place, well it stinks. It smells like 9000 cigarettes were smoked in here yesterday. This entire city stinks, the streets are so fucking narrow they trap the car exhaust and you can’t get the smell of diesel out of your nose. Plus, all the dog shit.

I went out last night and walked around. I had to dodge a patch of vomit and I stumbled into this woman. She smelled of perfume but I don’t know how good it was. She jabbered something at me in Italian. She had a hot ass.

I said I was sorry and she started speaking English. She asked me if I was American but I said Canadian (I’m American). It worked and she warmed up. These people have no gratitude, not for WWII or anything.

When she asked me where I was going I lied and said just buying cigarettes. I was keeping my options open. No use, because she said her boyfriend was at this bar nearby, but she invited me in for a drink.

I should have known better but I followed her down a little alley and into this dank little place called (as far as I can tell from the sign), “BAR”.

Started drinking with her and her boyfriend and a couple of other people who didn’t speak much English. I just kept drinking (they have a great drink here made with crushed ice + sugar + lime juice + vodka, mostly just vodka but tasty).

Next thing I know I wake up and I’m outside and it’s morning. I’m laying in the alley with no clue how I got there. There’s a dead pigeon right in front of my nose. Its head is crushed and the beak is squished out of its face, barely attached to the skull by a few strands of nerves and tendons.

It stank. But not as bad as this apartment.

Paul R – Ypsilanti, Michigan

P.S. If you find my wallet it’d be great if you could mail it to me at [address deleted].

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice has this sculpture of an apparently aroused man on a horse in the back garden:

The horse has a look of desperation. Here’s a close-up of its head (note that there is a light reflection that makes it look like the horse is looking downward, but if you look closely, you’ll see his pupil as an indentation in the eye – he is actually looking upward):

I always feel out of my element in art museums because I don’t know anything about art. I know I like modern art best, but I rarely feel as though I have any understanding of the point the artist is trying to put across.

When I was in high school, I would argue in English class about poetry. The teacher would always interpret the meaning of the poem in a certain way, typically weighty and metaphysical, which I would dispute.

I wasn’t convinced that poets always had a deeper meaning when they wrote. I thought that maybe Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening might just really be a poem about a guy out riding his horse.

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

When I first saw this sculpture I laughed. It seemed goofy, the sort of thing I see in art museums and don’t understand, like Frost’s poem in high school. So I photographed it.

But this sculpture has stuck in my mind, more than any other artwork I think I’ve ever seen. So without knowing a thing about it, I will attempt an interpretation of it, which I will then compare to an interpretation by an expert, if I can find one. Here goes.

The sculpture shows man’s willingness to subjugate others even as he himself is ruled by a higher power (or a belief in one).

The man’s arms are extended in the form of a cross, and he looks upward. His expression is resolute but also supplicant, as though he is asking for something only god can give him but is steadfastly certain that god will do so. He is dependent but also filled with confidence.

His head faces one way but his penis points in a different direction – “the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). Like his relationship with god, his relationship with his penis is characterized by dependency but it also drives him forward – thrusts him forward, you might say.

Beneath all this, the horse is suffering. He is driven forward by the man on top, but he enjoys none of the confidence that the man does, because he has no faith in the man. He is unable to escape his fate and knows it will likely be grim.

The horse represents both nature and man’s domination of it, and man’s domination of those people that are weaker than him.

That’s my take, now let’s see what others have to say. The sculpture is called The Angel of the City (L’angelo della citta ) by Marino Marini (try saying his name out loud, it’s pure honey). Here’s a description of some his work:

The evolution of the subject of the horse and rider reflects Marini’s personal response to that changing context. The theme first appears in his work in 1936, when the proportions of horse and rider are relatively slender and both figures are poised, formal, and calm. By the following year the horse rears and the rider gestures.

In 1940 the forms become simplified and more archaic in spirit, and the proportions become squatter. By the late 1940s the horse is planted immobile with its neck extended, strained, ears pinned back, and mouth open, as in the present example, which conveys the qualities characteristic of this period of Marini’s work – affirmation and charged strength associated explicitly with sexual potency.

Later, the rider becomes increasingly oblivious of his mount, involved in his own visions or anxieties. Eventually he was to topple from the horse as it fell to the ground in an apocalyptic image of lost control, paralleling Marini’s feelings of despair and uncertainty about the future of the world.

That’s about all I found. I’m not sure if my interpretation holds up or not. In the process of seeking meaning in this piece, however, I think I’ve learned a little bit about art.

[tags]modern art, art, sculpture, guggenheim, Venice[/tags]

This trip to Europe is thoroughly enjoyable, but I feel an uneasy guilt as the mountainous terrain near Florence flashes by the windows of the train.

We arrived in Europe by plane, of course, a form of transportation that is bad for the environment, particularly in its production of greenhouse gases. Now we’re getting around by train, which is less harmful but still not great.

The source of my unease is the papers I have with me, The Guardian and The International Herald Tribune, both with stories emphasizing my personal contribution to the planetary problem of global warming.

The Herald Tribune carries a story about environmental criticism of airlines (as it turns out, I can’t find the paper, I must have thrown it out). Air travel is by far the worst form of transportation because of its massive fuel consumption, and now an environmental group has started a campaign on the issue.

In The Guardian, Madeline Bunting writes a wistful piece set on November 6, 2046, looking back 40 years and attempting an explanation to an imaginary grandson for the folly of our times:

The problem was that we were intoxicated with an idea of individual freedom. With hindsight, that understanding of freedom was so impoverished that it amounted to nothing more than a greedy egotism of doing whatever you wanted whenever. We understood freedom largely in terms of shopping and mobility (we were restless, and liked travel of all kinds).

Harsh words, and like many of the people who’ve read them, I’m sure, I sit here trying to think of why they don’t apply to me.

Truthfully, I don’t understand freedom as shopping or mobility, nor do I agree with Bunting when she goes on to say that the “most precious freedom of all” is “freedom from fear”. The most precious freedom is freedom to be as one is, and to grow; it’s true fear is a potent inhibitor of this freedom, but one can be lulled or seduced into its loss too, unafraid.

Travel, for me, is not this seduction of thoughtless pleasure, it’s an unfolding of new experience that I hope will change my perceptions in some way. If it weren’t for the environmental issues I am only now becoming aware of, I would recommend that everyone travel abroad to experience other ways of life.

Paradoxically, these ways of life often teach environmentalism by example. I’m thinking of the superb waste management of The Netherlands (they have no landfills), the dense, functional and vibrant city centres all across Europe, and the excellent transportation systems in cities like Paris.

The water conservation techniques of arid countries in the Middle East also come to mind, although I’ve never seen these first-hand. This is a good lesson, because none of the things other countries do better than Canada require travel to understand. For the average person who doesn’t read about urban planning or recycling facilities in their spare time, however, travel powerfully illustrates the possible.

In the end, for me these are nothing more than rationalizations. I enjoy non-fiction. For now, I’m left committing myself to buying fluorescent light bulbs and maybe some more insulation. And I wonder how many trees it would take to absorb the carbon I’ve burned this trip.

Maybe I’ll switch to one-ply?