Monday, 08 February 2010
More About a Cat's Nature
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When it comes to understanding cats, there is an important principle to bear in mind: they can’t stand being on one side of a closed door.
It all begins when you settle down in your armchair. Someone has lent you a good psychology book. You have your nice hot cup of tea at hand. You read:
“In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels…One, the rational mind, is the mode of comprehension we are typically conscious of: more prominent in awareness, thoughtful, above all to ponder and reflect. But alongside that there is another system of knowing: impulsive and powerful, if sometimes illogical – the emotional mind.”[1]
You lift your eyes from the page to ponder this, and in so doing your gaze falls on the open doorway to your son’s bedroom. It was once inhabited by a sweet little boy, but it has since been taken over by a 17-year-old rebel with a moustache and an attitude, and it consequently exhibits a general litter of dirty socks, empty Coke bottles and an unmade bed of unclean sheets, a litter suspected more than seen since the curtains are kept drawn. It’s an irritation in your environment as you read. It would be nice to close the door and not see the mess, and the rebel’s not home to object. You stand, set your book down, and go close the door.
Kitty is alerted by the sound. Ordinarily the son’s room is less interesting to her than, say, the pleasant rattle of kibble in her dish in the kitchen, or the attractive scrunch of someone manipulating a little plastic shovel to clean her litter. But she sees the door closed, and races to you standing there. She begins anxious figure eights around your ankles. You reflect. Is she experiencing a loss of control? Is she regarding the closed door as a challenge to her intelligence? Or is she sufficiently delusional to believe she is trapped?
“Kitty,” you finally hypothesize as she weaves, “have you quite lost your mind? There isn’t anything in there you could need or want!” She halts, shifts an unblinking gaze from your face to the implacable door and back, and then falls to her figure eights once more. Your theory has apparently been substantiated. She’s nuts.
As impassive as the door, you leave her there and return to your chair, settling down with a sigh. You turn the page and read:
“Most intriguing for understanding the power of emotions in mental life are those moments of impassioned action that we later regret, once the dust has settled; the question is how we so easily become so irrational…”
It’s hard to concentrate with the cat so anxious at the door, but you do your best. For her part, she gives up on the figure eights, and decides to address the door directly, without your intermediary. She squats down, tilts her head with apparent inquisitiveness and extends a paw under the door, but it does not open. She becomes more industrious, and begins to claw at its underside, her muscular little back working, her tail half raised in a waterfall of black fur that says: you do get my message, do you not? She digs into the soft pine, ripping it off in small flakes of wood and paint, and you suddenly realize something similar is happening to your nerve endings.
“All right, you win!” you explode, and rise to go fling open the door. She shoots to its other side. “Ha!” you shout evilly, “you asked for that!” and you slam it shut behind her. Terrific! No mess to look at, no cat to be annoying. Ha! Ha!
You go back to your chair and settle down again with your book. You are smirking.
“Small wonder we can have so little insight into the murk of our more explosive emotions, especially when they still hold us in thrall. The amygdala can react in a delirium of rage or fear before the cortex knows what is going on because such raw emotion is triggered independent of, and prior to, thought…”
There was quiet in the apartment for about three minutes, but now the demolition crew has started work on the door from inside the room. Kitty wants to be back on the other side of it.
“What is your problem?!” you cry. You fling your book aside to go rip the door open and she emerges, her tail lifted in thanks. She heads over to the couch. No! you think. She is not going to win.You wham the door shut and stomp back to your armchair to pick up your book.
“Such emotional explosions are neural hijackings. At those moments, evidence suggests, a center in the limbic brain proclaims an emergency, recruiting the rest of the brain to its urgent agenda. The highjacking occurs in an instant, triggering this reaction crucial moments before the neocortex, the thinking brain, has had a chance to glimpse fully what is happening, let alone decide if it is a good idea…These hijacks are by no means isolated, horrific incidents that lead to brutal crimes…”
Kitty has trotted back to the door, and without a look at you, has fallen to clawing more chips of wood from its underside. “Stop that!” you shout, throwing your book wildly at her. You head for the kitchen to fetch the dustpan and brush to prevent your looking for a blunt instrument. And the door will end up being left ajar.
Why on earth does she do this to you? When she is outside of the room she seems to want its soft bed or a cuddle with its inhabitant. If she is inside the room she seems to want breakfast, her litter or a stroll. Sometimes she seems to be simply waiting for someone inside to be out, or someone to go in, and in so doing she hunkers down in front of the closed door with her fluff of tail out straight behind her, her haunches like the back fenders on a VW bug, waiting. But one thing is clear – she’s always on the wrong side of the door.
[1] Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, Bloomsbury, 1996
17:01 Posted in Deborah's Sketchbook | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: cats
Thursday, 04 February 2010
Giacometti Sale Sets a Record
One of Alberto Giacometti's best-known bronzes, "Walking Man I" , has just broken the world record for the price paid for an art work sold at auction.
Last night at Sotheby's in London, the hammer came down to sell the piece to an unidentified telephone bidder for 92.5 million dollars, or 104.3 million dollars with fees.
Giacometti said in a 1960s interview, in discussing his bronze "Places" (see image below):
"...men walk past each other, they pass each other without looking. Or then they stalk a woman. A woman is standing there and four men direct their steps more or less toward the spot where the woman is standing. It occurred to me that I can never make a woman in any other way than motionless, and a man always striding; when I model a woman, then motionless; a man, always walking. It's the totality of this life that I want to reproduce in everything I do."
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in "The Search for the Absolute" :
"With space...Giacometti has to make a man; he has to write movement into the total immobility, unity into the infinite multiplicity, the absolute into the purely relative, the future into the eternally present, the chatter of signs into the obstinate silence of things... The passion of sculpture is to make oneself totally spatial, so that from the depth of space, the statue of a man may sally forth..." .
"“Walking Man I” is perhaps the most recognizable of any sculpture Giacometti ever did. It was originally cast in a limited edition of only six, along with four artist proofs; most of these are now in museums or private collections. this copy of “Walking Man I” came up for sale because it was put on the auction block by Germany's Dresdner Bank, which had purchased it in 1980.
"Walking Man I" was originally commissioned by architect Gordon Bunshaft for downtown Manhattan's Chase Manhattan Plaza; it was intended to stand alongside his glass and steel design for the new Chase headquarters. Although the installation was never made, this and other sculptures Bunshaft commissioned for the project were made, along with roughs Giacometti created for the project. The artist unfortunately destroyed many of them.
It would seem the room burst into applause when the hammer fell to conclude the sale.
13:03 Posted in The Art of Art | Permalink | Comments (7) | Email this | Tags: giacometti walking man sotheby's
Sunday, 31 January 2010
A Dog's Nature
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To my delight a reader in the UK shared this marvelous set of lyrics by Frank Zappa, in response to the recent article on a Cat's Nature. This is from his 1975 One Size Fits All album:
Evelyn, a modified dog
Viewed the quivering fringe of a special doily
Draped across the piano, with some surprise
In the darkened room
Where the chairs dismayed
And the horrible curtains
Muffled the rain
She could hardly believe her eyes
A curious breeze
A garlic breath
Which sounded like a snore
Somewhere near the Steinway (or even from within)
Had caused the doily fringe to waft & tremble in the gloom
Evelyn, a dog, having undergone
Further modification
Pondered the significance of short-person behavior
In pedal-depressed panchromatic resonance
And other highly ambient domains...
Arf she said.
13:33 Posted in The Art of Music | Permalink | Comments (11) | Email this | Tags: frank zappa evelyne