Hip hop can deal with emotions sort of but it’s not a strength. Nas’s song about dancing with his dead mother made me cry but that is neither here nor there. Moms make me cry in general. Whatever. It’s an exception. Hip hop is style and virtuosity. Bach’s counterpoint produces linearity by complicating the relations […]
(thanks, Josh Keiter) “Philosophy and the Poetic Imagination” is a good post about the difference between expressive and communicative language. It sums up the day’s dominant theory of the place, not just of poetry, but, one might argue, of human understanding in general: “Poetry evokes a special kind of thinking — where we interpret ordinary […]
by Tyler Collison This is the first post in a series, Reconstructive Manifesto. Though the world of sports is at times both entertaining and fascinating, the fact is that the nation’s major sports organizations (NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL) are businesses, and no business model is flawless. And with that, we begin the inaugural Reconstructive […]
I I’ve always been tickled by the question “what do you do?” How this query usually comes during the small talk phase of interaction, sometime after weather or sports and before becoming lifelong friends, could mean “what do you like to do?” or “what do you do for a living?” Though I often try to […]
by Tyler Collison In the honeymoon period of what was unarguably the greatest single-game performance in Olympics history, the engine driving the debate of who would win a head-to-head matchup between the United States’ two “Dream Teams” — those of 1992 and 2012 — has received an oil change. But before I get too far into things, […]
Films tend to lean left because they put a face on the human condition, and thus make it harder for those who feel that the disenfranchised and those who are different should be left out in the cold. It’s an emotional medium, which wants us to understand a character and situation that may or may […]
After years of anticipation for some, just nine months for others, birth is the single most important event of every human being’s life. Regardless of how much this event has been denigrated to a medical procedure, it is a special day – every single year, most of us observe the occasion and are aware that […]
Lucky for us, popular culture does not need to be affirmed or denied. It’s happening, and you and I, as members of the populace, are in it. This is not to say that there are not all sorts of ways to bargain with our position, en masse or otherwise. But this is to say that […]
