Tuesday, December 06, 2016
Why I Hate White, Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs
Clouds are white.
Gravestones are white.
Trim work and crown molding in contemporary suburban houses are white.
The light warmly bathing the ancient silent walls of Florence’s great Duomo is yellow.
Halos in icons over the Holy One and his saints are yellow.
The sun is yellow.
Interior of Florence’s Great Duomo
The valley of dry bones is white.
Cadavers are grey and white.
The ghost of the dead rising from a body at the moment of death in a late Renaissance painting is depicted as white and grey.
Regular old incandescent light bulbs are yellow.
The fullness of the presence of the background in medieval icons is reflective, shimmering gold, meant to make appear before the senses the power of heaven and to thus remind the audience of the power of an icon to speak.
T.S. Eliot, in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, in heading up towards these lines…
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse…
And I have known the eyes already, known them all –
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin,
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume? ….
….stealing from the imagination of Einstein's formula of relativity, speaks of time like so…
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
Or, speaking of dry bones, in The Dry Salvages, Eliot says this…
Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint--
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
But, at least we have there the image of sunlight.
On the light bulb, Marshall McLuhan says this: "totally radical, pervasive, and decentralized... it eliminates time and space factors in human association exactly as do radio, telegraph, telephone, and TV, creating involvement in depth." He means depth there in terms of being in opposition to extension of the message through an actual bodily medium in which the message is conveyed in the actuality of space and time. He means “depth” in reference to human association that occurs all at once, simultaneously, and from all directions and times. McLuhan also says, “What people don’t understand about electronic media is, when you are on the phone or on the air, you have no body.”
Ashes are white.
Lots wife was white.
Now she lays eternally not in a heap of pure white fallenness but lost imageless in the wind.
Inside of Villa Savoye, built 1929
The walls of our contemporary suburban houses are white.
And, in the clutter of contemporary consumerism, we get lost between or hidden behind them.
McLuhan says that we shape our tools, and they in turn shape us. In this case, we make our technologies, and, in becoming like them, we get lost in them.
The walls of Le Corbusier’s great and groundbreaking Villa Savoye of 1929 are white, but the order and simplicity, harmony and music of the rest of what appears allows humans to stand up and out, over and against the background of the artifact they made.
Florentine Voyaging
Molten liquid glowing golden -
The yellow smoke upon the window panes…
Descent and rising under the dome,
Whirling and twirling within the shadows.
Vines are growing around the sun,
Monks chanting under a Duomo.
Men are melting into angle fire.
Dome of Florence’s Great Duomo
Trim work and crown molding in contemporary suburban houses are white.
Lab coats are white. The walls of scientific research laboratories flicker in horror with the white florescent bulbs that baptize them.
The trim work of houses built before the time when Lot’s wife disappeared into the wind, and man’s body disappeared into his use of electronic media…is the warm color of nature’s trees.
When Marlon Brando's character whispered "the horror..." in Apocalypse Now, he was referring to man's loss of himself.
It's the horror of the moment of indecision as to whether or not to disturb the universe, compacted into a ball of Nothingness called a white, energy-efficient light bulb.
If man will disappear into associating with each other outside of and beyond time and space, let him at least have trim work the color of trees rather than of graves.
If man will melt away, let him at least melt into angel fire rather than Nothingness.
If man will formlate himself, sprawl out, fragments of his formerly embodied and breathing self wriggling on a dissection pin, then let him at least paint the walls of his laboratory the colors of a Cezanne still-life.
Light bulbs are already, in and of themselves, the vacating of man’s existence into the windy ashes.
Let us at least remember time, lost in a shaft of sunlight.
A home is not a research laboratory. Neither is it a graveyard of dry bones and fallen ashes.
Gravestones are white.
Trim work and crown molding in contemporary suburban houses are white.
The light warmly bathing the ancient silent walls of Florence’s great Duomo is yellow.
Halos in icons over the Holy One and his saints are yellow.
The sun is yellow.
Interior of Florence’s Great Duomo
The valley of dry bones is white.
Cadavers are grey and white.
The ghost of the dead rising from a body at the moment of death in a late Renaissance painting is depicted as white and grey.
Regular old incandescent light bulbs are yellow.
The fullness of the presence of the background in medieval icons is reflective, shimmering gold, meant to make appear before the senses the power of heaven and to thus remind the audience of the power of an icon to speak.
T.S. Eliot, in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, in heading up towards these lines…
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse…
And I have known the eyes already, known them all –
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin,
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume? ….
….stealing from the imagination of Einstein's formula of relativity, speaks of time like so…
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
Or, speaking of dry bones, in The Dry Salvages, Eliot says this…
Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint--
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
But, at least we have there the image of sunlight.
On the light bulb, Marshall McLuhan says this: "totally radical, pervasive, and decentralized... it eliminates time and space factors in human association exactly as do radio, telegraph, telephone, and TV, creating involvement in depth." He means depth there in terms of being in opposition to extension of the message through an actual bodily medium in which the message is conveyed in the actuality of space and time. He means “depth” in reference to human association that occurs all at once, simultaneously, and from all directions and times. McLuhan also says, “What people don’t understand about electronic media is, when you are on the phone or on the air, you have no body.”
Ashes are white.
Lots wife was white.
Now she lays eternally not in a heap of pure white fallenness but lost imageless in the wind.
Inside of Villa Savoye, built 1929
And, in the clutter of contemporary consumerism, we get lost between or hidden behind them.
McLuhan says that we shape our tools, and they in turn shape us. In this case, we make our technologies, and, in becoming like them, we get lost in them.
The walls of Le Corbusier’s great and groundbreaking Villa Savoye of 1929 are white, but the order and simplicity, harmony and music of the rest of what appears allows humans to stand up and out, over and against the background of the artifact they made.
Florentine Voyaging
Molten liquid glowing golden -
The yellow smoke upon the window panes…
Descent and rising under the dome,
Whirling and twirling within the shadows.
Vines are growing around the sun,
Monks chanting under a Duomo.
Men are melting into angle fire.
Dome of Florence’s Great Duomo
Trim work and crown molding in contemporary suburban houses are white.
Lab coats are white. The walls of scientific research laboratories flicker in horror with the white florescent bulbs that baptize them.
The trim work of houses built before the time when Lot’s wife disappeared into the wind, and man’s body disappeared into his use of electronic media…is the warm color of nature’s trees.
When Marlon Brando's character whispered "the horror..." in Apocalypse Now, he was referring to man's loss of himself.
It's the horror of the moment of indecision as to whether or not to disturb the universe, compacted into a ball of Nothingness called a white, energy-efficient light bulb.
If man will disappear into associating with each other outside of and beyond time and space, let him at least have trim work the color of trees rather than of graves.
If man will melt away, let him at least melt into angel fire rather than Nothingness.
If man will formlate himself, sprawl out, fragments of his formerly embodied and breathing self wriggling on a dissection pin, then let him at least paint the walls of his laboratory the colors of a Cezanne still-life.
Light bulbs are already, in and of themselves, the vacating of man’s existence into the windy ashes.
Let us at least remember time, lost in a shaft of sunlight.
A home is not a research laboratory. Neither is it a graveyard of dry bones and fallen ashes.
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