First, M absconded with the camera tonight, so no photos. Tomorrow, or not at all.

Got in a solid 100 minute run. Didn’t find the trail I was looking for, though in hindsight with a map, now I know where to go. Heard that before? Shoes still bugging the heels, which is really quite discouraging. I think it will be resolvable, it better, because I have two new pairs of identical (potentially unusable) shoes. Good news, 100 minutes of solid running on rocky two-track with decent climbing and descending was physically inconsequential. My goal for the Wahsatch Steeplechase is to be physically unhindered and on my way to doing 100 milers next year. So that’s a good step.

Came home, found the 8″ front rotor waiting. First, dinner. Trying to keep the inspiration going, I had two Newcastles and whole wheat linguine with marinara and gorgonzola stuffed lamb meatballs spiced provencal with pepper and lavender. It was really tasty, good for inducing lethergy.

Recipe for meatballs:
1 lbish ground lamb
good slosh of Newcastle
couple tablespoons of flour
1 jumbo egg
sea salt, pepper, provencal spices (lots)

Mix well, fill with gorg to taste (lots), broil until done and eat. Perfection. Best meatballs I’ve ever made by a good margin. No pics cuz the gorg ones are in my belly. (Rest are in the fridge M.)

Got around to bolting on the rotor and adapter. A routine job except for the fidgety demonstration of my mechanical ineptitude and impatience centering the pads calls for. Eventually got the damn thing to not rub and squeak, tightened both brake cables which was overdue and gave back some good power. It’s a big rotor, and I like it. Lots of spoke clearance now (very little before) and tucks the fork under east braking in a quite obvious way. Definitive increase in power, even puttering around the driveway in the dark. I’m excited to go bomb some hills, perhaps a Whiskey TT tomorrow? Or a part one cutting out some pave.

In any case, new bike parts are good for neutralizing the aforementioned gastronomic somnolence.

And big descents excite me, for the KTR (got Julie in full long ride mode with bar light and frame bag), and for the Duke’s of Hazzard ride that you all in the unsuspended 1-gear mafia must come do this fall. Big Moab ride, Hazard County and highlights from town. Up La Sal Pas road, across Squaw Springs, up Geyser Pass road, Moonlight Meadows and the full descent including LPS all the way to River road. This is negotiable, but not optional.

And Evan, as for the Bell article, I ain’t got much. Nietzsche tells us how the world is “always already interpreted,” and this extends to art as well. The article quotes Kant correctly in the small sense; he was the first to articulate in detail the layers of subjectivity that come into making judgments (aesthetic and otherwise, which he conflates in ways that still don’t make any sense to me). Kant used the phrase “subjective, but not merely subjective.” I’ll steal this phrase, as have many others, and use it to talk about cultural framing and subjectivity. I am of the opinion that in this case, perhaps more than the many others, Kant did not follow his ideas as he ought to’ve.

It’s easy to look at the case of Bell playing classical violin in the metro and decide that folks were just not noticing him because he did not come with the proper context to make him intelligible on a systematic level. That is true, but the nuance is far greater. Classical performance, as a lot of good ethnomusicologists have written in the last decade (Chris Small would be the big name here, read him with Vetter at Grinnell), is one of the most heavily encoded of cultural events. It’s a formalized ritual that carries an enormous historical weight, and may in many ways be a more cultural visible and durable continuation of what organized Christianity used to be. That is, the norms of demonstrating reverence (by stifling coughs, etc) at a classical music performance are more well know and alive and well in practice than reverential practice in church, in the eyes of The Culture. Moreso, it is (in the case of a performer like Bell, his violin being the first example) a direct-as-possible communion with deities, in this case the composers enshrined in the canon. People, or at least very few people, treat Glass or Bartok in the same way they treat Bach or Mozart.

What’s the news? In the first, a particular strong and very well documented example of decontextualizing a cultural icon (in the form of one man). The guy who recognized Bell as an outstanding player but didn’t recognize him? Stood in the corner like a freshman at a dance. The woman who had attended his performance the week before, complemented him referencing that formal performance first. To make it understandable. In the second, it shows us how our society is beholden to images from the past that we only understand in the most indirect and cartoonish way. Plato’s cave metaphor could work here. (I can’t comment on Europe here, which would be illuminating.) Lastly, it speaks to the extent to which we are all complicit in such matter while at the same time being largely unaware of their existence.

And here is the split: does such ignorance point to the need for “progress,” or humility? Take Abbey’s critique from a very academic reading of Desert Solitaire and you have the later. I think a central question for the academy in this century will be anthropocentrism, and the epistemic (and thus metaphysical) questions in raises. Is it possible to try to know everything? Is it possible to expand knowledge at all, as opposed to merely shifting the same static pool around in-the-world? It is desirable to attempt to do either? A question of particular interest because for the last 30 years you’ve had vastly different thinkers from the sciences (particularly Biology) and the humanities (Levy-Strauss and modern philosophical anthro) doing seperate but complementary work. We’ll have to get philosophers to take environmentalism more seriously first.

Thank you Evan, that was fun. Almost makes me want to look at Philosophy grad school….(except for the whole “job” thing). The above is the outline for at least one life’s work.

Good night.