One of my favorite things that I periodically do on Twitter is what I might call exploratory nerdposting – it’s when I start looking something up, and I don’t actually know where it’s going, and I enjoy the journey as I go. Here’s an example of my most recent favorite: How did Chartreuse get its name? I’d like to do some version of that on Substack, but I haven’t quite figured out how to do it. I think the only way to learn is by doing, so here’s an attempt.
Yesterday I improvised a freestyle 15 minute talk on my youtube channel in rehearsal/preparation for a talk I’m going to be giving. I started by telling my personal origin story – lonely bookish library nerd discovers the internet, his local music scene, embraces the ‘found family’ sense of belonging, is dismayed to witness how it all falls apart… gets fascinated with the history of successful scenes, and is obsessed with trying to figure out how to bootstrap scenes into being today. I’ll probably skip the details and condense that to the above one-liner.
Now, I know that other people have written about scenes – I have loads of notes and references and links – but it’s important to me that I reinvent the wheel and develop my own understanding, rather than pass off someone else’s understanding as my own.
My definition of scene: I personally define a scene as “any group of people loosely-but-truly aligned on something… creating powerful vectors by producing publicly-accessible work that’s directed at each other”.
Where do we start? I might start with David Banks, a statistician who wrote an essay in 1997 titled “The Problem of Excess Genius”. Why are some periods and places so astonishingly more productive than others?
I feel compelled to start with Athens in the age of Pericles, Socrates and so on.
According to Plutarch, Pericles’ lover Aspasia had a house in Athens that was an intellectual centre, attracting nerds like Socrates. She had been alleged to have been a hetaira, a sort of highly-educated geisha-esque elite courtesan type? It’s complicated, scholars argue about it.
Desiderius Erasmus was one of the most prolific men of letters in the 1500s. He was born out of wedlock, and both his parents died in the plague. He became a Catholic priest like his father, studied at monastic schools, was offered the post of secretary to a Bishop on account of his skill in Latin and his reputation as a man of letters. He wrote thousands of letters to hundreds of people, getting replies from popes and kings! He studied at the university of Paris, taught at Oxford… he urged internal reform of the Catholic Church, was good friends with Thomas More (Utopia), was lauded as “Prince of the Humanists”, famously argued with Martin Luther on the subject of free will, travelled widely across Europe, died of dysentery at 69. “Despite a chronic shortage of money, he succeeded in learning Greek by an intensive day-and-night study of three years, continuously begging in letters that his friends send him books and money for teachers.”
Erasmus worked at the print shop of Aldus Manutius (c1450–1515). Aldus was a teacher, scholar, founder of the Aldine Press, Inventor if Italics, publisher of new copies of Plato and Aristotle, a friend to all books and libraries until the end of time.
Gupta golden age?
~50 years after Erasmus came Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), an ordained Catholic priest who was called “the post-box of Europe”. He was mutuals with Descartes, Pascal, Hobbes, Galileo, Huygenes. If you wanted to get something to someone, you sent it to him, and he’d reroute it. Mersenne was one of Galileo’s most ardent supporters and he insisted that Galileo publish his work outside Italy Mersenne himself did some math – Mersenne prime numbers (Mn = 2^n − 1) are named after him – but I believe that his correspondence & distribution was his real contribution to the world. Mersenne also formed his own informal private academy where he spread Descartes’ ideas… a recurring phrase used to describe him is “a clearing house for correspondence between philosophers and scientists.” Some bits about Mersenne’s life: he was born 1588, same as Hobbes. He was the child of a laborer, but managed to study with the Jesuits and joined the Minim Friars. He introduced his correspondents to each other, which established a comms network, and also challenged/encouraged them.
✱
alrighty its time to do some wikipedia spelunking on The Republic Of Letters. let’s see… first known occurrence is in a letter by Francesco Barbaro (1390-1454) to Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459). Let’s start there… plot their births against other historical figures for context. Barbaro was from a wealthy Venetian family – here’s a statue of him in Santa Maria Zobenigo, which is a church that’s still active today it seems… family started in ~836 and ended with Napoleon’s conquest of Venice, it looks like
anyway yea Francesco Barbaro was appointed senator of Venice, governor of Vicenza, Bergamo, Verona… was the ambassador to Mantua, then Milan… busy guy, all that governance… found time to do some nerd shit too! Wrote a treatise on marriage to celebrate a Medici’s wedding…
ok then we have Poggio, who doesn’t have a statue, but he was a Papal Secretary… early Renaissance humanist, rediscovered many lost classical Latin manuscripts decaying and forgotten in monastic libraries… born and died in Florence! studied under a protege of Petrarch…
he was a Papal Secretary for FIFTY YEARS, serving a total of seven popes, starting with Boniface IX. Poggio considered himself a Florentine working for the papacy, was text buddies with Cosimo Medici… and damn, this mf had 14 kids with one woman, abandoned her, and married a 17 year old (with whom he had 6 more kids), and wrote about why he was right to do it.
Poggio had a quarrel with a Lorenzo Valla, and Erasmus got involved somehow… Erasmus considered Poggio indecent. much drama in the 1450s, dunkin’ and subtweeting and all that noise.
basically the thing they had in common was a mutual interest in retrieving ancient greco-roman manuscripts. they wanted to retvrn to the wisdom of antiquity, and this was right about the time the printing press happened. Poggio wrote a History of Florence from 1350 to 1455, written in “avowed imitation of of Livy and Sallust, and possibly Thucydides” – a lesson I’ve been learning from reading a bunch of these old timers is that a way to be influential is to write reference material. 1400s SEO.
✱
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth were poetry bros in the UK, both born in the 1770s. They formed a poetry group with their mutuals, which the Edinburgh Review disparagingly called “The Lake Poets” – a name which has since stuck. Wordsworth hosted hundreds of visitors and became Poet Laureate of the UK. Notable utilitarian JS Mill wrote in his autobiography that it was the poetry of Wordsworth that helped him assuage his existential despair.
✱
Max Planck (1858–1947) won the Physics Nobel for his discovery of energy quanta. Him and his wife Marie would host literal nerd house parties! “The Planck home became a social and cultural center. Numerous well-known scienttsts – Einstein, Hahn, Meitner were frequent visitors.” They’d play music together.
✱
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was born to a wealthy family, raised in Oakland, CA. Both her parents died by the time she was 17. At Radcliffe College, she was a student of William James, who called her brilliant and encouraged her to go to med school. She got bored and flunked out. “She had spent many of her evenings not applying herself to her studies, but taking long walks and attending the opera.” Her uncorseted physical appearance and eccentric mode of dress aroused comment and she was described as “Big and floppy and sandaled and not caring a damn.” In 1902 her brother Leo left for London hoping to pursue an art career, and Gertrude followed – and a year later they relocated to Paris. Here Gertrude would host a weekly Saturday night salon that attained legendary status, which is the reason I’m writing about her. Who attended her salons? Some of her guests that you might recognize are: Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclar Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse. Picasso painted a portrait of her. According to art critic Henry McBride, the Steins’ art collection was “just about the most potent of any that I have ever heard of in history.” He observed that Gertude “collected geniuses rather than masterpieces. She recognized them a long way off.”
✱
https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1352252140593451015
I’m not sure people really understand how Andy Warhol did what he did. He strikes me as a superconnector. I tend to see descriptions of him suggesting that he was sort of a clever gimmick guy, which is correct, but in my assessment that’s insufficient to explain his success and influence.
My read is that, on top of being prolific as an artist and illustrator and so on, Warhol bootstrapped an entire scene. What’s interesting to me is that The Factory lasted ~20 years – lots of people trying to start scenes give up 3-5 years in.
An important variable re: The Factory is that the rent was really cheap.
McLuhan to Ezra Pound
Clarence Avant
What were the golden ages of China?
✱
Most important scenius hypotheses?
high social intercourse – people need to be talking a lot, exchanging ideas a lot,
tolerance of transgression – weird and strange ideas are okay.
disregard for tedious status games – one of the best things about twitter is how anybody can reply to anybody else. This causes some funny outcomes
✱
Marshall McLuhan letter to Ezra Pound, 15 July 1948
Dear Pound,
The present abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Saint-André in Belgium is a Chinese: Dom. Pierre Lou Tseng-Tsiang former minister of foreign affairs for China about 1895-1906. In his Souvenirs et Pensées (Desclee Brouwer 1943) he speaks of the deep affinity between Confucianism and the Benedictine rule-sense of the family in that rule especially. The sense of work and studies. Also of close relation between Gregorian and Chinese music and language.
Characteristic of your generosity that you should suggest prior claims of W[yndham] Lewis to a book. I know Lewis’s work in its full extent. Would be glad to do a book on him (for Jas. Laughlin?) after one on you. The work of the musqueteers in 1908-14. That’s the job to get into sharp focus. The vortex² you created then has become a kiddies’ slide in the subsequent work of the Spenders Sitwells Audens and co. Thanks to Freud. Thanks to lack of sustained attention.
Lack of energy even to contemplate what’s been happening. To know what’s going on. The devil of a job in isolation. Problem: How to achieve a milieu. How to get 10 competent people together in one city. And keep them there to talk. To think. To write. I haven’t met anybody who even imagines the need for such a group. It can’t be done in New York. No one university contains more than one or two such potential allies. So it can’t be done at a university unless one had power to hire. The latter possibility is the one always in my mind.