The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
Why We Bond With Art - A Discussion with Art Historian Luc Travers
Discover the heartbeat of fandoms and the power of literature in our lives with Luc Travers, the eloquent author behind "Stories in Paint" and "Touching the Art." As we journey from the fervor of Star Wars fanatics to the wide-eyed students exploring the pages of "Anne of Green Gables," we unwrap the emotional tapestry that binds us to the stories we cherish. Join us for an episode that not only celebrates the passionate responses to narrative adaptations but also delves into the art of selecting transformative literature for the young reader.
Venture with us through the landscapes of education where art and literature intermingle, creating a symphony of empathy and cultural appreciation. Our candid talk with Luke Travers sheds light on the indispensable role the arts play in enriching the minds of future generations. As we dissect the importance of stretching a child's imagination, we underscore the lifelong journey of growth that goes hand in hand with a carefully curated literary diet. This episode isn't just a discussion; it's a gateway to understanding the profound impact of the humanities on our collective conscious.
We then bridge the worlds of STEM and the humanities, advocating for an education that marries the technical with the creative. Through the lens of literature-infused engineering, we illustrate how characters like Guy Montag from "Fahrenheit 451" influence our worldview and how a balanced education fosters innovation. Let this episode be your invitation to a richer understanding of life, where art and literature are not just subjects to be studied but are experiences that shape who we become.
Welcome everybody to the new studio. And I have Luke Travers, who wrote the book Stories in Paint, as well as Touching the Art, and Luke is visiting Austin after doing a monthly event that I do in Austin called Third Thursday, and he did a whole bunch of tours in Austin and Houston. I actually got a van, got a whole bunch of friends together and we drove up to Houston and I wanted to start and we're gonna talk about art, we're gonna talk about education, we're gonna talk about history, love, literature. I don't know, I'm just throwing in stuff in there. We'll talk about mechanics and how why do airplanes have holes in them and things like that.
Speaker 1:I just learned this from Elon Musk yeah, no, but we're gonna talk about art and art history and education and primarily. But I wanted to start off with something that I found interesting. I don't know if you'll find this interesting or not, but on the way back from Houston with my busload of friends that we brought up from Austin, we were talking about a whole bunch of things, and one of the things that we discussed was why it was the fandoms of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, and I have my theory about this. But I've noticed that as these remakes are happening, as these types of things are happening, there's a kind of virulent anger and almost violence on the Star Wars fandom. People Not everybody, I mean most people are chill about it, but there seems to be a real like I'm gonna kill that guy for messing up this character, this lore, and they got it so wrong. It's so horrible.
Speaker 1:Now, lord of the Rings had the same type of thing, where there was a kind of there were these prequels. People loved the Lord of the Rings. I know people who've watched them every year. The extended on Christmas. I did this with a couple of friends this last year and they love Lord of the Rings. There's a lot of love for those first three movies, and then the prequels not so much right the Hobbit movies, the Hobbit movies, thank you.
Speaker 1:And yet with the Lord of the Rings fandom, I don't notice or see or hear about the virulence, the violence. I'm gonna kill you. It's more like even in that van, disparity was very interesting. So we had, we were talking about Star Wars, people got passionate about it. What was stupid? They argued about lightsabers and stuff. You know why do they have midichlorians Like, oh, it's a freaking mat, what do you? You know, and both the Lord of the Rings, the person who was the biggest Lord of the Rings fan, they're like, yeah, I didn't like the prequels and then they were done and that was it and I just thought that was really interesting and I've noticed that kind of thing. I don't know if you, I have my theory, but I wanna see if you have anything.
Speaker 2:Well, may I broaden it out a little bit.
Speaker 2:And then I'm interested in your theory. So when I hear this, this resonates, because I think art in general arouses a lot of division, a lot of passion, and oftentimes this comes especially when there's an interpretation of a source text that you already have a connection with. I'm thinking of the Game of Thrones and how everybody kind of loved it. At first it adhered to the books, the book fans enjoyed it, and then when it got towards the end of the series, it caused a lot of division because it seemed to depart a little bit from the story or the story wasn't as well-paced and nobody really liked it. But the book fans also especially didn't like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're right, but I hear what you said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's fascinating to think that there are some subcultures of fans that aren't as upset by interpretations of the source text that they love, like the Lord of the Rings fans.
Speaker 2:But I think in general, when you bond with a work of literature and it's adapted whether in a painting or in a movie or a TV show you have your vision of it and you're going to be more critical of what it is that this director or painter is going to create and because if it clashes with your vision, you're gonna say you know what. That's not the way I saw it, and I think a lot of Star Wars fans were expecting the prequels to be kind of. I remember I saw the prequel 1996, was it? I went to the movie theaters, really excited to see it, and all I remember was this silly kid who did not know the controls of his ship and was flying through, was like, oh, what does this button do? And he blows up something and he saves the day by being like the force I guess is going through him and he's doing pod racing and for me it felt really juvenile, which was a big difference.
Speaker 2:1996, I was 19, 20 years old.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it felt to me juvenile. While Star Wars, which I didn't see till I was like 12, 13, because I wasn't in the country, it was aspirational. Here's this young hero who's breaking away from his parents to go off and do something grand that I was primed for that. But then the story shifted into this children's story and that wasn't for me. So that's a case where there wasn't a source story that I had bonded with, like the Lord of the Rings. It was just this. I was hoping for a similar kind of experiences.
Speaker 1:I had before.
Speaker 2:And I was not getting it with the prequels, and maybe there are a lot of. There's a variety of reasons for that. For me, like all these new Star Wars TV shows, ahsoka- Wobby One Kenobi. Andor is an exception.
Speaker 1:Andor is the exception for me.
Speaker 2:But all these others are based on a lot on these cartoons that were done, the Clone Wars cartoons that are serving a children audience and they're not for me.
Speaker 1:Okay. So yeah, I think there's a couple of things there. One, I agree with the way that we bond with art, and you notice that where people will bond irrationally in a sense, where they think that this is objectively great art, even just because they grew up with it, now we could have a debate. Maybe it is objective because it's into them, it is, and that's fine. But you know, like I remember seeing this interview with 50 Cent, the great and powerful and wise 50 Cent.
Speaker 1:He actually is pretty smart, but he was talking about, like you know, someone was asking him like who's the greatest rapper? And he said whoever was in the club when you were in the club as a kid, right, that's who the greatest rapper is. Because you know, if you were in the club in the 90s, it was gonna be like Dre and NWA and those types of people. And if it was the early 2000, be like early 90s and early 2000,. Eminem and then 50 Cent and the you know 2002 to 2007 or whatever. So it's whoever that. And he acknowledges that that truth of the subjectivity of whoever was hot when you were falling in love, you know, kissing a girl at the club or whatever when you were having those experiences and bonding with the art at that time. Of course, 20 years later, when you're slumpy at your couch and you hear that jam, you're like, yeah, it brings me back, right, it kind of brings us back. So there's that subjectivism that people get almost virantly mad about when they're hearing new generations that are like making mumble rap or something. It's like that's not rap. So there's that component. I agree completely. Now, the weird thing about the Star Wars Lord of the Rings thing is they both corrupted source material in a sense, like the Hobbit is a corruption of the source material. Clearly, like you know, they have a legalist in it and he's not in the Hobbit, right? So they just so they have all these kinds of things that are clearly that. So here is my quick answer to this and, by the way, the whole reason I'm setting this up is just to kind of talk about this connection with art, but also this we had such great art experiences, so we were at your tour in Houston and we want to have those and I think you're right, people definitely have those experiences with movies. Star Wars in particular, for whatever reason, has that experience for a lot of people. And but the thing that I think is different is that what the source material is. So Star Wars source material is a movie, it's a cinema.
Speaker 1:Lord of the Rings is literature, it's real literature. So there's a real base and I think there's a different mentality when someone comes from that base. And that there because when you read Lord of the Rings which I was not that great a fan of it, but it's pretty serious, deep literature, in a sense Like it's difficult, there's complexities to the language, the way he's describing things is very you know. It trains the mind in a certain way, like it stretches people who read it, and so I think that type of person who loves literature and art, who loves Lord of the Rings from literature, is less likely by their temperament to get that kind of virulence Versus, I think, someone who's from the medium of movies, where it's more pure emotion and more pure emotion coming at you and you're a little bit more passive than the kind of active integration.
Speaker 1:So to me there's a more confidence you get when you integrate and you interpret an art form yourself, all on your own, just blank scrolls on a page. You have to see what this character looks like. You'll have a connection to it. But I think you're more confident in that connection because you did the work Versus Star Wars does it all for you, it's got the music, it tells you who to love, who to hate, who to move, what they look like. So it could still be great and it's a wonderful experience. I'm not denigrating the experience, but it's fundamentally different, is my view. So that's my argument.
Speaker 2:Okay, so book readers are smarter, more confident. Movie watchers are dumber and let things sweep over them passively.
Speaker 1:Well, I was trying to say that like a little bit implicit. But thank you for pointing it out, but I don't think that movie goes. I love movies. I was a film major, to be clear.
Speaker 2:Oh, you were.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I love movies. That's not my actual point, but I do think, like if you have that as your base, that that's you know, that I think that's a cause for this kind of thing Versus the equanimity that comes from the training that literary art can give you. So I'm an advocate of both, do both like, enjoy movies. So that's my argument.
Speaker 2:Couple of thoughts come to that, a couple of questions and a couple of flashbacks for me. I have I teach literature and I have a lot of students who read the novels with me and then go watch the movies afterwards and they have strong feelings about the movies and they say things like no, that's not the way Anne of Green Gables looks like Okay, her hair isn't red enough. So I think that there are definitely strong passions about what the adaptation looks like. The other thing is I'm wondering for the audience of Laura the Rings how many of them read, did read, the books. I haven't read the books, I watched the movies. I'm wondering if for most of the audience for Laura the Rings, they are coming to it for the first time, to the movies, in a similar way as with Star Wars.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:That's my thought there.
Speaker 1:So can I just add one real quick thing? I agree that that makes sense, but I think the I don't think the people who saw only the Lord of the Rings they probably were the ones who liked the hobbit, who never read the books In eighth grade.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like. If so, those people like some people liked the hobbit. Maybe they don't admit it, but some people liked it right, it made money or I don't think it flopped completely. So it's some people liked it. I think it was the people who probably didn't read it as much and I think the people who read it were like this is so far askew, what's the point? My thing is like the virulence. We're like Jar Jar Binks. The actor almost killed himself. It was that virulently hatred toward him. What kind of what brings out that attitude in people where it's? I'm not arguing that Lord of the Rings fans disliked or liked the hobbit and they didn't have passionate feelings about it. I think people do have passionate feelings. It's more how it's manifested. And first, there is a fundamental difference in my observation between people who see the source material, between the Star Wars mentality of fandom versus the Lord of the Rings fandom, taking out the people who saw Lord of the Rings and didn't read the books.
Speaker 2:Well, to bring this to education. If my students have that much fiery passion for an adaptation of a novel that they've read with me, I'm happy.
Speaker 1:I'm happy, not if they try to get the guy to kill himself and say he should die, and that's all. That's what I'm saying. Like, I agree with the passion. I don't agree with how it manifests.
Speaker 2:That's for me as a French.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's just to me an interesting. I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2:So there's one thing that you said that really intrigued me. Okay, and that's how well you didn't say it. 50 cents said it. What is it that who was in the club when you were in the club is going to?
Speaker 1:stick with you.
Speaker 2:And this idea of the art of your generation is what is going to resonate with you the rest of your life, this idea that there is a point in life, in your development and your growth as a human being, where art is especially going to be meaningful because it's going to reveal and discuss situations and themes that are new to you. And now that I'm in my 40s, I don't have the same resonance with Star Wars, because I'm not in the same point of my life as Luke Skywalker was. And this is why I love to teach literature, because I am getting to share these classics, these great works of literature, at the prime art education moment in life for these kids, so that there, at a certain point in life where it's going to really mean something to them, now you do a lot of literature yourself.
Speaker 1:But I don't do them with students as much. I did teach fifth and eighth grade for a short period and I agree I think that I was able to have an impact where some of those kids had one in particular the Princess of Mars series, edgar Rice Burroughs, great wonders of literature but the reality is that probably for most students, even at a good school or if they have a good teacher like you, probably some high percentage of things is not going to connect with them that much. There's going to get through it and they'll probably have some good connection and I think if you as a good teacher help them get some connection to it, that's great. But I would imagine there's going to be in 30 years. They're going to look back and be like this book really did something big for me or something, and I think they're going to have that passionate connection that'll be really life changing. It'll be different.
Speaker 2:So that goes to the question of how do you select the books? And I spent a lot of time thinking about how I select the books and I think I've got general principles for three phases.
Speaker 1:In terms of age groups.
Speaker 2:In terms of age groups, so for elementary students, this is what to what.
Speaker 2:This is a second grade through fifth, sixth grade, something like that and the novels that I generally go to are ones with child protagonists, because I think I view the kind of overarching theme of these stories is maturation how do you grow? What does it look like for you to grow, to mature? That's very self-developmental. A lot of these stories are about okay, this is one phase of my life and now I've got to move to another phase of my life, and what does that look like? One quick example Anne of Green Gables, that the elementary students are reading right now with Mrs Minor at my little company literature at our house, and that's a story about a young child with an overactive imagination, fiery, spirited, and she's got to learn a little bit of how to control that or how that matches with the world.
Speaker 2:And almost every story that I come across with a child protagonist, meant for children, has that kind of underlying. What does it look like for you to go on to the next age, from nine to 10, 10 to 11, 11 to 12? What does it look like for you to grow? Children are obsessed with growth. Okay, what do I get to do now that I'm 11 years old?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like expanding their freedom and their circle of freedom and liberty. Essentially, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's interesting.
Speaker 1:Do you guys read Hatchet?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean Hatchet is another one, that's a great example of maturation, yeah, okay, what does it look like for you to develop? What does it would say? Not self-control, not self-confidence, necessarily.
Speaker 1:That's a story about a kid who's in an airplane accident and survives, and he has to figure out how to survive in the jungle.
Speaker 2:Essentially, with just a hatchet. So, independence, in a way Independence okay, that's the one. Yeah, there's another word that he uses that I forgot.
Speaker 1:Self-reliance maybe.
Speaker 2:Self-reliance is really good too, Because he's been just living his life as a child and now he's got to take responsibility oh, I need to eat, or nobody's going to come and shoot the mosquitoes away and he has to find it within himself to take action. So that's elementary level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. So you're trying to select artworks literary artworks in this case that speaks to that student and that's your primary speaks to that age group and what they're actually experiencing and is that your primary selective tool Is what speaks to them. So why wouldn't you choose Harry Potter or Percy Jackson?
Speaker 2:That's a good question, right? I love Harry Potter and a lot of students already read it. They already read Harry Potter and they already read Percy Jackson. So one of the criteria is let's look for works of literature that a student might not immediately pull off of the bookshelf on their own.
Speaker 2:So the goal is not to encourage primarily to encourage reading, or even to encourage reading fiction. Those are great, tangential goals. The primary goal is to fall in love with literature, which means to fall in love with very well told stories that are very insightful. That might be just a little bit beyond what you would normally reach to to easily read, where some guidance whether it's providing a little bit of historical background or a little bit of language might be a little bit difficult. So you might read it with your parents or whatever it is. It's just a little bit out of your reach and maybe something that's the language is more difficult. Like Anne of Green Gables, the language is tough Secret Garden.
Speaker 2:the language is tough. That's tough because they have that dialect, of course.
Speaker 1:So that's part of what you're looking for is something that stretches the child, in this case, yeah. Second to sixth graders that they're. These are kids who already know how to read. Of course they're maybe reading my age. I was reading a lot of Hardy Boys goosebumps, which is really simple. It's like designed to be sold.
Speaker 2:Fund to read. Yeah, I read everything, yeah, and they're basically the goosebumps are all basically the same story with the same theme.
Speaker 1:What kind of scares you?
Speaker 2:I won't deny that. But yeah, like I haven't read.
Speaker 1:There's definitely. I haven't investigated as an adult, so as a kid you know it's puppets versus vampires. It's different, right, and maybe you're, I'm sure you're right that it's basically a monster tale told over and over again with slight variations, sure. Anyway, I'm not going to argue about all sign and get all furious, but I will say agree with. But that makes a lot of sense to me in terms of the, the value of what literature, like selecting literature at that age group in particular.
Speaker 1:Now I have so I wanted to talk about role of art in general, but we would let's, since we're on literature, would stick here for a little bit. Because so one of the things I've been thinking about as someone who's just studied literature and a lot and study a little bit of education and pedagogy and the philosophy of education I have some experience in teaching but I've never run a school. There's a lot of real life problems you have to deal with. So it's easy to have theories of like what kids should do, right, what they should like, they should know the alien, the Odyssey by the time they're 15, front words and backwards or something like that, right, which is a feeling. I don't have that quite feeling.
Speaker 2:But I'll get to the classical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like a kind of classical thing. So I have like a little bit of a different take, although I think both are possible in a sense, I believe. So I part of what I think needs to happen, even starting in the early years, is you have to think about, like, from what is general education as a specialized moment in our lives and a specialized type of training, right? So there's gymnastics type training. We're trying to train their bodies a little bit. You might do musical trainings to train some of their spiritual things, what socializing at the playground but in the classroom, from the ages of, you know, four, five, six years old, till today now 18, or really 22 or 23,.
Speaker 1:There's a kind of generalized. This is something that a human that we believe a human should have, whatever field that they go into, to be a better human, to have the most best chance of living a great life in our complex society that we live in. And this is not. I don't believe in having this be any technical training. I think kids should do that on the side. If you see an aptitude and you know fixing things, then put them in something else. But I do think there's a value to have like some kind of generalized education and I think literature is core to that literature, math, science, history, core things. So I guess my question is, when you're thinking about that overall goal right as like, what should they know? And first off, do you think about that, is that at all part of what you're selecting for?
Speaker 2:So when you're saying, is that at all part of what I'm selecting for? Do you mean an overall program of literature? That is asking the question of what is it valuable for a human being to learn?
Speaker 1:Yes, like what should this kid? Let's say, you know you're gonna have a kid from the age of, you know, six till 16 when he's done, or 18. What should that kid experience literature wise? That you think is managed with I'll give caveats to flexibility based on the interests of the child. But that you think is do you have any strong inclinations of like they need to have, or they should optimally have, these types of literary experiences?
Speaker 2:So literary experiences is a key term in what you're saying here and you can equate that with particular books. But I don't necessarily equate that with particular books. I think there's a wide range of books. I do think literature and art, and when we talk about the visual arts I can share a little bit more of how I think it fits into. I think I have a better sense of how that fits into a broader program.
Speaker 2:But literature, yeah, I can speak a little bit on that, but literary experiences for me are not primarily about the particular books you read.
Speaker 2:There are particular books that I really like to teach that over the years have really resonated with my students and we talked.
Speaker 2:I talked a little bit about what I the kind of book I select for elementary, but I also have like a category for like the junior high years and then the high school years and for when I think of literary experiences, I think primarily of setting the student up for their own private reading experience at a certain point in a story, when they are swept up on, when they're with a book like Climax of the Hunchback of Notre Dame and they're reading it on their own, if they are totally into it and they're wrapped by that.
Speaker 2:That's the literary experience I want them to have, not necessarily with a particular book, but with the sense. I understand everything that's going on here. I understand the stakes, I understand how it connects to me, I understand all of it and it's coming through in this powerful emotional experience, as I'm seeing Quasimodo try to decide what to do and looking for Esmeralda and not knowing that she's right over there, all that stuff. But coming to building up not to a test in the classroom but to their own personal reading experience with, like, the end of a novel or the climax of a novel, something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're heavily focused on the personal experience of the students and you've done this yes and no.
Speaker 2:Okay, where's the no? Because I wanted to build up to that.
Speaker 1:Where's the no?
Speaker 2:The no, I'm a guide.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I'm a guide. There's a lot that needs to be set up with stories like this. I'll give you one example.
Speaker 1:Hunchback of Notre Dame. Let me give a different example because that's pretty approachable.
Speaker 2:That's an example of a junior high.
Speaker 1:That's a strong book for a junior high.
Speaker 2:It's pretty strong for junior high.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's one that the theme is really relatable because it's all about variations and romantic loves, and that's one of the standards. I'll just explain very quickly the junior high in high school to set the context. Junior high. I'm looking for adult classics with themes and story situations that would resonate to a 13-14 year old.
Speaker 1:That would resonate. The theme is now, so it's more abstract in a sense.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit more abstract. The themes often have to do with their kind of broad categories of themes like justice yeah To kill a mockingbird, 12 angry men, romantic love, personal identity. What's that? One Pygmalion or a doll's house? And the doll's house was the one I wanted to bring up as an example that.
Speaker 1:That's a junior high, junior high.
Speaker 2:A seventh grade boy is not going to pick up that novel or that play.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's not going to pick up that play.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's Ibsen. It's a play about a housewife who thinks she's happy but starts to realize that she isn't happy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, torvald, right, that's the husband, that's right. That's right. It's been a while since they've read it, okay.
Speaker 2:But that is a story that, when we come to the end of it, the climax, I'm looking for those junior high boys, as well as the girls, to be riveted, because it matters to them and the way we connect it to ourselves. There the theme essentially has to do with who do you listen to in your life? Are you going to simply accept what your parents and society tells you is right and wrong, or are you going to question, and that for a 13 year old?
Speaker 1:is gold.
Speaker 2:That's gold. So one the high school is similar, but what differentiates maybe the junior high is we have some very positive role models to go along with that. We have Shane. We have Nora from Adolzals. We have Quasimodo, who's very different from the superficial, phoebus and his orations of love that are mean nothing. That's sincere love versus superficial. We have Atticus Finch. So they are these complex adult stories, but the themes are relatable to 13, 14 year olds and the protagonists are admirable.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're focusing on the admirable, that's, the junior high differential.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now that doesn't mean that the stories are going to turn out well. One thing I tell my junior high students is I want you to suffer. At least I want you to. I want to introduce you to tragedy. Yeah, we will be introduced to tragedy, but we will see characters that we root for.
Speaker 1:Okay, and the high?
Speaker 2:school adult classics questions, thematic questions that deal with things that they're going through in their life. But maybe the answers that the author provides are not ones that you will want to emulate. For example, the Great Gatsby. I started off before we read the novel. I asked the question something like is it worth pursuing your dreams? And the Great Gatsby has a very definite answer to that, and it's not a positive answer.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Dreams are by nature superficial and shallow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I know that story, but it's been a while since.
Speaker 2:It's been a while, but the idea for the high school is we are interested in questions, thematic questions that you're going to relate to. We're not looking at the literature for literature's sake, like oh, this is a classic, you need to read James Joyce. No, we're not looking at literature that has themes that are more adult, like there's one you know I'm reading Dr Glass with a college student right now and it's all about Dr Glass. Dr Glass, I've never heard of it either. We're doing some Nordic literature together, but that's dealing with society's views of abortion.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's modern, it's contemporary.
Speaker 2:This is modern contemporary. That's not something that I would teach. No, it's actually like late 19th century.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:But it's not something that I would normally teach. Teach for the high school students. But what I do want to get to the high school students is you're going to have these relatable thematic questions Like what does justice look like in society, like or how does somebody change your world Fahrenheit 451. And maybe you're going to get answers that come from a different philosophical viewpoint.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so that's the difference for the high school class.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah so yeah. I mean there's a lot to unpack there, because I find that very interesting and I'd be curious how much of that is the focal point throughout the whole education, because obviously in literature-.
Speaker 2:What do you mean by throughout the whole education, so that literature, art education or education as a whole?
Speaker 1:General education, right, so like, because my thought is, you can all. There's a role for both in a sense.
Speaker 2:For both what?
Speaker 1:As in, I'm an advocate, like I want people to have personal experiences. But we live in a complex world that is built, in my view, by the imaginative literature that came before us, and by that I mean our conception of love and marriage, our conception of work, and you know what you're supposed to do with work, and your relationship to your family, your relationship to society, your relation, your duties or non-duties, and all these kinds of things are cool, like you're putting kids out in this world and they're supposed to, and it's like figured out, stupid. And to me, part of what and I'm not you, but I think that's what that's what happened to me is my, my feeling, where they didn't really give me the kind of humanities training that I think is essential for living in this complex world that we live in, not to give you all the answers, but to give you the tools to go find the answers properly. And to me, the imaginative literature, the great canonical works, help you in a couple of ways. I think they do a lot of what you say, and but they also they don't always do that, though, like I always tell people, like you're going, there's going to be parts of Dante, you're not going to like that's just going to be a little boring, you're not going to connect with this character. And yet Dante is one of the most pivotal books in the history of the Western canon and it's set up the enlightenment and everything that happened afterwards, and so like it's canonical and it's like we live in a Dantian, post-dantian world in a sense, and so if you don't read that, you're missing out, not just on, like you know, little references here and there, but in substructures of our entire society and world and psyche.
Speaker 1:I think I think literature of the 11th, 12th century, troubadours and you know these guys that they're writing stuff that are conception of love and marriage and sex come there from there and it was very different. So my point is that I don't think they need to read everything, but they for me, there needs to be an exposure to some of these what I would call influential, greatest, most influential works of all time that have built the cultural world that we live in. And I think that's what I would say to you if you're interested in the West, if you're living in the West, or if you're curious about the West. And now that's another debate is, should you do West East all of it. I don't know. That's hard questions. I don't have great answers to it, but that, to me, is a piece of the puzzle I'm not seeing enough of in you know, the kind of education individuals that I know about, who I think are amazing. That's what you do. You know, literature 3, 4.0 versus literature 1.0. I'm just thinking that there's a little bit extra of a piece.
Speaker 2:So what you're describing is their cortex to Western civilization and that kind of shape, how humanity's developed, and you can go back to the Odyssey, you can even go back to Gilgamesh the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Speaker 2:You can go back and then you can go through and take a look. Maybe Augustine's Confessions or Dante. And there are these texts Milton's, Paradise Lost. That might be drier, that might not be as much fun to read, but they were so influential in the development of Western civilization. Understanding those will give you a better sense of where we are today as humanity.
Speaker 1:Yes, and again, not everything just like a core set.
Speaker 2:For me I would say that sounds like a great college course, and also for me I think I would. When I think of the visual arts, I think of art appreciation and then I think of art history and I love art history and art history for me is okay. Let's study Giotto di Bondone, the core Renaissance painter, who influenced everybody from Michelangelo to, you could say, video game design in the 21st century.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll have to look this guy up.
Speaker 2:But he's a historical figure in a similar way that Dante might be. His paintings, treating them as art, are black and white movies. They're not as thrilling and exciting to immerse ourselves in. When I look at literature and I teach literature to through high school I'm looking to create I think we use a term literary experiences to create those powerful literary experiences, using a lot of the classics, but using the best and most approachable and for that particular age.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then afterwards for those students like I told you about that student I'm doing Nordic literature with and I've done other, gotten into Epic of Gilgamesh and things like that as well to look at the texts that led to the works of literature that they're in love with. But I'm focused especially on falling in love with the works of literature so that later on, if you do care about it, you'll want to know what was the predecessor that led to it and you'll want to know the art history of it. But before getting to the art history of it, you got to love the art of it. So that's my approach.
Speaker 1:Okay. So there's a lot we can talk about that. I would love to keep going, but I think it's important, especially because it's your expertise, to move into more of your expertise. I mean, they're both your expertise, but your degree is in art history and you do amazing tours. So if you ever get a chance, go check out one of the tours. They're not a normal museum tour. This is not in the sense of most museum tours I've done, which I haven't done a lot, because they're usually boring. It's just kind of walk around to the dates and times and maybe an influence of this painter, that sculptor, and then they move on.
Speaker 1:The point of what you're doing is in your museum tours and I don't even like calling them museums where you're art tours of great art, and what they call museums is you do focus in the same way you're talking about with having great experiences with the paintings. So can I? I'll give an example. Can I give an example that I'm going to say? The first thing we started with yes, the other day. Is that okay? Sure, okay. So we walk into a room and Luke sets it up by saying I want you to walk around before we get into the room. I want you to walk around and find the person you're most physically attracted to.
Speaker 2:Sexiest, sexiest, sexiest, sexiest, which is sexually attracted.
Speaker 1:But the person you find sexiest, and don't tell anybody, don't point it out, but just kind of walk around and find that person. Then we gather together and then you said for them to describe the painting, and with just simple descriptions.
Speaker 2:A title you would title give it.
Speaker 1:And so we went around and did that. But the point of that was to have a real visceral, you know, arousal of from a painting in a sense, and I think that's a really good way to connect with art in general. I mean, not, it doesn't always have to be sex, although sex is how awesome. So it's a good way to start a tour, but the that's very different. You would never see that in any museum, that kind of, you know, museum guide. So I think that's what makes what you do interesting and special.
Speaker 1:Now, the, so the. The question is, of course, in general education and in art history, art appreciation, I mean, I I find it interesting because you focus on this. I wonder if you think there should be like a full like, like we have a literature class, a full class of this type of thing, where they're going in the same way that you would have literature, almost versus. You know just, you could always incorporate art or maybe an art appreciation course here and there for a kid, that's it. So like you know what I mean. Which one would you advocate for and why? Which?
Speaker 2:method. So as someone who has taught separate art appreciation courses for over 15 years, I enthusiastically say there is a separate art appreciation course from elementary through high school.
Speaker 1:Okay. So to be clear, we're talking where you would advocate math, right? Tell me if I'm wrong on one of these subject math, science, history, literature, art appreciation.
Speaker 2:So I'm not an expert in the rest of those and whether or not they should be part of the general education I'm a big advocate of like homeschooling and so kind of crafting your own.
Speaker 1:So there's more individuality.
Speaker 2:But I would say in some ways, art appreciation is a kind of capstone to all the other subjects.
Speaker 1:It like integrates. It integrates more than literature.
Speaker 2:You think More than literature.
Speaker 1:More than literature, more than literature. Oh, we should have started here. Defend yourself. All right, let me hear. I'm excited to hear this.
Speaker 2:So what you described as your experience for going to the Art Museum, that was the first, just initial game that we played. What we did later on was we sat in front of an artwork and we started reading it together. And reading an artwork is a core of art appreciation. So, just for those that don't know what I do with art appreciation, we're not making clay vases or collages. I'm not teaching about art history and the difference between impressionism and post-impressionism.
Speaker 2:What we're doing is we're treating the artworks a lot like literature. They are stories, almost like visual poems, and the way to understand them and experience them is to quote unquote, read them ourselves, to describe them and immerse ourselves in the stories by using our words. And doing that is a combination of being scientific, analytical, as you're making observations, as you're piecing together what's happening in the scene, a lot like a detective might in a crime scene investigation. Oh, there's some petals on the ground, she looks sad, what does that have to do with each other? And you piece together all the clues to put together the story. So you're being analytical. You might even offer up hypotheses and test your hypotheses with observations. So you're being I don't know what side of the brain that is right side of the brain, whatever side, one of the two sides of the brain. But you also use the other side of the brain, the one where you are immersing yourself in the story, where you're imagining that these characters are real, that if you were to push play on the scene, that they would move in a certain way, that they would speak, that you would hear them, that this is a drama. This is not a frozen moment. This is a moment like on a video, pushed on pause, and you can bring kind of your imaginative qualities to bring that scene to life, a little bit like what's going on here. Bring that scene to life Now.
Speaker 2:In that sense, you're using both sides of your brain, the sides that you might use in math and science, the sides that you might use in the humanities and literature. Not only that, but you're doing it Not for some long term study or to an ASA test or to complete a worksheet. You're doing it for the satisfaction of getting a story. You're going to come away from each art appreciation class feeling like, wow, we just lived this moment with this character.
Speaker 2:To top it all off, introspection. It is not enough to simply just read the story and analyze and imagine, but then to identify the kind of moment and to personally connect that moment and we do that constantly from first grade on where we look at a character and we empathize with them and we personally connect and ask ourselves when have we been in a moment like this? And then we see that character as a reflection of who we are Personal growth and development, introspection, extra-spection, all of it and then throw in maybe you got some history in there, you got some creative writing in there, but that's why I see art appreciation as a capstone.
Speaker 1:For the humanities.
Speaker 2:For all of it.
Speaker 1:But you didn't talk anything about science.
Speaker 2:Yes, I did.
Speaker 1:What I meant.
Speaker 2:Observation analysis hypotheses. All that is using that right side of your brain. I train teachers to teach art appreciation and none of them were in the humanities. I co-taught a second grade art appreciation class with a science teacher and he told me this is better than a science class Because what I've got to do is I've got to have them make observations and put together something here, and it's over by the end of the class. He would contrast that to like studying the phases of the moon, where over the course of a month they make observations and at the end of it they draw conclusions. But it's not an encapsulated scientific game.
Speaker 1:Definitely, I guess I don't see what literature and poetry would not do that that can do. That literature and poetry can't do.
Speaker 2:I can answer that, okay, the visual arts are visual. You start off with the concretes. You start off like you're going on a nature hike. You start off like you're staring at the stars. You start off like you're looking at a person and you've got to provide the concepts. You've got to build up from that. And literature it's the reverse You're given the concepts and you've got to imagine the scene. That's how you concretize. You picture the character, you picture the actions, you picture the setting.
Speaker 1:But where do the concepts come from when you look at a painting? Where do the words that you use come from? You have to study literature to increase your ability to make those kinds of you can study literature to increase your ability, but you don't Most.
Speaker 2:this class is not for literature students.
Speaker 1:When I teach art appreciation, it's not for literature students, what I'm trying to get is what's more foundational.
Speaker 2:Oh, probably literature. Okay, that what I see. There's a difference in reading a poem. Oh for sure. And there's something more scientific about.
Speaker 1:You haven't gotten me there Again. This is coming from someone who loves what you do and loves the art stuff, so I'm not trying to. I do think there's like I don't know. There's something. One the science example you gave to me sounds like it's maybe because he just didn't have great training in general.
Speaker 2:He's a good teacher.
Speaker 1:Because I don't know if you've seen mystery science and I think what they do is very similar to art appreciation Exactly.
Speaker 1:No, but not art appreciation. That's not the foundational thing. The foundational thing is how you think. So you gave a talk at Third Thursday on art and epistemology and how bad epistemology leads to bad discussions and bad integrations, and you can use art appreciation as one way to train the mind, and I think that I guess my point is that everything you do in general education should be geared toward training the mind, so science should be. This is one way to extra-spec about the world, to make observations about how the functioning of the world around you, outside of you, does Art, and primarily, in my view, is how the inside of you works. It's mostly about that. Now you can also use the extra-spection element of look, she's holding a flower. So what kind of flowers, though? What is it? Is there meaning to those flowers? Things of that nature, but I don't think that's the primary for painting. That's where I would disagree. You think, knowing, I think you've got to start.
Speaker 2:You know you've been on the tours where we don't start with the story or the background story. We don't start with the plot, sorry, the concrete. We start with what we're seeing, what you see, and we build up from that, in a similar way that the Mystery Science Theater. I think I remember something about.
Speaker 1:Just Mystery.
Speaker 2:Science, mystery, science, mystery Science Theater. That would be fun too. Well, he did a good job, but they start off with an observation.
Speaker 2:Let's look at this tortoise shell and look at it carefully and then make some observations and come up with oh wow, the shell is connected to the body of the tortoise. And the same way you look at an artwork to start with you don't know what's happening and you've got to figure out what's going on, like you're stepping into nature and observing it. So the reason I think of it as a capstone it's not a replacement for science, of course but, it integrates literary observational into one little condensed package.
Speaker 1:Whenever I teach or do literature, I always bring in paintings. So I agree. So I'm not trying to disagree with you in that sense. I'm just trying to get at what is the core and how do you properly use this? I mean to me, I think there's a role. I mean, like my view would be that you would have art appreciation or art integrated throughout all of literature, that the literature course would be the foundational and you would constantly put in as so like I think as a literature teacher, you should be well-trained in all the humanities.
Speaker 2:So if I you want to, I can share a little bit about how so. I do integrate art with literature, but never as well, no, not never. There are two kinds of integrations. There's one where the art helps in some way to appreciate the literature and that can come in some ways of it illustrates maybe a scene, or it's some historical background, like here's Julius Caesar and now let's read the play, or something like that.
Speaker 2:But the main way that I love to integrate is when we do not have any notion of any connection, and this is what happens. So I'll give you a quick example. In art appreciation class in junior high early this year we had a painting of Andromache. After she has been kicked out of Troy and Troy, her country has been burned down and she's a captive and we see her a kind of a city scene, a slave waiting for water. Hector's wife. Hector's dead. Her son is dead.
Speaker 1:Killie kills Hector.
Speaker 2:And she is by herself, solemn and lonely and black, in this new place, while this old other village is kind of looking at her a little bit like who's the stranger. And we immerse ourselves in this story and personally connect to it and ask the question when have you felt like an outsider? And then we connect it. I asked the question what if Atticus Finch saw this painting? What would he think of it? And Atticus Finch, from To Kill a Mockingbird, is someone who is constantly thinking about how to put yourself in somebody else's shoes, how to empathize with them, how to connect with them and not to dismiss them based on your prejudice. And so I have the students write an assignment where Atticus takes his two kids to the art museum and they see this painting, and to write out the dialogue that they would have about this painting.
Speaker 1:From Atticus's perspective.
Speaker 2:And from Atticus the kids. Yeah, so the focus there I'm treating the artwork independently and the connection to literature is the same kind of connection that we'd make to personal life. It is secondary to the artwork, so the artwork is primary. It's not the handmaiden of the literature class, but it connects thematically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. So it seems like we're mostly on the same page, though. I agree, because I guess I would just put more of an emphasis and this is the great thing about having you know when you have a school system I don't believe it should be public that you could have different teachers with different focuses, in a sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's why I'm a big fan of, like, all kinds of freedom and education so that you can be all kinds of experiments with the different kinds of courses, and parents could see what works best for their kids.
Speaker 1:Because the way I would approach it is I would have literature and poetry as the base and then painting would be supporting it. That's how I would probably approach it, but I would do the same kind of exercise. I would definitely learn and use those exercises because I think it's very valuable. Anything you could do to especially with the conceptual arts of literature, anything you can do with getting somebody to put them to understand it and integrate it enough to apply it somewhere else, is a valuable exercise.
Speaker 2:I would even go farther For me, it's one of the core tenets of education the ability to constantly integrate between literature, between art and your art.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree. I would think that's the core of all of education.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, like in literature, for example, our curriculum gets more and more exciting as the year goes on, because we're constantly asking the question how is this character similar to, indifferent from previous characters? There's a game I like to play over the course of the year called Crazy Character Combos, where we just get throw all the Ash Ups, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:We get all the characters that we spent time with over the course of the year to that point together, whether it's Atticus and Goodman Brown and Jean Valjean, and we randomly pick two. Yeah, and ask ourselves, okay, what's fundamentally similar and different between these two characters? Yeah, and we gain a Clear understanding and we start to see links, and we start to see abstractions and we start to understand humanity so I agree with all of that?
Speaker 1:I would definitely. I I'm saddened to live in a world where only stem is the focal point. And, and you know, there's that Robin Williams quote from Dead Poult Society we're. I don't remember the quote verbatim, but he says is it the one about?
Speaker 2:poetry is to women.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's definitely the one, because that does work. So I would say it's so. The quote is something like you know, and engineering, lawyers, doctors, these are noble professions and we should admire them, and you know, this is Something about helping us live longer. But beauty, love, poetry, literature, art, this romance, this is what life is worth living for. Right, and I Did not get that correct, exactly the idea of you know, doctor, extend your life, and that's worthwhile and great, but what are you extending it for? Or the the cheap way of you know life. So, in other words, I think we live in this world where we're focused on purely life extension, doing all these things, which I think are noble, and I want to live a long time, as healthy as possible, enjoy but we're missing all these other elements, which is why you're alive in the first place, other than just mere breathing, mere existence. And I think art, literature, romance, love, passion these are the things that give you that or that at least fill in. You know, I think of it as like almost the engineering and the tech that gives you the outline of a life, but the you fill it in with beauty and passion and love and romance and Adventure and things like that. That, to me, is why you stay alive.
Speaker 1:I I don't want to stay alive on a to where I could see TV, and that's like. I want to be able to experience life and to see more beauty and be able to expand my abilities to see more beauty. That's why I try to read really hard literature that's way above my Pay grade. I say like above my abilities, just like you do with those kids. Like I just read Moby Dick and I still don't know what the hell that's really about. Like and I'm doing it, I'm doing two groups of that and I've read it several times now and I've taken lectures and I have something and I'm grappling with this mysterious tragedy thing and it's odd.
Speaker 1:Reading Shakespeare, reading Homer, reading Dante, reading Milton, like these are not like the books that I Pick up as popcorn and enjoy and love Harry Potter, love adventure stories and thrillers I love those, they're great. But these are things that like Expand my desire to be alive and it's like while there's still some more in existence to experience, and it keeps Expanding and it's like a. You know, it's an ever-expanding bound of human thought, as Tennyson put it Most bound of human thought, it's like, and it's the utmost, that it's like always going to the end, where those, as far as you travel, knowledge travels with you and it goes farther and there's just so to me. I I'm saddened in a sense to live in that, in a world where these things that I think are amazing and the tech and the you know stem stuff is so great, and I'm so happy and admiring of these people, but I feel like we're missing what you're talking about in our education system and in our culture may leave you with this, so I would like to talk.
Speaker 2:What's the Robin Williams characters name? Can't remember. Is it reardon?
Speaker 1:is it? Maybe I'll look it up as you're doing this. Don't judge me for doing this.
Speaker 2:I would like to talk to him a little bit because I feel on the one hand I'm very sympathetic to that site that art fills in what's missing in the world. It makes life worth living.
Speaker 1:It's John.
Speaker 2:Keating. Oh, that's it, john Keating that was okay.
Speaker 1:I don't think. I don't know if they did that on purpose, but that's a family. That's not Peter Keating.
Speaker 2:That's Peter Keating, I know I know, keating, yeah, but I for me that that's not enough.
Speaker 1:What is it?
Speaker 2:What's Peter? What John Keating says? That art. Art makes life worth living. That you do the science, you do the engineering, you do all that stuff to survive, but you have all this to make it worth living, to make the years worth living. For me, I think that's not enough.
Speaker 1:Well, he didn't just say art, to be clear.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, that's not.
Speaker 1:The focus is beauty, love, art, everything like that poetry.
Speaker 2:All that I for me.
Speaker 1:I don't think. What do you think it is?
Speaker 2:This is something that I want to think more about. Okay, but my initial reaction and there's one little story I'll maybe illustrate my initial reaction is that's too much of a dichotomy, that I want to see more of an integration between I mean your work and what that means, and Love and beauty and poetry and art and all that.
Speaker 2:And I'll give you a little story that comes to mind is I've got a student who who's a senior in high school right now and he's taking my high school literature class and he's doing some Very high-tech projects. I think they're doing some kind of reverse 3d printing where you take an object and it digitizes it and preserves that object so you can take I don't know family heirloom and and have it preserved and then later on 3d printed. But he's he's working on a team to build something like that and we were having a private tutorial session and I asked him a little bit about this thing that he's working on and then to integrate it back To literature, the question popped in my mind to ask All right, let's think about all the characters that we've encountered so far this year Gatsby, hester, pren, some other characters from literature. Who's the main character from Fair Knight 451?
Speaker 1:I don't remember his name. Oh, we could use.
Speaker 2:Clarisse, who's the who's? Guy Montag from fair.
Speaker 2:Yeah or we're gonna get thrown throwing the fireman baby. Let's look at these characters and imagine that they were there right beside you. What would they think of this reverse 3d printer? How would their premises, their understanding of the world affect their view of this technology and your passion for this creation of this technology? And Clarisse would have a very different view than Gatsby would. And thinking about these characters in terms of these human ideas that live with you, that Help shape your perspective on the world, that give you these different perspectives in the world and in your engineering work, I think there's. I think there's more for me than just simply.
Speaker 1:It makes life worth living and Maybe it you just proved my point, I think because that makes the career worth doing.
Speaker 2:Maybe, yeah. Integration yeah, the way yeah do the.
Speaker 1:I 100% agree, and I that, to me, is my point is that we don't have the integration, we just have the stem, and so we're not doing the humanities thing. And but I agree that and that's a wonderful story that you want to have meaning in your work. So many people, like they, go into work and I know all these tech people who make tons of money, make what I make in like four years and like six months in there, and they're miserable, miserable. They have no meaning, they have no thought about what that's all about, and I think part of it is what you're saying. You know, read some arrow. Read arrow Smith by Sinclair Lewis and see the passion he has for his craft. Read, and there's a whole bunch of these types of stories like that. So I fundamentally agree.
Speaker 1:But I will just add that even if you're a tech bro, that you, this type of stuff isn't just about. It's about making meaning in your work and in other areas of your life, because one thing I've noticed in talking to tech people is Not always, but often, they seem to be lacking in the Relationships, in the love and the romance. They're almost robotic a lot of times. And they don't need to be, because I think they're at their core, there's some of the most passionate people possible, and that's what infuriates me about how we treat kids and an education system by doing the dichotomy. Well, you know, if you read Iliad, if you read Les Miserables, you're not gonna get, you know, a better Ability to be a better engineer, right, you're not gonna be able to, you know, logically, dissect this thing, to have a better widget. It's like no, maybe not, but I think actually yes, because you'll probably be more creative.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you look at the best entrepreneurs, they're all actually pretty Artistic and literary Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos he started a bookstore. I mean, like these guys are actually very literate. They have read Shakespeare, I think. I Think I read somewhere that Steve Jobs really loved Moby Dick, which I was fun, interesting. We also love Shakespeare and other. So my point is that I agree, integration, integration, integration. But we're not doing that. We denigrate or we see as like, maybe it's a nice leisurely Hobby when you're older and retired and I've nothing else to do. That's literature, that's painting, that's art, that's love, that's beauty, versus. You know well this. This will get me the $300,000 job right now, so I'm gonna do just this and then I'll you know, maybe worry about that later, and I that.
Speaker 2:That's why I just don't well, we're gonna have to Continue this conversation another time, because I feel like there are all kinds of oh yeah, there's so much to talk about.
Speaker 1:I would love to talk more about the canonical works To which one should should, if any, integrate. And there's so much to do. Why don't you leave the people with some things you're working on and Make sure you talk into the mic, because I want them to hear it loud and clear and, you know, touching the art, museum tours and Literature at our house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. If you want to find out more about the classes I teach literature at our housecom, go there. If you want to find out more about the art appreciation For adults classes or the tours, sign up for my mailing list. On touching the artcom Kirk and you do salons online. Oh yeah, so all kinds of.
Speaker 1:That's a good introduction, by the way, because, like you, then you get to experience it. So check out the salons. Where do you normally announce those?
Speaker 2:on my mailing list. Okay, go to touching the art.
Speaker 1:So everything's just touching the artcom. Just sign up and go from there.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Kirk Cool. All right, thank you.