Recommend something complex and profound

(thx Geeta, best link ever)

Maybe not, but I really like it. I'm inclined these days to think that nothing is either complex or profound, and that instead things are either silly or pretentious.

Would kinda love it if people took this thread seriously!

yeah

Dr Hecht's Optics

Damn straight.

the water cycle

Seriously every time I see an oil in a puddle I think all about the water cycle and its complexity, and how profound it is.

Sometimes when I'm high I think about Fibonacci numbers.

I think I consider something profound if it strikes me deeply but it's ultimate meaning either eludes me or whatever I find most special about it seems to elude whatever the meaning seems to be, if that makes sense. "1984" actually seems like a good example since it strikes me in a place much deeper than a political allegory should.

Antonioni's "The Passenger"
Eliot's "Four Quartets"

Parasites

Well I don't really "recommend" them but they're complex/profound!

Sun City Girls "Torch of the Mystics"
which i am listening to right now in order to get my brain moving better

handstands

my go-to answer would probably be short stories by Kafka, but i just finished reading Cynthia Ozick's The Puttermesser Papers and it fits these criteria for me, so i'll say that.

my go-to answer would probably be short stories by Kafka

Yeah, or Borges. I can only really take complex and profound in short bursts.

dianetics

the celestine prophecy

the da vinci code

the secret

he's just not that into you

ann gedes 1999 calendar

http://www.robertashley.org/productions/atalanta.htm

http://www2.stetson.edu/religion/lucas/images/interior_art/newgrange1z.jpg

^^^those guys were trippin' balls, dude

Would kinda love it if people took this thread seriously!

― ryan, Tuesday, October 12, 2010 6:09 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

the secret

― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Monday, October 11, 2010 6:58 PM

Serious answers:

Mastering the Core Teachings of The Buddha by Daniel M. Ingram (whole thing's available as a free ebook too)

Mind of Clover

Sadness by Barthelme

Tarkovsky's "Stalker"

the music of dream thetater

that's my scientologist dream theater cover band

we also eat lots of potatoes

http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/amy-hempel/in-the-cemetery-where-al-jolson-is-buried

― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Tuesday, 12 October 2010 01:33 (11 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

<3

when I think about the incredibly complex and profound proofs of Erdős I can feel the cosmic meth

I think that is what I officially recommend btw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

HOOS: the first three! I didnt see the second three, but those look good too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxYCLbbW12c&feature=related

teaching the entirety of Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" this semester has re-acquainted me with its beautiful, maddening, frustrating, excessive, enormous, majestic, witty, funny, over-the-top, psychedelic royalist poetics. If you want a complex and profound experience, try an 880 page long poetic allegory in which Aristotelian virtue ethics and the colonial domination of Ireland are woven and re-woven into a never ending epic chivalric romance about knights and giants and magicians and dragons and fairies.

the novels of William Gaddis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwpP00k-u9s&feature=related

the novels of William Gaddis

― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 12 October 2010 14:59 (15 minutes ago)

I just came to this thread to say the same thing. It doesn't get much more complex or profound than JR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CwICXwLBmo&feature=channel

I don't really see how instrumental music can be profound. What is it telling one about life? Complex and beautiful, yes.

You're kidding?

Nope, maybe I have a misunderstanding of profound. To me it's something that makes you think deeply and honestly about something. Music doesn't make me think, it makes me feel.

The word "profound" comes from the Latin word for "deep"; depth in art (for me) is merely when something elicits a complex response. There are so many different emotions contained in for e.g. the Bach piece I posted — too many in fact, and they change so often, and are by their nature ambiguous and hard to identify — so for me it is profound.

Sebald, the Rings of Saturn

oakley hall's novel warlock

^^ can you tell me about this?

i have the NYRB edition - bought because i <3 robert stone and i <3 the nyrb editions - but i have not yet cracked it open.

also

http://akalin.cx/images/Gravitation.jpg

don't think i comprehend more than the first half of the first chapter and the first half of the second chapter

"depth in art (for me) is merely when something elicits a complex response."

I feel like this places an undue burden on the listener to create the depth, particularly with something as abstract as sheet music. Was it Proust or the cookie that is profound? I feel like most music is the cookie.

I don't really see how instrumental music can be profound.

I really want to say, "I am not arguing about profundity on the internet," but you know me better than that. To say that one kind of understanding is fundamentally different than another is necessarily to say that some people understand BETTER than other people. But wait, let me jump back a couple of steps.

We don't know what is profound. We don't know what happens when we die (though I think I have a good working theory). We don't know why we're here (again, I feel like I'm on solid ground here). We especially don't know THE THINGS THAT WE DON'T KNOW. There are things we can't ever know, the same way there are parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes can't see. We're part of something that's not just big, and not just really really big, it's bigger than we can comprehend with our brains. It's bigger than we are, and that's what that means. There are things we will die not knowing, and that's true for every one of us, and it will always be true for every one of us. We have to make peace with that before we die. Isaac Newton had to do it, and so do we, and as infinite as the universe is, and as long as there are brains around to not understand how infinite "infinite" really is, we'll be having the same conversations. And then we'll all die. Every single last one of us.

Me, I don't worry about dying slowly, or horribly, or quickly, or violently -- I'm not concerned with what my body thinks about my dying. I would like its complaining to be limited as much as possible, but it's not what matters. What matters is having some sense of what I, myself, meant. It doesn't matter whether it's at the micro or macro level -- it's the same thing.

Complexity is overrated, sure. So is simplicity. If you don't see how instrumental music can be profound, then it won't be. If you think all complexity in language and ideas can still be reduced to a simplicity, then it will be. If you think everything is hilarious and pointless, of course you have a point, but only from where you sit. These aren't the things that define us as personalities. None of this is a matter of style, and not even a matter of preference. These are the questions that we don't ever answer, all of us, together.

I think it's fun to challenge my brain in any way that I can think of (which of course creates a loop, but nevermind). I think "Music for Airports" has a lot to recommend it, but I only say that because I put it on last night. Another night, I would pick something else.

Did I mention Hopscotch?

Brice Marden's Cold Mountain series.

http://www.sfmoma.org/images/artwork/large/99.367_01_b02.jpg

http://www.kickingwind.com/assets4/marden.jpg

These aren't the things that define us as personalities

cmon, they totally are. good post though!

"We especially don't know THE THINGS THAT WE DON'T KNOW. "

I'm gonna cop to agreeing with Zizek that Rumsfeld's "known unknowns" speech is kind of accidentally profound, and if people had spent more time trying to unpack its implications instead of mocking its Monty Python linguistic weirdness, it might have made for a more enlightened public policy towards large scale projects.

MStB, the basic narrative -- sheriff comes to town, crimes occur, violence escalates -- belies the novel's tonal and narrative complexity. the best way i can describe it is by reference to another novel. have you read pynchon's against the day? warlock directly prefigures the apocalyptic wild west travails of the traverse boys (hall is a big big influence on pynchon), but hall does it with even more bewildering density of incident. it's exhausting, in the best sense

been wanting to read Warlock for a long long time.

and on the Rumsfeld, unknown unknowns kinda thing: Nicholas of Cusa's theology, especially "On Learned Ignorance" def qualifies as profound.

rumsfeld's spiel wasn't profound or accidental; he just laid out various categories of ignorance in US intelligence in the style of doctor seuss

haven't read "against the day" but i really liked "mason & dixon" and the older stuff (didn't actually care much for "inherent vice")

nice to hear it's got a pynchon connection, will read.

my answer was serious and no one wants to talk about it ;(

the man without qualities - robert musil.

the rare sort of stuff i divide my life into "before" and "after" reading it.

xp ian - i can talk about how i haven't heard/seen it but i want to hear it!

Musil is great.

Dr Hecht's Optics is a good introduction for a senoir undergrad.
― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, January 7, 2004 4:37 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

elegant but profound is a stretch

instrumental music can be profound. imo, profoundity isn't necessarily when you learn something, it is when you experience a state of euphoric clarity. music does this for me all the time.

"the man without qualities - robert musil."

i borrowed this for about eight weeks but couldn't make it through. Is there a non-German equivalent?

http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_reg_E.htm

ian i would talk about robert ashley for ages, but you know that already. i think the mention of him should not be forgotten in this thread re: "instrumental music", esp as his use of words is an interesting mix of vocal intrument + lyrics, imo.
a couple weeks ago i went to a talk by Van Dyke Parks and he said that lyrics were intellectual connectors and the music they fit within or were accompanied by (however it might work out) was the emotional connector, but he also kind of hesitated to put them in such bold dichotomy - it can all blend.

ohman, Erdős and the love of amphetamines! that is how i feel abt coffee these days tbh. the clarity!
good stuff itt, thx :)

any tips? i've had a fairly boring rainy sunday and would like to watch something that will move me. a movie, a documentary, a tv series, a play, any recommendations welcome. something quite direct would be good.

andy carroll

too complex and profound.

future historians will be seasoned campaigners at examining the past, yet few will have seen the likes of carroll.

former holy roman empire man carolus magnus aka charlemagne will have been disappointed at being eclipsed by the big novocastrian

http://www.leninimports.com/ingmar_bergman_wild_starberries_uk_dvd_cover.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKoJcDclJXE

J.G. Bennett's Hazard

I think I might enjoy that film