If I had listened to Hegel

If I had listened to Hegel, life might be different. I don't know where we'd be living or if I would have found a job teaching philosophy. But If I'd listened to Hegel, I'd know the answers.

I met Hegel for the first time in Dr. Bob Anderson's logic class at Washington College. I asked Dr. Anderson if he bought into how the logic we were learning related to real-life. He was an Obi-wan Kenobi kind of figure, who always had me listening for more than was going on in class. He said he personally subscribed to Hegelian logic. That was before I Googled. Off to the library.

Modern philosophy class with Dr. Anderson danced closer to Hegel, by way of Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant. Philosophy had its hooks in my spirit long before Washington College, but Anderson and company, ancient philosophy, Thomas Kuhn, Nietzsche, Buddhism, I was happily soaking in the existential hot tub--reading Kierkegaard, Camus and Dostoevsky over the summer for no reason.

As I worked on my English degree, dialed in on William Blake, Wordsworth and British Romanticism, Hegel hung in the background, an influence. His dialectic logic surfaced everywhere. I was skimming the surface, but didn't have a chance to dive deep. Hegel's tome "Phenomenology of Spirit," stared me down.

I am motivated by challenges. Bigger challenge, more motivation. Hegel's Phenomenology has been pegged both as one of the crowning achievements of modern philosophy and one of the ten most difficult books of all time. Game on, Hegel. Let's dance.

Dr. Anderson and I talked graduate schools for philosophy. This would be where I would dance or wrestle with Hegel, the lion at the gate of the contemporary deep thinkers who followed him. The ring, or dance floor (sorry, can't pick which metaphor I prefer), was Duquesne University.

And then it wasn't. The siren-call of a real job and income drowned out Hegel. His finger-on-my-chest, German breath in my grill challenge became a whisper. It was almost like a kid outgrowing Santa Claus, pushing the pursuit of the philosophy career out for something more practical. But I know better.

I've always heard Hegel, before I knew who he was. I've always been my fullest self when I'm absorbed in study and activity, whether philosophy or literature, or running. And I know that Hegel gets closer to reality and being than Wall Street and big business can even sniff.

Funny thing is, I can apply Hegel's dialectic (thesis, then its antithesis or opposite, combining in a synthesis of both) to any part of my own life and it works. Take my slothful, hazy unstudying years at N.C. State. They led to my running and lifting weights, in shape years of serious study at Washington College while working, which led to the jobs and writing that followed.

I can still hear Hegel. His Phenomenology sits in a box of books in our garage. Yesterday (Aug. 27) was Hegel's birthday, which got me thinking about him again. Our cage match or dance is still coming. Sure, if I'd listened to Hegel, my life might be different now. But truth is, I've never stopped listening.

The Abstract, a.k.a. the left cross

Q-Tip has the coolest voice in hip hop. I've maintained that statement since first hearing "A Tribe Called Quest" years ago. Tip also goes by the handle "The Abstract Poet." When I think about his lyrics, his flow, his songs, abstract doesn't seem to be the right word. His narratives paint pictures with more detail.

But then I think about the fact that he produced Tribe's earliest albums. And I think about how those albums affect me: that if I disregard the words and just roll with the beat, the jazz, the music, then I am tapped into the abstract.

Mark Rothko said, "We favor the simple expression of the complex thought." Rothko went after "the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea and between the idea and the observer." That led him to large canvases with swaths of color. The canvas as a portal for the viewer to look into, look through. The abstract.

Abstract hits me differently. Maybe it's the left cross you don't see coming. A landscape painting or a ballad relies on story, and per Rothko, the the idea is buried in the story. You've got to excavate. It's not naked before you. Maybe unearthed is another word for abstract.

The abstract is the likely reason I dig jazz. Miles, Monk, Mingus. With little in the way of lyrics, the bass, the horn, the keys emote directly to the soul. For me, Mingus may be the master of the unseen left cross. Mingus has one-punch knockout power, raining down  a river to float your soul down a Nile of the abstract.

Mingus, Rothko, Q-Tip. They've all attended some sort of boxing/archaeology school. That school that teaches you how to unearth an idea, dust it off and straight knock someone out with it.

Funny, my response is the Obi-wan Kenobi stance: let my guard down and take it. I don't expect to become more powerful. But there is something to being hit with the left cross. Hit with the abstract.