If you work in philosophy of math or logic, you probably know some of Cook's work. I'm frankly envious of the speed and acuteness of his logic mind, which is comparable to anybody I've met. And with Roy these virtues combine with philosophical depth, creativity, and a general decency that leads him to be one of the most helpful interlocutors you can ever spend a meal with.
But none of that is why we honor Cook during our second punkrockmonday. Roy Cook the logic dude is the same as Roy Cook the builder of this jaw-droppingly cool scale model of the Saint Paul Cathedral.
My wife got a chance to see this in person at the Minnesota State Fair and she said it's actually a pretty sublime experience. I'm hoping at the forthcoming Central to track it down.
Or consider Cook's perhaps even more awesome depiction of the Minnesota State Capitol.
This thing is like six feet long, and all with Legos! And let me state clearly that there are no packages with instructions for how to put these together. It's three dimensional pointallism, and (with apologies to Arthur Danto) a lot fricking cooler than recreated boxes of Brillo pads.
But what does this have to do with punk rock?
Everyone who gets decent at anything has to be mediocre at it for a time, and also to put up with all sorts of discouraging people who put down the value of what they do, either as failing the lazy hegemony of American cool or as being non-conducive to career success. And the very name "punk" is to glorify the honey badger (who, as we all know, doesn't give a s**t) response to these dictates.
That is, lots of people for whatever reasons have a lot invested in making sure you get and then stay with the program. But it's a program that pretty systematically precludes creating beautiful things. Great punk rock is the systematic rejection of this get with the program demand. In fact, Iggy Pop once said that everytime he tried to do something beautiful, somebody called him a punk. So he finally thought, fine I'm a punk, I don't care but I'm going to keep doing this. And within a couple of years we had The Stooges, Funhouse, Raw Power, the Berlin duology, New Values, and later American Caesar. O.K. then; I want to be a punk too!
I can't begin to imagine how many people discouraged Cook (he's also an amateur cartoonist), e.g. "This is what you're doing instead of philosophy of math Roy?" Ha. Ha. Ha.
As if one can't do Legos and great philosophy of math and logic (vita HERE) at the same time. As if all you can do is one thing. As if the philosophy muse doesn't give us ideas in the strangest places, including and especially in a box of Legos. As if the same people griping about hobbies didn't say the same exact discouraging things when you took your second philosophy class! If we'd listened to those voices, none of us would be students of philosophy.
But like Iggy, Roy soldiered on, putting together all the little pieces in the pursuit of crafting something beautiful out of creation's plastic detritus. And he's done it, showing the rest of us that all our own weird labors inside and out of philosophy are not in vain.
Check out a one of Cook's pointalist mosaics of a Star Wars character.
Or check out this frighteningly canine spaceship.
Fricking awesome! And for more of Roy's Lego creations go HERE.
Lady Philosophy finds the weirdest places to bestow her gifts! In a box of Legos, when you open up ProTools or GarageBand, on an old, badly tuned piano, a box of ingredients in your kitchen, an old edition of Petit Larousse, a public street in India, H.P. Lovecraft, video games, Disney Pixar films, Hank Williams Senior's medical history, etc. etc. etc. And at its best, punk rock is nothing more nor less than a desperate attempt to make a space where you can listen to her. T.S. Elliot puts the problem thusly:
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
But remember! Elliot never went to the Minnesotal State Fair, or the Landmark Building in downtown Saint Paul. And his building blocks were words, not little pieces of articulated plastic.
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