This is a reminder to mark your calendars for November 20th. Recall my post on the Categorically Not! series of events held at the Santa Monica Art Studios. The first one of the new season was a tremendous success, and I described it here, and there was another one since then, part of which I described here.

Well, the next one of the new season is on Sunday. Here is K.C. Cole’s teaser:

As Alice learned, it’s not always clear what’s a looking glass, and what’s a window to another world. Mirrors and windows are often interchangeable: we look out into the world, and see ourselves reflected back. We look at a reflection, and believe it’s showing us a world beyond. We internalize the mirror image and project the one inside. Objects, actions and ideas can become so confused with their reflections that it’s impossible to untangle them. What’s phantom and what’s real? Is there even a relevant difference?

November’s Categorically Not! will explore mirroring in religion, neuroscience, and photography. Mirror neurons turn the mind into a looking glass, firing in the brain when we see someone perform, as well as when we perform an action ourselves. This inherent organization of the brain contributed to how we came to develop language and social groups, learn a skill, and empathize with others. UCLA neuroscientists Bruce Dobkin and Marco Iacoboni will bring us up to date on exciting new discoveries. For photographers, reflections can be a nuisance, but poet and artist Janet Sternburg—who is celebrating the publication of her new book Optic Nerve: Photopoems—uses them to create a multi-dimensional cosmos where phantoms are as real as the “real world” beyond. As for God, do we mirror ourselves in his image? Or do we create him in ours? As Pultizer-prize winning author of God: A Biography, Jack Miles, will discuss: “The practice of a religion entails the introjection of a durable set of moods, behaviors, and intuitions not of one’s own devising. Sometimes these derive from a known founder, sometimes not. In any case, their adoption–in which belief constitutes only one element–brings about something like the transfer of personality over time.”

Once again, in view of a previous time, please send pointed critical remarks about the above quoted blurb to KC Cole, and not to me, thanks. However, discussion and exploration of the ideas within it are welcome in the comment section, as usual.

As usual, it is held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, come at 6:00pm for drinks, cookies and a look around the space, and there’s a 6:30 start. For more information, visit the Categorically Not! website.

Hope to see some of you there!

-cvj