>> from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. claimed the lives of 2800 troops. we talk about the war from many ,erspectives with journalists generals, and many who debate why we went to war and the involvement. served me are three who in the military. and he is thehor ofnding executive director

iraq and served. here, daniel, who served in themarines and was in marine corps. i am pleased to have all of them there to discuss the war that they see and what those of us should know about with the theirrs in iraq and feelings and understandings of the mission. i welcome all of you to this conversation. you ande begin with what we should know from the perspective of the men and women who are fighting the war. but theyre fantastic, the finest force --

without a doubt, the finest force. there is the difficult operating environment and you hear consistently. >> they are detached because they do not feel connected and you look at world war ii and you have 10% or 11%. islooks like most of america busy looking at britney spears and madonna. the detachment affects the american people. the entire dynamic is different now since it is such a small percentage of the entire population that the public is removed from. >> echoing the fact of what paul said, they are just unbelievable

individuals. i do not think i would go to the rest of my life meeting about a group of individuals than i served with in iraq. i constantly keep in touch with them. moving forward, i think, just like paul had said, it is difficult because the american public is very detached, and there is somewhat of a, i think you can call it, a siphon. you have a number of individuals here who have different perspectives than we do. i am happy you invited us here today because we have that boots on the deck perspective. we are there for these extended periods of time, ok, and daniel and i served in the same regiment together. we just found that out. charlie:? together >> together, yes. charlie: your dad told me you ought to talk to my son about fallujah. what would i have understood if i talk to you at that time?

david: when i had gotten back, i was extremely frustrated with the way we had been able to operate while we were in fallujah. charlie: you could not operate the way you wanted to? david: i would not go that far. we had certain constraints, absolutely. the city of fallujah, as you know, it was basically bypassed. the objectives when we pushed up from kuwait was to get to baghdad and secure baghdad and the national airport. bypassed for loser was one of those concerns. it became a staging ground and an infestation of the insurgency. the first mother got into iraq from a second appointment was every of 2004 and fallujah was a no go zone. it was deemed as being too dangerous and that was frustrating wintry for -- once we first got there. this blackwater scenario where these individuals ended up being hung on the bridge from the west side. we were able to cordon off the

city and -- charlie: these were people working as private contractors in iraq as i remember? david: yes. before that, we were frustrated as marines that we could not go in there and do the job we came there to do. charlie: why could you not go in there at that time? david: the political rationale was that we were going to take a heavy loss if we went in there. and i think, politically, we wanted to try and work towards a different solution in terms of negotiating with these individuals, see if we could have another alternative as opposed to going in there, and we tried that and it did not work. what subsequently happened was the november invasion of fallujah after i had subsequently left.

charlie: what happened at that time? david: the marines along with a number of army units and other units picked up where we left off, and moved to the city and cleared it, -- charlie: which is what you wanted them to do from the beginning? david: which we want to do once we got there. charlie: it is often said, and i have heard this 1000 times, that man -- men and women in combat, it binds them, their instinct is to work with and take care of those that are in battle with them. >> you develop this bond that you cannot find anywhere else. it is something so tight that you trust the men to the right of you and the men to the left of you. you cannot find anywhere else -- it is something that is very unique. charlie: some believe that a lot of things that are good are not reported. is that something you guys feel

strongly about? >> they don't dig in deep. they want a 32nd sound bite, the quick story, but they don't want to understand the gravity and depth, magnitude. imagine trying to put into a cnn clip expanding how your buddy died. there is so many emotions there, it is hard to convince it down for a quick soundbite. that is part of the frustration i felt. at the same time, if you want good news stories, go to disneyland. this is a war zone. you have an obligation to show the american people the true cost of war. that is not an antiwar or pro-war statement. people must understand the experience. it is in the best interests of america to understand what is happening there. >> i would add to that, one of the things that frustrates me is not too many of the stories of

our heroes are really told. i have 10 to 20 of my very good friends who deserve a front-page article in "the new york times." a story of one would be captain -- a captain during the platoon march. they basically got heavy guns and humvees and were rolling north. they encountered a trench line of iraqis and came under severe fire. he decided to take his humvee, drive it directly into the trench, dismounted his humvee, cleared the trench, killed 30 iraqis, and ended up saving the lives of a number of his men in his platoon, ended up being awarded the navy cross for that, highest medal you can get in the navy, and the only thing that was mention of that was a little article in his local paper. charlie: did you believe you had the support of people at home when you were fighting?

was any question, i mean, that their public support, those who might disagree about the war, but their support for you as a soldier? >> i had many people who supported myself and my platoon. he sent us packages, family, friends, i had more support, it helped me through the war. a letter every day, it just got me through. he mentions the letters that people sent him to help him get through that. it is very important. this is -- it build our morality. letters from home, little simple packages, these things help. daniel: we really appreciate them. >> people understand finally, to separate the people from the policy and the war from the war

years. it is not like vietnam and i think that is tremendous progress. that generation learned to separate the two, but by and large, i have been treated fantastically. i live in new york city, there is a hotbed of antiwar sentiment, but everyone shakes my hand and treats me well. that is a testament to the american people. because you are antiwar, that does not mean you are against me. that is progress in this country. the support i got was incredible. charlie: did you get the support you need it from the military? we hear all the stories about people driving humvees have to go out and get extra kinds of protection and the humvees were not. this was raised with the secretary of defense. >> my guys did not have -- charlie: how can that be? >> i ask the same question, charlie. we need to ask these questions in the coming years. how did you send 40,000 troops

with inadequate body armor? we did not have enough troops on the ground, interpreters, the political tools to be successful on the ground and that goes to the civilian leadership. the senior generals are obviously bearing some of the responsibility, but that is why i am happy rumsfeld -- he was failing in his job. he lost the confidence a -- of a lot of people. people on both sides of the aisle called for his resignation. it is about accountability. >> getting back to the armor issue, you were in the reserves, right? speaking from first marine division and my battalion, we had all the personal body armor that we needed and compulsively carry. charlie: did he think the humvee had the kind of protection it needed from the roadside

devices? >> gets to a point i think where these guys are building these improvised explosive devices today with just an incredible amount of power. more sophisticated. it gets to a certain point where, no matter how much you have on this humvee, it is not going to help. i know a number of our tank commanders who had him these -- humvees -- >> it is not just about the armor. it was widespread logistics failures. widespread procurement failures and it took the outcry of the american people and the veterans coming home to get it fixed. rumsfeld was very dismissive. he famously said, "you go to war with the army you have." it took us standing up in kuwait for this to really move. the armored humvee factories were not operating at capacity. they could have done more. it goes back to that initial issue of detachment. the american public does not

know most american soldiers. most people in this country have never met a folder that has been to iraq. that affected their ability to this bondage is like body armor, chewed numbers, it all comes -- ability to respond to issues like body armor, chewed numbers. >> as far as -- troop numbers. >> i do not think we had enough men on the ground. daniel: in opposite to -- and my platoon, we had a hard time getting enough men on the ground, filling positions. >> just to add to that, there is marine corps doctrine, and i am sure it is in the army field book as well, is that it takes a certain amount of combat power to get an objective, and it takes a lot more to hold that objective. when we went into iraq, we took the objective, we took baghdad. within a number of weeks. since we have been there, i agree with paul.

david: we needed, and i know senator mccain was pushing the issue, for more troops. >> if you are talking about 40,000 troops -- charlie: you need 100,000. >> the criticism i hear constantly within the military is that we have done this halfway. the longer we wait, the harder it gets. if we need more troops on the ground, we need to talk about hundreds of thousands, not tens of thousands. charlie: what do you guys think would have happened if in fact, there is a famous controversial -- she said there is, we are going to need at least 200,000 troops? the conventional wisdom was that that was the end of his army career and he was chief of staff at the army at that time. general powell has often said we needed more troops going in there.

is it your belief that an fact one of the things that has been wrong with the iraqi war is that we did not have enough men and women on the ground to do the job? >> during marja, we had what we needed. charlie: marja was until -- march up was until saddam was -- >> yes. what is this aftermath going to look like? my personal opinion, i came back from my first tour and figured, i am not going back. it is pretty much done. we had a great welcome from the majority of iraqis. i did not think it would morph into what it has, but we have

not reacted to that. we went within a combat -- went with enough combat power to meet the objective, but i believe we need, just like paul mentioned, increase it not just by incremental amounts, but by significant amounts. >> minor changes that i think are rhetorical or even political, you have to talk about apprehensive solutions. the longer we wait, the harder it will get. the window of opportunity was summer and fall of 2003. charlie: when the looting went unchecked, there was the scent it was out of control. paul: -- this sense it was out of control. charlie: i want to go back to rumsfeld, do you think his resignation was -- >> yes. rumsfeld underestimated what we needed in iraq. he did not take care of the troops like he should have, like you were just mentioning about

that. specialists were ignored. he ignored them. that is accessible. >> you have an obligation as a combat leader to go down to the lowest level and talk to the sergeants and privates and find out about the ground troops. charlie: what would they have not heard? >> what the sergeants were staying. we did not have enough people. we did not have the two also be successful. that is the frustration we here in the military. rumsfeld did not listen to the military. he was not listening. in many ways, you set the military of for failure here. i do not want to see the rhetoric change where you start to blame the generals. rumsfeld said, if the generals asked, we'll give it to them. well, they've been asking. >> the last thing we want is for this to become a war of escalation, which, i have been a

little reading, obviously, but that is what the perceived problem in vietnam was, it was a war of escalation. we did not come in full force with everything we had to take care of that problem, and i know, deep within my heart, if we do that here, we can win. >> iraq is never going to look like new jersey or texas. we need to seriously downgrade our expectations here. we are doing geopolitical triage. we have to think about iran, our political stability, and start to downward manage what we are going to get out of iraq. it is not going to look like president bush told us it would. charlie: do you think it was a mistake to go in? paul: i do. on balance, i think it has weakened us. charlie: what if we have to do both? why did you go into the marines? >> i joined 9/11, a high school senior. i looked outside my school building and i saw the twin towers were hit. so, i left the school with permission from parents, of course, and i went home, and my father was a new york city police detective and he came running home to get all of his -- i told him, dad, i will not be over a couple of days. i did not see him for five or six days. i said to myself, i do not want this for my kids. you know, let me take a stand now, here and now. i will devote however long it takes, four years of my life, to hopefully ensure the safety of

the american people. i felt that my children should live in a safe -- charlie: you were how old? >> i was 16. charlie: is that something you would do over? >> without a doubt. what i do it over? yes. i feel very patriotic doing what i did. >> i ended up in the marines, from university, graduated, and i just wanted to do something different. it was 2001. i went to officer candidate school before september 11 had happened. charlie: you were in there before november 11 -- before 9/11? >> yes.

i did not want to sit behind a desk and get a finance job like the majority of my friends. charlie: you had served two tours? david: each one roughly a month. charlie: and you? >> 1998, i joined the army reserves after i graduated college. charlie: did you really? >> i wanted to give something back. my father had been drafted during world war i, my grandfather had been drafted. if i did not do my part, i was kind of freeloading. paul: as a citizen.

i wanted to get them in back. i wanted to do the hardest thing i could think of. i wanted to jump out of airplanes and blow something up. i think that was part of it. i wanted to test myself and i think military service is an honorable thing and something that has been a tradition in my family and i wanted to do my part. charlie: be on the idea of brotherhood, sisterhood, what is the most important thing we can never understand about combat unless you have been there? >> in the middle of a firefight, in the middle of mortars dropping and all of this chaos and adrenaline rushing through your body and the sphere, you witnessed -- this fear, you witness wonderful actions. a corporal of mine in my platoon running out from a bunker in the middle of a barrage of mortars to grab one of his buddies and pull him back to safety, and that is just one of the images in my life i will never forget, and there is a horrible and disgusting aspect to war, but there is that tiny bit of just

amazing piece of bravery. and courage that you witness when you are there that you will never forget. ♪

charlie: he has been called a poor laureate of outrage and despair for more than 20 years. leonard cohen has been writing and singing songs with passion and longing, the forefront of the renaissance of song and poetry in the 60's. another you renaissance, -- another renaissance, his album is getting critical a claim. first, we take manhattan. >> ♪ charlie: joining us now, leonard cohen. >> it has been 10 years in this ♪

charlie: joining us now, leonard cohen. >> it has been 10 years in this country because my record company neglected to put out a couple of my records, but you know, i have been moving around europe. charlie: what is it like during that lull period? leonard: you don't really live according to your chart position. one continues to do one's work. charlie: to the audiences still want to hear the favorites? leonard: yes, they like to hear the old songs and ask for them. it is sometimes difficult to enter into a song you have been singing for 20 years, but it is important. charlie: enter into it, what do you mean? leonard: for instance, last

night, the audience asked me over and over to sing "suzanne" -- charlie: of course they did. leonard: and i thought, "ok i will sing the song." charlie: you want to hold out as long as possible? leonard: it is not that severe an ordeal. charlie: in a sense, knowing in the end it is your responsibility to them as an audience if you have written a song or perform the song were saying some that has registered. did you write that? leonard: yes. charlie: it is probably the most popular song you are known for. leonard: certainly over year, yes. charlie: i would think an artist would over that -- would owe that to a audience.

leonard: there's no point in refusing to sing a song. charlie: then you are in a sense, you would not want to do it either, would you? hold it out till the end? leonard: it has to be carefully determined in a concert that. it is mostly instinctive, but a lot of it has certain technical considerations. you do not want to put three up-tempo songs altogether. charlie: is it written down somewhere or do you know? do you? have it hated on stage leonard: i do have a set list -- do you have it on stage? leonard: i have a set list. charlie: the hole player -- the whole playlist was on stage. you have got to have some recollection of where you want to go? leonard: there are technical considerations because players have to be aware of what song is coming up. charlie: you are what now, 50? leonard: 54. charlie: do you still train your voice?

leonard: i tried to smoke quite a lot and drink. charlie: right. leonard: i never had a voice, i never thought i had a voice. i have a deep voice that keeps getting deeper. charlie: because? leonard: 50,000 cigarettes. charlie: you still smoke? leonard: i started again for the tour. charlie: why? leonard: i have been reaching for a cigarette for 30 years. i had quit for some time. charlie: because of the cancer scare? leonard: just wanting to get on the bandwagon of health. charlie: i always think a tour for someone like you, who has a 11 relationship with the audit -- a one to one relationship of the audience would be fun, enjoyable, satisfying, would be confirming. leonard: well, i love touring. the preparations are difficult,

the preparations are difficult, but once you get on the road, it is like a motorcycle gang and you are free from decisions and alibis and the whole day funnels down to the moment where you step out on the stage and there's nothing out really to be considered. charlie: it is like a television show? leonard: there is nothing that is going to stand in the way of that moment. charlie: if suzanne is the audience's favorite, what is your's? leonard: i do not think it is the audience's favor, but it is the most familiar song and they are right to insist they hear it. it varies from my tonight in terms of how well the song is played. charlie: are you the least bit surprised at your continued survivability and acceptance and success? leonard: of course i am happy to be able to stay in the game.

when i started this word and this racket, -- work and this racket, i always thought i was in the long haul. charlie: you thought you would have a career? leonard: i never thought of it in terms of a career. i always wanted to be paid for my work but i did not want to work for pay. charlie: that is a good way of putting it. you do not work for pay now? leonard: of course, with economic considerations -- charlie: but you don't have to do this? leonard: there are certain private obsessions that really determine what your life is, and a lot of my life is concerned with turning out a certain standard of work, and as long as i can keep up a certain respect of standard, i am pleased. charlie: appreciate it the united states? leonard: they don't understand the words over there. charlie: if you saying in french in france, they were not appreciated as much? leonard: in america, they are a

refreshing market. if you don't satisfy those laws, you just do not perform in the market. it has been determined that i am not a mainstream singer, and therefore, the market is not as receptive, but i cannot don a cloak of neglect or indulgence for the cloak of obscurity. it is not so. i cannot complain about that. charlie: i would not either. tell me about the new album? it back to country and western. leonard: i started out in a country western band in montreal 35 years ago called the buckskin boys. i think country music is one of the most sophisticated strains of music we have in america. charlie: why? leonard: it is minimal music

where there is great emphasis on the voice, the experience and the voice. i love to hear the stories told in country music. charlie: i do, too. but it is sophisticated because -- leonard: no, because the hearts and minds that produces music are very sophisticated. we have this notion because it is from tennessee, some conformer is singing it, it is not going to be informed -- charlie: i'm interested in what you think it does to reflect sophistication? leonard: it is just the refinement of a very complex situation into very cogent and heart touching phrases. the technical considerations of country music are very demanding and the great thing is the great writers like hank williams, they are as important as any other writers'. charlie: what is interesting is

the trend now is back. between travis and some of those guys, looking for those roots. leonard: well, you know, the roots have always been there, and for billions of people, the roots never withered. fads, styles move away from one music to another, but that kind of music has always been. we call it full music. -- we call it folk music. you have got to earn the right to sing the blues, but they fit in whatever the heart is full enough, and the heart is willing to sing the blues. it is not my strain of music. i would not touch that kind of music. charlie: because?

leonard: it is not really my tradition, but i love it. charlie: have using clint eastwood's film on tony parker? leonard: i have not seen it. charlie: they say it is incredible, the best films made about a jazz artist. how is the writing experience for you? leonard: it is a desperate kind of experience. charlie: never gets easier? leonard: no. there seems to be two schools of writers, one where you work three months on a paragraph, and the thomas will school, where you write 40,000 words on the top of the refrigerator every night. unfortunately, i am in the subcategory. charlie: the idea of working three-month on one paragraph or even writing and being, laboring over one paragraph before you moved to the is just, that is just painful to me. -- before you move to the next paragraph, that is just painful to me. leonard: there is something that

is wonderful about finishing a song you have labored on with that kind of care and intensity. if you're going to be singing a song for the next 20 years, you want to be sure you can get behind every word. i have a lot of songs i can still get behind because i brought that kind of attention to the lyrics. charlie: you knew wellington to fashioning the words in the paragraph? leonard: i have to write down everything i throw away so that by the time i get down to six verses in a song, maybe i have thrown away 60 or 70 completed songs. the ratio is 10 to one. charlie: what is the difference between writing poetry and prose? leonard: i'm not sure there is any different. the lines do not, at the end of the page is guaranteed a place in poetry. i do not think we should really deserve hours -- disserve

ourselves with that kind of consideration. national geographic will have that stunning kind of simplicity and clarity that we associate, you know, with great verse. charlie: it really is that. stunning, simplicity, and clarity. leonard: we don't have to be limited to that because sometimes we like complexity and sometimes we like puzzles and certainly modern poetry gives us a lot of that. charlie: any book you continue to go back to and want to read? for example, i think it was someone who said to me on this broadcast, every few years or so, he reads a certain book. leonard: it takes a few years to read cervantes. what i go back to is the bible. the king james version of the bible. charlie: why? leonard: the language, the

authority, the magnificence of the whole presentation. i don't think we have anything in our language that touches it. that is just on the literary level. it also, obviously, has -- to read the psalms of king david or the story of king david, that is the prototype of every poet, everything are, every writer. charlie: are you a religious man? leonard: i would not say so, no. charlie: i would think so, but you don't think so? leonard: you don't want to advertise yourself that way on national television. you would never be a will to get a date. [laughter] charlie: well, thank you very much. it is a pleasure to have you here. much success with the album. i hope you'll come back here. always welcome on this broadcast. leonard: thank you very much. ♪

charlie: eric kandel is here. his new book is for the relationship between art and science. it considers how science can help us to perceive, appreciate and understand great works of art. it is called reductive is him in our. i am pleased to welcome air kandel that to the stable. -- eric kandel back to the table. science and art are concerned

about the deepest questions of human existence. they share that concern. we think of them as separate. eric: this book is designed to show it is not as separate as we think, and why it is not as separate. the humanities are concerned with art and literature, and science is concerned with the nature of the universe, and that is because scientists and human tears -- humanists use different methodologies. in this book, and make the point that in certain instances, this is not the case. in brain science, and we have seen this in the program we have done together, the goals of the scientists are very humanistic, to understand the nature of schizophrenia and consciousness.

these are all extreme. nature of memory storage, these are all humanistic questions. in addition, painters, artists, often use experimental approaches, so very much like scientists, a painter can try different things in order to see you whether they are getting exactly the kind of impact. charlie: i think it was richard sarah who said to me once, may have said a number of times, you know, that art is about making choices and in moving on. eric: absolutely. charlie: you choose this color, and then you move on. you make another choice about where this line goes. science is about choosing, making choices. we'll try this and this. eric: solving problems, is the way sarah puts it. and this is the point i will try to make here, that this became very clear with the abstract

expressionism. charlie: what do you mean by reductionism? eric: i mean taking a complex problem and selecting one component if you want to study it in great detail and many of these artists focus on one particular thing, color or flatness in jackson pollock. charlie: and how does that relate to what you did in terms of memory? eric: what i did was to take a complex problem like memory and say to myself, "you know, studying your memory would be very difficult, but what happens if i take the simpleness of memory in the animal, i might be able to make progress like that." i took a marine snail, could work out a neurosurgeon of their behavior, produce a change and see exactly what happens.

my colleagues and i found that learning involves changes in the strength of synaptic inventions, how nerves cells communicate with each other. that is a simple example of a reductionist approach which has been used repeatedly in molecular biology. using reductionism in science is nothing new. using reductionism in art is also not new but people did not think of it in those terms. eric: you have said -- charlie: you have said science is an abstract art. why? eric: abstract art is more experimental. it allows the artist to play with your imagination where it focuses on certain aspects of things, so an abstract art, focusing on color per se, jets and pollock would focus on the splattering of paint on the

canvas, so they will focus on specific things, sort of simplify the task and allow your imagination freedom to wonder. one of the wonderful things about abstract art in contrast to figurative art is to view a response with very differently. charlie: you say that abstract art and science address questions and goals that are central to humanistic thought. what are those questions? eric: in science, particularly brain science, we want to understand how the human mind works. in art, we want to understand how people respond to works of how their imagination works, how we can stimulate the imagination, what are the things pleasing to people. those are important questions. what enriches your life? charlie: let us take a look. let's go through them. the first one, take a look. eric: i love this. this next sequence really outlines the wall task before

us. turner was interested in ship that the and how they confronted the natural forces, the storm at sea, the clouds, the waves, these shifts struggling in order to handle themselves in those circumstances. this is a very figurative, beautifully detailed depiction. he now returned to this theme 40 years later and he has done away with much of the detail, and you can barely recognize the fact that it is a ship because you see the mast and you see a lot of the details gone, but you still see the ships struggling against the force of nature, against the waves, against the sky, and in some ways, because it leaves more to your imagination, it affects you more powerfully. and this is a very interesting thing about this work of art, abstract art in general.

there are processes involved in how you and i look at art. one is called a bottom-up process, and the other is a top-down process. when i look at you for example, all my eyes see are the light bouncing off your face. that is clearly insufficient for me to recognize charlie rose. i recognized him with great facility and sold does everyone else. -- and so does everyone else. there must be other sources of information. bottom-up and top-down. bottom-up is our brain, our visual system is involved in over hundred that that ubaldo per hundred of thousands of years and has many -- has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. i assume the person larger is closer. there is a built-in mechanism whereby we make a lot of essentially guesses and that is why everyone recognizes you

despite the fact that all they see as photons rounding off your face. in addition, to this built-in mechanism, there is a top-down mechanism, and we learn different things, we have different experiences, we have seen different works of art, different people, and that there is and enriches us. when it comes to this, the vaguer it is -- one of the reasons absent art is so pleasurable for people is that top-down processing involves your imagination and creativity. charlie: the next slide is willing to cleaning -- william. eric: he is considered the greatest artist, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century and he painted this picture in 1940 of the woman he

was to marry several years later. it is interesting because this is a figurative depiction, but if you look at her right arm, it is quite abstract and the right side of her face is quite abstract. it is a mixture of abstraction and figuration. initial period of time, de kooning became powerfully abstract. it is a mixture of cubism and surrealism unconscious processes. what is true for de kooning in many of his paintings is that despite the fact that he is abstract and it causes you to spin around and move, you can see figurative elements in it. this is very characteristic. he goes back and paints particularly women, but in

addition, even in his abstract paintings, you can often see figurative elements in it. charlie: the next slide is jackson pollock. eric: jackson pollock is an extraordinary guy. he was trained by benton. he started off doing reasonably interesting work, but then he saw picasso's work and got interested in doing something more radical. jackson pollock has blown the conventional idea of a picture completely to help. this is a completely radical depiction of a work of art. charlie: the next one is mark rothko. eric: he is all of these people. started off as a figurative artist and you can trace them as they move from figuration to obstruction. rothko said, look, everyone is paying attention to line and form, but what about color? he began to play with color. what you can do by looking at it, you have to see it in real life. you see there is depth to it. he has layers.

this orange right here. he has layers of paint and translucency on top. as you sit in front of it, you see the depth of the painting. i once sat in front of these things and had a spiritual reaction. this is a quote response one has to something like this, i don't know if you have ever been to the rothko chapel, ecb's dark paintings he made. he was really quite depressed at the end of his life. -- you see the dark paintings he made. he was really quite depressed at the end of his life. is the movement in the image or in you? he is a fantastic artist. charlie: the next one is out cap -- alex katz. eric: not only did they influence each other and the world, but they influence figurative artist.

fray while it seemed as if the figurative artist was dead. unless you are abstract, you are not in the action. he did not go along with that. the paintings are completely flat, no perspective. a very simple background which is like a light blue. he is interested in depiction. he's not interested in conveying a message. he wants you to get the beauty of the painting. he influenced warhol, particularly with jacqueline kennedy, did repeated images as alex katz bid. -- did. katz influenced warhol. charlie: what about music and writing? do you see reductionism there? eric: yes. in schoenberg, who really revolutionized music, made music atonal, simplified it a great deal, that actually is not, um,

from a perceptive point of view, as attractive as abstract art. that form of music has not caught on, but certainly, people simple if i music in a variety of ways to make it more attractive -- simplify music in a variety of ways to make it more attractive. charlie: you said this has made you a more sensitive human being? eric: certainly. you see people, scenes that you would not normally experience, and also, allows you to get more insight into yourself, what you respond to, what moves you. i do not know whether you find this, my guess is you do. the shallowest idea, one gets a great deal of pleasure out of one's originality. when you look at a painting, and abstract painting that allows you to put your own ideas into it, i think it is very satisfying, and the people who enjoy abstract art to it because it recruits their creative processes. charlie: who was ernst kris? eric: they were a trio of art historians.

our history is going to die a method becomes more scientific. it is how you live a work of art. a painting is not complete until the artist paints it and if -- and get your response to it. eric: no one had put this into print and thought about it. how does the older respond to a work of art? kris took that problem on. when you and i look at the same painting, we see it somewhat differently. what does that mean? each of us is undergoing a creative process that will re-create in their own head the image they see and that is one of the reasons it is satisfying to the viewer.

he was the one who realized that all you see is photons. he developed this idea that came from -- the modern way we look at works of art from an experimental psychological point of view is like this. and now, of course, the next step is people are starting to do this and i am beginning to explore this with colleagues of mine, is to see what happens if you image a person. while they are looking at three of these paintings. figurative, intermediate, and abstract, what is happening in their brain as they shift? charlie: here is the book. "reductionism in art and brain science." see you next time.

♪

>> before producers meet at the end of the month. >> cheap oil takes its toll. petrochina is said to be offloading nonenergy assets. >> looking overseas. saudi arabia's sovereign wealth on may sell local stakes to pay for expansion abroad. >> president obama