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Sailing To Byzantium,
by W.B. Yeats

I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees--
Those dying generations -- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

from http://www.uky.edu/Classes/A-H/322/yeatssailing.htm

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3.) Byzantium:

The origins of Byzantium are shrouded in legend. The traditional legend has it that Byzas from Megara (a town near Athens), founded Byzantium, when he sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea. Byzas had consulted the Oracle at Delphi to ask where to make his new city. The Oracle told him to find it "opposite the blind." At the time, he did not know what this meant. But when he came upon the Bosporus he realized what it meant: on the Asiatic shore was a Greek city, Chalcedon. It was they who must have been blind because they had not seen that obviously superior land was just a half mile away on the other side of the Bosporus. Byzas founded his city here in this "superior" land and named it Byzantion after himself.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantium

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5.) And now for something different. David Lynch on the making of Inland Empire:

"I’ve never worked on a project in this way before. I don’t know exactly how this thing will finally unfold... This film is very different because I don’t have a script. I write the thing scene by scene and much of it is shot and I don’t have much of a clue where it will end. It’s a risk, but I have this feeling that because all things are unified, this idea over here in that room will somehow relate to that idea over there in the pink room."

Interviewed at the Venice Film Festival, Laura Dern admitted that she didn't know what Inland Empire was about or the role she was playing, but hoped that seeing the film's premiere at the festival would help her "learn more." Justin Theroux has also stated that he "couldn't possibly tell you what the film's about, and at this point I don't know that David Lynch could. It's become sort of a pastime - Laura [Dern] and I sit around on set trying to figure out what's going on."

...Laura Dern recounted a conversation she had with one of the movie's new producers. He asked if Lynch was joking when he requested a one-legged woman, a monkey and a lumberjack by 3:15. "Yeah, you're on a David Lynch movie, dude," Dern replied. "Sit back and enjoy the ride." Dern reported that by 4 p.m. they were shooting with the requested individuals.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Empire_%28film%29#Production

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1.) Apparently on a sleepy day I start reading about the following:
Dog meat
Cat meat

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2.) It should be noted that most vegetarians also are aware of avoiding products that may use animal ingredients not included in their labels or which use animal products in their manufacturing i.e. cheeses that use animal rennet, gelatin (from animal skin, bones, and connective tissue), some sugars that are whitened with bone char (e.g. cane sugar, but not beet sugar) and alcohol clarified with gelatin or crushed shellfish and sturgeon.

So it goes.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism#Terminology_and_varieties_of_vegetarianism

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3.) The Flaming Dr. Pepper is a flaming cocktail...that is said to taste like the soft drink Dr Pepper, although it does not contain any soda. It is usually made by filling a shot glass 3/4 full with Amaretto, and 1/4 Bacardi 151 (or Everclear) to make it flammable. (The two liquors are not mixed; rather, the high-proof alcohol is layered on top to burn more easily.) The shot is then set on fire and dropped into a glass half-filled with beer. The flaming shot is extinguished by the beer, which foams up and is then quickly consumed.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_Dr._Pepper

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1.) Major branches within Christianity

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2.) Popular legend remembers Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned, but this is an anachronism as the instrument had not yet been invented, and would not be for over 1,000 years.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Rome#Nero_and_the_Great_Fire

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3.) Tacitus described the event:

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Rome#Persecution_of_Christians

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4.) Important dates in Development of (Catholic) Christianity:
64: Nero blames Christians for great Fire of Rome (persecutions)
150: Church Fathers write theological and "apologetic" works to defend faith starting around this time
313: Christianity legalized by Constantine with the Edict of Milan
325: First Council of Nicaea (Nicene Creed)
380: Emperor Theodosius I declares Christianity to be official Roman religion and all others to be seen as heretics
382: Council of Rome set Biblical Canon (which books of the Old Testament and the New Testament were to accepted)
431: Council of Ephesus declared Jesus to have been both God and Man simultaneously
450: increase in missionary activity starting(?) around this time
480: Monastic Rule set out by St. Benedict (regulations for monasteries)
787: Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea ruled in favor of icons (in response to iconoclasm debates earlier in the century)
11th century: cathedral schools, originally only teaching Theology, become Universities and are ancestors to systems of Western learning
11th(?) century: mendicant orders (Dominicans and Franciscans) (urban settlement); Cistercians move towards large isolated monasteries (wilderness settlement); and European cathedrals of Romanesque and Gothic grandeur
1095: Urban II initiates Crusades (against Turkish expansion at request of Byzantine emperor Alexios I)
1184: Inquisition (in response to Cathar heresy)
7th-14th centuries: East-West Schism (West-Latin and East-Greek: Orthodox Church) (Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439) attempted to reunite the churches to no avail)
1204: Forth Crusade sacks Constantinople (the capital of the Byzantine empire: Eastern Orthodox Christian city)
1272: Ninth and last Medieval Crusade to the Holy Land
1517: Martin Luther and his 95 theses (Zwingli and Calvin): Protestants: criticism = indulgences, primacy of the pope, clerical celibacy, the seven sacraments, the eucharist, and various other Catholic doctrines and practices
1534: Act of Supremacy makes King of England Supreme Head of the Church of England
1536: British monasteries are eliminated
1538: Pope Paul III excommunicates King Henry VIII (Rome vs. England)
1563: Council of Trent in response to Protestant threats (Counter-Reformation): the founding of new religious orders, such as the Jesuits, the establishment of seminaries for the proper training of priests, worldwide missionary activity, and the development of new yet orthodox forms of spirituality, such as that of the Spanish mystics and the French school of spirituality
18th-19th centuries: Catholicism under attack from Enlightenment and Modernist thinking
1870: First Vatican Council affirms doctrine of papal infallibility
1965: Second Vatican Council reaffirms historical teachings of Catholicism to modern world

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic#Origins_and_history

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397: Confessions by St. Augustine
1109: Anselm writings
1274: Aquinas's Summa Theologica
1321: Divine Comedy by Dante
14th century: Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
1608-1674: John Milton

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1.) Thérèse de Lisieux -- "Little Flower". I stayed at a convent in southern India dedicated(?) to her.

"Sometimes, when I read spiritual treatises, in which perfection is shown with a thousand obstacles in the way and a host of illusions round about it, my poor little mind soon grows weary, I close the learned book, which leaves my head splitting and my heart parched, and I take the Holy Scriptures. Then all seems luminous, a single word opens up infinite horizons to my soul, perfection seems easy; I see that it is enough to realize one's nothingness, and give oneself wholly, like a child, into the arms of the good God. Leaving to great souls, great minds, the fine books I cannot understand, I rejoice to be little because 'only children, and those who are like them, will be admitted to the heavenly banquet'."

Passages like this have also left Therese open to the charge that hers is an overly sentimental and even childish spirituality...

"For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward Heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy; in a word, something noble, supernatural, which enlarges my soul and unites it to God.... I have not the courage to look through books for beautiful prayers.... I do as a child who has not learned to read, I just tell our Lord all that I want and he understands."

"I will spend my Heaven doing good on earth."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therese_de_Lisieux

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2.) It was a long time ago in a book store in Montreal I stumble on a book by a great Spanish poet. And in this book he invited me to enter a universe of ants and crystals and arches and minnows and thighs that slipped away like herds of tiny fish. I entered that world and I'm so happy to say that I never left it. And here's my tiny homage to the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. Take this Waltz...
- Leonard Cohen from Zürich 21/05/93
from http://pagesperso-orange.fr/pilgraeme/take_this_waltz.htm

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3.) do Not create anything. it will be
misinterpreted. it will not change.
it will follow you the
rest of your life.

from Advice for Geraldine on her Miscellaneous Birthday, Bob Dylan

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4.) Last year I had the great honour to translate into English a poem by the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca,a man who effectively ruined my life when I was fifteen. I found a book of his in a secondhand bookstore. I read the lines, "I want to pass through the arches of Elvira to see your thighs and begin weeping." And for the next thirty years, I was looking for the arches of Elvira, I was looking for those thighs, I was looking for my tears. I'm glad I've forgotten all that and I could revenge him with this act of homage, by translating one of his great poems into clumsy English. Take this Waltz,take this waltz.
- Leonard Cohen from Wien 11/05/88
also from http://pagesperso-orange.fr/pilgraeme/take_this_waltz.htm

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5.) The next step was to read a bit about the Carmelites -- the order that Thérèse de Lisieux (see #1 above) joined in 1888. The Carmelites are named after Mount Carmel in Israel and were founded in the 12th century. They seem to emphasize acesticism and some type of contemplative prayer. The following are some of their, shall we say, guidelines:
...strict obedience to their prior, residence in individual cells, constancy in prayer, the hearing of Mass every morning in the oratory of the community, vows of poverty and toil, daily silence from vespers until terce the next morning, abstinence from all forms of meat except in cases of severe illness, and fasting from Holy Cross Day (September 14) to Easter of the following year. Their scapular is believed to give salvation so long as one also lives the Christian life well. Interestingly, the scapular is originally to be made of brown wool but now can be made of any suitable brown material, however no recorded or approved miracles have come from anything other than the real and traditional wool Scapular. Wool of course being from the sheep (a significant Christian symbol), the gift of the sheep perhaps.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmelite

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6.) All Saints' Day falls on November 1st. Also called All Hallows, Hallows apparently means Saints (making Halloween the "The Eve of All Hallows"), in which all saints known and not are celebrated (see #1 yesterday). Interestingly in the West it started in 609 or 610 on May 13, a pagan observation of great antiquity, the culmination of three days of the Feast of the Lemures, in which were propitiated the malevolent and restless spirits of all the dead. All Saints Day was later moved to November 1st. Some protestants although sometimes avoiding veneration of saints will celebrate All Saints Day because this doesn't venerate some believers over all, but instead venerates all believers (see #1 yesterday, again).

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints_Day

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1.) Now I'm not entirely sure what is the difference between a Doctor of the Church and a Church Father (in Roman Catholicism), but here is a list of the Doctors of the Church, including such notables as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Anselm, St. Bede the Venerable, St. John of the Cross, St. Albertus Magus (see yesterday #2), and St. Thérèse of Lisieux (who was the founder-type figure of the convent I stayed at in southern India).


St. Augustine

I started reading about canonization (a prerequisite for being declared a Doctor of the Church) within the church -- such a highly structured organization! See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonization for a brief overview of how one moves from the title of "Servant of God" through to "Venerable", on to "Blessed" and finally could be elevated to "Saint": Canonization, whether formal or informal, does not make someone a saint: it is only a declaration that the person is a saint and was a saint even before canonization. It is generally recognized that there are many more saints in heaven than have been canonized on earth.

...most Protestant theologians and denominations, in an attempt to avoid veneration of certain believers above others, reject the notion of an official or recognized list of "saints".

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonization

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2.) There is something called the Holy Fool, as example St. Francis of Assisi. They have their source in words by Paul:

"We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised." (1 Corinthians 4:10)

The yurodivy [the Russian fool-for-Christ] is a Holy Fool, one who acts intentionally foolish in the eyes of men. He or she often goes around half-naked, is homeless, speaks in riddles, is believed to be clairvoyant and a prophet, and may occasionally be disruptive and challenging to the point of seeming immorality (though always to make a point).

Andrei Rublev, (a film by Andrei Tarkovsky,) [features] a yurodivy character, "Durochka"...

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fool_for_Christ

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1.) I started reading about mandrakes, the plant, and ended up lost in that world for some time.

They are in the nightshades family along with Datura or Jimson weed, eggplant, mandrake, deadly nightshade or belladonna, capsicum (paprika, chile pepper), potato, tobacco, tomato, and petunia. Featured in Pan's Labyrinth, they were also important in the following Biblical story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrake_%28plant%29#Hebrew_Bible as well they have a long history of mystical associations. It was believed that when picked they would scream and anyone who heard this would die. Here is how you could pick one:

A furrow must be dug around the root until its lower part is exposed, then a dog is tied to it, after which the person tying the dog must get away. The dog then endeavours to follow him, and so easily pulls up the root, but dies suddenly instead of his master. After this the root can be handled without fear.

And then:

Is this root the umbilical vestige of our terrestrial origin ? We dare not seriously affirm it, but all the same it is certain that man came out of the slime of the earth, and his first appearance must have been in the form of a rough sketch. The analogies of nature make this notion necessarily admissible, at least as a possibility. The first men were, in this case, a family of gigantic, sensitive mandragores, animated by the sun, who rooted themselves up from the earth...

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrake_%28plant%29

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2.) He rejected the idea of "music of the spheres" as ridiculous: movement of astronomical bodies, he supposed, is incapable of generating sound.

Albertus Magnus, a Dominican friar and preeminent scholar of Aristotle, under whom Thomas Aquinas studied, had tried to reconcile religion and science.

His ideas influenced the design of this, the Strasbourg Cathedral:

Click on either or both of the below photos:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertus_Magnus#Music

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3.) The mandrake next led me to Franz Mesmer, from whom we have words such as "mesmerize", who in the 18th century, believed he had found something called "animal magnetism", however in 1784 the king and his commissioners found that there was no actual scientific fluid called "animal magnetism". Here, briefly, is the procedure as done for an individual (there's a separate one for groups):

With individuals he would sit in front of his patient with his knees touching the patient's knees, pressing the patient's thumbs in his hands, looking fixedly into the patient's eyes. Mesmer made "passes", moving his hands from patients' shoulders down along their arms. He then pressed his fingers on the patient's hypochondrium region (the area below the diaphragm), sometimes holding his hands there for hours. Many patients felt peculiar sensations or had convulsions that were regarded as crises and supposed to bring about the cure. Mesmer would often conclude his treatments by playing some music on a glass armonica.

It wasn't questioned as to whether or not his cures worked, it was questioned that there was any physical scientific proof of "animal magnetism". The commission concluded that there was no evidence for such a fluid. Whatever benefit the treatment produced was attributed to "imagination."

Apparently, Reiki and Qi Gong have some similarities to "animal (from Latin animus = "breath") magnetism".

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Mesmer
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_magnetism

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4.) Back to the mandrake:

Some alchemists, impressed by this idea [see #1 above: second quoted paragraph], speculated on the culture of the mandragore, and experimented in the artificial reproduction of a soil sufficiently fruitful and a sun sufficiently active to humanise the said root, and thus create men without the concurrence of the female.

also:

VLADIMIR: What do we do now?
ESTRAGON: Wait.
VLADIMIR: Yes, but while waiting.
ESTRAGON: What about hanging ourselves?
VLADIMIR: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
ESTRAGON: (highly excited). An erection!
VLADIMIR: With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That's why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?

It was a common belief in some countries that a mandrake would grow where the semen of a hanged man dripped on to the earth; this would appear to be the reason for the methods employed by the alchemists who "projected human seed into animal earth".

Would you like to make a Mandragora, as powerful as the homunculus (little man in a bottle) so praised by Paracelsus? Then find a root of the plant called bryony. Take it out of the ground on a Monday (the day of the moon), a little time after the vernal equinox. Cut off the ends of the root and bury it at night in some country churchyard in a dead man's grave. For thirty days water it with cow's milk in which three bats have been drowned. When the thirty-first day arrives, take out the root in the middle of the night and dry it in an oven heated with branches of verbena; then wrap it up in a piece of a dead man's winding-sheet and carry it with you everywhere.

again from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrake_%28plant%29
and from Waiting for Godot by Beckett

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6.) Nightshades:

One of the most important groups of these compounds is called the tropane alkaloids. The term "tropane" comes from a genus in which they are found, Atropa (the belladonna genus). The belladonna genus is so named after the Greek Fate, Atropos, who cut the thread of life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightshade#Alkaloids

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7.) The "hotness" of capsaicin products and foods is expressed in Scoville units. A scoville unit is the factor by which the capsaicin-containing substance must be diluted to render the resulting solution imperceptible to a tester (for example, a teaspoon of a 5,000 Scoville unit hot sauce would have to be diluted with 4,999 teaspoons of a sugar water solution to negate its potential to cause a sensation on the palate).

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightshade#Alkaloids

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1.) Last chance to walk the Labyrinth up at UVic is this week:
http://web.uvic.ca/interfaith/practicing/labyrinth.html

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2.) "a sequence of four stages normal to all culture cycles, whether of mankind in general, a civilization, or a nation...summarized in the following diagram:"
Beginnings:
deeply experienced perceptions: aptly named
I Poetry: Folk Belief (Hearty) Imagination
II Theology: Idealizing/Exaltation (Holy) Reason
III Philosophy: Clarifying/Devaluation (Wise) Understanding
IV Prose: Dissolution in Banality (Vulgar) Sensuality

Confusion, Resistance, Dissolution

from Goethe as quoted in Campbell's Creative Mythology (it looks much nicer in the book; my HTML knowledge is bad and the above is sloppy)

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3.) "It is in the passage from Stage II to Stage III that mentality gains the upper hand and reductive criticism begins to devaluate and, where possible, even eradicate the instinctual impulses to life." - Campbell

the paragraph relating to the above, again by Goethe as quoted in Campbell:

The man of understanding tries to appropriate everything imaginable to his own sphere of clarity and even to interpret reasonably the most mysterious phenomena. Popular and ecclesiastical beliefs, consequently, are not rejected, but behind them a comprehensible, worthy, useful component is assumed, its meaning is sought, the particular is transformed into the general, and from everything national, regional, and even individual, something valid for mankind as a whole is extracted. We cannot deny to this epoch the credit of a noble, pure, and wise endeavor; however, its appeal is rather to the unique, highly talented individual than to an entire folk.

For, no sooner does this type of thought become general than the final epoch immediately follows, which we may term the prosaic, since it has no interest in humanizing the heritage from earlier periods, adapting it to a clarified human understanding and to a general domestic usage, but drags even the most venerable out into the light of common day and in this way destroys completely all solemn feelings, popular and ecclesiastical beliefs, and even the beliefs of the enlightened understanding itself--which might yet suspect behind what is exceptional some respectable context of associations.

This epoch cannot last long. Human need, aggravated by the course of history, leaps backward over intelligent leadership, confuses priestly, folk, and primitive beliefs, grabs now here, now there, at traditions, submerges itself in mysteries, sets fairy-tales in the place of poetry, and elevates these to articles of belief. Instead of intelligently instructing and quickly influencing, people now strew seeds and weeds together indiscriminately on all sides; no central point is offered any more on which to concentrate, but every-odd individual steps forward as leader and teacher, and gives forth his perfect folly as a perfected whole.

And so, the force of every mystery undone, the people's religion itself profaned; distinctions that formerly grew from each other in natural development now work against each other as contradictory elements, and thus we have the Tohu-wa-Bohu chaos again: but not the first, gravid, fruitful one; rather, a dying one running to decay, from which not even the spirit of God could create for itself a worthy world.

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4.) Tohu-wa-Bohu:

In the days of Abraham the period of "tohu wa-bohu" (confusion) ceases and the 2,000 years of law begin.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanna_Devei_Eliyahu#The_Periods_of_Jewish_History

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1.) "I want to communicate these things but I feel the split is widening, or closing, I don't know which. The chasm is opening and closing and these words are the borderline. I can stay as I have with bare narrative, but it's getting too difficult, too artificial. It always has been. Let me say that Eben means rock, and rock is never as strong as water. Let me say that the clouds will come and go but that the sky is always there, always blue to the observer, silently mourning. Let me say that when the sun sets the frogs start their croaking and I sit to meditate. When the wind blows through the pines I pine. In everything, this is a stumbling. The previous stress is the disintegration of the disintegration of the world we pretend to not be so.

If there's only one prayer tonight, if there's only one bed, make it so that remembrance blesses the tongue.
Make it lick the letters already written.
written in stone
whittled by water."

from tunnels and bells, sent June 05 2006 from I believe Sri Lanka

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1.) Shall we say that the dog who is toilet trained has good morals? Yes, I believe we shall.

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2.) "A simple thing has to be understood: love -- the love that you are talking about -- is not in your hands. You have fallen into it. It was not in your power not to fall, so when it comes, it takes you with it. But it is like a breeze, it comes and goes. And it is good that it comes and goes, because if it stays it becomes stale."

"Love is such a beautiful word. When you say, "Falling in love," you are using the word in an ugly way. Say "falling in sex"; be true. In love one always rises, never falls. But first you have to come out of the ditch. Help each other."

"You fell without a second thought; you can understand that very easily love has disappeared. Accept the truth of it, and don't blame each other, because nobody is responsible.

Help each other gracefully; in deep friendship, part. Lovers when they separate become enemies. That is a strange kind of gratitude. They should become really friends. And if love can become friendship, there is no guilt, no grudge, no feeling that you have been cheated, exploited. Nobody has exploited anybody..."

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3.) "the so-called religious people have never been gentle with themselves. In fact, we call a person a saint only when he tortures himself, when he is masochistic. The more masochistic, the greater a saint he is. The more he tortures himself, the more followers worship him.

That's how we have been deciding who is a real saint. The saint tortures himself and teaches others to be like him, and he creates guilt in you if you cannot torture yourself -- and no intelligent person can torture himself. Hence all intelligent people have been feeling guilty. Only stupid people can torture themselves. That's why in the faces, in the eyes of your saints you will see nothing but sheer stupidity."

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4.) And to speak of solitude again, it becomes always clearer that this at bottom not something that one can take or leave. We are solitary. We may delude ourselves and act as though this were not so. That is all. But how much better it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it. We shall indeed turn dizzy then; for all points upon which our eye has been accustomed to rest are taken from us, there is nothing near any more and everything far is infinitely far. A person removed from his own room, almost without preparation and transition, and set upon the height of a great mountain range, would feel something of the sort: an unparalleled insecurity, an abandonment to something inexpressible would almost annihilate him. He would think himself falling or hurled into space, or exploded into a thousand pieces: what a monstrous lie his brain would have to invent to catch up with and explain the state of his senses!

So for him who becomes solitary all distances, all measures change; of these changes many take place suddenly, and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, extraordinary imaginings and singular sensations arise that seem to grow out beyond all bearing. But is necessary for us to experience that too. We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it.

That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called "visions," the who so-called "spirit-world," death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied.

whew! from http://indiefaith.blogspot.com/2007/09/letter-8-rilke-on-solitude-and.html

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5.) Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake. It is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. Only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), might young people use the love that is given them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for along, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.

Whoever looks seriously at it finds that neither for death, which is difficult, nor for difficult love has any explanation, any solution, any hint of way yet been discerned; and for these two problems that we carry wrapped up and hand on without opening, it will not be possible to discover any general rule resting in agreement. But in the same measure in which we begin as individuals to put life to the test, we shall, being individuals, meet these great things at closer range. The demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them. But if we nevertheless hold out and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play, behind which people have hidden from the most earnest earnestness of their existence - then a little progress and alleviation will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us; that would be much.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet

from http://www.verticalpool.com/rilke.html

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6.) Dylan: Yes, I had a group at the very start. You must realize I come from the United States, you know. I don't know if you know the United States. It's not like England at all. The people at my age now you know, 25, 26, at this age, everybody's grown up, you know, playing rock'n'roll music.

Klas Burling: You did it?

Dylan: Yes, I mean, cause it's the only kind of music you heard. I mean everybody has done it, cause all you heard was rock'n'roll and country and western and rhythm and blues music. Now at a certain time the whole field got taken over into, into some milk, you know - into Frankie Avalon, Fabian and this kind of thing. That's not bad or anything, but it was just ... there was nobody really, that you could look at, and to really want anything that they had or wanna be like them, you know? So everybody got out of it. And I remember when everybody got out of it. But nobody really lost that whole thing. And then folk music came in as some kind of substitute for a while, but it was only a substitute don't you understand? And that's all it was. Now it's different again, because of the English thing. The English thing ... what the English thing did was, they proved that you could make money, you know, at playing the same old kind of music that you used to play, and that's the truth. You know, that's not a lie. It's not a come on or anything. But, uh, you know the English people can't play rock'n'roll music.

-- Bob Dylan interview with Karl Burling in '66, found on a website, misquoted a little (to my memory): I have the whole interview on CD

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7.)take a look at me baby
I am a teenage prayer
when it's cloudy all the time
all you gotta do is...

take a look at me babe
(good go 'head)
I'm your teenage prayer
take a look at me baby
just take a look at me baby
I am your teenage prayer
yes I'm your teenage prayer

from I'm Your Teenage Prayer, sung by Dylan and The Band in '67 on the basement tapes

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8.) Samuel Beckett.

The perceived pessimism in Beckett's work is mitigated both by a great and often wicked sense of humour, and by the sense, for some readers, that Beckett's portrayal of life's obstacles serves to demonstrate that the journey, while difficult, is ultimately worth the effort. Similarly, many posit that Beckett's expressed "pessimism" is not so much for the human condition but for that of an established cultural and societal structure which imposes a stultifying will upon otherwise hopeful individuals; it is the inherent optimism of the human condition, therefore, that is at tension with the oppressive world. Peter Brook says in The Empty Space that if you believe that Beckett is pessimistic, then you are a Beckett character trapped in a Beckett play; Beckett was not saying "No" because he wanted to but because he was searching for the "Yes".

In 1945, Beckett returned to Dublin for a brief visit. During his stay, he had a revelation in his mother’s room in which his entire future literary direction appeared to him.

"...clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most..."

Since Beckett's death, all rights for performance of his plays are handled by the Beckett estate, currently managed by Edward Beckett, the author's nephew. The estate has a reputation for maintaining firm control over how Beckett's plays are performed and does not grant licences to productions that do not strictly adhere to the stage directions. Historians interested in tracing Beckett's blood line were, in 2004, granted access to confirmed trace samples of his DNA to conduct molecular genealogical studies to facilitate precise lineage determination.

Beckett was once criticized for a 'decadent' lack of realism. (!)

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett

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9.) Beckett was not open to every new approach to his work and he famously objected when, in the 1980s several women’s acting companies began staging the play [Waiting for Godot]. "Women don’t have prostates," said Beckett, an allusion to the fact that Vladimir ... frequently has to leave the stage to urinate, on account of his enlarged prostate. In 1988 he took a Dutch theatre company, De Haarlemse Toneelschuur to court over this issue. "Beckett ... lost his case. But the issue of gender seemed to him to be so vital a distinction for a playwright to make that he reacted angrily, instituting a ban on all productions of his plays in The Netherlands."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot#Interpretations

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10.) The history of Protestantism has been one of chronic iconoclasm. One wall after another fell. And the work of destruction was not too difficult once the authority of the Church had been shattered. We all know how, in large things as in small, in general as well as in particular, piece after piece collapsed, and how the alarming poverty of symbols that is now the condition of our life came about. With that the power of the Church has vanished too - a fortress robbed of its bastions and casemates, a house whose walls have been plucked away, exposed to all the winds of the world and to all dangers.

Although this is, properly speaking, a lamentable collapse that offends our sense of history, the disintegration of Protestantism into nearly four hundred denominations is yet a sure sign that the restlessness continues. The Protestant is cast out into a state of defencelessness that might well make the natural man shudder. His enlightened consciousness, of course, refuses to take cognizance of this fact, and is quietly looking elsewhere for what has been lost to Europe. We seek the effective images, the thought-forms that satisfy the restlessness of heart and mind, and we find the treasures of the East.

... Shall we be able to put on, like a new suit of clothes, ready-made symbols grown on foreign soil, saturated with foreign blood, spoken in a foreign tongue, nourished by a foreign culture, interwoven with foreign history, and so resemble a beggar who wraps himself in kingly raiment, a king who disguises himself as a beggar? No doubt this is possible. Or is there something in ourselves that commands us to go in for no mummeries, but perhaps even to sew our garment ourselves?

I am convinced that the growing impoverishment of symbols has a meaning. It is a development that has an inner consistency. Everything that we have not thought about, and that has therefore been deprived of a meaningful connection with our developing consciousness, has got lost. If we now try to cover our nakedness with the gorgeous trappings of the East, as the theosophists do, we would be playing our own history false. A man does not sink down to beggary only to pose afterwards as an Indian potentate. It seems to me that it would be far better stoutly to avow our spiritual poverty, our symbollessness, instead of feigning a legacy to which we are not the legitimate heirs at all. We are, surely, the rightful heirs of Christian symbolism, but somehow we have squandered this heritage. We have let the house our fathers built fall into decay, and now we try to break into Oriental palaces that our fathers never knew. Anyone who has lost the historical symbols and cannot be satisfied with substitutes is certainly in a very difficult position today: before him there yawns the void, and he turns away from it in horror. What is worse, the vacuum gets filled with absurd political and social ideas, which one and all are distinguished by their spiritual bleakness. But if he cannot get along with these pedantic dogmatisms, he sees himself forced to be serious for once with his alleged trust in God, though it usually turns out that his fear of things going wrong if he did so is even more persuasive. This fear is far from unjustified, for where God is closest the danger seems greatest. It is dangerous to avow spiritual poverty, for the poor man has desires, and whoever has desires calls down some fatality on himself. A Swiss proverb puts it drastically: "Behind every rich man stands a devil, and behind every poor man two."

Just as in Christianity the vow of worldly poverty turned the mind away from the riches of this earth, so spiritual poverty seeks to renounce the false riches of the spirit in order to withdraw not only from the sorry remnants - which today call themselves the Protestant church - of a great past, but also from all the allurements of the odorous East; in order, finally, to dwell with itself alone, where, in the cold light of consciousness, the blank barrenness of the world reaches to the very stars.

from Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious by Carl Jung, (quoted in Campbell's Creative Mythology), found here: http://www.jungland.ru/Library/EngArchColUn.htm

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11.) Throughout his life, [Saint] Dominic is said to have zealously practiced rigorous self-denial. He wore a hairshirt, and an iron chain around his loins, which he never laid aside, even in sleep. He abstained from meat and observed stated fasts and periods of silence. He selected the worst accommodations and the meanest clothes, and never allowed himself the luxury of a bed. When traveling, he beguiled the journey with spiritual instruction and prayers. As soon as he passed the limits of towns and villages, he took off his shoes, and, however sharp the stones or thorns, he trudged on his way barefooted. Rain and other discomforts elicited from his lips nothing but praises to God.

Death came at the age of fifty-one and found him exhausted with the austerities and labors of his eventful career. He had reached the convent of St Nicholas at Bologna, Italy, weary and sick with a fever. He refused the repose of a bed and made the monks lay him on some sacking stretched upon the ground. The brief time that remained to him was spent in exhorting his followers to have charity, to guard their humility, and to make their treasure out of poverty. He died at noon on 6 August 1221.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Dominic

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1.) Do you know the song Hey There Delilah? It's by the Plain White T's and they play it on the Ocean. It's not really worth checking out, but the story is kind of fun.

"When I'm at the gym, it's playing; when I'm at the pool, it's playing. Part of me wants to scream at the top of my lungs that it's about me. Another part of me wants to cower and say it's not."

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_There_Delilah#Inspiration_and_composition

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What's the matter with me,
I don't have much to say,
Daylight sneaking through the window
and I'm still in this all-night cafe.
Walking to and fro beneath the moon
out to where the trucks are rolling slow,
to sit down on this bank of sand
and watch the river flow.

http://bobdylan.com/moderntimes/songs/riverflow.html

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3.) January Cinecenta
February Cinecenta

These look pretty exciting.
By the way, I saw I'm Not There while in New York this past weekend.

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The Pickton Trial with guilty verdict. The shirts say "Count 1 = Guilty / Count 2 = Guilty" etc.

What the fuck is this, a fucking circus? a tennis match?

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5.) http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=de639e3a-81c9-492d-88d8-13d2e5b4c655&k=15317
Ah yes, the Province.
I like the part about: the man [Robert Dziekanski] could have been suffering from a condition known as "excited delirium."

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6.) "Mind is eternal, in so far as it apprehends an object under the species of eternity."
- Spinoza, Ethics (as quoted in Campbell's Creative Mythology)

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7.) I do not quite understand what it is that compels me to type this letter. Perhaps it is to leave some vague reason for the actions I have recently performed. I do not really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I cannot recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.

To Whom It May Concern: I have just taken my mother's life. I am very upset over having done it. However, I feel that if there is a heaven she is definitely there now...I am truly sorry...Let there be no doubt in your mind that I loved this woman with all my heart.

I imagine it appears that I brutally killed both of my loved ones. I was only trying to do a quick thorough job...If my life insurance policy is valid please pay off my debts...donate the rest anonymously to a mental health foundation. Maybe research can prevent further tragedies of this type.

Charles Whitman, who climbed a tower at the University of Texas in Austin in 1966 and opened fire, sniper style, to kill 14 and wound 31.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman#Leadup_to_the_shootings

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8.) He fancied himself an oral jazzman. His ideal was to walk out there like Charlie Parker, take that mike in his hand like a horn and blow, blow, blow everything that came into his head just as it came into his head with nothing censored, nothing translated, nothing mediated, until he was pure mind, pure head sending out brainwaves like radio waves into the heads of every man and woman seated in that vast hall. Sending, sending, sending, he would finally reach a point of clairvoyance where he was no longer a performer but rather a medium transmitting messages that just came to him from out there -- from recall, fantasy, prophecy. A point at which, like the practitioners of automatic writing, his tongue would outrun his mind and he would be saying things he didn't plan to say, things that surprised, delighted him, cracked him up -- as if he were a spectator at his own performance!

Lenny Bruce's performance on February 3, 1961 at the Carnegie Hall as seen by critic Albert Goldman.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_Bruce#Career

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Phil Spector

Stories of Phil Spector's gunplay mounted over the years, including his discharging a firearm while in the studio with John Lennon during the recording of his cover album Rock 'n' Roll, placing a loaded pistol at Leonard Cohen's head during the sessions for Death of a Ladies' Man, and forcing Dee Dee Ramone to play bass guitar to Spector's specifications at gunpoint. Cohen told "Rolling Stone" magazine in 1978 that, "Phil couldn't resist annihilating me. I don't think he can tolerate any other shadows in his darkness."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Spector#Eccentricity

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10.)... If rape or arson, poison, or the knife
Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
Of this drab canvas we accept as life—
It is because we are not bold enough!

Charles Baudelaire, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire#Life_and_work

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1.) The Carnegie Hall.

The renovation was not without controversy. Following completion of work on the main auditorium in 1986, there were complaints that the famous acoustics of the hall had been diminished. Although officials involved in the renovation denied that there was any change, complaints persisted for the next nine years. In 1995, the cause of the problem was discovered to be a slab of concrete under the stage. The slab was subsequently removed.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_hall#Renovations_and_additions

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2.) In addition, several audience members have died at the Met [Opera House]. The most well-known incident was the suicide of operagoer Bantcho Bantchevsky on January 23, 1988 during an intermission of Verdi's Macbeth.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Opera_House#Deaths_at_the_Met

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"All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites."

"My name is Marc, my emotional life is sensitive and my purse is empty, but they say I have talent."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Chagall#Chagall_quotes

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1.) Hence, in 168 BC, Antiochus (of Seleucid Empire) again invaded, and overran all Egypt, except for Alexandria, while his fleet captured Cyprus. Near Alexandria he was met by Gaius Popillius Laenas (of Rome), who told him that he must immediately withdraw from Egypt and Cyprus. Antiochus said he would discuss it with his council, whereupon the Roman envoy drew round him a line in the sand, and said, "Before you cross this circle I want you to give me a reply for the Roman senate"

exciting!
This is Antiochus IV, whom the Jews remember. He desecrated the temple which then led to the Maccabees which then led to Hannukah.

...after the occupiers had been driven from the Temple, the Maccabees discovered that almost all of the ritual olive oil had been profaned. They found only a single container that was still sealed by the High Priest, with enough oil to keep the menorah in the Temple lit for a single day. They used this, and miraculously, that oil burned for eight days (the time it took to have new oil pressed and made ready).

Hannukah started yesterday at sundown. Happy Hannukah!

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiochus_IV#Second_invasion
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannukah

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1.) re: V-Tech Massacre:

Professor Liviu Librescu held the door of his classroom, Room 204, shut while Cho attempted to enter it. Librescu was able to prevent the shooter from entering the classroom until most of his students escaped through the windows, but he died after being shot multiple times through the door. One student in his classroom died.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting#Resistance

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1.) re: École Polytechnique massacre:

Killing one’s self after killing others (multiple homicide/suicide strategy) is considered a sign of a serious personality disorder.

A memorial erected in Vancouver sparked controversy because it was dedicated to "all women murdered by men", which critics say implies all men are potential murderers. As a result, women involved in the project received death threats and the Vancouver Park Board subsequently banned any future memorials that might "antagonize" other groups.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre#Search_for_a_rationale

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You can click this photo:

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1.) From leading hippie to businessman extraordinaire. And yet, not so vast.

[Jerry] Rubin began to demonstrate on behalf of various left-wing causes after dropping out of Berkeley. ... Rubin organized the VDC (Vietnam Day Committee), led some of the first protests against the war in Vietnam, and was a cofounder of the Yippies (Youth International Party) with Abbie Hoffman, and Pigasus, the pig who would be president. He played an instrumental role in the disruption of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Along with seven others (Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, John Froines, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, and Tom Hayden; Bobby Seale was part of the original group, but his case wound up being tried separately), Rubin was put on trial for conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting a riot.

Julius Hoffman was the presiding judge. The defendants were commonly referred to as the "Chicago Seven" (after Seale's exclusion). The defendants turned the courtroom into a circus and although five of the seven remaining defendants were found guilty of inciting a riot, the convictions were later overturned on appeal.

-- now and then --

After the Vietnam War ended, Rubin became politically more moderate and became an entrepreneur and businessman. He was an early investor in Apple Computer.

In the 1980s he embarked on a debating tour with Abbie Hoffman entitled "Yippie versus Yuppie." Rubin's pitch in the debates was that activism was hard work, that abuse of drugs, sex and private property had made the counter-culture "a scary society in itself," and that "wealth creation is the real American revolution—what we need is an infusion of capital into the depressed areas of our country."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Rubin

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2.) In November 1986 Hoffman was arrested along with fourteen others, including Amy Carter, the daughter of former President Jimmy Carter, for trespassing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The charges stemmed from a protest against the Central Intelligence Agency's recruitment on the UMass campus. Since the university's policy limited campus recruitment to law-abiding organizations, Hoffman asserted in his defense the CIA's lawbreaking activities.

In three days of testimony, more than a dozen defense witnesses, including Daniel Ellsberg, Ramsey Clark, and former Contra leader Edgar Chamorro, described the CIA's role in more than two decades of covert, illegal and often violent activities. In his closing argument, Hoffman, acting as his own attorney, placed his actions within the best tradition of American civil disobedience.

On April 15, 1987, the jury found Hoffman and the other defendants not guilty.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_Hoffman#Back_to_visibility

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3.) Oddly (or not) there is an updated and online version of Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book called Steal This Wiki:
http://www.stealthiswiki.org/

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1.) An interesting cinema in Vancouver which I'd never heard of before today:
(also the only one in Vancouver/Victoria I've found that is showing I'm Not There)

http://www.cinemaclock.com/aw/ctha.aw/p.clock/r.bri/m.Vancouver/j.e/k.Fifth_Avenue.html

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2.) One of my managers told me today that I had to watch out for Leap Year next year because women apparently propose often to men in the month of February. I responded that I would hide away at my desk but then be getting handed all these forms for proposals. I would then have to put them into a spreadsheet.

I blame this on the Ocean, which has been playing here over the radio for the past few weeks.

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3.) The Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970, 4 days after Nixon announced that the US had entered Cambodia, in which 4 students were killed by the National Guard in Ohio, 2 of whom were not involved in the anti-war protest.

The shootings led to protests on college campuses throughout the United States, and a student strike - causing over 450 campuses across the country to close with both violent and non-violent demonstrations. A common sentiment was expressed by students at New York University with a banner hung out of a window which read "They Can't Kill Us All."

Just five days after the shootings, 100,000 people demonstrated in Washington, D.C. against the war and the killing of unarmed student protesters. Ray Price, Nixon's chief speechwriter from 1969-74 recalled the Washington demonstrations saying, "The city was an armed camp. The mobs were smashing windows, slashing tires, dragging parked cars into intersections, even throwing bedsprings off overpasses into the traffic down below. This was the quote, student protest. That's not student protest, that’s civil war."

After the student protests, Nixon asked H. R. Haldeman to consider the Huston Plan, which would have used illegal procedures to gather information on the leaders of the anti-war movement. Only the resistance of J. Edgar Hoover stopped the plan.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings#Aftermath_and_long-term_effects

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1.) I took a small fall on my bicycle this morning on the way to work, as the tires hit some ice and I hit the pavement. It was an odd experience and the first thing I noticed was how drastically one's awareness is reduced in this type of situation: I remember shoulder-checking over my left shoulder, I remember starting to turn the bicycle, I think or seem to remember looking down and noticing something -- perhaps that the tires were sliding instead of turning. The next thing I remember is semi-sitting on the road thinking I should get up. The other four observations are as follows:

1. It seems my body knows what to do as I did not hit my head. This could also have to do with the way that I fell: sliding. Or the reason why awareness shut down.
2. The other observation is that in my cases it seems rare to actually land on the bicycle when one falls. I guess this maybe makes sense as you and the bike have different properties as such, but I guess I often forget this when bicycling: it feels like more of a unity and that falling might anger the bicycle, causing it to want to be under you as you come tumbling down.
3. Falling off of a bicycle makes for a good story. Or at least it starts the engine of the story-producing hungry gears somewhere within.
4. Thrill seekers. But it seems to be related to awareness shutting down, a conservation of sorts, kind of like a turtle. A straight-edge razor wave of adrenalin, or something smooth. I'm probably simplifying here, but that's what we get.

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2.) Δόξα Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ καὶ Ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι,
καὶ νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀμήν.

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3.) "Between three and four in the morning, the phone rang," Herzog recalled. "It took me at least a couple of minutes before I realized that it was Kinski who was the source of this inarticulate screaming. And after an hour of this, it dawned on me that he found it the most fascinating screenplay and wanted to be Aguirre."

On one occasion, irritated by the noise from a hut where cast and crew were playing cards, the explosive Kinski fired three shots at it, blowing the top joint off one extra's finger. Subsequently, Kinski started leaving the jungle location (over Herzog's refusal to fire a sound assistant), only changing his mind after Herzog threatened to shoot first Kinski and then himself.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguirre%2C_the_Wrath_of_God#Herzog_and_Kinski

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4.) Nuts. I feel the blog lost a bit of steam after the Rothko-Cage-minimalists posts. Oh well, carry on. To the realm of Mercury Rev, for a brief visit.

Tony Conrad (see November 1st, #4: he has ties with the minimalist composers) was the "academic mentor" of Mercury Rev. Mercury Rev also has some connections with the Flaming Lips, with whom I'm not too familiar. Anyway, check out the following quote, and also I think it would be interesting for me to check this out (Paralyzed Mind of the Archangel Void): http://wm05.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:apfwxquhldae.

...the performances, mounted without any practice sessions, constantly teetered on the brink of disintegration -- set lists were nonexistent, and Baker frequently hopped off the stage (in midsong, no less) to grab a drink. Additionally, the group was reportedly banned from air travel after Donahue attempted to gouge out Grasshopper's eye with a spoon in mid-flight. Following the tour, Mercury Rev again went their separate ways; the members found menial jobs, moved in with their parents, or earned money by participating in medical experiments.

from http://wm05.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:09fyxqw5ldse~T1

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5.) Mercury Rev to Dream Pop somehow to Sigur Rós.

Sigur Rós joined Radiohead in October 2003, to compose music for Merce Cunningham's (see November 19: a dancer, John Cage's partner) dance piece Split Sides.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigur_R%C3%B3s#.28_.29_.282002.29

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1.) Anyone else up for a Jim Henson night? Seriously, take a quick look at the following movie-film descriptions (I also wouldn't argue if we added The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth):
Time Piece
The Cube

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"Michael Moschen: In Motion"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_juggling#History

Click this photo:

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2-4ish.) Unfortunately, the closest I can get to I'm Not There is finding out that it's being released in Canada on November 28. Where, I don't know. I do know it was only for "select cities" which probably does not include Victoria.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368794/releaseinfo

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5?.) I would like to see some more Werner Herzog, as well:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081746/plotsummary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Best_Fiend

Klaus Kinski, a volatile actor who collaborated with Herzog and starred in Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972), Woyzeck (1979), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and finally Cobra Verde (1987) (none of which have I seen), sounds like quite the character, even from the brief sketch presented here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Kinski

Klaus Kinski was also a major source of tension (during the filming of Fitzcarraldo), as he fought with Herzog and other members of the crew and greatly upset the native extras. In his documentary My Best Fiend, Herzog says that one of the native chiefs offered to murder Kinski for him, but that he declined because he needed Kinski to complete filming.

The film was an incredible ordeal, and famously involved moving a 320-ton steamship over a hill without the use of special effects. Herzog believes that no one has ever performed a similar feat in history, and likely never will again, calling himself "Conquistador of the Useless".

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo

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6.) That juggling thing is awesome.

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7.) What is this? ("Les Francais vus par")
Directed by: Luigi Comencini, Werner Herzog, Andrzej Wajda, Jean-Luc Godard (segment "Le dernier mot"), David Lynch (segment "The Cowboy and the Frenchman")

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094999/

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8.) Oh lordy me.
http://www.mopod.ca/mopod.htm

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1.) I apologize: yesterday's post bored me too. Here we go:

Islam:
Muslim men and women are required by the Sunnah to remove their pubic hair and underarm hair. Muslim men are discouraged from shaving their faces. Some legal schools include the moustache in this definition while others encourage the moustache to be shaved.

Judaism:
Jewish men are forbidden by the Torah to shave their facial hair with a razor. Whether it is permitted to shave with an electric razor is a matter of debate among Jewish legal decisors, but most are lenient.

Sikhism:
Sikh men and women are forbidden to shave any body hair because hair (called Kesh) is one of the Five K’s which all baptised Sikhs keep in the way they believe Waheguru [God] intended. Sikh's believe that, since God created the human body with hair, it is against his will for them to remove it. Hair is also considered part of man's natural beauty that should not change. Having long head hair is one of the reasons why Sikh men and women wear turbans to cover their hair.

Historically however, Sikhs were required to wear a turban and beard primarily to stand out among the rest as a protector and guardian for the early Sikhs and Hindus who sought protection against the then-ruling Muslim forces in India.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-shaven#Shaving_in_religion

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1.) Merce Cunningham, John Cage's partner and lover, used many of John Cage's methods/theories and applied them to dance instead of music-theater.

Inspired by Albert Einstein's words "there are no fixed points in space," Cunningham developed a method of creating known as "Chance Operations"...Cunningham would create a number of dance phrases and use methods such as dice, cards, or coins to determine order, number of repetitions, direction and spatial relation.

Although considered an abrogation of artistic responsibility by some, Cunningham was thrilled by a process that arrives at works that could never have been created through traditional collaboration. This does not mean, however, that Cunningham holds every piece created in this fashion is a masterpiece. Those dances that do not "work" are quickly dropped from repertory, while those that do are celebrated as serendipitous discoveries. In this fashion chance operations are similar to improvisation, used as a tool of creation by many artists.

...in Cunningham's choreography, dancers do not necessarily represent any historical figure, emotional situation, or idea.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merce_Cunningham

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2.) The Cornish College of the Arts, as close by as the Seattle area, influenced by Montessori ideas, has had the following very notable faculty/alumni: John Cage, Bill Frisell, Meredith Monk, Merce Cunningham, and, uh, Steve White of The Blue Man Group.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_College_of_the_Arts
and http://www.cornish.edu/

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1.) Conceived in 1952, Theater Piece No. 1 consisted of Cage collaborating with Merce Cunningham, David Tudor, Robert Rauschenberg, and Charles Olson at Black Mountain College where the performance took place amongst the audience. "Happenings", as set forth by Cage, are theatrical events that abandoned the traditional concept of stage-audience and occur without a sense of definite duration; instead, they are left to chance. They have a minimal script, with no plot. In fact, a "Happening" is so-named because it occurs in the present, attempting to arrest the concept of passing time. Cage believed that theater was the closest route to integrating art and (real) life. The term "Happenings" was coined by Allan Kaprow, one of his students, who was to define it as a genre in the late fifties. Cage met Kaprow while on a mushroom hunt with George Segal and invited him to join his class. In following these developments Cage was strongly influenced by Antonin Artaud’s seminal treatise The Theatre and Its Double, and the “Happenings” of this period can be viewed a forerunner to the ensuing Fluxus movement. In October of 1960, Mary Baumeister's Cologne studio hosted a joint concert by Cage and the video artist Nam June Paik, who in the course of his 'Etude for Piano' cut off Cage's tie and then washed his co-performer’s hair with shampoo.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage#Happenings_.26_Fluxus

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2.) Many performers of "New Complexity" find the extremely difficult requirements of these scores (extended techniques, microtonality, odd tunings, highly disjunct melodic contour, innovative timbres, complex polyrhythms, irrational meters like 4/3 and 21/6, unconventional instrumentations, quick changes in loudness and intensity, and so on) to be liberating in their very difficulty and abstraction, performing a live critique of classical music performance practice. Others have suggested, more radically, that the demands of "New Complexity" scores celebrate the relationship between composer and performer as role-playing a sado-masochistic relationship; the composer as sadist, the performer, masochist. Some believe that New Complexity is a "postmodern" rebellion from the sometimes conservative performance practice that evolved around the highly systematic and modernist "old complexity."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Complexity

John Cage might be considered a precursor to such movements as New Complexity.

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3.) There's something that seems (from my brief investigation) playful with John Cage but there's also something that seems a little too rigorous and maybe even militant. I am drawn to Mark Rothko (see below) and wonder if this passage isn't somewhat relevant here with respect to Cage:

Rothko labeled Pop-Art artists "charlatans and young opportunists" and wondered aloud during a 1962 exhibition of Pop Art, "are the young artists plotting to kill us all?" On viewing Jasper Johns' flags (see here) , Rothko said, "we worked for years to get rid of all that." It was not that Rothko could not accept being replaced, so much as an inability to accept what was replacing him. He found it valueless, though it received much admiration as collectors sold off their Rothkos, Newmans and Gottliebs and replaced them with Rauschenbergs (see above: #1), and staged retrospectives of artists then in their mid-twenties.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rothko#United_States

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4.) I guess that's what this is: a brief investigation. A slurred dance through lamppost streets. A drop of coriander, a wisp of cumin. A few cars going by on the highway. One street light flickers on and off, wavering between the two.

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5.) I HAD to include this. Please enjoy.

A preface to Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen for a Chinese edition.

A NOTE TO THE READER

Dear Reader,

Thank you for coming to this book. It is an honor, and a surprise, to have the frenzied thoughts of my youth expressed in Chinese characters. I sincerely appreciate the efforts of the translator and the publishers in bringing this curious work to your attention. I hope you will find it useful or amusing.

When I was young, my friends and I read and admired the old Chinese poets. Our ideas of love and friendship, of wine and distance, of poetry itself, were much affected by those ancient songs. Much later, during the years when I practiced as a Zen monk under the guidance of my teacher Kyozan Joshu Roshi, the thrilling sermons of Lin Chi (Rinzai) were studied every day. So you can understand, Dear Reader, how privileged I feel to be able to graze, even for a moment, and with such meager credentials, on the outskirts of your tradition.

This is a difficult book, even in English, if it is taken too seriously. May I suggest that you skip over the parts you don't like? Dip into it here and there. Perhaps there will be a passage, or even a page, that resonates with your curiosity. After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover. In any case, I thank you for your interest in this odd collection of jazz riffs, pop-art jokes, religious kitsch and muffled prayer æ an interest which indicates, to my thinking, a rather reckless, though very touching, generosity on your part.

Beautiful Losers was written outside, on a table set among the rocks, weeds and daisies, behind my house on Hydra, an island in the Aegean Sea. I lived there many years ago. It was a blazing hot summer. I never covered my head. What you have in your hands is more of a sunstroke than a book.

Dear Reader, please forgive me if I have wasted your time.

Los Angeles, February 27, 2000

Leonard Cohen



from http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/lcbook5.html

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6.) And back a bit to John Cage.

Another of Cage's works, Organ² / ASLSP, is currently being performed near the German township of Halberstadt, in an imaginative interpretation of Cage's directions for the piece. The performance is being done on a specially-constructed autonomous organ built into the old church of St. Burchardi. It is scheduled to take a total of 639 years after having been started at midnight on September 5, 2001. The first year and half of the performance was total silence, with the first chord -- G-sharp, B and G-sharp -- not sounding until February 2, 2003. Then in July 2004, two additional Es, an octave apart, were sounded and are scheduled to be sounded later this year on May 5. But at 5:00 p.m. (16:00 GMT) on Thursday, 5 January, the first chord progressed to a second -- comprising A, C and F-sharp -- and is to be held down over the next few years by weights on an organ being built especially for the project.

(see also: here and here)

(the earliest year available to "buy" is 2025...better hurry! it only costs 1000 Euros.)



and

Between 1987 and 1990 Cage composed a major series of works entitled Europeras, numbered one to five. Cage was invited to compose the first two works for the Frankfurt Opera. They deconstruct operatic form, yet are not merely parodic. Plots, librettos, and arias (often sung simultaneously) were assembled via chance methods from a wide range of conventional 18th and 19th century operas whose texts and scores were in the public domain. Chance determined other aspects as well, from stage lighting, scenery, costumes and props to the actions of the singers. There was no conductor; performers were instead guided by large projections of a digital clock according to strict time intervals. Cage even went so far as to hand out two separate sets of librettos to the audience at the premiere, themselves culled from previous operatic works. Being overtly based as they are upon previous works, the Europeras provide one of the most intriguing examples of Cage defamiliarising the familiar, rendering a complex new web of symbols and meanings overlapping across conventional aesthetic domains.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage#Subsequent_works

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7.) "I am for the birds, not for the cages people put them in."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage#Writings.2C_visual_art.2C_and_other_activities

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8.) Jarrad, I feel that John Cage is somewhat similar to our previous discussion regarding our attraction to etymologies and whatnot: something to do with resonances and reverberations.

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1.) John Cage described his music as "purposeless play", but "this play is an affirmation of life—not an attempt to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and desires out the way and lets it act of its own accord."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage#Asian_influences

Another piece Cage wrote consisted of lines, running horizontally and some vertically across the page of all different length. The performer must determine the speed, pitch, clef, and length of each note based on what he perceived the line to instruct.

...Cage’s radical demands resulted in markedly hostile performer reactions.

Most performers often felt that Cage's 'chance' music was so detailed that there was nothing left to chance (or improvise). The performers felt more like slaves of the music rather than interpreters. Cage later went on to say "In my opinion it is the composer's privilege to determine his works, down to the minutest detail".

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage#Chance

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2.) This could be scary (I think Mark Rothko would have found it scary) but I think it's amusing and interesting.

"I have spent many pleasant hours in the woods conducting performances of my silent piece... for an audience of myself, since they were much longer than the popular length which I have published. At one performance... the second movement was extremely dramatic, beginning with the sounds of a buck and a doe leaping up to within ten feet of my rocky podium."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage#Black_Mountain.2C_4.E2.80.9933.E2.80.99.E2.80.99

(see November 8 #6 below)

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1.) By 1886, Nietzsche himself had reservations about the work, referring to The Birth of Tragedy as "an impossible book . . . badly written, ponderous, embarrassing, image-mad and image-confused, sentimental, saccharine to the point of effeminacy, uneven in tempo, [and] without the will to logical cleanliness." Its reception was such a personal disappointment that he referred to it, once, as "falling stillborn from the press." Still, he defended the "arrogant and rhapsodic book" for inspiring "fellow-rhapsodizers" and for luring them on to "new secret paths and dancing places."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Tragedy#Reception

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2.) The two decisive innovations of the book are, first, its understanding of the Dionysian phenomenon among the Greeks: for the first time, a psychological analysis of this phenomenon is offered, and it is considered as one root of the whole of Greek art. The other is the understanding of Socratism: Socrates is recognized for the first time as an instrument of Greek disintegration, as a typical décadent. "Rationality" against instinct. "Rationality" at any price as a dangerous force that undermines life!— Profound, hostile silence about Christianity throughout the book. That is neither Apollinian nor Dionysian; it negates all aesthetic values—the only values that the "Birth of Tragedy" recognizes: it is nihilistic in the most profound sense, while in the Dionysian symbol the ultimate limit of affirmation is attained.

Nietzsche, in Ecce Homo, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Tragedy#Reception

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3.) Mark Rothko's interest was "only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions . . . The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rothko#European_travels

There is a Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, opened in 1971, a year after Mark committed suicide.

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4.) "This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good. What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind . . . let it be something good."

-Anonymous

This was put up in the staff lunch room. Scary.

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5.) Even less than a box schema (see #7 from November 8), it would be cool (read: much more expressive, much more 'accurate' perhaps) to somehow have a swirl of these various words, pictures, images, ideas...not even a dance but just a swirl, somehow around and within.

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