This is a great documentary about Alfred Wainwright. Apart from filling me with a sense of awe at his prodigious technical output and stoic mountain fortitude, it was also reassuring to know he was a merciless curmudgeon, eschewing crowds of school kids on the peaks, and bemoaning encroaching commercialization. It inspired me to get yet more of the major Wainwrights under my belt in future. This documentary is the opening episode in the Wainwright Walks Coast to Coast series, with soggy biscuit Julia Bradbury, notable as in this episode there are thankfully relatively few soft porn shots of her huffing & puffing uphill for the camera. One of my teacher colleagues relayed a story about his friend who was up walking on the West Pennine Moors near Blackburn years ago. On the tops he came across a myopic old man smoking a pipe, and they agreed to walk down together. It was only after the old man had gone on his way that my colleague's friend realised he had been in the modest company of Alfred Wainwright. To delight in anonymity; to feel alive only when wrapped in the solitary cool breezes of the mountain; Wainwright is someone from whom we all can learn.
Meditazioni delle Vette (translated as Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest) is a work by Italian esoteric writer Julius Evola. A collection of articles from between 1930 and 1955 as assembled by Renato del Ponte. Published in 1974 by La Spezia: Ed. del Tridente; English translation by Inner Traditions, 1998. The excerpt is from pages 22-23. Images are from a walk I did around Dovesone Reservoir in April this year. The descent was treacherous; partly through white rapid river, partly through ravine. I had to hang at full stretch in places just to get down through the slippery rocks. The words of Evola echoed through my mind. If they are the last words to go through my mind before falling to my death I thought, they are good words and worthy of an heroic end.
“In this way, beyond the natural symbol of the
mountain, which is directly perceived by the senses, we can access its
doctrinal and traditional symbolism, namely, the deeper content of all the
previously mentioned ancient myths in which the mountain appears as the seat of
divine natures, immortalizing substances, forces of solar and supernatural
regality (for example, the solar mountain referred to in the traditions of the
Hellenized Roman Empire and the mountain as the seat of Mazdean glory), as
spiritual center (Mount Meru and the other symbolic mountains conceived as
poles), and so forth. In fact, in all this we see the various depictions,
personifications, and projections of transcendent states of consciousness, or
inner awakening and enlightenment. These projects are said to be real when they
no longer represent something vague, mystical or fantastic, but rather when
they are perceived according to the evidence and normalcy of a superior order
that regards as abnormal everything that was previously regarded as familiar
and habitual.
“It is possible that the
ancients, who ignored mountain climbing or only knew some rudimentary
techniques (and therefore knew the mountain as an inaccessible and inviolable
entity), were consequently lead to experience it as a symbol and as a
transcendent spirituality. Considering that today the mountain has been
physically conquered and that there are few peaks that man has not yet reached,
it is important to keep the conquest from being debased and from losing its
higher meaning. Thus, it is necessary that the younger generation gradually
come to appreciate action at the level of ritual and that they slowly succeed
in finding again a transcendent reference point. It is through this reference
point that the feats of audacity, risk, and conquest as well as the disciplines
of the body, the senses, and the will that are practiced in the immovable,
great, and symbolic mountain peaks, lead men to the realization that all in man
is beyond himself. In this way these feats will be justified in the context of
the spiritual revolutionary movement that is currently emerging among our
people.”
Sir Robert Peel, former Tory Prime Minister, textile capitalist,
and founder of the modern Police force; “Bobbies or Peelers”
Queen Victoria's
Diamond Jubilee and also to celebrate the victory of the local people
for the right to access the moor.
Access
PeelTower
is open to the public when the flag is flying from the top, but these
occasions are limited. It was closed when I went.
Open all times. Access via an internal spiral staircase. The
tower dome came off during strong winds on 11 November 2010. A replacement powder-coated
stainless steel dome made by WEC Group of Darwen, which cost more than
£35,000, was winched into place by helicopter on 13 January 2012.
Views
Ramsbottom Moor, Manchester,
into Cheshire basin, some of North
Wales.
North Yorkshire,
MorecambeBay, Blackpool
Tower,Cumbria,
the Isle of Man, North Wales,
Derbyshire, elsewhere in Lancashire,
and surrounding moorland.
Steps
148
65 stone + 17 iron = 82
Cost
£1000 by
public subscription.
£650 devoted in aid of
the Nursing Association by public subscription.
Aesthetic Opinion
Manchester
Evening News: PeelMonument
is “not a specimen of architectural
beauty"
James Jarret:
“The finest ProspectTower in Lancashire”
The Verdict
I’m all
behind DarwenTower in this architectural face off.
Sure, its shorter, cost less to build, and looks like a 1950’s Pinewood Studios
space rocket. But it was built to commemorate free access to the moor, which
resulted from hard fought and bloody battles with greedy landowners. Plus the
view from DarwenTower is pretty phenomenal too. All PeelMonument can boast is testament to twice
Tory PM Robert Peel, founder of the rozzers. No contest!
Mahlon Blaine’s best work walked the razor's edge between the grotesque and beautiful. Though few facts of his life are verifiable, insomuch as anyone can gather, he lived in that no man’s land as well. A childhood accident left the artist – who was born in 1894 - blind in his left eye, an accident that contributes to the flattened perspective that marks his work. Though he alleged to have seen combat in World War I, the Army rarely drafted the half blind. A well-documented chronic injury to his left arm was unlikely to have come from a war wound. The plate in his head of which he boasted was probably fictional. Few photographs of the artist survive, but his self-portraits further the likely fake war hero persona.
In 1928, Blaine depicted himself as a typical, pipe-smoking veteran from the Lost Generation, an archetype that could be mistaken for a Hemingway dust jacket. After the war years, Blaine led a transient existence, toiling in Hollywood in the era of avant-garde silent films, and bouncing back and forth from the West Coast to New York City as his marriage to b-movie actress Duskal Blaine smoldered, exploded, and then reignited.
According to his own count, Blaine and his wife married and divorced no fewer than three times. But of course, Blaine’s count is not to be trusted. Though he was beloved by his friends for his poetic approach to life- his storytelling style was once compared to haiku, containing just a glimmer of meaning for the listener to deduce- his life is best pieced back together by tracking his career. For decades Blaine labored in the factory-like setting of the underground New York erotic literature scene. Working closely with Jack Brussel, the energetic antiquarian book dealer who published and sold erotica first at his Ortelius Book Shop and then at other Fourth Avenue locations, Blaine illustrated symbolist classics like Paul Verlaine’s Hashish and Incense, the Marquis de Sade’s Justine, fast-money low-market fetish pornographic booklets, and everything in between.
Blaine’s devotion to the macabre, the bizarre, and the sexual aspects of his art put the brakes on his commercial career. Though, patrons bought his original works during his lifetime, his cult status today emerged only through his rediscovery by sci-fi collectors and underground cartoonists. Still, Blaine’s admirers during his lifetime were fierce. Along with magician Jack Dunninger, who literally kept Blaine fed during lean times (often complaining about the artist's prodigious appetite), Blaine gathered fans in the elite of New York City's design world.
How much of Blaine’s obscurity in his lifetime came from his emergence during the depression years, when high end glossy work was scarce, and how much was due to a form of self-sabotage may never be entirely clear. Haunted by his own demons, Blaine spent the early 1940s under the psychiatric care of Greystone Hospital’s Dr. Archie Crandall. This period marks the only known break in Blaine’s working life. After ironically completing illustrations for a reissue of E. Thelmar’s 1909 autobiography of madness The Maniac, Blaine slipped out of public view, before returning to the New York art scene in the 1950s.
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of about a thousand Persian poems, attributed to poet, mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyám (1048–1131). An aruba'i is a two-line stanza with two parts (or hemistichs) per line, hence the word rubáiyát (derived from the Arabic language root for "four"), meaning "quatrains".
The Rubaiyat has seen many versions and interpretations since the first FitzGerald 1859 edition, reflecting its wonderful beauty and fluidity. Similarly there have been many attempts at illustration in various styles, several of which I have shown below. Amongst the many versions, Wallace Irwin’s parodical Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Jr. purports to be his translation from a language he calls “Mango-Bornese”. I have mashed up a number of illustrations, plus quatrains from the Shahriar Shahriari version with a few cheeky ones from Irwin. See which ones you can identify or scratch your head at.
Heaven is incomplete without a heavenly romance
Let a glass of wine be my present circumstance
Take what is here now, let go of a promised chance
A drumbeat is best heard from a distance.
O foozied Poetasters, fogged with Wine,
Who to your Orgies bid the Muses Nine,
Go bid them then, but leave to me, the Tenth
Whose name is Nicotine, for she is mine!'
This clay pot like a lover once in heat
A lock of hair his senses did defeat
The handle that has made the bottleneck its own seat
Was once the embrace of a lover that entreat.
Then let the balmed Tobacco be my Sheath,
The ardent Weed above me and beneath,
And let me like a living Incense rise,
A Fifty-Cent Cigar between my Teeth
Mark how Havana's
sensuous-philtred Mead
Dispels the cackling Hag of Night at Need,
And, foggy-aureoled, the Smoke reveals
The Poppy Flowers that blossom from the Weed.
Alas
the youthful fire is a dying ember
The
spring of life has reached December
What
is termed youth, I vaguely remember
But
know not whence and how from life's chamber.
Tonight
I shall embrace a gallon cup
With
at least two cups of wine I'll sup
I'll
divorce my mind and religion stop
With daughter of vine, all
night I'll stay up.
This
clay pot like a lover once in heat
A
lock of hair his senses did defeat
The
handle that has made the bottleneck its own seat
Was once the embrace of a
lover that entreat.
Khayyam,
if you are intoxicated with wine, enjoy!
If
you are seated with a lover of thine, enjoy!
In
the end, the Void the whole world employ
Imagine
thou art not, while waiting in line, enjoy!
Alfie's Theme is the first track from the 1966 album Alfie by jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, compiled for the film of the same name & year. It is, in part, featured in the opening scenes of the film infused with moody sights of London at night. The original British film soundtrack recruited Rollins with other local musicians, including pianist Stan Tracey, who sadly is not heard on the album.
In March 1933, when Strauss was 68, Adolf
Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power. Strauss never joined
the Nazi party, and studiously avoided Nazi forms of greeting. For reasons of
expediency, however, he was initially drawn into cooperating with the early
Nazi regime in the hope that Hitler—an ardent Wagnerian and music lover who had
admired Strauss's work since viewing Salome in 1907—would promote
German art and culture. Strauss's need to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law
and Jewish grandchildren also motivated his behavior, in addition to his
determination to preserve and conduct the music of banned composers such
as Mahler and Debussy.
In 1933, Strauss wrote in his private notebook:
I consider the Streicher-Goebbels Jew-baiting as a disgrace
to German honour, as evidence of incompetence - the basest weapon of untalented,
lazy mediocrity against a higher intelligence and greater talent.
Meanwhile,
far from being an admirer of Strauss's work, Joseph
Goebbels maintained expedient cordiality with Strauss only for a period.
Goebbels wrote in his diary:
Unfortunately we still
need him, but one day we shall have our own music and then we shall have no
further need of this decadent neurotic.
Strauss & Goebbels in the 1930's
Nevertheless, because of Strauss's international eminence,
in November 1933 he was appointed to the post of president of the newly
founded Reichsmusikkammer, the State Music Bureau. Strauss, who had lived
through numerous political regimes and had no interest in politics, decided to
accept the position but to remain apolitical, a decision which would eventually
become untenable. He wrote to his family, "I made music under the
Kaiser, and under Ebert. I'll survive under this one as
well." In 1935 he wrote in his journal:
In November of 1933, the minister Goebbels nominated me
president of the Reichsmusikkammer without obtaining my prior agreement. I
was not consulted. I accepted this honorary office because I hoped that I would
be able to do some good and prevent worse misfortunes, if from now onwards
German musical life were going to be, as it was said, "reorganized"
by amateurs and ignorant place-seekers.
Strauss privately scorned Goebbels and called him "a
pipsqueak." However, in 1933 he dedicated an orchestral song, Das
Bächlein ("The Little Brook"), to Goebbels, in order to gain his
cooperation in extending German music copyright laws from 30 years to 50 years.
Strauss attempted to ignore Nazi bans on performances of
works by Debussy, Mahler, and Mendelssohn. He also continued to
work on a comic opera, Die schweigsame Frau, with
his Jewish friend and librettist Stefan Zweig. When the opera
was premiered in Dresden in 1935,
Strauss insisted that Zweig's name appear on the theatrical billing, much to
the ire of the Nazi regime. Hitler and Goebbels avoided attending the opera,
and it was halted after three performances and subsequently banned by the Third
Reich. On 17 June 1935,
Strauss wrote a letter to Stefan Zweig, in which he stated:
Do you believe I am
ever, in any of my actions, guided by the thought that I am 'German'? Do you
suppose Mozart was consciously 'Aryan' when he composed? I recognise only two
types of people: those who have talent and those who have none.
This letter to Zweig was intercepted by the Gestapo and sent to Hitler. Strauss was subsequently dismissed from his post as Reichsmusikkammer president in 1935.
Richard Strauss speaking at the German Composers'
Meeting, Berlin on 18 February 1934.
The 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics nevertheless used
Strauss's Olympische Hymne, which he had composed in 1934. Strauss's
seeming relationship with the Nazis in the 1930s attracted criticism from some
noted musicians, including Arturo Toscanini, who in 1933 had said,
"To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it
back on again," when Strauss had accepted the presidency of
the Reichsmusikkammer. Much of
Strauss's motivation in his conduct during the Third Reich was,
however, to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law Alice and his Jewish
grandchildren from persecution. Both of his grandsons were bullied at school,
but Strauss used his considerable influence to prevent the boys or their mother
being sent to concentration camps.
In 1947, Strauss made his first flight to conduct concerts in England arranged by his old friend Thomas Beecham. He was deeply depressed by having to justify himself to the denazification board, which was investigating those thought to have collaborated with the regime. In June 1948, he was cleared on all counts. Despite Strauss being cleared of collaboration, for decades his music suffered the same fate as Wagner’s: the composer’s association with the Nazis sullied the work, which was banned, ignored or reviled as a result. While Wagner is still verboten, Israel lifted its embargo on Strauss in the 1990s.
Strauss completed the composition of Metamorphosen, a
work for 23 solo strings, in 1945. The title and inspiration for the work comes
from a profoundly self-examining poem by Goethe, which Strauss had
considered setting as a choral work. Generally regarded as one of the masterpieces
of the string repertoire, Metamorphosen contains Strauss's most
sustained outpouring of tragic emotion. Conceived and written during the
blackest days of World War II, the piece expresses Strauss's mourning of,
among other things, the destruction of German culture - including the bombing of
every great opera house in the nation. At the end of the war, Strauss wrote in
his private diary:
The most terrible
period of human history is at an end, the twelve year reign of bestiality,
ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany's 2000 years of cultural evolution met its
doom.
Goethe’s poem Metamorphosis of Plants can be found here, but
Strauss’ title Metamorphosen undoubtedly refers to both Goethe poems The
Metamorphosis of Plants and The Metamorphosis of Animals. In both, the
philosopher optimistically conceives of that process as “order in motion.” Strauss's
Metamorphosen turns Goethe's concept on its head. In the musical work,
self-knowledge does not elevate man; rather, it reveals his bestial nature. To
symbolize the inversion of Goethe's noble concept, Strauss reworks a basic
motive from his “Niemand” sketch in the Metamorphosen. In the vocal piece, the
C-major tonic is initially undermined by either E-minor or C-minor harmonies,
either of which may easily be transformed into C major by the shift of a single
pitch. Jackson equates those
slippery harmonic relationships, which he calls the Metamorphosenmotiv, with
the elusiveness of Goethe’s unknowable self. In “Niemand wird sich selber kennen”
the poet asserts that self-knowledge is the way in which man elevates himself,
a concept that Strauss supports in his vocal setting through the triumph of C
major over the E-minor and C-minor harmonies.
In the Metamorphosen, however, Strauss’s transformations of
the Metamorphosenmotiv determine the work’s underlying harmonic structure and symbolically
contradict Goethe. C major is defeated by C minor, self-knowledge is not
redemptive, and only man’s most degenerate nature is revealed.
For a musical form, Strauss employs a loose sonata-allegro
design in which the recapitulation necessarily emphasizes the triumph—-or in
this case, the defeat of one tonality by another. To focus attention on this
background tonal conflict, the six surface motives remain unchanged throughout
the work, while the orchestration for twenty-three solo strings imparts a rich and
solemn tone well suited to the serious subject matter. Alan Jefferson, viewing
it only as a memorial to Munich, called
the Metamarphosen “possibly the saddest piece of music ever written”.
The solemnity & simple elegance of Metamorphosen has similarities,
at least in its intent, to Vaughan-
Williams’ post war Elegy from the 3rd (Pastoral) Symphony and
playing the two pieces one after another is sometimes a good exercise in
reflecting on creative vulnerability in an age of mass warfare.
Above is a picture of Munich after the allies had finished with it. Being an industrial city, Munich was a major target for allied bombing missions during World War II, which decimated much of its infrastructure. Most of the buildings we would see today had been heavily damaged or destroyed during the war. When the dust settled, many that remained standing were only a skeletal shell of their previous form. Most were painstakingly rebuilt over time, many in their former traditional style. Amazingly, over six tons of unexploded allied bombs are discovered throughout Germany each and every year during the excavation process of construction projects.
Sources: Richard Strauss: a reluctant Nazi collaborator (New Statesman; Jan 2014) The Richard Strauss Companion- Schmid, Mark-Daniel (2003).
My Dinner with Andre is a 1981 film starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, written by Gregory and Shawn themselves, and directed by movie magician Louis Malle. The film depicts an intense conversation between Gregory and Shawn (not necessarily playing themselves) at the fictional Café des Artistes (actually the vacant Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia, which has since been restored and reopened as a luxury venue). Based mostly on conversation, the film's dialogue covers such things as experimental theatre, the nature of theatre, and the nature of life, contrasting Shawn's modest, down-to-earth humanism with Gregory's extravagant spiritual experiences. I was wary of watching 111 minutes of two guys having dinner in a restaurant, but found the film fascinating, a bit like my head had been peeled open with a tin opener and all the thoughts had poured out onto the screen.
Education For a Sustainable Future presents information on how today's practices in schools are socially unsustainable. The documentary film critically analyses what is considered socially relevant in a new education system which brings out the most potential in all of humanity whilst also detailing specific educational methods from a wide range of sources on how to nurture social skills, critical thinking techniques and a larger variety of important practices to positively reinforce from our earliest years onwards. It must be recognised that a sustainable education is one of the most critical components of any advanced society.
Education For a Sustainable Future is an independent film production and has been uploaded online for free download and distribution. The views expressed in this documentary are not necessarily shared by the originators of source material presented.
This is a
good video. Whilst I find myself agreeing with much of it, I can’t help
thinking there is some hidden quasi- sectarian agenda embedded within it which
is never quite stated explicitly. Much of this ‘feeling’ derives from the
somewhat uncompromising, programmed narrative which leaves little option for plurality
within our educational structures. It seems to question nearly every aspect of
sustainability in education, but not the main question (in my opinion) which is
one of the human scale; ‘schools’ of the future hopefully won’t be large
industrial scale institutions which indoctrinate with an agenda of ‘scientism’,
but an outgrowth of personal development at the home, village, or small- scale
community level. My view of sustainable education is one of high tech, low
ecological impact, on the human scale.
Whilst
promoting the values of humanism, sustainability, cooperation and materialism,
there is a didactic undercurrent to this film which I do not like. It seems to
be predicated on a humanist model which is frighteningly totalitarian in its
outlook, and politically naïve. I will take each one of these assertions in
turn.
(i)Humanist
outlook. An attempt to remove “dogma” of religion, politics, and belief from
education actually becomes a kind of baggage itself. The whole documentary
seems to have been conceived in a vacuum of knowledge of social constructivism,
such as that outlined back in 1969 in The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas S Kuhn); In the film it says
“there is no point in teaching redundant concepts in science which were
disproved long ago” and “If scientists didn’t need this knowledge, they
wouldn’t have developed that field of science”, whilst showing images of
religiosity as “obsolete” (despite advancing multiculturalism & inclusivity
as a desirable goal of their empathy training). To poo poo our historical and
sociological ferment in the hope we can crystallise a new clinical outlook
around a few trite ‘objective’ values is hopelessly naïve, and somewhat scary. Human
beings are not atomised commodities to be trained in One Truth. They come with
their own spirituality and wonderfully rich conditioning for a reason.
(ii)Centralising
(totalitarian). There is an idea that physical referents should predominate
over social relativism. For example; “Science is the best tool we have so far
[in achieving sustainability]”, and “Education needs to be founded on science” Which
science??? Which epistemological basis is being used??? By whom??? Science is
not quite the objective exercise which is portrayed. It comes with sociological
and economic strings. For example the ‘scientific wisdom’ of pesticide use,
vaccination, surgery, large scale energy and water projects, and GM technology
will come to be looked upon as Medieval instruments of torture in the future,
whilst being universally endorsed now.
(iii)“A
new social system with a scientifically advanced outlook, a system focussed on
alleviating human labour via machine automation and creating an abundance of
resources for all of humanity to share, would surely adopt the new education
system conveyed”. This statement shows a failure to understand the intrinsic
and spiritual relationship of humanity to the earth, to the harmonious singing
of birds in the trees, their whistling words in the wind. And this disconnection
between “science” and “nature”, which has its origin with Descartes, is promulgated
in ignorance in this film. Where is the outdoor education? The meditation? The
Steiner- type whole person approach to body, mind, nature, and education? The
insertion of ‘mechanisation’ between man and nature is a fundamental error which stands in the
way of harmonic working with nature; for example Permaculture, the energy utilisation
ideas of Nicola Tesla, Viktor Schauberger, etc.
(iv)There
is an absence of exploration of the dialectics of education (and science) as an
outgrowth of capitalism. Industrialised education is a product of capitalism. Targets,
exams & testing, and other such bean counting is an impediment to learning
(see the work of Paulo Freire). Holistic education & self directed learning
are true education. If you have had the opportunity of seeing any Jacques
Fresco videos, you will notice his ideas are drawn on heavily throughout this
documentary. Fresco has the opinion that human societies can be strategically planned and organised by
robots, that there is no room for doctors, architects, lawyers or teachers when
machines can do the job based on algorithms and mechanisation. To remove the
human, the art from our material plane of existence is impossible. For we are
an outgrowth of nature, (etymologically the word human comes from the word humus,
soil) not a cerebrum standing loftily above it. This naiveté is well
illustrated when the documentary writers wax lyrical about normative and
criterion referencing, which are concretised and limiting methods of ‘training’
rather than education as I understand it, a path to liberty and wisdom.
That said,
and having got my main beefs out of the way with this documentary, there are
many things to like such as the Roots of Empathy program, Jacques Fresco’s
futuristic ideas (minus the mechanised robo- communistic leadership), some deep
questioning of what it means to be educated in a sustainable way, and divesting
ourselves of limiting beliefs and politics that blight our industrialised
educational system.
Some resources I would recommend in this area include:
.jpeg)
