Horror of horrors!

NIGHTMARE OF NEARNESS

Watching the other,
Waiting to witness the smallest, first slip,
Could freeze a furnace.

Keenest eyes of a critic,
Measuring minutest movement: - mask feigning,
The mounting panic.

Swift, swirling thoughts,
Sucking senses, crushing choice and control,
Confounding all clarity.

Unhealthy hysteria,
And heart-heaving horror in hurrying from the one,
Who drives the dream.

Excited elation,
In the initial thrill of exposure,
Drops to hell.

Spine-chilling sporters,
Like Frankenstein, Freddie, are frivolous fun,
In comparison.

- goinghome

Don't overdo it!

IDOLATRY

Always I want to be beside you,
To permanently partake of your beloved being.
If I could erase,
The faint vapour of my existence,
And attach myself so close to your concrete constancy,
And, like a beaten, blind bat, blend blissfully,
Into the shimmering, sun-shower strength,
Of your precious presence forever;
How ecstatically would I sigh,
And, paying the price, then die.

- goinghome

A Look at Icons, Part II

(Continued) ->
In modern culture, the words icon and symbol are often conflated. Strictly speaking, a symbol represents a concept only and does not have weight as a particular object in its own right. An icon is a signpost, a representation, an extension, an analogy, for conveying a whole lot more along a continuum. Visual imagery is the most obvious candidate but iconic status attaches to anything that has lasting emotional resonance beyond itself that affects witnesses en masse. I would cite poems such as Yeats’ Second Coming, or Frost’s The Road Not Taken; music such as The Beatles’ song Hey Jude, or Arvo Part’s Fratres, and mecca-esque buildings like the Taj Mahal or the Golden Dome Synagogue of Jerusalem, as iconic. Even people too, such as John F. Kennedy, or Queen Victoria, fall into the classification. It is by force of the enduring desire in disparate swathes of the population to acquaint themselves with qualities inherent in these phenomena that their endurance in humanity’s collective self-knowledge is facilitated and their relevance is kept alive. Still, the aim is for the subjective secondary gain, not just the target, as the poet Imamu Baraka graphically illustrated with the metaphor: “Hunting is not those heads on the wall”.



I was briefly holidaying with a friend in London in early July this year (2008). One evening we entered the bar of a decidedly opulent hotel in Knightsbridge, having a few minutes to kill before our dinner booking at the well-respected restaurant on site. Just settled in the busy lounge, I looked across the bar. My eye was caught by something familiar about a figure several meters away, as he squeezed his way back to his seat between a plenitude of clientele. It was in fact only the back of his head and torso that was discernible to me in that moment before he disappeared from view, but that was all I needed to recognise him. The sighting was corroborated in an article published some weeks later describing an interview that had been conducted the day after in the same hostelry.

It was the singer Morrissey, a self-dubbed “living sign” (a refrain from his former band The Smiths’ song Vicar in a Tutu). John Tusa, who ran the Barbican Centre till 2007, proposed in a piece for The Guardian newspaper in 2004 entitled Why the Arts Matter, that “the arts are evolutionary and revolutionary…they resist the homogenous, strengthen the individual and are independent in the face of the pressures of the mass, the bland, the undifferentiated”. Morrissey fits this bill very neatly, as both artist and as work of art. Indeed journalist Rachel Elder labeled her review of one of his concerts in 2004, Why Morrissey Matters, and she ended it on the observation that “Whether you love him or not, his music is a direct, uncompromising message to the world and to his fans. And this week, in the legendary Apollo Theater, as fans make their cathartic pilgrimage to the front of the stage to see Morrissey, he will stand as a direct reminder of why he matters so much.”

It is not unusual for authors who adopt Morrissey as subject-matter to employ language indicating the circulation of religious vibes in his proximity. Mark Simpson wrote a book called Saint Morrissey, analysing his hero and laying bare the highs and lows of being a devotee. The singer himself supposed that “it is love, not rock stardom”. While other pop stars are found falling over themselves to cut the apron strings and party, Morrissey strains in the opposite direction, gathering his thoughts inwardly. HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS was a slogan etched into the run-out groove of one of the Smiths' singles. Though he is a straight-talker where his lyrics are concerned, they are peppered with atypical literary words and references that would be deemed high falutin if they did not mesh so seamlessly in the context. This modus operandi also ensures that whoever pays attention is transported into spaces and worlds beyond the song itself.

The focus of fans has far outrun its station at the song alone. The yodels, yelps and banter on record, unrecorded live performances, all of his interviews, photographs, record covers plus their typeset, sleeve credits, emblems etc, have been picked up, raked through and cherished because of their auspicious source in the person of Morrissey. There are dozens of websites consecrated to him, while writers and bands commonly cite him as a seminal influence. He is unique in transforming the situation whereby artists of whom he used to be a fan e.g. Sparks, the New York Dolls, have later in turn credited his impact on them. He is a photogenic chap and it is due to imagery of his appearance promulgated in the media that triggered my immediate identification of him in the hotel. That, and the fact that the message he personifies says something to me about my life, to paraphrase a line from The Smiths’ song Panic.

In 2006 BBC Two’s The Culture Show ran a public election to establish who the Greatest Living British Icons were. Sir David Attenborough took the first prize, but weighing in second ahead of Sir Paul McCartney, was Morrissey. Creative giants have usually passed away before they harvest the type of idolized fervour that streams his way. Before the award was announced he was interviewed on the Culture Show about the relevance of his nomination, and he reliably delivered insights into the process that verified his popularity amongst voters on the street who were prepared to inaugurate him as an icon. The comedian Danny Robins played host and campaign promoter in one, and in conversation, he elucidated the singer’s views.

Morrissey ventured that while he is held in suspicious regard by some vested interests and authorities, and he avoids the sniping of the media, the public at large seem fond of his consistent refusal to be tagged and institutionalized, and appreciative of his fearless pronouncements in the face of controversial issues. He is responsive to this support. People consider him to be a propelling force in society and show love because he is that rare celebrity, somebody real, and because throughout his career he has articulated what people felt but found it difficult to formulate and express themselves. A recurrent theme in stories from fans is how his words reached them and kept them afloat during turmoil. Such testimony typically concludes that he literally saved their lives.

He claimed not to value awards and to dislike chest-beating and self-promotion, which sets him apart from most of his famous peers. The prospect of hero-worship can be mind-numbing, if nice. He acknowledged with gratitude the mutual affection between himself and his public built up over the years, spanning all genders and ages. However he verbalized some dubiousness about sporting the ‘icon’ badge because as an over-used word in recent years, its essence had mutated into something more common than originally intended. He could not single out anyone alive to whom he would ascribe iconic status but he would hail many of the dead as possessing it.

He had never been inclined to plan in any long-range manner, and his achievements had often transpired against the grain, running aground time and again in defiance of his commitment but ultimately this pattern, as he repeatedly rebounded better than before, reaps more satisfaction. He had never aimed to be an iconic artist, convinced that this is something other people looking on must determine. You cannot arrange yourself into myth, he mused. Once embraced though, the implication is that you will figure as a part of their lives forever and that you’ll always stay in their hearts somewhere, having been through something together even if they if turn away from you in the future.

Music, according to Morrissey, is unifying and more powerful than other art forms in allowing for the immediate and full explosion of emotion. It can free people mentally, and while it is interpreted personally, it promises potential that far surpasses the sound and words. Morrissey’s song-writing approach is to be very direct and never to talk down to people. He proceeds on the assumption that his audience is intellectual, and he treats them as equals with responsibilities and cares and emotional conflicts. He is true to experience, an attitude that reverberates amongst sensate folk dealing with the challenges of living in the modern world. He fights his corner, and thus his listener’s corner, and he goes on, inexhaustibly.

Our Lad of Perpetual Succour, then, is what he seems to epitomize, for many of those who come seeking meaning in his art. In this respect, his brother-in-arms is the likes of Andrey Rublyov who cast off self-alienation, in buddhisattva fashion, to bring back some enlightenment to his fellow human beings suffering in the material world. In computer jargon, an icon refers to a small graphic representation of a program or file that, when clicked on will be run or opened. The mechanism evokes a well-founded correlation with the function of all icons. The iconic object in general is uniquely recognizable but has also acquired a larger purpose to act as a constant reliable bridge or stepping stone to help meet people’s deeper internalized desires and needs. Experiences of rapture; bliss; consolation; aesthetic awe; memory; mental or spiritual illumination; inspiration; harmony and empathy, are some of the fruits that users hunger for in reaching for the desideratum via the essential iconic gateway. To engage, for example, with Morrissey’s oeuvre is to walk with him through a tunnel that leads to a multi-forked path branching off into musical influences, literature, quotidian private and social concerns, moral dilemmas and more. Our spirits are companionably lifted to press on along rough patches on the road with the hope that, ‘there is a light that never goes out’. This is the gist of the power that rests in all icons. Emotional associations, emerging from the chaos of universal thought and action seeking a channel, are more persuasive than stultifying dogma and dialectics. Take Che Quevara’s portrait. A picture speaks a thousand words.

Ken Wilber, in his book Eye of Spirit, comments on a closely related topic: "Great art suspends the reverted eye, the lamented past, the anticipated future; we enter it with the timeless present; we are with God today, perfect in our manner and mode, open to the riches and the glories of a realm that time forgot, but that great art reminds us of: not by it's content, but by what it does in us: suspends the desire to be elsewhere."

The fact that icons are either manufactured by, or even sometimes are, other people, much like ourselves, stimulates another equation, which is that we can be like them. Their behavior, and the iconic quantities with which they gift enquirers, affect us, just as we arouse a response in others, whether it is to bring pleasure to loved ones, or direction or encouragement to dependents. By extension, in our own lives, we can produce, and exist in iconic mode. The only question that remains is, to borrow a last Morrissey-penned phrase: “how soon is now”?

- goinghome

A Look at Icons, Part I

I composed the following article as a contribution to a discussion about the import of icons earlier this year.

WANTED: ICONS, DEAD OR ALIVE



The image of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour is an icon painted on wood that dates back to the 13th century. Standing at about 54 x 41.5 centimetres, it depicts Mary, under the title “Mother of God,” holding the Child Jesus who is confronting a vision of His Passion. The Archangels Michael and Gabriel hover in the upper corners, carrying the implements of torture — the spear, the wine-soaked sponge; and the crown of thorns, the cross and the nails. The structure and colours however augur a glorious triumph to come. Mary is represented as the Hodighitria, (literally, ‘her who shows the way’), intimated by the guiding star on her veil, as she draws in beholders towards the Redeemer, inducing comfort, faith and poise.

A merchant is said to have collected this icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour from the island of Crete towards the end of the 15th century for shipping to Rome. On praying to the figure during a violent storm, the passengers and crew were saved. The merchant became fatally ill in Rome and instructed his friend to promote the blessed object. The merchant’s infant daughter dreamed that Mary asked for the image to be mounted in a church between the Basilicas of St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran in Rome. And so it was done in the Church of St. Matthew, where it soon became known as “The Madonna of St. Matthew.”

Pilgrims visited in droves over the next 300 years, until disaster struck in 1812 when Napoleon’s soldiers gutted the building. The image was saved and moved to Posterula where its fame gradually waned. Pope Pius IX rediscovered it in 1866 and, following on his boyhood dedication to the Church of St. Matthew, handed over the image to the Redemptorists, who had just built the Church of St. Alphonsus. It was he who founded the Catholic feast-day of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. Accounts of miraculous healings spread as interest was rekindled. Veneration at the site continues to the present day. Devotion to the icon itself has no geographical boundaries. Most cultures exhibit variations wherein the title has been translated into multiple languages, such as Nuestra Señora del Perpetuo Socorro, Perpetuo Succursu, Beata Virgo de Perpetuo Succursu, and Ina ng Laging Saklolo.

An utterly compelling film was made in 1969 about the role played by iconic religious art in early 15th century Russia. Andrey Rublyov was directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It traces the life of the celebrated monastic painter of the title name through the upheavals of the early 15th Century in Russian history, during which ceaseless fighting between rival Princes and Tatar invasions added to the hardship of ordinary Russian people.

The scenery is often dreamy and Paradisical, especially where men’s preoccupations with their sorrows and conflicts are being surveyed. Silent pauses cue easy contemplation by the viewer, in response to an underlying assured intelligence that runs through the whole 3 hours. References to dust and death are never far away, along with a generous insertion of gross earthy close-ups, including snakes, ants, dead birds, vivid war wounds, relentless rains, a raucous mooning scene, a ghoulish highway attack. In contrast there are tender scenes of male abbey members weeping at each other’s departure, admitting their mutual affections and desolation.

In the film, the character Theophanes the Greek solemnly lectures: “You’ll penetrate the crux of everything if you describe it truthfully”. Kirill, Rublyov’s pupil, says celestial art such as his master’s is holy, and he betrays envy, opining that greed can overtake talent. Rublyov himself doubts the value of his genius and almost naively believes in the good in people, arguing with Theophanes who is cynical, and who perceives human evil everywhere. Jesus helped reconcile people back to God in their despair, Theophanes reasons, but Jesus also abandoned those who trusted in him by doing the will of God.

Rublyov is fascinated during a scene in which he spies on the naked pagans frolicking in the wood but he is compelled to judge their uninhibited exuberance as sinful. One of their party, a salacious girl, argues that their permissive carnal love is as worthy as brotherly love. Rublyov procrastinates his chore of painting the Cathedral because he feels its subject-matter would scare people and he doesn’t want to do it. Luke’s Biblical love speech is orated in full. The contradictory cultural rules for head-covering, a social signifier, occur a few times, both in discussion and metaphorically, for example God’s fool, wild till tamed by Tatar head-dress. The struggle between the secular and canonical rules; between moral rigidity and innocence, is played out in the society around him, and in Rublyov himself.

The Tatar raid of 1408 is presented as merciless and hellish. Rublyov realizes that local lords cooperated in the ransacking of the Cathedral and he concludes that the human heart is indeed rancid. He decides never to paint again, as “nobody needs it”. He is overwhelmed by his conscience on killing a man in defense of the girl. Even aesthetic immersion cannot raise his spirits. He keeps this untamed female nearby after that incident to remind him of his moral corruption. He takes a vow of silence up to 1412. The area meanwhile is speedily decimated by persecutions and famine. While a person wishes to be blameless, Rublyov broken-heartedly rues that the world inherently seems to set us up for sin if we are to act at all, and we hurt others whether intending to or not. His old adversary Kirill shows up again, but now invoking Rublyov not to take his talent and his voice to the grave but to use them to elevate the people from their misery.

An accident turns the painter round. A community leader emerges and commands that a bell, grander than any in the village before, be constructed. Despite the lies, ignorance and cruelty inflicted by the son of the now deceased local bell-maker who is commissioned with the job, his project succeeded, and the newly-built bell rings out ebulliently. Finding the boy collapsed in relieved exhaustion, Rublyov comforts him, thus finally breaking his own vow of silence, and then also resuming his resplendent artwork, ironically too giving up the search for perfection once and for all.

The film is really a device to make sense of several themes, principally those of the value of art, the role of the state, the Russian experience of war, the worth of religious life, and the character of morality. The artist as cultural warrior, which is how the director Tarkovsky considered himself, and which left him apprehensive about the future of world civilization, is also probed. To cope with censorship, Tarkovsky was known to manipulate film scenes to divert scrutiny from material he wanted left untouched. In this there is something of the Italian aristocrat, Baldassere Castiglione, who coined the word sprezzatura in 1528, in his guide to ideal courtly behavior, Il Cortegiano (in English, The Book of the Courtier).

This is a trait involving the maintenance of nonchalant composure and dignity in all circumstances, even the most ignominious. To quote the author, sprezzatura “is an art which does not seem to be an art. One must avoid affectation and practice in all things a certain sprezzatura, disdain or carelessness, so as to conceal art, and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.”

It is a feature that is common to geniuses, a semblance of natural ease in their compositions. Andrey Rublyov has been described as the War and Peace of Russian film-making, a haunting visceral icon about icons.

The word icon is derived from the Greek eikon, meaning image. Its earliest allusions were to painted and possibly carved portable objects of the Orthodox Eastern faith. Since the 6th century scholars assume these to have acted as aids to the devotee in transmitting his prayers to the holy figure portrayed. The mosaic and fresco tradition of early Byzantine art provide the background to the growing use of icons in decorating church spaces and in standard-bearing during processions. Many seem to contain conventional and stylised formations regardless of the florid ornamentation, intended to correspond to easily-detectable symbols of the mystical divinity. Some evolution in method through the various schools has been traced. Students in the 19th-century German school of art history revised the meaning of icon to reference subject matter in general, giving rise to the terms iconography and iconology, which encompass the detailed study, mostly in art history, of all types of images, plus their provenance and import.

In the Middle East, relics of the cross and paraphernalia associated with the life and death of Jesus Christ have been claimed and revered around the world for nearly two millennia. Further East, gem- or pearl-like deposits retrieved from the cremated ashes of spiritual masters are treasured as indicators of their attainments. The Sanskrit name for these beads is sharira, and their history stretches back to the era of the founding Buddha Shakyamuni in the fifth century. Today they are treated as relics and sometimes taken on global tour to benefit practitioners. While relics bear imprints of those whose lives they touched, furnishing reminders and often engendering an affective response, they usually lack the quality of a hologram that bears closer resemblance to the original shape itself, as an icon does. -> -> ->

- goinghome

Guillermo Del Toro; Fiend or Hero?

Michael Guillen has posted an interview he conducted December 2006 with the highly original and provocative Mexican-born film-maker Guillermo Del Toro, on his website 'The Evening Class' - http://theeveningclass.blogspot.com/2006/12/pans-labyrinththe-evening-class.html-

Del Toro has stirred up more public enthusiasm with the release of the 'Hellboy' films, and purportedly has agreed to direct a screen version of Tolkein's 'The Hobbit'.

One of his central themes is befriending the monster archetype, since alienating our shadow sides poses one of our greatest dangers. A related theme is openness to the supernatural.

This is an excerpt from the specified interview: -

MG: That's what I've noticed so far; it's rich in detail. Pan's Labyrinth is textured with redemptive transgression. Can you speak to why doing the wrong thing ends up being so right?

Del Toro: I love the way you put it. There's a song by Rufus Wainwright—"Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk" it's called, I think—and it says, "Why is it that everything I like is a little bad for me?" Instinct will guide you more than intellect towards what's right for you and actually more naturally right. Disobedience is one of the strongest signals of your conscience of what is right and what is wrong. When you disobey in an intelligent way, you disobey in a natural way, it turns out to be more beneficial than blind obedience. Blind obedience castrates, negates, hides, and destroys what makes us human. On the other hand, instinct and disobedience will always point you in a direction that should be natural, should be organic to the world. So I think that disobedience is a virtue and blind obedience is a sin.

MG: Why do you eroticize cruelty? Your villains are thrillingly virile. First, Eduardo Noriega in The Devil's Backbone; now, Sergi López in Pan's Labyrinth. You've made it near to impossible for me—a queer-identified male—to trust a handsome stud! [Guillermo laughs.] At the least you have revealed to me that—if I'm going to go out on the town tonight—I really would rather leave Dr. Jekyll in the lab and go out with fucking Mr. Hyde. [Guillermo laughs again.]

Del Toro: Well, it's the revenge of the guy who grew up being a chubby, not-very-attractive guy. That's the revenge of the nerd. One of the dangers of fascism and one of the dangers of true evil in our world—which I believe exists—is that it's very attractive. That it is incredibly attractive in a way that most people negate. Most people make their villains ugly and nasty and I think, no, fascism has a whole concept of design, and a whole concept of uniforms and set design that made it attractive to the weak-willed. I tried to make Sergi López like all politicians that are truly evil—well-dressed, well-groomed, well-spoken, gets up from his chair when a lady enters the room, gets up from his chair when a lady leaves the room. I'd much rather be with a slob that is cool. It's very rarely that when somebody is that worried about the outward appearance, there's something truly truly wrong within. The opposite is often true. When people aren't comfortable just being in their normal level, just being—I don't have a cool pair of shoes, I don't have a cool pair of pants, but I'm all right—that's actually a sign of comfort, that something's at peace within. Extremes are incredibly powerful in cinema and the fact that this 11-year-old girl is much more comfortable in her skin than this fascist that hates himself so much that he slits his own throat in the mirror and negates his father's watch and does these crazy things, that gives the girl power and gives the other guy the illusion of power and the choice of cruelty. Choice is key in what we are. You choose to be destructive or you choose to be all encompassing and love-giving. Each choice defines who we are, no matter what the reason behind it is, because everybody values the reason behind the act, or the idea behind the act more than the reason. The idea behind the act, they value it more than the act these days. -

International Declaration on the Principles of Equality

The Equal Rights Trust (ERT) is an independent international organisation whose purpose is to combat discrimination and promote equality as a fundamental human right and a basic principle of social justice. Established as an advocacy organisation, a resource centre and a think tank, it focuses on the complex and complementary relationship between the different forms of discrimination, developing strategies for translating the principle of equality into practice.

In all its manifestations, discrimination is the most widespread human rights violation, affecting the greatest number of people in the world today. Although the international community has developed legal standards to fight discrimination and promote equality, relatively few states have tackled discrimination and fewer still have effectively promoted equality using legal means.

Over 160 countries in the world lack effective legal protection against discrimination and legal means to promote equality. And even in countries where such provisions are in force, the legislation is fractured, inconsistent, complicated and inefficient. Even in the European Union, which has made important steps towards equality legislation, grave and systematic discrimination is widespread.

The recently-announced Declaration on the Principles of Equality contains 27 principles on six key themes: equality; non-discrimination; scope and rights-holders; obligations; enforcement; prohibitions. The Declaration is intended to assist efforts of legislators, the judiciary, civil society organisations and anyone else involved in combating discrimination and promoting equality.

Full story at: http://www.equalrightstrust.org/newstory21oct2008/index.htm

Self-test for racism, and how to quit.

Implicit association tests (IATs) have been designed to capture mental associations that elude conscious introspection and are outside of conscious control. A lot of people who generally despise any expressions of prejudice have been disappointed by their own scores on the online version of a race IAT from Project Implicit - https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ .

Many commentators, academic, social, literary and so on, have observed that when human beings can be perceived as a group with inferior characteristics, and so separate and different from the authoritative viewer, this objectification can often be at the root of 'ists' and 'isms', of ideologies that justify doing onto others as you would not do to yourself. This way of looking at people is the opposite of empathy where we can establish a commonality of experience, even if it is just through our imagination of how the other's circumstances and perspective could effect anyone's behaviour.

Some programmes have been developed to help socially disengaged adults become familiar and comfortable with emotions, to nurture understanding, and to improve their theory-of-mind abilities (knack of paying attention, and being sensitive to what others might reasonably be thinking in a situation). Baron-Cohen's Mind Reading: The interactive Guide to Emotions is one such set of cyber exercises - www.jkp.com/mindreading .

The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum: 1941-1943

After dinner, 21 Oct 1941

"It is a slow and painful process, this striving after true inner freedom. Growing more and more certain that there is no help or assurance or refuge in others. That the others are just as uncertain and weak and helpless as you are. You are always thrown back on to your own resources. There is nothing else. The rest is make-believe. But that fact has to be recognised over and over. Especially since you are a woman. For woman always longs to lose herself in another. But that too is a fiction, albeit a beautiful one. There is no matching of lives. At least not for me. Perhaps for a few moments. But do those moments justify a lifetime together? Can those few moments cement a shared existence? All they can do is give you a little strength. And perhaps a little happiness. God knows, being alone is hard. For the world is inhospitable".

Etty Hillesum was a Dutch Jewish woman born in January 1914, who met her death in Auschwitz concentration camp in late 1943. She journalled intensively during her last three years, and while her writings are persuasive of a developmental maturity in this period, as much humanitarian as intellectual and spiritual, her later letters comprise an articulate insider record of conditions within concentration camp fences.

Westerbork, Saturday 3rd July, 1943

"Here I am on the third tier of this bunk hurrying to unleash a veritable riot of writing, for in a few days' time it'll be the end of the line for my scribblings. I'll have become a "camp inmate," allowed to write just one letter a fortnight, and unsealed at that. And there are still a couple of little things I must talk to you about. Did I really send a letter that made it look as if all my courage had gone? I can hardly believe it. There are moments, it's true, when I feel things can't go on. But they do go on, you gradaully learn that as well. Though the landscape around you may appear different: there is a lowering black sky overhead and a great shift in your outlook of life, and your heart feels gray and a thousand years old. But it is not always like that. A human being is a remarkable thing. The misery here is really indescribable. People live in those big barracks like so many rats in a sewer. There are many dying children. But there are many healthy ones, too. One night last week a transport of prisoners passed through here. Thin, waxen faces. I have never seen so much exhaustion and fatigue as I did that night. They were being "processed": registration, more registration, frisking by half-grown NSB men, quarantine, a foretaste of martyrdom lasting hours and hours. Early in the morning they were crammed into empty freight cars. And then three days' travel eastward. Paper matresses on the floor for the sick. For the rest, bare boards with a bucket in the middle and roughly seventy people to a sealed car. A rucksack each was all they were allowed to take. How many, I wondered, would reach their destination alive? And my parents are preparing themselves for just such a journey unless something comes of Barneveld after all. Last time I saw my father, we went for a walk in the dusty, sandy wasteland. He is so sweet, and wonderfully resigned. Very pleasantly, calmly, and quite casually, he said, "You know, I would like to get to Poland as quickly as possible. Then it will all be over and done with, and I won't have to continue with this undignified existence. After all, why should I be spared from what has happened to thousands of others?" Later we joked about our surroundings. Westerbork really is nothing but desert, despite a few lupins and campions and decorative birds that look like seagulls. "Jews in a desert, we know that sort of landscape from before." It really gets you down, having such a nice little father, you sometimes feel there is no hope at all. But these are passing moods. There are other sorts, too, when a few of us laugh together and marvel at all sorts of things. And then we keep meeting lots of relatives whom we haven't seen for years - lawyers, a librarian, and so on - pushing wheelbarrows full of sand, in untidy, ill-fitting overalls, and we just look at each other and don't say much. A young, sad Dutch police officer told me one trasport night, "I lose two kilos during a night like this, and all I have to do is to listen, look, and keep my mouth shut." And that's why I don't like to write about it, either. But I am digressing. All I wanted to say is this: The misery here is quite terrible; and yet, late at night when the day has slunk away into the depths behind me, I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire. And then, time and again, it soars straight from my heart - I can't help it, that's just the way it is, like some elementary force - the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent, and that one day we shall be building a whole new world. Against every new outrage and every fresh horror, we shall put up one more piece of love and goodness, drawing strength from within ourselves. We may suffer, but we must not succumb. And if we should survive unhurt in body and soul, but above all in soul, without bitterness and without hatred, then we shall have a right to a say after the war. Maybe I am an ambitious woman: I would like to have just a tiny little bit of a say.

You speak about suicide, and about mothers and children. Yes, I know what you mean, but I find it a morbid subject. There is a limit to suffering: perhaps no human being is given more to bear than he can shoulder; beyond a certain point we just die. People are dying here even now of a broken spirit, because they can no longer find any meaning in life, young people. The old ones are rooted in firmer soil and accept their fate with dignity and calm. You see so many different sorts of people here, and so many different attitudes to the hardest, the ultimate questions...

I shall try to convey to you how I feel, but am not sure if my metaphor is right. When a spider spins its web, does it not cast the main threads ahead of itself; and then follow along them from behind? The main path of my life stretches like a long journey before me and already reaches into another world. it is just as if everything that happens here and that is still to happen were somehow discounted inside me. As if I had been through it already, and was now helping to build a new and different society. Life here hardly touches my deepest resources - physically, perhaps, you do decline a little, and sometimes you are infinitely sad - but fundamentally you keep growing stronger. I just hope that it can be the same for you and all my friends. We need it, for we still have so much to experience together, and so much work to do. And so I call upon you: stay at your inner post, and please do no feel sorry or sad for me, there is no reason to. -..."

Mr E's Beautiful Day

Despite Mark O. Everett's private woes, and appreciation of the tribulations of others, he went on to produce a controversial song of jubilation, as if quite thrilled to be present and alive regardless, Mr E's Beautiful Day -

Eels - Death is Part of the Deal

Mark Oliver Everett is the creative force and frontman of the successful band Eels. His father, a physicist, originated some theories that have gradually gained widespread recognition in that field, about parallel worlds. The Eels songs are tinged with melancholy, pain and an almost supernatural tenderness at times.

His autobiography was published this year, entitled "Things the Grandchildren should know". It reveals a disrupted life strewn with dead bodies of family and friends, and a fragile, yet courageous mind. The band's album Electro-Shock Blues was released during a period in the late 1990's when his sister committed suicide and his mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer shortly afterwards. Song titles included Cancer for the Cure, Going to your Funeral, Hospital Food . The record company was very reluctant to handle it but it was very well received when launched.

One of Mark's comments about this time is in the chapter 'Happy Trails' -

"To me, it wasn't a record about death. That was missing the point. It was about life. And death was a big part of life that tended to be ignored, or denied. No one wanted to think there would be an end to themselves, but I couldn't ignore it and I realised that if you treat it like the everyday fact of life that it is, it becomes less scary. And also, by being more aware of death, you gain a perspective on living and how you'd better make it count, whatever that may mean to you".

Tim Crouch 'gets it'

Tim Crouch is a highly acclaimed actor and playwright to whose work I was recently introduced at the Dublin Theatre Festival. His current show "England" is set in available galleries in whatever city the play happens to be running (the Hugh Lane/Municipal Gallery in this instance), and the script changes to incorporate information about the building and paintings. The audience is on the move during the event, addressed directly quite often creating a kind of cognitive dissonance that lifts us out of our comfort zone, and we can't stay uninvolved anymore. The themes explored in "England" include the relative values of great art, health, and the price on life as it applies to people of different locations, influence and affluence around the world.

I was intrigued to learn that Crouch has also written a play called "Oaktree" which develops the theme of metamorphosis by suggestion in Craig-Martin's ostensible folly. Crouch deconceptualises art and deconstructs its relevance for human beings in an entertaining, suspenseful and unforgettable way.

For Crouch's profile click on:
News From Nowhere / Tim Crouch - Performance in Profile 2008 - British Council - Arts

- goinghome

More mind games: Oaktree, Craig-Martin

The notorious art installation entitled "Oaktree" by Michael Craig-Martin was displayed in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 2006, and its audacity fascinated me. It can be viewed, along with a short background,
at: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=27072, having first been displayed in the Tate Gallery, London in 1973.

The viewer sees a small shelf on a wall just above head level on which is placed a plain glass half-filled with water. Down lower attached to the wall is a single sheet of paper featuring an interview with the artist about the meaning of the piece which in itself is a constant part of the installation. Here it is:


- An interview with Michael Craig-Martin from Audio Arts Issue: Vol. 1 No. 2, 1973 (Transcript)

William Furlong: Could you describe this work?
Michael Craig-Martin: Yes of course. What I’ve done is to change a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree without altering the accidents of the glass of water.
WF: The accidents?
MC-M: Yes, the colour, the whole weight, size. Do you mean that the glass of water is a symbol of an oak tree? No, it’s not a symbol; I’ve changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree.
WF: It looks like a glass of water.
MC-M: Of course it does. I didn’t change it’s appearance, but it’s not a glass of water it’s an oak tree.
WF: Can you prove what you claim to have done?
MC-M: Well, yes and no. I claim to have maintained the physical form of the glass of water and, as you can see, I have. However as one normally looks for evidence of physical change in terms of altered form, no such proof exists.
WF: Haven’t you simply called this glass of water an oak tree?
MC-M: Absolutely not, it is not a glass of water anymore; I have changed its actual substance. It would no longer be accurate to call it a glass of water. One could call it anything one wished but that would not alter the fact that it is an oak tree.
WF: Isn’t this just a case of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’?
MC-M: No, with ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ people claimed to see something which wasn’t there because they felt they should. I would be very surprised if anyone told me they saw an oak tree.
WF: Is it difficult to affect the change?
MC-M: No effort at all. But it took me years of work before I realised that I could do it.
WF: When precisely did the glass of water become an oak tree?
MC-M: When I put water in the glass.
WF: Does this happen every time you fill a glass with water?
MC-M: No of course not, only when I intend to change it into an oak tree. The intention causes the change. I would say it precipitates the change.
WF: But you don’t know how you do it?
MC-M: It contradicts what I feel I know about cause and effect.
WF: It seems to me you’re claiming to have worked a miracle, isn’t that the case?
MC-M: I’m flattered that you think so.
WF: But aren’t you the only person that can do something like this?
MC-M: How could I know?
WF: Could you teach others to do it?
MC-M: No, it’s not something one can teach.
WF: Do you consider that changing the glass of water into an oak tree constitutes an artwork?
MC-M: Yes.
WF: What precisely is the artwork, the glass of water?
MC-M: There is no glass of water anymore.
WF: The process of change?
MC-M: There is no process involved in the change.
WF: The oak tree?
MC-M: Yes, the oak tree.
WF: But the oak tree only exists in the mind.
MC-M: No, the actual oak tree is physically present in the form of the glass of water. As the glass of water is a particular the oak tree is also particular. To conceive the category oak tree or to picture is particular oak tree is not to understand an appearance that appears to be a glass of water as an oak tree. Just as it is unperceivable it is also inconceivable.
WF: Did the particular oak tree exist somewhere else before it took the form of the glass of water?
MC-M: No, this particular oak tree did not exist previously. I should also point out that it does not and will not ever have any other form but that of a glass of water.
WF: How long will it continue to be an oak tree?
MC-M: Until I change it. -

From: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/audioarts/cd1_2_transcript.htm

About a Light that Never Goes Out

Thich Nhat Hanh - Birth and Death are Just a Game of Hide and Seek

Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh's 2005 talk in California entitled "Birth and Death are just a Game of Hide and Seek" has been uploaded on Google videos.

- Can we truthfully say we did not exist before our birth? What will become of us after death? Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh addresses our ideas about life and death and how we can release these debilitating notions and get in touch with our true nature, the nature of no birth and no death. We have the tendency to think dualistically: coming and going, birth and death, same and different, being and non-being. Such opposing ideas are merely mental constructions that do not reflect the true nature of reality. Life arises when conditions are sufficient and fades when conditions are no longer sufficient. But we cannot say life and death oppose one another—they “inter-are.” “The teaching of no birth, no death,” says Thich Nhat Hanh, “is the cream of the Buddha’s teachings.”

Becoming Human

DEVENIR HOMME

Travelling from dark nowhere,
I sought to arrive somewhere,
To a home, in time and space,
Built out of lucid nowhere.

I was expiring in dismay,
Before finding Dieu-li-vol*,
To be, inspired afresh,
Devenir homme et plus, peut-etre.

Rejoicing in the rare treasure,
Free for all who hear and heed, over-flowing,
I weep with real relief, quickening.
I bow, caressed by healing wound's rays,
And I touch the earth, and smile,
To the dust made flesh here,
The way of delight made clear.

They do unto others, and enemies too.
The Golden Rule glistens with substance,
Diamond-solid, heart-flowing,
Alchemised from agony on muddy waters.
Gates, not of this world,
But in it, are wide open,
Welcoming aspirants to virtuous unity,
And Tara# hovers everywhere,
Animating thorn-torn buds,
Planting flower-blossoms on falling crosses.

Karuna+ reigns in neighbour love;
A fraternity, a people have been led to safety,
And a master-piece has been crafted
To demonstrate the art of true peace
To a giddy, greedy world, whose race
Trips itself up on many mines
- Egos, bombs, baubles, and babel -
Never minding the moment, afraid to stop,
More wanting more, ravishing life,
Lost lambs shepherd-less, separate,
Dumb little children, unlearnt, crying for their Thay=.

*Name of ancient French village
#Name of female Buddha
+Sanskrit for compassion
=Vietnamese for Teacher.

- goinghome

Review of "Call Me By My True Names", Part II

The Poetry
- Section 1; the Historical Dimension

From “Mudra” – “Don’t listen to the poet. / In his morning coffee, there is a teardrop”. This is advising against paying attention unless prepared to share in the suffering through injustices, war etc, to be recounted. “Yet my right hand is on the table, - / waiting for humankind to wake up”. His purpose is resolute and determined, to bear repeated testimony to reality until he obtains an adequate response from the world.

In “Experience”, he says, surrounded by death and destruction in a ravaged bombed Vietnamese village, “O sing, / Sing aloud/ So True Being may follow the Word”. There must be a constant vision of what is needed to reverse damage.

“I know a bullet may strike / the heart of the little bird this morning, / the bird that is celebrating life with all its might. / The corn, the grass, the fragrance of the night, / together with the stars and the moon - / all of us are doing our best. / We are doing everything we can / to keep you alive.” This is from “Structure of Suchness”, where Hanh reinforces the unequalled preciousness of life despite the precarious nature of existence as worth fighting for.

“I call the thunder back close to your side. / We were determined to confront violence” (from “A Free White Cloud”). Even as a pacifist, it is important to be a conscientious objector to whatever attacks our integrity, and not to feel ashamed or deterred, but rather empowered, when naming it.

“We are the foam / floating on the vast ocean. / We are the dust / wandering in endless space. / Our cries are lost / in the howling winds.” (from “A Prayer for Land”). This writer, who organised the boat people under grave danger both from the elements and from authority, can be trusted because he has endured anguish, and prevailed as a pacifist. He is a living sign, an actualised witness.

“My joy is like Spring, so warm / it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. / My pain is like a river of tears, / so vast it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names, / so that I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, / so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names, /so I can wake up / and the door of my heart / could be left open / the door of compassion.”

This passage from the title poem is central to the book, and is about openness to, and acceptance of, what life brings, as well as about the requirements to be equipped with right view, discernment and alertness, to always be breaking through and returning confidently to the celebration of the true, the good and the beautiful. Accuracy in identifying what transpires is the key.

- Section 2; the Ultimate Dimension

In “True Source”, the closing scenario is thus: “Let us approach the child together and ask, /”What are you looking for? Where are you going? / Where is the true source? Where is the final destination? And what are the ways home? / The little boy just smiles. / The flower in his hand suddenly / becomes a bright red sun, / and the child goes on alone - /his path through the stars”. It’s as if a fresh child of vast potential exists in each of us, and a couple of profound well-timed questions can alchemise and unlock the universal destiny.

“Knowing your eyes are impermanent, / I enjoy them without trying to make them last forever, / without trying to hold on to, or record, them / or make them mine. / Loving your eyes, I remain free”. This is from “Love Poem”, and is a contemplation on loving without fear of loss which might arise from attachment to that which will pass. An attitude of protective reverence towards the fragility of form is proposed.

“Interrelationship” is worth quoting completely.
“You are me, and I am you. / Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”? / You cultivate the flower in yourself, / so that I will be beautiful. / I transform the garbage in myself, / so that you will not have to suffer. / I support you; / you support me. / I am in this world to offer you peace; / you are in this world to bring me joy”. Hanh attributes his muse to Fritz Perl’s famous statement: “You are you, and I am me, and if by chance we meet, that’s wonderful. If not, it couldn’t be helped”. His effort to enrich the partially desperate randomness of Perl’s statement, and bring more profound meaning to encounters between people, and the inter-dependent nature of all being, suffuses the poem.

In “Defuse Me” he compares himself, or anyone in anger, to a bomb, and ends: “I have not created my own bomb. / It is you. / It is society. / It is family. / It is school. / It is tradition. / So please don’t blame me for it. / Come and help; / if not, I will explode. / This is not a threat. / It is only a plea for help. / I will also be of help / when it is your turn.” Hanh has indomitable faith in the long-term logic of caring and fairness. Rescuing our neighbour from the strangle-holds of darkness and oppression is always a sound investment.

Hanh refers to something rarely circulated, in “The Good News, where he postulates that there is always a way out of despondency. “The dandelion is there by the sidewalk, / smiling its wondrous smile, / singing the song of eternity. / Listen! You have ears that can hear it. / Bow your head. / Listen to it. / Leave behind the world of sorrow / and preoccupation / and get free. / The latest good news / is that you can do it.” Always, there will be an answer, generating more contentment, after inner retreat and change of perspective.

In “Stopping the Wheel”, he reassures: “Don’t worry too much, my friend. / Even suffering is needed in the world.” Because struggle is inherent, to a greater or lesser extent, a mind-set of serenity and inner strength through both the rough and the smooth is wiser than an expectation that sorrow can ever be plucked away once and for all during an individual’s incarnation in the world.

Every situation is unique, and any formula would foil flexible and pertinent responses. Observation by an un-prejudiced but involved and keen motivating force for positive growth is very important. These poems convey both process and principles, and their emotional punch, the capacity for compassion and concentration amidst the depths of human grief, transmit a rare empathy, and inspiration to be strong for, and with, each other. There would be little need for remedial interventions if the world was ready to listen to the instruction: “Please call me by my true names”.
- goinghome

Review of "Call Me By My True Names" Part I

REVIEW OF BOOK: ”CALL ME BY MY TRUE NAMES – THE COLLECTED POEMS OF THICH NHAT HANH” - Part I

Overview

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Zen master, poet, bestselling author and peace activist. A Buddhist monk for nearly 50 years, he was chairman of the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace delegations during the Vietnam War. He was nominated by Dr Martin Luther King for the Nobel Peace Prize, who said about him: “Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity”. In 1966 Hanh visited the United States and Europe on a peace mission and was unable to return to his native land, until granted official permission in 2003. He continues to head Plum Village, a meditation community in south-western France, where he teaches, writes, gardens and aids refugees worldwide, as well as regularly touring to lead retreats.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama acknowledged that, through his work, Thich Nhat Hanh “shows us the connection between personal, inner peace and peace on earth”. Where there is confusion he seeks to establish understanding, and in his fine attention to detail and humanistic analysis of any situation, his comments take everything into account, always within the parameters of profoundly caring values on a personal yet universal scale.

The author of “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying”, Sogyal Rinpoche, summarised Hanh’s poems as “deeply touching, human and lucid. Thich Nhat Hanh’s poems have an almost uncanny power to disarm delusion, awaken compassion, and carry the mind into the immediate presence of meditation. It is because when he writes, Thich Nhat Hanh writes with the voice of the Buddha”. This is high praise indeed and promises some exceptional insights into enhancing the integrity and competence with which we face our fate and associated events. Of the one hundred books which he has written, the delicate yet piercing poems in the anthology “Please Call Me by My True Names”, encapsulate perhaps most succinctly meditation in action, and take the reader immediately into the light of the present moment. In a world of distraction and chaos, there is much healing and growth to be drawn from any consideration of these visceral creations crafted from pure mindfulness. As Joanna Mace, author of “World as Lover, World as Self” expressed it, “his luminous presence of the simple, compassionate clarity of his writings have touched countless lives”.

“If you touch deeply the historical dimension,
You find yourself in the ultimate dimension.
If you touch the ultimate dimension,
You have not left the historical dimension -”
(Intro.)

There are 48 poems contained in the section described as the historical dimension, which deal more with the reflections of Thich Nhat Hanh on the events of personal and national upheaval in which he was involved during the era that spans the first half of his life. There is greater detachment, yet playful lightness in the more philosophical pieces, numbering 67, collected in the section entitled the ultimate dimension. All offer wisdom about approaching circumstances with a realistic, lovingly vulnerable yet constructive heart. The inter-play of feeling, action and, especially, thinking towards a more integrated and unified position is the impression that Thich Nhat Hanh, weighing every word for effect, often projects through his poems.
- goinghome

Please Call Me By My True Names

PLEASE CALL ME BY MY TRUE NAMES

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow-
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced -labour camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so that I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open
the door of compassion.

- Title poem of anthology by Thich Nhat Hanh