Mandala

This is enchanting:

In response to the September 11 tragedies, twenty Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery constructed a sand mandala (sacred painting) at the Sackler gallery. This seven-foot-square mandala, one of the largest ever created in the West, was offered for the healing and protection of America. In addition, the monks participated in chanting, meditation, and other traditional healing ceremonies.

Unique to Tibetan Buddhism, sand mandalas are believed to effect purification and healing. Typically, a great teacher chooses the mandala to be created, and monks consecrate the site with sacred chants and music. Next, they make a drawing and fill it in with colored sand. The finished mandala is consecrated and, having served its purpose, is swept up and dispersed into flowing water.

Of course, if you don’t believe in the mumbo-jumbo or don’t want to find out more about it, you can at least take an awestruck look at the superb image gallery. The delicacy involved in making the thing was phenomenal.

tags: [buddhism] [mandala]

Haiku

Highly recommended.

The lights are going out
in the museum, a fetus
suddenly darkens



for the smell
I plane another shaving
snow buries my tracks from the house



Passport check:
my shadow waits
across the border

tags: [poetry] [haiku] [books]

Kryptos

Above is a photo of a sculpture which stands in the courtyard of CIA Headquarters — Langley — in the USA. It’s a sinuous sheet of copper which has thousands of letters punched into it. The letters form a puzzle whose solution is said to be co-ordinates pointing to something marvellous buried in the grounds of Langley. And for 15 years the puzzle has remained stubbornly unsolved.

But perhaps not for too much longer. There’s only one third left to go.

There’s an extensive site about Kryptos here (nobody can visit it because the place is off-limits to everyone but CIA HQ people — this is the best you’ll get), and here’s the Guardian article linking its presence to The Da Vinci Code which sparked my interest.

tags: [code] [cryptography] [codebreaking] [cia] [virginia] [da vinci code]

Teenager imprisoned against own will by homophobic parents, Memphis, TN

A gay 16-year-old (link goes to his LiveJournal) has come out to his parents who have placed him in a christian-based ‘camp’ in which he will undergo ‘treatment’ to try to reverse his sexuality and make him straight.

The organisation’s website here. The teenager posted a list of all its deeply crazy and hateful rules.

A blog calls for action; another joins the call; protests are held as the teenager is now going through the 5th day of the loveless regime. (I got tipped off by MetaFilter.)

This is appalling. Read the list of their rules I've linked to above. Take a look at their site. Send email. If you live near Memphis, TN, consider protesting. If you’re a lawyer or know one likely to be sympathetic, please act now in whatever way you can. And if you’re a journalist with current access to a paper (as I so wish I was at times like this) please try to get this into your news meeting.

This teenager is not perfect. He is not more deserving of help and support than any other oppressed person on this planet. However, he’s a human being with a sexuality he’s sure of and he should be given every assistance to sue his parents and that place into the ground, and every shelter should he be subjected to further senseless violence. — This is nothing but violence, the program he is being forced through is psychological violence, and his experience should also serve as a wake-up call to any and all who care.

tags: [gay] [homophobia] [loveinaction] [love] [hate] [human rights] [cruelty] [abuse]

Untrammelled greed!

Hot on the heels of Hyperion Records’ difficulties posted earlier on this blog, I’m very pleased to point you to a superbly acerbic post, dripping with sarcasm, on the newly-discovered and excellent The Rest Is Noise. Heh.

tags: [music] [law]

Religion

A couple of interesting articles to blog about today. The first is a nuanced account in which Os Guinness examines a new book about religion and politics. The book argues that rich societies are becoming more secular but the world as a whole is becoming more religious. The arficle examines whether or not people’s insecurities and fears created religion, and whether, in today’s America — and especially after 9/11 — there really is religious freedom, or freedom to speak against religion, or neither, or both. I’d say neither.

Salman Rushdie writing for the Toronto Star, however, just yanks out his six-shooters and blazes away at religion. Like Gore Vidal, who called religion “the great unmentionable evil” at the very centre of our culture and ethics, Rushdie has no time for those who sit back and ideologically handle religion with kid gloves, while it ideologically punches many areas of life and culture full in the face.

Rushdie makes an interesting point about dead religions v. live ones: that only after a religion dies is its art and literature available for true enjoyment by all. It’s as if the pagan Norse poetry and Greek and Roman temples are only now opened to the view, only now flung wide for the mind to examine — only now their religions have passed out of memory and practice.

One lunchtime in London, I stepped into Westminster Abbey to sit for a while in the middle of its history and beauty, and was told that it was closed for a service. I looked the guy in the face and said I had come to pray. He stepped aside. I sat for a while, listened to the music and looked at the wonderful stonework, and didn’t think about god once. I thought about visiting a famously beautiful new temple out in the suburban terraced streets and abandoned the idea when I found I would have to remove my shoes; I have never genuflected in a Catholic church (although I have played the organ in many) and will not do the equivalent anywhere else. Maybe all Rushdie’s fierce blasting is closer to my worldview than I thought.

tags: [religion] [atheism] [god] [church] [temple]

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

So yeah, there was this trailer for The Fantastic Four which looked really good.

The Fantastic Four also makes an appearance as a comic-book series in Ang Lee’s film The Ice Storm, if anyone’s interested.

As for the movie that we went to see... erm. How do I put this delicately? Acting which makes you want to see Shattered Glass (to remind you that Christensen can actually do the job), Moulin Rouge and Black Hawk Down (to remind you likewise about Mc Gregor). Scripting which makes you want to see American Beauty (to reconstitute your brain).

The only things in this movie which got me awake or sitting up in expectation were: the opening music, the corruption of the Senate as setpiece, Yoda fighting the Sith Lord, and Obi-Wan yelling at Anakin/Vader as he sizzles near the end. Think of any movie that’s been universally panned. This is the same quality, and the only reason people are reviewing it well is because of the special effects and Star Wars franchise.

And postscript for the ever-sensitive Giles: taking into account all the above, it was certainly watchable, just like they all are.

tags: [lucas] [star wars] [starwars] [sith] [film]

The Out-of-Towners

I just bought this CD today, and was driven to the keyboard by ‘I love you’ on track 3. DeJohnette strikes through here with an arrow-straight and taut solo for cymbals alone, and Jarrett caresses it with a couple of notes from the piano a minute before the end. It’s a nice touch, and the audience is ablaze by the end.

However, it’s not all arresting solos; this is a disc of ‘standards’ — that is, already popular melodies, presented but reworked — and although many more knowledgeable jazz listeners will instantly recognise them and what has been done with them before, I don’t, so this disc has a different flavour for me. I find the music has a traditionalist nucleus which I can’t quite discern, and the trio’s circling around it illustrates it by its absence in what they actually play. So it sounds old and new at once.

I still haven’t finished listening to the disc, so I’ll give you the blurb now and finish this later.

Balancing standards and jazz tunes with Keith Jarrett originals, the trio keeps the music in tight focus. There is spirited blues-based group improvisation in the title track, and shared joy as the musicians roar into “Five Brothers”, the old Gerry Mulligan favourite, or negotiate the blissful, enraptured melody of Cole Porter’s “I Love You.” At the album’s conclusion, Keith Jarrett returns to the stage alone — a rare moment in the trio’s recordings — to play a heart dilating rendition of the ballad “It’s All In The Game.” — so tender that it could easily have fit onto his “The Melody At Night With You” solo disc.

On preview: go buy.

tags: [music] [jazz] [jarrett] [piano] [bass] [drums]

Words which irritate

Firstly, thank god I can’t remember which blog used this dastardly word, or there’d be a libel action waiting on my doorstep tomorrow. But somewhere, I saw a word which quite unexpectedly got me in a little frenzy of hate:

Wiseacre.

Don’t ask me why, exactly — because I just don’t know why this word irritates me so. Perhaps it’s because I think that wisecracker does just as well and is actually more precise, in the sense that a good joke can be an unexpected crack of the linguistic whip.

It certainly isn’t because of the word’s modernity. At first I thought that wisecracker might be older, as wiseacre is more conspicuously used in the USA than the UK, but:

Wiseacre: 1595, partial translation of M.Du. wijssegger “soothsayer” (with no derogatory connotation), probably altered by association with M.Du. segger “sayer” from O.H.G. wizzago “prophet,” from wizzan “to know,” from P.Gmc. *wit “know.” The depreciatory sense of “one who pretends to know everything” may have come through confusion with obsolete Eng. segger “sayer,” which also had a sense of “braggart” (c.1440).

Hmmm. Could that be the same phoneme, then, as wizard? No. Strange. But wiseacre’s hateful.

Postscript: I am so glad that Maciej over at Idle Words has quit his job — you’ll remember that a while back I was devastated he was deserting Vermont, but the end of his job has heralded lovely posts. Like this one. Mmmm, pizza.

tags: [etymology] [wiseacre] [hate] [pizza]

Dates and haiku and windows

No, I don’t mean you to reach for the Medjool that you weren’t embarrassed enough to change your mind about in the supermarket. I don’t mean you to reach for your little volume of Basho. (Although you can, if you like. If anyone reading this also reads Basho.) I certainly don’t invite you in the slightest to muse on the wonders of Microsoft.

I mean you to take a quick click over to these corners of the web. The first is a Gothamist interview with Joel Derfner (Joel, you look lovely but your surname is as bad as mine) who has just published a book of gay haiku. The second is his blog, a rather snappish but entertaining affair all about... well, men. Variations on a theme. You almost expect him to stop in the middle of the street, cry “Oh why do I have to possess emotion?!”, and stride off, frustratedly, in search of coffee. Which is nice, but grinworthy.

Meanwhile, in London, Jonathan sees the extraordinary.

tags: [gay] [date] [haiku] [windows]

The cat always lent a sympathetic ear

From The Gaping Maw. Via the excellent Incoming Signals.

tags: [cat] [animals] [teeth] [funny]

Superb classical label crippled by musicologist

Hyperion Records is a small but superlative classical record label, based in the UK. Discerning classical mag Gramophone regularly gives its releases the honour of a review or an “Editor’s Choice” and it has a superb catalogue spanning an extremely wide variety of repertoire. I have taken particular delight in its Renaissance output, as well as the complete Bach organ works, and the Organ Fireworks series.

From their news page:

Hyperion Records is very sorry to announce that it has lost its defence of the copyright case brought against it by Dr Lionel Sawkins.

Dr Sawkins claimed musical copyright in four editions of the musical works of Lalande. He lost at first instance in relation to the recording of one of the pieces of music but won on the other three. Hyperion appealed with the leave of the trial judge.

Hyperion’s principal objection to the claim made by Dr Sawkins was its contention that a performing edition does not amount to a new and substantive musical work in its own right unless the performing edition is original, in the sense that it amounts to a new musical work. Thus, Hyperion contended that if an edition is an arrangement or interpretation of an existing musical work then it may obtain copyright as an original musical work. Dr Sawkins expressly made clear that he was not contending that his editions were arrangements of Lalande’s music.

Instead, Dr Sawkins made it clear that his intention was to faithfully produce the music of Lalande in a modern performing edition. Hyperion argued that an edition of Lalande’s music that is a faithful reproduction of Lalande’s music cannot itself be an original musical work.

Hyperion contended that Dr Sawkins had produced a modern performing edition and that the skill and labour that he had exerted in doing so gave him a literary copyright in the text. It did not give Dr Sawkins a musical copyright, as the sound was Lalande’s.

Basically, they lost their appeal on a technicality and the judgement has far-reaching consequences. It means that when a record label wishes to record a work where the manuscript or edition is out of copyright, they will still have to seek and pay for a licence before performing from an edition. Performers might also be able to claim musical copyright in a work they have performed, as well as performing rights.

For Hyperion, the consequences are severe. It will have to pay its own legal costs, as well as those of the grasping Dr. Sawkins, and the total liability will be around one million pounds. For a company which employs only 12 people, it’s a crippling blow at worst and will force massive and catastrophic cutbacks at best.

Sawkins is an utter bastard for not seeing the bigger picture and letting his case go when he still could, and the Court (as another blogger agrees) has made profoundly the wrong judgment and clamped down on copyright yet further, in a way which the Judge must have known would have a damaging effect on the classical recording industry. If there is any justice to be had elsewhere, I hope that Hyperion will pursue it. This is simply too dangerous a judgment to be allowed to rest.

tags: [copyright] [music] [law] [recording] [current affairs]

Nerves

I have never owned or worn a t-shirt with a hood, and I’ve never appeared in a court and been ordered to do community service for some minor misdemeanour or other. But I still feel nervous at the prospect of new rules governing both.

These new rules have been proposed by our disappointingly re-elected New Labour government (New by name as well as by status) which seems intent, in a kind of diluted Orwellian way, on eradicating from the State things the State doesn’t like seeing. Hoodies, for example.

The thinking behind banning the hooded top goes that you can’t see young people’s faces when the hood’s up, and young people are terribly worrying for older people, especially when they stand around and be young in youthful groups. Need I remind you that in the depths of insane America where hoodies come from, even the authoritarian bastards in charge there would laugh at such an unfair, finger-pointing, shallow scheme?

Amid echoes of John Major’s ill-fated “Back to Basics” campaign, a moral panic is in full swing. As one politician put it, ‘the morals of children are ten times worse than formerly.’

Those words, however, were spoken by Lord Ashley in 1823, suggesting the demonisation of youth by their elders is nothing new.

As Blair unveils a Queen’s Speech this week stuffed with measures to ‘restore respect’ the question remains: has he picked up on a genuine erosion of civilised values? Or is a Government that once entertained Noel Gallagher at Downing Street just getting old and square, as its members hit their fifties and sixties?

I feel even more nervous about the other unhelpful idea our wise Government coughed up recently — when someone’s doing community service on their own to pay their debt to society, make them wear a brightly-coloured uniform so that they’ll feel even more alienated and everyone will be able to ‘see justice being done’. Please, please, NO.

tags: [bigotry] [society] [crime] [punishment] [youth] [fear]

Normal service will resume shortly

Sorry there’s been such a silence at peripathetic lately. I’ve been building myself a new computer, which is now up and running but with the usual teething troubles that new computers have. I may have to return a component; I may not — but if I do have to that will mean another couple of weeks’ silence. I’ll try to get some decent posts in when I’ve had a chance to surf a little again.

tags: [computer]

Golden tears from trees

What became of the Amber Room? Among the art treasures of Europe stolen by the Nazis in their conquest of the continent during World War 2, the Amber Room’s fate is most mysterious. Some believe that it was permanently lost in a fire at the end of the war, and some believe that it is waiting to be discovered.

But the Russians haven’t waited and are currently nearing the end of their restoration work at the Catherine Palace. Golden memories indeed. Via MetaFilter.

tags: [Amber Room] [Russia] [Art]

Big cock metaphor of the week

That is one big gun. And that’s another. The largest big cock symbols ever, courtesy of Adolf Hitler.

tags: [artillery] [gun] [thor] [dora] [hitler] [war]

Mini-rail Torpedo

HG4
Originally uploaded by
House Gymnastics :: Ampage of the Americas.

This is a guy who's very talented in House Gymnastics, an exciting new sport involving a house, its fixtures and fittings, and personal defiance of gravity. Great stuff. Found at the excellent Tofu Hut.

That's a hell of a lot of Cardinals

And so it begins. By night they will be locked in a modern Cardinals-only hotel in the Vatican; by day they will be locked in the sublime Sistine Chapel. They won’t move freely again until they have elected one of their own to the Papacy. The Catholic Church is the Catholic Church, and as such I guess it has to have a Pope. And as such, I guess it has to be one of a number of aged, religious men. Yes, maybe it’s because I’m in my twenties and gay and don’t like religion that I find this so disturbing, but the fact that the current favourites for the post are all conservatives of an ultra-conservative church worries me no end. See the previous post on this issue earlier this month.

Getting to more wholesome things, Jonathan emerges from a blog hiatus to write dreamily about art, life and feeling sorry for oneself. He muses on the elegant notion that “people who think art and depression go hand in hand are dead wrong. Dead as in metaphorically, not dead as in Vincent van Gogh rotting in his suicidal grave.”

I reckon that’s accurate enough. For, with only some notable exceptions in hundreds upon hundreds of years of art, depression is to the production of art what pasteurised milk is to the production of Camembert: it produces an unsavoury mess at best, and a squalid, forced little diarrhoeaic accident at worst.

I know because I’ve been there. And other writers, and musicians, and sculptors and I daresay even pop artists have, too. It’s a dark, misaligned place filled with distorted misunderstandings and self-righteous beliefs in the unique shittiness of your own situation.

One of the things I’ve learned in well over 10 years of more-or-less serious art appreciation is that if the artist didn’t have at least one clear, unwarped idea at the heart of a piece of work, the observer won’t get a clear idea of what the hell (s)he was on about at the end of it. But feeling disillusioned or bitter or grumpy as hell about something: oh yes. Now that can produce satisfying art. You only have to look at Bacon or Larkin or, dare I say it, Damien Rice, to see that.

And irony? Oh yes. During their deliberations, the Cardinals may care to gaze up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, jewel of the home of the Roman Catholic Church on earth, to see perfect, erotic, lustfully rendered male figures of God and the Saints — all painted by one of the greatest male artists Christendom has ever known.

tags: [pope] [art] [life]

No electricity. Fighting, hunger and death?

This article scares the shit out of me:

These are daunting and even dreadful prospects. The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world?wide power shortage. The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope ? that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on.

Yes, the article really scares the shit out of me. So much will go to wrack and ruin, seriously. Let’s see, things I take for granted: the ability to go hear organ recitals in a concert hall. Concert halls will have closed ? and / or have been swept aside for farmland where possible. The ability to use my bank cards in a cash machine. What cash machine? Listen to music? On / through / with what, exactly? Surf the net? What net?

*whimpers, thinks of buying cyanide capsules just in case*

But actually, since stuff I care about like arts and culture and sciences and things will go on, I’m encouraged: think of how much printing will cost, think of the return to hot metal, even just think of how amazing books are going to be when writers must be carefully chosen again and today’s designers learn about actual metal typesetting. But jesus, everything will be so scary. Think of medicine without electrically?mass?produced medicines and therapies, for example.

tags: [future] [energy] [oil] [earth] [apocalypse]

Pope still dead

His last word was “Rosebud”, but he was probably talking about his first altar boy.
—notmydesk, MetaFilter

In a shocking new development, it recently emerged from the Vatican that Pope John Paul II, who died a few hours ago, is still dead.

Heh, look, sorry for that. I feel a sense of great occasion about this death in particular, as I’m sure many others do, religious or not. However, I think a lot of it is overblown and I cannot bring myself to feel sad. I didn’t know the man, and I have my own (on balance, negative) opinions about how the Catholic Church he led influences individuals and the world.

Which is why I can’t help feeling that all the crying and so on is rather… misplaced somehow; this is one old man, an 86–year–old virgin, who has died, not a whole town or villageful of people during a war. Undoubtedly the person of the Pope — that is, the Papal office — has ceased to exist for a while, and that is why many Catholics and others will feel disturbed and rootless.

The arcane and purposeful procedures now to be set in place, however, will soon set people’s emotions to rights. I’ve always been interested in what happens when a Pope or someone equally important dies: to meditate for a second, it’s just very interesting to see loads of homo sapiens clustering round a more important homo sapiens in its life or after its death, to see what happens…

tags: [pope] [church] [death] [religion]