This months recommended book for June is above - to have around and dip into. I am about to start it soon after I've finished off a fortnight of selfish thinking. Don't read others all the time - also read yourself.
About 8 years ago I embarked on self initiated project titled Circadian Rhythms - it was initially for PHD but really it was a reaction to changeable natures and rhythms. Not a book but a set of retinal and audio 'material. Audible things. It also consisted largely of a 12 month internal recital of live thoughts' by 'live' I mean like a live performance to myself - not recorded - not written down - you had to be there ( and I was ) It was an internal sabbatical. It was not something I wanted to corral, tame or trap nor was I interested in seeking approval for it. I thought I would lose or forget some of it by not recording it but I have retained much of it in character and outlook. It was better being free to marinate and not be petrified in book form. It was certainly more organic and fluid in that feral way. Real, experiential, hard work but eventually nourishing.
You could liken it to picking up a large knapsack of elusive unquantifiable nutrition or a parcel of red cross health. When starting out in adult life do try to have one of these projects ticking along next to the work you do for others.
*The word corral from the Spanish word corro, means ring, Portuguese word curral, means trap, pen or enclose. As a verb, corral = round up, gather up / collect / herd
corral to me, means to inhibit ones liberty !
''Ebb & Flow' is a recurrent or rhythmical pattern of coming and going or decline and regrowth. This movement of the tides pulled by the moon. The one constant with human beings is how changeable we are from week to week - some from day to day - It is the most interesting and very natural state and process - and how we bond, clash, learn and adapt - we reflex.''
*n.b : hand held - 'to have and to hold' - a learning agreement - to pass on - the baton - to hold a stick - a pencil - a bow - to bend the note - to bend the arrow from the bow - a gift - maid marion and robin practiced cognitive distancing. ''Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude, Wayth-men ware commendyd gude'' to warmly point - to hold - to rest.
You could liken it to picking up a large knapsack of elusive unquantifiable nutrition or a parcel of red cross health. When starting out in adult life do try to have one of these projects ticking along next to the work you do for others.
*The word corral from the Spanish word corro, means ring, Portuguese word curral, means trap, pen or enclose. As a verb, corral = round up, gather up / collect / herd
corral to me, means to inhibit ones liberty !
''Ebb & Flow' is a recurrent or rhythmical pattern of coming and going or decline and regrowth. This movement of the tides pulled by the moon. The one constant with human beings is how changeable we are from week to week - some from day to day - It is the most interesting and very natural state and process - and how we bond, clash, learn and adapt - we reflex.''
*n.b : hand held - 'to have and to hold' - a learning agreement - to pass on - the baton - to hold a stick - a pencil - a bow - to bend the note - to bend the arrow from the bow - a gift - maid marion and robin practiced cognitive distancing. ''Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude, Wayth-men ware commendyd gude'' to warmly point - to hold - to rest.
seminar / workshop; notes;
She shells
On the She
She Shore
from the original song about Mary m'Anning.
Also ... ''and she shall have Music where ever she goes'' keeping time - soaring higher & higher (hardy) bowing higher & higher - ''faster faster alle alle aster'' ... 'sea saw margery daw' was a sawing work song for sawyers using a two person saw - keeping time & rhythm - alignment - duet - duetto - grafting hard shaping laburnum wood or maple or hazel upon the greenfield - in the fir wood - by the fjord - a rhyme & rhythm song on the plateau
seminar notes workshops
The Hip - the seat - the neck - the spine - the body - the saddle - dimensionality. When we play, ride, physicality - all play - adult play - child play - it is stirring - the tumbling is evident - it is both felt physically and mentally - it permeates - the unseen childlike and the perceptive. Through play we learn - reflexive learning.
The Hip - the seat - the neck - the spine - the body - the saddle - dimensionality. When we play, ride, physicality - all play - adult play - child play - it is stirring - the tumbling is evident - it is both felt physically and mentally - it permeates - the unseen childlike and the perceptive. Through play we learn - reflexive learning.
Realms. These dimensional experiences are potentially a realm of the elusive much mythologised fourth dimension and fifth. Connectivity
Surely it dosn't yet need to be explained or quantified - indeed, wouldn't that ruin it ?
Magnetite is found in the human brain
brain cells respond to external magnetic fields
Transitive ; if an attitude or feeling 'permeates' something, you can feel or see its influence clearly in every part of that moment or 'thing'. i.e in context 'A sense of mystery or awareness permeates the work / drawing / music / poetry.'
Memory - trace - impressions given - felt - left - theads - remaining - cast - fossil - sculpture- gift : Feeling the way - without looking - touching the moment - touchstone -
lodestone - magnetite - capsule - cell - atom - quark - beauty factory - finger
Duchamp - fingers - dexterity - to hand - to hold, to conjour up - atavistic feeling.
That was a moving touching moment - headiness - dizziness - I felt that
moved somewhere - some place - some where. Un-forgetting - unlearning.
The Gene can reminisce recall remember. Don't underestimate it.
The Gene can reminisce recall remember. Don't underestimate it.
- ''faster faster alle alle aster'' - exhilaration - thrill - habitual muscle memory - keeping thyme - smoking - chewing mint
Feelings we are exploring and realising - 'without looking' ( thomas hardy). Early memory of exhilarating physical 'touching' moments in time - where dimensionality is questioned - headiness - dizziness - the seasaw- upside down on a rope - the slide - being not ones self - role play - fetish - displaced feeling - thresholds. Connections with this transitive realm.
* fleeting time - flēotan - to float - afloat
(mm; from a longer essay titles 'Engines' )
Fleeting comes from the old word flēotan, which means to float - the loveless float at the procession - at the Gala - at the Fair - fleet of foot - fleeting pockets of time with someone we miss. Branwell Bronte, Lorca, Kundera and Pinter knew this stuff - they breathed it in - they dealt with the unsaid - the unexpressed feeling .... the difficult and inexpressible - the voice that will not whisper it let alone thunder it. Gifted Branwell is the author of this painting. Yet he painted himself out. His absent visage now sits in-between his equally gifted sisters.
There is an absence and yet there is presence felt. A bioluminescence.
There is an absence and yet there is presence felt. A bioluminescence.
The painting can also be read semiotically as male withdrawal away by the males own hand. The now retiring nature - enjoying other matters
A removal from what Mack ? Well what have you got. ? It ticks all the boxes. the old Consumerism - Colonialism - Celebrity - Glamour - Clamour - Attention - Competition - Ageism - whats not to dislike ?
In Branwell's case totally De-materialising from a Victorian repressive culture - and father - a culture that fed his addictive flawed energetic excess.
It is a sad but glowing painting - because the same man also possessed the becalmed lightness seen illuminated here - the lightness of being - as well as the weight of it. He was flawed yet had a warmth like a LAMP - that lit up gloomy rooms. I imagine that when he stepped outside on a summer evening his coat would become coated by the most beautiful of moths.
A removal from what Mack ? Well what have you got. ? It ticks all the boxes. the old Consumerism - Colonialism - Celebrity - Glamour - Clamour - Attention - Competition - Ageism - whats not to dislike ?
In Branwell's case totally De-materialising from a Victorian repressive culture - and father - a culture that fed his addictive flawed energetic excess.
It is a sad but glowing painting - because the same man also possessed the becalmed lightness seen illuminated here - the lightness of being - as well as the weight of it. He was flawed yet had a warmth like a LAMP - that lit up gloomy rooms. I imagine that when he stepped outside on a summer evening his coat would become coated by the most beautiful of moths.
Today in the present, here outside on the plateau beside the moor, there is quiet thunder. 26.6.2020
*semiotically - fools gold - fools silver (relates to lost signs and their in-significance, from foolish sēmeiōsis, to mis-signal, to mis-interpret )
*mm; extract from a longer essay titles 'Engines'
A short bronte essay awarded 'best in show' in 2019 by The ELSS The Ebor Lane Somnambulist Society - peer review committee
A short bronte essay awarded 'best in show' in 2019 by The ELSS The Ebor Lane Somnambulist Society - peer review committee
Sabina Spielrein circa 1908. Her work on individuation.
Individuation being the process or journey through education and self-realization - to the development of individuality. Your own self. Knowing & becoming. The ongoing process - essential to the formation of authentic identity - especially if that identity has been slowed by early primary events
Sabina Spielrein was Brilliant - years ahead was she - her work informed and advanced Freud & Jungs later work. ( Freuds 'Beyond the pleasure principle' ) and in breaking Carl Jung's heart she led him to his incredibly personal manuscript called 'Liber Novus' The Red Book. Which only saw the light of day recently in 2009. Drawings paintings texts. Sabrina Was the first expert in this new emerging field to have informed her teachings & methodology from her own experiential knowledge of her childhood and difficult youthful experiences - to go on, qualify and map out the study of childhood & the evolving adult mind. Her work is still under appreciated.This authentic transparency and achievement had not been achieved before. Mid brilliant career she lost her life in the holocaust. Her portrayal in the film 'A Dangerous Method' by Keira Knightley is somewhat accurate but doesn't do her importance justice. It Seems more a vehicle for Jung & Freud played well by Viggo Mortensen & Michael Fassbender. *Jung's Red book is epic in his text and his illuminated images - but the epic inner message is simply 'value your inner life.
Being and Becoming.’ Mary's Education was experiential too - and thus the development of fascination, character physicality in the world + emotion ....not just systematic instruction, theory or Process
Mary in her element - role play - and her huge beastie !
We ride the tail
But know not the head
Not even the spine
Of that upon which
We travel.
She sells seashells by the seashore," is based on a song written by Terry Sullivan. The song is about a brilliant Palaeontologist - an real seashell seller named Mary m'Anning (1799 – 1847). Mary m'Anning who became known around the world for important scientific discoveries that she made along the Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the devon coast. She was far more than a seashell seller. She has a blue plack in Dorset her home, She collected fossils and contributed important information about prehistoric life to the international scientific community
*Importantly Mary was by all accounts a 'dissenter' and did not fully participate in the male scientific community of 19th-century Britain, who were mostly Anglican men.
She struggled financially for much of her life. Her family was poor, and her father, a cabinetmaker, died when she was eleven.
She struggled financially for much of her life. Her family was poor, and her father, a cabinetmaker, died when she was eleven.
Her hardship drove her walks and the discovery of her own creative sciences and her self
nessy - legend - real - legend - real - the oneiric - a trace - a dream
Mary (m)Anning & marcel duchamp
The Science of dissent, truancy. autobiography. Ebb and Flo - She sold more than Sea Shells
Her coastal habitat as escape
(Ruskin / Proust / Bachelard) As an outsider and dissenter - her natural history unlocked. Not confined. Re-wilded emotional spaces - evolving curiosity and fascination - she handled things - extra dimensional expertise for the outsider and dissenter - unlocked. Not confined.
seminar notes / Introductions to series of important pertinent people / their work : And the psychology, activity, polarity, dualities that drove them.
Life - source - The neck - the object - the handle - irony -play - concept - Darwin - xx xy depository - sting - dart
duchamp- object - never intended for viewing but intimate gifts
Duchamp compares the act of love to a ‘four-dimensional situation par excellence’
He was a sensorialist - the quality of having sensation - not an aesthete - (image /imago / visage)
It enables a satisfaction - like brisk walking it is 'worth' it holistically and expresses matters and teaches others too
(quote from the Plateau, mm 2020)
DW.Winnicot
In 1964, talking with Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp said:
In 1964, talking with Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp said:
All this talk about the fourth dimension was around 1900, and probably before that. But it came to the ears of artists around 1910. What I understood of it at that time was that the three dimensions can be only the beginning of a fourth, fifth, and sixth dimension, if you know how to get there. But when I thought about how the fourth dimension is supposed to be time, then I began to think that I’m not at all in accord with this. It’s a very convenient way of saying that time is the fourth dimension, so we have the three dimensions of space and one of time. But in one dimension, a line, there is also time. I also don’t think that Einstein in fact calls it a fourth dimension. He calls it a fourth coordinate. So my contention is that the fourth dimension is not the temporal one. Meaning that you can consider objects having four dimensions. But what sense have we got to feel it? Because with our eyes we only see two dimensions. We have three dimensions with the sense of touch. So, I thought that the only sense we have that could help us get a physical notion of a four-dimensional object would be touch again. Because to understand something in four dimensions, conceptually speaking, would amount to seeing around an object without having to move: to feel around it. For example, I noticed that when I hold a knife, a small knife, I get a feeling from all sides at once. And this is as close as it can be to a fourth-dimensional feeling. Of course from there I went on to the physical act of love, which is also a feeling all around, either as a woman or as a man. Both have fourth-dimensional feelings. This is why love has been so respected.
Hardy / Larkin / Eliot - Moments & Momentum
Seminar notes: To look out or look in - or is that the same thing ?
Thomas Hardy's poetry was, said Larkin, the major influence on his work ....
"I don't think Hardy, as a poet, is a poet for young people. I know it sounds ridiculous to say I wasn't young at twenty-five or twenty-six, but at least I was beginning to find out what life was about, and that's precisely what I found in Hardy. In other words, I'm saying that what I like about him primarily is his temperament and the way he sees life. He's not a transcendental writer, he's not a Yeats, he's not an Eliot; his subjects are men, the life of men, time and the passing of time, love and the fading of love... When I came to Hardy it was with the sense of relief that I didn't have to try and jack myself up to a concept of poetry that lay outside my own life -- this is perhaps what I felt Yeats was trying to make me do. One could simply relapse back into one's own life and write from it. Hardy taught one to feel rather than to write - of course one has to use one's own language and one's own jargon and one's own situations -- and he taught one as well to have confidence in what one felt. I have come, I think, to admire him even more than I did then."
Larkins quote is Cited from The Poetry of Hardy 'Required Writing' 1955-1982 Faber 1983), p175-176.
Seminar notes: To look out or look in - or is that the same thing ?
Thomas Hardy's poetry was, said Larkin, the major influence on his work ....
"I don't think Hardy, as a poet, is a poet for young people. I know it sounds ridiculous to say I wasn't young at twenty-five or twenty-six, but at least I was beginning to find out what life was about, and that's precisely what I found in Hardy. In other words, I'm saying that what I like about him primarily is his temperament and the way he sees life. He's not a transcendental writer, he's not a Yeats, he's not an Eliot; his subjects are men, the life of men, time and the passing of time, love and the fading of love... When I came to Hardy it was with the sense of relief that I didn't have to try and jack myself up to a concept of poetry that lay outside my own life -- this is perhaps what I felt Yeats was trying to make me do. One could simply relapse back into one's own life and write from it. Hardy taught one to feel rather than to write - of course one has to use one's own language and one's own jargon and one's own situations -- and he taught one as well to have confidence in what one felt. I have come, I think, to admire him even more than I did then."
Larkins quote is Cited from The Poetry of Hardy 'Required Writing' 1955-1982 Faber 1983), p175-176.
The Self Unseeing
Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.
She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.
Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day;
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away.
Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.
She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.
Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day;
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away.
Seminar notes ;
The reason why this poem is held in such high regard - why it is extraordinary, is the notion that they were 'looking away'
They were naturally immersed in the moment- in their natures - as a family. Hardy's family.
This is the great paradox. Hardy, the jigging child and his fiddle playing parent are experiencing the happy 'glow' because they are not observing it intellectually and spoiling it. To look too closely at it would dispel the freedom of the moment and cast a shadow of 'duration' over proceedings. This 'knowing' always delivers a blow - to discover something is ephemeral is always a sad moment and moment-um is lost
To self consciously over 'observe' ones own experiences exposes the moment. This is not to say one should not appreciate the moment as adults. Of course this is the appreciation that Hardy is saying we lack - a mindfulness. It is a fine line. Real revelation can be intense and only pops up once or twice in a lifetime. The 'glow' and the 'gleam' state in the poem cannot be manufactured nor last. It is a magical thing when it occurs naturally - inside our own vivarium. (Vivarium. Latin, literally for 'Place of life')
When very young tis better to spring about - care free and unknowing. Ideally, life should not 'see itself' too intensely as a child. This kind of self awareness can be like rising to the surface from deep ocean too quickly - and cause 'the bends'.
Then later, when one appreciates the past, one should not feel longing for it. ''The future is in the instant'' and 'nostalgia' as Shakespeare knew, is bullshit. Yes, it is nice to celebrate the days we made - - and to see the deep value in them. Our experiences become the engines that inform us - so we should celebrate the present much more.
This conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion - going forward but not in a rush - nice and steady - self aware.
* So firing in the present (a creative act, gift, a 'present') is a fine thing
The Poem encapsulates Hardy's experience. It too is a capsule, propelled into the future - just like Voyager (the Space craft we talk of below that carries all those musical occupants),
She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.
By writing this down Thomas Hardy took them all into forever - we absorbed it in the here and now - but it will be read again and again - time and time over
'Days are where we live'' who ( much later ) said these lines ?
Seminar notes ;
The reason why this poem is held in such high regard - why it is extraordinary, is the notion that they were 'looking away'
They were naturally immersed in the moment- in their natures - as a family. Hardy's family.
The poem is like the scene in A Christmas Carol 1843 where Scrooge visits his own childhood with the ghost and looks in on his own family dynamics as an unseen voyeur. This revelation alters his future state. It is transformative for him. As it was for George Bailey in 'Its a Wonderful Life'.
This is the great paradox. Hardy, the jigging child and his fiddle playing parent are experiencing the happy 'glow' because they are not observing it intellectually and spoiling it. To look too closely at it would dispel the freedom of the moment and cast a shadow of 'duration' over proceedings. This 'knowing' always delivers a blow - to discover something is ephemeral is always a sad moment and moment-um is lost
To self consciously over 'observe' ones own experiences exposes the moment. This is not to say one should not appreciate the moment as adults. Of course this is the appreciation that Hardy is saying we lack - a mindfulness. It is a fine line. Real revelation can be intense and only pops up once or twice in a lifetime. The 'glow' and the 'gleam' state in the poem cannot be manufactured nor last. It is a magical thing when it occurs naturally - inside our own vivarium. (Vivarium. Latin, literally for 'Place of life')
When very young tis better to spring about - care free and unknowing. Ideally, life should not 'see itself' too intensely as a child. This kind of self awareness can be like rising to the surface from deep ocean too quickly - and cause 'the bends'.
Then later, when one appreciates the past, one should not feel longing for it. ''The future is in the instant'' and 'nostalgia' as Shakespeare knew, is bullshit. Yes, it is nice to celebrate the days we made - - and to see the deep value in them. Our experiences become the engines that inform us - so we should celebrate the present much more.
This conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion - going forward but not in a rush - nice and steady - self aware.
* So firing in the present (a creative act, gift, a 'present') is a fine thing
The Poem encapsulates Hardy's experience. It too is a capsule, propelled into the future - just like Voyager (the Space craft we talk of below that carries all those musical occupants),
She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher. By writing this down Thomas Hardy took them all into forever - we absorbed it in the here and now - but it will be read again and again - time and time over
'Days are where we live'' who ( much later ) said these lines ?
Days
What are days for?
Philip Larkin 1953
Days
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
Philip Larkin 1953
notes:
notes:
* And lastly - in terms of lineage and influence. See this poem by Eliot 1943 that was born out of reading Shakespeare and Hardy's unseen moment poem dicussed above.
The unattended moment, the moment in and out of time,
The wild thyme unseen, the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
This poem from Four Quartets once again re- enforcing Eliot’s more metaphysical spiritual tone and melancholy inner life at that time .... an almost, 'oh no, its too late' type of post appreciation or longing for lost life. Don't be like Eliot. Eliot cheered up later on after meeting Esme Valerie - his own music lasted until 1965
* And lastly - in terms of lineage and influence. See this poem by Eliot 1943 that was born out of reading Shakespeare and Hardy's unseen moment poem dicussed above.
The unattended moment, the moment in and out of time,
The wild thyme unseen, the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
The wild thyme unseen, the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
This poem from Four Quartets once again re- enforcing Eliot’s more metaphysical spiritual tone and melancholy inner life at that time .... an almost, 'oh no, its too late' type of post appreciation or longing for lost life. Don't be like Eliot. Eliot cheered up later on after meeting Esme Valerie - his own music lasted until 1965
In my experiences in education and in life - with long periods of time spent in both tough areas and privileged areas - the best people I have encountered have had to dig deep and dig in ... worked hard, studied life, and improved themselves - irrespective of class or money - it is more to do with chance & nature and with an evolved perspective. This is something I understand too - and recognise in others.
It is crucial to remember that in the visual arts and creative education this lateral, joined up, conflated thinking is very important to foster self awareness and new creativity - not just as an investigative process for learning as a student - but also as a teacher and professional. The logical, straight laced personality can find this 'tumbled' approach to learning abstract, random and often confusing.
''It's ilke spaghetti !'' I was once told by a student who was then aged about 26.
'Ok, I said, lets straighten 'some' of it out for you'' - but you should really try to do that yourself - and in all the re-arranging you will find that you are learning learning learning''.
Speculation and digression are important in teaching. It hands the reader their own 'agency' - via suggestions and prompts they have to contemplate and unwrap matters for themselves and are allowed to do so. In Arts education there is no designated route - indeed to pretend there is a right prescribed way is the wrong way.
In any medium. Learners have to apply more lateral playful risk taking and new methodologies and have healthy dips of reflective evaluation. Elders can sound a little smug spouting about self growth - I do it and try to bite my tongue always - but in the scheme of things it is very interesting to ask & discover how they themselves acquired any levels of self awareness - it is often via harsh beginnings, by chance & circumstance - time ; and by being 'lived in' by life. An appreciation.
To create interesting new things requires exploration, error, trial and patience and it requires the investment of both head and heart. Independent learning can never come about via mere prescribed facts or technical skills. Challenge and intrigue encourages independent thinking and enables what is called deep learning. Conceptual philosophical enquiry digging beneath the surface veneer of things. When one encounters learners who's own cognitive calibration closes up when challenged to think imaginatively for themselves and whom ask to be told in ABC terms how to complete a task to earn a good grade etc - then one has to be patient and readjust delivery for them. Having taught several science graduates creative practice at degree level - some were intuitive and receptive - others not so. *(see the excellent book on neurodiversity further down this text it is vg)
In my experiences in education and in life - with long periods of time spent in both tough areas and privileged areas - the best people I have encountered have had to dig deep and dig in ... worked hard, studied life, and improved themselves - irrespective of class or money - it is more to do with chance & nature and with an evolved perspective. This is something I understand too - and recognise in others.
It is crucial to remember that in the visual arts and creative education this lateral, joined up, conflated thinking is very important to foster self awareness and new creativity - not just as an investigative process for learning as a student - but also as a teacher and professional. The logical, straight laced personality can find this 'tumbled' approach to learning abstract, random and often confusing.
''It's ilke spaghetti !'' I was once told by a student who was then aged about 26.
'Ok, I said, lets straighten 'some' of it out for you'' - but you should really try to do that yourself - and in all the re-arranging you will find that you are learning learning learning''.
In any medium. Learners have to apply more lateral playful risk taking and new methodologies and have healthy dips of reflective evaluation. Elders can sound a little smug spouting about self growth - I do it and try to bite my tongue always - but in the scheme of things it is very interesting to ask & discover how they themselves acquired any levels of self awareness - it is often via harsh beginnings, by chance & circumstance - time ; and by being 'lived in' by life. An appreciation.
To create interesting new things requires exploration, error, trial and patience and it requires the investment of both head and heart. Independent learning can never come about via mere prescribed facts or technical skills. Challenge and intrigue encourages independent thinking and enables what is called deep learning. Conceptual philosophical enquiry digging beneath the surface veneer of things. When one encounters learners who's own cognitive calibration closes up when challenged to think imaginatively for themselves and whom ask to be told in ABC terms how to complete a task to earn a good grade etc - then one has to be patient and readjust delivery for them. Having taught several science graduates creative practice at degree level - some were intuitive and receptive - others not so. *(see the excellent book on neurodiversity further down this text it is vg)
The living minutes of our lives” lecture Slides’ - GreenFields seminar set - Ontology ; Drawing ; Print ; Music ; ritual & Performance; Bonds; Super Nature. The Sublime.
Cover by Cranach the Elder
greenfield / ebor mill stack at the bottom - snod hill
Trees – Apples - Grapes - on the vine - the term Terroir (not terror) is a vineyard term ‘’Terroir’’ – Your terrain, the seedbed – the soil in which the wine is flavoured - the environment one is grown in – what we absorb and soak up – our phenomenological habitat. This is a soup of idiosyncratic and sensual characteristics from the felt and physical surroundings that create us - so say by the age of 20 you should have a store. This store is formed from both nature and nurture and forms who you are. Personality and Character are classed as two different things - but essentially any artist or person has an autobiographical sense to draw narratives and meaning from . So you have your own mythology. The german language has a name for it - Künstlerroman.
The Campus
University Upon The Greenfield
Department of Visual & Material Culture
Beneath the Mills stack
Ebor 42552
collage 'Vivarium' by mm 2007 - terroir, a topography - soil / growth - beginnings - a geology - the archeology of ourselves.
Seeking things out, giving - receiving - commende gude ; research - historocity - language - etymology
* notes
Cultural capital is gained via creative growth- yes, via books, literature, music, film.etc
but mostly by CURIOSITY. Art Schools act as catalysts for shaping self awareness & personal growth - especially in an era of compartmentalised filtered cultural traffic.
Smell the Roses ; Vocals from workshop & seminar on phenomenology, synesthesia; psychology of colour; expression & impression.; sense ; experimentation as key - dissonance, consonance - harmony in visual language - working things out. This is the rub ! Balance & The importance for 'slow' celebratory or private time - as much as the intense productive time in a day or week or annum - so, rhythm yes but seasonal times too - the affect of the seasons and climate on the body - warmth , cold , sun. The moon pulls at not just the tides (read Paglia's nature /nurture texts and read anthropological book 'The Wise Wound' too - on circadian rhythm by Penelope Shuttle)
And crucially relationships with 1; the self and 2. Others, ... the constant time and fleeting time etc ( see my break down of Hardy's poem below) - I think when we are alone we are always looking - thinking - over thinking - (until engrossed in work or asleep). Yet our time with others - as adults - well, I don't think we look enough - appreciate the moments - and we should.
Be around good people - spend time with family more - don't close off
Campus
University of GreenFields
Department of Visual & Material Culture
Beneath the Mills stack
Ebor 42552
#Poly kettle Lecture slides/ notes:
Thank heavens for the parallel universe - we are beaming - a fine day on campus. The University of Greenfields - (look at the twins in background )
The living minutes of our lives” lecture Slides’ - GreenFields seminar set - Ontology ; Drawing ; Print ; Music ; ritual & Performance; Bonds; Super Nature. The Sublime.
greenfield / ebor mill stack at the bottom - snod hill
Trees – Apples - Grapes - on the vine - the term Terroir (not terror) is a vineyard term ‘’Terroir’’ – Your terrain, the seedbed – the soil in which the wine is flavoured - the environment one is grown in – what we absorb and soak up – our phenomenological habitat. This is a soup of idiosyncratic and sensual characteristics from the felt and physical surroundings that create us - so say by the age of 20 you should have a store. This store is formed from both nature and nurture and forms who you are. Personality and Character are classed as two different things - but essentially any artist or person has an autobiographical sense to draw narratives and meaning from . So you have your own mythology. The german language has a name for it - Künstlerroman.
The Campus
University Upon The Greenfield
Department of Visual & Material Culture
Beneath the Mills stack
Department of Visual & Material Culture
Beneath the Mills stack
Ebor 42552
collage 'Vivarium' by mm 2007 - terroir, a topography - soil / growth - beginnings - a geology - the archeology of ourselves.
Seeking things out, giving - receiving - commende gude ; research - historocity - language - etymology
* notes
Cultural capital is gained via creative growth- yes, via books, literature, music, film.etc
but mostly by CURIOSITY. Art Schools act as catalysts for shaping self awareness & personal growth - especially in an era of compartmentalised filtered cultural traffic.
but mostly by CURIOSITY. Art Schools act as catalysts for shaping self awareness & personal growth - especially in an era of compartmentalised filtered cultural traffic.
Smell the Roses ; Vocals from workshop & seminar on phenomenology, synesthesia; psychology of colour; expression & impression.; sense ; experimentation as key - dissonance, consonance - harmony in visual language - working things out. This is the rub ! Balance & The importance for 'slow' celebratory or private time - as much as the intense productive time in a day or week or annum - so, rhythm yes but seasonal times too - the affect of the seasons and climate on the body - warmth , cold , sun. The moon pulls at not just the tides (read Paglia's nature /nurture texts and read anthropological book 'The Wise Wound' too - on circadian rhythm by Penelope Shuttle)
And crucially relationships with 1; the self and 2. Others, ... the constant time and fleeting time etc ( see my break down of Hardy's poem below) - I think when we are alone we are always looking - thinking - over thinking - (until engrossed in work or asleep). Yet our time with others - as adults - well, I don't think we look enough - appreciate the moments - and we should.
Campus
University of GreenFields
Department of Visual & Material Culture
Beneath the Mills stack
Department of Visual & Material Culture
Beneath the Mills stack
Ebor 42552
#Poly kettle Lecture slides/ notes:
Thank heavens for the parallel universe - we are beaming - a fine day on campus. The University of Greenfields - (look at the twins in background )
'In A Forest' by Diaz - read story below by Walser
'Looking at Pictures'
'Every sensitive person carries inside himself old cities enclosed by ancient walls.”
Robert Walser, 'The Walk'
There is little doubt in my mind that the fictional child in this scene is the author. The best creative achievements - or the truest - are often narratives that expand from within ourselves, and often for the benefit of others.
Born in Switzerland in 1878, his contemporary admirers included Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse, Robert and Walter Benjamin. Today he is acknowledged as one of the most important and original literary voices of the twentieth century.
In A Forest
'In a forest' painted by Diaz, a little mother and her son stood still. They were now a good hour from the village. Gnarled trunks spoke a primeval tongue. The mother said to her child: “In my opinion, you shouldn’t cling to my apron strings like that. As if I were here only for you. Benighted creature, what could you be thinking? You’re just a small child, yet want to make grownups dependent on you. How ill-considered. A certain amount of thinking must enter your slumbering head, and to make that happen, I shall now leave you here, alone. Stop clutching at me with those little hands this instant, you uncouth, importunate thing! I have every reason to be angry with you – and I believe I am. It’s time you were told the unadorned truth, otherwise you’ll stay a helpless child all your life, forever reliant on your mother.
To teach you what it means to love me, you must be left to your own resources, you’ll have to seek out strangers and serve them, hearing nothing but harsh words from them for a year, two years, perhaps longer. Then you’ll know what I was to you. But always at your side, I am unknown to you. That’s right, child, you make no effort at all, you don’t even know what effort is, let alone tenderness, you uncompassionate creature. Always having me at your side makes you mentally indolent. Not for a minute do you stop to think – that’s what indolence is. You must go to work, my child, you’ll manage it if you want to – and you’ll have no choice but to want to.
notes; message ; peripatetic - try to be less so - settle in a bit
These excerpts from Looking at Pictures are published by permissions of Christine Burgin and New Directions Publishing. Copyright © Suhrkamp Verlag Zurich 1985. License edition by permission of the owner of rights, Carl-Seelig-Stiftung, Zurich. “Diaz’s Forest” translation copyright © 2015 by Susan Bernofsky.
Slide: Dr Winnicott cover for Play & Realty book
Alain De Botton wrote of Dr Winnicott - He was the greatest British psychoanalyst who ever lived. He writes beautifully and simply about the problems of everyday life - and is the perfect thing to read if you want to understand yourself and other people better."
What are the origins of creativity and how can we develop it - whether within ourselves or in others? Not only does Playing and Reality address these questions, it also tackles many more that surround the fundamental issue of the individual self and its relationship with the outside world. In this landmark book of twentieth-century psychology, Winnicott shows the reader how, through the attentive nurturing of creativity from the earliest years, every individual has the opportunity to enjoy a rich and rewarding cultural life. Today, as the 'hothousing' and testing of children begins at an ever-younger age, Winnicott's classic text is a more urgent and topical read than ever before.
'In A Forest' by Diaz - read story below by Walser
'Looking at Pictures'
borrow or buy the book - it's been on every wise Arts reading list from Kensington Gore to Chelsea to Cambridge, to Glasgow - to Rome
'Every sensitive person carries inside himself old cities enclosed by ancient walls.”
Robert Walser, 'The Walk'
Here in the short text below Robert Walser weaves an allegory - he is not inciting abandonment of your child. Importantly all authorship has a historical context - its own imaginary space - this is what he exploits - he is writing in 1919 about a liminal imaginary wooded space in 1868. Notice how the author's protagonist unusually breaks the 4th wall half way down the prose. This is called 'metafiction' (remember this is 1919)
There is little doubt in my mind that the fictional child in this scene is the author. The best creative achievements - or the truest - are often narratives that expand from within ourselves, and often for the benefit of others.
Born in Switzerland in 1878, his contemporary admirers included Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse, Robert and Walter Benjamin. Today he is acknowledged as one of the most important and original literary voices of the twentieth century.
In A Forest
'In a forest' painted by Diaz, a little mother and her son stood still. They were now a good hour from the village. Gnarled trunks spoke a primeval tongue. The mother said to her child: “In my opinion, you shouldn’t cling to my apron strings like that. As if I were here only for you. Benighted creature, what could you be thinking? You’re just a small child, yet want to make grownups dependent on you. How ill-considered. A certain amount of thinking must enter your slumbering head, and to make that happen, I shall now leave you here, alone. Stop clutching at me with those little hands this instant, you uncouth, importunate thing! I have every reason to be angry with you – and I believe I am. It’s time you were told the unadorned truth, otherwise you’ll stay a helpless child all your life, forever reliant on your mother.
To teach you what it means to love me, you must be left to your own resources, you’ll have to seek out strangers and serve them, hearing nothing but harsh words from them for a year, two years, perhaps longer. Then you’ll know what I was to you. But always at your side, I am unknown to you. That’s right, child, you make no effort at all, you don’t even know what effort is, let alone tenderness, you uncompassionate creature. Always having me at your side makes you mentally indolent. Not for a minute do you stop to think – that’s what indolence is. You must go to work, my child, you’ll manage it if you want to – and you’ll have no choice but to want to.
I swear to you, as truthfully as I am standing here with you in this forest painted by Diaz, you must earn your livelihood with bitter toil so that you will not go to ruin inwardly. Many children grow coarse when they are coddled, because they never learn to be thoughtful, thankful. Later, they all turn into ladies and gentlemen who are beautiful and elegant on the outside but self-absorbed nonetheless. To save you from becoming cruel and succumbing to foolishnesses, I am treating you roughly, because overly solicitous treatment produces people free from conscience and care.”
As the child heard these words, it opened its eyes wide in terror, trembling, and a tremor passed through the very leaves of Diaz’s forest, but the mighty trunks stood firm.
The fallen leaves upon the forest floor murmured: “What has been written in this brief essay appears to be quite simple, but there are times when everything simple and readily comprehensible recedes from human understanding and only can be grasped with great effort.” That’s what the leaves murmured. The mother was gone. The child stood there alone. Before this child stood the task of finding its way in the world, which is also a forest, of learning to hold itself in the right humility and to drive out all smug complacency and self entitlement from its own person, so that it might be ready for others. full text by R.Walser
notes; message ; peripatetic - try to be less so - settle in a bit
These excerpts from Looking at Pictures are published by permissions of Christine Burgin and New Directions Publishing. Copyright © Suhrkamp Verlag Zurich 1985. License edition by permission of the owner of rights, Carl-Seelig-Stiftung, Zurich. “Diaz’s Forest” translation copyright © 2015 by Susan Bernofsky.
Slide: Dr Winnicott cover for Play & Realty book
Alain De Botton wrote of Dr Winnicott - He was the greatest British psychoanalyst who ever lived. He writes beautifully and simply about the problems of everyday life - and is the perfect thing to read if you want to understand yourself and other people better."
What are the origins of creativity and how can we develop it - whether within ourselves or in others? Not only does Playing and Reality address these questions, it also tackles many more that surround the fundamental issue of the individual self and its relationship with the outside world. In this landmark book of twentieth-century psychology, Winnicott shows the reader how, through the attentive nurturing of creativity from the earliest years, every individual has the opportunity to enjoy a rich and rewarding cultural life. Today, as the 'hothousing' and testing of children begins at an ever-younger age, Winnicott's classic text is a more urgent and topical read than ever before.
desert islands - celebration - comfort - distance
Listen here to rare recording BBC archive of Desert Island discs - the guest is not Robinson Crusoe but Philip Larkin, Poet - its insightful - he is almost avuncular here.
BBC arhive https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009n0l8
desert islands - celebration - comfort - distance
Listen here to rare recording BBC archive of Desert Island discs - the guest is not Robinson Crusoe but Philip Larkin, Poet - its insightful - he is almost avuncular here.
Qualia & Distance / the spaces between
Qualia.
The question is ...if Robinson is not around to witness this phenomena does the tide still come in and wet the white sand of the island ? Do the Parrot and dog still smell the salt in the sea breeze ?
Does the coconut falling from the palm tree make a sound as it hits the sand IF Robinsons is not present to hear the 'noise' / feel the vibration of the impact ?
Nihilism is a much misinterpreted theoretical philosophy but in essence it does indeed condemn & oppose the meaningful aspects of life and existence. It is the ultimate party pooper. Incidentally Kierkegaard Nietzsche, Camus and Satre were not nihilists & opposed it vocally- all were mindful and sought meaning.
Existential Nihilism argues that life is ‘without’ any meaning or value. The 7 Seas do not exist unless we are there to observe them or project our lens onto them : Yet to think Man is the only consciousness or locus presents as very hopeless. An intellectual Patriarchal Anthropocentrism. What of the qualia felt by the dreaming Wolf or tiger etc. It all makes for good conversation. As an idea it is the polar opposite philosophy to Buddhism or James Lovelock or Helen Keller's deaf & blind insight.
Magic exists in the world whether we are present or not to sense or measure it. Is Qualia present without our antenna ? (See Frank Jackson "knowledge argument) Moral nihilists assert that ethics don't exist. Hence are they Amoral ? from Latin *Nihill (nothing) Nihilism becomes defensive disenchantment. A cognitive defeatism.
This can change in a person and not through epiphany but via life experience perspective paternity humility etc . For example in the novel Fathers & Sons by Ivan Turgenev the Protagonist and Nihilistic leader Bazarov discovers that his strong nihilistic views are challenged upon his own falling in love. He sees the world around him differently.
He realises his chemistry and heart has been altered - he experiences new appreciation where once he felt a void. See Mr Rochester or Scrooges awakening & paradigm shift. *cultivate an intuitive appreciation of things beyond Freud’s hedonistic THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE ‘Conjuring’ other things up, acknowledging and using magical thinking in its various forms & observing one’s own phenomenology. Sharing it with a significant other(s) or going solo. I think like Larkin, that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
film still above; 'all that heaven allows' directed by master douglas sirk - a societal film about difference and inner life not materialism. The book 'Walden' by Thoreau is a central theme too. ( see older posts for more info and imagery from this wonderful film - old seminar notes )
qualia notes:
In the poem below - the planted Rose would still have bloomed and faded to return the next summer and the earth would still be turning away from the Sun with or without the writer - me - noticing it.
Qualia & Distance / the spaces between
Qualia.
The question is ...if Robinson is not around to witness this phenomena does the tide still come in and wet the white sand of the island ? Do the Parrot and dog still smell the salt in the sea breeze ?
Does the coconut falling from the palm tree make a sound as it hits the sand IF Robinsons is not present to hear the 'noise' / feel the vibration of the impact ?
The question is ...if Robinson is not around to witness this phenomena does the tide still come in and wet the white sand of the island ? Do the Parrot and dog still smell the salt in the sea breeze ?
Does the coconut falling from the palm tree make a sound as it hits the sand IF Robinsons is not present to hear the 'noise' / feel the vibration of the impact ?
Nihilism is a much misinterpreted theoretical philosophy but in essence it does indeed condemn & oppose the meaningful aspects of life and existence. It is the ultimate party pooper. Incidentally Kierkegaard Nietzsche, Camus and Satre were not nihilists & opposed it vocally- all were mindful and sought meaning.
Existential Nihilism argues that life is ‘without’ any meaning or value. The 7 Seas do not exist unless we are there to observe them or project our lens onto them : Yet to think Man is the only consciousness or locus presents as very hopeless. An intellectual Patriarchal Anthropocentrism. What of the qualia felt by the dreaming Wolf or tiger etc. It all makes for good conversation. As an idea it is the polar opposite philosophy to Buddhism or James Lovelock or Helen Keller's deaf & blind insight.
Magic exists in the world whether we are present or not to sense or measure it. Is Qualia present without our antenna ? (See Frank Jackson "knowledge argument) Moral nihilists assert that ethics don't exist. Hence are they Amoral ? from Latin *Nihill (nothing) Nihilism becomes defensive disenchantment. A cognitive defeatism.
This can change in a person and not through epiphany but via life experience perspective paternity humility etc . For example in the novel Fathers & Sons by Ivan Turgenev the Protagonist and Nihilistic leader Bazarov discovers that his strong nihilistic views are challenged upon his own falling in love. He sees the world around him differently.
He realises his chemistry and heart has been altered - he experiences new appreciation where once he felt a void. See Mr Rochester or Scrooges awakening & paradigm shift. *cultivate an intuitive appreciation of things beyond Freud’s hedonistic THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE ‘Conjuring’ other things up, acknowledging and using magical thinking in its various forms & observing one’s own phenomenology. Sharing it with a significant other(s) or going solo. I think like Larkin, that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
Existential Nihilism argues that life is ‘without’ any meaning or value. The 7 Seas do not exist unless we are there to observe them or project our lens onto them : Yet to think Man is the only consciousness or locus presents as very hopeless. An intellectual Patriarchal Anthropocentrism. What of the qualia felt by the dreaming Wolf or tiger etc. It all makes for good conversation. As an idea it is the polar opposite philosophy to Buddhism or James Lovelock or Helen Keller's deaf & blind insight.
Magic exists in the world whether we are present or not to sense or measure it. Is Qualia present without our antenna ? (See Frank Jackson "knowledge argument) Moral nihilists assert that ethics don't exist. Hence are they Amoral ? from Latin *Nihill (nothing) Nihilism becomes defensive disenchantment. A cognitive defeatism.
This can change in a person and not through epiphany but via life experience perspective paternity humility etc . For example in the novel Fathers & Sons by Ivan Turgenev the Protagonist and Nihilistic leader Bazarov discovers that his strong nihilistic views are challenged upon his own falling in love. He sees the world around him differently.
He realises his chemistry and heart has been altered - he experiences new appreciation where once he felt a void. See Mr Rochester or Scrooges awakening & paradigm shift. *cultivate an intuitive appreciation of things beyond Freud’s hedonistic THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE ‘Conjuring’ other things up, acknowledging and using magical thinking in its various forms & observing one’s own phenomenology. Sharing it with a significant other(s) or going solo. I think like Larkin, that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
film still above; 'all that heaven allows' directed by master douglas sirk - a societal film about difference and inner life not materialism. The book 'Walden' by Thoreau is a central theme too. ( see older posts for more info and imagery from this wonderful film - old seminar notes )
qualia notes:
In the poem below - the planted Rose would still have bloomed and faded to return the next summer and the earth would still be turning away from the Sun with or without the writer - me - noticing it.
Repost below from 2015 interview on value, bonding and creative practice
Parallel Sensibilities
Authorship helps navigate away from potential senses of absence or disenchantment, away from ones own anthropocentrism. It placates the illusions and negativity that we can feel from status anxiety etc. Creative Practice can steer us away from 'the Other' toward levels of contentment through reflexive engagement - observing what is occurring - learning - remaking and re-owning things presently - in the present tense.
Preserving these observations ‘seen’ or perceptions ‘felt’ in a drawn act - as an expression of visual or sonic language or text etc - is an entanglement of sensory observations from the present and of the past - depicted and preserved into one capsule – and therefore the work may become an expression of immediate experience - and even if the work has a natural involvement with the historical past - the work is paradoxically born out of knowledge and feeling gained in the present - therefore it is a recording of that present moments perceptions and not an echo. As a result the work when successful helps define a more acceptable personal state - a new paradigm - the friendship or 'fellowship' that Orwell talked about - important today amidst the plethora of simulated 21 century commercial and social media stimulus that is both heterogeneous and conflicting.' The value of living well - alive alive oh.
Alive, alive, oh
Repost below from 2015 interview on value, bonding and creative practice
Parallel Sensibilities
Authorship helps navigate away from potential senses of absence or disenchantment, away from ones own anthropocentrism. It placates the illusions and negativity that we can feel from status anxiety etc. Creative Practice can steer us away from 'the Other' toward levels of contentment through reflexive engagement - observing what is occurring - learning - remaking and re-owning things presently - in the present tense.
Preserving these observations ‘seen’ or perceptions ‘felt’ in a drawn act - as an expression of visual or sonic language or text etc - is an entanglement of sensory observations from the present and of the past - depicted and preserved into one capsule – and therefore the work may become an expression of immediate experience - and even if the work has a natural involvement with the historical past - the work is paradoxically born out of knowledge and feeling gained in the present - therefore it is a recording of that present moments perceptions and not an echo. As a result the work when successful helps define a more acceptable personal state - a new paradigm - the friendship or 'fellowship' that Orwell talked about - important today amidst the plethora of simulated 21 century commercial and social media stimulus that is both heterogeneous and conflicting.' The value of living well - alive alive oh.
Alive, alive, oh
Crying "cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh"
Astonishment - curiosity - 'how we come across things'
Glib means readily fluent, yet thoughtlessly, superficially, or insincerely. - a glib talker; glib answers. A Glib listener. Don't be glib.
the moment in and out of time - eliot
Campus
University of GreenFields
Department of Visual & Material Culture
Beneath the Mills stack
Ebor 42552
Historical & Contextual notes
The inversion of conservatism & repression & tradition - the ancient inversion of taste etc
Crying "cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh"
Campus
University of GreenFields
Department of Visual & Material Culture
Beneath the Mills stack
Ebor 42552
Astonishment - curiosity - 'how we come across things'
Glib means readily fluent, yet thoughtlessly, superficially, or insincerely. - a glib talker; glib answers. A Glib listener. Don't be glib.
the moment in and out of time - eliot
Campus
University of GreenFields
Department of Visual & Material Culture
Beneath the Mills stack
Ebor 42552
Historical & Contextual notes
The inversion of conservatism & repression & tradition - the ancient inversion of taste etc
The inversion of conservatism & repression & tradition - the ancient inversion of taste etc
The brilliance of Sula Wolff
''Closely and carefully argued. This book is eminently readable and holds the reader's interest''
(Hans Steiner in 'The Lancet' )
(extract below from her full obituary here https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sula-wolff-child-psychiatrist-who-made-pioneering-advances-in-her-field-1813213.html%3famp
Sula Wolff was precise in her thinking and did not let sloppy statements pass without questioning. Her writing was exceptionally clear, spare and elegant. In particular, in 1969 she published Children Under Stress: Understanding the Emotionally Disturbed Child, an account aimed at all professionals concerned with children, as well as at the general public. This book was translated into all major and several minor languages and resulted in numerous invitations to lecture abroad. She played an active part in national meetings, where I met her as a colleague and later as a friend. She and Henry, who was appointed professor of psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh, became a well-known couple in the city. Together they created a home in Blacket Place that housed an amazing art collection. From the time they arrived in Edinburgh in 1962 they collected modern Scottish paintings, including many by Joan Eardley. Soon their collection spread to include French impressionists and American abstract art, including paintings by Frank Stella and Hans Hofmann.
The brilliance of Sula Wolff
''Closely and carefully argued. This book is eminently readable and holds the reader's interest''
(Hans Steiner in 'The Lancet' )
(Hans Steiner in 'The Lancet' )
(extract below from her full obituary here https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sula-wolff-child-psychiatrist-who-made-pioneering-advances-in-her-field-1813213.html%3famp
Sula Wolff was precise in her thinking and did not let sloppy statements pass without questioning. Her writing was exceptionally clear, spare and elegant. In particular, in 1969 she published Children Under Stress: Understanding the Emotionally Disturbed Child, an account aimed at all professionals concerned with children, as well as at the general public. This book was translated into all major and several minor languages and resulted in numerous invitations to lecture abroad. She played an active part in national meetings, where I met her as a colleague and later as a friend. She and Henry, who was appointed professor of psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh, became a well-known couple in the city. Together they created a home in Blacket Place that housed an amazing art collection. From the time they arrived in Edinburgh in 1962 they collected modern Scottish paintings, including many by Joan Eardley. Soon their collection spread to include French impressionists and American abstract art, including paintings by Frank Stella and Hans Hofmann.
Sula Wolff was precise in her thinking and did not let sloppy statements pass without questioning. Her writing was exceptionally clear, spare and elegant. In particular, in 1969 she published Children Under Stress: Understanding the Emotionally Disturbed Child, an account aimed at all professionals concerned with children, as well as at the general public. This book was translated into all major and several minor languages and resulted in numerous invitations to lecture abroad. She played an active part in national meetings, where I met her as a colleague and later as a friend. She and Henry, who was appointed professor of psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh, became a well-known couple in the city. Together they created a home in Blacket Place that housed an amazing art collection. From the time they arrived in Edinburgh in 1962 they collected modern Scottish paintings, including many by Joan Eardley. Soon their collection spread to include French impressionists and American abstract art, including paintings by Frank Stella and Hans Hofmann.
Sula Wolff - two books
Loners - the life path of unusual / gifted children
'Children under stress'
University Campus Curricular - module1777 :
Desire paths (cutting through the long grass)
dedicated to Moria Hutchison Soroptimist ; Headteacher : Educator ;
https://sigbi.org/keighley/rip-moira-hutchison-27-06-31-to-13-06-14/
bronze by louise bourgouis
Sula Wolff - loners - the life path of unusual / gifted children
another excellent thesis from hyde
KINO Poster rough by mm for the film Hiroshima Mon Amour
Tumbled and conflated - astride the engines into forever
Adventure Time Historicity & the Chronotope
Restrictions of 'linear time' have always frustrated sensitive people - I think about it a lot - and always have. So music is a saviour / muse in this respect, of achieving NON linear time. Creative acts of remembering the future - remember ?
Adventure Time in greek myth. Chronotopes, where changing aspects of time and space are achieved. The ancient Greek story has “adventure time” for hero and heroine where their own duetto developments do not impact upon other characters; This space in which their adventures happens, is effectively theirs alone.
Historicity
All the people (‘’where do they all come from'' ( e. rigby))
Sometimes you just have to go back up stream and retrieve them - reanimate them - the lost. Expanding forgetting remembering ; Film: Hiroshima Mon Amour
Time, The Universe is expanding and Voyager is still travelling through time and interstellar space carrying Bach, Stravinsky and Blind Willie Johnson to infinity and beyond ! Tumbled immersive engines - took them all into forever.
Having operated for 42 years the spacecraft still communicates with Earth, receives routine commands and transmits data to humans (visit & track here https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/#where_are_they_now
Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have reached Interstellar space - each continue their unique journey through the Universe. In the NASA app, you can see the real spacecraft trajectories of the Voyagers, which are updated every five minutes.
the combined duet of the fixed / the steady with the wild / elusive
Summer reference Film. 'Walk the Line' the life of June (Carter) pictured here and her pal Mr Cash - one of the best historical biopics - good if 21 and unfamiliar with this 20th century story.
...................................................................................
In Anthropology 'anamnesis' is a mythical fireside philosophical discussion with PLATO - that humans possessed ancestral knowledge from our past innings - that learning consists of rediscovering previous lost ancient knowledge. It is an interesting precursor to reflexive learning and of forgetting. A clean sheet and then a becoming again - a recovering of pre-requisite data through a memory recovering and promptings - so in essence ones life experience is actually a 'palimpsest'. A layering. An experience on top of a faded experience. I rarely get de ja vu now - it does fade as you age. The term has since become a medical term for a patients recollections. ptsd etc too. So now think of healing /recovery and indeed learning in this new context when you write, interpret or compose. Learning or remembering.
Film for October 2020 - Level 5 project: Hiroshima Mon Amour
adventure time - inside and under a cloud
Seminar notes - 2019 workshop notes
Drawing from the life - drawing your life - drawing life
Learning & Remembering - Polykettle James Joyce exercise
A warm reminder of what you did in workshops: OR what you missed as I walked about talking and asking you - as you buried yourself into some excellent drawings - half listening to me (which was the plan) and my prompts and the content of some of those classes merged with your more intuitive modes - all enabling some excellent drawings.
Reflexive Learning - reflective knowledge. A circular relationships with ones own experience. Cause and effect. Lesson learning is embedded in human beliefs - games - play - a circle game - growth but with snakes & ladders,
See Modernism - Joyce in character : Ulysses in 1917.
My youth. Only once it
comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the
same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want.
Nothing new under the sun.
As an exercise flip the meaning & context above by JJ to this.
Her Wisdom - it will come. ~ Or hiz.
Take a train to it tonight ? ~ No.
Doesn't work like that.
knowledge ? Youth wants.
No fast track.
Nothings new under the Moon
All of its been said, sang, done.
Yet all of it - all of that
Is for herz or hiz to come.
The prose by Joyce (and my small but important alteration of context basically means this);
That Human life and its trials and beautitudes are constant and as Chaucer and Shakespeare shows us - does not change like fashion. Romans, Elizabethans, Greeks and Georgians had the same loves and woes as we ..... loss or love at each stage of life is unaltered by time, sexual preference. It transcends eras.
Ones youth is driven by a set of primal drivers that are common across any time - and so the smiling lamenting of youth by a dying Viking Octogenarian off the Beaches of Lindisfarne in 762 will still be exactly the same philosophy and emotion as in the year 2095 by a silver suited future utopian Octogenarian .... as then - as is now.
'This conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion'
Lecture notes / Slides:
1: The Yellow Book & Fin de siècle (cover by Aubrey Beardsley) as discussed in seminar for it’s subversive cultural influence - yellow books published London 1894 to 1897 (Munch, Gauguin and Van Gogh pioneered new expressionist drawing during this same narrow window but earlier in 1888 ) German Expressionism came later in 1905.
2: Sight & Sound 2011 Film ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ Depicts post war 1950 social nuances so well ....directed by Terence Davies and starring Rachel Weisz who is outstanding as Hester Collier - her performance is both urgent and vulnerable all at once.
Recommended / Books & Film
seminar slides
Recommended book : Blue - Colour by Carol Mavor
Sabinas important work helped lead to the modern developments / understanding the object relation / child whole object constancy breakthrough.
*Inclusivity / notes 2012
If we read the original ethos behind the Greek 'Epicurian' texts and the 'Stoic' texts ( Seneca, Marcus Aurelius etc ), there is a difference to the modern cliche of both
1; The rampant Epicurian libertine hedonist - well this is not the case in its original philosophy - it is more akin to a wanderer and relaxed seeker.
2. TheStoic. Neither does the cliche of the emotionally detached cold stoic fit
There is a good focus in modern 'stoics' on nurturing pleasure from the senses through the arts - through wellbeing, a focus on benevolence as opposed to self-preoccupation and on the development of ethical awareness - putting back in - social duty - care for others.
However, the rub here is that the quality of independence and self preoccupation is often required if you are a young evolving curious artist of a personality type inclined for resistance. This resistance is how interesting artists are formed - rebellious - stubborn etc
Control is not a virtue - questioning and freedom is.
This is not to say that a Stoic approach cannot support a less motivated learner - but it cannot be assumed that it is an approach that is always welcomed. Many young people are are often inherently rebellious of course - a dislike of control, routine and parental mithering - it is a longer road but their own track on the outside - often very self informed - well read, observant, intuitive. It is certainly a much greyer shade for us all than the Greek texts.
Myers Briggs' their methodology - has had its critics but it was one of the first methodologies to recognise difference and diversity in persons - and try to educate workplaces about understanding / managing mixed groups.
De Botton On Winnicot
Winnicott also came up with the idea of the “good enough mother”. Other psychoanalysts often demanded that the mother be everything, or else the child would be harmed. But Winnicott allowed a greater amount of error for both the mother and father. For anyone who has a family of their own it’s a nice deprecatory starting point.
This collection brings together Winnicott’s most important works about understanding the minds of children, and includes essays such as “Concept of a Healthy Individual”, the “Value of Depression” and “Delinquency as a Sign of Hope.” These sound very intriguing, and indeed controversial, even by today’s standards – would you agree?
Definitely. A lot of his writing involved picking up the broken pieces after the Second World War, when children had endured complicated family arrangements – whether the father was away, or killed, or the children sent to the countryside. He found a ready audience in his ideas about imperfection, and about accepting imperfection while still trying to get better.
Winnicott is praised as being one of the most creative and accessible of all psychoanalysts. Your own work has been described as a “philosophy of everyday life”, and I wondered whether his approach inspired yours?
When I think about the essayists that I like, I realise I have a very low tolerance for complicated writing. There is almost nothing in the humanities that can’t be expressed simply, even if it’s a complicated idea. It’s not rocket science, so the onus is on the writer to provide a charming reading experience.
Why did you choose his collection over better known psychoanalysts, such as Sigmund or Anna Freud?
Partly for literary reasons – I like the way he writes and I like his personality. He is the sort of person I would like to be friends with, which I don’t feel about either Anna or Sigmund Freud. While a lot of what he says is Freudian, I prefer the nuances and the ordinariness that he holds on to while discussing pretty weird stuff.
Solice & Seeking ; both
'Toward the forest’ 1897 Woodcut ; printed in deep blue, turquoise green, yellow and beige, Printer Woll's second variation (of three), signed in pencil.
The Sick Child
Seminar notes:
Western Painting at this point was predominantly about religion, figurative accuracy, wealth and status. Munch, Vincent & Gauguin were somewhat repelled by this. They recognised the spirit of early Italian painters like Sassetta, Delacroix too, they felt kinship with William Blake, Durer and Goya.
'The Sick Child' see above:
Munch was the first Artist in Western Visual Art to agitate the surface of his paintings and prints to emote his own existential autobiographical feelings - agitation or poetics that explicitly told his own personal narratives - no one had knowingly explored and visualised this psychological authorship before in such depth - and as a means of self expression & psychic amelioration - not in in paint anyway ... not since ritualistic prehistoric Cave Painting.
(Vincent did this too, a year or so later in 88/9 - but Munch’s painting, of his own sister, ‘The Sick Child’ 1885 is the first 'known' or recognised use of this abstract tactile expressionism in the WEST ....where the sickness and emotion (of painter & sitter conflated in paint ) becomes the portraits real authentic motive and subject.
It depicts the gravitas and diseased solemnity of the sitters state - her mortality and connectivity / also we feel the loss of the painter. It connotes via his deliberate palette knife cuts and abstraction - a sense of demise using primitive inscribed markings instead of the norm - tasteful traditional symbolism - a limp vase of flowers etc.
He painted his lost sister as a memory of the event - her loss witnessed 1877 yet he painted it in 1885.
after processing matters. Survivors guilt and ptsd fuelled this work. It is very akin in actual fact to cutting / self harm / flagellation. His private painting was his way of releasing, processing and placating his difficult emotions owning these himself without involving another, a form of ‘anonism’ and of Self inventory. William Blake used religious allegory to show his vision yet Munch and Van Gogh succeeded in tapping personal narratives that represent universal themes. Works such as The Sick Child, 'Wheat Field with Reaper' and 'Starry Night over the Rhône' evidence a kinship between the artists on a deeper fundamental level.
Painted 1899 : Dance By the shore by Edvard Munch one of my favourite paintings - special - the geology - shapes of it - the colour - the vibrancy of mood - the view from his summer house - the great Edvard palette / beauty / myth
............................................................................................
''At one - the wind rose - and with it the nosie of the black poplars'' PL
poem 2006 by mm
'Children under stress'
University Campus Curricular - module1777 :
Desire paths (cutting through the long grass)
Desire paths (cutting through the long grass)
dedicated to Moria Hutchison Soroptimist ; Headteacher : Educator ;
https://sigbi.org/keighley/rip-moira-hutchison-27-06-31-to-13-06-14/
bronze by louise bourgouis
Sula Wolff - loners - the life path of unusual / gifted children
another excellent thesis from hyde
KINO Poster rough by mm for the film Hiroshima Mon Amour
Tumbled and conflated - astride the engines into forever
Adventure Time Historicity & the Chronotope
Restrictions of 'linear time' have always frustrated sensitive people - I think about it a lot - and always have. So music is a saviour / muse in this respect, of achieving NON linear time. Creative acts of remembering the future - remember ?
Adventure Time in greek myth. Chronotopes, where changing aspects of time and space are achieved. The ancient Greek story has “adventure time” for hero and heroine where their own duetto developments do not impact upon other characters; This space in which their adventures happens, is effectively theirs alone.
Historicity
Actual real people in social history - the essence and real quality of being part of histories tumbled conflated immersive engine - as opposed to being a statistic, myth, legend, reject, victim or fiction.
All the people (‘’where do they all come from'' ( e. rigby))
Sometimes you just have to go back up stream and retrieve them - reanimate them - the lost. Expanding forgetting remembering ; Film: Hiroshima Mon Amour
Time, The Universe is expanding and Voyager is still travelling through time and interstellar space carrying Bach, Stravinsky and Blind Willie Johnson to infinity and beyond ! Tumbled immersive engines - took them all into forever.
Having operated for 42 years the spacecraft still communicates with Earth, receives routine commands and transmits data to humans (visit & track here https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/#where_are_they_now
Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have reached Interstellar space - each continue their unique journey through the Universe. In the NASA app, you can see the real spacecraft trajectories of the Voyagers, which are updated every five minutes.
the combined duet of the fixed / the steady with the wild / elusive
Summer reference Film. 'Walk the Line' the life of June (Carter) pictured here and her pal Mr Cash - one of the best historical biopics - good if 21 and unfamiliar with this 20th century story.
...................................................................................
In Anthropology 'anamnesis' is a mythical fireside philosophical discussion with PLATO - that humans possessed ancestral knowledge from our past innings - that learning consists of rediscovering previous lost ancient knowledge. It is an interesting precursor to reflexive learning and of forgetting. A clean sheet and then a becoming again - a recovering of pre-requisite data through a memory recovering and promptings - so in essence ones life experience is actually a 'palimpsest'. A layering. An experience on top of a faded experience. I rarely get de ja vu now - it does fade as you age. The term has since become a medical term for a patients recollections. ptsd etc too. So now think of healing /recovery and indeed learning in this new context when you write, interpret or compose. Learning or remembering.
Film for October 2020 - Level 5 project: Hiroshima Mon Amour
adventure time - inside and under a cloud
Seminar notes - 2019 workshop notes
Drawing from the life - drawing your life - drawing life
Learning & Remembering - Polykettle James Joyce exercise
A warm reminder of what you did in workshops: OR what you missed as I walked about talking and asking you - as you buried yourself into some excellent drawings - half listening to me (which was the plan) and my prompts and the content of some of those classes merged with your more intuitive modes - all enabling some excellent drawings.
Reflexive Learning - reflective knowledge. A circular relationships with ones own experience. Cause and effect. Lesson learning is embedded in human beliefs - games - play - a circle game - growth but with snakes & ladders,
See Modernism - Joyce in character : Ulysses in 1917.
My youth. Only once it
comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the
same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want.
Nothing new under the sun.
As an exercise flip the meaning & context above by JJ to this.
Her Wisdom - it will come. ~ Or hiz.
Take a train to it tonight ? ~ No.
Doesn't work like that.
knowledge ? Youth wants.
No fast track.
Nothings new under the Moon
All of its been said, sang, done.
Yet all of it - all of that
Is for herz or hiz to come.
The prose by Joyce (and my small but important alteration of context basically means this);
That Human life and its trials and beautitudes are constant and as Chaucer and Shakespeare shows us - does not change like fashion. Romans, Elizabethans, Greeks and Georgians had the same loves and woes as we ..... loss or love at each stage of life is unaltered by time, sexual preference. It transcends eras.
Ones youth is driven by a set of primal drivers that are common across any time - and so the smiling lamenting of youth by a dying Viking Octogenarian off the Beaches of Lindisfarne in 762 will still be exactly the same philosophy and emotion as in the year 2095 by a silver suited future utopian Octogenarian .... as then - as is now.
'This conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion'
Lecture notes / Slides:
1: The Yellow Book & Fin de siècle (cover by Aubrey Beardsley) as discussed in seminar for it’s subversive cultural influence - yellow books published London 1894 to 1897 (Munch, Gauguin and Van Gogh pioneered new expressionist drawing during this same narrow window but earlier in 1888 ) German Expressionism came later in 1905.
2: Sight & Sound 2011 Film ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ Depicts post war 1950 social nuances so well ....directed by Terence Davies and starring Rachel Weisz who is outstanding as Hester Collier - her performance is both urgent and vulnerable all at once.
Recommended / Books & Film
seminar slides
Recommended book : Blue - Colour by Carol Mavor
Sabinas important work helped lead to the modern developments / understanding the object relation / child whole object constancy breakthrough.
*Inclusivity / notes 2012
If we read the original ethos behind the Greek 'Epicurian' texts and the 'Stoic' texts ( Seneca, Marcus Aurelius etc ), there is a difference to the modern cliche of both
1; The rampant Epicurian libertine hedonist - well this is not the case in its original philosophy - it is more akin to a wanderer and relaxed seeker.
2. TheStoic. Neither does the cliche of the emotionally detached cold stoic fit
There is a good focus in modern 'stoics' on nurturing pleasure from the senses through the arts - through wellbeing, a focus on benevolence as opposed to self-preoccupation and on the development of ethical awareness - putting back in - social duty - care for others.
However, the rub here is that the quality of independence and self preoccupation is often required if you are a young evolving curious artist of a personality type inclined for resistance. This resistance is how interesting artists are formed - rebellious - stubborn etc
This hardship and poverty - quirk, deprivations and resulting resilience - is what cultivates sensitivity or defiance, it is a reaction to the familial, the safe and secure.
Control is not a virtue - questioning and freedom is.
This is not to say that a Stoic approach cannot support a less motivated learner - but it cannot be assumed that it is an approach that is always welcomed. Many young people are are often inherently rebellious of course - a dislike of control, routine and parental mithering - it is a longer road but their own track on the outside - often very self informed - well read, observant, intuitive. It is certainly a much greyer shade for us all than the Greek texts.
It is so important to recognise Solitude and Collectivism in learners and embrace both
Myers Briggs' their methodology - has had its critics but it was one of the first methodologies to recognise difference and diversity in persons - and try to educate workplaces about understanding / managing mixed groups.
De Botton On Winnicot
Winnicott also came up with the idea of the “good enough mother”. Other psychoanalysts often demanded that the mother be everything, or else the child would be harmed. But Winnicott allowed a greater amount of error for both the mother and father. For anyone who has a family of their own it’s a nice deprecatory starting point.
This collection brings together Winnicott’s most important works about understanding the minds of children, and includes essays such as “Concept of a Healthy Individual”, the “Value of Depression” and “Delinquency as a Sign of Hope.” These sound very intriguing, and indeed controversial, even by today’s standards – would you agree?
Definitely. A lot of his writing involved picking up the broken pieces after the Second World War, when children had endured complicated family arrangements – whether the father was away, or killed, or the children sent to the countryside. He found a ready audience in his ideas about imperfection, and about accepting imperfection while still trying to get better.
Winnicott is praised as being one of the most creative and accessible of all psychoanalysts. Your own work has been described as a “philosophy of everyday life”, and I wondered whether his approach inspired yours?
When I think about the essayists that I like, I realise I have a very low tolerance for complicated writing. There is almost nothing in the humanities that can’t be expressed simply, even if it’s a complicated idea. It’s not rocket science, so the onus is on the writer to provide a charming reading experience.
Why did you choose his collection over better known psychoanalysts, such as Sigmund or Anna Freud?
Partly for literary reasons – I like the way he writes and I like his personality. He is the sort of person I would like to be friends with, which I don’t feel about either Anna or Sigmund Freud. While a lot of what he says is Freudian, I prefer the nuances and the ordinariness that he holds on to while discussing pretty weird stuff.
Solice & Seeking ; both
'Toward the forest’ 1897 Woodcut ; printed in deep blue, turquoise green, yellow and beige, Printer Woll's second variation (of three), signed in pencil.
The Sick Child
'Toward the forest’ 1897 Woodcut ; printed in deep blue, turquoise green, yellow and beige, Printer Woll's second variation (of three), signed in pencil.
The Sick Child
Seminar notes:
Western Painting at this point was predominantly about religion, figurative accuracy, wealth and status. Munch, Vincent & Gauguin were somewhat repelled by this. They recognised the spirit of early Italian painters like Sassetta, Delacroix too, they felt kinship with William Blake, Durer and Goya.
'The Sick Child' see above:
Munch was the first Artist in Western Visual Art to agitate the surface of his paintings and prints to emote his own existential autobiographical feelings - agitation or poetics that explicitly told his own personal narratives - no one had knowingly explored and visualised this psychological authorship before in such depth - and as a means of self expression & psychic amelioration - not in in paint anyway ... not since ritualistic prehistoric Cave Painting.
Munch was the first Artist in Western Visual Art to agitate the surface of his paintings and prints to emote his own existential autobiographical feelings - agitation or poetics that explicitly told his own personal narratives - no one had knowingly explored and visualised this psychological authorship before in such depth - and as a means of self expression & psychic amelioration - not in in paint anyway ... not since ritualistic prehistoric Cave Painting.
(Vincent did this too, a year or so later in 88/9 - but Munch’s painting, of his own sister, ‘The Sick Child’ 1885 is the first 'known' or recognised use of this abstract tactile expressionism in the WEST ....where the sickness and emotion (of painter & sitter conflated in paint ) becomes the portraits real authentic motive and subject.
It depicts the gravitas and diseased solemnity of the sitters state - her mortality and connectivity / also we feel the loss of the painter. It connotes via his deliberate palette knife cuts and abstraction - a sense of demise using primitive inscribed markings instead of the norm - tasteful traditional symbolism - a limp vase of flowers etc.
It depicts the gravitas and diseased solemnity of the sitters state - her mortality and connectivity / also we feel the loss of the painter. It connotes via his deliberate palette knife cuts and abstraction - a sense of demise using primitive inscribed markings instead of the norm - tasteful traditional symbolism - a limp vase of flowers etc.
He painted his lost sister as a memory of the event - her loss witnessed 1877 yet he painted it in 1885.
after processing matters. Survivors guilt and ptsd fuelled this work. It is very akin in actual fact to cutting / self harm / flagellation. His private painting was his way of releasing, processing and placating his difficult emotions owning these himself without involving another, a form of ‘anonism’ and of Self inventory. William Blake used religious allegory to show his vision yet Munch and Van Gogh succeeded in tapping personal narratives that represent universal themes. Works such as The Sick Child, 'Wheat Field with Reaper' and 'Starry Night over the Rhône' evidence a kinship between the artists on a deeper fundamental level.
Painted 1899 : Dance By the shore by Edvard Munch one of my favourite paintings - special - the geology - shapes of it - the colour - the vibrancy of mood - the view from his summer house - the great Edvard palette / beauty / myth
............................................................................................
''At one - the wind rose - and with it the nosie of the black poplars'' PL
poem 2006 by mm
seminar notes:
The ineffable parallel life ; Costume - troupes - and .....”the living minutes of our lives” Ontology - roots - warmth and humour
The Mari Lwyd
The importance of roots & inclusivity / John Merrick & Mari Lwyd & forms of humour, humility and beauty
watch the welsh voice reverberate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ptel9C3Zhg
Seminar / slide notes by mm
Enchantment and enactment - learning - early impression & influence, homage & how we celebrate, adjust or ameliorate nature and nurture via creativity and education : How the mind perceives the material and immaterial. Custom.
#poly kettle Lecture slides / notes by mm
Euphory & Dysphory - bedfellows in one showcase. How we react Seeing & feeling - early impression & influence &
Slide above.
The moment a dragon is slain' simulation ; verisimilitude ; witnessing drama (trauma); reaction.Traditions - Troupe
Punch & Judy Puppet Show Paris 1963.
New paradigms.
curiosity - fascination - enthrallment
Robert B Browning wrote : ''I count life just as stuff - to try the soul's strength on''
He was no braggard - his legacy is clear to see and read - he also wrote to E.B Browning “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, 'A whole I planned, youth shows but half ... (Lennon adapted this verse for his song to Yoko Ono) es - and to supplement studio & academic essay content.
The film above - an UNsentimental film - it works
Elizabeth BB and Robert BB poems - (Sonnets from the Portugese)- a book found on a bunk bed Wilmslow 1945 by M.Jones
Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from the age of eleven
Research ‘femme savante’
notes: gender - Rrose Selavy & Myra Breckinbridge - read the book
Duchamp - the handle - to handle Royal Acadamey pdf
Written by Rebecca Bray
For the Learning Department © Royal Academy of Arts
Duchamp and Dalí both insisted on the importance of the individual, a concept they each explored in their work, primarily through consciously developed and performed identities: Dalí as a dandyish, extravagant showman and prolific artist; Duchamp as an ironic, solitary figure who by the 1930s many thought had relinquished art-making entirely. Although their public personas differed greatly, the two artists are united in their need to actively construct for themselves a unique identity.
Cat. 31 At first glance, the person in this photograph appears to be a fashionable woman of the 1920s. Wearing a low-set feathered hat and several necklaces, her gaze is direct, cool and questioning. At the time, her appearance would have been recognisable as a ‘femme savante’, an educated, intellectual, artistically literate woman. She is, however, none other than Marcel Duchamp. This 1921 photograph demonstrates his visual, even flamboyant, exploration of assuming an alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. This character was not a one-off occurrence, but an identity that Duchamp assumed many times during his career. He apparently signed or co-signed works ‘by Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy’ and even appeared (in a photograph taken in the same costume) as the face of an imaginary fragrance, Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath, Veil Water).
Key to understanding the layered significance of Duchamp/Rrose is the name. Rather than a misspelling that stuck, Rrose Sélavy is a deliberate pun, intended to prompt wider connotations when looking at anything created of or by her. Exactly what Duchamp meant by the pun is somewhat less clear. The most common interpretation is that it sounds like Eros, c’est la vie (Eros, that’s the life. Eros is the Greek god of erotic love); but it has also been interpreted to mean arroser la vie (make a toast to life). Perhaps its ambiguity is one of the reasons why Duchamp made this pun, so that viewers would understand it differently based on their own associations and allowing for slippage of meaning. Puns appear many times throughout Duchamp’s artworks and notes; they became an important element in his artistic identity, a way to encourage certain readings of works that otherwise may seem impenetrable. Often deciphering these puns relied on understanding an in-joke, or on being part of the specific circle of friends and artists known to Duchamp – to non-French speakers, for example, the name Rrose Sélavy is not an obvious pun. Duchamp began to use puns as a way to promote his elusive persona, while also helping those ‘in the know’ to interpret his works.
Duchamp’s exploration of a female identity is particularly relevant when considered alongside today’s discourse surrounding gender. Duchamp’s decision to ‘change sex’ at will was a radically unusual one for the period, suggesting he believed gender and identity to be a fluid concept, an idea which has only recently gained mainstream acceptance. However, it is important to approach Rrose Sélavy within the context of the period in which the persona was created. The status of women in the art circles Duchamp frequented would have been limited, with women often seen as being muses for male artists rather than recognised as artists in their own right. Duchamp would deliberately ‘put on’ the persona of Rrose Sélavy for the creation of artwork, rather than as a part of his lifestyle, or to make a political or feminist statement. With even her name acting as a pun, Rrose Sélavy seems to be less a fully formed person than a personification of Duchamp’s ideas about playing with identity.
'This conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion' mm
''It all begins and ends with Bach''. (It doesnt end though Ludwig)
(Ludwig Van Beethoven)
What colour is this piece ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1A7Jts4_Ag
then listen to this one by Despaxhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92R3Tw4o8dk
Mary Garden - for Moira
Louise B
Colour - the feel of a colour - the sound of a colour
Listen to this historic link :
Debussy & Mary Garden Interview about Debussy and her singing Pelleas Act 3
seminar notes:
The ineffable parallel life ; Costume - troupes - and .....”the living minutes of our lives” Ontology - roots - warmth and humour
The Mari Lwyd
The importance of roots & inclusivity / John Merrick & Mari Lwyd & forms of humour, humility and beauty
watch the welsh voice reverberate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ptel9C3Zhg
Seminar / slide notes by mm
Enchantment and enactment - learning - early impression & influence, homage & how we celebrate, adjust or ameliorate nature and nurture via creativity and education : How the mind perceives the material and immaterial. Custom.
#poly kettle Lecture slides / notes by mm
Euphory & Dysphory - bedfellows in one showcase. How we react Seeing & feeling - early impression & influence &
Slide above.
The moment a dragon is slain' simulation ; verisimilitude ; witnessing drama (trauma); reaction.Traditions - Troupe
Punch & Judy Puppet Show Paris 1963.
New paradigms.
Punch & Judy Puppet Show Paris 1963.
New paradigms.
curiosity - fascination - enthrallment
Robert B Browning wrote : ''I count life just as stuff - to try the soul's strength on''
He was no braggard - his legacy is clear to see and read - he also wrote to E.B Browning “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, 'A whole I planned, youth shows but half ... (Lennon adapted this verse for his song to Yoko Ono) es - and to supplement studio & academic essay content.
The film above - an UNsentimental film - it works
Elizabeth BB and Robert BB poems - (Sonnets from the Portugese)- a book found on a bunk bed Wilmslow 1945 by M.Jones
Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from the age of eleven
notes: gender - Rrose Selavy & Myra Breckinbridge - read the book
Duchamp - the handle - to handle Royal Acadamey pdf
Written by Rebecca Bray
For the Learning Department © Royal Academy of Arts
Duchamp and Dalí both insisted on the importance of the individual, a concept they each explored in their work, primarily through consciously developed and performed identities: Dalí as a dandyish, extravagant showman and prolific artist; Duchamp as an ironic, solitary figure who by the 1930s many thought had relinquished art-making entirely. Although their public personas differed greatly, the two artists are united in their need to actively construct for themselves a unique identity.
Cat. 31 At first glance, the person in this photograph appears to be a fashionable woman of the 1920s. Wearing a low-set feathered hat and several necklaces, her gaze is direct, cool and questioning. At the time, her appearance would have been recognisable as a ‘femme savante’, an educated, intellectual, artistically literate woman. She is, however, none other than Marcel Duchamp. This 1921 photograph demonstrates his visual, even flamboyant, exploration of assuming an alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. This character was not a one-off occurrence, but an identity that Duchamp assumed many times during his career. He apparently signed or co-signed works ‘by Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy’ and even appeared (in a photograph taken in the same costume) as the face of an imaginary fragrance, Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath, Veil Water).
Cat. 31 At first glance, the person in this photograph appears to be a fashionable woman of the 1920s. Wearing a low-set feathered hat and several necklaces, her gaze is direct, cool and questioning. At the time, her appearance would have been recognisable as a ‘femme savante’, an educated, intellectual, artistically literate woman. She is, however, none other than Marcel Duchamp. This 1921 photograph demonstrates his visual, even flamboyant, exploration of assuming an alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. This character was not a one-off occurrence, but an identity that Duchamp assumed many times during his career. He apparently signed or co-signed works ‘by Duchamp and Rrose Sélavy’ and even appeared (in a photograph taken in the same costume) as the face of an imaginary fragrance, Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath, Veil Water).
Key to understanding the layered significance of Duchamp/Rrose is the name. Rather than a misspelling that stuck, Rrose Sélavy is a deliberate pun, intended to prompt wider connotations when looking at anything created of or by her. Exactly what Duchamp meant by the pun is somewhat less clear. The most common interpretation is that it sounds like Eros, c’est la vie (Eros, that’s the life. Eros is the Greek god of erotic love); but it has also been interpreted to mean arroser la vie (make a toast to life). Perhaps its ambiguity is one of the reasons why Duchamp made this pun, so that viewers would understand it differently based on their own associations and allowing for slippage of meaning. Puns appear many times throughout Duchamp’s artworks and notes; they became an important element in his artistic identity, a way to encourage certain readings of works that otherwise may seem impenetrable. Often deciphering these puns relied on understanding an in-joke, or on being part of the specific circle of friends and artists known to Duchamp – to non-French speakers, for example, the name Rrose Sélavy is not an obvious pun. Duchamp began to use puns as a way to promote his elusive persona, while also helping those ‘in the know’ to interpret his works.
'This conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion' mm
''It all begins and ends with Bach''. (It doesnt end though Ludwig)
(Ludwig Van Beethoven)
What colour is this piece ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1A7Jts4_Ag
then listen to this one by Despaxhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92R3Tw4o8dk
Mary Garden - for Moira
Louise B
Colour - the feel of a colour - the sound of a colour
Listen to this historic link :
Debussy & Mary Garden Interview about Debussy and her singing Pelleas Act 3
Lecture Slide: Wim Wenders / Robert Walser - The Walk
Lecture Slide:
Rain - 1915 by Apollinaire
Lecture Slide:
Rain - 1915 by Apollinaire
notes to the future - notes to the past ;
Ghosts :
We work alongside ghosts and the past a lot - and with you as students too - but I hadn't reckoned fully on what the real transcendental language of sheet music was until today.
Music was sent out on the golden record - see other old post - sent out by NASA into the milky way for ever and ever - but it seems we have been doing the same thing to ourselves with notes arriving from the past for centuries.
Note from the future to the past says - send help.
notes to the future - notes to the past ;
Ghosts :
We work alongside ghosts and the past a lot - and with you as students too - but I hadn't reckoned fully on what the real transcendental language of sheet music was until today.
Music was sent out on the golden record - see other old post - sent out by NASA into the milky way for ever and ever - but it seems we have been doing the same thing to ourselves with notes arriving from the past for centuries.
Note from the future to the past says - send help.
Nuances in 'Authorial Practice' / Classical Music / Art
notes only; Initial reactions - after the wonderful Benedetti Institute sessions :
*Update ; Having now just experienced the final Paganini, Warlock and Tallis performances - it is abundantly clear that music is all about the magic of the act and the performance, irrespective of status.
These performances of each piece will probably be regarded in time as their most moving renditions ( especially the Tallis) for reasons that transcend elite professional performance. The context of the piece - covid 19, the diversity of the global players - and ultimately the feeling of sound and vision that resonated in our earphones - it was intense and very moving. A brilliant thing ! - Captured as a collective moving moment forever - performed by both children and adults - such widening participation. Congratulations everyone. The Children in this piece and all the pieces today will be showing their own grandchildren this in 80 years time to inspire them. This alone is a fantastic achievement. At Primary school we used to bury a tin full of simple gifts - items from each child's home. - a drawing, a poem, a mouth organ, a hairbrush, a spoon, a twix etc. It was called a time caspsule, a treasure tin. The tin was a gift from us all to the future - for the future to open. This Finale film footage does exactly that and more for future generations to discover. It shows a collective of individual human beings - all being extraordinarily creative and yet also profoundly and intimately so very open and normal within their own personal homes - human beings at their best. That earnest endeavour and the desire to be part of something other than just themselves. We all want that I think deep down.
If Paganini had witnessed the Caprice variations by the virtuosos this weekend - It is 100% certain he would be most delighted and very moved by such 2020 attention and the incredible original interpretations to his immortal music.
notes only;
Gifted classical musicians and players interpret and share music through their own unique particular - they don't just 'play' it nor do they merely translate it - rather it is an immersive sensorial experience for them - a re-interpretation by them-selves as individual artists / people. Their adroit technical mastery allows full intuitive improvisation. They all know this and feel this. Thrilling , moving and fun too.
Looking at an old fast feral pianist drawing I did several years ago - a primary memory of a northern dining room - then watching virtuoso musicians , it struck me how unique classical sheet music is to other art forms - in the way that it preserves and reinvents ancient or 18th or 19th century artists inner visions. I realise these manuscripts are adapted and transcribed (which raises further questions for me about authenticity and freedom to adapt etc) I mean you can't tinker with a Picasso drawing. ( you are inspired by it and buy the concept of play / making things up / deconstruction etc - but you dont tinker with a cypher for one of his unique paintings etc. It is an interesting conversational piece.
I suppose it is like comparing apples and pears really -but as I say - its interesting and if its peaked my curiosity- then its of worth a chat. The original sheet is a cypher on paper of the poetic experience of the dead composer - it was encapsulated via paper into a new shared language for future generations. Elgar’s quote about hearing the music on his walks among trees - his original emotions jotted down then become a written code' of how to reanimate / interpret those feelings.
notes only;
Obviously generations later these thoughts can now be evoked, conducted and played again. This is obvious to musicians of course but the same is not possible in my art form. An early 17th Century play is the best comparison to a score of music, like Macbeth circa 1606, a play that has evolved for each set of players and era, each director. So it is interesting to think that a felt drawn or painted experience cannot be channelled again in new form in 2090 or 2150 by another person. If for example a modern artist transcribes a Rembrandt or Picasso it is not valued much beyond it being transcription, imitation, emulation. One can look at a drawing and maybe feel it - but not re-animate it as an immersive act like music can. Is it too private ? inimitable too ?
notes only;
' ... i don't think in any language.
notes only; Initial reactions - after the wonderful Benedetti Institute sessions :
*Update ; Having now just experienced the final Paganini, Warlock and Tallis performances - it is abundantly clear that music is all about the magic of the act and the performance, irrespective of status.
These performances of each piece will probably be regarded in time as their most moving renditions ( especially the Tallis) for reasons that transcend elite professional performance. The context of the piece - covid 19, the diversity of the global players - and ultimately the feeling of sound and vision that resonated in our earphones - it was intense and very moving. A brilliant thing ! - Captured as a collective moving moment forever - performed by both children and adults - such widening participation. Congratulations everyone. The Children in this piece and all the pieces today will be showing their own grandchildren this in 80 years time to inspire them. This alone is a fantastic achievement. At Primary school we used to bury a tin full of simple gifts - items from each child's home. - a drawing, a poem, a mouth organ, a hairbrush, a spoon, a twix etc. It was called a time caspsule, a treasure tin. The tin was a gift from us all to the future - for the future to open. This Finale film footage does exactly that and more for future generations to discover. It shows a collective of individual human beings - all being extraordinarily creative and yet also profoundly and intimately so very open and normal within their own personal homes - human beings at their best. That earnest endeavour and the desire to be part of something other than just themselves. We all want that I think deep down.
If Paganini had witnessed the Caprice variations by the virtuosos this weekend - It is 100% certain he would be most delighted and very moved by such 2020 attention and the incredible original interpretations to his immortal music.
notes only;
Gifted classical musicians and players interpret and share music through their own unique particular - they don't just 'play' it nor do they merely translate it - rather it is an immersive sensorial experience for them - a re-interpretation by them-selves as individual artists / people. Their adroit technical mastery allows full intuitive improvisation. They all know this and feel this. Thrilling , moving and fun too.
Looking at an old fast feral pianist drawing I did several years ago - a primary memory of a northern dining room - then watching virtuoso musicians , it struck me how unique classical sheet music is to other art forms - in the way that it preserves and reinvents ancient or 18th or 19th century artists inner visions. I realise these manuscripts are adapted and transcribed (which raises further questions for me about authenticity and freedom to adapt etc) I mean you can't tinker with a Picasso drawing. ( you are inspired by it and buy the concept of play / making things up / deconstruction etc - but you dont tinker with a cypher for one of his unique paintings etc. It is an interesting conversational piece.
I suppose it is like comparing apples and pears really -but as I say - its interesting and if its peaked my curiosity- then its of worth a chat. The original sheet is a cypher on paper of the poetic experience of the dead composer - it was encapsulated via paper into a new shared language for future generations. Elgar’s quote about hearing the music on his walks among trees - his original emotions jotted down then become a written code' of how to reanimate / interpret those feelings.
notes only;
Obviously generations later these thoughts can now be evoked, conducted and played again. This is obvious to musicians of course but the same is not possible in my art form. An early 17th Century play is the best comparison to a score of music, like Macbeth circa 1606, a play that has evolved for each set of players and era, each director. So it is interesting to think that a felt drawn or painted experience cannot be channelled again in new form in 2090 or 2150 by another person. If for example a modern artist transcribes a Rembrandt or Picasso it is not valued much beyond it being transcription, imitation, emulation. One can look at a drawing and maybe feel it - but not re-animate it as an immersive act like music can. Is it too private ? inimitable too ?
notes only;
Indeed the 'written word' a novel, requires no sound - no oral voice, to absorb and re-live the authors intent - as it is a silent internal communication across ages when we read - see Nabokov's quote on how he hears no language in the brain - not Russian nor English - just images.
' ... i don't think in any language.
No, I think in images, and now and then a Russian phrase or an English phrase
will form with the foam of the brainwave, but that's about all.''
In visual language - only ones 'self' can channel ones self etc - This what Duchamp and then Warhol exploited with ready mades and repeats. A solo drawing or manifestation from mind to stick to paper - is a solo communication. It is the handkerchief thrown into the grand canyon by Don. A very quiet act - and very like Walt Whitman's title - 'A song of myself'.
notes only;
Albrecht Durer and the invention of reproduction / printmaking / etching - of course enabled an image to be reproduced like a bank note - but it is still just an imitation, an antique , a replication - a bland simulacrum - a copy and not a NEW interpretation like music - retaining its vigour - nor new life. This is why a drawing is seen as so valuable fiscally over limited edition prints. Drawing is that singular record of one moment. Their own thoughts and never again by El Greco, Picasso, Delaunay, Khalo. Choral music or Violin etc doesn't have this limitation - this finite restriction.
This is what addled my brain for 24 hours.
* Jazz music is quite different of course - in that it can be altered free form and in the spirit of jazz itself - without concerns for overt respect/authenticity to the original composers wishes. Although I suspect miles davis would want a big say in how his work was interpreted.
Music is the person. If I was given the choice of listening to Jean Sibelius perform for two hours or sit down and talk - I know which one I would choose.
The person is the artist / performer - and we should appreciate this truth more rather than marvelling always at the mythic manifestations of the output.
One needs a little Sturm & Drang ?
An (in aid of UNICEF) Interview on drawing here from 2014/5 ish https://lanugofur.blogspot.com ( not waffle ) from when I was more inside the storm of such things and very productive.
notes only;
Coleridge's 'Khubla Kahn's Pleasure Dome' was dreamt up too ....so, the same process as the metaphysical composer, up to this point - but the resulting poem on paper does not then get adapted, edited, altered and interpreted. Or does it ? For it can be abridged and read in new ways by a voice - it can be cut up and edited etc ? This is a longer conversation about authorship, appropriation and integrity, intent and originality. (ethics beyond say Intellectual copyright) - all to be had between an editor - a Poet - a Musician - a composer and a performer.
Elliots 'Wasteland' text - is an example of a Poem being heavily cut and influenced by an Editor /mentor. *Ezra Pounds cuts and edits to the original Elliot text can all be seen on the page in an excellent Faber edition that I have - which places both texts along side one another. Abba negotiated huge deals which allowed interpretation for musicals - they did the re-interpetations and had full final say. So the lving Artist has pride and ego intact. The dead ? What can they say ?
*( Pound by the way became a Nazi in WW2 Italy - and was found guilty of treason / and lost all respect from there on in )
I felt odd re-arranging a snippet of Joyce recently - as an exercise -which was interesting to highlight a point and a view. But remember that Joyce raids Homer. This all shows also that although we do revere these texts - that there has always been a spirit of deconstruction and reconstruction in the Arts - a spirit of transcribing - which all of these historical authors benefited from themselves.
In visual language - only ones 'self' can channel ones self etc - This what Duchamp and then Warhol exploited with ready mades and repeats. A solo drawing or manifestation from mind to stick to paper - is a solo communication. It is the handkerchief thrown into the grand canyon by Don. A very quiet act - and very like Walt Whitman's title - 'A song of myself'.
notes only;
Albrecht Durer and the invention of reproduction / printmaking / etching - of course enabled an image to be reproduced like a bank note - but it is still just an imitation, an antique , a replication - a bland simulacrum - a copy and not a NEW interpretation like music - retaining its vigour - nor new life. This is why a drawing is seen as so valuable fiscally over limited edition prints. Drawing is that singular record of one moment. Their own thoughts and never again by El Greco, Picasso, Delaunay, Khalo. Choral music or Violin etc doesn't have this limitation - this finite restriction.
This is what addled my brain for 24 hours.
* Jazz music is quite different of course - in that it can be altered free form and in the spirit of jazz itself - without concerns for overt respect/authenticity to the original composers wishes. Although I suspect miles davis would want a big say in how his work was interpreted.
Music is the person. If I was given the choice of listening to Jean Sibelius perform for two hours or sit down and talk - I know which one I would choose.
The person is the artist / performer - and we should appreciate this truth more rather than marvelling always at the mythic manifestations of the output.
One needs a little Sturm & Drang ?
An (in aid of UNICEF) Interview on drawing here from 2014/5 ish https://lanugofur.blogspot.com ( not waffle ) from when I was more inside the storm of such things and very productive.
notes only;
Coleridge's 'Khubla Kahn's Pleasure Dome' was dreamt up too ....so, the same process as the metaphysical composer, up to this point - but the resulting poem on paper does not then get adapted, edited, altered and interpreted. Or does it ? For it can be abridged and read in new ways by a voice - it can be cut up and edited etc ? This is a longer conversation about authorship, appropriation and integrity, intent and originality. (ethics beyond say Intellectual copyright) - all to be had between an editor - a Poet - a Musician - a composer and a performer.
Elliots 'Wasteland' text - is an example of a Poem being heavily cut and influenced by an Editor /mentor. *Ezra Pounds cuts and edits to the original Elliot text can all be seen on the page in an excellent Faber edition that I have - which places both texts along side one another. Abba negotiated huge deals which allowed interpretation for musicals - they did the re-interpetations and had full final say. So the lving Artist has pride and ego intact. The dead ? What can they say ?
*( Pound by the way became a Nazi in WW2 Italy - and was found guilty of treason / and lost all respect from there on in )
*( Pound by the way became a Nazi in WW2 Italy - and was found guilty of treason / and lost all respect from there on in )
I felt odd re-arranging a snippet of Joyce recently - as an exercise -which was interesting to highlight a point and a view. But remember that Joyce raids Homer. This all shows also that although we do revere these texts - that there has always been a spirit of deconstruction and reconstruction in the Arts - a spirit of transcribing - which all of these historical authors benefited from themselves.
The project was hailed as a landmark, not just in the history of Scotland's music, but in the history of music for stringed instruments.
Macintosh's Lament here
This is beautiful longing and missing - but importantly to me what comes across is that overwhelming wealth of absolute respect for the lamented - be that the person or place or time. It then moves forwards into a sense of celebration. This is ancient music. A review by me 2008
Review:
''The gemstone is Rideout's pibroch.'' New York Times''
''... a complete revelation...'' The Guardian, U.K.
The project was hailed as a landmark, not just in the history of Scotland's music, but in the history of music for stringed instruments. It's little known out of specialist areas.
The project was hailed as a landmark, not just in the history of Scotland's music, but in the history of music for stringed instruments.
Macintosh's Lament here
This is beautiful longing and missing - but importantly to me what comes across is that overwhelming wealth of absolute respect for the lamented - be that the person or place or time. It then moves forwards into a sense of celebration. This is ancient music. A review by me 2008
Review:
''The gemstone is Rideout's pibroch.'' New York Times''
''... a complete revelation...'' The Guardian, U.K.
''The gemstone is Rideout's pibroch.'' New York Times''
''... a complete revelation...'' The Guardian, U.K.
The project was hailed as a landmark, not just in the history of Scotland's music, but in the history of music for stringed instruments. It's little known out of specialist areas.
When Herman Hesse wrote that 'Every man or woman is not only him or herself for he or she is also the unique particular, always significant and remarkable point where the phenomena of the world intersect once and for all and never again'
Hesse is not saying we shouldn't embrace our shared social sisterhood or brotherhood etc nor is he claiming that we should ignore our collective strengths as a closer knit society or humanity. He is stating that personal experience - though often shared - is always unique and particular to the individual - we are all different due to a myriad of circumstances, responses - the quirks and nuances of an individuals genetic make up within the 'self'. Using this unique auto biographical experiential voice and knowledge is vitally important for any Artist, Musician, Author etc if they wish to make work that has genuine authenticity and honesty - and crucially if we wish to share it as a visual 'opinion' / subtle experience - OR indeed to 'raise the volume' and make societal work that supports, subverts or criticises society. This 'voice' should also be applied to any smart creative school or Institute that seeks to cultivate and harbour creativity. Seeking to emote new knowledge takes risk and deeper levels of self awareness beyond the superficial, aesthetic skills - it requires digging deeper - down through the strata of surface turf that can stifle intuitive germination - stifling original ideas and concepts.
Digging a little deeper through the top soil is necessary if we wish to 'Practice or Teach' Creativity. This is Authorial Practise. The over intellectualism of the Arts is concerning. The esoteric turf of intellectual and analytical theory within the Creative Arts and Humanities.
Don Marquis the great American poet and writer said something along the lines of - to publish a line of poetry is akin to throwing a feather down into the grand canyon -(there will be no grand resounding echo).
Now I may have added the last echo bit - but Marquis' truth can also be applied to the act of producing a drawing, doodle or painting - or playing the fiddle - or indeed to any non commercially commissioned creative practise. It is akin to whispering to ones reflection in the mirror - not an act after approval and with no aspiration attached to it other than the doing. Making at its best and most honest is most often just performed as a statement of existence - an individual or collective act of being.
Authorship helps navigate away from potential senses of absence or disenchantment, away from ones own anthropocentrism. It placates the illusions and negativity that we can feel from status anxiety etc. Creative Practice can steer us away from 'the Other' toward levels of contentment through reflexive engagement - observing what is occurring - learning - remaking and re-owning things presently - in the present tense. Preserving these observations ‘seen’ or perceptions ‘felt’ in a drawn act - as an expression of visual or sonic language or text etc - is an entanglement of sensory observations from the present and of the past - depicted and preserved into one capsule – and therefore the work may become an expression of immediate experience - and even if the work has a natural involvement with the historical past - the work is paradoxically born out of knowledge and feeling gained in the present - therefore it is a recording of that present moments perceptions and not an echo. As a result the work when successful helps define a more acceptable personal state - a new paradigm - the friendship or 'fellowship' that Orwell talked about - important today amidst the plethora of simulated 21 century commercial and social media stimulus that is both heterogeneous and conflicting.' The value of living well - alive, alive oh.
Voyager and Bach and blind Willie Nelson - a conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion ..... through interstellar space -
will it appear back on the horizon in the future - flown full circle ?
notes * A full list of all the music is below near end of blog page
Linked to previous drawing workshops / our sessions on channeling time / historocity / people / place / Life spans - originalities - interpretations - drawing - music - text - sound - vision
The Person / Human Being as work of Art - NOT only their materialised manifestations of their song music poetry voice drawing art etc ; Good People.
The essence and real quality of being part of histories tumbled conflated immersive engine - as opposed to being a statistic, myth, legend, or fiction.
The Good
archival #polykettle 2019/20
Please research this man - and then watch this short but fabulous
1 minute footage from prime TV - link here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_nFuJAF5F0&list=FL_NOzSyKzJxYpMJL8jjyjhA&index=161
It is an extraordinarily warm thing - to see - the humility.
Please visit the free Imperial war museum galleries In Lambeth at least once a year to never forget.
The humility of this man was incredible - Nicholas, you are missed appreciated and never forgotten. He lived to 106
Obit here
books / juxtaposition is to be encouraged in all expressions
Students Do read Maya Angelou, Primo Levi and Dee Brown if serious about knowing and discussing world history and diversity, racism, genocide protest and understanding - respecting the history of your mothers / fathers / grandparents I read the full Maya Angelou set when I was about 30 - so any young minds who follow this page have plenty of time to do so too.
Unison Songs. In the spirit of the age, they were classless: written for everyone to sing, adults and children alike.
Literary facts & film
Recommended Books / film for this month :
'To be and to have' One of my all time personal favourites - the beautifully real observations of the small child and the teacher - set in a tiny rural French school 'Etre et Avoir' (read reviews)
When Herman Hesse wrote that 'Every man or woman is not only him or herself for he or she is also the unique particular, always significant and remarkable point where the phenomena of the world intersect once and for all and never again'
Hesse is not saying we shouldn't embrace our shared social sisterhood or brotherhood etc nor is he claiming that we should ignore our collective strengths as a closer knit society or humanity. He is stating that personal experience - though often shared - is always unique and particular to the individual - we are all different due to a myriad of circumstances, responses - the quirks and nuances of an individuals genetic make up within the 'self'. Using this unique auto biographical experiential voice and knowledge is vitally important for any Artist, Musician, Author etc if they wish to make work that has genuine authenticity and honesty - and crucially if we wish to share it as a visual 'opinion' / subtle experience - OR indeed to 'raise the volume' and make societal work that supports, subverts or criticises society. This 'voice' should also be applied to any smart creative school or Institute that seeks to cultivate and harbour creativity. Seeking to emote new knowledge takes risk and deeper levels of self awareness beyond the superficial, aesthetic skills - it requires digging deeper - down through the strata of surface turf that can stifle intuitive germination - stifling original ideas and concepts.
Digging a little deeper through the top soil is necessary if we wish to 'Practice or Teach' Creativity. This is Authorial Practise. The over intellectualism of the Arts is concerning. The esoteric turf of intellectual and analytical theory within the Creative Arts and Humanities.
Don Marquis the great American poet and writer said something along the lines of - to publish a line of poetry is akin to throwing a feather down into the grand canyon -(there will be no grand resounding echo).
Now I may have added the last echo bit - but Marquis' truth can also be applied to the act of producing a drawing, doodle or painting - or playing the fiddle - or indeed to any non commercially commissioned creative practise. It is akin to whispering to ones reflection in the mirror - not an act after approval and with no aspiration attached to it other than the doing. Making at its best and most honest is most often just performed as a statement of existence - an individual or collective act of being.
Like the megalithic hand stencil in the cave of dreams. ''I am here'' .... and if the work survives ''I was here'' ( the hominid hand on the cave - or the 'graffiti' on the alley wall.
Authorship helps navigate away from potential senses of absence or disenchantment, away from ones own anthropocentrism. It placates the illusions and negativity that we can feel from status anxiety etc. Creative Practice can steer us away from 'the Other' toward levels of contentment through reflexive engagement - observing what is occurring - learning - remaking and re-owning things presently - in the present tense. Preserving these observations ‘seen’ or perceptions ‘felt’ in a drawn act - as an expression of visual or sonic language or text etc - is an entanglement of sensory observations from the present and of the past - depicted and preserved into one capsule – and therefore the work may become an expression of immediate experience - and even if the work has a natural involvement with the historical past - the work is paradoxically born out of knowledge and feeling gained in the present - therefore it is a recording of that present moments perceptions and not an echo. As a result the work when successful helps define a more acceptable personal state - a new paradigm - the friendship or 'fellowship' that Orwell talked about - important today amidst the plethora of simulated 21 century commercial and social media stimulus that is both heterogeneous and conflicting.' The value of living well - alive, alive oh.
Voyager and Bach and blind Willie Nelson - a conflation of the previous and the current are what fuels propulsion ..... through interstellar space -
will it appear back on the horizon in the future - flown full circle ?
will it appear back on the horizon in the future - flown full circle ?
notes * A full list of all the music is below near end of blog page
Linked to previous drawing workshops / our sessions on channeling time / historocity / people / place / Life spans - originalities - interpretations - drawing - music - text - sound - vision
The Person / Human Being as work of Art - NOT only their materialised manifestations of their song music poetry voice drawing art etc ; Good People.
The essence and real quality of being part of histories tumbled conflated immersive engine - as opposed to being a statistic, myth, legend, or fiction.
The Good
archival #polykettle 2019/20
1 minute footage from prime TV - link here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_nFuJAF5F0&list=FL_NOzSyKzJxYpMJL8jjyjhA&index=161
It is an extraordinarily warm thing - to see - the humility.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_nFuJAF5F0&list=FL_NOzSyKzJxYpMJL8jjyjhA&index=161
It is an extraordinarily warm thing - to see - the humility.
Please visit the free Imperial war museum galleries In Lambeth at least once a year to never forget.
The humility of this man was incredible - Nicholas, you are missed appreciated and never forgotten. He lived to 106
Obit here
books / juxtaposition is to be encouraged in all expressions
Students Do read Maya Angelou, Primo Levi and Dee Brown if serious about knowing and discussing world history and diversity, racism, genocide protest and understanding - respecting the history of your mothers / fathers / grandparents I read the full Maya Angelou set when I was about 30 - so any young minds who follow this page have plenty of time to do so too.
Unison Songs. In the spirit of the age, they were classless: written for everyone to sing, adults and children alike.
Literary facts & film
Literary facts & film
Recommended Books / film for this month :
'To be and to have' One of my all time personal favourites - the beautifully real observations of the small child and the teacher - set in a tiny rural French school 'Etre et Avoir' (read reviews)
lost notes
Our creative capacity to reproduce threads of memory and to transform and recycle experience.
To recall & revisit a previous state or condition after having been altered, moved or deformed by its affects.
Our Natural habitat and our ability to empathise in it / with it from the view of the outsider (to have 'Einfühlung') to have 'feeling into' and to project our emotion into the landscape as well as receive from it
To occupy ones own natural external environment, natural surroundings, our home, domain, our haunts - to observe from the inside out.
mm 2006
The mind regarded as a store of things remembered and all things FELT
It rumbles up your OWN engines rather than leaving you supine in the back seat.
The good
Creative displacement is a classic human activity - a positive force for good for the bursts of good creativity anyway - it gets things done. Though in the wrong forms it can take its toll by not addressing the cause of the often beautifully obsessive activity. This displacement activity, when positive and rewarding, gives the soul much needed supply and pleasure -and so much pleasure for others . It provides the right kind of attention to this space and gap. Without its drive we would not learn our values and lessons.
The Bad
If we had settled all our most celebrated maverick artists of their own driving passions and hunger for seeking and doing then we would have a very bland history indeed. However we may have also had much more time with them all around us with us too - more works from them - and curtailed their dramatic needless loss - for example Vincent and the many others gifted souls gone too soon in history because they were not listened to enough - not understood, were not valued and did not have the right blend of peers around them.
They also did not look after themselves enough and in the end reduced their own capacities and lives by indulgence and risk. Recognising to slow down is important - the body tends to tell a person anyway quite bluntly. Ignoring that voice is ridiculous. It is not a sustainable life to go at full pelt. Find out what is best for you - but in the finding and even in the slowing do not lose your wiser self.
lost notes
Our creative capacity to reproduce threads of memory and to transform and recycle experience.
To recall & revisit a previous state or condition after having been altered, moved or deformed by its affects.
Our Natural habitat and our ability to empathise in it / with it from the view of the outsider (to have 'Einfühlung') to have 'feeling into' and to project our emotion into the landscape as well as receive from it
To occupy ones own natural external environment, natural surroundings, our home, domain, our haunts - to observe from the inside out.
mm 2006
The mind regarded as a store of things remembered and all things FELT
It rumbles up your OWN engines rather than leaving you supine in the back seat.
The good
Creative displacement is a classic human activity - a positive force for good for the bursts of good creativity anyway - it gets things done. Though in the wrong forms it can take its toll by not addressing the cause of the often beautifully obsessive activity. This displacement activity, when positive and rewarding, gives the soul much needed supply and pleasure -and so much pleasure for others . It provides the right kind of attention to this space and gap. Without its drive we would not learn our values and lessons.
The Bad
If we had settled all our most celebrated maverick artists of their own driving passions and hunger for seeking and doing then we would have a very bland history indeed. However we may have also had much more time with them all around us with us too - more works from them - and curtailed their dramatic needless loss - for example Vincent and the many others gifted souls gone too soon in history because they were not listened to enough - not understood, were not valued and did not have the right blend of peers around them.
They also did not look after themselves enough and in the end reduced their own capacities and lives by indulgence and risk. Recognising to slow down is important - the body tends to tell a person anyway quite bluntly. Ignoring that voice is ridiculous. It is not a sustainable life to go at full pelt. Find out what is best for you - but in the finding and even in the slowing do not lose your wiser self.
