21 Feb 2013

Circles.

The Moyness Stone Circle has been dismantled, but it was unique in one respect. One of the boulders of which the circle was composed was said o have been a rocking stone, or loggan, and according to traditional belief was used as an ordeal stone for determining the innocence or guilt of a person accused of crime.If the stone rocked when the person was placed on it guilt was established; if it remained unmoved, innocence was declared. Considerable sanctity, as may be supposed, attached to this tell-tale stone with its mysterious movements, but the school children of later times, with irreverent familiarity, were wont to play upon it.

From p3 of ‘History of Nairnshire’ by George Bain (1893)

The beautiful weather took us out and about yesterday and my guide for the day showed me this stone circle. I'm not sure how many of the stones are where they were  originally placed; certainly many are missing. They've probably become part of a croft or a wall elsewhere. This must be the best time of year to see it; much later and the grasses would have drowned the remaining stones. It was a double circle with a depression between the two. The lichens are beautiful.






The Moyness Stone Circle has been dismantled, but it was unique in one respect. One of the boulders of which the circle was composed was said o have been a rocking stone, or loggan, and according to traditional belief was used as an ordeal stone for determining the innocence or guilt of a person accused of crime.If the stone rocked when the person was placed on it guilt was established; if it remained unmoved, innocence was declared. Considerable sanctity, as may be supposed, attached to this tell-tale stone with its mysterious movements, but the school children of later times, with irreverent familiarity, were wont to play upon it.

From p3 of ‘History of Nairnshire’ by George Bain (1893)

17 Feb 2013

Kung Het Fat Choy











The face-changing was extremely clever - like magic. With a couple of passes of the sleeves she  changed her mask again and again.

15 Feb 2013

Under the skin.


Wednesday was a NADFAS day so I had a break from the Chinese. The talk was on Leonardo Da Vinci. Always a surprise. The blurb said  something about machines so we had expected cartoons of flying machines, steam cannon, musical instruments, and so on, maybe a little anatomy, but the speaker was a surgeon whose interest in LDV was sparked by his profession. We hadn’t known that in advance. The talk was gruesome in the extreme and, whereas I am hardened by exposure to autopsies on TV, my artist friend is not and is extremely squeamish; something I didn’t know about her. It almost put her to flight. LDV was quite obsessed with what lies under the skin, went to dissections with the enthusiasm of a young Tempe Brennan (TV version). He did a few of his own on executed criminals. It must have been trying having to wipe off the bodily fluids each time he wanted to make a sketch of a section. If he hadn’t cleaned so well we might just have had his DNA. There’s a thought.

J nearly fainted when he explained the reason why LDV found it hard to get a decent cross section of the eye, which collapses like a full bladder once pierced. We got a cursory shot of the Mona Lisa, that beautiful woman with an ermine and the redhead, then it was back to flayed bodies and statues of St. Bartholomew standing nonchalantly with his skin over one arm, as we might carry our raincoat.
Enough!

Maybe it did inspire me. I found in my bookcase one of Kathy Reichs crime novels that I read so long ago I’d almost forgotten.  I had also forgotten how much I need a translator when I read her books. What in the name of all that’s wonderful are ‘Hail Mary passes’? Lateral ones. Used in this instance to describe the large size of a room. What is ‘the Santorini valet’? Santorini is an island. It doesn’t need a valet.
And do I care?
I much prefer the TV incarnation of Temperance Brennan.

13 Feb 2013

Chinese New Year celebrations again in our small town. Yesterday a talk on face changing opera/dance. Looking forward to the demonstration on Sunday.

10 Feb 2013

More work needed on myself!!


Oh dear. Last night I discovered that I’m still capable of unseemly outburst of anger when I’m upset. I thought I was done with all that, that I had mellowed. Not so. Evidently my equanimity goes unchallenged because I don’t usually get exposed to situations in which something might happen to set me off! 

It was all going so well too; unexpectedly well. I’d agreed, reluctantly, to accompany a friend to the 9th birthday of the Big Choir, a friendly singing group started with the express intention of including all those who want to sing, irrespective of whether they can hold a note or not, in the believe that everyone can with practice. I’ve never joined because I didn’t want to shake their faith by setting them up for a depressing failure! (And because I am unsociable.) The choir now meets in a beautifully renovated church that has been saved from becoming a storehouse for potatoes by becoming a venue for social events as well as a church. The comfortable padded seats, each with a ledge on the back for prayer books etc, are all moveable and can become dining chairs at will. Light but sturdy trestle tables covered with gingham are set up down the length of the hall, the altar and hymn numbers stay discreetly under the tall stained glass windows at the West end (odd that.Shouldn’t it be the East?) There is a marble memorial plaque on the wall half way along one side and a handsome carved wooden cross on the other but they are both benign, not at all oppressive. The height of the hall gives wonderful acoustics; some soft lighting and candles turn it into a very pleasant space. 

It was a pot luck supper. When everything had arrived the tables did look as if they might groan. I wished I had taken my camera - as usual. By some magic, as always does occur at pot lucks I’ve found, there was a wide variety and a good balance of savoury dishes. I’d taken chicken pieces rolled in oat bran, parmesan and chilli because I knew most of that choir are vegetarian and veggie food tends to be heavy and full of carbs! There were some tasty salads. Sadly (for me) there were also wonderful puddings, notably a couple of roulades which I love. In the end I had a small piece of one to calm the bitterness of deprivation. It might have been the niggling urge to eat a whole lot more that added to the final rage. I do find it’s all or nothing with me. Now I understand how an alcoholic must feel. One sip or bite and you’re lost!   

The evening began with a blessing circle, something I had forgotten about but very New Age, which the choir members aren’t exclusively but at least one of the leaders is. I suppose it’s friendly, inclusive, and does neatly mark the beginning and end of affairs.

There was wine. I hadn’t expected that because it was in a church. Silly me. Didn’t Our Lord himself... etc. I had several (small) glasses of something white which, as I almost never drink these days, went straight to my head. (That may have had something to do with the uncontrolled outburst later.)

Food eaten, the choir got together and sang some jolly African songs, probably hymns, very heavy on the rhythm. I wished I could join in but am glad I was able to restrain myself. I did have some control left.

Then there was entertainment. Several people got up, ceilidh style when the mood took them, to sing a capella, some folksy songs, one in Gaelic, all very beautiful and strong. A man sang ‘I did it my way’ with conviction. Then a woman joined him and he sang something from ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘I Have often walked..’ That was rather less successful because their voices didn’t harmonise well. Says she, whose voice could only harmonise with a bullfrog. Still, I do know what’s right musically and what’s not. A young chap did a very clever ventriloquist act with a dummy that wasn’t at all creepy. A woman told us a story about a snake who could ‘unriddle’ dreams. I’m never sure about stories that have meaning, except perhaps the Sufi ones. The point of this  tale missed me by a mile, In fact it seemed to suggest that our behaviour is influenced by the times we live in and we’re not responsible for our actions, which is a depressing rather than an uplifting thought, but still, she told it well.

Then, oh best beloved, the ventrilquist chappie who had made me laugh moments before, stood up and launched into a song about the last, lonely, sad, despairing, weeping, injured whale; the last leviathan.  It upset me. I told my friend I had had enough and we started to leave. The evening began to break up, everybody started making a move, - I bet it was that song, although he received tumultuous applause because that’s what you give to right-on songs about Green issues (bitterly). As I got my coat and retrieved my dish someone I know and like asked me if I had enjoyed the evening. I said, loudly, that I had enjoyed everything except that last piece of sentimental, mawkish, melodramatic crap! 

I hope not too many people heard!

4 Feb 2013

Ruminations in the Harbour Café


The problem now with this cafe is that the radio is too loud. Maybe that’s why the women talked so loudly, to hear themselves over it. I’m never satisfied. I came here to be part of life but in a situation where I don’t have to actively interact, then I complain about it. A couple of my friends have the radio or television on all the time and one has a radio in every room which, as he has a very small flat, means quadrophonic sound. If all electronic communication failed would we wilt and die? Or would we congregate in pubs and cafe’s again? Have more ceilidhs? Write letters? Drink more, fight more, commit suicide more. In short would it be better or worse?

I’ve been rereading Farenheit 451. We are surely getting closer to the society described in that novel. How many of us rely on the television to bring colour into our lives? To give us a sense of belonging? It even give us families we can feel a part of without any of the onerous responsibility a flesh-and-blood family brings. Perhaps we should be grateful for the social networking sites that bring real people in touch however superficially, instead of scoffing at them.

The range of books available to us is vast but not many titles are visible. Our menu is decided by the statistics. What sells? What does it pay to promote? Private Eye has been spotting book cover designs that mimic ones wrapping a previous success. Amazon idiotically tells us that a new author, or one we haven’t tried, is just like one we have recently bought, or who has been selling well. The Scandinavian crime novel was discovered, justifiably, but now every good, bad or indifferent Scandinavian writer is suddenly worthy of translation and promotion. How many of us still read books that we have actively chosen rather than picking up one of the shoals of new publications pushed into our faces in the supermarkets, or in train station kiosks, or the front windows of struggling bookstore chains that no longer have a backlist, or chosen for us by Amazon software on the basis of our past purchases? The ‘literary’ prizes are also, in my opinion, given to works that mine the seams of precious readership guided by what’s currently popular on TV, what’s trending. Just now the historical novel is trending, spurred by the perceived success of costume drama. Tough for me as I don’t like them.

It’s cynical and lazy of the publishers. I’d go so far as to call it unethical. But they are driven by the need for profit, or at least survival.

Down off that soap box and on to another. 

I know a couple of people who think the internet is the work of the devil (along with the New Agers!) ‘Too much information’ is their reason. It makes everyone unhappy, crazy. That’s the belief that enabled the governments of Bradbury’s world to persuade the populace to allow them to begin burning books, to appoint brigades of firemen to start fires rather than put them out, ridding society of worrying ideas. F.451 was written 50 years ago, before the World Wide Web when books were more influential, but they weren’t as influential as TV is today. It has been suggested (before the rise in tuition fees and disappearance of grants) that some pupils chose to ‘drop out’ rather than go on to higher education because the characters in the soaps so often do that in order to be kept in the storyline. There are people who can’t tell the difference between reality and screen fiction (certainly ‘reality’ TV has blurred the lines) and lead their lives as though they are a part of the soaps, emulating the behaviour, beliefs and language, of the characters they see daily. 

Books don’t do that.  Books, even novels, present ideas, the world seen through the eyes of others, but we can put them down, shout at them, argue, pick up another and find an opposing opinion. Books open our eyes to the world, they don’t close them by hypnosis. They remind us to have ideas for ourselves, to be creative, to smell the flowers, but they take more effort. We have to put more of ourselves into the reading of a book than into watching TV. With the easier alternative there to be switched on we are getting lazier. We have two hands free to eat our supper, or knit. 

Faber, the old philosopher, says to fireman Montag ‘Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.’ 

The drive to find happiness is universal amongst humans and animals alike, only differing in the form the condition necessary for happiness takes - satisfied primary needs, a full belly, warmth and safety, or more complex emotional needs like love. In the crowded over-fed societies that so many of the nations on the planet have evolved into we've arrived at a state where happiness should be a foregone conclusion, only to find that physical satisfaction isn’t enough. Though none of the women In Fahrenheit 451 realise it they are deeply depressed. They know they want something but think it’s another wall of television, another level to make the pretense more real. Nightly a non-medical team, trained only in the use of a sophisticated stomach pump, are called out to thwart suicide attempts. The fireman’s wife takes an overdose of her sleeping tablets even though her day has been ‘happily’ spent with her friends in worlds created for them and transmitted to them through the walls of their living quarters. What does this suggest? That we need misery?  That we need to make our own decisions? The interactive nature of the programs the women are offered give them the possibility of making directional changes in the stories in which they ‘live.’ Don’t we all do that to some extent? Make a story out of our lives which we add to daily. Mythologise ourselves. What's the difference between the real world and the one Montag’s wife leads in her one room, between her four walls, except that nothing really bad can happen there. War can't happen. Death can't happen. Out in their real world war is about to happen. The death of millions is about to happen, but it won’t touch these women until, entirely unconscious of its approach, they are killed by it.

What is so different between those women’s lives and mine as I sit in the car now, in a bubble of glass and metal, shielded from the wind and rain, watching the ocean unfold itself, somewhat violently, onto the beach. I can get out and feel the wind, taste the rain, but I don’t because I prefer to remain warm and dry. 

 In the dystopian world envisioned by Bradbury, advertising hoardings have to be kilometres long because the traffic goes so fast that it speeds past the short ones too quickly to see them. The countryside they drive through is never seen, because of the speed and because of the hoardings.  Montag is challenged by a young woman he meets, Clarisse McClellan. She doesn’t challenge him by upbraiding him for what he is doing. She doesn’t proselytise, she walks with him, talks to him about liking the taste of rain, shows him how a dandelion can reveal whether he loves anyone or not. She tells him firemen where once for putting out fires and protecting people, not for starting them. His certainties begin to disintegrate.

Old Faber, a philosopher, tells the increasingly distressed and confused fireman, Montag, the story of Hercules and Antǣus the giant who is invincible as long as his feet stand upon the earth. When Hercules lifts him above the earth he loses all his power and is easily defeated. Faber also says to Montag ‘Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.’

When I visit London and am bombarded by advertising both visually and audibly I think of the millions who live their lives separate from the places of peace and quiet, forced to work incessantly at numbing jobs, selling their souls to their companies. My daughter tells me that even publishers read magazines rather than books in their lunch hour. The agitated flick flick of the magazine mentality, the endless search for what is the newest toy in IT heaven, the newest title on the shelves. The restlessness of the unquiet mind.









3 Feb 2013


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Chauvet cave paintings. c.30,000 BPChauvet Cave horses

These cave paintings are amongst the earliest expression of human feelings we have found to date. When Picasso first saw the caves of Lascaux, where the paintings date from c.17.300 BP, he said of Modern Art, ‘We have discovered nothing.’ Even those paintings show no progression in perception, appreciation, emotion or sensitivity from these by the people of Chauvet 12,000 years earlier. Today it’s safe to say we have still learned nothing more, and probably not evolved as much as we like to think.

What we don’t know is how quickly language developed in subtlety. Art seems to have been the earliest means of self-expression; the first evidence of human beings wanting to emulate, record, perhaps control, perhaps pay homage, to nature. 

Although feelings, emotions, desires, fears, and complex relationships were probably as important to the early Homo Sapiens as food, drink and safety, it wasn’t until the discovery of ‘Gilgamesh,’ a series of poems written in Sumerian 3,800 years ago, that we had evidence of the impulse to record in words something more than mere crop yields or lineage. Though art may have been the first enduring form of expression, words slowly became the primary language of communication for all human affairs and were eventually considered  important enough to find a means of preserving them and transmitting them beyond the time and space limits of the speaker.  The story of Gilgamesh meant enough to the people of Sumeria and then again in Mesopotamia (where it was written first in Old Babylonian, later in Standard Babylonian,) to be told and retold through hundreds of generations. It was at once a memory of a strong noble King and a morality tale of what happens to those who reach for that which can only be for the gods. 

Gilgamesh was like us, he yearned for close companionship, feared death, longed for immortality, was angered by the gods. The archetypal human story of his quest, first for a friend who was his equal (they fought to establish the equality! Strength was the important measure rather than birth or learning.) Then he searched, with his new companion Enkido, for immortality. Together they passed through triumph, elation, betrayal, disappointment and despair. Shades of human passions that could never have been portrayed by sculptures or paintings alone. 

                                                     ****

All the above was the result of being invited to introduce an Open Mike poetry reading in March with some remarks on the marriage of art and poetry. A poet friend has just had two of her poems painted onto a wall and the ceiling in the local art gallery. It’s quite an innovative event for our conservative little town, and probably fairly novel for the UK. I know there have been attempts to take poetry to the public in the form of sculpture and multi-media and think it’s a brilliant movement. I see the need for a poet incarnation of Banksy. That’s probably what I’ll say, probably all I’ll say, but it’s led me down an interesting pathway.

It’s easy for a visual artist to get an audience, even if their work is just hung in a café or put on Facebook. People like pictures. They are an undemanding enjoyment, don’t take much time, don’t take much thought, usually. To have to pause to read something is different and the majority of the population are too busy. I’m told that even people in publishing are more likely to read a magazine than a book in their lunch hour! The flick-flick magazine mentality.  Poems on a wall near the bus stop, or the walls of the underground, might get their attention when they have nothing else to do but stand and wait. Printing T-shirts, fridge magnets and tea towels with poems by modern writers might catch on, but needs a cash investment.


A better class of clientele



I’ve been carrying out an intensive survey of the best cafes in this area, justifying the amount spent in soup, or coffee and scones (plus the terrible price of fuel to get to them of course) by balancing it against the hours the heating can be turned off whilst I’m out of the house.  I think I’ve decided upon my favourite. It has a view of the harbour above, is small, cosy, warm, and does excellent soup and scones. Warmth as in temperature, not just welcoming smiles, is an important requirement this time of year and isn’t always to be found in places offering refreshment sadly; some canny patrons, ready with the recession as an excuse (actually they have always been this way) are mean with the heating. The other star quality this cafe has that sets it above all others is - it welcomes dogs! The first time I went in I was so charmed by sharing floorspace with an elderly Spaniel and a Scotty that I wanted to go out and borrow a dog to have lying at my own feet. They are all extremely well behaved, no fighting or fussing, probably aware of the hitching posts available outside for them on the cold pavement if they misbehave! Today the Scotty was back with his master. There were also two well groomed West Highlands in smart tartan chaskits, and, to my huge surprise, a greyhound unfolded herself gracefully from under a bench when her owner got up to leave. She had been very self-effacing.