Author: Ken Finton

THE WORK OF EDWARD CURTIS

/ Ken Finton / 2 Comments

What is a Photogravure?

Photogravure-plate-of-Geronimo

Paul Unks, of Denver, nicknamed Mountain Hawk, explains the craft of printing photogravures: “Developed in the 1850’s, an intaglio photogravure is produced through a complex painstaking hand-made process whereby the original photographic image is etched into a metal plate allowing the plate to hold ink. Then, oil based ink is carefully applied by hand onto the etched plate so that the ink is pushed down into the etched grooves of the plate that range in depth from deep (dark) to shallow (light). Once the printing plate is properly inked, high quality moistened paper is placed on the inked plate and then hand cranked in a press at 10,000 lbs of pressure causing the paper to squeeze down into the grooves of the plate. After the paper fibers have absorbed the ink, the paper is carefully peeled off the plate leaving the image deeply embossed into the paper fibers creating a fine art print that has the subtle detail of a photograph, the velvety texture of an etching and richness of an oil painting.”

The technical difficulties of the photogravure process can seem infinite and insurmountable at times. Ansel Adams remarked, “Photogravure is a most beautiful technique, but I would not recommend anyone do it”.

NOTE: There are only a handful of master printers in the world today who make hand-made photogravure plates and prints. And Mountain Hawk is the only one producing Curtis’ original photographs as he did, as intaglio photogravures, each archival print individually hand-made, one at a time, restoring Curtis’ original fine photographic detail that had previously been lost, to new plates. Using this traditional classic method, Mountain Hawk is faithfully and authentically completing the edition Curtis started, but wasn’t able to finish in his life time.

While in recent decades printers have produced re-strikes from the original plates, many of those plates have been lost, destroyed or damaged, and the ones that are intact are worn from repeated printing.

IMG_2357

Paul Unks at Denver, Colorado exhibit July 2015

Paul Unks, nicknamed Mountain Hawk, has  gone a step further in craftsmanship and quality to produce his photogravures working from an early set of images and using high-resolution photography he has created new copper plates; then, in collaboration with a master print maker, and refining his ink and sourcing a very fine paper—a tissue that is translucent, imparting a wonderful dimensionality to the print—he has produced new photogravures of incomparable quality. Many people have remarked that the sharpness and detail are every bit as good as the best originals. As Curtis himself was able to produce less than half of his intended edition of 500, Paul’s great purpose is to complete the edition with the original artistic standards intended by Curtis—and so in a real sense to fulfill Curtis’s mission. A passionate historian and speaker on Curtis as well as craftsman, Paul is thoroughly devoted to honoring Curtis’s legacy with this truly extraordinary collection.

THE WORK OF EDWARD SHERIFF CURTIS (1868-1952)

Edward Curtis self portrait

Edward Curtis self portrait

Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952) is the most famous photographer of the  American Indian. In 1906, JP Morgan contracted with Curtis to photograph and document native American life throughout the west. The following year the artist began publishing his twenty volume The North American Indian.

The project was driven by passion and urgency; in the introduction to the first volume, Curtis wrote, “The information that is to be gathered … respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost.”

The work included folios of photogravures that have become highly treasured and sought after. When Curtis originally sold his images they cost the subscriber $3000 per 20 volume set. Now Curtis’s pictures of the poorest of Americans are sold to the richest of Americans, often bringing $30,000 to $75,000 per image.

A SHORT HISTORY OF EDWARD CURTIS’ LIFE

In 1906, J. P. Morgan provided Curtis with $75,000 to produce a series on Native Americans. This work was to be in 20 text volumes with 1,500 small photogravure illustrations, accompanied by twenty folios with 720 large photogravures. Morgan’s funds were to be disbursed over five years and were earmarked to support only fieldwork for the books not for writing, editing, or production of the volumes. Curtis himself would receive no salary for the project, which was to last more than 20 years. Under the terms of the arrangement, Morgan received the first 25 sets and 500 original prints as his method of repayment.

Geronimo by Edward Curtis

Geronimo by Edward Curtis

222 complete sets were eventually published. Curtis’ goal was not just to photograph, but to document, as much of Native American traditional life as possible before that way of life disappeared.

He wrote in the introduction to his first volume in 1907: “The information that is to be gathered … respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost.”

Curtis made over 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Native American language and music. He took over 40,000 photographic images from over 80 tribes. He recorded tribal lore and history, and he described traditional foods, housing, garments, recreation, ceremonies, and funeral customs. He wrote biographical sketches of tribal leaders, and his material, in most cases, is the only written recorded history although there is still a rich oral tradition that documents history.

Around 1922, Curtis moved to Los Angeles with his daughter Beth, and opened a new photo studio. To earn money he worked as an assistant cameraman for Cecil B. DeMille and was an uncredited assistant cameraman in the 1923 filming of The Ten Commandments. On October 16, 1924 Curtis sold the rights to his ethnographic motion picture In the Land of the Head-Hunters to the American Museum of Natural History. He was paid $1,500 for the master print and the original camera negative. It had cost him over $20,000 to film.

During the years of work on The North American Indian, Curtis was often absent from home for most of the year, leaving his wife Clara to manage the children and the studio by herself. After several years of estrangement, Clara filed for divorce on October 16, 1916. In 1919 she was granted the divorce and received the Curtis’ photographic studio and all of his original camera negatives as her part of the settlement.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ORIGINAL GLASS NEGATIVES

In 1927, after returning from Alaska to Seattle with his daughter Beth, he was arrested for failure to pay alimony over the preceding 7 years. The total owed was $4,500, but the charges were dropped. For Christmas of 1927, the family was reunited at daughter Florence’s home in Medford, Oregon. This was the first time since the divorce that Curtis was with all of his children at the same time, and it had been thirteen years since he had seen Katherine.

Most of the Mohaves by Edward Curtis

Mosa of the Mohaves by Edward Curtis

According to some sources Edward went with his daughter, Beth, to the studio and destroyed all of his original glass negatives, rather than have them become the property of his ex-wife, Clara. It is still controversial as to who destroyed them. Clara went on to manage the Curtis studio with her sister, Nellie M. Phillips (1880–?), who was married to Martin Lucus (1880–?). Following the divorce, the two oldest daughters, Beth and Florence, remained in Seattle, living in a boarding house separate from their mother. The youngest daughter, Katherine Curtis lived with Clara in Charleston, Kitsap County, Washington.

In 1928, desperate for cash, Edward sold the rights to his project to J.P Morgan’s son. In 1930 he published the opus-concluding volume of The North American Indian. In total, about 280 sets were sold of his now completed magnum opus. In 1930, his ex-wife, Clara, was still living in Seattle operating the photo studio with their daughter Katherine. His other daughter, Florence Curtis, was still living in Medford, Oregon with her husband Henry Graybill. After Clara died of heart failure in 1932, his daughter Katherine moved to California to be closer to her father and her sister Beth.

LOSS OF RIGHTS TO The North American Indian

Taos Water Girls by Edward Curtis

Taos Water Girls by Edward Curtis

In 1935, the Morgan estate sold the rights and remaining unpublished material to the Charles E. Lauriat Company in Boston for $1,000 plus a percentage of any future royalties. This included 19 complete bound sets of The North American Indian, thousands of individual paper prints, the copper printing plates, and the unbound printed pages. Lauriat bound the remaining loose printed pages and sold them with the completed sets. The remaining material remained untouched in the Lauriat basement in Boston until they were rediscovered in 1972.

On October 19, 1952, at the age of 84, Curtis died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California in the home of his daughter, Beth. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. His terse obituary appeared in The New York Times on October 20, 1952:

Edward S. Curtis, internationally known authority on the history of the North American Indian, died today at the home of a daughter, Mrs. Beth Magnuson. His age was 84. Mr. Curtis devoted his life to compiling Indian history. His research was done under the patronage of the late financier, J. Pierpont Morgan. The forward for the monumental set of Curtis books was written by President Theodore Roosevelt. Mr. Curtis was also widely known as a photographer.

SOURCES:

http://www.curtisprints.net

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_S._Curtis

TO SEE AVAILABLE PRINTS OF CURTIS’ PHOTOGRAPHS ONLINE GO TO:

http://www.curtisprints.net/gallery.php?gallery=1

http://www.curtisprints.net/gallery.php?gallery=2

Canon de Chelly, Navajo Indians by Edward Curtis

Canon de Chelly, Navajo Indians by Edward Curtis

Two Sioux Cheifts by Edward Curtis

Two Sioux Chiefs by Edward Curtis

Denver 9 News report on the making of Curtis prints by Paul Unks.

http://www.9news.com/story/news/features/2015/07/26/denver-artists-recreates-famous-photographs/30686917/

GREAT SONG LYRICS

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33282745

A Point of View: What’s the secret of writing great song lyrics?

by Adam Gopnik

  • 26 June 2015
  • From the section Magazine
Music score with the words
Having written words for someone else’s music, Adam Gopnik finds there’s a common factor behind all great lyrics, from Mozart opera to Taylor Swift. 

Everyone thinks he can write a song, and now I have. The haunted, wild look you see in the eyes of professional songwriters at cocktail parties rises from the popular idea that any of us, given the chance, can do what they do as well as they do it – the fur earmuffs you see them wearing even on the hottest summer days are there, too, from a desperate attempt not to have to listen to the songs the rest of us write and insist on playing for them. “I think I just feel how everyone feels, that I have three or four really great folk albums in me,” Hannah says complacently on the US television comedy Girls. Everyone thinks that.

But now I have done what all of us amateurs dream of doing – written words to someone’s music and heard it sung. Not a song alone, but an entire work – called (when I am in a puffed up mood) an oratorio, and when I am feeling more modest, a mere song cycle, and when I am feeling more modest still, a concept album, as yet unrecorded. It’s called Sentences, with music by the inspired young composer Nico Muhly, and seeing it premiere a few weeks ago, at the Barbican Centre in London goes high on my list of things I did that made my life matter – like the birth of a child, only with less sweat and better dressed.

The story we told was that of the great computer scientist Alan Turing, and it was sung by the amazing counter-tenor Iestyn Davies – but I won’t detain you with its genesis or my own sense of what in it works and what doesn’t. I will say that I was working on the libretto for the song cycle even as I was also writing the words for a musical comedy, properly so-called, and I discovered that in work meant or dreamed of for the commercial theatre, every syllable gets argued over. Is the emotional logic entirely lucid? In our Barbican-directed oratorio a great deal of indirection and obliquity was welcome. In our age, I’ve decided, the difference between entertainment and art is that in entertainment we expect to do all the work for the audience, while in art we expect the audience to do all the work for us.

But the deeper relation between words and music – the way they land in the listener’s ear, and then her soul – is more complicated than it seems. Music alone is puzzling enough – how it is that the mind makes sound into music and music into meaning is one of the big unanswered questions. No matter how hard we craft them for lucidity and shape and dramatic clarity – and it’s the good faith of the librettist’s art form to do so as elegantly as he can – music and words together exist in the end in an older realm of magic and enchantment, a place where the nursery rhyme and the church hymn and the pop single all meet. They work as spells do – that is, either entirely, or not at all. We sing and the magic door swings open, or it doesn’t, and there’s no explaining it. Three boys from Liverpool sing “She loves you, yeah, yeah yeah ” and the world turns off its axis. Had they sung, as Paul McCartney’s father wanted, “yes, yes, yes”, the old path would not have changed.

The Beatles in concert, 1964

Yeah, yeah. yeah. The Beatles in concert, 1964

The libretto writer, I should add at once, is merely the junior partner in the enterprise – or not even a partner, more like the man who sweeps out the candy wrappers from the theatre floor after the patrons leave. Who now remembers the name of the man who set the text for Handel’s Messiah? Well, it was Charles Jennens. The only libretto writer whose name anyone remembers – other than the great lyricists of the American musical theatre, the sacred law firm of Mercer, Loesser and Hart – is Lorenzo da Ponte, who is my hero. He was Jewish and a priest, and a Venetian and a New Yorker. It’s a sympathetic package, and he wrote for – more than “with” really – wrote for Mozart, the three operas that may well be the height of all artistic creation: The Marriage of Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutte and Don Giovanni.

Lorenzo Da Ponte 1749-1838

Lorenzo da Ponte
  • Born Emanuele Conegliano, to a Jewish family in Venice. converted to Roman Catholicism in 1764 and was baptised with the name Lorenzo da Ponte
  • Ordained as a priest in 1773 but nevertheless fathered two children, and was subsequently banished for 15 years from Venice
  • Moved to Vienna where he scored Mozart’s best-known Italian operas – The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Cosi Fan Tutte (1790)
  • Later moved to London and then the US where he ran a grocery store, gave Italian lessons and was eventually appointed professor of Italian literature at Columbia College

If the aliens arrived on earth from Neptune and asked me “what should we go out to see first that you humans have made?”, I think I would say Cosi Fan Tutte. (Though I also think I would add “Oh – and watch Cary Grant in North By Northwest” – but then the aliens would say, “Yeah: we saw that already on Neptune. Everybody in the galaxy has seen North By Northwest.”)

But a single touch of contrivance spoils it all. Any time we feel the authors creating coincidence or engineering emotion, making melodrama rather than musical drama – shoving incidents around rather than exploring character in collision with itself or another – we rebel inside. In Cosi Fan Tutte we accept the convention of disguised Albanians. But we accept it because Mozart writes his most sublime music for the silliest parts. If it sounded cute, we would rebel against it. That “yeah, yeah, yeah” mattered because it was exactly what such a boy would actually say to a friend about a girl. The smirk, or the hack’s weary knowing devices, are both enemies of enchantment and, without enchantment, music and words together mean nothing.

A 2009 production of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, performed at the Salzburg Festival

A 2009 production of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, performed at the Salzburg Festiva

Music is so emotionally overwhelming that it pushes the discursive and explanatory roles of language aside – and it is part of the job of the libretto writer to get out of its way. Even in Handel’s Messiah we recall lyrical fragments more than whole stanzas. “Unto us a child is born, “How beautiful are the feet…” “All we, like sheep”. When we think through our experience of our favourite oratorios, our most important pop songs, our favourite operas, they are almost always the experience of a forceful fragment – three or four words – “How beautiful are the feet”, or “Shake it off”.

It is a mysterious, semi-physical response, in which the audience does as much work as the artists. It works or it doesn’t. Small fragments of sound and sense strike our hearts as shrapnel strikes our skin. They lodge and wound us, independent of their intended trajectory. The audience responds or it doesn’t. The audience is less like a crew of supercilious analysts and more like a magnet set to one pole or the other. If the pole is right, the audience is drawn irresistibly to the sound on stage. If it isn’t, no amount of seduction or intelligence can draw them in, any more than a physical magnet can be made to adhere to metal by good will or affection. Sung words belong more fully to the world of ritual and routine, of incantation and mother’s murmurings, than to the fully lucid and well-lit world of argument. The words work or they don’t.

Sigrid Thornton in an australian production of A Little Night Music, 2009

Sondheim’s “Send In The Clowns” is sung by Desiree (Sigrid Thornton) in this 2009 production of A Little Night Music.

The one thing I have learned through the process is this – our minds make meaning out of music by not making too much meaning out of it. One learns as a librettist to tiptoe to the edge of argument, and then back off to the limbo-land of implication and indirection. The most popular lyric of Stephen Sondheim is, after all, the most offhand – a rueful farewell, but exactly to whom or exactly why we don’t always know. I hear the producer or the scriptwriter asking “Send in the clowns? Shouldn’t it be call off the clowns?” But in the clowns must come for reasons only clowns and composers know.

I have not learned why music matters most – but I have learned a great deal about the power of voices, the limits of language to insist and its power to invoke, and about the mysterious magnetism that passes between an audience and its art. Above all, I have learned that musicians are a superior race. We are lucky to share this planet – or any other – with them.

  • Adam Gopnik has lived in Paris and wrote the book Paris to the Moon

A Point of View is usually broadcast on Fridays on Radio 4 at 20:50 BST and repeated Sundays 08:50 BST

Van Morrison – in The Days Before Rock ‘n’ Roll!

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

‘Turn it up! Turn up your Rad-io!’ (Van Morrison – ‘Caravan’)

‘We were the War children – born 1945 ….’ (Van Morrison – ‘Wild Children’)

‘I can get your station when I need rejuvenation … Wavelength you never let me down’ (Van Morrison – ‘Wavelength’)

‘… I like Morrison because I know that his work comes from the same level as my own poetry – the level of daydreaming; that he’s out to annihilate ego; that he’s after the same,’nothingness’ as Kavanagh was after ….’ (Paul Durcan)

Van Morrison is an only child. A child alone much of the time by inclination and perhaps vocation. A soul born to dream, to live in dreams and to birth those dreams in songs and singing – dreaming in God.

As a boy growing up in East Belfast he was close to the sea and the countryside. From his house, beyond his bedroom, he could hear voices echoing over the Beechie River and imagine the mist swathed shipyard towers looming out of the night as the foghorns guided ships safely home.

His head, heart and spirit opened up and welcomed dreams and intimations of an immortal world coexisting with the mortal world. Walking down Hyndford Street to leafy Cyprus Avenue he could be transported so that he was both thrillingly outside himself and strangely never so completely himself.

Dreaming those young man’s dreams he found sustenance for his creative imagination in the sights and sounds of his home city, its hinterland, and in sounds closer to home emanating from the radio and the HMV record player. The radio and the record player would become almost sacred objects.

The sounds they produced would enter deep into his consciousness, his soul; sounds he could never forget, sounds he would store as treasure and draw on for decades – fusing them through the mysterious alchemy of art into extraordinarily beautiful and affecting visions of his own.

And these visions have their genesis in the days before Rock ‘n’ Roll. The days of post war austerity. Days which could seem monochrome, mundane and stultifyingly metronomic. Days when a dreaming boy hunched close to the radio and the record player in search of a rainbow for his soul.

Together with fellow Irishman and fellow dreamer, poet Paul Durcan, he would dramatise those dreaming days in a song, ‘In The Days Before Rock ‘n’ Roll’ – a song which would catalogue some of the signposts of those dreams in a performance which has something of the hyper real, time slipping, giddy character of a waking dream. A performance which has me laughing out loud and punching the air with Joy as he hymns the stations and the musicians that called to him – that called his own unique voice into being.

‘In the Days’ is a dream that’s shot through with good humour, strangeness and charm. A dream that flows like a pure mountain stream strong enough to cut through stone yet gentle enough to dip your hand in. A stream you would surely want to let the goldfish go into!

A dream brought to vivid life over four days in the studio by an intimate quartet – Paul Durcan as the inspired/crazed narrator, Dave Early on drums, Steve Pearce on bass with Van Morrison on animating spirit, piano and vocals.

The sleeve notes tell me the song last 8 minutes and 13 seconds but that only records how long it lasts the first time you hear it – for once you’ve heard it it will be playing in your imagination and in your dreams for the rest of your life. Come aboard!

A Listeners guide:

Paul Durcan:

Paul Durcan is a maverick Irish poet who has been writing poems which fizz with emotional and literary energy for as long as Van has been writing songs which fizz with spiritual and musical energy. Durcan’s poetry speaks in an urgent conversational tone about almost every aspect of life not excluding the political, the sexual and the spiritual.

Reading a Durcan collection is to be taken on a thrilling literary roller coaster ride which will have you laughing and gasping as well as exhilarated and emotionally pummelled. He is a performance poet on the page as well as the stage addressing his audience as friends and fellow campfire sitters as he examines the crazy world we live in. He seems to me to be wholly mad and wholly sane simultaneously – ideal territory for a poet to occupy.

Who is Justin? Just a name plucked out of the air for its sound, its comparative rarity in a world awash with Jims and Georges and Pauls? Probably we will never know who this, ‘gentler than a man’ man was. Just a thought but it strikes me as not insignificant that an Irish poet from the latter half of the twentieth century would use a name which happens to be the little know second name of the greatest Irish poet of that era: Seamus Justin Heaney!

The Wireless Knobs/Telefunken

Vintage radios such as those made by the Telefunken Company in Berlin were gorgeously tactile objects. Radios, humming with valve power and gleaming with polished wood, bakelite and glass, softly lit, took pride of place in our homes in the days before Televisions took up their imperial dominance in our living rooms. No point and shoot remotes then! Radios were switched on and off and tuned to stations using knobs that clunked satisfyingly into position and dials that you set spinning to call up and capture sounds from distant lands beamed in from the ionosphere.

The very air crackled with possibility as you waited for the signal to settle as you settled down to laugh along your favourite comedians, sing along with your favourite singers, gasp at the heroics of your favourite detective or be amazed by a discovery as the spinning dial led you into imaginative territory you had never dreamed existed.

Radios conjured up dreams, created communities of interest and painted pictures that seared into our memories. Radio, despite all the technological developments of the last few decades remains the dreamers ideal companion. Tune in!

‘I am searching for … Luxembourg, Athlone, Budapest, AFN, Hilversum, Helvetia …’

One of the great pleasures of vintage radio was discovering what programmes were made by exotically named radio stations broadcasting from places which often had to be looked up on an atlas to see where they were! Not knowing what you might find and be introduced to was exciting and expanded our cultural horizons.

I’ll take spinning the dial over preset culture any day of the week: only listening to what you already know you like narrows your horizons and precludes the revolutionary discoveries that open up new worlds.

As you scanned the stations on the radio dial even reciting their names became a form of litany – clearly recognised above by Paul Durcan who has a genius for incantatory recitation.

Luxembourg:

Radio Luxembourg had a very powerful signal (on 208 metres Medium Wave) which washed tidally over the British Isles bringing many young people their first regular exposure to those new fangled musics their parents just knew were no good for them. Luxembourg, in contrast to the BBC, was a commercial station which meant it was happy to devote whole programmes to showcasing the new releases from record labels such as Capitol and Phillips.

On Saturdays at 8pm in 1956 (when Van was aged 11) you could listen to, ‘Jamboree’ – described as two hours of non-stop, action packed radio featuring ‘Teenage Jury’ and American disc-jockey Alan Freed with an excerpt from his world changing show, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’.

Athlone:

Athlone is a historic Irish town on the shores of the River Shannon. From the 1930s to the 1970s the principal transmitter for Irish radio was located in Athlone and the Irish national radio station came to be known on radio dials all over the world as Athlone. The fledgling Irish state was keen to promote native culture with Irish sports and traditional music being prominently featured.

Athlone is also the birthplace of the great Irish tenor Count John McCormack whose golden voice resounded all over the globe in the first half of the twentieth century. Like Van he had a voice that was able to express the normally inexpressible – a voice that could send shivers through the soul.

AFN (American Forces Network)

One of the spin-offs from the presence of GIs in Europe as a result of WW2 and the ensuing cold war was AFN whose broadcasts of American music could be listened to by Europeans hungry for the jazz and blues based music which was so hard to find anywhere else. Being near an American military base was a boon both for the likely strength of the signal and the possibility that personnel from the base might have records never seen in domestic stores.

Lester Piggott:

Lester Piggott (‘The long fellow’) was, as my Dad would have told you, the greatest horse racing jockey who ever lived. He won England’s premier race, The Epsom Derby, an almost unbelievable 9 times from 1954 as a teenager with, ‘Never Say Die’ through to 1983 when he won with, ‘Teenoso’. Lester Piggott became an almost mythical figure not just in the world of the turf but in the folklore of the nation.

Children and grandmothers who never opened a racing page in their lives would go into a bookmakers on the day of a classic race and simply say, ‘I’ll have five shillings on whatever Lester is riding!’ And, very, very often that turned out to be a very smart bet for no one was a better judge of what horse to ride than Lester Piggott and no one more capable of riding a race with ice cool expertise to ensure victory. Lester was a close mouthed man with a very dry sense of humour – he had no time for the hoopla of celebrity. He he lived to win horse races and he spoke horse with a fluency that’s probably never been matched.

Fats, Elvis, Sonny, Lightning, Muddy, John Lee!, Ray Charles:The High Priest! The Killer: Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard.

Van Morrison was extraordinarily fortunate to be the son of a father who had lived in Detroit and who had a fabled collection of blues and Rhythm & Blues records young Van could immerse his thirsty soul in. As he says he heard Muddy Waters and Blind Lemon on the street where he was born. Leadbelly became his guiding spirit. A spirit he has remained true to over five decades and more of music making.

The radio brought to him and millions of others the original Rock ‘n’ Roll creators – the revolutionaries whose legacy will live for ever. The greater the distance we are from those giants of the 1950s the greater their genius is clear. They were the guides and spirits who befriended us – who turned on the coloured lights for whole generations. Their genius is lovingly celebrated in the roll call here to form an honours board of immortality.

There can be no doubt that Van Morrison has joined that company.

As the song fades back into the ether a transported Paul Durcan says:

‘We certainly got a lot of beautiful things in there Van’.

Truer words were never spoken.

Thom Hickey's avatarThe Immortal Jukebox

‘Turn it up! Turn up your Rad-io!’ (Van Morrison – ‘Caravan’)

‘We were the War children – born 1945 ….’ (Van Morrison – ‘Wild Children’)

‘I can get your station when I need rejuvenation … Wavelength you never let me down’ (Van Morrison – ‘Wavelength’)

‘… I like Morrison because I know that his work comes from the same level as my own poetry – the level of daydreaming; that he’s out to annihilate ego; that he’s after the same,’nothingness’ as Kavanagh was after ….’ (Paul Durcan)

Van Morrison is an only child. A child alone much of the time by inclination and perhaps vocation. A soul born to dream, to live in dreams and to birth those dreams in songs and singing – dreaming in God.

As a boy growing up in East Belfast he was close to the sea and the countryside. From his house, beyond his bedroom…

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Virtual and Sometime Friends ( Really Careless Talk!)

/ Ken Finton / 4 Comments

philipparees's avatarINVOLUTION: Science and God: Reality Redefined

Virtual and Sometime Friends ( Really Careless Talk!)

I have taken a long silence in the past weeks. Many loose threads are now waving at me to be woven into some kind of order. Having briefed the court case and found the book judged ‘not guilty’ I was bereft of purpose. Bereft also of much conviction that anything else I could say would have the value that justified saying it.

Some of those threads. Casual Observations, all.

• Blogging.

Unlike cooking which presents the necessity at least once daily, there is no appetite for a blog that is reflective, philosophically reflective, or too argumentative, or too long. Guilty as charged m’lud. I have perhaps twelve faithful friends who read and comment, and some at extravagant length. That is most warming and I can answer at equal length and never write anything else. This might discourage others who prefer to mwah…

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“UNIVERSE”

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

Man of many thoughts's avatarkeithgarrettpoetry

 

Created within me Is the answer to the beginning of time,

Is there a start or finish, an ending or beginning to what’s mine.?

In many a direction I must be,

Everything travels through my darkness, who knows what their Is to see.

Older than anything, how long have I really existed,

Where did I come from, Is the answer a mystery never to be discovered.?

All things that live within my space,

Rotating forever, will they always be In this place.?

I am the universe, not knowing what I really am,

With no air or much light, not a visitor from your land.

I’ll stay here, whom can say just how long,

Perhaps till an end comes to my time.

Keith Garrett

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NOT MUCH DO I WANT

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

Man of many thoughts's avatarkeithgarrettpoetry

A roof over my head, a bed to rest my weary head,

Food on the table, a shower and a place to sit.

Healthy inside, a little money so i may survive,

A friend or two, love is really quite a miracle.

Not much do i want as this is about all i need or want,

Things that are still free to enjoy are in my sight.

The rising, morning sun is a sight taken much for granted,

See the sky, the clouds drifting by, look always up so high.

The wind would be beautiful to see, feel the winds beauty,

A smile during a falling rain, a gift with hope will always remain,

Not much do i want, simple things as i live each given day.

Keith Garrett

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Lost Love Lyrics

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

midimike's avatarMidiMike

*Please see previous post if you are interested in the story behind why I wrote this song. *

“Lost Love”   86 bpm  © MSK 6-2004

We’d been together just a little while

Each day melted into the other.

Daylight through the evenings we danced,

Completely consumed by one another.

As life went on our love got stronger.

My friends thought that it would never last.

I know all things come to an end.

Just didn’t think it would be so fast.

It’s been a long number of years now gone

How many more I don’t really know.

Everyday I try to say good bye,

but For some reason I just can’t let you go.

And he said, ‘son, if ignorance is bliss,

You must be a very happy man’.

Memories of your Lost Love might never go away,

But everyone else you love can.

Father and son, we were…

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WHY DO RACISTS SEE THE WORLD AS THEY DO?

/ Ken Finton / Leave a comment

Ken Finton's avatarKenneth Harper Finton

(A HUMANITARIAN REBUTTAL TO WORLD RACISM)

by Kenneth Harper Finton

29CF0E6900000578-0-image-a-34_1434814613248

A manifesto written by Dylann Roof shortly before he murdered nine black people in Charleston, South Carolina is an important clue into the workings of his mind and the ideas that underlie a universal form of racism and ignorance that is destroying the our very world.

Roof states:

‘“I was not raised in a racist home or environment. Living in the South, almost every White person has a small amount of racial awareness, simply beause of the numbers of negroes in this part of the country. But it is a superficial awareness. Growing up, in school, the White and black kids would make racial jokes toward each other, but all they were were jokes. Me and White friends would sometimes would watch things that would make us think that “blacks were the real racists” and other elementary thoughts like this…

View original post 3,483 more words

SHARK

/ Ken Finton / 1 Comment

BY ARTEMIS J. JONES ©2014

shark

Each day weather permitting I go to the beach. I clean the sand out of the wheels and pivots of my wheel chair. I lube the hubs on the front wheels. Pack my day bag along with my binoculars and wheel myself down Ocean Drive. My destination: the giant palm tree on the south east corner of the  Hotel Property. It’s the perfect spot. It’s about fifty yards from the water at low tide. The brick pavers aren’t too difficult for a wheel chair, so I manage.  I really love this spot, the sidewalk and common areas are a rustic Mediterranean color and the palm gives me shade for most of the day. My only competition for this tiny piece of real estate is Jimmy the Bum. Jimmy, who is drunk most of the time, occasionally beats me here. He panhandles, sleeps, and picks up old cigarette butts to try and smoke what’s left of them. Today I’m first so Jimmy will have to take the other side of the sidewalk. I got my spot!

From about ten o’clock to two o’clock the walkway is busy, tourists mostly going back and forth from the restaurants and hotels. Families carrying their beach bags, boyfriends, lovers, husbands talking to their wives, girlfriends, lovers- who knows. I enjoy the activity and I eavesdrop a little.

The afternoon is typical Jimmy is sleeping off his early morning drinking and I’m watching all the beach goers. There is a couple that has my attention. A man and women together, she is coated in suntan oil, I can see it glistening off her bronze skin from here. He’s just sitting and watching everything. He seems to be a very observant man. His girlfriend—I don’t think they are married— sometimes checks his glances, she is suspicious, but she remains quiet. I just think he’s observant.

About twenty yards north of their position another couple is enjoying the sun. I’m sure they’re married. They display a lack of interest in each other that many married couples show in public. It’s hard to really know what that means … it could be trust, it could be who cares. They talk and I guess they both decide he would go to the food stand and get some refreshments. He walks by me and heads for the stand. On the way back he says hi to me and asks if I’m a vet. I say “yes” and he commends me for my service. What a nice guy!

I watch both couples, the married couple, and the observant man who is coupled with the jealous women. The married man goes into the water, while the observant man just sits under his umbrella with his shades on. There’s a lot of people in the water today, the tide is low, water temperature is seventy-three degrees. The low tide is great for children to play in, there is no shelf or drop off. So many kids are on boogie boards, floats. Families playing together. It’s a beautiful day.

I look for the married man, but I don’t see him. I glance towards his chair, look at his wife, she is sleeping, but I cannot see the man. So I gaze over the crowd. Maybe he got out of the water and went for a walk on the beach. I look up and down the beach, then I see him pop his head up in the water. He must be quit a swimmer, to stay under water that long. So I look back at the observant man, he is watching something, his head perks up, something has his attention. I look back towards the married man, he has gone under water.

The observant man gets up and starts yelling shark, shark, as he runs towards the beach where all the children are playing. I see the fin, it’s definitely a shark. The life guards come to life leaping from their sedentary posts.  The jealous women watches her boyfriend as he runs towards the water. The married women wakes up and begins looking for her husband.  Everyone else stands up with their cell phones and they all begin recording the excitement. Children are running for their moms and dads. Moms and dads are running for their children, and the wife stands at the edge of the water looking for her husband.  The observant man is still yelling shark, he is in the water. The married man’s head pops up and the shark is right behind him.

There is thrashing and the water turns red. The observant man stops. He stares at the spot where he last saw the married man, and he does not leave the water. I look around many people are still  recording the event with their phones, but some have stopped. The ones that stopped go to their chairs and begin texting or whatever it is that they do. I glance at Jimmy he is sleeping through all the excitement.

A head neck and torso wash up on the beach. The man who had a kind exchange with me, just moments ago, is gone. His wife is holding her hands up towards the water and she looks over at the man who tried to warn everyone. She must be in shock.

Most people stop recording the event with their cell phones. Paramedics come rushing by me with stretchers and they all step on Jimmy’s feet that are sticking out in the walkway. People are coming off the street to see what happened, the walkway is getting crowded.

The jealous women goes to her boyfriend. Suddenly he is a viral man and she is aroused, she shows this by kissing him passionately. They hug for a moment.  He walks out of the water, shaking his head. I can tell he wanted to save the man.  The life guards and paramedics talk to him, a few pat him on the back. His girlfriend enjoys the attention he is getting, he is shy about it.

The medical examiner arrives while other city services clean up and gather information. The tourists who recorded some of the event are gone, others who witnessed and recorded all of it are talking with police, and a few others- to local news crews. I guess it will be all over the local TV news tonight.

The observant man and his girlfriend leave.

I sat and thought about what I had just witnessed. The observant man saved a lot of children, the shark went right through the area where they were playing. I toss an old coconut at Jimmy to wake him up. Startled he hits his head on the brick wall and spills all the change the passers-by tossed into his cap. I guess it’s time to go home.

I’m lucky. My apartment is on the first floor, it’s small, but I like it. I have a computer desk that my chair fits up to nicely. I like to browse the internet sometimes. So I make a sandwich and roll myself into place. When my browser comes up it always shows me the latest news on CNN, FOX, and the local stations. I also watch You-Tube videos. I always watch the most popular videos of the day.

CNN, FOX have more war stuff— ISIS stories. The local channel has the weather, always the weather, the only good news they can report is the weather, because the weather is always good.

You-Tube has taken life though, there is a bunch of videos streaming in- fresh new content- that everyone loves to see. All the top videos today have a similar title. SHARK ATTACK — SHARKS SWARM MAN— SHARK EATS MAN ALIVE— and the most popular of the day MAN WATCHES SHARK EAT ANOTHER MAN.

The views of all the videos are soaring, the most popular was at 200,000 one minute then 2,000,000 the next. And the world that now —sees itself as a witness— to this horrific event, is weighing in with comments.  The streams of opinions never seem to end, but they all say about the same thing.

Cavegirl21:    “It was horrible, he just stood there. What a coward.”

Avenger17:    “If I was close enough I would’ve saved him.”

I’m a slut 18:   “Did you see the look on the woman’s face as she looked at that coward.”

Lonlygirl12:   “I’m horrified. The coward looked like my father who left us.”

Braveheart29: “I will find that coward! I’ll teach him about bravery.”

Enlightenus4: “Our society is failing. We must all seek the truth to understanding.”

Anger69:         “I’ll beat his worthless ass.”

Sugarlipps:      “How can someone just stand there while their best friend gets eaten alive?”

Monstor99:     “My rage shall be felt throughout the land.”

Monstor99: also quoted Edmund Burke, “that evil succeed when good men do nothing.”

The bravado: pouring out of their empty souls, as they espouse their opinions of life and mankind.  How pathetic to sit in solitary self-imposed confinement and criticize the world. Every video I watched was of the shark attack— that I witnessed. All the brave commentators were nowhere near the scene of the attack.  The up-loads showed all the videos were posted by companies called XCITE, CONTENT MEDIA, YOUJUSTSAWIT, and others. They all pay for videos. The people who made the short videos had their story and they got some quick cash.  This all got under my skin, I was angry. So I thought about it and responded.

My online name is GWVET54 and this is what I wrote back.

I saw this shark attack, and the man you all are condemning tried to save the man who got attacked. He did save several children who were in the water. They were not friends, he was brave, and his actions should be commended.

Responses were as follows:

Sugarlipps: Where is your video if you were there. You’re probably the coward. What an asshole.”

Avenger17, Braveheart29, and Anger69 all replied with the same answer: YOU’RE A LIAR! In capital letters of course, they wanted me to feel their anger. I didn’t.

I couldn’t stand it, I turned off the computer and turned on the local evening news. First story— Shark attack— they did not pin point the location for fear of scaring away the tourists. But they did show video that showed the man running into the water and warning everyone- although the news commentator said, “He sure caused a panic … but children were saved, so I guess it was worth it.” They mentioned there was a victim, but did not disclose any more information about him.

About a week later, on You-Tube there was another video of the attack. Someone named Clarity33 posted it on their channel. So I guess Clarity33 was on the beach that day. It had a few hits, and one comment about the man warning the children. But most people had already moved on, satisfied that they knew the real story.

LEARN MORE ABOUT Artemis J Jones  AT HIS WEBSITE:  http://artemisjjones.blogspot.com

Dialogue of the Nihilist and the Chaotician

/ Ken Finton / 3 Comments

by KD Rose

Dialog

From Heavy Bags of Soul by KD Rose

Nihilist: I’ve lost faith in the Work.

Chaote: Good. What use is faith in the Work? The condition is complete continuity within complete discontinuity.

Nihilst: Yes, I know. And what good is that?

Chaote: Arbitrary perceptual intention combining with the determinism arising from absolute cause effect, creating the immensely entertaining experience of “will.”

Nihilist: That is not will. It is just arbitrary perceptions arising from environmental stimuli or cues that strike ones personal patterns, flaws, thoughts, ideas, etc that seem like patterns because they have a common perceiver.

Chaote: The things that were said to create the experience of will were not identified as will itself, you will notice.   Rather, will itself seems to be best described as a bottomless self-iterating feedback loop of consciousness− the self of selflessness.

Nihilist: No, then you are saying the mere act of perceiving it is will.

Chaote: Yes.

Nihilist: That’s not true, perception is not will.

Chaote: So what is it?

Nihilist: Perception is perception, and it is false at that.

Chaote: But will is true?

Nihilist: Supposedly. I know nothing anymore.

Chaote: Seems safer that way, eh?

Nihilist: I don’t believe in anything anymore. There is nothing that one can put stake in as true. It’s not safer, it’s devastating. There is no reason to exist.

Chaote: What are you doing?

Nihilist: What do you mean?

Chaote: Now. Right now.

Nihilist: Wasting a body.

Chaote: Then what are you?

Nihilist: Nothing.

Chaote: Then how can you be wasting a body?

Nihilist: I don’t know what you mean. It doesn’t matter whether the body is illusion or not. There is some form of consciousness here. It is wasted.

Chaote: You are using your nihilism as a buffer from the actual shock of arbitrary randomness, from chaos. There is no standard for waste, or purpose. So you’re just making one up and denying it to save your sorry identity from something even more mind blowing.

Nihilist: Chaos is meaningless.

Chaote: Of course!

Nihilist: What is the standard I am supposedly making up and then denying?

Chaote: I don’t know but it must be something, otherwise the ideas of nothing and waste would seem as arbitrary and pointless to you as they do to me.

Nihilist: The standard is to have a purpose. That has been my standard. Different systems put their own words on it. My sorry identity has already perceived mind-blowing things. What else is there?

Chaote: You seem disappointed.

Nihilist: There is no reason to exist. That is rather disappointing, yes.

Chaote: You need one?

Nihilist: My current perception is that my current consciousness needs a purpose, yes.

Chaote: No wonder you’re disappointed.

Nihilist: There is connection to larger somethings, but I no longer believe in the purpose of any larger somethings either. Just more bullshit. The masturbation of the universe. Why, how do you see everything?

Chaote: As a continually self-iterating fractal, apparent order evolving out of apparent disorder, the extrapolation of arbitrary initial conditions spiraling through infinite reflections of its own shifting image.

Nihilist: Only sounds like hell to me. It feels otherwise to you?

Chaote: In order to have hell, you have to have something to compare it to.

Nihilist: Only imagination of otherwise, and imagination of a purpose to it all.

Chaote: There can be infinite purposes!

Nihilist: Infinite purposes is the same as arbitrary meaningless.

Chaote: Right on!

Nihilist: Man is ultimately only happy striving for something. And once having tossed away the material, emotional, power plays, and all the other layers of stuff to strive for, there is nothing else. Levels of attainment…enlightenment….all a sham. No ultimate thing to strive for. No purpose.

Chaote: And instead of being amused, you’re bored!

Nihilist: What do you want from your life?

Chaote: Nothing.

Nihilist: You don’t care? Do you enjoy it?

Chaote: Yes.

Nihilist: Are you saying you are Tao? Is that why?

Chaote: I am saying there is a probability that I could be anything at all.

Nihilist: But there are higher probabilities for this lifetime based on your particular situations and gifts, correct?

Chaote: Probably. Isn’t indeterminacy fun! Consciousness manifests indeterminacy. Cause effect is obviously absolute.

Nihilist: Um…. how do you say cause-effect is absolute?

Chaote: Everything is caused by something.

Nihilist: Really. And there is nothing self-created? The initial whatever must be self created, no?

Chaote: Doesn’t matter. That is just a masturbatory question.

Nihilist: Laughs

Chaote: If the initial conditions arise spontaneously, you could just as well say nothing created them.

Nihilist: I don’t wish to create an arbitrary purpose. I could, but it would be a lie. I could treat the world as a playground, but that would be just another form of lie. The only thing I can think of is that I like learning and exploring the unknown. But that would just be another game too− one that apparently has nothing at the end of it. Should I just get lost in humanness? Numb the consciousness with the veils of human life? Pretend I am not aware?

Chaote: You could start by reminding yourself that you really don’t have control of what’s happening to you.

Nihilist: What good would that do?

Chaote: Anything could potentially happen, so instead of arbitrarily identifying your awareness with this so called (non) truth of yours, just wait and see what does happen.

Nihilist: Should I look for burning bushes in the sky?

Chaote: You are hung up on this no meaning, no purpose awareness boredom repetition. It will pass.

Nihilist: Waiting for arbitrary happenings? What will it pass into next? The mouse will round the next corner of the endless maze and describe what it sees?

Chaote: Quite possibly.

Nihilist: One day, a mouse will figure out how to destroy all perception of the maze and mice. And what insights do you cast from your corner of the run? What phase, if any, are you in?

Chaote: Apparently the one where nothing actually matters and it is enjoyable.

Nihilist: Some would call that a final phase.

Chaote: I don’t know about anything being final. Out of infinite possibilities, initial conditions are chosen entirely at random. Any attempt at ultimate control is superfluous.

Nihilist: And you still say you seek nothing and just plan to enjoy arbitrary whatever?

Chaote: Yes.

Nihilist: Have you ever had communications with what people would label a higher being, or your higher self, or the universe, etc, type thing?

Chaote: Probably. Grins

Nihilist: Well how do you fit those into your paradigm of arbitrariness?

Chaote: They must have been caused by something which must be integrated into the pattern somehow, and the structure of the pattern is originated by arbitrariness.

Nihilist: So you are talking antecedents of determinism again. That would only be a theory, would it not? That the structure of the pattern is originated by arbitrariness?

Chaote: Yes, just a theory. But a meta-theory at that. The theory of theories.

Nihilist: Yes, yes, the map is not the territory, etc. But the very theory of arbitrariness would say, would it not, that the probability at some point would be that the origin would not be arbitrary.

Chaote: Yes, it would. In fact, the initial condition can never actually be observed so they might as well not exist. Pure chaos creates determinism from indeterminacy.

Nihilist: Well, that would be one name to give it. Others would be God, Self, Universe, Will, etc.

Chaote: Certainly.

Nihilist: Then the construct is just using the name chaos as another pose of the big dad in the sky, only one with no purpose.

Chaote: Except it would have no attributes in this case.

Nihilist: Oh, I don’t know. It ‘makes the origin of everything,’ ‘creates determinism from indeterminacy,’ ‘makes the structure of the pattern’…sounds like the big impartial dad of the universe to me.

Chaote: But there’s nothing actually there; it’s just a byword for a process.

Nihilist: And what is the fuel for this process?

Chaote: Information does not require fuel.

Nihilist: Information?

Chaote: Patterns.

Nihilist: Patterns and process imply movement, do they not? Or change. Otherwise there would be no patterns or determinism from indeterminacy. Movement or change implies fuel.

Chaote: That sounds Newtonian. Of course there is change, but not necessarily conversion of energy from one state to another.

Nihilist: No, not conversion of energy. But the energy needed for the movement at all…or call it inertia− the energy needed for inertia.

Chaote: And what are energy and inertia?

Nihilist: Concepts…. devised to explain other concepts.

Chaote: Right, so the point is, in the realm of concepts, it is no use to appeal to other concepts to explain how concepts themselves work. Pure information cannot depend upon energy, which is just a term of information itself. Concepts + information.

Nihilist: Perhaps, but inertia would not be the same term as energy and pattern and information could be. Inertia would describe their existence. Insomuch as all words are concepts, nevertheless, inertia describes a property.

Chaote: The tendency not to change?

Nihilist: The tendency to remain in the state that one is in….this includes movement….to go on moving in the same way.

Chaote: Isn’t that just another way of referring to the deterministic character of self-propagating systems?

Nihilist: I see no determinism in inertia. Only continual movement.

Chaote: But there has to be a cause, does there not?

Nihilist: You said yourself that origins are unknown, therefore what do they matter. I don’t agree, but that was your statement.

Chaote: The point is that motion is determined. It is not the motion I am claiming to be arbitrary, but rather the origin of the motion.

Nihilist: If the origin of the motion is arbitrary, then the motion is also arbitrary!

Chaote:   Good one.

Nihilist: The things to wait for in life, as you said− all arbitrary.

Chaote: Ultimately the motion would be arbitrary, but from inside it looks like a determined system.

Nihilist: From inside?

Chaote: When perceiving pattern as a part of it.

Nihilist: ‘Pattern’ meaning what?

Chaote: Information manifesting consciously.

Nihilist: Yes, but one knows now that it is not a determined system, regardless of perception.

Chaote: Probably. Grins

Nihilist: Back to square zero. Or should I say Ouroboros.

Chaote: Best of luck in your passionate attempt at negation.

Nihilist: Passionate attempts to negate are only monumental efforts to find that which cannot be negated. Best of luck with the butterflies.

Chaote: Oh, we’ve moved on to Minkowski seagulls.

KD ROSEK.D. Rose is a poet and author who currently has published “Heavy Bags of Soul”, “Inside Sorrow”, “I AM”, “Erasing: Shadows”, “Anger’s Children”, and “The Brevity of Twit.”

K.D. has an eclectic mind and loves language, physics, philosophy, photography, design, art, writing, symbolism, semiotics, spirituality, and Dr. Who. KD Rose is an avid supporter of music, the arts, cutting edge science, technology, and creativity in all forms that encourage us to expand and explore past the artificial limits we often set for ourselves in order to see the everyday connections that exist among all things.

K.D. is also a spoonie and prefers to think of herself as “a spoonie on the lam.”

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