TREAT YOURSELF TO THE B E S T

Onomatopoeia and glossolalia.

2012-01-20T09:44:00.005Z

Demetrio Stratos' interpretation of Antonin Artaud's screeches, onomatopoeia and glossolalia.

"7. La cruauté c'est d'extirper par le sang et jusqu'au sang Dieu le hasard bestial de l'animalité inconsciente de l'homme partout ou on peut la rencontrer..." - Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu (Antonin Artaud)

ALSO, download and listen to Demetrio Stratos' "Cantare la voce" - HERE.

AZOLAN.

2012-01-19T01:30:00.003Z

by Voltaire

AT VILLAGE lived, in days of yore,

A youth bred in Mahomet's lore;

His well-turned limbs were formed with grace,

With blooming beauty glowed his face;

His name was Azolan, with care

The Koran he had written fair;

Was on its study ever bent,

To get it all by heart he meant.

From the most early youth his breast

By zeal for Gabriel was possessed;

This minister of the most high

Descended to him from the sky.

"The zeal that in thy bosom glows,"

Said he, "thy guardian Gabriel knows:

To Gabriel gratitude is dear,

To make your fortune I'm come here;

You'll in short time as first divine

Of Medina and Mecca shine;

This, next to his place who is chief

Of all who hold the true belief,

Is the most high and wealthy station

In holy Mahomet's donation.

When you your duties once begin,

Honors on all sides will pour in;

But you a solemn oath must make

The whole sex female to forsake;

To lead a life most chaste, and ne'er

But through a grate to view the fair."

Too hastily the beauteous boy,

That he church treasures might enjoy,

Fell easily into the snare,

Nor of his folly was aware.

Our new-made imam was elate,

Seeing himself become so great;

His joy the salary enhanced,

Which was immediately advanced

by a clerk of important air,

Who with him still went share and share.

No joy can dignity supply,

Nor wealth, should love his aid deny.

Amina fair by chance he spies,

With youthful bloom and charming eyes;

He loves Amina, she in turn

For him feels love's flame equal burn.

Each morning as the day returned,

The youth, who with love's flames still burned,

Being by his cursed oath enchained,

Of his sad slavery complained,

Avowing freely in his heart,

That he had played a foolish part.

"Then, Medina, farewell," he cried,

"Mecca, vain pomp and foolish pride;

Amina, mistress of my breast,

We'll both live in my village blessed."

From heaven the archangel made descent,

Severely to reproach him bent:

The tender lover thus replies:

"Do but behold my mistress' eyes;

I find of me you've made a jest,

I'm by your contract quite distressed;

With all you gave I'll freely part,

I ask alone Amina's heart.

The prudent and the sacred lore

Of Mahomet I must adore;

Love's joys he grants to the elect,

Nay, he allows them to expect

Aminas and eternal love,

In his bright Paradise above.

To heaven again, dear Gabriel, go,

My zeal for you shall still o'erflow;

To the empyrean then repair;

Without my love I'd not go there."

Catalin Avramescu's An Intellectual history of Cannibalism.

2012-01-16T13:53:00.012Z

Discussion of the Idea of Cannibalism by Catalin Avramescu and Nigel Warburton at the Philosophy Bites podast which took place the 6th of December 2009.

Avramescu discusses the fascinating topic of the part played by the idea of cannibalism in the history of philosophy in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

Philosophy Bites is a podcast created by Nigel Warburton & David Edmonds.

Visit www.philosophybites.com & their Facebook user's group.

Direct download: http://traffic.libsyn.com/philosophybites/Catalin_Avramescu_on_Cannibalism.mp3

FURTHER RECOMMENDED READING:

An Intellectual History of Cannibalism

by Catalin Avramescu.

The cannibal has played a surprisingly important role in the history of thought--perhaps the ultimate symbol of savagery and degradation-- haunting the Western imagination since before the Age of Discovery, when Europeans first encountered genuine cannibals and related horrible stories of shipwrecked travelers eating each other. An Intellectual History of Cannibalism is the first book to systematically examine the role of the cannibal in the arguments of philosophers, from the classical period to modern disputes about such wide-ranging issues as vegetarianism and the right to private property.

Catalin Avramescu shows how the cannibal is, before anything else, a theoretical creature, one whose fate sheds light on the decline of theories of natural law, the emergence of modernity, and contemporary notions about good and evil. This provocative history of ideas traces the cannibal's appearance throughout Western thought, first as a creature springing from the menagerie of natural law, later as a diabolical retort to theological dogmas about the resurrection of the body, and finally to present-day social, ethical, and political debates in which the cannibal is viewed through the lens of anthropology or invoked in the service of moral relativism.

Ultimately, An Intellectual History of Cannibalism is the story of the birth of modernity and of the philosophies of culture that arose in the wake of the Enlightenment. It is a book that lays bare the darker fears and impulses that course through the Western intellectual tradition

Bud Powell trio.

2012-01-16T11:16:00.010Z

Dance of the Infidels ( Live @ Blue note cafe Paris )

"Bud Powell is the most important pianist in jazz and one of the most underrated because he spent over a third of his life in mental and medical hospitals. He was beaten by the police when he was twenty and he never fully recovered from that beating and as a result, he suffered pain and had to take drugs to alleviate the pain. ... In spite of that, he created a whole lot of wonderful music. He was really the first guy. Before Bud Powell, pianists were playing "boom, chuck" in the left hand and a lot of melodic figures in the right hand that tended to be arpeggios ... Bud Powell was imitating Charlie Parker. So Bud was the first pianist to take Charlie Parker's language and adapt it successfully to the piano. That's why he is the most important pianist in music today because everybody plays like that now." - Bill Cunliffe

Nahawa Doumbia - Didadi Kana

2012-01-14T09:32:00.003Z

"During the late 80's Political and economic crisis in Mali, the music made a move from praise and jeli, towards a more modern
sound. Especially in Wassoulou, south of Bamako. Nahawa Doumbia comes in at the Global Groove with her fresh sounding voice. Very nice music."

GET IT !

‎"At least I galloped... When did you ???"

2012-01-13T17:33:00.003Z

Yes, Equus again... How many times must I've had talked about this film ? It haunts me what can I do but to succumb to watch it over and over trying to peel yet another layer off of it anytime I see it ?

This film never ceases to amaze me. It is perfect beyond comprehension. Because of Lumet and Shaffer, because of Burton, because of Firth and because of the powerful message it has... Children indoctrination is one of the vilest acts of violence that could be committed against someone. And the ability to create a god or some other metaphysical fantasy only takes two eyes and a tongue but it can cause severe damage both at an individual and a general level.

Time to begin extirpating all these esoteric, spiritual myths and superstitions off our brains because they are a vivid and highly virulent tumour.

Que voulez-vous dire, Monsieur Artaud ?

2012-01-08T23:39:00.017Z

For you can tie me up if you wish,

but there is nothing more useless than an organ.

When you will have made him a body without organs,

then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions

and restored him to his true freedom.

They you will teach him again to dance wrong side out

as in the frenzy of dance halls

and this wrong side out will be his real place.

Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu: Balzac & Rivette.

2012-01-03T15:12:00.064Z

These are both my favourite Balzac/Rivette works. Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse closely followed by La Religieuse, La Bande des Quatre & Hurlevent. And in regard to Balzac, apart from The Atheist's Mass, Cousin Bette and The Magic Skin, this short story is one of my favourites especially since I can (as surely many other artists/writers can out there) easily identify with some of the sentiments of its main character Frenhofer.

I highly recommend both the film (the 4 hours version of it) and the short story itself you can read (translated to English) HERE.

The 1831 short story:

Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu is a short story by Honoré de Balzac. It was first published in the newspaper L'Artiste with the title "Maître Frenhofer" (English: "Master Frenhofer") in August 1831. It appeared again later in the same year under the title "Catherine Lescault, conte fantastique." It was published in Balzac's Études philosophiques in 1837 and was integrated into the La Comédie humaine in 1846. At the most fundamental level, "Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu" is a reflection on art.

In the plot, although Frenhofer has mastered his technique, he admits that he has been unable to find a suitable model for his own masterpiece, La Belle noiseuse, on which he has been working for ten years. This future masterpiece, that no one has yet seen, is to be the portrait of Catherine Lescault. Poussin offers his own lover, Gilette, as a potential model. Gilette's beauty is so great that it inspires Frenhofer to finish his project quickly. Poussin and Porbus come to admire the painting, but all they can see is part of a foot that has been lost in a swirl of colors. Their disappointment drives Frenhofer to madness, and he destroys the painting and kills himself.

The 1991 Film adaptation:

Based on Honore de Balzac's "Le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu" (or The Unknown masterpiece), La Belle Noiseuse is a 1991 film directed by Jacques Rivette and starring Michel Piccoli as the distressed artist, obsessed with something that will never exist: The perfect and flawless artistic masterpiece.

Plot: A famous reclusive painter, Frenhofer (Piccoli), lives quietly with his wife and former model (Birkin) in a large château in rural Languedoc-Roussillon. When a young artist visits him with his girlfriend Marianne (Béart), Frenhofer is inspired to commence work once more on a painting he long ago abandoned - La Belle Noiseuse - using Marianne as his model.

The film painstakingly explores Frenhofer's creative rebirth. It uses lengthy real-time takes of the artist's hand (provided by Bernard Dufour) working on the canvas.

A stray comment in La Bande des quatres about the painter Frenhofer and his masterpiece La Belle noiseuse spawned a 1991 film of the same name, leading Rivette fans themselves to wonder of a pervasive conspiracy between the master’s films. La Belle Noiseuse is a meditation on the artist’s relationship to the surrounding world, and the complexities of artistic inspiration. Rivette, never fully satisfied with merely one agenda per film, also crafts a fully realized portrait of two couples, and two lifestyles, colliding, with unexpected and life-altering repercussions.

Rivette also released a two-hour version of the film, entitled La Belle noiseuse: divertimento, constructed out of alternate takes, which appeared to be intentional self-mutilation.

GET IT !!! La Belle Noiseuse (1991) | 240mins in 3 dvds | 2.08gb | English & Spanish subtitles. (no pass)

DVD 1: PART1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7 | PART 8
DVD 2: PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7 | PART 8
DVD 3: PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7 | PART 8

ENGLISH srt: DVD 1 | DVD 2 | DVD 3
SPANISH srt: DVD 1 | DVD 2 | DVD 3

All rip/upload credits goes to saynomoreglass over at the delightful Arsenevich blog.

La Religieuse: "and my answer is NO."

2011-12-30T22:50:00.057Z

The 1796 Novel:

La Religieuse (The Nun) is an 18th century French novel by Denis Diderot. Completed in about 1780, the work was not published until 1796, after Diderot's death. In English it is called The Nun, or Memoirs of a Nun in Francis Birrell's translation.

The novel began not as a work for literary consumption, but as an elaborate practical joke aimed at luring the Marquis de Croismare, a companion of Diderot's, back to Paris. The novel consists of a series of letters purporting to be from a nun, Suzanne, who implores the Marquis to help her in renouncing her vows, and describes her intolerable life in the convent to which she has been committed against her will.

Diderot later revised the letters into a novel drawing attention both to the cruelty of the then-current practice of forcing young women into convents in order to get them out of the way, and the corruption that was rampant among the clergy and in religious institutions. When Diderot publicly admitted his role in the ruse, the Marquis is said to have laughed at the revelation, unsurprisingly since he had behaved with exemplary compassion and generosity in his willingness to help the imaginary Suzanne.

'You can leave a forest, but you can never leave a cloister; you are free in the forest, but you are a slave in the cloister.' Diderot's The Nun (La Religieuse) is the seemingly true story of a young girl forced by her parents to enter a convent and take holy orders. A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing insight into the effects of forced vocations and the unnatural life of the convent. A succes de scandale at the end of the eighteenth century, it has attracted and unsettled readers ever since. For Diderot's novel is not simply a story of a young girl with a bad habit; it is also a powerfully emblematic fable about oppression and intolerance.

The Nun is a fictitious collection of memoirs of a young French girl forced into becoming a nun by her parents, specifically her mother. Her memoirs detail the struggles she has with being pushed into the religious life, and the torture she goes through as she tries to escape a life of god. Diderot not only shows his distaste for the church hierarchy, but also the notion of the institution being involved with religion, and human rights and freedoms being taken away from those involved with the church. Diderot shows that convents are not quite, what the public perceives them to be. He shows them as a monarchy led by a supreme ruler (mother superior) and if a nun does not obey, she will be subject to treatment similar to a prisoner of war. “ When I got back to my cell I felt terrible pains in my feet, I looked down and saw that they were covered in blood from cuts made by bits of glass they had spitefully thrown in my path ”.

The 1966 Film adaptation:

La Religieuse (English: The nun, also known as: Suzanne Simonin, la Religieuse de Denis Diderot) is a 1966 French drama directed by prominent director and once chief editor of Cahiers du Cinema, Jacques Rivette. The film is based on the novel of the same title, as already mentioned above by 18th century Enlightened philosopher Denis Diderot.

In eighteenth-century France a girl is forced against her will to take vows as a nun. Three mothers superior (Madame de Moni, Sister Sainte-Christine, and Madame de Chelles) treat her in radically different ways, ranging from maternal concern, to violent and vicious persecution, to lesbian desire.

This shocking film is considered the most traditional of New Wave master Jacques Rivette's oeuvre. But it is compelling, visually beautiful and poignant. The film is greatly abetted by the superb performances of the sterling cast.

The controversial subject matter caused the feature to be banned in France for two years during the sixties, despite assurances to director Jacques Rivette by censors. The subsequent ban helped the film (shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966) gain more recognition. Rivette's cynical references to Catholicism as the ultimate theater enraged the Catholic Film Office, the agency that spearheaded the opposition to the film. "La religieuse" caused a big scandal when it was released in the mid-sixties.The Church insisted on calling the movie Suzanne Simonin ,la religieuse de Diderot.

GET IT !

La Religieuse (1966) Original French audio | Subs: English/Spanish | 134 min | 1.07 GB (no psswd):

Nietzsche on Hardship.

2011-12-28T14:15:00.009Z

Philosophy
A Guide To Happiness:
NIETZSCHE ON HARDSHIP.
with Alain de Botton.

Personally...

2011-12-28T10:31:00.010Z

A policeman rushes to extinguish Apostolos Polyzonis, who set himself alight outside a bank branch in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, Sept. 16, 2011 while protesting against government, banks and political parties. The 55-year old man has attempted self-immolation before, two-years ago, over financial problems. The man was hospitalised with non life-threatening burns.

It's interesting how people who is ready to kill someone with their gun or beat them to death with nightsticks if the laws permits it or if the social conventions deplore that person as unworthy, rushes to save the persons life. Like when you watch a Sidney Lumet film in which some policeman shoots to death a criminal and right away an ambulance comes to try to save the criminals life only so they can sentence him/her to death or a lifetime in prison. Saving a life to punish it because a dead person cannot be punished and so the example of dominance and power cannot be set and shown to the fearful subordinates under their sick power.

The levels of depravity of general morality are even more obscure and frightening than those of a "deviant" person sometimes.

Personally, the general morality (and you can call me a pain in the arse but it is generally christian/religious based of course) only makes me FUCKING SICK and I'm beginning to really feel fed up with it !

This man, Apostolos Polyzonis has more fucking balls and integrity than any tossing politician or policemen or religious representative. He understand the fundamental principle, like some of his ancient greek ancestors did, of being able to do with your body and life whatever the fuck you want, whatever suits you; even if to the general eye it may appear extreme or insane. He makes his statement, blatantly. He is radical and he is more than anything disgusted and tired of living in a society ruled by two way morality nonsensical bastards and opportunists who like utter parasites bleed innocent people to death in order to satisfy their selfish needs and fulfil their lives ruled by dogma, prejudice, violence and madness and gods and money and properties and success and meat and all the other rubbish they call living.

Chimera.

2011-12-25T14:28:00.002Z

Le Rappel / Les Cyclopes.

2011-12-23T16:20:00.003Z

I was thinking... If I ever manage to write/direct a feature film, among the soundtrack I'd like this "Les Cyclopes" Rameau harpsichord composition as well as "Le Rappel" to be part of it... I love them both !

Rameau compositions are beyond copyrights now since they're so old... The issue would be finding someone as amazing as Elaine Comparone or José Iturbi or Luc Beausejour and a fine harpsichord like the ones on the videos to record original versions of them...

I'd be brilliant. For now I'll just limit myself to keep these two tunes present in my mind while I carefully weave a few stories for screenplays.

"And if Thine eye offend thee, PLUG IT OUT !"

2011-12-22T12:12:00.033Z

...PLUG IT OUT! PLUG IT OUT! CUT IT OFF! CUT IT OFF!

Some peoples myths, gods for instance, can be quite ridiculous and truly ugly inventions. Of course, they were begotten ages ago by primitive man. An animal who deserves infinite credits for its numerous achievements considering the situation in which it thrived. Although it is the cause and effect of this ugly imaginary god which together with all the atrocities and dogma that walked for centuries by its hand, continues to endure after thousand of years. It advocates denial of life, death, ignorance and self-deceit, self-harm, genocide and mutilation of others and of oneself rather than understanding real causes and dealing with real issues in a more sensible less barbaric and literally butchery way.

Especially since it claims to be an enlightened and omnipotent being, it could just kindly enough indicate in a more accurate manner to his beloved daughters and sons, ways to deal and cope with the flawed and perverse existence (it is so to someone who lives under the conception of a judgemental god who created human with a body, senses, physiological needs, "temptations", pleasures and their favourite: sin, in order to eternally push him/her if he/she ever dared to fall into one of its playful traps) it created for whatever obscure reasons. Not dogmatic ways, more like instructions of how to put a wooden shelves together. Something simple, tangible, provable, convincing. Instead it delivers yet another cryptic babbling of such ugliness and violent imagery it succeeds to put even the most fervent gullible off.

If what you see or feel troubles you would you really grab an axe or an ice pick and literally severe it away from you ? Indeed like hundreds of allegations throughout the christian bible, this was a literal advice and not a metaphor as usually religion mongers and endorsers pretend to argue. "Plug it out !" and suffer temporally to avoid eternal suffering, heheh, What insanity ! Like when someone with sexual troubling concludes he/she has to severe or close the genitalia... As if the problem was really there... Or is it really ?

In any case, Roger Corman is the director of this fine, mostly underrated and harshly judged 1963 masterpiece of incredible effort called "X" (The Man with the x-ray eyes); the reason why I started thinking about this again... I quite enjoyed this film directed by marvellous Corman even when it could have obviously been much better in terms of character development and dilemma or the screenplay in general or even the production of the visual effects and photography. Having said that, I think this film talks about a highly interesting subject: The human body and its limitations when it perceives its near and far away surroundings, how could it be if we were physically modified, would that really solve mysteries?, would it be a curse? what is really behind this amazing urge to know or find an explanation to things? Would having more acute senses turn us into savage beasts capable of even more appalling acts against our own and other species and the environments we all inhabit? or will it turn us into noble creatures so full of wisdom that we wouldn't have the need to go further and further and further? etc etc...

Obviously sometimes in this life when referring to art one has to stop being (at times) too critical and pretending objectivity, to be able to appreciate subtle details that makes almost anything to the eyes, ears, nose or skin who perceive it, enjoyable, enriching and even bizarre to some extent. In the case of Corman's film I can look underneath the 60s "b-movie" (I don't think I can agree with that label in this case) look and the "simplicity" of the story and the characters in it, and see a truly horrifying tale... In the end what terrify us the most is anything that can endanger or harm our bodies; which after all and in the very end is the only thing that as animals we have in this strange life.

GET IT: X (1963) directed by Roger Corman / 80 min (no pass)
http://rapidshare.com/files/53017368/xray.eyes.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53021740/xray.eyes.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53025963/xray.eyes.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53029895/xray.eyes.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53033603/xray.eyes.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53038342/xray.eyes.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53042385/xray.eyes.part7.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53043368/xray.eyes.part8.rar

Rita, Sue & Bob too.

2011-12-18T00:21:00.022Z

Alan Clarke ? phew... Yes, everyday please!

Pioneer of raw vision, fervent steadicams and travelling sequences. Traits of his harsh and critical cinema.

In this one in particular, "RITA, SUE & BOB TOO", a British 1987 film directed by Alan Clarke and written by Andrea Dunbar, there is a wonderful and direct introductory sequence, a walking sequence cleverly accentuated by the vicious fight of two unhinged dogs and the sharp and cold exchange between pissed father and pissed off daughter. For then on you can intuit what is coming ahead.

"Adapted by Andrea Dunbar from two of her controversial plays, this tale of an affair between a married man and two teenage girls caused a right old rumpus on its release. Although much of the shock value has been dissipated by seeing so much of the same on our weekly soaps nowadays, this is still a film to make you squirm as you find yourself unable to decide who is exploiting who, where the blame lies and how to respond to jokes that are uproariously funny despite their political incorrectness. A decade on, the three characters still exist in abundance, and it is to the credit of Michelle Holmes, Siobhan Finneran and George Costigan that they pitch their performances so perfectly."

RITA, SUE & BOB TOO (1987) 89 min GET IT !!!
Psswrd: montcalm
http://rapidshare.com/files/385199924/RitSu.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385200063/RitSu.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385200178/RitSu.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385200402/RitSu.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385200137/RitSu.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385199944/RitSu.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385200127/RitSu.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385200098/RitSu.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385199939/RitSu.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385199916/RitSu.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385199742/RitSu.part11.rar

Kutiyattam, Sanskrit Theatre.

2011-12-17T06:16:00.008Z

A form of Sanskrit theatre traditionally performed in the state of Kerala, India. Kutiyattam is performed in the Sanskrit language in Hindu temples, it is believed to be 2,000 years old. It is officially recognised by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

Koodiyattam [kutiyattam], meaning "combined acting," signifies Sanskrit drama presented in the traditional style in temple theatres of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It is the only surviving specimen of the ancient Sanskrit theatre. It has an attested history of a thousand years in Kerala, but its origin and evolution are shrouded in mystery. Kutiyattam and chakyar koothu were among the dramatized dance worship services in temples of ancient India, particularly Tamilakam (modern-day Tamil Nadu and Kerala). Both kootiyattam and chakyar koothu find several mentions in ancient sangam literature of south and also in the epigraphs belonging to subsequent Pallava, Chera, Chola periods in Tamilnadu. Inscriptions related to the dramatized dance worship services like koodiyattam and chakyar koothu are available in temples at Tanjore, Tiruvidaimaruthur, Vedaranyam, Tiruvarur, and Omampuliyur. They were treated as an integral part of worship services alongside the singing of tevaram and prabandam hymns. There are mentions in epigraphs those forms of dramatized dance worship services that are called aariyam that mostly had Sanskrit scripts for plays.

Several ancient kings and members of other professions are listed to have authored several works for these services. There is evidence of these services being done all over ancient subcontinent during time of cholas and pallavas. A Pallava king called Rajasimha has been credited with authoring a play called kailasodharanam in Tamil that has the topic of Ravana becoming subject to Siva's anger and being subdued mercilessly for the same. For examples a fragmented inscription at the door step of an ancient Shiva temple (now non-existent) in Pegan in Burma finds mention of these services.

It is believed that Kulasekhara Varman Cheraman Perumal, an ancient king of Tamil Chera dynasty, who ruled from Mahodayapuram (modern Kodungallur), reformed Koodiyattam, introducing the local language for Vidusaka and structuring presentation of the play to well-defined units. He himself wrote two plays, Subhadraharana and Tapatisamvarana and made arrangements for their presentation on stage with the help of a Brahmin friend called Tolan. These plays are still presented on stage. Apart from these, the plays traditionally presented include Ascaryacudamani of Saktibhadra, Kalyanasaugandhika of Nilakantha, Bhagavadajjuka of Bodhayana, Nagananda of Harsa, and many plays ascribed to Bhasa including Abhiseka and Pratima. The Kutiyattam performance was performed in specially designed temples called koothambalams.

LONG LIVE CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011)

2011-12-16T09:29:00.004Z

A man of sensible atheism (unbreakable until the very end like The Marquis de Sade), letters, intellect, integrity and gentle grace.
I am telling you... They are parading one by one out of this cruel and chaotic world...

:(

“The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

RAW MEAT.

2011-12-13T22:36:00.008Z

My mouth is still agape after watching this genuinely avant-garde masterpiece 'Death line' (UK 1972) or as I prefer to call it by its USA title 'Raw Meat'. A film way ahead of its time. This particular long sequence is insane! The acting in this film is unbelievably odd and the catacombs of the Russell Square tube stn. are so nightmarish and repulsive that watching this film had an actual physical effect (I hardly get squirmy, unsettled or disgusted much less spooked) on me like no other film have had.

I was totally captivated from start to end and me and my friends were equally perplexed by the genius of it and we unanimously declared this film to be perhaps the strangest film we've ever seen in all levels: direction of photography, cut & editing, acting direction, sound effects and soundtrack, the beautifully plotted screenplay, the witty and obscure dialogue and at times even visionary political topics, the mannerisms and expressions, etc. Extreme attention must be definitely paid to the most inconspicuously tiny odd details in this film in order to understand what I say.

UTTER MASTERPIECE.

LIKE A VIEWER SAID "TARKOVSKY HIMSELF WOULD'VE BEEN PROUD OF THIS LONG TAKE" AN INSUPERABLE LONG TAKE INDEED.

GET THIS: Dwnld links: http://www.mediafire.com/?dcxledc2mqhv1
Password:
Part 1 - taringa.net/perfil/BL0OD
Part 2 - HorrorFest666.Blogspot

Mammalian reptiles.

2011-12-08T00:09:00.009Z

Humans still functioning on the reptilian brain in all cultures, countries, social statuses and contexts.
Gullible, desperate, willing to accept without questioning anything these charlatan religious leaders, actors/actresses of all kinds, politicians, educators, the lot, have to eructate out of their coarse tongued mouths.

It is only the natural order of events for an evolved out of nothing mammal species to start in the darkness of ignorance, eaten by fear, sickness and the inclemency of a fragile and bewildering body and surroundings.

Everything during Palaeolithic times was decided and led by necromancers, witches, sorcerers, rather lunatic women (Recent archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest known shamans—dating to the Upper Palaeolithic era in what is now the Czech Republic—were women). Nowadays they might still be lunatics but they're mostly vulgar male and female criminals who should be totally ignored and debunked. This "levitatin" charlatan in the view, although he's cute and exotic, is just a tiny example of what foolish people love to idolise... The real list is horrifyingly long: Gods of all kinds, miracles, saints, scriptures, names, statues, places, buildings, paraphernalia, myths, imaginary beings and realms, etc etc etc.

To think that still in 2011 the bigger part of worlds human population cling to believe and LIVE like troglodytes and mammalian reptiles. Mind you, other mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, fishes could be considered more sensible just for the fact of not living a life almost completely subjugated by hideous religious and selfish ideas and the absurd and unnecessary concept of a supreme being commanding all sentient beings on earth.

Oh well...

Sous le soleil de Satan.

2011-12-02T14:38:00.015Z

This is Maurice Pialat's masterpiece "Sous le soleil de Satan".
An extraordinary film aching to be watched and loved by everyone.

You should also be aware of other Pialat masterpieces like "La Gueule Ouverte" (1974),
"Van Gogh" (1991), "À nos amours" (1983) and "Loulou" (1980). It is a great fortune for
all of us to have Pialat's legacy available and we should only try to honour him by sitting
down for a couple hours and submerging from head to toes in this thickly atmospheric and intense
parallel world. This great film is starred by Gérard Depardieu as Donissan, Sandrine Bonnaire as Mouchette
and Maurice Pialat himself as Menou-Segrais.

"Positioned somewhere between Bresson’s immortal Journal d’un curé de campagne and Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster, Maurice Pialat’s staggering Sous le soleil de Satan [Under the Sun of Satan] addresses the torrent of spiritual and intellectual turmoil unloosed among the denizens of a little country parish. It is a film by turns calm and violent, buoyant upon the tears of mercy and gurgling with the blood of the Lamb.

Gérard Depardieu (Loulou, Le Garçu) is the self-abasing curate tortured by questions about his role in God’s plan — before an encounter with a material Satan touches off a powerful revelation. At the crux of his vision is Sandrine Bonnaire (A nos amours., Police), the madly profligate sylph whose fate ruptures in a blast of gunpowder and the slash of a razor. As events unfurl, Maurice Pialat himself provides witness as the seasoned cleric who pronounces the words: “God wears us down.”

One of the great films of faith made by a non-believer, Sous le soleil de Satan left an indelible mark on spectators from the very moment of its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987 — where it won the Palme d’Or for Best Film. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Maurice Pialat’s soul-shaking Sous le soleil de Satan on DVD in the UK for the first time."

"Wonderful! Fascinating! Bernanos captured with an obvious anti-clerical twist from Pialat. A cult-movie for art-movies amateurs... If you have seen other Pialat's films, you understand the progression of his art. Very honest film that shakes your bones to the core. Sandrine Bonnaire is just perfect and Depardieu's calm and open acting works very well with the character. A dark movie at its best! This is a well-deserved Golden Palm from the 1987 Cannes Festival, handed by Yves Montand, as president of the Jury. What a scandal it was -- giving the palm to an outcast like Pialat. History will remember that Cannes, on its 50th anniversary, tried and succeeded on promoting true art in films."

Watch this excellent piece of work (with english subs included):
password: summerobabalon.blogspot.com

http://www.fileserve.com/file/NvCP5tq/SousLeSoleil.87-SOBBL.7z.001
http://www.fileserve.com/file/pMAx7T4/SousLeSoleil.87-SOBBL.7z.002
http://www.fileserve.com/file/NQzv52Z/SousLeSoleil.87-SOBBL.7z.003

credits of upload/rip goes to Poenir @ www.surrealmoviez.info.

+ EUREKA's 'Masters of Cinema' dvd extras:

http://www.filesonic.com/folder/2253971 or http://www.fileserve.com/list/XnYenxW

"TRASH PALACE" (not quite so...)

2011-11-30T21:58:00.012Z

Found this website while searching for a film. A massive list of genuinely great DVD/VHS gems like Walerian Borowczyk's "BLANCHE", Marco Ferreri's "L'HAREM", 1976 Salvatore Samperi's overtly venereal Italian drama "SCANDALO", David Hamilton's "BILITIS" & "LAURA", Conrad Rooks's "CHAPPAQUA" (featuring William Burroughs), Ken Russel's "THE DEVILS", Adonis Kyrou's "LE MOINE", Arne Mattson's "THE GIRL", among others.

Don't be deceived by the looks of some of the real scummy sex farces listed. Among them are some real corkers of astonishing cinematography, editing and moody atmosphere.

http://www.trashpalace.com/collectorsmovies/unclassifiables.htm

http://www.trashpalace.com/collectorsmovies/erotica1.htm
http://www.trashpalace.com/collectorsmovies/erotica2.htm

http://www.trashpalace.com/collectorsmovies/horror1.htm
http://www.trashpalace.com/collectorsmovies/horror2.htm

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers - A Night In Tunisia (live '58)

2011-11-30T14:57:00.000Z

Art Blakey - drums
Lee Morgan - trumpet
Benny Golson - tenor sax
Bobby Timmons - piano
Jymie Merritt - bass

2011-11-28T13:02:00.013Z

KEN RUSSELL DIED YESTERDAY.

My nostril started bleeding just a few minutes after finding this out and I do not know whereas there's any connection with the awful news whatsoever, but it seems very appropriate since I, and I say this without any drama or exaggerations, admire and hold very dearly in my heart his body of work and some of his films have inspired me to walk the trails I've walked and I have yet to walk. I haven't spoken a word for the last hour or so, even when I am not alone right now. Obviously out of being upset.

Some of us stand helplessly and mourning, even when we do not know some of these great artists in person, as they one by one disappear behind a column of thin smoke and never come back.

The day today started smoothly and nicely especially because I've been looking forward since last week to go to the cinema and watch David Cronenberg's new film. But now this downbeat news: Ken Russell died yesterday.

Although it is good to read that he died peacefully and with a big smile on his face, surrounded by his beloved ones. That is important.

I can imagine how now (of course it's always the same), people is going to start paying attention to his remarkable and unique oeuvre. Why does it always takes the most extreme event (death) for people to really make an effort and pay attention, turn their necks to the right side, to what is really worthy? Once that valuable, forgotten or not even noticed at times, is dead is when the talk starts, the buying of books and dvds starts, the retrospectives starts, the exhibitions and articles start. What a voyeuristic bunch...

When I think about who's going to be the next dying soon, one of the old men or women who are still alive and had made a priceless contribution to human history, a truly good one, so much comes to mind and I rather abandon the thought and think about something else like why on earth my nose just started bleeding all of the sudden...

AWFUL !

SADE: How to read and interpret his work.

2011-11-26T14:55:00.003Z

"In discussion of the links between reproduction and death in his principal theoretical work, Eroticism, Bataille reminds us that, long before Freud, St Augustine himself was only too aware of the proximity of the sexual organs to the processes of bodily evacuation: 'Interfaeces et urinam nascimur,' he declared, ('We are born between faeces and urine'). For Bataille, the taboo and its transgression are two sides of the same coin: as taboo substances that remind us of degeneration and death, urine and faeces are repugnant, but, like all taboos, they are also fascinating, because they represent the challenge of transgression:

To reply to the utmost the ecstasy, in which we lose ourselves in orgasm, we must always know what the borderline is: it is horror. There is no form of repugnance that does not have an affinity with desire."
- from 'How to read SADE' by John Phillips.

AND CONTINUING WITH MY ONGOING MARQUIS DE SADE / FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE CONSCIOUSNESS CAMPAIGN: BUY THIS ABSOLUTELY WORTHWHILE & POWERFUL LITTLE BOOKS !

http://grantabooks.com/page/3032/How-To-Read-Sade/1080

From the Granta Books series HOW TO READ... which also include the equally great How to read Nietzsche. I'm a proud owner / avid reader of the two. (my own scan of the book cover)

Breathing a Vein

2011-11-24T19:20:00.003Z

Etched engraving by James Gillray 1804, published by H Humphrey, St James St. London
"Bloodletting, or phlebotomy, had been a standard medical practice since antiquity. It entailed withdrawing a considerable amount of blood from a person in order to cure disease. Blood was thought to build up in excess and then stagnate in certain areas of the body. Removing the extra blood would restore the natural balance of the body.

In this etching Gillray demonstrates venesection, which he calls “breathing a vein.” The title suggests that the procedure was a pleasant way to allow the vein a little air. The reality of the procedure was something else, as the cartoon suggests. A tourniquet was placed above the elbow, the artery in the forearm was punctured by a lancet, and the blood, gushing like a geyser, was captured in a bowl."

Grant Green - Idle Moments (Long Version)

2011-11-24T14:27:00.000Z

14 minutes 56 seconds of bliss, from Green's classic album "Idle Moments"

Grant Green - guitar
Joe Henderson - tenor sax
Bobby Hutcherson - vibraphone
Duke Pearson - piano
Bob Cranshaw - bass
Al Harewood - drums

W.Borowczyk: Imagination fulgurante.

2011-11-20T17:59:00.065Z

*about Author/Director Walerian Borowczyk and his films in particular 'Contes Immoraux'.
I'd say this is Walerian Borowzcyk's masterpiece. I mean the four short tales called 'Contes Immoraux' (1974). Although, I am also very keen of La bête, Interno di un Convento, Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (an extremely bizarre and violent film starring Udo Kier as Jekyll), Cérémonie d'amour... Absolutely all of them; even the Emmanuelle sequel he directed later on.
But back to the 'Immoral tales', I am particularly fond of the 'Lucrezia Borgia' incestuous fifteenth-century orgy segment involving her, her brother, and her father the Pope.

You could say I'm some kind of avid, platonic pupil of Borowczyk, so to speak, aspiring to ever convey something of remotely a similar beauty and philosophical depth as his films. One only has to see Une collection particulière and the subtle metaphors of the relation between the moon phases and the sea tide with sexuality in 'The Tide' and the extraordinarily dancing grace of the short documentary L' Amour monstre de tous les temps about late surrealist painter Ljuba Popović.

He is without a single doubt a top favourite of mine among the very best dissident and truly idiosyncratic filmmakers every to be enjoyed in the history of cinema. Up there with Pasolini, Buñuel, Russell, Svankmajer, Visconti... It's not a matter of comparing; they are all geniuses in their own individual ways.

DWNLD 'CONTES IMMORAUX' w/English subtitles included:

http://rapidshare.com/files/324644329/contesimmoraux.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/324911381/contesimmoraux.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/324924273/contesimmoraux.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/324938072/contesimmoraux.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/324657229/contesimmoraux.part5.rar

"Whether he takes the brush, the chisel, the pen, the still camera or the movie camera, whether he's recording the real movement of actors or creating an illusory movement image by image, Walerian Borowczyk, artist of multiple talents, is building a unique body of work. Great manipulator of matter, he not only transforms it into images with the power to impart emotions by his hand, but he is also able to draw from that material the expression of its deepest reality while keeping its personality intact. He shapes each substance with a respect for its life essence. He reveals the mysterious autonomy therein and controls its disturbing fertility." -Maurice Corbet.

ORNETTE REHEARSAL Pt.1 a side A

2011-11-20T14:47:00.002Z

Check out the rest of the parts of this interesting rehearsal tape filled with Ornette Coleman and the band discussing their methods between playing.

MY LIST OF FAVOURITE FILM AUTHORS / DIRECTORS: A filmmaker's reference guide (GROWING)

2011-11-20T10:02:00.016Z

In no particular order:

Luis Buñuel
David Cronenberg
John Cassavetes
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Walerian Borowczyk
Maurice Pialat
Jean Vigo
Luchino Visconti
Marco Ferreri
Werner Herzog
Jean Cocteau
Jan Švankmajer
Vittorio de Sica
Gary Sherman
Harry Kümel
Louis Malle
Ken Russell
Jean-Claude Brisseau
Alexander Rou
Sergio Citti
Abel Gance
John Boorman
Diane Kurys
Bernard Tavernier
Eric Rohmer
Roman Polanski
Sergei Parajanov
Otar Iosseliani
Alain Resnais
Mike Leigh
Alain Tanner
Forugh Farrokhzad
Ernst Ingmar Bergman
Fernando Fernán Gómez
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Marguerite Duras
Jerzy Skolimowski
Ladislao Vajda
Margaret Tait
Bela Tarr
Costa-Gavras
Robert Bresson
Peter Watkins
Robert Altman
Mario Camus
Yasujirō Ozu
René Féret
Věra Chytilová
Elia Kazan
Bernardo Bertolucci
Kon Ichikawa
Per Blom
Hiroshi Teshigahara
Claude Berri
Michael Cimino
Jacques Becker
Philip Kaufman
Jacek Koprowicz
Jean Renoir
Lindsay Anderson
Shohei Imamura
Fernando Trueba
José Luis Guerín
Víctor Erice
Agnès Varda
Joseph Losey
Pilar Miró
José Luis Cuerda
Akira Kurosawa
John Huston
Claude Berri
Aleksandr Sokurov
Woody Allen
Nicolas Roeg
Jacques Rivette
José Luis Borau
Chantal Akerman
Theodoros Angelopoulos
Marcel Carné
Hans Richter
Franco Citti
Cesar Velasco Broca
Veronica Ibarra
Barbet Schroeder
Michelangelo Antonioni
Claude Miller
Alan Clarke
Andrei Tarkovsky
F. W. Murnau
Tim Roth
Chris Marker
Segundo de Chomon
Cédric Kahn
Sidney Lumet
Miloš Forman
Nanni Moretti
William Friedkin
Raymond Depardon
Jose Val del Omar

"Make a lot of money" "To do what ?"

2011-11-09T10:13:00.009Z

The pupils answered: "WE want to make a lot of money" and Professor Solomon asked: "To do what?" and the pupils stuck.
After a thought they answered: ""Charity" "Giving back" to society?; not very convincing ends to P. Solomon (not to me either I must say)...

He had this exact same shallow replies and stuck reactions from some adult, successful chief executives and businessmen, Professor Solomon commented; which is a quite revealing fact about what's behind peoples motivations and ideas of how to live their lives and their life goals.

He thought that often people who think that, hold a two faced motivation:

One is High aspirations (which he added are good and there's nothing wrong about them) but then the other face is of being ruthless and inconsiderate (not so good he also pointed) in order to succeed and possess that money or power. But what is really behind these aspirations ? Perhaps these goals should be revised and reconsidered.

To ask oneself "What am I doing with my life", according to Professor Solomon is not at all a futile question but a very philosophical one. And afterwards imagining how COULD your life be instead and how it could be achieved, that IS philosophy.

This is a quite interesting short interview with Robert Solomon talking a few years ago before his death. One of the last, remarkable contemporary philosophers. Long live P.R.S. !!!!

JG Ballard Q&A: "How do you Write"

2011-11-04T11:03:00.004Z

Painting by Brigid Marlin, 1987

INTERVIEWER
So, how do you write, exactly?

BALLARD
Actually, there’s no secret. One simply pulls the cork out of the bottle, waits three minutes, and two thousand or more years of Scottish craftsmanship does the rest.

INTERVIEWER
Let’s start with obsession. You seem to have an obsessive way of repeatedly playing out permutations of a certain set of emblems and concerns. Things like the winding down of time, car crashes, birds and flying, drained swimming pools, airports, abandoned buildings, Ronald Reagan…

BALLARD
I think you’re completely right. I would say that I quite consciously rely on my obsessions in all my work, that I deliberately set up an obsessional frame of mind. In a paradoxical way, this leaves one free of the subject of the obsession. It’s like picking up an ashtray and staring so hard at it that one becomes obsessed by its contours, angles, texture, et cetera, and forgets that it is an ashtray—a glass dish for stubbing out cigarettes. Presumably all obsessions are extreme metaphors waiting to be born. That whole private mythology, in which I believe totally, is a collaboration between one’s conscious mind and those obsessions that, one by one, present themselves as stepping-stones.

INTERVIEWER
Your work also seems tremendously influenced by the visual arts.

BALLARD
Yes, sometimes I think that all my writing is nothing more than the compensatory work of a frustrated painter.

INTERVIEWER
How does a book take shape for you?

BALLARD
That’s a vast topic, and, to be honest, one I barely understand. Even in the case of a naturalistic writer, who in a sense takes his subject matter directly from the world around him, it’s difficult enough to understand how a particular fiction imposes itself. But in the case of an imaginative writer, especially one like myself with strong affinities to the surrealists, I’m barely aware of what is going on. Recurrent ideas assemble themselves, obsessions solidify themselves, one generates a set of working mythologies, like tales of gold invented to inspire a crew. I assume one is dealing with a process very close to that of dreams, a set of scenarios devised to make sense of apparently irreconcilable ideas. Just as the optical centers of the brain construct a wholly artificial three-dimensional universe through which we can move effectively, so the mind as a whole creates an imaginary world that satisfactorily explains everything, as long as it is constantly updated.

INTERVIEWER
How many hours a day do you put in at the desk?

BALLARD
Two hours in the late morning, two in the early afternoon, followed by a walk along the river to think over the next day. Then at six, Scotch and soda, and oblivion.

INTERVIEWER
That sounds like the schedule of an efficient worker.

INTERVIEWER
Aside from your adolescent dream of becoming a psychiatrist, do you have any other pet daydreams about other lives, other careers?

BALLARD
I haven’t really had any private fantasies about an alternative life, even in the daydream sense. I rather like the idea of ending my days drinking myself to death on a mountainside in Mexico.

Bob Solomon's "Will to power: The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche" 2nd lecture.

2011-10-30T13:11:00.006Z

Finally uploaded the 2nd lecture on the series of 24 given
by Professors Bob Solomon and Kathleen Higgins named:

"Will to power: The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche".

WATCH IT IN 4 PARTS HERE:
http://www.youtube.com/user/tofuCKYOU#p/u

LONG LIVE NIETZSCHE AND HIS PHILOSOPHY, BOB SOLOMON & KATHLEEN HIGGINS !!!!

"Anthrōpos: human animal and it's diverse and fascinating behaviours and ways."

2011-10-29T17:24:00.027+01:00

My attention had been dragged quite slowly throughout the last few years towards ancient (yet still existing) musical and ritualistic traditions from Ancient Greece and African/North African, Middle East, Asian and Indian tribes from different countries; as well as their instruments, costumes, mannerisms, paraphernalia, sculpture, perception of violence and sexuality (both heterosexual and homosexual), of death, roles of genre, obviously of esotericism and superstitions, that is, so-called "gods", their art, literature and poetry, their ways of storytelling, their physical features, the lot...

There's a whole universe out there related to all these things to explore... I just feel the limitations time and money holding me back but if it wasn't for those two things I'd fucking slurp it all in through the top of my skull right inside my brains and then straight to my neurones and thoughts; then obviously and subsequently into my own creative process in it's various forms.

I've been visiting the local university library and it is pretty good... It's got a whole section on philosophy, anthropology, oriental and african literature, a biography section and a huge section with gigantic almanacs and specialised encyclopaedias of all kinds and countries.

So the research and study never ends... I've got to put my thoughts in order though because I've got a never ending list of books to read (I have the bad habit of reading 3 or 4 dense books at the same time) art projects in mind, collaborations, ideas on studying a university career again and on top of that I'm on the verge of relocating once more to another country (with all that implies).

If you follow T Y T T B, you might have already noticed my interest in these things as I post... So it is not a new thing... But I might try as much as possible to focus on them on top of film reviews, book reviews or youtube videos of music, etc. Of course with the exception of the topics that will always be recurring in my head: Atheism, cruelty among and by human animals, western philosophy, western art and literature, cinema.

-

SO FOR STARTERS, I am going to begin by posting about Sundanese Dance rituals and music in West Java. I'm looking forward to get a copy of this book soon, which I believe is very interesting for what I've read:

"Erotic Triangles: Sundanese Dance and Masculinity in West Java". Written by Henry Spiller and published by The Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology in 2010.

"In West Java, Indonesia, all it takes is a woman's voice and a drumbeat to make a man get up and dance. Every day, men there - be they students, pedicab drivers, civil servants, or businessmen - breach ordinary standards of decorum and succumb to the rhythm at village ceremonies, weddings, political rallies, and nightclubs. The music the men dance to varies from traditional gong ensembles to the contemporary pop known as dangdut, but they consistently dance with great enthusiasm. In "Erotic Triangles", Henry Spiller draws on decades of ethnographic research to explore the reasons behind this phenomenon, arguing that Sundanese men use dance to explore and enact contradictions in their gender identities. Framing the three crucial elements of Sundanese dance - the female entertainer, the drumming, and men's sense of freedom - as a triangle, Spiller connects them to a range of other theoretical perspectives, drawing on thinkers from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Levi-Strauss, and Freud to Euclid. By granting men permission to literally perform their masculinity, Spiller ultimately concludes, dance provides a crucial space for both reinforcing and resisting orthodox gender ideologies."

"A highly original and illuminating study of Sundanese performing arts and gender ideology. Theoretically challenging and historically rich, Erotic Triangles frames men's improvisational dance as the playful working out of gendered identity relations."

The Japoingan of the Javanese culture from West Java, Indonesia.

HERE'S A FEW OF FILMED EXAMPLES OF PERFORMANCES FROM WHAT WAS MENTIONED ABOVE:

When they had their ancient dances of subversive, unconditional love.

2011-10-27T14:40:00.017+01:00

by Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Mustafa Al-Misri
Tuhfet Ul-Mulk (a Turkish translation of Ruju as-Shaykh ila sibah), 1773
Illustrated Turkish Erotic Manuscript
Alain Kahn-Sriber Collection, Paris © Gilles Berquet

"We are all here because of a sexual act…The union of two bodies is an act of extraordinary physical and emotional intimacy.
"The prelude, the process of seduction, the act itself and the immediate aftermath provide the focus for the exhibition... as humans, we have developed elaborate social frameworks for its expression and its regulation."

SHEIKH MUHAMMAD B. MUSTAFA AL-MISRI: TUHFAT AL-MULK OTTOMAN TURKEY, AH 1209/1794-5 AD AND EARLIER A TURKISH TRANSLATION OF PART OF THE ARABIC RUJU AL-SHAYKH ILA SIBAH, TURKISH AND OCCASIONAL ARABIC MANUSCRIPT DATED 1209, WITH TWENTY FULL PAGE MINIATURES, SHOWING COUPLES IN AMOROUS EMBRACE AND IN VARIOUS STAGES OF NAKEDNESS, IN A VARIETY OF INTERIORS AND POSITIONS, THE COSTUMES AND DECORATION EXTREMELY WELL OBSERVED, FLAKING, SLIGHT REPAINTING.

THE MANUSCRIPT IS A PART OF WHAT WAS OBVIOUSLY ORIGINALLY A LARGER WORK. IT APPEARS THAT THE SECTIONS WHICH DEALT WITH HOMOSEXUAL LOVE HAVE BEEN REMOVED, WHICH IS WHY THE TWO TITLE PAGES ARE BLANK, HAVING CONTAINED PART OF THE OTHER SECTIONS ON THEIR REVERSE SIDES. THE LACK OF TITLE PAGE MAKES THE ATTRIBUTION OF THE TEXT SLIGHTLY UNCERTAIN, BUT ANOTHER COPY OF THE TEXT SOLD AT SOTHEBY'S (4 APRIL 1978, LOT 120), DATING FROM ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME TIME, SHOWS THAT THIS WAS A WORK WHICH WAS POPULAR IN CERTAIN CIRCLES AT THE TIME.

THE FIRST SECTION IS A SERIES OF FANCIFUL REMINISCENCES OF THE ADVENTURES AND ROMANCES OF AN INQUISITIVE SHEIKH AND HIS DEALINGS WITH WOMEN, WHILE THE SECOND IS A COMPENDIUM OF RELEVANT INFORMATION BEGINNING WITH THE RECIPE FOR A 'STRANGE POTION' OR APHRODISIAC. THE SEPARATION OF THE HOMOSEXUAL PARTS FROM THE PRESENT TOTALLY HETEROSEXUAL TEXT PROBABLY REFLECTS THE RESISTANCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WEST TO THE FORMER.

THE MANUSCRIPT, AND THAT SOLD AT SOTHEBY'S IN 1978, ARE BOTH FROM A SMALL NUMBER OF ILLUSTRATED EROTIC OTTOMAN TEXTS TO HAVE SURVIVED. OTHER SINGLE LEAVES HAVE ALSO SURVIVED, A NUMBER OF WHICH ARE EITHER SIGNED OR ATTRIBUTED TO THE PAINTER 'ABDULLAH BOKHARI. HIS WORKS DATE FROM SLIGHTLY EARLIER THAN THE PRESENT PAINTINGS, BUT LACK THE ELABORATE DETAILED BACKGROUNDS SEEN HERE. THEY ALSO DEPICT BOTH HETEROSEXUAL AND HOMOSEXUAL POSITIONS (CHRISTIE'S, 19 OCTOBER 1993, LOT 101, AND 18 OCTOBER 1994, LOT 96). TWO MINIATURES, CLOSER IN STYLE TO THE PRESENT PAINTINGS BUT OF LASS LASCIVIOUS NATURE, FROM A DISPERSED MANUSCRIPT WERE SOLD IN THESE ROOMS (12 OCTOBER 1978, LOTS 44 AND 45) AND ARE NOW IN THE KHALILI COLLECTION (J.M. ROGERS,EMPIRE OF THE SULTANS, LONDON, 1995, NO.158, PP.228-9).

IT IS POSSIBLE THAT THE MINIATURES WERE COMMISSIONED SEPARATELY AND SLIGHTLY EARLIER THAN THE TEXT. THEY ARE ON DIFFERENT PAPER WHICH IS PROBABLY OTTOMAN UNLIKE THE EUROPEAN PAPER OF THE TEXT, AND HAVE DETAILS WHICH WOULD NORMALLY DATE THEM ABOUT THIRTY YEARS BEFORE THE DATE IN THE COLOPHON. THEY PROBABLY REPRESENT OTTOMAN VERSIONS OF EUROPEAN EROTIC PRINTS WHICH WERE VERY DIFFICULT TO COME BY IN EUROPE, BUT ACCORDING TO CONTEMPORARY SOURCES WERE WIDELY EXPORTED TO THE ISLAMIC WORLD. THE DETAILS AND IN PARTICULAR THE TEXTILES AND INTERIORS ARE EXCEPTIONALLY WELL-OBSERVED, AS ARE THE VIGNETTES VISIBLE THROUGH THE WINDOWS AND THE OCCASIONAL FACE PEERING THROUGH SCREENS.

THE SCRIBE SIGNS HIMSELF AS "MAHMUD CCE (THE DWARF), AN INTIMATE OF THE SULTAN", INDICATING THAT THIS MANUSCRIPT MIGHT WELL HAVE BEEN PREPARED FOR ROYAL BEDTIME READING. THE QUALITY OF BOTH THE TEXT AND MINIATURES WOULD BE PERFECTLY CONSISTENT WITH THIS.

1989 Brisseau's "Noce Blanche".

2011-10-26T10:49:00.022+01:00

NOCE BLANCHE (1989)
A film by Jean-Claude Brisseau.

MUST WATCH!!!

This film is absolutely brilliant... Performance by Bruno Cremer (as usual) is genius. I love how the film was written, the cinematography, the ending, the music, the art direction... The character of the obsessed philosophy teacher trying to pursue a long gone youth in the form of a beautiful and luring adolescent woman... In short, I highly recommend this film for European cimena lovers... One has to watch European cinema quite often to develop the ability to taste it and appreciate it, like when you are able to tell the quality of a very good glass of water among five different kinds.

DOWNLOAD this wonderfully crafted film with English subtitles included in folder & Spanish subtitles link below:

"Temptation comes in many forms. For Francois (Bruno Cremer), a high-school philosophy teacher, it takes the form of Mathilde (Vanessa Paradis), a troubled student with a very bad attitude. Francois sets out to improve her attitude and her grades, and soon the two are bedmates as well as tutor and student. When Francois wants out of the affair, Mathilde will have none of it, and this stubborness nearly ruins both their lives when the affair is discovered. However, whatever else one may say about the relationship, her grades did improve while it was going on." ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi.

Single MU link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2I6N48KR

http://rapidshare.com/files/105196775/Noce_Blanche.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105201146/Noce_Blanche.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105201104/Noce_Blanche.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105196982/Noce_Blanche.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105198603/Noce_Blanche.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105201392/Noce_Blanche.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105198762/Noce_Blanche.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105201551/Noce_Blanche.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105197523/Noce_Blanche.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105199115/Noce_Blanche.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105197890/Noce_Blanche.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105198009/Noce_Blanche.part12.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105197985/Noce_Blanche.part13.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/105196440/Noce_Blanche.part14.rar

Spanish subtitles: http://www.surrealmoviez.info/subs/26/11873_100611075918.rar

Download with Jdownloader and extract with the Unarchiver (mac).

"Let it come down." (Of raining, edible mushroom & literature)

2011-10-24T11:04:00.017+01:00

A few days ago I was grieving because not a single raindrop had fallen and so there would be no mushrooms to pick this year. I even said "Let it come down" (no superstition at all or request in the phrase; just an expression of annoyance after 4 months without rain) like the character Nelson Dyar says in Paul Bowles novel with the same name...

Bowles took the book's title from Macbeth III.3, just before Banquo is murdered:

Banquo: It will be Rayne to Night.
1st. Murd.: Let it come downe. (They set upon Banquo.)
Bowles has described the line as an ‘admirable four-word sentence, succinct and brutal’.

But the point is, it DID ! And it haven't stopped raining for the past three days in which temperatures had dropped so dramatically it literally caught me with the clothes off.

Three days ago it was summer like here. I'm walking to the very top of the mountain there's a huge pine forest and I'm positively sure I'll find shit loads of "Lactarius deliciosus" and "Pleurotus ostreatus" and "boletus edulis" up there.

Now that's something to look forward to ! My knives have a big smile on their blades because they finally will cut and crush; "esparto" basket will carry and books will confirm and film camera will document !

I'm going to stir fry them with French onions, garlic cloves, asparaguses, parsley/coriander, celery, broccoli, will stuff aubergines with them, will wrap them in pasties, will boil them in chickpea and potato soups and stews, accompany them with a nice glass of wine or a cold bottled beer, rye bread, Scottish vegan SHeese (I don't care what anyone says I like the taste and I'm anything but after tasting animal cheese because personally it disgusts me to the highest levels) , will fry them with white rice, smoked tofu, courgettes, seitan sausages and all sort of 100% vegetarian meals with them...

All that of course, if the collection is successful and most importantly with prudence and care... Don't wanna end up shitting me underwear the whole week if I pick up a laxative mushroom, or just drop dead while enjoying the meal.

La Fabrique du Conte d'ete.

2011-10-19T12:27:00.005+01:00

Isn't this a wonderful film!?

We all miss Rohmer already... What a loss. We are only left with his delightful filmography to watch over and over again and notice
the hundreds of little subtle details in them like chemists scrutinising rare bacteria under the telescope.

Beautiful Amanda Langlet (also starring in Pauline à la plage ) too :P

The Sfirohampiolo and the Mantoura.

2011-10-17T14:45:00.005+01:00

Of the making of two Cretan wind instruments. Beautiful handcrafted wind instruments which played by the right hands utter lovely melodies which evoke images of how could it have been to walk through the Greek plains of ancient civilisation; among the arid fields and the white rock mountains, the olive trees, the sharp smell of sea salt and whatnot !

Visit www.cretain-music.gr (in Greek)

"...but I still did everything for her" - Plastic Bag

2011-10-16T09:14:00.001+01:00

Plastic Bag
by Ramin Bahrani

Struggling with its immortality, a discarded plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) ventures through the environmentally barren remains of America as it searches for its maker.

Lapiths, centaurs, shelters.

2011-10-13T22:49:00.014+01:00

BEHOLD THE TESTAMENT OF TWO GREAT ARTISTS:

Giorgio De Chirico.

¨The battle of Lapiths and Centaurs.¨
by Giorgio De Chirico.

¨Triomphe.¨
by Giorgio De Chirico.

¨Due figure mitologiche¨
by Giorgio De Chirico.

Henry Moore.

¨Presentation¨
by Henry Moore

¨Falling Warrior¨
by Henry Moore

¨Reclining figure no.5¨
by Henry Moore.

NEWSLETTERS POST #17

2011-10-10T21:26:00.001+01:00

In two words let me say it once again:

2011-10-10T18:40:00.003+01:00

The genius of De Sade said (during -and after- unfair imprisonment for more than two decades) in a very short and simple paragraph what summarises a condition/s to which some of us can immediately relate to and identify with.

TYTTB @ FBK

2011-10-09T12:14:00.002+01:00

TREAT YOURSELF TO THE BEST can now be followed through Facebook on it's own page.

Hope to see you around there ! T Y T T B !!!

visit and subscribe to: https://www.facebook.com/TYTTB

Manobo.

2011-10-08T19:44:00.004+01:00

The Manobo / Manuvu - Instruments: UDOL. a slit drum.
A series of films by anthropologist Robert Garfias in the 1960s.

The Manobo / Manuvu are a large group of Austronesian people from Mindanao in the Philippines. This is the Udol dance, named after the slit drum that accompanies it.

The mesmering rhythm of the udol is believed to call the spirits of the deceased (fallen warriors) to show them (the dancers/performers) where their remains are so they could bring them home and have a decent burial. (daghang salamat SaiaoPinoi)

The dancers provide the Udol, Utomay and the Patawagay rhythms themselves as they take turns to dance.

NEWSLETTERS POST #16

2011-10-06T17:03:00.002+01:00

N U E R

2011-10-06T00:10:00.012+01:00

"The Nuer call themselves Naath. Only their immediate neighbors, the Dinka, Shilluk and Arabs, call them Nuer. Most foreigners, which includes those with whom the Nuer neither fought nor traded, are called Bar which means 'almost entirely cattleless'. Those foreigners who live even more remotely and include Europeans are called Jur which means 'entirely cattleless', a most unthinkable state indeed.

The people of Ciengach, where the film was made, are the Eastern Jikany, one of about a sixteen distinct tribes of Nuer. Twenty-five years ago E.E. Evans Pritchard estimated the total population of Nuer to be around a quarter of a million. Since then the number has undoubtedly dwindled considerably due to warfare, civil strife, sickness, drought and the general abandonment of traditional lifeways."

I say: To be able to produce such wonderful photography these present days... Almost impossible if not extremely expensive and skill-demanding, rather difficult. Something to pursue.
One has to look up to the beauty of documentaries like this: Superbe.

Want to see it all ? Get it all ! Dwnld with Jdownloader & join with Unarchiver ( mac ) by draggin all 11 parts onto the app in the dock or by clicking all at once and decompressing the first file. Very simple...

http://rapidshare.com/files/380889824/Hilary.Harris.Robert.Gardner-The.Nuer.1971-SMz.avi.001
http://rapidshare.com/files/380895367/Hilary.Harris.Robert.Gardner-The.Nuer.1971-SMz.avi.002
http://rapidshare.com/files/380890617/Hilary.Harris.Robert.Gardner-The.Nuer.1971-SMz.avi.003
http://rapidshare.com/files/380887641/Hilary.Harris.Robert.Gardner-The.Nuer.1971-SMz.avi.004
http://rapidshare.com/files/380889512/Hilary.Harris.Robert.Gardner-The.Nuer.1971-SMz.avi.005
http://rapidshare.com/files/380892557/Hilary.Harris.Robert.Gardner-The.Nuer.1971-SMz.avi.006
http://rapidshare.com/files/380887996/Hilary.Harris.Robert.Gardner-The.Nuer.1971-SMz.avi.007
http://rapidshare.com/files/380895380/Hilary.Harris.Robert.Gardner-The.Nuer.1971-SMz.avi.008
http://rapidshare.com/files/380892062/Hilary.Harris.Robert.Gardner-The.Nuer.1971-SMz.avi.009
http://rapidshare.com/files/380889287/Hilary.Harris.Robert.Gardner-The.Nuer.1971-SMz.avi.010
http://rapidshare.com/files/380886574/Hilary.Harris.Robert.Gardner-The.Nuer.1971-SMz.avi.011

Ancient Greece Theatre: Slaves and Peddlers.

2011-10-02T22:59:00.022+01:00

In ancient Greek's tragic & comical theatre, particularly the outcast, the slave, the peddler characters (actor) used to bear a huge penis erection during the performances for some (at least to me) obscure and odd reason. They also were naked from the waist down as can be seen in several vase illustrations, paintings and little statues and sculptures from the epoch.

To witness these theatrical plays and the tranced actors carry their heavy stone masks, pale and colourful cloaks. To listen to the coarse but beautiful dialects spoken by the soft tongues and deep throats of tempered artists. The drums and strings quivering strange notes. It'll have stood up the hair on the back of Artaud's and Nietzsche's and Cocteau's neck. It'll have overshadowed and ridiculed every single so-called performance of art, music and poetry witnessed ever since the demise of one of human animal's greatest moments of it's own history.

Rondo

2011-10-01T12:45:00.009+01:00

Masterpiece:

Maarten Altena Octet
02 - Rondo
Written-By – Guus Janssen
(from the album "Rif")
- -- GET IT.

http://www.maartenaltena.nl/

by
Alto Saxophone, Clarinet, Bass Clarinet – Michael Moore (4)
Bass – Maarten Altena
Cover [Cover Art] – Aki Kuroda
Design – Walter Bosshardt
Executive Producer – Pia And Werner X. Uehlinger
Liner Notes – Bill Shoemaker, Steve Martland
Percussion – Michael Vatcher
Photography By – David Hanson
Piano, Synthesizer – Guus Janssen

Producer – Claxon Amsterdam
Recorded By – Jared Sacks
Remastered By – Peter Pfister
Tenor Saxophone, Bass Clarinet – Peter van Bergen
Trombone – Wolter Wierbos
Trumpet, Horn [Alto] – Marc Charig
Violin – Maartje Ten Hoorn

THE LEPER MASK: Gnoumous ritual dance in Boni.

2011-09-28T09:47:00.012+01:00

SHEER INTENSITY AND INTRINSIC BEAUTY DISPLAYED IN THESE UNBELIEVABLE PERFORMANCES WITH NO PAIR... THESE ARE ONE OF A KIND FINE ART IN IT'S CRUDEST FORM.

On a market day in the Bwa village of Boni, in central Burkina Faso, West Africa a group of masks perform, including the great plank masks called nwantantay, the leper, hyena, dwarf, antelope, and bush buffalo.

Mask Performances: Gnoumou Family Village of Boni Purification of the Neighborhood. Several types of masks that represent the power of the spirit Lanle appear in the village, including the serpent, crocodile, monkey, planks, and others.

The initiates learn the meanings of the geometric signs that cover the masks, explained by elders, who use the masks themselves as models, and who also use rectangular boards on which the same signs have been painted. Initially, each of the signs is explained independently of other signs, using didactic boards. Then the meanings of the assembled signs on specific plank masks are explained. Here, as among the gurunsi, the combination of signs communicates a moral or historical lesson that is an essential part of the initiation. These lessons describe the virtues of the ideal, respected member of the community, and the dangers of straying from the path of social behavior marked out by the ancestors. They also illustrate the myths of the founding of the clans.
The meaning of each sign can vary depending on the age and level of understanding of the initiate, for only the oldest understand the most profound meanings of the signs. Meaning also can vary with context, with a single sign given different meanings on two different masks.
As a result, these do not qualify as elements of a universal language whose meaning should not vary with context, but they are didactic symbols in an esoteric language open to several interpretations depending on need.

http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/
https://www.createspace.com/214909

Anthony Grayling on Atheism

2011-09-19T12:49:00.011+01:00

Anthony Grayling on Atheism.
A great Philosophy Bites Podcast episode. Visit Philosophy Bites to subscribe to their feed, iTunes or to listen more episodes.

"Is belief in the existence of a God or gods the equivalent of believing that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden? Or can it be defended on the basis of reason or evidence? In this interview for Philosophy Bites Anthony Grayling gives a philosophical defence of atheism and explains why he believes it to be a well-grounded and ultimately life-affirming position to hold."

LISTEN @ www.philosophybites.libsyn.com/anthony_grayling_on_atheism

Anthony Grayling MA, DPhil (Oxon) FRSL, FRSA is Master of the New College of the Humanities, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. Until 2011 he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written and edited over twenty books on philosophy and other subjects; among his most recent are "Ideas That Matter", "Liberty in the Age of Terror" and "To Set Prometheus Free". For several years he wrote the "Last Word" column for the Guardian newspaper and now writes a column for the Times. He is a frequent contributor to the Literary Review, Observer, Independent on Sunday, Times Literary Supplement, Index on Censorship and New Statesman, and is an equally frequent broadcaster on BBC Radios 4, 3 and the World Service. He writes the "Thinking Read" column for the Barnes and Noble Review in New York, is the Editor of Online Review London, and a Contributing Editor of Prospect magazine.

In addition he sits on the editorial boards of several academic journals, and for nearly ten years was the Honorary Secretary of the principal British philosophical association, the Aristotelian Society. He is a past chairman of June Fourth, a human rights group concerned with China, and is a representative to the UN Human Rights Council for the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, the Patron of the United Kingdom Armed Forces Humanist Association, a patron of Dignity in Dying, and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.

Anthony Grayling was a Fellow of the World Economic Forum for several years, and a member of its C-100 group on relations between the West and the Islamic world. He has served as a Trustee of the London Library and a board member of the Society of Authors.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2003 he was a Booker Prize judge, in 2010 was a judge of the Art Fund prize, and in 2011 the Wellcome Book Prize.
He supports a number of educational charities and is a sponsor of Rogbonko School in Sierra Leone.

Letter of a madman.

2011-09-16T21:37:00.009+01:00

Guy de Maupassant
Introduction & Translation by Will Stone.

IN THE EARLY HOURS OF 2 JANUARY 1892, SENSING THE APPROACH OF INSANITY, THE RENOWNED FRENCH WRITER GUY DE MAUPASSANT ATTEMPTED SUICIDE. THERE THEN FOLLOWED FOR THE SICK MAN LONG MONTHS OF CONFINEMENT IN PASSY AT THE PRIVATE CLINIC OF THE RESPECTED DR BLANCHE, THE CONCLUSION OF WHICH WAS HIS DEATH ON 6 JULY 1893, OVERCOME BY HIS ILLNESS, A SYPHILITIC DISEASE OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

"Numerous were the columnists following the course of the writer’s demise who sought to identify signs of madness in his works. Even before he had died the newspaper Le Figaro declared: 'Maupassant has fallen victim to the intensity of his own sensations. He described and analysed the madness long before the dreadful sickness overcame him.' Enthusiastically the salons fed the controversy. Some maintained that the frequent evocation of alienation in Maupassant’s writings resulted in the development of his 'general paralysis', whilst others continued to believe that the weakened author, suffering from writers block, nevertheless managed to preserve some inspiration from the scoria of his illness. In the 'Letter of a Madman' which was first published in Le Gil Blas in 1885, Maupassant, or 'Maufrigneuse' as he mysteriously signs himself (curiously recalling Hölderlin’s use of the name ‘Scardanelli’ during his own ‘madness’), left behind a text largely ignored until after his death, which is now regarded as one of the founding elements for the myth surrounding the famous short story 'Le Horla'. The scene of the blurred reflection in the mirror is repeated in the story written two years later. Maupassant’s perceived 'being', which lived outside of his self, became an evil alter-ego as illness encroached upon his faculties and resulted in acute paranoid delusions and a virtual delirium of the senses.

His 'letter' can be seen as another fascinating fragment wrested from a journey of no return which unknowingly predestines studies into the suppressed nature of the unconscious by Freud in the following century. Furthermore one cannot help but recall in respect of Maupassant the earnest declaration of Poe; 'And now - have I not told you that what you take for madness is but an over-acuteness of the senses?"

LETTER OF A MADMAN

My dear Doctor, I place myself entirely in your hands. Do with me as you wish. I shall tell you frankly about my strange state of mind and you can determine whether it might not be better for you to take care of me for a while in a nursing home, rather than leave me prey to the hallucinations and sufferings which plague me. Here is my story, in full and in detail, charting the incredible desolation of my soul.

I was living like anyone else, observing life with the lucid yet blinkered eyes of man, without astonishment or comprehension. I was living as animals live, as we are all living, fulfilling all the functions of existence, studying closely and thinking to see, to know, to understand what surrounds me, when, one day, I realised all was a sham. There’s a line by Montesquieu which elucidates my thought. It goes: “One organ more or less in our body would have given us a different intelligence… in the end all the accepted laws on which our body is dependent would in some way be different if our body were not actually designed in that particular way.” I reflected on this for months and months, and little by little, a strange clarity filled me, and upon that clarity darkness descended. Indeed our organs are the sole intermediaries between the outer world and our own. I mean that the inner being, which constitutes my ‘self’ finds itself in turn linked to the outer being which constitutes the world, via the nerve endings. Now, besides this outer being eluding us by its proportions, its duration, its countless and unfathomable properties, its origins, its future or its end, its remote shapes and endless manifestations, our organs still only give us a rough outline of what we could be aware of, and that from information as scant as it is unreliable. Unreliable, because, uniquely to us, these are the only properties of our organs which determine the visible make-up of living matter. Scant, because our senses number only five and thus their field of enquiry and the nature of their revelations remain strictly limited.

Let me explain – the eye shows us dimensions, shapes and colours. It deceives us in all three areas. It can only reveal to us objects and beings of average dimensions, in relation to the human scale, which encourages us to apply grand words to some things and lesser words to others, solely because its shortcomings prevent it from comprehending that which is too vast or too insignificant. Consequently it sees and understands next to nothing, and virtually the entire universe remains beyond its reach, the star which inhabits space and the animalcule which exists in a drop of water. Even if it possessed one hundred million times its normal power, if it detected in the air we breathe all those species of invisible beings as well as those that inhabit neighbouring planets, there would still exist an infinite number of smaller species and of worlds so distant it would never reach them. So all our established ideas on proportions are false, as there are no definite limits on the scale of both large and small. Our judgement of shapes and dimensions has no absolute validity, being determined solely by the powers of a single organ and from a constant comparison with ourselves.

It’s worth adding that the eye is still incapable of perceiving the transparent. A flawless glass deceives the eye because it confuses the glass with the air it can no longer see. Let us move on to colour. Colour exists because our eye is constructed in such a way that it transmits to the brain , in the form of colour, the myriad ways in which the body absorbs and breaks down, following their chemical composition, the rays of light which strike them. The different proportions of that absorption and breakdown produce shades. So, this organ imposes on the mind its particular method of seeing, or better still, its arbitrary way of noting dimensions and assessing the relationship between light and matter. Now let us examine the hearing. Even more so than the eye, we are mere playthings for this deceiving and whimsical organ. Two bodies colliding produce a certain disturbance of the atmosphere. This movement causes a particular tiny flap of skin in our ear to quiver, which immediately transforms into noise what is in reality only a vibration. Nature is silent. But the eardrum possesses this miraculous property which sends us in the form of senses, and of different senses following the number of vibrations, all those quiverings from the invisible waves of space. That metamorphosis undergone by the auditory nerve during the short journey from ear to brain allows us to create a peculiar form of art, music, the most poetic and the most precise of arts, ill-defined as a dream and as exact as algebra. What can be said of taste and smell? Could we know the scents and qualities of foods without the strange properties of our nose and palate? Yet, humanity could exist without the ear, without taste or a sense of smell, that is to say without the slightest motion of noise, flavour or odour. So, if we had fewer organs, we would miss the most wonderful and strange things, but if we had a greater number, we would discover around us infinite varieties of other things which we would, through lack of means, never have thought to take note of. Therefore we are mistaken when judging the known, and we are surrounded by the unexplored unknown.

In fact, all is speculative and interpreted in different ways. All is deceptive, all is possible, all is questionable. We can echo that reality by recalling the old saying: “Truth this side of the Pyrenees, error beyond.” Then we might say: ‘Truth in our organs, error close by.’ Beyond our own atmosphere two and two don’t necessarily equal four. Truth on earth, error beyond, from which I conclude that barely glimpsed mysteries like electricity, hypnotism, transmission of the will, suggestion, all the magnetic phenomena, only remain concealed from us because nature has not endowed us with the organ or organs necessary to comprehend them. Having convinced myself that everything my senses reveal to me exists for me alone as I perceive it and would be totally different for a separate being, after having reached the conclusion that a diversely assembled humanity would impose on the world, on life, on everything, ideas at odds with ours, because the accord of beliefs only results from the similarity of human organs, and the divergence of opinions only comes from slight differences in the functioning of our nerve endings, I made a superhuman effort to afford myself a glimpse of the unfathomable which surrounds me. Have I lost my mind? I told myself: ‘I am enveloped by unknown things.’

I pictured man without ears, imagining the sound as we imagine so many hidden mysteries, man noting the acoustic phenomena whose nature and origin he would be unable to determine. And I was fearful of everything around me, fearful of the air, fearful of the night. From the moment when we understand almost nothing, and from the moment all seems limitless, what remains? Is it not the void? Just what is there in that emptiness? And that confused terror of the supernatural which has haunted man form the beginning of time is justified, as long as the supernatural is just another world veiled from us. I understood terror. It seemed to me that I was permanently on the verge of discovering the secret of the universe. I attempted to sharpen my organs, to stimulate them, to make them momentarily perceive the invisible. I told myself: ‘All is being. The cry which passes through the air is a being comparable to the animal, since it is born, produces a movement, and transforms itself again to die. Now, the timorous mind which believes in immaterial beings is therefore not mistaken. Who are they?’ How many men sense them, tremble at their approach, shiver at their imperceptible touch. One feels them close and all around, but one cannot make them out, because we don’t have the eye which would see them, or rather that unknown organ which would be able to detect them. So, more than anyone I felt them myself, these supernatural passers by. Beings or mysteries? How to tell? I couldn’t say what exactly they were, but I could always signal their presence. And I saw – I saw an invisible being – as far as one can see them, these spirits. I would remain quite still for whole nights on end, sitting there at my table, head in hands, pondering it all, musing on them. Often I imagined a shadowy or rather imperceptible body brush lightly against my hair. It didn’t actually touch me, being not so much an earthly creature, but an obscure, unknowable species. Now, one night, I heard my floor creak behind me. It creaked in an odd way. I trembled. I turned around. I saw nothing. And I thought no more about it. But the next day, at the same time, the exact same noise occurred. I was so terrified I stood up, absolutely convinced that I was not alone in the room. Yet there was nothing to be seen. The air was limpid and clear throughout. My two lamps lit up the alcoves. The noise did not recur and little by little, I composed myself, yet I remained troubled and often turned around.

The next day I shut myself away at an early hour, looking for ways I might actually come to see the invisible spirit which visited me. And I did see it. I almost died of fright. I had lit all the candles in my fireplace and my chandelier. The room was lit up as if for a soirée. My two lamps burned on the table. Opposite me, my bed, an old oak four-poster. To the right my fireplace. To the left my door which I had fastened. Behind me a cavernous mirrored wardrobe. I was regarding myself in it. My eyes seemed odd and the pupils were dilated. Then I sat down just as on any other day. The noise had occurred the day before and the day before that at precisely twenty two minutes past nine. I waited. When the exact moment came, I experienced an indescribable feeling, as if a fluid substance, an overwhelming liquid had passed through every pore of my flesh, saturating my soul in a fear both ghastly and strangely comforting, Then the creaking sound began again close up against me. I swiveled round so rapidly that I almost fell over. You could see it all clear as day, I was no longer visible in the mirror! It was empty, clear, bathed in light. I wasn’t there and yet I was right in front of it. I watched it with terror in my eyes. I did not dare approach, only too aware that ‘he’ was between us, the unseen one, and that he was hiding me. Oh! How terrified I was! And that was when I began to discern myself through the mist at the base of the mirror, a mist like that which creeps across water; and it seemed to me that this sluggish water was ebbing from left to right, revealing a little more of me with each passing second. It was like the close of an eclipse. Whatever was hiding me had no contours, but a kind of hazy transparency which was becoming gradually less opaque. And eventually I could see myself clearly, just as I did when regarding myself each day. So I had seen it! And I never saw it again. But I wait for it constantly and I feel my mind is led astray from all this waiting. I stay for hours, nights, days, weeks, there in front of my mirror waiting for it. But it no longer comes. It has understood that I have seen it. But I sense I will wait nevertheless, forever if need be, until death. I will wait without respite before that mirror, like a hunter lying in wait for his quarry. And in that mirror I begin to see the most deranged images, monsters, hideous corpses, all manner of terrifying beasts, ghastly wraiths, all the fantastical visions that come to haunt the minds of madmen.

There is my confession, my dear Doctor. Now, tell me, what should I do?

A celebration of reason.

2011-09-13T20:04:00.011+01:00

Bluntly said by a sensible mind: "Science works, religion doesn't."
- PZ Myers @ Global Atheist convention 2010.

Watch this wonderful conference which happened last year in Melbourne Australia:

If you are in Melbourne, Oz by the time the Global Atheist Convention takes place do attend! At least do it for me who won't be able to make it.

And furthermore, if you have kids or are an uncle or aunt or older brother or sister or stepparent or grandparent do check this children BOOK written by Richard Dawkins and perhaps buy it and read it aloud for all to hear and recover the senses and prevent further children indoctrination and the spread of utter nonsense to future generations to come:

De Materie.

2011-09-11T00:41:00.017+01:00

De Materie (Matter)
1984 to 1988
by Louis Andriessen.

Own it: part I - part II - part III

A four-part vocal and orchestral composition by Dutch Atheist & anarchist composer Louis Andriessen, which he composed over the period 1984 to 1988.

OUT OF THIS WORLD PIECE OF GLORIOUS MAJESTY! I LOVE IT SO DEARLY I WANT TO SHARE IT WITH THE UNAWARE BUT ALSO WITH THE ALREADY FERVENT ANDRIESSEN FOLLOWER.

The work incorporates eclectic musical influences, ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach and Igor Stravinsky to the old Netherlands chanson "L'homme armé" and 20th-century boogie-woogie. The work opens with 144 iterations of the same chord played fortissimo (very loud) and features an extended solo for two large metal boxes played with hammers. The texts are both sung and spoken. The four sections of the work incorporate various texts, with the dates of composition of each section in parentheses.

Nonesuch Records has released a series of recordings of Andriessen's major works, including the complete De Materie, ROSA Death of a composer and Writing to Vermeer. GO CHECK IT OUT and GET IT !

excerpt I

excerpt II

"Make it vibrate til the fibre of life squeals"

2011-09-08T13:08:00.005+01:00

"...a patient breaking into a nuthouse"

"Theatre of Cruelty -- what is it? "Everything that acts is a cruelty" says Artaud in his essay on the subject. "It is upon this idea of extreme action, pushed beyond all limits, that theatre must be rebuilt." If you look at his subjects -- the Marquis de Sade, Bluebeard, the Fall of Jerusalem, the Conquest of Mexico -- you get some idea of the crypto-fascist cosmologies that run behind the revolutionary expression of this French poet, actor, medium and madman who advocated the artist as a Creator rather than as a writer or director. Visionary... or just another ass with an act? Gerard Mordillat's black comedy on the subject gives you some idea.

The narrative frame for the action is an unrecognized poet's journal which records his meeting and later enslavement to the great man. If masochists exist in order for sadists to express themselves, then Jacques Prevel (Marc Barbe) must be a masochist. In a sense this poet who says he writes "for people who will be alive when I'm dead" is Artaud's understudy, and ironically a sadist by default to his suffering wife and superbly suffering mistress.

Prevel has sent some of his poems to Artaud in the asylum at Rodez (outside Paris) and receives a polite letter back. It's a measure of Prevel's desperation or delusion that he thinks that if he could publish this letter, this in turn will help him get recognized as the sensitive genius he knows he is. Crazy? That's French literature in the post-war climes, folks. And this Left-Bank mentality is far from dead, as you can find it on nearly any campus in North America today. For this reason, My Life & Times is likely to be seen as hip rather than tragic, a model rather than a moral.

There's no question that despite the immediate squalor of madness, there's also something attractive about it, especially for the poet as savant. It's like reverse language therapy, an occultic means of breaking through the spectral walls that enclose our reality. As this involves an assault on the senses, drugs are nearly always involved. It was true for Nerval and Alfred Jarry, both obvious precursors of Artaud. They say Jarry was found dead on a bed of straw, a cylinder of ether nearby. For Artaud -- the man who looks like a fresh cadaver in a stale bistro -- his death might've been accelerated by any one of the different drugs Prevel delivers to him. Once, during one of their many transits of the Charrenton bridge, Artaud says to Prevel, "All the opium in Paris must be at Artaud's disposal... so he can finish his work."

Thus spake the Master. And such is Prevel's sycophantic desperation, he continues to supply Artaud (Sami Frey) with laudanum -- that ancient staple of the visionary poet i.e. Francis Thompson, City of Dreadful Night -- or nearly anything else that will give the man a buzz. Artaud wants ham -- Prevel gets it for him. Artaud needs woman -- Prevel's wife might do. Artaud needs his visions recorded -- Prevel will write them down. Artaud needs an audience for his theatre -- Prevel will be that audience.

"make it vibrate til the fibre of life squeals"

In a delineating scene, Prevel approaches through the asylum garden, hears the pained voice of the actress that Artaud is rehearsing in his room. "There once was a King of Thule," she recites... over and over. "No!" shouts Artaud. "Louder... louder...!" She stands stiffly like a truant schoolgirl, accepting her humiliation from the Master like the slave she is. "There once was a King of Thule," she shrieks, "whose faithful courtesan gave him a talisman!" "No!" shouts Artaud. "The sound must squirt out! Make it vibrate 'til the fibre of life squeals!" Tears stream down her face, her body trembles... and the madman circles. Avant-garde? Yes. Theatre of Cruelty? You bet.

Artaud's relationship with Colette the actress is left ambiguous, like much of the metaphoric language that the poet excels at. He tells Prevel that Colette was brutally raped and that he will slit the man's throat "if (he) can find him." You wonder if Artaud is the assailant, as he frequently refers to himself in the 3rd person... the mind-body dualism of a spiritual coward? Yet his immersion within his own act of self-destruction is so complete, a certain integrity prevails. For example, he's not too far gone to suggest to Prevel that he's treating his wife badly and that Jany his mistress "is an evil influence".

Prevel's situation is so absurd that it can only exist by omission of detail. His wife and children live in apartment while he lives down the street in a hotel with his mistress. There never seems to be any money... and why would there be? Prevel never works. When she's not stoned, Jany is out "trying to sell (Prevel's) poems". Somehow Prevel seems to be able to keep this menage trois going between writing in cafes and running dope to the madman. All the while only one thing matters: recognition that he, Prevel, is a significant poet. While Artaud is evasive, a publisher is not -- he says Prevel's poetry reveals a certain "laziness". Funny? We think so.

Prevel is ostracized by the literary disciples who await the sporadic visits of their Christ in one of the many smoky cafes they hang around in like hyenas. They resent his relationship with Artaud, the fact that he supplies the maestro with drugs. Prevel is killing Artaud, they feel.

Meanwhile Prevel continues to walk the walk with Artaud, listen to his stream-of-consciousness (or is it vomit) with the dead-pan rapture of a nicotine zombie. "Everytime a man and a woman have sex, I feel it," intones Artaud. "They deprive me of something." He advises Prevel to give up sex. "Avoid it. One day it will no longer be desired or necessary, or exist anymore."

Prevel: Drugs do that to you?

Artaud: I take drugs to rid myself of sexual obsessions! (Prevel demurs) Only a hermaphrodite knows what love should be, the rest just saps energy.

One night they return to the asylum but Artaud has lost his keys. When Prevel is giving him a "leg up" onto the wall, two gendarmes come by, demand to know what's going on. "A patient breaking into the nuthouse!" one exclaims. They help Artaud climb the wall in an act that symbolizes the absurd modus operandi of the modern poet in search of understanding.

The film is in black and white, no doubt to help lock it into history and the bleak cultural confusion of forties France. It works, as Paris looks like an industrial nightmare, a perpetual shunting yard of locomotives and Metro transit. Cafes, streets, buildings, even nature, are drained of color, reduced to shades of gray and black as if filtered by the smoke from the endless cigarettes everyone is smoking.

The principals are excellent in their roles. Sami Frey is so within the character of Antonin Artaud you think this is a documentary. Mordillat's film isn't that funny if you have no sympathy for transcendental language, and indeed many will find its self-indulgent characters tiresome. But for the curious with no previous knowledge of Artaud, it might draw attention to his brilliant collection of "essays" collected as Theatre And Its Double. Here you will find such interesting gems as "No More Masterpieces" and "Towards a Theatre of Cruelty".

Artaud died in 1948, a month after his war-guilt radio play To Have Done With The Judgement of God was broadcast to an indifferent public, his manisfestos misunderstood, his exorcism withheld."

"Beside Schopenhauer's corpse"

2011-09-02T02:13:00.009+01:00

"Beside Schopenhauer's corpse"
A short story by Guy de Maupassant.

He was slowly dying, as consumptives die. I saw him each day, about two o'clock, sitting beneath the hotel windows on a bench in the promenade, looking out on the calm sea. He remained for some time without moving, in the heat of the sun, gazing mournfully at the Mediterranean. Every now and then, he cast a glance at the lofty mountains with beclouded summits that shut in Mentone; then, with a very slow movement, he would cross his long legs, so thin that they seemed like two bones, around which fluttered the cloth of his trousers, and he would open a book, always the same book. And then he did not stir any more, but read on, read on with his eye and his mind; all his wasting body seemed to read, all his soul plunged, lost, disappeared, in this book, up to the hour when the cool air made him cough a little. Then, he got up and reentered the hotel.

He was a tall German, with fair beard, who breakfasted and dined in his own room, and spoke to nobody.

A vague, curiosity attracted me to him. One day, I sat down by his side, having taken up a book, too, to keep up appearances, a volume of Musset's poems.

And I began to look through "Rolla."

Suddenly, my neighbor said to me, in good French:

"Do you know German, monsieur?"

"Not at all, monsieur."

"I am sorry for that. Since chance has thrown us side by side, I could have lent you, I could have shown you, an inestimable thing—this book which I hold in my hand."

"What is it, pray?"

"It is a copy of my master, Schopenhauer, annotated with his own hand. All the margins, as you may see, are covered with his handwriting."

I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at these forms incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth.

And Musset's verses arose in my memory:

"Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die,
And does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?"
And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.

Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant, or let us be enthusiastic, Schopenhauer has marked humanity with the seal of his disdain and of his disenchantment.

A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic ideals and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women, crushed the illusions of hearts, and accomplished the most gigantic task ever attempted by scepticism. He spared nothing with his mocking spirit, and exhausted everything. And even to-day those who execrate him seem to carry in their own souls particles of his thought.

"So, then, you were intimately acquainted with Schopenhauer?" I said to the German.

He smiled sadly.

"Up to the time of his death, monsieur."

And he spoke to me about the philosopher and told me about the almost supernatural impression which this strange being made on all who came near him.

He gave me an account of the interview of the old iconoclast with a French politician, a doctrinaire Republican, who wanted to get a glimpse of this man, and found him in a noisy tavern, seated in the midst of his disciples, dry, wrinkled, laughing with an unforgettable laugh, attacking and tearing to pieces ideas and beliefs with a single word, as a dog tears with one bite of his teeth the tissues with which he plays.

He repeated for me the comment of this Frenchman as he went away, astonished and terrified: "I thought I had spent an hour with the devil."

Then he added:

"He had, indeed, monsieur, a frightful smile, which terrified us even after his death. I can tell you an anecdote about it that is not generally known, if it would interest you."

And he began, in a languid voice, interrupted by frequent fits of coughing.

"Schopenhauer had just died, and it was arranged that we should watch, in turn, two by two, till morning.

"He was lying in a large apartment, very simple, vast and gloomy. Two wax candles were burning on the stand by the bedside.

"It was midnight when I went on watch, together with one of our comrades. The two friends whom we replaced had left the apartment, and we came and sat down at the foot of the bed.

"The face was not changed. It was laughing. That pucker which we knew so well lingered still around the corners of the lips, and it seemed to us that he was about to open his eyes, to move and to speak. His thought, or rather his thoughts, enveloped us. We felt ourselves more than ever in the atmosphere of his genius, absorbed, possessed by him. His domination seemed to be even more sovereign now that he was dead. A feeling of mystery was blended with the power of this incomparable spirit.

"The bodies of these men disappear, but they themselves remain; and in the night which follows the cessation of their heart's pulsation I assure you, monsieur, they are terrifying.

"And in hushed tones we talked about him, recalling to mind certain sayings, certain formulas of his, those startling maxims which are like jets of flame flung, in a few words, into the darkness of the Unknown Life.

"'It seems to me that he is going to speak,' said my comrade. And we stared with uneasiness bordering on fear at the motionless face, with its eternal laugh. Gradually, we began to feel ill at ease, oppressed, on the point of fainting. I faltered:

"'I don't know what is the matter with me, but, I assure you I am not well.'

"And at that moment we noticed that there was an unpleasant odor from the corpse.

"Then, my comrade suggested that we should go into the adjoining room, and leave the door open; and I assented to his proposal.

"I took one of the wax candles which burned on the stand, and I left the second behind. Then we went and sat down at the other end of the adjoining apartment, in such a position that we could see the bed and the corpse, clearly revealed by the light.

"But he still held possession of us. One would have said that his immaterial essence, liberated, free, all-powerful and dominating, was flitting around us. And sometimes, too, the dreadful odor of the decomposed body came toward us and penetrated us, sickening and indefinable.

"Suddenly a shiver passed through our bones: a sound, a slight sound, came from the death-chamber. Immediately we fixed our glances on him, and we saw, yes, monsieur, we saw distinctly, both of us, something white pass across the bed, fall on the carpet, and vanish under an armchair.

"We were on our feet before we had time to think of anything, distracted by stupefying terror, ready to run away. Then we stared at each other. We were horribly pale. Our hearts throbbed fiercely enough to have raised the clothing on our chests. I was the first to speak:

"'Did you see?'

"'Yes, I saw.'

"'Can it be that he is not dead?'

"'Why, when the body is putrefying?'

"'What are we to do?'

"My companion said in a hesitating tone:

"'We must go and look.'

"I took our wax candle and entered first, glancing into all the dark corners in the large apartment. Nothing was moving now, and I approached the bed. But I stood transfixed with stupor and fright:

"Schopenhauer was no longer laughing! He was grinning in a horrible fashion, with his lips pressed together and deep hollows in his cheeks. I stammered out:

"'He is not dead!'

"But the terrible odor ascended to my nose and stifled me. And I no longer moved, but kept staring fixedly at him, terrified as if in the presence of an apparition.

"Then my companion, having seized the other wax candle, bent forward. Next, he touched my arm without uttering a word. I followed his glance, and saw on the ground, under the armchair by the side of the bed, standing out white on the dark carpet, and open as if to bite, Schopenhauer's set of artificial teeth.

"The work of decomposition, loosening the jaws, had made it jump out of the mouth.

"I was really frightened that day, monsieur."

And as the sun was sinking toward the glittering sea, the consumptive German rose from his seat, gave me a parting bow, and retired into the hotel.

"We're going to live forever!"

2011-08-29T11:33:00.055+01:00

* about Ken Russell, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Gustav Mahler and the films based on the two latter.

To those who haven't had the fortune yet to watch any Ken Russell film, but particularly two of his numerous, indisputable masterpieces: SAVAGE MESSIAH & MAHLER, this post is especially targeted at. And listen to me carefully: You MUST NOT live another week without watching this two marvellous films. You will not be living, fully at least, until you have watched these precious gems (hehe yes, the usual histrionic writing style, i know).
These two fine pieces of cinematic art will spill all over you a contagious eagerness for life; while at the same time draining you off it and replacing that eagerness with a deep, sweet sorrow and an awareness of the absurdity of existence and human animal condition, of love, of how beautiful human's creation is (Art) and it will remain with you for a long time after you see it.

These two films are very appropriate for the artist, the writer, the musician, the poet. They're both outstanding depictions of an artist struggle with creativity in the past; although one could still identify to such struggle in the present. The portrayal of the artist wanting to convey abstract thoughts, emotions and ideas through words, sounds, objects, etc. Something very familiar to those who feel (and know) they have something to say and through the artwork is how they say it. And that is why an artist, that one who has something relevant to say to the others, the one who is sincere and has very personal motivations to create, is going to live forever. Like Brzeska, like Mahler, like Russell (who by the way has recently interpreted Aleister Crowley in a film).

Ken Russell have been for years, still is and will always be, in my view at least, the greatest british film director there is and one of my cherished. From his early BBC dramatised, biographical documentaries (or semi-documentaries) to his classics portraying great personalities and events from the late 19th and early 20th century, with extravagant allure and a masterful sensitivity and proficiency of detail.

Russell's most important work, however, is the infamous/blasphemous utter masterpiece THE DEVILS. To which my good friend Velasco Broca ( a great filmmaker and individual himself) and I had dribbled numerous occasions, fascinated by the unbelievable stage designs, performances, score, the heavy atmosphere, the accuracy of it, the extreme violence and bizarreness of the factual events which took place in France and Britain; and the way in which Russell translated real life into a visually and audibly dense parallel reality of extraordinary proportions.

Savage Messiah is a biographical film about French sculptor Henri Guadier-Brzeska (Complete film on YT):

Mahler, as the title already suggests, is a biographical film about Austrian intellectual and classical composer Gustav Mahler. Russell makes allusion to Visconti's Death in Venice (12 part on YT):

"More human than human."

2011-08-28T00:45:00.005+01:00

And now back to the recurrent, most relevant topic (after the fact of the non-existence of a god/s and the utter aberration of religions and the need for them to extinct): ART.

This is an episode of a documentary produced by the good old BBC called: "HOW ART MADE THE WORLD". This 1st episode is called "More human than human". A phrase by the way, which somehow captivates me and makes me feel some kind of joy...

Plus this other documentary about Modern art hosted by Orson Welles.

Ed Blackwell (& Wadada leo smith & Don cherry).

2011-08-22T00:03:00.010+01:00

Ed Blackwell's "What it be like" and "El Corazon" with Don Cherry and "Blue mountain's sun drummer" with Wadada leo Smith; three incredibly beautiful and powerful pieces of fine art and music. I knew Ed Blackwell from before but didn't listened closely to his tunes and he was recently brought back to my attention again by a good friend while we were working in some artwork and I fell in love immediately with his drumming style and compositions... I spent the whole afternoon driving into the forest, walking in the forest and driving back home while listening to a lot of Blackwell's albums and I'm still vibrating, so to speak, from listening to these first class incredible music. I'm hooked now to some tunes like the "Grandma's shoes", "Solidarity", "Arabian", "Nebula", "First Love",etc... Basically the whole Ed Blackwell's project vol. I & II, the two albums with Don Cherry "El corazon" & "Mu" and the album with Wadada Leo Smith, as i mentioned before "The blue mountain's sun drummer".
Surely buy these or get them from the internet or anything and listen to every single note of them, please. Masterpieces of free-improvisation, drums and fusion of instruments, styles and rhythms.

I'm not a music reviewer, much less a jazz reviewer or a critic. I just love this man's music and these album's he left for posterity. Luckily for all of us to cherish and listen over and over in static delight.

Ed Blackwell - Grandma's Shoes.

"Charms for the vulgar"

2011-08-20T00:51:00.004+01:00

JEAN MESLIER: Superstition in all ages.

XII.—RELIGION ENTICES IGNORANCE BY THE AID OF THE MARVELOUS.

If religion was clear, it would have fewer attractions for the ignorant. They need obscurity, mysteries, fables, miracles, incredible things, which keep their brains perpetually at work. Romances, idle stories, tales of ghosts and witches, have more charms for the vulgar than true narrations.

XIII.—CONTINUATION.

In the matter of religion, men are but overgrown children. The more absurd a religion is, and the fuller of marvels, the more power it exerts; the devotee thinks himself obliged to place no limits to his credulity; the more inconceivable things are, the more divine they appear to him; the more incredible they are, the more merit he gives himself for believing them.

XIV.—THERE WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ANY RELIGION IF THERE HAD NEVER BEEN ANY DARK AND BARBAROUS AGES.

The origin of religious opinions dates, as a general thing, from the time when savage nations were yet in a state of infancy. It was to coarse, ignorant, and stupid men that the founders of religion addressed themselves in all ages, in order to present them with Gods, ceremonies, histories of fabulous Divinities, marvelous and terrible fables. These chimeras, adopted without examination by the fathers, have been transmitted with more or less changes to their polished children, who often do not reason more than their fathers.

Ultralyd.

2011-08-18T00:05:00.002+01:00

To whom it may concern: I share with you one of the finest (those words are truly) bands in the current music scene.

All children are born Atheists.

2011-08-12T12:02:00.006+01:00

Baron d'Holbach
"Good sense without god" (extract)
Read the whole document here.

30.

To the generality of men, nothing renders an argument more convincing than fear. It is therefore, that theologians assure us, we must take the safest part; that nothing is so criminal as incredulity; that God will punish without pity every one who has the temerity to doubt his existence; that his severity is just, since madness or perversity only can make us deny the existence of an enraged monarch, who without mercy avenges himself on Atheists. If we coolly examine these threatenings, we shall find, they always suppose the thing in question. They must first prove the existence of a God, before they assure us, it is safest to believe, and horrible to doubt or deny his existence. They must then prove, that it is possible and consistent, that a just God cruelly punishes men for having been in a state of madness, that prevented their believing the existence of a being, whom their perverted reason could not conceive. In a word, they must prove, that an infinitely just God can infinitely punish the invincible and natural ignorance of man with respect to the divine nature. Do not theologians reason very strangely? They invent phantoms, they compose them of contradictions; they then assure us, it is safest not to doubt the existence of these phantoms they themselves have invented. According to this mode of reasoning, there is no absurdity, which it would not be more safe to believe, than not to believe.

All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God. Are they then criminal on account of their ignorance? At what age must they begin to believe in God? It is, you say, at the age of reason. But at what time should this age commence? Besides, if the profoundest theologians lose themselves in the divine nature, which they do not presume to comprehend, what ideas must man have of him?

31.

Men believe in God only upon the word of those, who have no more idea of him than themselves. Our nurses are our first theologians. They talk to children of God as if he were a scarecrow; they teach them from the earliest age to join their hands mechanically. Have nurses then more true ideas of God than the children whom they teach to pray?

32.

Religion, like a family estate, passes, with its incumbrances, from parents to children. Few men in the world would have a God, had not pains been taken in infancy to give them one. Each would receive from his parents and teachers the God whom they received from theirs; but each, agreeably to his disposition, would arrange, modify, and paint him in his own manner.

33.

The brain of man, especially in infancy, is like soft wax, fit to receive every impression that is made upon it. Education furnishes him with almost all his ideas at a time, when he is incapable of judging for himself. We believe we have received from nature, or have brought with us at birth, the true or false ideas, which, in a tender age, had been instilled into our minds; and this persuasion is one of the greatest sources of errors.

34.

Prejudice contributes to cement in us the opinions of those who have been charged with our instruction. We believe them much more experienced than ourselves; we suppose they are fully convinced of the things which they teach us; we have the greatest confidence in them; by the care they have taken of us in infancy, we judge them incapable of wishing to deceive us. These are the motives that make us adopt a thousand errors, without other foundation than the hazardous authority of those by whom we have been brought up. The prohibition likewise of reasoning upon what they teach us, by no means lessens our confidence; but often contributes to increase our respect for their opinions.

35.

Divines act very wisely in teaching men their religious principles before they are capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood, or their left hand from their right. It would be as difficult to instill into the mind of a man, forty years old, the extravagant notions that are given us of the divinity, as to eradicate them from the mind of him who had imbibed them from infancy.

The sand drawing of Vanuatu.

2011-08-11T17:58:00.001+01:00

Remembering man's most pathetic opus.

2011-08-07T17:14:00.005+01:00

FAILURE, INDEED!

Michael Shermer: Why people believe strange things.

2011-07-29T00:23:00.010+01:00

A humourous talk given by Dr. Michael Shermer, founder publisher of the Skeptic Magazine and the Skeptic society, and author of several books, including Why People Believe Weird Things.

"Dr. Shermer takes us on a hilarious romp through the strange claims we humans put forth as truth — from alien encounters to Virgin Mary sightings on pizza pies, to hidden messages revealed while playing “Stairway to Heaven” backwards — and explains the evolutionary and cognitive basis for these lapses in reason."

Shermer also mentions a very basic yet irrefutable argument against "creationism" & "intelligent design" in less than 30 seconds...

(Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 17:29)

Bob Solomon's "Will to power: The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche" (1st lecture of 24).

2011-07-27T21:39:00.004+01:00

‎01. ( part 1 )
Why Read Nietzsche? His Life, Times, Works, and Themes.
Lecture given by Professors Robert Solomon & Kathleen Higgins. Uploaded with PURE EDUCATIONAL MEANS.

‎1st of 24 lectures intended to be shared. These Bob Solomon lectures are an invaluable treasure of jewels called Friedrich Nietzsche. To be seen over and over again and that wouldn't be enough...

Z (1969)

2011-07-25T23:36:00.033+01:00

A film directed by Costa-Gavras.
Written by Jorge Semprun & Costa-Gavras.

This film is a masterpiece. No doubt about it. Intentionally based on true events and characters as clearly stated at the beginning; this film is based too in Vassilis Vassilikos's book with the same title.
One shall inevitably utter a quivering scream at the final scene when the narrator says:

"Concurrently, the military banned long hair on males; mini-skirts; Sophocles; Tolstoy; Euripedes; smashing glasses after drinking toasts; labor strikes; Aristophanes; Ionesco; Sartre; Albee; Pinter; freedom of the press; sociology; Beckett; Dostoyevsky; modern music; popular music; the new mathematics; and the letter "Z", which in ancient Greek means "He is alive!"

Don't forget Jorge Semprun. Deceased the last 7th of June 2011.
Great musical composition too by Mikis Theodorakis.

Watch Z (pronounced "Zi") in 13 parts and enjoy ecstatically like myself this amazing film (whatever happened to cinema... had lost it's huge potentiality):

FOLLOW THE LINKS FOR THE NEXT 12 PARTS ON YT.

Maupassant's "Le Horla."

2011-07-20T20:28:00.022+01:00

Analysis: The story is written in the first person in the form of a diary. One may consider the story to be semi-autobiographical, as it recreates similar elements from the author's own life, such as the final line of the narrative in which the protagonist remarks that "there is nothing left for me but to kill myself." This proves his subjectivity in the story regarding his own attempt at suicide in 1892. Many think that the author himself was insane when he wrote this story[citation needed]. In fact, even though he was not considered mentally ill when he wrote the story, it is known that he had been suffering from syphilis for a few years and the illness affected his mental health considerably. Some of his symptoms match sleep paralysis. The seeming insanity and dementia of the protagonist contribute much to the fantastic air that pervades the short story. Maupassant conveys the protagonist's psychology and analysis of fear through the entries to his diary.

"Le Horla" (1887)
by Guy de Maupassant.

May 8. What a lovely day! I have spent all the morning lying on the grass in front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree which covers and shades and shelters the whole of it. I like this part of the country; I am fond of living here because I am attached to it by deep roots, the profound and delicate roots which attach a man to the soil on which his ancestors were born and died, to their traditions, their usages, their food, the local expressions, the peculiar language of the peasants, the smell of the soil, the hamlets, and to the atmosphere itself.

I love the house in which I grew up. From my windows I can see the Seine, which flows by the side of my garden, on the other side of the road, almost through my grounds, the great and wide Seine, which goes to Rouen and Havre, and which is covered with boats passing to and fro.

On the left, down yonder, lies Rouen, populous Rouen with its blue roofs massing under pointed, Gothic towers. Innumerable are they, delicate or broad, dominated by the spire of the cathedral, full of bells which sound through the blue air on fine mornings, sending their sweet and distant iron clang to me, their metallic sounds, now stronger and now weaker, according as the wind is strong or light.

What a delicious morning it was! About eleven o'clock, a long line of boats drawn by a steam-tug, as big a fly, and which scarcely puffed while emitting its thick smoke, passed my gate.

After two English schooners, whose red flags fluttered toward the sky, there came a magnificent Brazilian three-master; it was perfectly white and wonderfully clean and shining. I saluted it, I hardly know why, except that the sight of the vessel gave me great pleasure.

May 12. I have had a slight feverish attack for the last few days, and I feel ill, or rather I feel low-spirited.

Whence come those mysterious influences which change our happiness into discouragement, and our self-confidence into diffidence? One might almost say that the air, the invisible air, is full of unknowable Forces, whose mysterious presence we have to endure. I wake up in the best of spirits, with an inclination to sing in my heart. Why? I go down by the side of the water, and suddenly, after walking a short distance, I return home wretched, as if some misfortune were awaiting me there. Why? Is it a cold shiver which, passing over my skin, has upset my nerves and given me a fit of low spirits? Is it the form of the clouds, or the tints of the sky, or the colors of the surrounding objects which are so change-able, which have troubled my thoughts as they passed before my eyes? Who can tell? Everything that surrounds us, everything that we see without looking at it, everything that we touch without knowing it, everything that we handle without feeling it, everything that we meet without clearly distinguishing it, has a rapid, surprising, and inexplicable effect upon us and upon our organs, and through them on our ideas and on our being itself.

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How profound that mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with our miserable senses: our eyes are unable to perceive what is either too small or too great, too near to or too far from us; we can see neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water; our ears deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air in sonorous notes. Our senses are fairies who work the miracle of changing that movement into noise, and by that metamorphosis give birth to music, which makes the mute agitation of nature a harmony. So with our sense of smell, which is weaker than that of a dog, and so with our sense of taste, which can scarcely distinguish the age of a wine!

Oh! If we only had other organs which could work other miracles in our favor, what a number of fresh things we might discover around us!

May 16. I am ill, decidedly! I was so well last month! I am feverish, horribly feverish, or rather I am in a state of feverish enervation, which makes my mind suffer as much as my body. I have without ceasing the horrible sensation of some danger threatening me, the apprehension of some coming misfortune or of approaching death, a presentiment which is no doubt, an attack of some illness still unnamed, which germinates in the flesh and in the blood.

May 18. I have just come from consulting my medical man, for I can no longer get any sleep. He found that my pulse was high, my eyes dilated, my nerves highly strung, but no alarming symptoms. I must have a course of shower baths and of bromide of potassium.

May 25. No change! My state is really very peculiar. As the evening comes on, an incomprehensible feeling of disquietude seizes me, just as if night concealed some terrible menace toward me. I dine quickly, and then try to read, but I do not understand the words, and can scarcely distinguish the letters. Then I walk up and down my drawing-room, oppressed by a feeling of confused and irresistible fear, a fear of sleep and a fear of my bed.

< 3 >
About ten o'clock I go up to my room. As soon as I have entered I lock and bolt the door. I am frightened - of what? Up till the present time I have been frightened of nothing. I open my cupboards, and look under my bed; I listen - I listen - to what? How strange it is that a simple feeling of discomfort, of impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps the irritation of a nervous center, a slight congestion, a small disturbance in the imperfect and delicate functions of our living machinery, can turn the most light-hearted of men into a melancholy one, and make a coward of the bravest? Then, I go to bed, and I wait for sleep as a man might wait for the executioner. I wait for its coming with dread, and my heart beats and my legs tremble, while my whole body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment when I suddenly fall asleep, as a man throws himself into a pool of stagnant water in order to drown. I do not feel this perfidious sleep coming over me as I used to, but a sleep which is close to me and watching me, which is going to seize me by the head, to close my eyes and annihilate me.

I sleep - a long time - two or three hours perhaps - then a dream - no - a nightmare lays hold on me. I feel that I am in bed and asleep - I feel it and I know it - and I feel also that somebody is coming close to me, is looking at me, touching me, is getting on to my bed, is kneeling on my chest, is taking my neck between his hands and squeezing it - squeezing it with all his might in order to strangle me.

I struggle, bound by that terrible powerlessness which paralyzes us in our dreams; I try to cry out - but I cannot; I want to move - I cannot; I try, with the most violent efforts and out of breath, to turn over and throw off this being which is crushing and suffocating me - I cannot!

< 4 >
And then suddenly I wake up, shaken and bathed in perspiration; I light a candle and find that I am alone, and after that crisis, which occurs every night, I at length fall asleep and slumber tranquilly till morning.

June 2. My state has grown worse. What is the matter with me? The bromide does me no good, and the shower-baths have no effect whatever. Sometimes, in order to tire myself out, though I am fatigued enough already, I go for a walk in the forest of Roumare. I used to think at first that the fresh light and soft air, impregnated with the odor of herbs and leaves, would instill new life into my veins and impart fresh energy to my heart. One day I turned into a broad ride in the wood, and then I diverged toward La Bouille, through a narrow path, between two rows of exceedingly tall trees, which placed a thick, green, almost black roof between the sky and me.

A sudden shiver ran through me, not a cold shiver, but a shiver of agony, and so I hastened my steps, uneasy at being alone in the wood, frightened stupidly and without reason, at the profound solitude. Suddenly it seemed as if I were being followed, that somebody was walking at my heels, close, quite close to me, near enough to touch me.

I turned round suddenly, but I was alone. I saw nothing behind me except the straight, broad ride, empty and bordered by high trees, horribly empty; on the other side also it extended until it was lost in the distance, and looked just the same - terrible.

I closed my eyes. Why? And then I began to turn round on one heel very quickly, just like a top. I nearly fell down, and opened my eyes; the trees were dancing round me and the earth heaved; I was obliged to sit down. Then, ah! I no longer remembered how I had come! What a strange idea! What a strange, strange idea! I did not the least know. I started off to the right, and got back into the avenue which had led me into the middle of the forest.

< 5 >
June 3. I have had a terrible night. I shall go away for a few weeks, for no doubt a journey will set me up again.

July 2. I have come back, quite cured, and have had a most delightful trip into the bargain. I have been to Mont Saint-Michel, which I had not seen before.

What a sight, when one arrives as I did, at Avranches toward the end of the day! The town stands on a hill, and I was taken into the public garden at the extremity of the town. I uttered a cry of astonishment. An extraordinarily large bay lay extended before me, as far as my eyes could reach, between two hills which were lost to sight in the mist; and in the middle of this immense yellow bay, under a clear, golden sky, a peculiar hill rose up, somber and pointed in the midst of the sand. The sun had just disappeared, and under the still flaming sky stood out the outline of that fantastic rock which bears on its summit a picturesque monument.

At daybreak I went to it. The tide was low, as it had been the night before, and I saw that wonderful abbey rise up before me as I approached it. After several hours' walking, I reached the enormous mass of rock which supports the little town, dominated by the great church. Having climbed the steep and narrow street, I entered the most wonderful Gothic building that has ever been erected to God on earth, large as a town, and full of low rooms which seem buried beneath vaulted roofs, and of lofty galleries supported by delicate columns.

I entered this gigantic granite jewel, which is as light in its effect as a bit of lace and is covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral staircases ascend. The flying buttresses raise strange heads that bristle with chimeras. with devils, with fantastic ani-mals, with monstrous flowers, are joined together by finely carved arches, to the blue sky by day, and to the black sky by night.

< 6 >
When I had reached the summit. I said to the monk who accompanied me: "Father, how happy you must be here!" And he replied: "It is very windy, Monsieur"; and so we began to talk while watching the rising tide, which ran over the sand and covered it with a steel cuirass.

And then the monk told me stories, all the old stories belonging to the place - legends, nothing but legends.

One of them struck me forcibly. The country people, those belonging to the Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in the sand, and also that two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with a weak voice. Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the screaming of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and occasionally human lamentations; but belated fishermen swear that they have met an old shepherd, whose cloak covered head they can never see, wandering on the sand, between two tides, round the little town placed so far out of the world. They declare he is guiding and walking before a he-goat with a man's face and a she-goat with a woman's face, both with white hair, who talk incessantly, quarreling in a strange language, and then suddenly cease talking in order to bleat with all their might.

"Do you believe it?" I asked the monk. "I scarcely know," he replied; and I continued: "If there are other beings besides ourselves on this earth, how comes it that we have not known it for so long a time, or why have you not seen them? How is it that I have not seen them?"

He replied: "Do we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Look here; there is the wind, which is the strongest force in nature. It knocks down men, and blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains of water, destroys cliffs and casts great ships on to the breakers; it kills, it whistles, it sighs, it roars. But have you ever seen it, and can you see it? Yet it exists for all that."

< 7 >
I was silent before this simple reasoning. That man was a philosopher, or perhaps a fool; I could not say which exactly, so I held my tongue. What he had said had often been in my own thoughts.

July 3. I have slept badly; certainly there is some feverish influence here, for my coachman is suffering in the same way as I am. When I went back home yesterday, I noticed his singular paleness, and I asked him: "What is the matter with you, Jean?"

"The matter is that I never get any rest, and my nights devour my days. Since your departure, Monsieur, there has been a spell over me."

However, the other servants are all well, but I am very frightened of having another attack, myself.

July 4. I am decidedly taken again; for my old nightmares have returned. Last night I felt somebody leaning on me who was sucking my life from between my lips with his mouth. Yes, he was sucking it out of my neck like a leech would have done. Then he got up, satiated, and I woke up, so beaten, crushed, and annihilated that I could not move. If this continues for a few days, I shall certainly go away again.

July 5. Have I lost my reason? What has happened? What I saw last night is so strange that my head wanders when I think of it!

As I do now every evening, I had locked my door; then, being thirsty, I drank half a glass of water, and I accidentally noticed that the water-bottle was full up to the cut-glass stopper.

Then I went to bed and fell into one of my terrible sleeps, from which I was aroused in about two hours by a still more terrible shock.

Picture to yourself a sleeping man who is being murdered, who wakes up with a knife in his chest, a gurgling in his throat, is covered with blood, can no longer breathe, is going to die and does not understand anything at all about it - there you have it.

< 8 >
Having recovered my senses, I was thirsty again, so I lighted a candle and went to the table on which my water-bottle was. I lifted it up and tilted it over my glass, but nothing came out. It was empty! It was completely empty! At first I could not understand it at all; then suddenly I was seized by such a terrible feeling that I had to sit down, or rather fall into a chair! Then I sprang up with a bound to look about me; then I sat down again, overcome by astonishment and fear, in front of the transparent crystal bottle! I looked at it with fixed eyes, trying to solve the puzzle, and my hands trembled! Some body had drunk the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could surely only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist - was living, without knowing it, that double, mysterious life which makes us doubt whether there are not two beings in us - whether a strange, unknowable, and invisible being does not, during our moments of mental and physical torpor, animate the inert body, forcing it to a more willing obedience than it yields to ourselves.

Oh! Who will understand my horrible agony? Who will understand the emotion of a man sound in mind, wide-awake, full of sense, who looks in horror at the disappearance of a little water while he was asleep, through the glass of a water-bottle! And I remained sitting until it was daylight, without venturing to go to bed again.

July 6. I am going mad. Again all the contents of my water-bottle have been drunk during the night; or rather I have drunk it!

But is it I? Is it I? Who could it be? Who? Oh! God! Am I going mad? Who will save me?

July 10. I have just been through some surprising ordeals. Undoubtedly I must be mad! And yet!

On July 6, before going to bed, I put some wine, milk, water, bread, and strawberries on my table. Somebody drank - I drank - all the water and a little of the milk, but neither the wine, nor the bread, nor the strawberries were touched.

< 9 >
On the seventh of July I renewed the same experiment, with the same results, and on July 8 I left out the water and the milk and nothing was touched.

Lastly, on July 9 I put only water and milk on my table, taking care to wrap up the bottles in white muslin and to tie down the stoppers. Then I rubbed my lips, my beard, and my hands with pencil lead, and went to bed.

Deep slumber seized me, soon followed by a terrible awakening. I had not moved, and my sheets were not marked. I rushed to the table. The muslin round the bottles remained intact; I undid the string, trembling with fear. All the water had been drunk, and so had the milk! Ah! Great God! I must start for Paris immediately.

July 12. Paris. I must have lost my head during the last few days! I must be the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a somnambulist, or I have been brought under the power of one of those influences - hypnotic suggestion, for example - which are known to exist, but have hitherto been inexplicable. In any case, my mental state bordered on madness, and twenty-four hours of Paris sufficed to restore me to my equilibrium.

Yesterday after doing some business and paying some visits, which instilled fresh and invigorating mental air into me, I wound up my evening at the Theatre Francais. A drama by Alexander Dumas the Younger was being acted, and his brilliant and powerful play completed my cure. Certainly solitude is dangerous for active minds. We need men who can think and can talk, around us. When we are alone for a long time, we people space with phantoms.

I returned along the boulevards to my hotel in excellent spirits. Amid the jostling of the crowd I thought, not without irony, of my terrors and surmises of the previous week, because I believed, yes, I believed, that an invisible being lived beneath my roof. How weak our mind is; how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: "We do not understand because we cannot find the cause," we immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.

< 10 >
July 14. Fete of the Republic. I walked through the streets, and the crackers and flags amused me like a child. Still, it is very foolish to make merry on a set date, by Government decree. People are like a flock of sheep, now steadily patient, now in ferocious revolt. Say to it: "Amuse yourself," and it amuses itself. Say to it: "Go and fight with your neighbor," and it goes and fights. Say to it: "Vote for the Emperor," and it votes for the Emperor; then say to it: "Vote for the Republic," and it votes for the Republic.

Those who direct it are stupid, too; but instead of obeying men they obey principles, a course which can only be foolish, ineffective, and false, for the very reason that principles are ideas which are considered as certain and unchangeable, whereas in this world one is certain of nothing, since light is an illusion and noise is deception.

July 16. I saw some things yesterday that troubled me very much. I was dining at my cousin's, Madame Sable, whose husband is colonel of the Seventy-sixth Chasseurs at Limoges. There were two young women there, one of whom had married a medical man, Dr. Parent, who devotes himself a great deal to nervous diseases and to the extraordinary manifestations which just now experiments in hypnotism and suggestion are producing.

He related to us at some length the enormous results obtained by English scientists and the doctors of the medical school at Nancy, and the facts which he adduced appeared to me so strange, that I declared that I was altogether incredulous.

"We are," he declared, "on the point of discovering one of the most important secrets of nature, I mean to say, one of its most important secrets on this earth, for assuredly there are some up in the stars, yonder, of a different kind of importance. Ever since man has thought, since he has been able to express and write down his thoughts, he has felt himself close to a mystery which is impenetrable to his coarse and imperfect senses, and he endeavors to supplement the feeble penetration of his organs by the efforts of his intellect. As long as that intellect remained in its elementary stage, this intercourse with invisible spirits assumed forms which were commonplace though terrifying. Thence sprang the popular belief in the supernatural, the legends of wandering spirits, of fairies, of gnomes, of ghosts, I might even say the conception of God, for our ideas of the Workman-Creator, from whatever religion they may have come down to us, are certainly the most mediocre, the stupidest, and the most unacceptable inventions that ever sprang from the frightened brain of any human creature. Nothing is truer than what Voltaire says: 'If God made man in His own image, man has certainly paid Him back again.'

< 11 >
"But for rather more than a century, men seem to have had a presentiment of something new. Mesmer and some others have put us on an unexpected track, and within the last two or three years especially, we have arrived at results really surprising."

My cousin, who is also very incredulous, smiled, and Dr. Parent said to her: "Would you like me to try and send you to sleep, Madame?"

"Yes, certainly."

She sat down in an easy-chair, and he began to look at her fixedly, as if to fascinate her. I suddenly felt myself somewhat discomposed; my heart beat rapidly and I had a choking feeling in my throat. I saw that Madame Sable's eyes were growing heavy, her mouth twitched, and her bosom heaved, and at the end of ten minutes she was asleep.

"Go behind her," the doctor said to me; so I took a seat behind her. He put a visiting-card into her hands, and said to her: "This is a looking-glass; what do you see in it?"

She replied: "I see my cousin."

"What is he doing?"

"He is twisting his mustache."

"And now?"

"He is taking a photograph out of his pocket."

"Whose photograph is it?"

"His own."

That was true, for the photograph had been given me that same evening at the hotel.

"What is his attitude in this portrait?"

"He is standing up with his hat in his hand."

She saw these things in that card, in that piece of white pasteboard, as if she had seen them in a looking-glass.

< 12 >
The young women were frightened, and exclaimed: "That is quite enough! Quite, quite enough!"

But the doctor said to her authoritatively: "You will get up at eight o'clock to-morrow morning; then you will go and call on your cousin at his hotel and ask him to lend you the five thousand francs which your husband asks of you, and which he will ask for when he sets out on his coming journey."

Then he woke her up.

On returning to my hotel, I thought over this curious seance and I was assailed by doubts, not as to my cousin's absolute and undoubted good faith, for I had known her as well as if she had been my own sister ever since she was a child, but as to a possible trick on the doctor's part. Had not he, perhaps, kept a glass hidden in his hand, which he showed to the young woman in her sleep at the same time as he did the card? Professional conjurers do things which are just as singular.

However, I went to bed, and this morning, at about half past eight, I was awakened by my footman, who said to me: "Madame Sable has asked to see you immediately, Monsieur." I dressed hastily and went to her.

She sat down in some agitation, with her eyes on the floor, and without raising her veil said to me: "My dear cousin, I am going to ask a great favor of you."

"What is it, cousin?"

"I do not like to tell you, and yet I must. I am in absolute want of five thousand francs."

"What, you?"

"Yes, I, or rather my husband, who has asked me to procure them for him."

I was so stupefied that I hesitated to answer. I asked myself whether she had not really been making fun of me with Dr. Parent, if it were not merely a very well-acted farce which had been got up beforehand. On looking at her attentively, however, my doubts disappeared. She was trembling with grief, so painful was this step to her, and I was sure that her throat was full of sobs.

< 13 >
I knew that she was very rich and so I continued: "What! Has not your husband five thousand francs at his disposal? Come, think. Are you sure that he commissioned you to ask me for them?"

She hesitated for a few seconds, as if she were making a great effort to search her memory, and then she replied: "Yes - yes, I am quite sure of it."

"He has written to you?"

She hesitated again and reflected, and I guessed the torture of her thoughts. She did not know. She only knew that she was to borrow five thousand francs of me for her husband. So she told a lie.

"Yes, he has written to me."

"When, pray? You did not mention it to me yesterday."

"I received his letter this morning."

"Can you show it to me?"

"No; no - no - it contained private matters, things too personal to ourselves. I burned it."

"So your husband runs into debt?"

She hesitated again, and then murmured: "I do not know."

Thereupon I said bluntly: "I have not five thousand francs at my disposal at this moment, my dear cousin."

She uttered a cry, as if she were in pair; and said: "Oh! oh! I beseech you, I beseech you to get them for me."

She got excited and clasped her hands as if she were praying to me! I heard her voice change its tone; she wept and sobbed, harassed and dominated by the irresistible order that she had received.

"Oh! oh! I beg you to - if you knew what I am suffering - I want them to-day."

< 14 >
I had pity on her: "You shall have them by and by, I swear to you."

"Oh! thank you! thank you! How kind you are."

I continued: "Do you remember what took place at your house last night?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember that Dr. Parent sent you to sleep?"

"Yes."

"Oh! Very well then; he ordered you to come to me this morning to borrow five thousand francs, and at this moment you are obeying that suggestion."

She considered for a few moments, and then replied: "But as it is my husband who wants them - "

For a whole hour I tried to convince her, but could not succeed, and when she had gone I went to the doctor. He was just going out, and he listened to me with a smile, and said: "Do you believe now?"

"Yes, I cannot help it."

"Let us go to your cousin's."

She was already resting on a couch, overcome with fatigue. The doctor felt her pulse, looked at her for some time with one hand raised toward her eyes, which she closed by degrees under the irresistible power of this magnetic influence. When she was asleep, he said:

"Your husband does not require the five thousand francs any longer! You must, therefore, forget that you asked your cousin to lend them to you, and, if he speaks to you about it, you will not understand him."

Then he woke her up, and I took out a pocket-book and said: "Here is what you asked me for this morning, my dear cousin." But she was so surprised, that I did not venture to persist; nevertheless, I tried to recall the circumstance to her, but she denied it vigorously, thought that I was making fun of her, and in the end, very nearly lost her temper.

< 15 >
There! I have just come back, and I have not been able to eat any lunch, for this experiment has altogether upset me.

July 19. Many people to whom I have told the adventure have laughed at me. I no longer know what to think. The wise man says: Perhaps?

July 21. I dined at Bougival, and then I spent the evening at a boatmen's ball. Decidedly everything depends on place and surroundings. It would be the height of folly to believe in the supernatural on the Ile de la Grenouilliere. But on the top of Mont Saint-Michel or in India, we are terribly under the influence of our surroundings. I shall return home next week.

July 30. I came back to my own house yesterday. Everything is going on well.

August 2. Nothing fresh; it is splendid weather, and I spend my days in watching the Seine flow past.

August 4. Quarrels among my servants. They declare that the glasses are broken in the cupboards at night. The footman accuses the cook, she accuses the needlewoman, and the latter accuses the other two. Who is the culprit? It would take a clever person to tell.

August 6. This time, I am not mad. I have seen - I have seen - I have seen! - I can doubt no longer - I have seen it!

I was walking at two o'clock among my rose-trees, in the full sunlight - in the walk bordered by autumn roses which are beginning to fall. As I stopped to look at a Geant de Bataille, which had three splendid blooms, I distinctly saw the stalk of one of the roses bend close to me, as if an invisible hand had bent it, and then break, as if that hand had picked it! Then the flower raised itself, following the curve which a hand would have described in carrying it toward a mouth, and remained suspended in the transparent air, alone and motionless, a terrible red spot, three yards from my eyes. In desperation I rushed at it to take it! I found nothing; it had disappeared. Then I was seized with furious rage against myself, for it is not wholesome for a reasonable and serious man to have such hallucinations.

< 16 >
But was it a hallucination? I turned to look for the stalk, and I found it immediately under the bush, freshly broken, between the two other roses which remained on the branch. I returned home, then, with a much disturbed mind; for I am certain now, certain as I am of the alternation of day and night, that there exists close to me an invisible being who lives on milk and on water, who can touch objects, take them and change their places; who is, consequently, endowed with a material nature, although imperceptible to sense, and who lives as I do, under my roof -

August 7. I slept tranquilly. He drank the water out of my decanter, but did not disturb my sleep.

I ask myself whether I am mad. As I was walking just now in the sun by the riverside, doubts as to my own sanity arose in me; not vague doubts such as I have had hitherto, but precise and absolute doubts. I have seen mad people, and I have known some who were quite intelligent, lucid, even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except on one point. They could speak clearly, readily, profoundly on everything; till their thoughts were caught in the breakers of their delusions and went to pieces there, were dispersed and swamped in that furious and terrible sea of fogs and squalls which is called MADNESS.

I certainly should think that I was mad, absolutely mad, if I were not conscious that I knew my state, if I could not fathom it and analyze it with the most complete lucidity. I should, in fact, be a reasonable man laboring under a hallucination. Some unknown disturbance must have been excited in my brain, one of those disturbances which physiologists of the present day try to note and to fix precisely, and that disturbance must have caused a profound gulf in my mind and in the order and logic of my ideas. Similar phenomena occur in dreams, and lead us through the most unlikely phantasmagoria, without causing us any surprise, because our verifying apparatus and our sense of control have gone to sleep, while our imaginative faculty wakes and works. Was it not possible that one of the imperceptible keys of the cerebral finger-board had been paralyzed in me? Some men lose the recollection of proper names, or of verbs, or of numbers, or merely of dates, in consequence of an accident. The localization of all the avenues of thought has been accomplished nowadays; what, then, would there be surprising in the fact that my faculty of controlling the unreality of certain hallucinations should be destroyed for the time being?

< 17 >
I thought of all this as I walked by the side of the water. The sun was shining brightly on the river and made earth delightful, while it filled me with love for life, for the swallows, whose swift agility is always delightful in my eyes, for the plants by the riverside, whose rustling is a pleasure to my ears.

By degrees, however, an inexplicable feeling of discomfort seized me. It seemed to me as if some unknown force were numbing and stopping me, were preventing me from going further and were calling me back. I felt that painful wish to return which comes on you when you have left a beloved invalid at home, and are seized by a presentiment that he is worse.

I, therefore, returned despite of myself, feeling certain that I should find some bad news awaiting me, a letter or a telegram. There was nothing, however, and I was surprised and uneasy, more so than if I had had another fantastic vision.

August 8. I spent a terrible evening, yesterday. He does not show himself any more, but I feel that He is near me, watching me, looking at me, penetrating me, dominating me, and more terrible to me when He hides himself thus than if He were to manifest his constant and invisible presence by supernatural phenomena. However, I slept.

August 9. Nothing, but I am afraid.

August 10. Nothing; but what will happen to-morrow?

August 11. Still nothing. I cannot stop at home with this fear hanging over me and these thoughts in my mind; I shall go away.

August 12. Ten o'clock at night. All day long I have been trying to get away, and have not been able. I contemplated a simple and easy act of liberty, a carriage ride to Rouen - and I have not been able to do it. What is the reason?

August 13. When one is attacked by certain maladies, the springs of our physical being seem broken, our energies destroyed, our muscles relaxed, our bones to be as soft as our flesh, and our blood as liquid as water. I am experiencing the same in my moral being, in a strange and distressing manner. I have no longer any strength, any courage, any self-control, nor even any power to set my own will in motion. I have no power left to WILL anything, but some one does it for me and I obey.

< 18 >
August 14. I am lost! Somebody possesses my soul and governs it! Somebody orders all my acts, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am no longer master of myself, nothing except an enslaved and terrified spectator of the things which I do. I wish to go out; I cannot. HE does not wish to; and so I remain, trembling and distracted in the armchair in which he keeps me sitting. I merely wish to get up and to rouse myself, so as to think that I am still master of myself: I cannot! I am riveted to my chair, and my chair adheres to the floor in such a manner that no force of mine can move us.

Then suddenly, I must, I MUST go to the foot of my garden to pick some strawberries and eat them - and I go there. I pick the strawberries and I eat them! Oh! my God! my God! Is there a God? If there be one, deliver me! save me! succor me! Pardon! Pity! Mercy! Save me! Oh! what sufferings! what torture! what horror!

August 15. Certainly this is the way in which my poor cousin was possessed and swayed, when she came to borrow five thousand francs of me. She was under the power of a strange will which had entered into her, like another soul, a parasitic and ruling soul. Is the world coming to an end?

But who is he, this invisible being that rules me, this unknowable being, this rover of a supernatural race?

Invisible beings exist, then! how is it, then, that since the beginning of the world they have never manifested themselves in such a manner as they do to me? I have never read anything that resembles what goes on in my house. Oh! If I could only leave it, if I could only go away and flee, and never return, I should be saved; but I cannot.

August 16. I managed to escape to-day for two hours, like a prisoner who finds the door of his dungeon accidentally open. I suddenly felt that I was free and that He was far away, and so I gave orders to put the horses in as quickly as possible, and I drove to Rouen. Oh! how delightful to be able to say to my coachman: "Go to Rouen!"

< 19 >
I made him pull up before the library, and I begged them to lend me Dr. Herrmann Herestauss's treatise on the unknown inhabitants of the ancient and modern world.

Then, as I was getting into my carriage, I intended to say: "To the railway station!" but instead of this I shouted - I did not speak; but I shouted - in such a loud voice that all the passers-by turned round: "Home!" and I fell back on to the cushion of my carriage, overcome by mental agony. He had found me out and regained possession of me.

August 17. Oh! What a night! what a night! And yet it seems to me that I ought to rejoice. I read until one o'clock in the morning! Herestauss, Doctor of Philosophy and Theogony, wrote the history and the manifestation of all those invisible beings which hover around man, or of whom he dreams. He describes their origin, their domains, their power; but none of them resembles the one which haunts me. One might say that man, ever since he has thought, has had a foreboding and a fear of a new being, stronger than himself, his successor in this world, and that, feeling him near, and not being able to foretell the nature of the unseen one, he has, in his terror, created the whole race of hidden beings, vague phantoms born of fear.

Having, therefore, read until one o'clock in the morning, I went and sat down at the open window, in order to cool my forehead and my thoughts in the calm night air. It was very pleasant and warm! How I should have enjoyed such a night formerly!

There was no moon, but the stars darted out their rays in the dark heavens. Who inhabits those worlds? What forms, what living beings, what animals are there yonder? Do those who are thinkers in those distant worlds know more than we do? What can they do more than we? What do they see which we do not? Will not one of them, some day or other, traversing space, appear on our earth to conquer it, just as formerly the Norsemen crossed the sea in order to subjugate nations feebler than themselves?

< 20 >
We are so weak, so powerless, so ignorant, so small - we who live on this particle of mud which revolves in liquid air.

I fell asleep, dreaming thus in the cool night air, and then, having slept for about three quarters of an hour, I opened my eyes without moving, awakened by an indescribably confused and strange sensation. At first I saw nothing, and then suddenly it appeared to me as if a page of the book, which had remained open on my table, turned over of its own accord. Not a breath of air had come in at my window, and I was surprised and waited. In about four minutes, I saw, I saw - yes I saw with my own eyes - another page lift itself up and fall down on the others, as if a finger had turned it over. My armchair was empty, appeared empty, but I knew that He was there, He, and sitting in my place, and that He was reading. With a furious bound, the bound of an enraged wild beast that wishes to disembowel its tamer, I crossed my room to seize him, to strangle him, to kill him! But before I could reach it, my chair fell over as if somebody had run away from me. My table rocked, my lamp fell and went out, and my window closed as if some thief had been surprised and had fled out into the night, shutting it behind him.

So He had run away; He had been afraid; He, afraid of me!

So to-morrow, or later - some day or other, I should be able to hold him in my clutches and crush him against the ground! Do not dogs occasionally bite and strangle their masters?

August 18. I have been thinking the whole day long. Oh! yes, I will obey Him, follow His impulses, fulfill all His wishes, show myself humble, submissive, a coward. He is the stronger; but an hour will come.

August 19. I know, I know, I know all! I have just read the following in the "Revue du Monde Scientifique": "A curious piece of news comes to us from Rio de Janeiro. Madness, an epidemic of madness, which may be compared to that contagious madness which attacked the people of Europe in the Middle Ages, is at this moment raging in the Province of San-Paulo. The frightened inhabitants are leaving their houses, deserting their villages, abandoning their land, saying that they are pursued, possessed, governed like human cattle by invisible, though tangible beings, by a species of vampire, which feeds on their life while they are asleep, and which, besides, drinks water and milk without appearing to touch any other nourishment.

< 21 >
"Professor Don Pedro Henriques, accompanied by several medical savants, has gone to the Province of San-Paulo, in order to study the origin and the manifestations of this surprising madness on the spot, and to propose such measures to the Emperor as may appear to him to be most fitted to restore the mad population to reason."

Ah! Ah! I remember now that fine Brazilian three-master which passed in front of my windows as it was going up the Seine, on the eighth of last May! I thought it looked so pretty, so white and bright! That Being was on board of her, coming from there, where its race sprang from. And it saw me! It saw my house, which was also white, and He sprang from the ship on to the land. Oh! Good heavens!

Now I know, I can divine. The reign of man is over, and he has come. He whom disquieted priests exorcised, whom sorcerers evoked on dark nights, without seeing him appear, He to whom the imaginations of the transient masters of the world lent all the monstrous or graceful forms of gnomes, spirits, genii, fairies, and familiar spirits. After the coarse conceptions of primitive fear, men more enlightened gave him a truer form. Mesmer divined him, and ten years ago physicians accurately discovered the nature of his power, even before He exercised it himself. They played with that weapon of their new Lord, the sway of a mysterious will over the human soul, which had become enslaved. They called it mesmerism, hypnotism, suggestion, I know not what? I have seen them diverting themselves like rash children with this horrible power! Woe to us! Woe to man! He has come, the - the - what does He call himself - the - I fancy that he is shouting out his name to me and I do not hear him - the - yes - He is shouting it out - I am listening - I cannot - repeat - it - Horla - I have heard - the Horla - it is He - the Horla - He has come! -

Ah! the vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the sharp-horned buffalo; man has killed the lion with an arrow, with a spear, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what man has made of the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his slave, and his food, by the mere power of his will. Woe to us!

< 22 >
But, nevertheless, sometimes the animal rebels and kills the man who has subjugated it. I should also like - I shall be able to - but I must know Him, touch Him, see Him! Learned men say that eyes of animals, as they differ from ours, do not distinguish as ours do. And my eye cannot distinguish this newcomer who is oppressing me.

Why? Oh! Now I remember the words of the monk at Mont Saint-Michel: "Can we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Listen; there is the wind which is the strongest force in nature; it knocks men down, blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains of water, destroys cliffs, and casts great ships on to the breakers; it kills, it whistles, it sighs, it roars, - have you ever seen it, and can you see it? It exists for all that, however!"

And I went on thinking: my eyes are so weak, so imperfect, that they do not even distinguish hard bodies, if they are as transparent as glass! If a glass without quicksilver behind it were to bar my way, I should run into it, just like a bird which has flown into a room breaks its head against the windowpanes. A thousand things, moreover, deceive a man and lead him astray. How then is it surprising that he cannot perceive a new body which is penetrated and pervaded by the light?

A new being! Why not? It was assuredly bound to come! Why should we be the last? We do not distinguish it, like all the others created before us? The reason is, that its nature is more delicate, its body finer and more finished than ours. Our makeup is so weak, so awkwardly conceived; our body is encumbered with organs that are always tired, always being strained like locks that are too complicated; it lives like a plant and like an animal nourishing itself with difficulty on air, herbs, and flesh; it is a brute machine which is a prey to maladies, to malformations, to decay; it is broken-winded, badly regulated, simple and eccentric, ingeniously yet badly made, a coarse and yet a delicate mechanism, in brief, the outline of a being which might become intelligent and great.

< 23 >
There are only a few - so few - stages of development in this world, from the oyster up to man. Why should there not be one more, when once that period is accomplished which separates the successive products one from the other?

Why not one more? Why not, also, other trees with immense, splendid flowers, perfuming whole regions? Why not other elements beside fire, air, earth, and water? There are four, only four, nursing fathers of various beings! What a pity! Why should not there be forty, four hundred, four thousand! How poor everything is, how mean and wretched - grudgingly given, poorly invented, clumsily made! Ah! the elephant and the hippopotamus, what power! And the camel, what suppleness!

But the butterfly, you will say, a flying flower! I dream of one that should be as large as a hundred worlds, with wings whose shape, beauty, colors, and motion I cannot even express. But I see it - it flutters from star to star, refreshing them and perfuming them with the light and harmonious breath of its flight! And the people up there gaze at it as it passes in an ecstasy of delight!

What is the matter with me? It is He, the Horla who haunts me, and who makes me think of these foolish things! He is within me, He is becoming my soul; I shall kill him!

August 20. I shall kill Him. I have seen Him! Yesterday I sat down at my table and pretended to write very assiduously. I knew quite well that He would come prowling round me, quite close to me, so close that I might perhaps be able to touch him, to seize him. And then - then I should have the strength of desperation; I should have my hands, my knees, my chest, my forehead, my teeth to strangle him, to crush him, to bite him, to tear him to pieces. And I watched for him with all my overexcited nerves.

I had lighted my two lamps and the eight wax candles on my mantelpiece, as if, by this light I should discover Him.

< 24 >
My bed, my old oak bed with its columns, was opposite to me; on my right was the fireplace; on my left the door, which was carefully closed, after I had left it open for some time, in order to attract Him; behind me was a very high wardrobe with a looking-glass in it, which served me to dress by every day, and in which I was in the habit of inspecting myself from head to foot every time I passed it.

So I pretended to be writing in order to deceive Him, for He also was watching me, and suddenly I felt, I was certain, that He was reading over my shoulder, that He was there, almost touching my ear.

I got up so quickly, with my hands extended, that I almost fell. Horror! It was as bright as at midday, but I did not see myself in the glass! It was empty, clear, profound, full of light! But my figure was not reflected in it - and I, I was opposite to it! I saw the large, clear glass from top to bottom, and I looked at it with unsteady eyes. I did not dare advance; I did not venture to make a movement; feeling certain, nevertheless, that He was there, but that He would escape me again, He whose imperceptible body had absorbed my reflection.

How frightened I was! And then suddenly I began to see myself through a mist in the depths of the looking-glass, in a mist as it were, or through a veil of water; and it seemed to me as if this water were flowing slowly from left to right, and making my figure clearer every moment. It was like the end of an eclipse. Whatever hid me did not appear to possess any clearly defined outlines, but was a sort of opaque transparency, which gradually grew clearer.

At last I was able to distinguish myself completely, as I do every day when I look at myself.

I had seen Him! And the horror of it remained with me, and makes me shudder even now.

< 25 >
August 21. How could I kill Him, since I could not get hold of Him? Poison? But He would see me mix it with the water; and then, would our poisons have any effect on His impalpable body? No - no - no doubt about the matter. Then? - then?

August 22. I sent for a blacksmith from Rouen and ordered iron shutters of him for my room, such as some private hotels in Paris have on the ground floor, for fear of thieves, and he is going to make me a similar door as well. I have made myself out a coward, but I do not care about that!

September 10. Rouen, Hotel Continental. It is done; it is done - but is He dead? My mind is thoroughly upset by what I have seen.

Well then, yesterday, the locksmith having put on the iron shutters and door, I left everything open until midnight, although it was getting cold.

Suddenly I felt that He was there, and joy, mad joy took possession of me. I got up softly, and I walked to the right and left for some time, so that He might not guess anything; then I took off my boots and put on my slippers carelessly; then I fastened the iron shutters and going back to the door quickly I double-locked it with a padlock, putting the key into my pocket.

Suddenly I noticed that He was moving restlessly round me, that in his turn He was frightened and was ordering me to let Him out. I nearly yielded, though I did not quite, but putting my back to the door, I half opened it, just enough to allow me to go out backward, and as I am very tall, my head touched the lintel. I was sure that He had not been able to escape, and I shut Him up quite alone, quite alone. What happiness! I had Him fast. Then I ran downstairs into the drawing-room which was under my bedroom. I took the two lamps and poured all the oil on to the carpet, the furniture, everywhere; then I set fire to it and made my escape, after having carefully double locked the door.

< 26 >
I went and hid myself at the bottom of the garden, in a clump of laurel bushes. How long it was! how long it was! Everything was dark, silent, motionless, not a breath of air and not a star, but heavy banks of clouds which one could not see, but which weighed, oh! so heavily on my soul.

I looked at my house and waited. How long it was! I already began to think that the fire had gone out of its own accord, or that He had extinguished it, when one of the lower windows gave way under the violence of the flames, and a long, soft, caressing sheet of red flame mounted up the white wall, and kissed it as high as the roof. The light fell on to the trees, the branches, and the leaves, and a shiver of fear pervaded them also! The birds awoke; a dog began to howl, and it seemed to me as if the day were breaking! Almost immediately two other windows flew into fragments, and I saw that the whole of the lower part of my house was nothing but a terrible furnace. But a cry, a horrible, shrill, heart-rending cry, a woman's cry, sounded through the night, and two garret windows were opened! I had forgotten the servants! I saw the terror-struck faces, and the frantic waving of their arms!

Then, overwhelmed with horror, I ran off to the village, shouting: "Help! help! fire! fire!" Meeting some people who were already coming on to the scene, I went back with them to see!

By this time the house was nothing but a horrible and magnificent funeral pile, a monstrous pyre which lit up the whole country, a pyre where men were burning, and where He was burning also, He, He, my prisoner, that new Being, the new Master, the Horla!

Suddenly the whole roof fell in between the walls, and a volcano of flames darted up to the sky. Through all the windows which opened on to that furnace, I saw the flames darting, and I reflected that He was there, in that kiln, dead.

< 27 >
Dead? Perhaps? His body? Was not his body, which was transparent, indestructible by such means as would kill ours?

If He were not dead? Perhaps time alone has power over that Invisible and Redoubtable Being. Why this transparent, unrecognizable body, this body belonging to a spirit, if it also had to fear ills, infirmities, and premature destruction?

Premature destruction? All human terror springs from that! After man the Horla. After him who can die every day, at any hour, at any moment, by any accident, He came, He who was only to die at his own proper hour and minute, because He had touched the limits of his existence!

No - no - there is no doubt about it - He is not dead. Then - then - I suppose I must kill myself!

The Koraktor, or the Force of Hell.

2011-07-19T14:14:00.018+01:00

I recently discovered this forsaken piece of extraordinary art and storytelling which I enjoyed greatly seeing.
Anyone familiar with animation, oldschool animation that is, knows that the utter kings of stop motion (cut out, pixilation), clay animation or any other technique, are the East Europeans... Specifically from Russia, Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine.
This is the evidence to back up my words which are no exaggeration whatsoever.
May you enjoy this greatly; the same way I did !!!

KRABAT: The Sorcerer's Apprentice
(Čarodějův učeň - 1977)
1:16:30 h - Czech Republic
English, Spanish, Dutch subtitles available.

" A 1977 Czechoslovak cutout animated dark fantasy film directed by Karel Zeman, based on the 1971 book The Satanic Mill by Otfried Preußler, and the Serbian folk tale upon which the book is based. The tale originates from India but exists in various alterations. The name Krabat is derived from the word Croat.

Krabat, a beggar boy in early 18th century Lusatia, is lured to become an apprentice to an evil, one-eyed sorcerer. Together with a number of other boys, he works at the sorcerer's mill under slave-like conditions while learning black magic, such as guising himself as a raven and other animals. Every Christmas one of the boys has to face the master in a magical duel of life and death, where the boy never stands a chance because the master is the only person who is allowed to use his secret grimoire: The Koraktor, or the Force of Hell.

One Easter while performing an annual ritual near a small village, Krabat meets a girl and falls in love, but has to keep the romance secret in order to protect her. After witnessing his friends one after one being helplessly slaughtered by the master every Christmas, Krabat starts to sneak up at night to study the forbidden book. On the last page of the book, Krabat finds a phrase saying: "Love is stronger than any spell." This is used when he ultimately has to defeat his master for the sake of love. "

Exquisit Humans.

2011-07-17T22:32:00.007+01:00

Human animal, above all species of course, had always pioneered and dominated the exquisite and innate art of violence to the most meticulous detail.

I wonder how many generations it'll take for this phenomena of inflicting pain onto others for self-satisfaction (that includes fulfilment of subjective moralities and ideas) to take a different turn...

Having said that now it would be appropriate to grab Ballard's Atrocity exhibition and Crash.

Friedkin's Sorcerer.

2011-07-14T13:11:00.018+01:00

William Friedkin
Sorcerer (1977)

More beloved films/filmmakers! Sorcerer (A revisiting of Clouzut's Le salaire de la peur)... A "catastrophic, bad film" the reviewers/critics without a single clue said. How wrong were they!

Oh man, what an unbelievable film! I may have seen it like 20 times already but by only seeing the title sequence I start to get so excited I can hardly sit still! This film has such a great cast, delightful soundtrack by tangerine dream and the heaviest atmosphere to it, set during the 70's in latin america (passing thru dozens of tiny, unnoticeable diabolic fascist dictatorships) in a hellish oil-digging town controlled by "gringos explotadores" and corrupt politicians and police. Only Friedkin used to put them together this way... Flawlessly and eerily! He is in that respect quite similar to Herzog; for the documentary/"ascetic"-like style of directing he had back then (mind you, ascetic without the religious connotation), Gavras and even Bresson. So that in the end you can really empathise, suffer or enjoy what you see because it's so realistic and graphic it appears even more real than reality itself. Whatever that means hehe.

Paco Rabal in it was great. Amidou too. Oh that knife fight! And Bruno Cremer. Oh the truck/suspension bridge scene!!! Roy Scheider's part; especially the final 10 minutes... Words are a waste of try. It has to be seen to feel more than understand my enthusiasm about it.

Relevant though, to point that this film isn't about terrorism or Palestinian/Israeli conflicts at all... It's about misfortune, evil materialised in thousands of forms: Land, minerals, objects, ideas, but especially, and as usual, people.

Please go to the video club or download or however the hell you have access to good cinema, and watch this film because it'll glue you up to your seat with your own sweat and make you have a near heart failure experience.

I say long live William Friedkin... Even if this aren't the 70s any longer, perhaps the golden era of great cinema, may he please delight us all with 4 or 5 more films or even 6 before he retire from working with that splendrous yet filthy and corrupt form of art called cinema.

Here's an INTERVIEW of Master Friedkin speaking about Sorcerer.

And the film ( in parts ) if you want to go through the pain of watching it on U TUBE (film is 2 hours long and the first 15 minutes or so which are crucial, are missing).

Plato's allegory of the cave.

2011-07-12T22:05:00.004+01:00

Oh.... The times we live in and what's yet to come!
Some of us might still be here to witness amazing or appalling things and some will be long gone.

The omens indicate to the appalling unless people start opting for reason instead of folly and superstition.

-

"The Allegory of the Cave – also known as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Cave – is an allegory used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate "our nature in its education and want of education" (514a). It is written as a fictional dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon at the beginning of Book VII (chapter IX in Robin Waterfield's translation) (514a–520a). The Allegory of the Cave is presented after the metaphor of the sun (507b–509c) and the analogy of the divided line (509d–513e). Allegories are summarized in the viewpoint of dialectic at the end of Book VII and VIII (531d-534e).

In the dialogue, Socrates describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.
The Allegory is related to Plato's Theory of Forms, according to which the "Forms" (or "Ideas"), and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. Only knowledge of the Forms constitutes real knowledge.[1] In addition, the Allegory of the Cave is an attempt to explain the philosopher's place in society: to attempt to enlighten the "prisoners".

"Every time a child is born, it drains blood from my body."

2011-07-06T20:13:00.007+01:00

* about the documentary 'My Life and Times With Antonin Artaud' and Artaud himself.

This is a short article about "My life and times with Antonin Artaud" I just found while researching something Artaud said...

If you haven't seen this documentary and you are an Artaud bookish and avid reader then please do. It's a shattering piece of work about the primordial surrealist and genius. Having bought the boxset dvd quite a while back, I'm tempted to upload both the non-fiction and fiction film to the net but it's a bit of a hassle to do it so I'm not sure hehe.

These Artaud lines (the one's I chose for the title post) just astonished me the first time I came across them! Antonin Artaud was surely a master of the word, the subconscious and the pencil/pen. Too bad he was deprived of producing more masterpieces!

Vive Antonin Artaud !!!

"My life and times with Antonin Artaud"
Hal Hinson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Oct. 13, 1995

About halfway through "My Life and Times With Antonin Artaud," French director Gerard Mordillat's incandescent evocation of the last days of the infamous actor, poet, theorist and madman, the protagonist approaches the pregnant wife of his friend Jacques and offers a rather peculiar piece of advice.

"Don't have your baby, Madame Prevel," the wild-eyed genius growls. "Every time a child is born, it drains blood from my body."

The setting is Paris in May of 1946 and, for Artaud (Sami Frey, in an astonishing performance), conspiracy lurks around every corner. Just out of prison, the 50-year-old poet feels spied on, hounded, decried, everywhere he goes. His brain is on fire and demons tear at the back of his eyes. Hundreds of people are bewitching him, he says, trying to destroy him and divert him from his work.

When he first meets Jacques Prevel (Marc Barbe), an aspiring poet who assumes the role of Boswell to this avant-garde Dr. Johnson, Artaud reads the desperate ambition in the young man's eyes and immediately begins to play him for a chump. "All the opium in Paris must be put at my disposal," he tells Prevel before sending him off on the first of many trips to procure drugs for his mentor.

In fact, massive doses of laudanum and opium are about all that sustain Artaud in his psychic agony, and Mordillat does an extraordinary job of capturing the drug-sick state of agitation and paranoia in which the artist exists. Frey plays Artaud as a sort of Iggy Pop of the Left Bank; one look at him and you're instantly convinced that he's wandered way around the bend. For his part, Prevel can't determine if the man is insane or just hyper-lucid and so cut off by his brilliance that his world is impenetrable. That's the way Artaud likes it.

In exchange for Prevel's work as a gofer, this champion manipulator critiques his poetry, in one breath encouraging him and praising the pangs of enormous suffering he senses in them, while tearing him down for their conventionality in another. Artaud toys shamelessly with his helpmate and supporter, teasing him the way a beautiful woman might tease a love-struck boy. For example, he tells Prevel that he needs to abandon his lingering bourgeois tendencies and rebel for real. Becoming a great poet isn't merely a matter of talent, he tells Prevel; it's an undertaking that requires great sacrifice and will. In truth, though, Artaud is secretly waging war against Prevel's wife (Valerie Jeannet), who wants her husband to dump the freeloader onto the street.

In bringing this sacred monster to life, Frey gives one of the most blessedly deranged performances in movie history. Nothing that this veteran French actor achieves here is timid or run-of-the-mill. With his wild mane of black hair and his suits hanging off his bones like the clothes on a scarecrow, Frey achieves the same sort of wacko inspiration that Marlon Brando has brought to his more recent roles. The performance is thoroughly nuts, but exhilarating. In one scene, Frey delivers his lines without once looking up from his lap; in another, he recites a poem while poking the top of his head with a knife.

At times, Frey's work here is so outrageous that it verges on camp; still the performance has power and weight. In the movie's most stirring sequence, Frey portrays Artaud as he systematically breaks down a beautiful young actress chosen to read his poems. He incessantly screams into her face, choking her and pounding a hammer rhythmically into a wooden stump until she achieves the appropriate level of rage and frustration.

It's a brutal lesson, and in perfect keeping with Artaud's extreme methods. Observing the moment through a window, Prevel understands for the first time what Artaud demands of himself and others—a complete sacrifice of self to art. Unfortunately, Barbe plays Prevel's reactions too close to the vest, and it's not clear if he's shocked by what he sees, or frightened, or titillated.

What we do learn, surprisingly, is that there is a method to Artaud's madness. He may be a sponger and a loon, but Mordillat and his writing partner Jerome Prieur also present him as the real thing, a true artist. As Artaud makes his rounds through the Parisian lower depths, looking for dope and expounding on everything from his own abysmal suffering to the imagined conspiracies of his enemies to his all-or-nothing philosophies on art, Mordillat does a masterly job of evoking the lethargic dissolution, experimentation and promiscuity of bohemian postwar Paris.

With its ravishing black-and-white images and jazzy harmonica score, the film is exquisitely realized. In some scenes, Mordillat's style is spare and straightforward; in others, moody and expressionistic. All the while, this chaotic, ranting presence burns at the center of the movie, bellowing from the depths of his raging heart.

Palante: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Simmel.

2011-07-04T14:49:00.011+01:00

Georges Palante's
Review of “Schopenhauer und Nietzsche ein vortragszyklus” by Georg Simmel

Source: Revue Philosophique, year 32, Vol 64 July-December 1907;
Translated: by Mitch Abidor for marxists.org

M. G Simmel’s book develops within an intellectual framework wider than that in which historical-critical studies of this kind usually move. For the author it’s not a question of studying Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s work in detail, but of drawing up a balance sheet of modern culture by taking as typical examples of this culture the two great philosophical figures who sum up its essential oppositions. In other words, M. Simmel’s goal is to study Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in function of modern culture.

In the first chapter the author formulates the respective positions of the two thinkers confronting this culture. The two philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are the perfect expression of our state of civilization. The characteristic of all advanced societies – which as a result of this are both differentiated and complicated – is the need for unity, for a final end (Endzweck) capable of conferring a meaning on it. For a long time Christianity satisfied this need for unity. Today it has lost its hold over souls, but the need for unity survives.

Schopenhauer’s philosophy expresses that nostalgia for a final and total unity. The Schopenhauerian will-to-life, dominated by the law of the insatiability of desire, and incapable of resting on a final goal, is the symbol of this. The consideration of a universe propelled by the will for a goal and yet deprived of a goal is also Nietzsche’s point of departure. But between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche there is Darwin. While Schopenhauer stops at the negation of a final goal and concludes at the negation of the will-to-life, Nietzsche finds in mankind’s evolution the possibility of a goal that permits life to affirm itself. In Schopenhauer it is the horror of life that is affirmed, in Nietzsche it’s the sentiment of life’s magnificence. The Superman is the formula of life’s ascension, which always surpasses itself, in opposition to the eternal monotony of the Schopenhauerian universe. In a remarkable parallel between the two thinkers M. Simmel remarks that Nietzsche better answers than Schopenhauer the aspirations of the modern spirit. “This ascendance of life is the great and imperishable consolation which, thanks to Nietzsche, has become the light of our modern intellectual landscape. This fundamental concept makes us forget the anti-social form which it clothes itself in in Nietzsche, so that despite this anti-social tendency Nietzsche appears, compared to Schopenhauer, as a much more fitting expression of the modern life feeling. And it is the tragic side of Schopenhauer’s destiny that with superior forces he defended the lesser cause. Schopenhauer is an incomparably more profound thinker than Nietzsche, a brilliant metaphysician, hearing in the depths of his soul the mysterious sounds of universal existence. It is not the metaphysical instinct that inspires Nietzsche: it’s the genius of the psychologist and the moralist that dominate in him. But he lacks the grand style of Schopenhauer, which bursts from tension of the thinker towards the mystery of things, and not only of man and his value; this grand style that seems to be refused in the most singular fashion to men of the greatest psychological finesse.”

Of the seven chapters that follow, five are dedicated to Schopenhauer and two to Nietzsche. As concerns Schopenhauer, we should note the penetrating critique to which M. Simmel submits pessimism.. He notes that Schopenhauer’s pessimism is not based on the amount of suffering, but on this statement of principle: evil is an a priori of life. It is a function of desire, the essence of life. To a system based on the psychological observation that desire is accompanied by pain and its satisfaction by pleasure, must be opposed a psychological refutation. In the will Schopenhauer only considers the obstacle or the departure and arrival points. He forgets the trajectory between the two end points, a trajectory each step of which is accompanied by pleasure, be it only the pleasure of anticipation. This refutation is identical to that of Guyau, who is not quoted by M. Simmel. Schopenhauer’s successors wanted to add empirical proofs to the metaphysical proof of evil: the sum of the evil surpasses the sum of the good. Again like Guyau, M. Simmel remarks that the comparison isn’t possible. And Schopenhauer, faithful to his principle of the metaphysical unity of the will and consequently of universal suffering, doesn’t linger over the question of the distribution of good and evil among individuals. To the contrary, any system resting on the differentiation of individuals and their absolute reality is especially attached to the question of distribution. An example: socialism.

Of the two chapters on Nietzsche one is called “Human Values and Decadence,” and the other “The Morality of Distinction.” Schopenhauer recognizes only one value, non-life. Nietzsche glorifies life. Nietzsche attacks Christianity, which sacrifices the strong to the weak and, because of this, is a decadence. But there is a misunderstanding in the thought of Nietzsche: he looks only at the moral side of Christianity and not at its transcendental value. In reality Christianity and Nietzsche exalt the individual. But while for Nietzsche it reaches its apex in this life, for Christianity it only reaches it in the Kingdom of God. Nietzsche doesn’t see in Christianity the intensive cultivation of the soul, he only sees its practical altruism. He only sees the act of charity, he doesn’t see the intense state that precedes it. He only sees the centrifugal force and not the centripetal. Nietzsche denies God: the opposition between God and the I demands this. Only Schleiermacher was able to reconcile the two by absorbing the one in the other. To the Kingdom of God Nietzsche substitutes the idea of a humanity realized by individuals of the elite, which he opposes to that of society. Goethe too had isolated “das allgemein-menschliche.” Nietzsche says: humanity only lives in individuals and not in society. The progress of the individual is the progress of society. From the point of view of the social concept the individual is a point of intersection of social threads. From the Nietzschean point of view the individual is a reality: he sums up a line of man that exited up to his arrival. And if this line is an ascending line the individual incarnates humanity’s progress. M. Simmel opposes Nietzschean individualism to liberalism.

A propos of Nietzchean aristocratism M. Simmel cleverly compares Nietzsche and M. Maeterlinck. Nietzsche places the value of life in a few elite individuals and a few heroic hours, culminating points of individual existence, “rupture of the equilibrium of our pendulum between heaven and earth.” M. Maeterlinck places the values of life in daily existence and in each of its moments. There is no need of the heroic, the catastrophic, the exceptional. “Learn to venerate the small hours of life.” This is the same idea as that expressed in the worker aesthetic of the sculptor Meunier: the individual, aristocratic, and esthetic value and charm of the individual, but who only counts as an equal drawn from a crowd of his peers. Maeterlinck makes the democratic evaluation descend into the infinite of the individual soul.

The final chapter, “The Morality of Distinction,” contains many ideas no less subtle and ingenious. Thus the remark that it is not the act but being that gives a man his rank. Society only respects what a man does; humanity, on the other hand, only profits from what a man is. M. Simmel recalls here the phrase of Schiller: “Noble natures count for what they are; common natures for what they do.”

We have gone on at length on this book that deserves a special place in Nietzschean literature, a book fertile in ingenious connections, penetrating criticisms, and subtle psychological and sociological observations. In summary the two essential points to be noted are: the refutation of Schopenhauerian pessimism through Guyau’s concepts, and the refutation of Nietzschean aristocratism through the moral democratism of Maeterlinck. M. Simmel reproaches Schopenhauer for only taking into account extreme states, pain and pleasure, and neglecting transitional states. He reproaches Nietzsche for only paying attention to the summits of life and heroic hours, and neglecting daily life and anonymous hours, that continuity that forms the uninterrupted and solid course of our destiny.