deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.
Greek: εμπάθεια/empáthia
intense negative emotions towards somebody; enmity.
English: empathy
the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their perspective.
I’ve been using both of these words incorrectly, the one in English, the other in Greek (like a true bilingual, yay) and I only found out recently. Who can blame me?!
I’d heard that the second part of the Dune saga is a bit of a disappointment after the grandiose first part, and as I do hate to admit it, I struggled to finish it. I couldn’t exactly follow what was happening, the characters’ motivations, their positions and the parts they were playing in Muad’Dib’s empire. Most of all, I couldn’t visualize how he was visualizing what was happening to him and the intrigue that was taking place around him… or if I did, which I might have, I thought it was confusing and not very interesting. The whole ghola/Idaho subplot (subplot? wasn’t that the book’s main storyline?) left me terribly indifferent.
I’m happy to have put Dune Messiah behind me. I can start seeing why a sci-fi fiend acquaintance of mine told me that he dropped the series because of “way too much religion and mysticism.” Messiah indeed went overboard in this regard compared to its predecessor, but I’m still curious what might happen in the next books and whether the mysticism and religion at least in the rest of the story might prove to be a bit less hazy and interesting. Mind, in the first book, it was a big part of what made it feel so alive.
HAN: —Nay, not that: The day when Jabba taketh my dear ship Shall be the day you find me a grave man.
GREEDO: Nay oo’chlay nooma. Chespeka noofa Na cringko kaynko, a nachoskanya!
HAN: Aye, true, I’ll warrant thou has wish’d this day. [They shoot, Greedo dies.] [To bartender:] Pray, goodly Sir, forgive me for the mess. [Aside:] And whether I shot first, I’ll ne’er confess!
I’m not a fan of Shakespeare. I don’t think I’ve never seen or read any of his plays. Since forever I’d thought that I would find the language or the story boring or something. You know how it is with some things; they rub you the wrong way once and you keep having an unexplainable prejudice against them for years thereafter.
Verily, I stumbled across this work while looking for Expanded Universe publications. At first I was skeptical for the reasons above but it didn’t take me long to discover the brilliance of this here tome. By the way, I read/listened to it in audiobook form, which felt much more like watching the play with the script at hand.
I shall try to be brief. William Shakespeare’s Star Wars not only is a masterpiece of genre mash-up, being something more than the sum of its parts. It made me laugh out loud (for real) with its deliciously tongue-in-cheek yet very serious and perfectly executed Shakespearean interpretation of the story we know and love: for instance, it’s written exactly like the script for something that would be put up in the Globe Theatre, with acts, scenes, entrances, exits, monologues — even Chewbacca and R2-D2 get a few [!!], plus it’s completely written in iamblic pentameter — quite an achievement in itself — and follows various classical drama tropes sublimely. It gave me new insight to the motivations of Han, Luke or Darth Vader; it even made me stop and think why I haven’t read Shakespeare before. In fact, the epilogue by writer Ian Doescher made me realise just to what extent good story-telling has been based on what Joseph Campbell’s introduced and explained in his work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and how a cross between Star Wars and Shakespeare ultimately makes a lot of sense and can prove thoroughly enjoyable and illuminating.
If you like Star Wars, the English language or simply seeing how far-fetched yet creative ideas can strike gold when done right, I cannot recommend this audiobook enough, although apparently the printed edition comes with some clever and beautiful illustrations (check the cover).
Here’s a little snippet I’m posting here I couldn’t post on Goodreads. Just listen to Vader sharing his inner thoughts and motivations with the audience.
Θα βγω λοιπόν και θα το πω. Σπάνια τα λάιβ αξίζουν. Είναι πολύ δυνατά, κουράζεσαι όρθιος συνέχεια, θες να κάτσεις, να πιεις κάτι, να κατουρήσεις, να δεις τους μουσικούς από κοντά και δεν μπορείς… Δεν είναι ότι η ζωντανή μουσική δεν αξίζει: αυτοκαγχάζω σχεδόν γράφοντας τις παραπάνω λέξεις, σκέφτοντας ότι μέχρι σχετικά πρόσφατα εμείς οι άνθρωποι δεν μπορούσαμε να διαχωρίσουμε τις έννοιες «ζωντανή» και «μουσική» (ούτε είχαμε βέβαια και μικρόφωνα ή ηχεία) και η εφεύρεση της ηχογράφησης για πολλούς σήμαινε το τέλος του πανάρχαιου αυτού είδους τέχνης.
Ξεκάρφωτο διαμάντι από τον οιρμό της σκέψης: πότε θα αποκτήσουν οι βιντεοκασέτες το κύρος που έχουν τα βινύλια;
Όχι, η ζωντανή μουσική έχει τη δική της θέση δίπλα στις ηχογραφήσεις ζωντανές ή περασμένες από πολλές στρώσεις audioshop, στην καρδιά μου και στον κόσμο γενικά. Απλά το αν και κατα πόσο θα απολαύσω μια συναυλία εξαρτάται από πολλούς παράγοντες, αστάθμητους και… σταθμητούς…; Όπως για παράδειγμα αν είμαι γνώριμος με τη μουσική από πριν (δύσκολα θα απολαύσω ένα τραγούδι ή ένα κομμάτι ζωντανά που δεν έχω ξανακούσει ποτέ) ή αν υπάρχει κάτι να κοιτάζω ενώ ακούω, για μια πιο οπτικοακουστική εμπειρία (σημαντικό). Παρακαλούνται οι αναγνώστες μουσικοί να αφήσουν κάτω τα μπουκαλάκια με τα χάπια (προς κατανάλωση και μετά εκσφενδόνιση)!
Γιατί είναι και μερικές φορές που πας σε μια συναυλία και πραγματικά το χαίρεσαι, και αυτές τις μέρες ειδικά έχουν πέσει όλα τα δρώμενα μαζί, είμαι συνέχεια έξω τα βράδια, με τη Δάφνη και με την Greek Team του Rights4Water, τον Αστίκ, την Λάουρα και τον Αντρές. Η Νταϋάνα είναι κι αυτή στο γκρουπ αλλά προτιμά να μένει σπίτι κάθε μέρα, δεν έχει βγει ούτε μια φορά.
Πριν τρεις εβδομάδες πήγαμε στον Θανάση Παπακωνσταντίνου στο Θέατρο Βράχων μετά από μια μικρή Οδύσσεια μέχρι να βρούμε να παρκάρουμε (γκουχκλειστοβενζιναδικογκουχ). Για μένα είναι τελικά ο σύγχρονος έλληνας μουσικός που περισσότερο με εμπνέει και με μαγεύει, που το έχει πιάσει το νόημα μουσικά, στιχουργικά… τι σημαίνει να είσαι έλληνας μουσικός το 2015 με όλη την βαθιά καλλιτεχνική παράδοση αυτού του τόπου αλλά και τι νέο μπορεί να προσφέρει σήμερα. Το όλο ρε παιδί μου.
Κοιτάχτε μόνο εδώ πώς χαμογελάει όταν ΟΛΟ το θέατρο αρχίζει και τραγουδάει—φοβερή εκτέλεση, ε; Επ, μπορείτε να βρείτε όλο το live στο παραπάνω playlist. Νάις… Τσεκάρετε και τον καινούργιο του δίσκο Πρόσκληση σε δείπνο κυανίου, αν συμπαθείτε τα λίγο πιο ψυχεδελικά.
Έπειτα, το περασμένο Σάββατο πήγε το παρεάκι στους Γιαννιώτες Villagers of Ioannina City, στο Resistance Festival στην Γεωπονική. Σχηματίστηκαν το ’07 και έβγαλαν και τους δύο δίσκους τους πέρσι και έχουν γίνει διάσημοι ήδη. Είπαμε, τι σου κάνει η δισκογραφία… Κάπου διάβασα την τέλεια περιγραφή τους: stoner ηπειρώτικα! Ψάχτε αυτές τις δύο λέξεις στο youtube και θα καταλάβετε. Ήταν να πάμε και τον Νοέμβριο αλλά έγιναν sold-out στο Fuzz. Από τα κόμεντς βλέπω ότι θα κάνουν (ήδη κάνουν;) λαμπρή καριέρα στα Βαλκάνια (Βούλγαροι και Σέρβοι εκστασιάζονται!). Μπράβο, μπράβο. Ξεχωρίζω το Nova (το οποίο είναι στα αγγλικά), το Κάλεσμα, το Κρασί και το Τι Κακό.
Την επόμενη βραδιά πήγαμε στους Lemonostifel. Το όνομα τους ταιριάζει πολύ, αυτό έχω να πω! Παίξανε σε έναν δρόμο στον Βοτανικό δίπλα σε μια εκκλησία, στα πλαίσια της Πανευρωπαϊκής Ημέρας Μουσικής. Ο Αστίκ με έπρηξε, μου έλεγε «θέλω να αγοράσω τον δίσκο, θέλω να αγοράσω τον δίσκο!» Δεν προλάβαμε να τους ζητήσουμε, τον έναν από τους δύο δίσκους που έχουν βγάλει τουλάχιστον κι αυτοί, γιατί έπρεπε να προλάβουμε το μετρό. Πάντως είναι κι αυτοί εξαιρετικοί μουσικοί, με γέμισαν ευχάριστα συναισθήματα και μια νοσταλγία για στιγμές που δεν έχουν έρθει. Κι αυτοί είχαν και κάτι να χαζεύω. Ξεχωρίζω τα πρώτα τέσσερα αυτής της playlist (Άνθος Αραβοσίτου, Radiokefalos, Γιαγιά, Γλυκό του Κουταλιού)
Όταν με ρωτάνε αν μου αρέσουν τα ελληνικά, απαντάω όχι. Τι εννοούν; Τι εννοώ;
Have you watched The Perfume? Do you know this scene? The music above is the soundtrack to the lizard-brain serotonin-releasing real-world fugue-state equivalent your future self will look back to in the same kind of shame you experience when people retell you, with great amusement they do not want to show, your drunk adventures from last night you only remember disconnected pictures of.
This is what I couldn’t help but imagine the talking dogs in this book looked like (together with the robotic “hands”). Minus the gun, cause dogs in City never kill.
Read this in audiobook form. I think it was the same guy who narrated the Replay audiobook. Maybe, can’t bother to check.
City is 8+1 connected stories passed down to the dogs of the future that tell of Earth and man (if such a being ever existed and isn’t just a product of legend). There’s a quasi-logarithmic time interval between each of the stories: the first takes place in the ’90s, the second somewhere in the 21st century, the last is something like 17,000 years in the future.
Even though dogs, robots and ants appear as successors to human civilization on Earth, with each species following a different philosophy inspired by or directly influenced by mankind, and although the stories are supposed to be retold by talking dogs of the far future, this is basically still a story about humans. Make no mistake, people in the future will obviously instill the same kind of vain belief in the march of progress and Prometheanism to any and all prospective “managers” of Earth. Under the dogs, who are first charged to follow mankind’s footsteps when our foolishness won’t allow us to “reach our true potential”, a “brotherhood of animals” is formed to unite all mute animals and make them useful, i.e. workers. That’s progress.
Really?
I don’t blame Mr. Simak. This is quite old sci-fi and it makes sense that works from the ’50s would succumb to such, ahem, easy ideas, or at least outmoded to our eyes. While listening, I caught myself often thinking “no, Cliff, you’re going too big on this. You’re missing the trees for the supposed forest. This future feels lifeless, lost in the blur of abstracted big idea”. And true, I was not sure what in the end was the point of it all, even with the added story which served as an epilogue and which was added decades later.
I don’t feel as if I caught any kind of glimpse of alternative universes, worlds or future societies: just a curious collection of stories based on ’50s American/Western ideals projected to the blank canvas of times yet unseen. At some point there is the notion in the book that humans would invent the bow and arrow in all possible timelines, and that, if given the opportunity, they would always go all the way from there to the atomic bomb. Humanity’s free, as long as they go down this predetermined path. Like in my last game of Civilization.
However, I must admit that the segment on Jupiter alone pushes Cities up a star for me. I found it much more innovative, prescient of trends in what’s been passed down as the changing collective human consciousness and culture in ways the rest of the book just wasn’t.
I’m closing with this little segment that explains parallel dimension beautifully:
He patted Ebenezer’s head and pulled Ebenezer’s ears.
“Look here, Ebenezer, I don’t seem to place these cobblies.”
“They aren’t any place,” said Ebenezer. “Not on this earth, at least.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Like there was a big house,” said Ebenezer. “A big house with lots of rooms. And doors between the rooms. And if you’re in one room, you can hear whoever’s in the other rooms, but you can’t get to them.”
“Sure you can,” said Webster. “All you have to do is go through the door.”
“But you can’t open the door,” said Ebenezer. “You don’t even know about the door. You think this one room you’re in is the only room in all the house. Even if you did know about the door you couldn’t open it.”
You don’t automatically have more motivation when you have more free time, but when you get rolling you’re more likely to keep working and keep creating.
The longer you’re away from the internet the less you miss it. Doing my half-hour per day wasn’t as inviting as I thought it would be.
My guess is that that is so because when you have a time limit, you have to prioritize. And prioritizing probably means excluding. It feels safer and easier to just avoid things rather than being forced to make decisions like including/excluding.
Cooking counts as creating. Oooh yes.
Media including movies is a bitch.
Next time we should probably do no books and see what happens. Julia Cameron had something to say about that, didn’t she? In The Artist’s Way, the theme for one of the weeks was not read a single text for a week. Again, back then there was no net.
This thingie below would have never existed if we hadn’t sat down with Daphne and said “okay, let’s make a collage”.
And this would have never existed if we hadn’t said “okay, what should we do now? Let’s paint!” — “OK, what?” — “eachother!”
But motivation is still a limited resource that can be separated into qualitative levels: you can have good motivation, bad (negative?) motivation, pure motivation and unstoppable motivation. All the lack of distraction does is bring forward the standard kind of motivation that under ordinary circumstances simply isn’t strong enough to become a greater priority than habit and addiction (media/internet). I suppose the kind of motivation we’re after is the one that needs no media fasts to rear its elusive head; it just trumps anything and everything!
But then again, you have people like Frank Herbert who just wrote— motivation, inspiration, or no… How about it, qb?
It took me many months to finally finish The Ages of Gaia. I suppose it’s because a lot of it was dry in the way scientific writing is dry to people who are not scientists but wish they could understand what scientists say. Daisyworld, for example, is an interesting supposition and thought experiment on how planetary phenomena influence and are influenced by life on a smaller scale — an idea that today seems typically banal but was novel at the time it was brought forward. I understand it intuitively, but the relevant science flew over my head, along with a great part of what else made this book important, I’m sure.
Where Lovelock’s writing was more approachable, I found it profound and enjoyable to read. I particularly enjoy how some of it could easily be divisive among ecologists and could be used to spark discussion, for instance his careful (and in my humble opinion, very balanced) examination of nuclear power, or the suggestion that anything alive is by definition a polluter to its environment, helping some species thrive and others wither away in a delicate eternal dance (or war, if you prefer that analogy). The chapter “The Contemporary Environment” is a must-read for anyone who’s interested in big-picture ecology and where it fits today… or where it used to fit 20 years ago and more. Even his early approach to geoengineering, long before it was an unwelcome reality, is enlightening to read: “So that’s what the scientists were thinking before the big shots took control of global climatic planning.”
Generally speaking, Mr. Lovelock displays great wisdom on a number of different subjects, the discussion of which is seldom characterised by either lucidity or farsightedness (widesightedness?). However, looking at his views today, which show that in his very old age he’s somewhere between trying to be pragmatic and being resigned, they are even more difficult to digest. Has he gone off his rocker, is he paid or is he just that big of a visionary? Google him and you’ll see why I’m asking these questions in particular.
To end with his hypothesis: will Gaia “do” anything (to the limit of her proactiveness) to preserve life on her surface, much in the same way our body would react to anything which could harm the microscopic (our cells and tissues) as well as the macroscopic life — us? Are we really a terminal threat to life on Earth, or could it be that:
“Looked at from the time scale of our own brief lives, environmental change must seem haphazard, even malign. From the long Gaian view, the evolution of the environment is characterized by periods of stasis punctuated by abrupt and sudden change. The environment has never been so uncomfortable as to threaten the extinction of life on Earth, but during those abrupt changes the resident species suffered catastrophe whose scale was such as to make a total nuclear war seem, by comparison, as trivial as is a summer breeze to a hurricane. We are ourselves a product of one such catastrophe, the extinction of many species 65 million years ago. Could it be that we are unwittingly precipitating another punctuation that will alter our environment to suit our successors?”
There used to be a Parapsychology lab at Duke University. It started working during the Interwar period and closed down sometime in the ’70s. Its figurehead was a man named J.B. Rhine. His goal was to scientifically prove the existence and significance of ESP and psi phenomena. Unbelievable is a journalist-style investigation into the story of that lab, the people who manned and womanned it and its discoveries.
We all know today that no such concrete proof exists. That, however, is not so because there are no cases that could suggest their existence. Rhine’s work included many interesting cases, most featured in this book, that seem to have been truly paranormal, in the sense that they’re still inexplicable in the conventional sense. For example, take the case of Hubert Pearce, who scored so consistently highly in the card tests, the only explanation barring ESP would be fraud — and that is, of course, what critics insist all this amounts to. The math checks out, the guidelines were followed, but the research was scarcely taken seriously. It is understandable, however. The effects of telepathy, ESP or psychokinesis were detected in multiple instances, but no kind of underlying theory was ever properly produced. But wow, imagine what kind of shit that would’ve got.
My opinion is that, ultimately, sadly but inevitably, no kind of evidence would have convinced the critics. Rhine’s life work was a doomed effort, as many people at his side also concluded by the end. How can you recreate the conditions, usually emotionally charged situations together with other highly subjective variables, to consistently produce ESP-related phenomena in the lab? Until we (somehow) change scientific methodology to include what’s left outside the lab, in order to make it more lifelike and less sterile, science will have very little room reserved for ESP and related effects. That, and it needs a theory.
In any case, apart from the fact that this book is a handy reference for the studies that were the foundations for the scientific inquiry into the paranormal, it was a book that tells a story. A story that is still valuable today, because for all that’s changed from the middle of last century, little really has. The paradigm hasn’t shifted as much as other kinds of progress could warrant. But remember, half a century or seventy years really isn’t such a long period of time. Who knows what science, physics and consciousness studies in a few centuries will have to say about the matter.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been going to the Alsos almost every day, rotating the bodyweight fitness (push-ups, pull-ups, handstands, L-sits etc) with the running. And it feels grrreat! Daphne has been helping a lot with cooking healthy and nutritious vegetarian meals with lots of protein, not that I’m shy of the stoves, but I tend to cook the same three or four things, not experimenting unless in the mood, and with her in control we’ve been eating like vegetarian kings. It activates me and it’s bringing in some good skills to have. I don’t know if I would be doing it if I didn’t have all the free time I have now, but that’s beyond the point. Having a workout and exercise routine helps me bring some (illusion of) order to my disorganised life, and with some much appreciated visible results.
Nevertheless, what I haven’t been able to organise, discipline and harness at all– seriously, AT ALL — is my mind.
In June last year, apart from running 10k, I posted this little write-up I’m still proud of:
Trouble is, I didn’t go through with what I pledged I would do. As far as I can remember (which isn’t a lot, because, as typically happens when you regress to addictive behaviour, your memory-forming functions give way to the reptilian dopamine-releasing pleasure centres, quite conveniently, too, because you don’t really want to remember in shame the ego-shattering moments when you and your actions fail to hold up to your initial intention), ten days later I was again browsing the web, free as a bird — or, to be more precise, free as a bird enclosed in a cage made of invisible walls.
A few days ago, while I was running no less, the thought came to me: why don’t I try again with this whole less internet, less media thing? I could use the extra time to think and create. I seriously miss creating…
The next 4 days I’m going to be in Loutra doing a media fast with Daphne: each day, we will be allowed to use the internet for just 30 minutes, and that’s just for e-mail, practicalities and Rights4Water. The rest of the time, anything with a screen will be off-limits. No movies, no games, no TV, no smartphones — I will switch mine to battery-saving “dumbphone mode”– no distractions from the interestnet. The only exception will be my Sansa Clip Zip I will be using for audiobooks, podcasts and music for when I’m doing exercise. The idea is to limit options, minimise distractions and allow for deeper thought and even boredom, which will force us to be creative instead of us automatically turning to the mind-numbing net for excitement and stimulation.
