Tag Archives: culture

Chickens, bravery and bagpipes . . . not the Scottish ones

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I had no idea there are so many kinds of bagpipes . . . pretty much one for every European nation, and even a Chinese version . . . the ones in the music of this video are Romanian.

I picked this video for a few reasons. One is that the pictures remind very much of some of the pictures of some of my now-deceased family – my grandparents – they really worked the land. Their stories are heartwarming, funny, inspiring, sometimes so very sad, and sometimes maddening.

They were not gypsies, except perhaps on the occasional Saturday night! I don’t know if the people in this picture were gypsies either – when is a group of gypsies no longer gypsies?

The other reason I chose this clip is because it also reminds me of a brief mention of a wonderfully humorous gypsy folk tale. I mention it in my novel, and no matter how I classify it, the story is about love – both mine and the gypsy tale!

I’ll only mention how the tale begins. Apparently there was a young man who was completely smitten by a certain gypsy girl, but she taunted him terribly. The story is all about his laughable quests to gain her favor, and the first of these is to fetch her a chicken, but not just any chicken!

And so it goes . . . I really can’t tell you more than that here . . . the games we play for love!

I’m kind of surprised that even today there are those who are wary of gypsies, though I apologize here because the term has as many variations as the bagpipes – probably many more!

All I can say is where would Cirque du Soleil be without them first? And even in this video, there must be something of love? I hope so . . . .

Thank you for risking so much!

Two Strings Attached

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Of all the arts, music is regarded as the most universal in its appeal and acceptance. This universality,however, does not mean that music is without individual character. Each country has its own kind of music that embodies the total experience, the collective consciousness of its people. Music, therefore, is the collective expression of the musical genius of a particular people.

Such is the case of Philippine music which today is regarded as a unique blending of two great musical traditions – the East and the West. Being innately musical, the Filipinos, from the earliest to contemporary times, have imbibed these traditions and have woven their musical creations along these mainstreams of musical thought. Through time, Philippine society has witnessed the evolution of music expressed in different forms and stylistic nuances.

A people gifted with a strong sense of musicality, the Filipinos turn to music to express their innermost feelings. Hence, every song they sing, every instrument they play, every music they make is a direct, almost spontaneous reflection of their hopes and longings, frustrations and fulfillment, failures and triumphs.

The above quote come from Antonio C. Hila, found in a wonderful article on the musical instruments of the Filipinos.

My little musical journey continues, and it is starting to feel like the missing element of a troika . . . the art, some writing, and now the music . . . there will certainly be some dancing along the way.

I’d have to agree with Hilda’s first sentence (above), and It does seem like less there’s less arguing and such when it comes to music. I’m tired of getting involved in so many trite ones – yeah, one happened today in an online discussion – in the end though, it seems that I did help the art student with one of my observations. It was his discussion. He took my comment back to his teacher, who was caught off-guard by it.

There’s a strange mentality in some of the art world revolving around the issue of integrity when an artist sells their art, and how that is somehow “less than noble”. In the context of this discussion, the issue was about fine art ‘versus’ commercial art (advertising). One or more artists/ participants seemed to be offended when I said, “If you do a painting and have it hung in a gallery for sale, it is also a form of advertising.”

It got pretty quiet when I asked whether the picture of a can of soup is fine art. When you think about it, the can is actually covered. The picture is mostly a picture of the label of a can of soup, and believe me, packaging is all about advertising. Funny how no one knows who did the graphic arts on the original label . . . I wonder if Andy had the talent to do that?

As you can see, these kinds of discussions are pretty non-nonsensical – though I’m glad the student and his teacher saw the humor in the truth of it. I really don’t like any discussions on the issue of “what is art” . . . it gets wearisome and only leads to frustration, and this can literally throw me off for hours, if not the whole day or evening.

I don’t care to rank them either, but still there is the music . . . perhaps the common thread in all of it is the heart? That certainly helps makes a good book – the words –  special, it draws one in to a painting, makes the music charming and exciting, and when you add some dancing in there it can be down right exhilarating. There’s no need to judge it, much more need to enjoy and celebrate it. Hopefully as time goes on that message will come through in this blog – hopefully another way of sharing pleasant surprises.

Some words, a little music, lots of light and some dancing – get the picture? 🙂

 

Being Cool in the Media

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It’s funny how one thing leads to another . . . eventually I’ll get to why I posted this video.

I began this Saturday night determined to push my book through more social marketing, but not knowing exactly where I would do so. These days I do gravitate to Pinterest, probably because I feel that it has the potential to be an outlet for creative expression.

I’ve been thinking of doing a Pin board completely about drumming. In the last few years I’ve come to appreciate it more. There’s something persistent, and I do believe universal, about drumming . . . there’s simply no need to try and explain that. However, it didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that it’s not so easy to make a board of it, so I’m going to make a board of all kinds of musical instruments instead, but not the ones I’m more familiar with.

After a simple search, wow, what can I say? I found a stunning list of musical instruments, 120 different percussion ones, 195 string ones, and over 500 in all! It seems my board won’t be complete tonight, on the other hand it feels like I’m starting another little adventure. Pin pictures really don’t do justice to the music, such as the video above, so I’m creating a YouTube playlist that will eventually link to my Pin page . . . once it’s full enough.

On this little journey, I’m doing a lot of Google searches to look up all kinds of instruments from many different countries and cultures. At first I was annoyed that Google wasn’t very helpful on many them – even coming up blank on some of them (instruments). Strange though, in no time at all the frustration turned into a relief of sorts – I really don’t want to ever think that “Google knows everything”!

This fascinating video at the top is titled:

“FOLI” there is no movement without rhythm original version by Thomas roebers and Floris Leeuwenberg

Certainly these people deserve the recognition, as little as mine may be. This is the fourth video installment on my new playlist – the seventh one I’ve researched so far from my list of 120 percussion instruments – the other three are each remarkable in their own right. I already know this is going to make an incredibly rich playlist, and yes Giselle, it does feel like a pretty cool way to spend a Saturday night! 🙂

It certainly beats getting bogged down in an online discussion on whether including vague figures in abstract art negates the label, “abstract”. It also beats getting into another discussion on the importance of garden sheds to the careers of various writers . . . the sheds being their favorite place to write . . . I screwed up by interjecting some humor . . . apparently the discussion is for those devoted to the topic . . . seriously folks!

What’s much more important is how this video struck a chord with me that’s been around for many years now. It seems I have a knack for putting two and two together and coming up with a picture or some words – in this case it’s words. The video reminds of something I read years ago, in Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media. It will take me awhile to find the exact quote. The passage has to with how the introduction of a water well completely disrupted the culture of an African tribe – the ritual of collecting water from the river was an important part of the day – the introduction of the well led to an unhappy cultural shock, whatever the intent.

This has stuck with me for many years now, and I kind of cringe every time I come across something that shows the third world becoming well-educated . . . I have very mixed feelings about this process. This book of McLuhan’s is like a fountain of relevancy – every page of it – not just to remote cultures, but to our own as well. Think about the following quote in the context of the video above, as well as in relation to our current cultural environment – the relevance is alarming on both counts:

Consider the phrase “It’s a man’s world.” As a quantitative observation endlessly repeated from within a homogenized culture, this phrase refers to the men in such a culture who have to be homogenized Dagwoods in order to belong at all. It is in our I.Q. testing that we have produced the greatest flood of misbegotten standards. Unaware of our typographic cultural bias, our testers assume that uniform and continuous habits are a sign of intelligence, thus eliminating the ear man and the tactile man.

Looked at another way, if we can’t solve so many of our own cultural problems, where is the wisdom in educating other cultures in our ways? These are some of the issues I think about often . . . as you can see, I get easily distracted. Perhaps that’s why I’m having a hard time selling my book . . . it is very much about all kinds of love, and the struggles.

I’m just glad I can still enjoy the music, like in this video above. I also believe there is much to be learned from the quote below, which is encouraging in more than one way – it turns out that he began by self-publishing as well:

“Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book. Dismiss whatever insults your soul. ” —Walt Whitman

Do We Know?

 

A little music, a little picture, and the “Blurb” . . .

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If I could put the some of the tone of it to music, it would be as in the above video.

I feel like I’ve accomplished something with this book – lots of mystery and intrigue, yet funny and heartwarming, characters you come to love even though they can sometimes be insufferable, and something about love – with honey, not syrup, and believable.

Book – Dawn at Last – Why it’s not Free . . . Yet

Before I can give my book away on Amazon – and I can only do that for a few days – I’d really like to get a “critical mass” of people who like to read on Kindle – get my book out there for free for awhile – it really is a nice read.

Also, I’ve rewritten the “blurb” – this is such a hard thing to write! I’m still waiting for Amazon to update the new one, so here’s what it says:

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New Blurb – Don’t be fooled by the Title!

Titles can be deceiving and no one knows this better than Donna Belauche. She is the envy of every woman she knows and adored by her eight male clients and two partners . . . or is it seven and three?

With her natural beauty, education and “special” training – and with her ability to charm on a dime – she has it all, but only according to others. She prides herself in playing the game of love, winning by acting and remaining unattainable . . . but in control.

Then her plans become unravelled in sleepy Victoria, a deception of its own . . . her secrets are only a pale part of the bigger picture. As events unfold beyond her control, what was once all so predictable becomes a battle with the past, a duel with deception, including the intrusion of a few simple tulips . . . will she learn to dance or will they cripple her forever?

“Then the strangest thing happened . . . Karen covered her naked body with Andrea’s robe, put her hair up and then put on that chauffeur’s hat . . . she told me to sit down again and just wait there for a minute. Then she went over to this platter. It had three tulips on it, but she only left one on the platter and put the lid back on. Then she disappeared with this platter – after all this – such a fuss over a single tulip?”

After 300 pages you will have the answers.

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From my "Playful & Cheery" collection - which goes nicely with my novel, "Dancing With Tulips"

From one of my art collections – which goes nicely with my novel, “Dawn at Last”

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So there you have it. Now to get that free copy – when its available – the best way is to follow me on twitter @ljgrodecki.

I’m hoping/ planning to do this launch two weeks from now – May 17th – depending on how much interest there is . . . and if you’re wondering why there is an error message up in the top right, under “Tweeter in Person”, that’s probably because as of this typing, I’m still a tweet virgin . . . I haven’t tweeted anyone yet . . . I’m so nervous as to who will be the first! 🙂

For Your Eyes Only…Only for You?

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When I was a kid, and then still when I was a young man, I always looked forward to the next 007 flick. I don’t know about you, but for me it was all about the gadgets and special effects, and of course the leading ladies. Yeah, I know, there’s plenty of stereotyping that goes on, but then there’s the humor, so hopefully no one took the sexism to heart.

Then it got to the point where for me at least, the introduction and the ending credits became worth the price of admission all by themselves. In this particular case for example, as much as I like the video, I can’t remember a damn thing about the movie, nor do I care to now. And I must have seen it at least three times.

This video, For Your Eyes Only, has always captivated me. There’s the music, the intriguing and mysterious lyrics. . . “no need to read between the lines.”, and then there’s the visual portrayal, and finally, all the technology that goes with it.

It’s pretty amazing to think that this video was done so many years ago. We tend to think of all this layering as being much more recent than 1980. But then the machine that was eventually to become known as ‘the fax machine’ was actually based on technology from the 1920’s.

It’s funny how the ‘warm and fuzzy’ I get when I watch this video is also the same way I feel in writing many parts of novel. It is hard to blog about that, partly because what is really a very simple story seems to be deceptive in a way. I say ‘deceptive’ because as it is coming to completion, I see that it has many different layers, and to talk of one without the other is damn near impossible. It’s kind of like trying to describe the rain coming from one cloud when it’s actually coming from more than you can count. . . but not too many!

But I’ll try to touch on of those layers here. It actually does concern the issue of audio and video technology and what happens when they become somehow entwined in a very sensual experience. Should some experiences be “for yours eyes only”?

So the issue becomes an ethical one, and there are so many these days, so many that I wonder whether humanity will ever be able to catch up with all our modern technology. If you think about it, then in a way the technology controls our sense of right and wrong, or perhaps puts that sense to sleep, for your shut eyes only?

And does technology have karma? It must, at least in the sense that it seems to be an inextricable part of much of the human condition. But then what is karma? And I’m sorry, but I’m not going back to writings from thousands of years ago to try to understand that. I’ve already done that many times over the years. But there are things that happen, and they involve technology, technical applications in the context of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. . . well those events have crushed any personal understanding of that term ‘karma’, at least in the traditional sense.

In my writing, one of my characters finds herself disturbed by the term, so the best she can describe her own feelings on the matter is, “the blending and churning of time and truth.”

Anyways, these are the musings of someone finds inspiration in the strangest places, even a silly little introduction to a James Bond film. I think the next music I post here will be ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’, the live rendition by Sharon Clark.

Have a wonderful weekend.

PS – The last 007 film that I’ve seen was a breakthrough film for Halle Berry, with an exquisite Madonna intro and conclusion. Since then they have completely lost any appeal, but then I haven’t seen the intros.

So tell me, am I missing something, anything?

Bar Reflections, With a Few Friends

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WP_Mirror

I suppose this might have been inevitable once I began writing more. “This” being the urge to add a post about how that’s progressing, my writing.

I’ve come across so many writers’ blogs recently, so many fine ones, and I don’t mind saying it is a richer experience than my networking places. Perhaps the dialogue isn’t so instant, though It’s all so much more personal isn’t it?

I’ve gotten to know only a handful of people through networking, and I’m very thankful for that, but for me it seems this is in spite of the venue and not because of it. With each of these people it is only through one-on-one and private communication where I really feel like I’m getting to know any one.

By comparison, it’s be like thinking of something like Google + as a busy night club, lots of entertainment, pizzazz (yeah, I know…pizzazz, but what the heck, I am 55), and a lot of fine people trying to impress and get to know some of the ‘each others’. And then you hit it off with some one in particular, and you begin a private correspondence, and it’s like going from a busy and crowded night club to a quiet, more intimate coffee shop. And you get to know one another about as well as one can over long distance telecommunication devices.

Blogging though, is often like skipping the bar scene and heading right to the coffee shop, and it often feels like one that is in a sort of magical book shop, full of surprises.

So I guess I’m old fashioned that way. You don’t have to think too hard to realize that in the real world a person is only physically and mentally capable of developing a handful of relationships that are meaningful at all…what’s the joke at political dinners, “I’d like to thank 500 of my closest friends for joining me tonight.”? Hmmm.

So it doesn’t matter if this place has 1 billion members and that one only 125 million…insane numbers really, especially when it comes down to you and me. Save it for the folks with the big advertising budgets. McDonald’s may have served billions, but how many do you want?

Oh, yeah, a post about my writing…well it’s coming along quite nicely, thank you, a pleasant mystery, twists and turns, a little humor, an almost excruciating amount of teasing of the reader…and soon I might even share a paragraph of two, but which ones?

Typing in the Bars

Getting From A to B

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Computer networking seems to be quite a popular topic in WordPress, but let me rephrase that…social networking seems to be a very popular topic.

I’ve been very impressed and amused by those who have woke up to what is somehow destined to be a failure in some important respects. I say failure because the long distance exchange of messages done with machines will never be the same as direct, fully human interaction. I would hope that we can all be thankful and appreciative of this truth. And I’m happy for those who have found happiness with others through the use of technology…good for them.

It seems I have a knack for looking at our culture differently than most. Perhaps it is because of the reading I’ve done over the years, but certainly not in totality. I only mention this because of one author and book in particular. The book is Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshal McLuhan. It’s one of those books where every time you read it, or even part of it, you learn something new as well as you can understand the world around you from a different perspective.

A Good Synopsis of “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”

If it were up to me I’d make it required reading at some point, perhaps even in high school, especially when mass media is so dominant in our culture. But then I’d also make the same requirement of the basic principles of logical reasoning. This may seem like an odd statement coming from an artist, but then I’m not really an artist, I’m a person who has a passion for doing art. There is a huge difference between the noun and the verb, between the object and the process.

The process always seems nice than the object, the journey between A and B.

I’ve always admired so much of what Einstein said, so many great quotes, such as, “Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination can take you everywhere.” It seems then, in order to make sense of life in this day and age, a great deal of both is necessary if one is to think and to wonder. I do a lot of both.

I know many will say that that  just living is better than so much thinking, and I can completely relate to that, and so many happy times happened just living. For me this is not that time though. I think a lot about what is natural and about what isn’t and it does seem to come down to machines versus nature, and much of humanity seems stuck in between.

To get back to this issue of computer networking, I’d like to put in the broader context of machines. The mechanization has happened at a very rapid and accelerated pace over the last 100 years or so, and we have collectively made ourselves dependent on machines in so many ways and to such large extents and extensions, the extensions of man.

I could go on at great lengths to explain the implications of this in great detail, but I’d prefer to at least try to make my point with a few statements. For example, now and then the issue of the world being overpopulated comes up. Yet no one ever addresses the issue of the population of machines. The world has gone from about 2 billion to 7 billion people in my lifetime; I don’t have the resources to even begin to calculate what that growth is in terms of machine population. Since many people form emotional attachments to their machines, even love, it is appropriate to use the term population.

Some wars and a great deal of media attention is placed on the issue of energy, mostly oil and gas. And yet not that long ago such reliance wasn’t there. When you think about it though, we don’t need oil and gas. Our machines need it and we now need our machines.

A Great Deal of Food For Thought

In the context of computers and pretty much every mechanical communication medium, including all kinds of presses and our educational system, the reliance on electricity is even greater than that of oil and gas. Yes, electricity is dependent on machines.

And yet we call of this a ‘process of evolution’ and we’re taught about natural selection. However, so much of humanity now seems so very different than anything that I see in nature. There I can see more balance, even kindness, more of what I used to see in people, and I wonder whether we will find a way to return to a more natural life form.

Something is missing and machines won’t help us find it. This is why I’m not surprised at an undercurrent of rebellion and disappointment in what is called social networking. Perhaps a nice first step is to realize that no matter how you brand it, the phone is just a phone.

By the way, in terms of that educational system and required reading, I’d also include something to do with love…I think it might just make a good replacement for much of history.

And so because of the absence of my humor in this blog, I don’t mind borrowing a little bit of nice humor from an old television show, partly to remind you that I don’t think it’s all bad. I’m a firm believer that there is always something good out there, but then what do I know?

I Don’t Know What I’m Talking About