tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12588723997633983592024-03-13T11:44:16.125-10:00Curiosity #CKTKUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger230125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-53130884233100304762017-12-06T23:57:00.000-10:002017-12-06T23:58:21.681-10:00The X-Ray Audio Project<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Many older people in Russia remember seeing and hearing strange vinyl type discs when they were young. The discs had partial images of skeletons on them, were called 'Bones' or 'Ribs' and originated in the Cold War years of the Soviet Union.</div>
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In an era when the recording industry was ruthlessly controlled by the State, music-mad bootleggers had found an incredible alternative means of making illegal copies of forbidden recordings - they repurposed used X Ray plates obtained from local hospitals.</div>
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The X-Ray Audio Project is telling this amazing story of forbidden music, cold war culture, bootleg technology and human endeavour with an online archive, a book, an award winning documentary, live events and a travelling exhibition. The project is supported by Arts Council England and has received a large amount of <a href="https://x-rayaudio.squarespace.com/x-rayaudiopress/" target="_blank">PRESS</a> and media coverage.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-24346765488568955712017-11-01T08:09:00.000-10:002017-11-28T10:24:26.357-10:00Manufacturing Consent<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, proposes that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication. The title derives from the phrase "the manufacture of consent," employed in the book Public Opinion (1922), by Walter Lippmann (1889–1974).</div>
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Chomsky credits the origin of the book to the impetus of Alex Carey, the Australian social psychologist, to whom he and co-author E. S. Herman dedicated the book. Four years after publication, Manufacturing Consent: The political Economy of the Mass Media was adapted to the cinema as Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992), a documentary presentation of the propaganda-model of communication, the politics of the mass-communications business, and a biography of Chomsky.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-91938995109700527862017-10-21T05:06:00.002-10:002017-10-21T05:06:45.018-10:00The most detailed map of the brain ever created<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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Working in collaboration with the conservation and collections departments of The Prado Museum, Madrid, The Louvre, Paris and The National Gallery, London, the artist scanned X-ray, infrared and ultra-violet renditions of Old Master paintings – including works by Uccello, van Dyck, Rubens, Delacroix, Goya and Velazquez amongst others. Monochromatic and energetic, the resulting photographs possess a graphic power strangely suggestive of the New York School artists, or a Gerhard Richter abstract.<br />
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The title of the new series, LEAD, refers to the presence of the metal in 17th and 18th century paint. This is what the X-rays show, bouncing back off lead pigments and transforming the paintings from recognisable images into otherworldly scenes, as if the viewer is given access to a separate reality below the surface paint. Guijarro has taken a scientific process used to demystify the paintings, and in doing so made them more unknowable, blurring the divisions between science and art.<br />
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Says artist Alejandro Guijarro: ‘At the heart of this series of work is a paradox: as X-rays they belong to the realm of scientific images, objective, possessing an unquestionable scientific truth. Yet, by their visual indeterminacy, they also exist in the subjective world of personal interpretation, the intuitional and emotional’.<br />
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This series continues Guijarro’s investigations into the paradoxes and contradictions that emerge where the boundaries of the photographic image break down. His first major series, Momentum, was a three-year project which saw the artist travel to the great quantum mechanics institutions around the world. From Berkeley in California to CERN in Switzerland, Guijarro photographed blackboards as he found them, before reproducing them at a 1:1 scale. By undermining our recognisable modes of perception, Guijarro’s photographic practice aims to question the solidity and authority of the photographic image and its ability to refer to reality and truth.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.alejandroguijarro.com/">www.alejandroguijarro.com</a></span></b></div>
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“Although he has made it with deep scholarship, Guijarro’s is not a dry enquiry nor a research project. It is a way of making photographic objects whose twin beauties perfectly complement each other. These lovely swirling or choppy marks of painterly activity are a beautiful reflection on what it means to paint; and, because Guijarro is an artist of great subtlety, also on what it means to photograph.”<br />
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– Francis Hodgson, Art Critic for the Financial Times</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-35850908146329387082017-10-11T23:03:00.000-10:002017-12-16T23:04:45.092-10:00J Dilla - How humanized a machine <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Back in October I went to see a Q&A with Amp Fiddler at Amsterdam Dance Event. He talked about introducing J Dilla to the MPC, and played some OG files he received from Dilla decades ago: deconstructing Dilla beats for the—shamelessly small—crowd of 30-ish people. And by way of the iconic Slum Village tracks “Players”, “The Look Of Love” & “Fall In Love”, Amp gave a Dilla for dummies crash course on why his beats sound so musical, warm and full of soul.</div>
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This new video by Vox made me think of that lecture: J Dilla Beats 101. The video is a 10-minute introduction on how J Dilla humanized the MPC3000. It’s a basic yet good watch on how he didn’t quantize his beats, insights on sampling Gap Mangione, Giorgio Moroder & The Escorts, and extending samples, using track examples such as “E=MC2”, “Fall In Love”, “Lazer Gunne Funke” & The Pharcyde’s “Runnin'”.</div>
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As drum machine pioneer Roger Linn puts it in the original MPC3000 manual: “(…) In this light, I like to think of the MPC3000 as the piano or violin of our time, and of you as an MPC3000ist.” J Dilla is truly the embodiment of that.</div>
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via. www.thefindmag.com</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-24538250126203407092017-10-10T10:54:00.000-10:002017-10-11T19:05:13.101-10:00Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things examines the many flavors of minimalism by taking the audience inside the lives of minimalists from all walks of life—families, entrepreneurs, architects, artists, journalists, scientists, and even a former Wall Street broker—all of whom are striving to live a meaningful life with less.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-29463402451948750202017-10-07T11:00:00.000-10:002017-10-10T11:05:34.214-10:00From the Vaults selected by Kp<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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[Ed note – We are aware that there are playback issues with the audio when this is watched on a mobile device. We encourage you to watch this on your desktop computer, laptop or with headphones.]</div>
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“Three things in Jamaica: Rasta, ganja and reggae music.”</div>
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Late last year we accompanied Vivien Goldman on a trip to Jamaica to track down the remaining vestiges of the island’s failing record industry.<br />
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As the documentary reveals, iconic record shops like Randy’s and Rockers International are now ghosts of their former selves, whilst Jamaica’s last pressing plant has been covered in dust for years (though a new deal should finally see the factory kick start operations again.)</div>
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Through conversations with local legends like Earl “Chinna” Smith, Vivien pieces together a personal story of how a culture so rooted in records has found itself in helpless decline.</div>
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“Jamaica had so many studios, outstanding studios, pressing plants, small producers and big producers, who were able to capture this whole spirit of the people in the grooves of these records,” explains Herbie Miller in the film. “This is the industry is the biggest calling card for this country.”</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-25476928720359218892017-09-08T00:20:00.000-10:002017-11-04T23:20:30.862-10:00Amos Milburn<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Joseph Amos Milburn, Jr. (1 de Abril, 1927 – 3 de Enero, 1980) fue un cantante y pianista americano de rhythm and blues, popular durante los 1940s y 1950s. Nació y murió en Houston, Texas.</div>
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El cantante y pianista tejano de boogie-woogie fue un importante intérprete de música blues durante los años inmediatamente anteriores a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Milburn fue uno de los primeros intérpretes en cambiar de sofisticados arreglos de jazz a un más fuerte jump blues. Comenzó enfatizando el rtimo y cualidades técnicas de la voz para hacerlo luego con la instrumentación.</div>
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Sus energéticas canciones, sobre temática de "ponerse a tono", fue admirado por sus colegas músicos, como Little Willie Littlefield, Floyd Dixon y su primer discípulo, Fats Domino.</div>
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Tuvo éxito comercial durante once años e influenció a muchos intérpretes. Fast Domino acredita a Milburn insistentemente como una de sus máximas inlfuencias a nivel musical.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-38189554052238712512017-09-05T23:15:00.000-10:002017-09-09T23:15:44.832-10:00Michel Foucault Vs. Noam Chomsky<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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*El memorable debate entre Foucault y Chomsky*</div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">El encuentro entre dos figuras emblemáticas de la intelectualidad actual en la Universidad de Amsterdam, allá por 1971, dentro del International Philosophers Project. En los apenas 13 minutos de grabación que hemos encontrado, podemos observar lo mejor y lo peor de cada uno de los autores:</span></div>
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En Foucault vemos el perfecto análisis de la violencia ejercida por instituciones aparentemente neutrales como la universidad o la familia, pero también la tendencia al inmovilismo propia del relativismo postmoderno que es incapaz de dar alternativas a la sociedad que critica.</div>
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*El histórico debate Chomsky-Foucault*</div>
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En Chomsky es de agradecer la llamada a la acción de uno de uno de esos raros intelectuales que no solo critica desde su torre de marfil sino que se convierte en activista social, pero también queda en evidencia la debilidad epistemológica de una visión idealista que parte de conceptos como “naturaleza humana”.</div>
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El debate integro fue publicado como libro bajo el titulo ”Chomsky – Foucault: La Naturaleza Humana Justicia Versus Poder” (te lo puedes descargar entero y en castellano aqui) . </div>
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Enfrentar a Chomsky y Foucault en una discusión tenía cierto sentido. En 1971 los dos eran famosos intelectuales en todo el mundo; los dos habían dedicado obras a la estructura del lenguaje, aunque entrenamientod de Chomsky era de linguística y no en filosofía, sobre todo, los dos habían adquirido fama por sus posiciones políticas combativas. Chomsky había publicado, en 1967, en la influyente The New York Review of Books uno de los artículos que más pesaron en el ataque a la guerra de Vietnam.</div>
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Chomsky recuerda que se conocieron y pasaron juntos varias horas antes del programa y que establecieron un terreno común a pesar de la barrera del idioma (Chomsky hablaba muy poco francés y Foucault aún no dominaba el inglés comom lo haría más tarde). Intercambiaron opiniones políticas generales, discutieron acerca de los gramáticos de Port-Royal (uno de los intereses académicos que compartían).</div>
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Pero ya había indicios de que éste no iba a ser un debate común y corriente. Con la esperanza de molestar la pulcra sobriedad del público holandés, el moderador del programa, Fons Elder, anarquista confeso, se había conseguido una brillante peluca roja y trató, infructuosamente, que Foucault se la pusiera. Por otra parte, y sin que lo supiera Chomsky, habían dado a Foucault, en pago por su presentación, una importante porción de hachís a la cual el filósofo y sus amigos llamarían, jocosamente y durante los meses que les duró, ‘el hachís de Chomsky’.”</div>
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“La conversación continuaba en este tono y Elders no dejaba de pisar a Foucault por debajo de la mesa, señalandole la peluca roja y susurrandole “póngasela, póngasela”. Foucault intentaba ignorarlo, pero las preguntas de Elders se volvían más y más apremiantes, y el filósofo empezó a irritarse”.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-62681378076801112412017-08-04T11:59:00.000-10:002017-08-04T12:10:43.009-10:00UPPER EGYPT SERIES<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WCpAPRegrzw/Tl-NjAwD8lI/AAAAAAAAAUU/xj-IWucI2e0/s1600/upperegypt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?yvbz9ojqv3b2pfu" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wpd_FyE-D44/Tl-NiHfyIGI/AAAAAAAAAUM/yEjG3D4jdU0/s1600/series_02.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?6ibmmrfwkisp99p" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VVDin6D44KM/Tl-Nii52KlI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/2_ILwPMubD4/s1600/series_06.jpg" /></a></div>
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UPPER EGYPT SERIES vive en las fronteras de diferentes culturas, con una manifiesta tendencia a contaminar deliberadamente las referencias. La sucia enciclopedia, son seis hojas arrancadas de cada libro. Los artefactos subterráneos y distintivos, frenéticos y reputados, con un estilo único e independiente, polvorosos de agujero de bala que cumplen con la etimología de nuestro propio Consortium. Es esa clase de ritmo, de voces, de ideas, de mentes imparables. Allí surge la vida de entre las piedras y se curten las gentes sin esa torpeza. El lugar donde se concentran los mágicos segundos. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-30534647048448210182017-07-29T21:14:00.000-10:002017-07-29T21:15:30.820-10:00New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #2d2d2d; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 20px;">On December 9, 1964, saxophonist John Coltrane led a quartet that featured pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones and bassist Jimmy Garrison into Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, where countless jazz recording sessions were held in the 1950s and ’60s. For photographer Chuck Stewart, Van Gelder’s was a short drive from his home in Teaneck.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">That day nearly 50 years ago the band recorded a Coltrane composition titled <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">A Love Supreme,</em> a profound expression of his spiritual awakening divided into four movements—“Acknowledgement,” “Resolution,” “Pursuance,” “Psalm.” For its soaring ambition, flawless execution and raw power, it was hailed as a groundbreaking piece of music when it was released in February 1965, and it has endured as a seminal part of the jazz canon. The work and its composer will be highlighted anew this April during <a href="http://www.smithsonianjazz.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0099ff; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Jazz Appreciation Month</a>, an annual event launched in 2001 by the National Museum of American History, whose collection includes Coltrane’s original manuscript for <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">A Love Supreme</em>.</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vobM9h6opTE/WVTL-dS5lMI/AAAAAAAAF2w/KdofUXg9GSU-Zx3q4TEgVHX4GSGOqMcmgCLcBGAs/s1600/ac1321-0000023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="1072" height="417" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vobM9h6opTE/WVTL-dS5lMI/AAAAAAAAF2w/KdofUXg9GSU-Zx3q4TEgVHX4GSGOqMcmgCLcBGAs/s640/ac1321-0000023.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">For Stewart, whose photographs have graced thousands of album covers, from Ellington to Davis, from Basie to Armstrong, that session with Coltrane—a friend of his since 1949—was no different from countless others. “When I did a session I would go in and shoot the rehearsal before they did any takes,” the 86-year-old photographer recalls, sitting in his cozy, picture-filled living room in Teaneck. “I couldn’t shoot during the take because the recording equipment would pick up the clicks. So what I did was meander around the studio. When I saw a picture I thought worked, I’d take it.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Stewart still has the Rolleiflex camera he used at the session, and the contact sheets as well. Many of the images he shot have been seen on CDs, as well as in numerous books and magazine articles. But 72 photographs from six rolls of film never made it beyond the contact-sheet stage, and so haven’t been published. Stewart’s son David recently rediscovered those images in his father’s collection, and now Stewart is scheduled to include some of them in a donation to the museum this month.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Looking over the contact sheets from those rolls, Stewart picks out two favorites. One finds Coltrane reclining on a staircase and talking with someone in the studio. The other, taken from a distance, shows him sitting at a piano, lost in thought. “I was looking for a decisive moment,” recalls Stewart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The photographer is reluctant to offer assessments of Coltrane’s music, but after some prodding, he allows that <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">A Love Supreme</em> was part “of a long spiritual evolution” for the musician that would be aided by his marriage in 1966 to pianist Alice McLeod, who would later lead an ashram in California. When pressed further to describe what he heard that day, Stewart smiles and says, “That’s not something I can really answer. I took piano lessons for eight years, and when I was through I couldn’t even play ‘Chopsticks.’” Then he adds, “John was basically a musical genius. What he did was learn how far the musical instrument he was playing could go, and he took it further than any tenor saxophone player in history.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of the band, he says, “Everyone had a very high regard for John, and they knew what was expected of them and they functioned accordingly. He wasn’t a bossy type, but he was the boss of his sessions, no question.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Though Stewart’s photographs would be widely used in books and articles connected with <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">A Love Supreme,</em> it is not a photo of his on the cover of the original Impulse album—and that remains a sore subject for him all these years later. “That photo is by [album producer] Bob Thiele,” he says. “It was a picture he’d taken at a session and he put it on there. I expressed my disapproval.” He pauses and adds, “I cursed him out.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">UPDATE: </strong>On March 26, 2014, photographer Chuck Stewart donated 25 images, featuring John Coltrane, his wife Alice Coltrane and his band members McCoy Tyner, Archie Shepp and Bob Thiele, to the collections of the National Museum of American History.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">SOURCE: www.smithsonianmag.com</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-36148877073183681862017-07-28T22:23:00.000-10:002017-07-29T21:14:59.449-10:00La bandera sureña junto al puño negro<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>: Cuando hillbillies y rednecks se aliaron con los Panteras Negras :</b></div>
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Parecían hillbillies y rednecks revolucionarios, soñaron con una comunidad utópica llamada Hank Williams Village y lograron lo que parecía imposible: hacer ondear la bandera sureña junto al puño negro.</div>
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«Hubo un tiempo en que creí que solo los negros estaban colonizados», afirmó Huey P. Newton en 1969, ya investido como líder de los Panteras Negras. Se refería a la idea que había planeado desde la creación del Partido unos años antes, y que afirmaba que los negros debían luchar exclusivamente junto a su gente. Quizás pesó mucho la política de exterminio parapolicial del gobierno, que había puesto precio a sus cabezas, dinamitaba sus sedes y tiroteaba a esta su misma gente. Parecía una guerra abierta, y quizás lo fuese. Iban armados, pero sabían que un combate cara a cara supondría una guerra incierta y perdida. En 1969, en medio de un clima de levantamiento armado, se dio un paso adelante en la unión con otras organizaciones, con el objetivo último de crear un Frente Antifascista, una Alianza Revolucionaria Nacional que se enfrentase al poder blanco. Fue la metamorfosis de Newton y los suyos. Se dijo que el fascismo gobernaba Amerikkka. Cuando Newton decía «colonizado», en realidad decía «explotado», entrando poco a poco toda la retórica, en ocasiones confusa y equívoca, típicamente pantera, entre el marxismo y el maoísmo. La consecuencia de este discurso se hizo cada vez más clara. A cada paso que daban, los panteras se encontraban con más y más explotados, grupos revolucionarios blancos y latinos, gente que pedía a gritos unidad.</div>
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Las colaboraciones de los panteras con otros grupos ajenos al black power comenzó inicialmente con el Partido Comunista estadounidense, donde militaba Angela Davis. Sin embargo, tras varias reuniones y encuentros surgieron enfrentamientos entre ambos. Bobby Seale, otro de sus dirigentes, no dudó en calificar de «cochina táctica fascista» sostener, como hacía parte de la prensa y la policía, que estaban dirigidos por el comunismo oficial. SDS, los estudiantes izquierdistas de los que saldrían los Weathermen, primer grupo armado blanco de ideología marxista leninista, fueron calificados como «pequeños burgueses», lo mismo que los airados que en unos meses empuñarían las armas, que fueron vistos como casi suicidas, representantes de un estilo suicida a lo general Custer que ellos rechazaban y que habían visto tantas veces. Sin embargo, los grupos con los que más estrechamente trabajarían serían otros: los Young Lords, surgidos de las pandillas puertorriqueñas y los guetos; la Guardia Roja, formada por prochinos de San Francisco y, sobre todo, un «extraño» grupo surgido en Chicago, quizás menos conocido que el resto, que respondía al nombre de Jóvenes Patriotas (Young Patriots). Tenían todo el aspecto de hillbillies y rednecks revolucionarios. Greasers amantes de las armas que podían contar historias de padres y madres rápidos con el fusil, de cabañas perdidas en medio de los montes, de la casi ancestral desconfianza en el mismo Gobierno que harían las delicias a Jim Goad, autor del Manifiesto Redneck, o al cantante country punk Hank Williams III. Escuchaban country, amaban las motos y las armas, se vestían impecablemente y lograron lo que parecía imposible: colocar la bandera sureña junto al puño negro militante.</div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">Se trataba de jóvenes sureños emigrados, mayoritariamente de los Apalaches, que habían ido a parar a Chicago. Poco tiempo después, en 1968, ya habían creado su grupo, en parte como imitación de los mismos Panteras Negras, pero también a partir de su propio legado: años antes, se manifestaban por la ciudad bajo las siglas de JOIN. Desde siempre, en sus barrios pobres de la ciudad en los que vivían ondeaba la bandera de la Confederación. Los futuros miembros de los Jóvenes Patriotas no la veían como un símbolo racista, sino simplemente un recordatorio del lugar del que provenían. La integración de la bandera sureña en su discurso revolucionario fue algo natural y, posteriormente, aceptado sin problemas por los militantes negros. Atendían a desempleados, hombres y mujeres que vivían en la extrema pobreza, represaliados por la violencia policial. Formaban piquetes, montaban pequeños comedores para la comunidad. Hablaban de responder a los ataques de la policía y también de una revolución que parecía inminente. En última instancia, se habían dado con un puente ideológico y táctico con Newton y los rebeldes negros: la cuestión no solamente era racial sino social. Ellos, al igual que los panteras, estaban siendo explotados y así estarían salvo que el país se levantase contra los burócratas y dirigentes, contra la auténtica basura blanca. Todo eso los acercó a la pujante sección de Illinois del Partido de la Panteras Negras, con quienes comenzaron a colaborar activamente, inaugurando la Free Health Clinic en septiembre de 1969, mientras Huey P. Newton amenazaba con llegar hasta la Casablanca para echarla abajo. Casi no había deferencias entre los panteras y los hillbillies revolucionarios, que al igual que los primeros abrieron sus comedores sociales y escuelas autogestionadas. Sin embargo, tomaban sus referencias de su propia cultura sureña. De este modo, cuando el Ayuntamiento intentó desalojar a los residentes en un barrio pobre de Chicago crearon la Uptown Area People’s Planning Coalition (UAAP), cuya finalidad última era levantar en ese mismo lugar una urbanización proletaria autogestionada que llamaron Hank Williams Village en honor al cantante country que todos veneraban. Por entonces, el grupo ya era muy célebre y hasta tuvo su réplica en una banda motorista aliada que se llamó Lincoln Park Patriots. Los Young Patriots se hicieron con los terrenos, ocupándolos y realizando en ellos toda clase de actividades. Pero la utopía redneck no prosperó.</span><br />
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El resultado de la unión entre los Jóvenes Patriotas y los Panteras Negras, junto a los puertorriqueños, fue la Rainbow Coalition (que publicó el periódico Rising Up Angry), pero que tendría poco recorrido: en un año muchos de sus participantes había sido asesinados o encarcelados, como Fred Hampton, líder pantera del capítulo de Illinois y colega de los hillbillies. Otros, sencillamente, habían abandonado el país, marchando al exilio. Fue el final de un ciclo, su epitafio greaser.</div>
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FUENTE : www.agenteprovocador.es</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-10994737771301060272016-01-31T00:30:00.003-10:002016-01-31T00:30:33.026-10:00Rubble Kings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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From 1968 to 1975, gangs ruled New York City. Beyond the idealistic hopes of the civil rights movement lay a unfocused rage. Neither law enforcement nor social agency could end the escalating bloodshed. Peace came only through the most unlikely and courageous of events that would change the world for generations to come by giving birth to hip-hop culture. Rubble Kings chronicles life during this era of gang rule, tells the story of how a few extraordinary, forgotten people did the impossible, and how their actions impacted New York City and the world over.<br />
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Shan Nicholson is an award winning filmmaker, DJ, music producer, and counter/pop culture storyteller. His work is unabashedly inspired by being a product of New York City’s culturally rich period of the 1980’s, which continues to influence the world over. Nicholson’s feature-length documentary, Rubble Kings, the story of New York City gang culture in the 1970’s and its influence on the birth of hip hop, is poised for national and international release summer 2015. A feature narrative is subsequently in development, directly inspired by the events described in Rubble Kings and being written by Nicholson. Beyond his burgeoning success as a documentary film director, Nicholson has focused equal attention on screen writing, directing online content and music videos, with premieres on pop culture tastemaker sites such as Pitchfork, MTV, VH1, and Rolling Stone. Nicholson also has several screenplays in development that have emerged from his documentary work.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-47433372217234978882015-09-25T12:58:00.000-10:002017-06-28T23:58:47.394-10:00Renegades of Rhythm<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lk0BPO2aZjc" width="1280"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Utilizing vinyl borrowed exclusively from Afrika Bambaataa's historic and genre-defining record collection, DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist's acclaimed Renegades Of Rhythm set touches down in Oakland, California in this professionally-documented film experience. You're there in the audience as the two DJ's unravel the evolution of Hip-Hop music and culture, using the same artifacts that helped create it. "Not just any records- the MASTER OF RECORDS' records." <br />
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</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-47168604016416880742015-09-20T01:43:00.000-10:002017-10-10T20:10:34.374-10:00AfroCubism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This short film provides an exclusive look at the making of the most eagerly anticipated release in world music. This collaboration of the finest musicians from Cuba and Mali features Eliades Ochoa, Bassekou Kouyate, Djelimady Tounkara, and Toumani Diabate, and sees the realisation of the project that inadvertently became the Buena Vista Social Club.</div>
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Members: Eliades Ochoa - acoustic guitar & vocals Djelimady Tounkara - electric guitar Bassekou Kouyaté - ngoni Toumani Diabaté - kora Kasse Mady Diabaté - vocals Lassana Diabaté - balafon Baba/Yacouba Sissoko - tama Jose A. Martinez - double bass Osnel Odit - acoustic guitar Jorge Maturell - congas and bongos Eglis Ochoa - maracas Lennis Lara - trumpet Alain A. Dragonit - trumpet<br />
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Home Town: Mali / Cuba<br />
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ELIADES OCHOA guitar and vocals (born Songo la Maya, Cuba 1946)</div>
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With his trademark cowboy hat and penchant for wearing black, Eliades Ochoa has been dubbed 'Cuba's Johnny Cash'. There's more than a fashion statement in the comparison to America's greatest country singer, too, for Ochoa is a 'guajiro' (from the countryside) and a champion of rural Cuban styles such as son and guararcha.</div>
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One of the younger members of the Buena Vista Social Club, at 63, he's now become something of an elder statesman himself and has been a professional musician for almost half a century. For many years he was a regular at Santiago's famous Casa de la Trova and in 1978 he took over the leadership of Cuarteto Patria, a Cuban institution which by then had already been performing for almost 40 years. He recorded two albums with the group for the Mexican Corason label and in 1986 met the veteran singer Compay Segundo, who joined Cuarteto Patria for a time. While with the group Segundo recorded the album 'Chanchaneando' which featured the original version of 'Chan Chan'.</div>
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A decade after their first meeting, Ochoa and Segundo famously reunited to perform 'Chan Chan' as the opening track on the Grammy winning 'Buena Vista Social Club'. To that album Eliades also contributed lead vocals and guitar on El Cuarto de Tula, and his own guajira showcase on El Carretero. Since Buena Vista, he has recorded several fine albums under his own name including 'Cubafrica' (1998) with the great Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango; 'Sublime Ilusión' (1999); 'Tributo a Cuarteto Patria' (2000) and 'Estoy Como Nunca' (2002). He continues to lead Grupo Patria and tours regularly around the world.</div>
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TOUMANI DIABATÃ kora (born Bamako, Mali 1965)</div>
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One of the most significant musicians in Africa, Toumani Diabaté is the leading exponent of the West African harp known as the kora. Born in Bamako, he inherited his musical gifts from a long family lineage of kora masters. A child prodigy, he recorded his debut album 'Kaira' in London in 1986 at the age of 21. Playing bass, rhythm and solo simultaneously on the instrument's 21 strings, it was the first ever album of solo kora music and the start of a remarkable international career.</div>
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As an innovative and experimental collaborator, he recorded the two acclaimed 'Songhai' albums with the Spanish flamenco group Ketama and has worked with Damon Albarn, Björk, and the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). His collaboration with Taj Mahal on 1999's 'Kulanjan' explored the connections between West African music and the blues and was cited by Barrack Obama as his favourite album during the presidential election campaign.</div>
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In the more traditional vein, he has recorded widely with most of the greatest names in Malian music, both on his own albums and as a guest on releases by singers such as Salif Keita and Kasse Mady Diabaté. In recent years, he has recorded a series of thrillingly diverse releases for World Circuit, including two albums of kora-guitar duets with Ali Farka Touré, including the Grammy winning 'In the Heart of the Moon' (2004); 'Boulevard de l¹Indépendance' (2005) with his groundbreaking Symmetric Orchestra; and the acoustic solo kora collection 'The Mandé Variations' (2008).</div>
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BASSEKOU KOUYATE ngoni (born Garana, Mali 1966)</div>
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Descended from a long line of griots, Bassekou Kouyate was born in the Segu region of Mali, where his mother was a famous singer and his father was a celebrated player of the ngoni ba, (banjo-like lute) on the local wedding party circuit. At the age of 16, Bassekou took his father's place and by the end of the 1980s he had joined Toumani Diabaté's Symmetric Orchestra.</div>
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Since then he has revolutionised the playing of the ngoni (an instrument dating back to the fourteenth century), adding extra strings to give him a wider melodic range and inventing new plucking methods to allow faster runs and more versatility. He also became the first ngoni player to use the instrument like a guitar, performing standing, instead of in the traditional seated position. As an accompanist, he went on to record with a wide variety of performers, including Taj Mahal, Ali Farka Touré, and the second Songhai album, before forming the ngoni quartet Ngoni Ba and making his debut as a band leader on 'Segu Blue', which won the 2007 BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music as best album. He followed it in 2009 with a second album, 'I Speak Fula', which was similarly praised, and he's very much in demand on the live circuit, as well as being an important collaborator with Africa Express.</div>
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KASSE MADY DIABATÃ vocals (born Kangaba, Mali 1949)</div>
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Now in his early 60s, the veteran griot singer Kasse Mady Diabaté began performing with the Super Mandé orchestra more than 40 years ago. He went on to become lead vocalist with National Badema (previously known as Las Maravillas de Mali). The band originally consisted of Malian musicians who had been sent to Cuba by the Mali government to train in Havana's music conservatoires. After nearly eight years there, they returned home to find Mali under a policy of cultural authenticity under which the Maravillas were encouraged to develop a more indigenous rather than Cuban repertoire, and to take a Malian name, thus becoming National Badema (national family). And to help them create a more local sound, they recruited the traditional griot singer Kasse Mady, although their sound remained infused with a strong Cuban flavour.</div>
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He recorded his debut solo album 'Fode' in Paris, in 1989. An electric, dance-based recording produced by Ibrahima Sylla, he followed it a year later with a contrasting album of acoustic griot songs, 'Kela Tradition' (1990). He also sang on the fusion album 'Songhai 2' (1995) with Ketama and Toumani Diabaté. After almost a decade in Paris, he returned to Mali in 1998 and joined Taj Mahal, Toumani Diabaté and Bassekou Kouyate on the recording of 'Kulanjan' and became lead vocalist with Toumani's Symmetric Orchestra on the 2006 album, 'Boulevard de l'Indépendance'. AfroCubism is not the first time he has worked with Cuban musicians, for the late Buena Vista Social Club star CachaÃto López guested on his 2003 solo album 'Kassi Kasse'. His most recent solo album 'Manden Djeli Kan' appeared in 2009.</div>
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DJELIMADY TOUNKARA guitars (born Kita, Mali in 1947)</div>
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Arguably the finest guitarist in Africa, Djelimady Tounkara was born in Kita and grew up playing drums and the xalam (lute). His parents wanted him to become an Islamic cleric but the plan was abandoned as soon as he saw and heard his first guitar. After early success playing in the Kita regional; band, by the mid-1960s he had moved to Bamako, where he joined Misra Jazz before he was promoted to join the state-sponsored Orchestre National as rhythm guitarist.</div>
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After the orchestra was disbanded, he joined the now legendary Rail Band in the early 1970s in what became known as their second period, playing at the Buffet Hotel de la Gare, next to Bamako's train station in a line up that included the singers Salif Keita and Mory Kante. He remained the Rail Band's arranger and lead guitarist throughout its glory years and in its later revival as the Super Rail Band, and continues to perform with them in Bamako to this day. In addition to appearing on all the Rail Band's recordings, he has also released the solo acoustic albums, 'Sigui' (2001) and 'Solon Kono' (2006) and 'Big String Theory' (2002) with his trio Bajourou.</div>
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FODE LASSANA DIABATÃ balafon (born Conakry, Guinea, 1971)</div>
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Lassana Diabaté is recognised as the outstanding balafon (ancestor of marimba) player of his generation. Born in Guinea into a family of virtuoso balafon players, he grew up studying the instrument in the country's traditional style before moving to Mali where he took advantage of the greater freedom with which the balafon is played there. He became a protégé of the great Kélétigui Diabaté from whom he learned the technique of playing two balafons simultaneously, the additional instrument possessing the equivalent of the black keys on the piano.</div>
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He has appeared on albums by Salif Keita, Bassekou Kouyate, and Kasse Mady Diabaté among others, and has been a long-standing member of Toumani Diabaté's Symmetric Orchestra. He also played on 'Kulanjan', Toumani's celebrated collaboration with the American bluesman Taj Mahal.</div>
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BABA SISSOKO talking drum (born Bamako, Mali, 1963)</div>
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Not only a master of the tamani (talking drum), Baba is equally adept at playing the ngoni, kamelngoni, bala and calabash. In the mid 1980s he was part of the prestigious Instrumental Ensemble of Mali orchestra, playing the tamani and ngoni. In 1991 he founded Baba Sissoko & Taman Kan, incorporating traditional Malian influences with blues, jazz and rock; they have toured extensively and released a number of albums. At the same time Baba forged a rather successful career collaborating with a whole host of musicians from both Mali and abroad, most notably his acclaimed 12 year relationship with Habib Koité.</div>
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Over the years Baba has released several solo albums and has worked with artists as diverse as Art Ensemble of Chicago, Angá DÃaz, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Rokia Traoré, and AKA Moon. He also has taught traditional drum in Brussels, Belgium, and led conferences for the University of Calibre's Art, Music, and Spectacle Centre in Italy.</div>
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JOSE ANGEL MARTINEZ double bass (born Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 1977)</div>
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Studied double bass at the Conservatorio Estaban Salas, in the city of Santiago de Cuba, winning prizes at various city-wide and national Amadeo Roldán competitions. His first full time professional job was with Eliades Ochoa's Grupo Patria, joining several months after graduating in 2000.</div>
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Over the past decade has recorded and toured worldwide with Eliades, but has also recorded some tracks for the Grammy nominated album "Tributo al Cuarteto Patria" as well as playing on the album "Aires" by the famous Spanish singer José Mercé.</div>
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JORGE MATURELL congas, bongos, cowbell (born Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 1963)</div>
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Studied music at the Escuela de Nivel Medio Superior de Superación Profesional. In 1984 founded the Septeto Turquino, recording many albums including "Son para los Rumberos", which won the EGREM Prize in 1996, the prize of Bienes de Fondos Culturales, and special mention in the Opera Prima category in the Cubadisco Festival in 1997. In the late nineties he recorded "Amor a Santiago" with singer-songwriter Alberto Tosca, and "La Banda" with Francés Cirius MartÃnez.</div>
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In 2000 he joined Grupo Patria with whom he played on "Estoy Como Nunca" and "Tributo al Cuarteto Patria". He also played on "Aires" by José Mercé, and recorded with "Eliades Ochoa y la Banda el Jigüe". As well as being a percussionist he doubles as manager/administrator for Grupo Patria.</div>
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ONSEL ODIT chorus vocals, rhythm acoustic guitar (born Granma, Cuba, 1965)</div>
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Was a long term member of Septeto Turquino with Jorge Maturell from 1984-2000. During this time he also performed and recorded with a variety of Cuban artists, and also won first prize in the OTI performance competition in 1998 and represented Cuba in the International event in San José in Costa Rica.</div>
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Over the past decade he has been a member of Grupo los Olivos, Grupo AKAN, and since 2005 has been a member of Grupo Patria. Onsel's own compositions have been performed by Sexteto Moneda Nacional, Morena Son, Adalberto Ãlvarez, Roberto Torres, Tamara, Eduardo Sosa, Oscar de León, amongst others. His music has also appeared in the film 9911 and in the hit US TV series Alias.</div>
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EGLIS OCHOA maracas, guiro, chorus vocals (born Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 1972)</div>
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Began his musical studies at Esteban Salas Conservatory as a violinist, although as a student would play periodically with Quinteto Oriente and Grupo Patria. At the end of his studies in 1994 he joined his father Eliades Ochoa as a full time member of Grupo Patria as vocalist and percussionist, where he has remained until this day.</div>
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As one of the longest serving members of the group, performed on the trio of Grammy nominated Eliades Ochoa albums at the start of the last decade, and toured extensively worldwide with the Buena Vista Social Club Star, enjoying the Cuban music boom that the project kick-started.</div>
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<br />
For more information go to:<br />
<br />
www.afrocubism.com</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-57903400604204224592015-09-19T09:37:00.000-10:002015-09-18T23:41:49.578-10:00The Great Forgetting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 23px;"> <a href="http://www.ishmael.org/origins/DQ/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #990b0b; text-decoration: none;">Daniel Quinn</a></em><br />
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">A note about this electronic text</span><br />
The electronic version of this book has been made available as an introduction only, in the interests of widespread access to important ideas. Reading an entire book online on a bright screen is obviously a haphazard experience and hard on the eyes, and of course nowhere near enjoyable as reading pages in a book. But for those without such means and those wishing to read as far into the book as they please before seeking out the book for purchase, we hope this full text resource of Daniel Quinn's most famous work will be found of value. If you agree, and can afford to, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553375407/readishmaelco-20/103-3261837-4371020" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0073fa; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">please consider supporting the author's work by purchasing the book</a>.</div>
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It's also worth mentioning, in many cases, at least one of your friends has already read the book and would be more than willing to lend you the book should you ask. ;)</div>
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O N E</h1>
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1</h2>
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The first time I read the ad, I choked and cursed and spat and threw the paper to the floor. Since even this didn't seem to be quite enough, I snatched it up, marched into the kitchen, and shoved it into the trash. While I was there, I made myself a little breakfast and gave myself some time to cool down. I ate and thought about something else entirely. That's right. Then I dug the paper out of the trash and turned back to the Personals section, just to see if the damn thing was still there and just the way I remembered it. It was.</div>
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<tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; vertical-align: top;">TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire<br />
to save the world. Apply in person.</td></tr>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">An earnest desire to save the world!</em> Oh, I liked that. That was rich indeed. An earnest desire to save the world—yes, that was splendid. By noon, two hundred mooncalfs, softheads, boobies, ninnyhammers, noodleheads, gawkies, and assorted oafs and thickwits would doubtless be lined up at the address given, ready to turn over all their worldlies for the rare privilege of sitting at the feet of some guru pregnant with the news that all will be well if everyone will just turn around and give his neighbor a big hug.</div>
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You will wonder: Why is this man so indignant? So bitter? It's a fair question. In fact, it's a question I was asking myself.</div>
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The answer goes back to a time, a couple decades ago, when I'd had the silly notion that the thing I most wanted to do in the world was . . . to find a teacher. That's right. I imagined I wanted a teacher—needed a teacher. To show me how one goes about doing something that might be called . . . saving the world.</div>
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Stupid, no? Childish. Naive. Simple. Callow. Or just fundamentally dumb. In one so manifestly normal in other respects, it needs explaining.</div>
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It came about in this way.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px;">During the children's revolt of the sixties and seventies, I was just old enough to understand what these kids had in mind—they meant to turn the world upside down—and just young enough to believe they might actually succeed. It's true. Every morning when I opened my eyes, I expected to see that the new era had begun, that the sky was a brighter blue and the grass a brighter green. I expected to hear laughter in the air and to see people dancing in the streets, and not just kids—everyone! I won't apologize for my naivete; you only have to listen to the songs to know that I wasn't alone.</span><br />
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Then one day when I was in my mid-teens I woke up and realized that the new era was never going to begin. The revolt hadn't been put down, it had just dwindled away into a fashion statement. Can I have been the only person in the world who was disillusioned by this? Bewildered by this? It seemed so. Everyone else seemed to be able to pass it off with a cynical grin that said, "Well, what did you really expect? There's never been any more than this and never will be any more than this. Nobody's out to save the world, because nobody gives a damn about the world, that was just a bunch of goofy kids talking. Get a job, make some money, work till you're sixty, then move to Florida and die."</div>
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I couldn't shrug it away like this, and in my innocence I thought there had to be <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">someone</em> out there with an unknown wisdom who could dispel my disillusionment and bewilderment: a teacher.</div>
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Well, of course there wasn't.</div>
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I didn't want a guru or a kung fu master or a spiritual director. I didn't want to become a sorcerer or learn the zen of archery or meditate or align my chakras or uncover past incarnations. Arts and disciplines of that kind are fundamentally selfish; they're all designed to benefit the pupil—not the world. I was after something else entirely, but it wasn't in the Yellow Pages or anywhere else that I could discover.</div>
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In Hermann Hesse's <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Journey to the East</em>, we never find out what Leo's awesome wisdom consists of. This is because Hesse couldn't tell us what he himself didn't know. He was like me—he just yearned for there to be someone in the world like Leo, someone with a secret knowledge and a wisdom beyond his own. In fact, of course, there is no secret knowledge; no one knows anything that can't be found on a shelf in the public library. But I didn't know that then.</div>
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So I looked. Silly as it sounds now, I looked. By comparison, going after the Grail would have made more sense. I won't talk about it, it's too embarrassing. I looked until I wised up. I stopped making a fool of myself, but something died inside of me—something that I'd always sort of liked and admired. In its place grew a scar—a tough spot but also a sore spot.</div>
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And now, years after I'd given up the search, here was some charlatan advertising in the newspaper for the very same young dreamer that I'd been fifteen years ago.</div>
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But this still doesn't explain my outrage, does it?</div>
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Try this: You've been in love with someone for a decade—someone who barely knows you're alive. You've done everything, tried everything to make this person see that you're a valuable, estimable person, and that your love is worth something. Then one day you open up the paper and glance at the Personals column, and there you see that your loved one has placed an ad . . . seeking someone worthwhile to love and be loved by.</div>
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Oh, I know it's not exactly the same. Why should I have expected this unknown teacher to have contacted me instead of advertising for a pupil? Contrariwise, if this teacher was a charlatan, as I assumed, why would I have <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">wanted</em> him to contact me?</div>
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Let it go. I was being irrational. It happens, it's allowed.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zjX3VZXsWZw/VeR559fe7TI/AAAAAAAAEG4/SZEUk_oEElU/s1600/photo-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zjX3VZXsWZw/VeR559fe7TI/AAAAAAAAEG4/SZEUk_oEElU/s640/photo-2.jpg" width="478" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://harrismattjr.wordpress.com/">ART SOURCE</a></div>
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2</h2>
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I had to go down there, of course—had to satisfy myself that it was just another scam. You understand. Thirty seconds would do it, a single look, ten words out of his mouth. Then I'd know. Then I could go home and forget about it.</div>
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When I got there, I was surprised to find it was a very ordinary sort of office building, full of second-rate flacks, lawyers, dentists, travel agents, a chiropractor, and a private investigator or two. I'd expected something a little more atmospheric—a brownstone with paneled walls, high ceilings, and shuttered windows, perhaps. I was looking for Room 105, and I found it in the back, where a window would overlook the alley. The door was uninformative. I pushed it open and stepped into a large, empty room. This uncommon space had been created by knocking down interior partitions, the marks of which could still be seen on the bare hardwood floor.</div>
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That was my first impression: emptiness. The second was olfactory; the place reeked of the circus—no, not the circus, the menagerie: unmistakable but not unpleasant. I looked around. The room was not entirely empty. Against the wall at the left stood a small bookcase containing thirty or forty volumes, mainly on history, prehistory, and anthropology. A lone overstuffed chair stood in the middle, facing away, toward the wall at the right, and looking like something the movers had left behind. Doubtless this was reserved for the master; his pupils would kneel or crouch on mats arranged in a semicircle at his knee.</div>
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And where were these pupils, who I had predicted would be present by the hundreds? Had they perhaps come and been led away like the children of Hamelin? A film of dust lay undisturbed on the floor to disprove this fancy.</div>
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There was something odd about the room, but it took me another look round to figure out what it was. In the wall opposite the door stood two tall casement windows admitting a feeble light from the alley; the wall to the left, common with the office next door, was blank. The wall to the right was pierced by a very large plate-glass window, but this was plainly not a window to the outside world, for it admitted no light at all; it was a window into an adjacent room, even dimmer than the one I occupied. I wondered what object of piety was displayed there, safely beyond the touch of inquisitive hands. Was it some embalmed Yeti or Bigfoot, made of cat fur and papier-mache? Was it the body of a UFOnaut cut down by a National Guardsman before he could deliver his sublime message from the stars ("We are brothers. Be nice.")?</div>
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Because it was backed by darkness, the glass in this window was black—opaque, reflective. I made no attempt to see beyond it as I approached; I was the spectacle under observation. On arrival, I continued to gaze into my own eyes for a moment, then rolled the focus forward beyond the glass—and found myself looking into another pair of eyes.</div>
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I fell back, startled. Then, recognizing what I'd seen, I fell back again, now a little frightened.</div>
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The creature on the other side of the glass was a full-grown gorilla.</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Full-grown</em> says nothing, of course. He was terrifyingly enormous, a boulder, a sarsen of Stonehenge. His sheer mass was alarming in itself, even though he wasn't using it in any menacing way. On the contrary, he was half-sitting, half-reclining most placidly, nibbling delicately on a slender branch he carried in his left hand like a wand.</div>
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I did not know what to say. You will be able to judge how unnerved I was by this fact: that it seemed to me I should speak—excuse myself, explain my presence, justify my intrusion, beg the creature's pardon. I felt it was an affront to gaze into his eyes, but I was paralyzed, helpless. I could look at nothing else in the world but his face, more hideous than any other in the animal kingdom because of its similarity to our own, yet in its way more noble than any Greek ideal of perfection.</div>
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There was in fact no obstacle between us. The pane of glass would have parted like a tissue had he touched it. But he seemed to have no idea of touching it. He sat and gazed into my eyes and nibbled the end of his branch and waited. No, he wasn't waiting; he was merely <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">there</em>, had been there before I arrived and would be there when I'd left. I had the feeling I was of no more significance to him than a passing cloud is to a shepherd resting on a hillside.</div>
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As my fear began to ebb, consciousness of my situation returned. I said to myself that the teacher was plainly not on hand, that there was nothing to keep me there, that I should go home. But I didn't like to leave with the feeling that I'd accomplished nothing at all. I looked around, thinking I'd leave a note, if I could find something to write on (and with), but there was nothing. Nevertheless, this search, with the thought of written communication in mind, brought to my attention something I'd overlooked in the room that lay beyond the glass; it was a sign or poster hanging on the wall behind the gorilla. It read:</div>
<center style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px;">
<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />WITH MAN GONE,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />WILL THERE<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />BE HOPE<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />FOR GORILLA?</center>
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<br /></div>
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This sign stopped me—or rather, this text stopped me. Words are my profession; I seized these and demanded that they explain themselves, that they cease to be ambiguous. Did they imply that hope for gorillas lay in the extinction of the human race or in its survival? It could be read either way.</div>
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It was, of course, a koan—meant to be inexplicable. It disgusted me for that reason, and for another reason: because it appeared that this magnificent creature beyond the glass was being held in captivity for no other reason than to serve as a sort of animate <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">illustration</em> for this koan.</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">You really ought to do something about this</em>, I told myself angrily. Then I added: <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">It would be best if you sat down and were still</em>.</div>
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I listened to the echo of this strange admonishment as if it were a fragment of music I couldn't quite identify. I looked at the chair and wondered: <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Would</em> it be best to sit down and be still? And if so, why? The answer came readily enough: <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Because, if you are still, then you will be better able to hear</em>. Yes, I thought, that is undeniably so.</div>
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For no conscious reason, I lifted my eyes to those of my beastly companion in the next room. As everyone knows, eyes <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">speak</em>. A pair of strangers can effortlessly reveal their mutual interest and attraction in a single glance. <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">His</em> eyes spoke, and I understood. My legs turned to jelly, and I barely managed to reach the chair without collapsing.</div>
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"But how?" I said, not daring to speak the words aloud.</div>
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"What does it matter?" he replied as silently. "It's so, and nothing more needs to be said."</div>
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"But you—" I sputtered. "You are . . ."</div>
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I found that, having come to the word, and with no other word to put in its place, I could not speak it.</div>
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After a moment he nodded, as if in acknowledgment of my difficulty. "I am the teacher."</div>
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For a time, we gazed into each other's eyes, and my head felt as empty as a derelict barn.</div>
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Then he said: "Do you need time to collect yourself?"</div>
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"Yes!" I cried, speaking aloud for the first time.</div>
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He turned his massive head to one side to peer at me curiously. "Will it help you to listen to my story?"</div>
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"Indeed it will," I said. "But first—if you will—please tell me your name."</div>
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He stared at me for a while without replying and (as far as I could tell at that time) without expression. Then he proceeded as if I hadn't spoken at all.</div>
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"I was born somewhere in the forests of equatorial West Africa," he said. "I've never made any effort to find out exactly where, and see no reason to do so now. Do you happen to know anything about animal collecting for zoos and circuses?"</div>
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I looked up, startled. "I know nothing at all about animal collecting."</div>
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"At one time, or at least during the thirties, the method commonly used with gorillas was this: On finding a band, collectors would shoot the females and pick up all the infants in sight."</div>
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"How terrible," I said, without thinking.</div>
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The creature replied with a shrug. "I have no actual memory of the event—though I have memories of still earlier times. In any case, the Johnsons sold me to a zoo in some small northeastern city—I can't say which, for I had no awareness of such things as yet. There I lived and grew for several years."</div>
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He paused and nibbled absentmindedly on his branch for a while, as if gathering his thoughts.</div>
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3</h2>
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In such places (he went on at last), where animals are simply penned up, they are almost always more thoughtful than their cousins in the wild. This is because even the dimmest of them cannot help but sense that something is very wrong with this style of living. When I say that they are more thoughtful, I don't mean to imply that they acquire powers of ratiocination. But the tiger you see madly pacing its cage is nevertheless preoccupied with something that a human would certainly recognize as a thought. And this thought is a question: <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Why</em>? "Why, why, why, why, why, why?" the tiger asks itself hour after hour, day after day, year after year, as it treads its endless path behind the bars of its cage. It cannot analyze the question or elaborate on it. If you were somehow able to ask the creature, "Why <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">what</em>?" it would be unable to answer you. Nevertheless this question burns like an unquenchable flame in its mind, inflicting a searing pain that does not diminish until the creature lapses into a final lethargy that zookeepers recognize as an irreversible rejection of life. And of course this questioning is something that no tiger does in its normal habitat.</div>
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Before long I too began to ask myself <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">why</em>. Being neurologically far in advance of the tiger, I was able to examine what I meant by the question, at least in a rudimentary way. I remembered a different sort of life, which was, for those who lived it, interesting and pleasant. By contrast, this life was agonizingly boring and never pleasant. Thus, in asking <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">why</em>, I was trying to puzzle out why life should be divided in this way, half of it interesting and pleasant and half of it boring and unpleasant. I had no concept of myself as a captive; it didn't occur to me that anyone was preventing me from having an interesting and pleasant life. When no answer to my question was forthcoming, I began to consider the differences between the two life-styles. The most fundamental difference was that in Africa I was a member of a family—of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven't known for thousands of years. If gorillas were capable of such an expression, they would tell you that their family is like a hand, of which they are the fingers. They are fully aware of being a family but are very little aware of being individuals. Here in the zoo there were other gorillas—but there was no family. Five severed fingers do not make a hand.</div>
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I considered the matter of our feeding. Human children dream of a land where the mountains are ice cream and the trees are gingerbread and the stones are bonbons. For a gorilla, Africa is just such a land. Wherever one turns, there is something wonderful to eat. One never thinks, "Oh, I'd better look for some food." Food is everywhere, and one picks it up almost absentmindedly, as one takes a breath of air. In fact, one does not think of feeding as a distinct activity at all. Rather, it's like a delicious music that plays in the background of all activities throughout the day. In fact, feeding became feeding for me only at the zoo, where twice daily great masses of tasteless fodder were pitched into our cages.</div>
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It was in puzzling out such small matters as these that my interior life began—quite unnoticed.</div>
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Although naturally I knew nothing of it, the Great Depression was taking its toll on all aspects of American life. Zoos everywhere were being forced to economize, reducing the number of animals to be maintained and thereby reducing expenses of all kinds. A great many animals were simply put down, I believe, for there was no market in the private sector for animals that were neither easy to keep nor very colorful or dramatic. The exceptions were, of course, the big cats and the primates.</div>
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To make a long story short, I was sold to the owner of a traveling menagerie with an empty wagon to fill. I was a large and impressive adolescent and doubtless represented a sensible long-term investment.</div>
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You might imagine that life in one cage is like life in any other cage, but this is not at all the case. Take the matter of human contact, for example. At the zoo, all the gorillas were aware of our human visitors. They were a curiosity for us, worth watching, in the way that birds or squirrels around a house might seem worth watching to a human family. It was clear that these strange creatures were there looking at us, but it never crossed our minds that they had come for that express purpose. At the menagerie, however, I quickly came to a true understanding of this phenomenon.</div>
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Indeed, my education in this regard began from the moment I was first put on display. A small group of visitors approached my wagon and after a moment began <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">speaking to me</em>. I was astounded. At the zoo, visitors had talked to <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">one another</em> —never to us. "Perhaps these people are confused," I said to myself. "Perhaps they've mistaken me for one of themselves." My wonderment and perplexity grew as, one after another, every group that visited my wagon behaved in the same way. I simply didn't know what to make of it.</div>
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That night, without thinking of it as such, I made my first real attempt to marshal my thoughts to solve a problem. Was it possible, I wondered, that changing my location had somehow changed <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">me</em>? I didn't feel in the least changed, and certainly nothing in my appearance seemed to have changed. Perhaps, I thought, the people who visited me that day belonged to a different species from those who had come to the zoo. This reasoning did not impress me; the two groups were identical in every way but this: that one group talked among themselves and the other talked to me. Even the sound of the talking was the same. It had to be something else.</div>
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The following night I attacked the problem again, reasoning in this way: If nothing has changed in me and nothing has changed in them, then <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">something else</em> must have changed. I am the same and they are the same, therefore something else is <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">not</em> the same. Looking at the matter this way, I could see only one answer: At the zoo there were many gorillas; here there was only one. I felt the force of this but could not imagine why visitors would behave one way in the presence of many gorillas and a different way in the presence of one gorilla.</div>
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The next day I tried to pay more attention to what my visitors were saying. I soon noticed that, although every speech was different, there was one sound that occurred over and over, and it seemed to be intended to attract my attention. Of course I was unable to hazard a guess as to its meaning; I possessed nothing that would serve as a Rosetta Stone.</div>
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The wagon to the right of mine was occupied by a female chimpanzee with an infant, and I had already observed that visitors spoke to her in the same way they spoke to me. Now I noticed that visitors employed a different recurrent sound to attract her attention. At her wagon, visitors called out, "Zsa-Zsa! Zsa-Zsa! Zsa-Zsa!" At my wagon, they called out, "Goliath! Goliath! Goliath!"</div>
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By small steps such as these, I soon understood that these sounds in some mysterious way attached directly to the two of us <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">as individuals</em>. You, who have had a name from birth and who probably think that even a pet dog is aware of having a name (which is untrue), cannot imagine what a revolution in perception the acquisition of a name produced in me. It would be no exaggeration to say that I was truly born in that moment—born as a person.</div>
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From the realization that I had a name to the realization that <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">everything</em> has a name was not a great leap. You might think a caged animal would have little opportunity to learn the language of its visitors, but this is not so. Menageries attract families, and I soon discovered that parents are incessantly schooling their children in the arts of language: "Look, Johnny, there's a duck! Can you say <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">duck</em>? D-u-u-c-k.! Do you know what a duck says? A duck says <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">quack quack</em>!"</div>
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Within a couple of years I was able to follow most conversations within earshot, but I found that puzzlement kept pace with comprehension. I knew by now that I was a gorilla and that Zsa-Zsa was a chimpanzee. I also knew that all the inhabitants of the wagons were <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">animals</em>. But I could not quite make out the constitution of an animal; our human visitors clearly distinguished between themselves and animals, but I was unable to figure out why. If I understood what made us animals (and I thought I did), I couldn't understand what made them <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">not</em> animals.</div>
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The nature of our captivity was no longer a mystery, for I had heard it explained to hundreds of children. All the animals of the menagerie had originally lived in something called The Wild, which extended all over the world (whatever a "world" might be). We had been taken from The Wild and brought together in one place, because, for some strange reason, people found us interesting. We were kept in cages because we were "wild" and "dangerous"—terms that baffled me, because they evidently referred to qualities I epitomized in myself. I mean that when parents wanted to show their children a particularly wild and dangerous creature, they would point at me. It's true that they would also point at the big cats, but since I'd never seen a big cat outside a cage, this was not enlightening.</div>
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On the whole, life at the menagerie was an improvement over life at the zoo, because it was not so oppressively boring. It didn't occur to me to be resentful of my keepers. Although they had a greater range of movement, they seemed as much bound to the menagerie as the rest of us, and I had no inkling that they lived an entirely different sort of life on the outside. It would have been as plausible for Boyle's law to have popped into my head as the notion that I had been unjustly deprived of some inborn right, such as the right to live as I pleased.</div>
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Perhaps three or four years passed. Then one rainy day, when the lot was deserted, I received a peculiar visitor: a lone man, who looked to be ancient and shriveled to me, but who I later learned was only in his early forties. Even his approach was distinctive. He stood at the entrance to the menagerie, glanced methodically at each wagon in turn, and then headed straight for mine. He paused at the rope slung some five feet away, planted the tip of his walking stick in the mud just ahead of his shoes, and peered intently into my eyes. I have never been disconcerted by a human gaze, so I placidly returned his stare. I sat and he stood for several minutes without moving. I remember feeling an unusual admiration for this man, so stoically enduring the drizzle that was streaming down his face and soaking his clothes.</div>
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At last he straightened up and gave me a nod, as if he'd come to some carefully considered conclusion.</div>
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"You are <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">not</em> Goliath," he said.</div>
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At that, he turned and marched back the way he'd come, without a look to right or left.</div>
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4</h2>
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I was thunderstruck, as you may well imagine. <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Not</em> Goliath? What could it possibly mean to be <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">not</em> Goliath?</div>
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It didn't occur to me to say, "Well, if I'm not Goliath, then who <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">am</em> I?" A human would ask this question, because he would know that, whatever his name, he is assuredly <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">someone</em>. I did not. On the contrary, it seemed to me that if I was not Goliath, then I must be no one at all.</div>
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Though this stranger had never laid eyes on me before that day, I didn't doubt for a moment that he spoke with an unquestionable authority. A thousand others had called me by the name of Goliath—even those who, like the workers at the menagerie, knew me well—but that was clearly not the point, counted for nothing. The stranger hadn't said, "Your <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">name</em> is not Goliath." He had said, "<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">You</em> are not Goliath." There was a world of difference. As I felt it (though I could not have expressed it this way at the time), my awareness of selfhood had been pronounced a delusion.</div>
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I drifted into a sort of fugue state, neither aware nor unconscious. An attendant came round with food, but I ignored him. Night fell, but I didn't sleep. The rain stopped and the sun rose without my noticing. Soon there were the usual crowds of visitors calling out, "Goliath! Goliath! Goliath!" but I paid no attention.</div>
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Several days passed in this way. Then one evening after the menagerie had closed for the day, I took a long drink from my bowl and soon fell asleep—a powerful sedative had been added to my water. At dawn I awoke in an unfamiliar cage. At first, because it was so large and so strangely shaped, I didn't even recognize it as a cage. In fact, it was circular, and open to the air on all sides; as I later understood, a gazebo had been modified to serve the purpose. Except for a large white house nearby, it stood alone in the midst of an attractive park that I imagined must extend to the ends of the earth.</div>
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It was not long before I'd conceived an explanation for this strange translocation: The people who visited the menagerie came, at least in part, with the expectation of seeing a gorilla named Goliath; how they came to have this expectation I could not guess, but they certainly seemed to have it; and when the owner of the menagerie learned that I was in fact <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">not</em> Goliath, he could scarcely go on exhibiting me as such, and so had no real choice but to send me away. I didn't know whether to be sorry about this or not; my new home was far more pleasant than anything I'd seen since leaving Africa, but without the daily stimulation of the crowds, it would soon become even more excruciatingly boring than the zoo, where at least I'd had the company of other gorillas. I was still pondering these matters when, around midmorning, I looked up and saw that I was not alone. A man was standing just beyond the bars, blackly silhouetted against the sunlit house in the distance. I approached cautiously and was astonished to recognize him.</div>
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As if reenacting our former encounter, we gazed into each other's eyes for several minutes, I sitting on the floor of my cage, he leaning on his walking stick. I saw that, dry and freshly dressed, he was not the elderly person I'd first taken him for. His face was long and dark and bony, his eyes burned with a strange intensity, and his mouth seemed set in an expression of bitter mirth. At last he nodded, exactly as before, and said:</div>
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"Yes, I was right. You are not Goliath. You are Ishmael."</div>
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Once again, as if everything that mattered was now finally settled, he turned and walked away.</div>
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And once again I was thunderstruck—but this time by a feeling of profound relief, for I had been redeemed from oblivion. More, the error that caused me to live as an unwitting impostor for so many years had been corrected at last. I had been made whole as a person—not again but for the very first time.</div>
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I was consumed with curiosity about my savior. I didn't think to associate him with my removal from the menagerie to this charming belvedere, for I was as yet incapable of even that most primitive of fallacies: <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">post hoc, ergo propter hoc</em>. He was to me a supernal being. To a mind ready for mythology, he was the beginning of what is meant by <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">godlike</em>. He had twice made a brief appearance in my life—and twice, with a single utterance, had transformed me. I tried to search for the underlying meaning of these appearances, but found only questions. Had this man come to the menagerie in search of Goliath or in search of me? Had he come because he <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">hoped</em> I was Goliath or because he suspected I was <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">not</em> Goliath? How had he so promptly found me in my new location? I had no measure of the extent of human information; if it was common knowledge that I could be found at the menagerie (as it had seemed to be), was it also common knowledge that I could now be found here? Despite all these unanswerable questions, the overwhelming fact remained that this uncanny creature had twice sought me out in order to address me in an unprecedented way—as a person. I was certain that, having finally settled the matter of my identity, he would vanish from my life forever; what more was there for him to do?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Doubtless you will have surmised that all these breathless apperceptions were just so much moonshine. Nonetheless the truth (as I later learned it) was not much less fantastic.</div>
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My benefactor was a wealthy Jewish merchant of this city, a man by the name of Walter Sokolow. On the day he discovered me at the menagerie, he'd been out walking in the rain, in a kind of suicidal gloom that had descended on him a few months before, when he learned beyond any doubt that his entire family had been swallowed up in the Nazi holocaust. His wanderings led him to a carnival set up at the edge of town, and he went in with nothing in particular on his mind. Because of the rain, most of the booths and rides were shut down, giving the place an air of abandonment that accorded well with his melancholy. At last he came to the menagerie, whose chief attractions were advertised in a series of lurid paintings. One of these, more lurid than the rest, depicted the gorilla Goliath brandishing the broken body of an African native as if it were a weapon. Walter Sokolow, perhaps thinking that a gorilla named Goliath was an apt symbol for the Nazi giant that was then engaged in crushing the race of David, decided it would be satisfying to behold such a monster behind bars.</div>
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He went in, approached my wagon, and by gazing into my eyes, soon realized that I was no relation to the bloodthirsty monster in the painting—and indeed no relation to the Philistine tormentor of his race. He found it gave him no satisfaction whatever to see me behind bars. On the contrary, in a quixotic gesture of guilt and defiance, he decided to rescue me from my cage and fashion me into a dreadful substitute for the family he had failed to rescue from the cage of Europe. The owner of the menagerie was agreeable to a sale; he was even glad to let Mr. Sokolow hire away a handler who had looked after me since my arrival. The owner was a realist; with America's inevitable entrance into the war, traveling shows like his were either going to spend the duration in winter quarters or simply become extinct.</div>
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After letting me settle in for a day in my new surroundings, Mr. Sokolow returned to begin to make my acquaintance. He wanted the handler to show him how everything was done, from mixing my feed to cleaning my cage. He asked him if he thought I was dangerous. The handler said I was like a piece of heavy machinery—dangerous not by disposition but by dint of sheer size and power.</div>
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After an hour or so, Mr. Sokolow sent him away, and we gazed at each other in a long silence as we had already done twice before. Finally—reluctantly, as if surmounting some daunting interior barrier—he began to speak to me, not in the jocular way of visitors to the menagerie but rather as one speaks to the wind or to the waves crashing on a beach, uttering that which must be said but which must not be heard by anyone. As he poured out his sorrows and self-recriminations, he gradually forgot the need for caution. By the time an hour had passed, he was propped up against my cage with a hand wrapped around a bar. He was looking at the ground, lost in thought, and I used this opportunity to express my sympathy, reaching out and gently stroking the knuckles of his hand. He leaped back, startled and horrified, but a search of my eyes reassured him that my gesture was as innocent of menace as it seemed.</div>
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Alerted by this experience, he began to suspect that I possessed real intelligence, and a few simple tests were enough to convince him of this. Having proved that I understood his words, he leaped to the conclusion (as others were later to do in working with other primates) that I should be able to produce some of my own. In short, he decided to teach me to talk. I will pass over the painful and humiliating months that followed. Neither one of us understood that the difficulty was unsurmountable, owing to a lack of basic phonic equipment on my part. In the absence of that understanding, we both labored on under the impression that the knack would someday magically manifest itself in me if we persevered. But at last there came a day when I couldn't go on, and in my anguish at not being able to <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">tell</em> him this, I <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">thought</em> him this, with all the mental power I possessed. He was stunned—as was I when I saw that he'd heard my mental cry.</div>
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I won't burden you with all the steps of our progress once full communication was established between us, since they are easily imagined, I believe. Over the next decade, he taught me all he knew of the world and the universe and human history, and when my questions went beyond his knowledge, we studied side by side. And when my studies carried me beyond his own interests at last, he cheerfully became my research assistant, tracking down books and information in places that were of course beyond my reach.</div>
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With the new interest of my education to absorb his attention, my benefactor soon forgot to torment himself with remorse and so gradually recovered from his gloom. By the early sixties I was like a houseguest who needed very little attention from his host, so Mr. Sokolow began to allow himself to be rediscovered in social circles, with the not-unpredictable result that he soon found himself in the hands of a young woman of forty who saw no reason why he could not be made into a satisfactory sort of husband. In fact, he was not at all averse to marriage, but he made a terrible mistake in anticipation of it: He decided that our special relationship should be kept a secret from his wife. It was not an extraordinary decision for those times, and I was not sufficiently experienced in such matters to recognize it for the error it was.</div>
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I moved back into the gazebo as soon as it had been renovated to accommodate the civilized habits I'd acquired. From the first, however, Mrs. Sokolow viewed me as a peculiar and alarming pet and began agitating for my speedy removal or disposal. Luckily, my benefactor was used to having his own way and made it clear that no amount of pleading or coercion would change the situation he'd created for me.</div>
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A few months after the wedding, he dropped in to tell me that his wife, like Abraham's Sarah, was soon going to present him with a child of his old age.</div>
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"I anticipated nothing like this when I named you Ishmael," he told me. "But rest assured that I won't let her cast you out of my house the way Sarah cast your namesake out of Abraham's house." Nevertheless, it amused him to say that, if it was a boy, he would name him Isaac. As matters turned out, however, it was a girl, and they named her Rachel.</div>
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5</h2>
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At that, Ishmael paused for so long, with his eyes closed, that I began to wonder if he'd fallen asleep. But at last he went on.</div>
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"Wisely or foolishly, my benefactor decided that I would be the girl's mentor, and (wisely or foolishly) I was delighted to have a chance to please him in this way. In her father's arms, Rachel spent nearly as much time with me as with her mother—which of course did nothing to improve my standing with that person. Because I was able to speak to her in a language more direct than speech, I could soothe and amuse her when others failed, and a bond gradually developed between us that might be likened to the one that exists between identical twins—except that I was brother, pet, tutor, and nurse all rolled into one.</div>
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"Mrs. Sokolow looked forward to the day when Rachel would begin school, for then new interests would make her a stranger to me. When this result didn't occur, she renewed her campaign to have me sent away, predicting that my presence would stunt the child's social growth. Her social growth remained unstunted, however, even though she skipped no fewer than three grades in elementary school and one grade in high school; she had a master's degree in biology before her twentieth birthday. Nonetheless, after so many years of being thwarted in a matter that pertained to the management of her own home, Mrs. Sokolow no longer needed any particular reason to wish me gone.</div>
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"On the death of my benefactor in 1985, Rachel herself became my protector. There was no question of my remaining in the gazebo. Using funds provided for this purpose in her father's will, Rachel moved me to a retreat that had been prepared in advance."</div>
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Once again Ishmael fell silent for several minutes. Then he went on: "In the years that followed, nothing worked out as it had been planned or hoped for. I found I was not content to `retreat'; having spent a lifetime in retreat, I now wanted somehow to advance into the very center of your culture, and I proceeded to exhaust my new protector's patience by trying one bothersome arrangement after another to achieve this end. At the same time, Mrs. Sokolow was not content to leave things as they were and persuaded a court to cut in half the funds that had been allocated to my support for life.</div>
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"It was not until 1989 that things came clear at last. In that year I finally comprehended that my unfulfilled vocation was to teach—and finally devised a system that would enable me to exist in tolerable circumstances in this city."</div>
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He nodded to let me know this was the end of his story—or was as much of it as he meant to tell.</div>
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6</h2>
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There are times when having too much to say can be as dumbfounding as having too little. I could think of no way to respond adequately or gracefully to such a tale. Finally I asked a question that seemed no more or less inane than the dozens of others that occurred to me.</div>
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"And have you had many pupils?"</div>
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"I've had four, and failed with all four."</div>
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"Oh. Why did you fail?"</div>
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He closed his eyes to think for a moment. "I failed because I underestimated the difficulty of what I was trying to teach—and because I didn't understand the minds of my pupils well enough."</div>
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"I see," I said. "And what <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">do</em> you teach?"</div>
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Ishmael selected a fresh branch from a pile at his right, examined it briefly, then began to nibble at it, gazing languidly into my eyes. At last he said, "On the basis of my history, what subject would you say I was best qualified to teach?"</div>
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I blinked and told him I didn't know.</div>
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"Of course you do. My subject is: <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">captivity</em>."</div>
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"Captivity."</div>
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"That's correct."</div>
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I sat there for a minute, then I said, "I'm trying to figure out what this has to do with saving the world."</div>
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Ishmael thought for a moment. "Among the people of your culture, which want to destroy the world?"</div>
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"Which <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">want</em> to destroy it? As far as I know, no one specifically <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">wants</em> to destroy the world."</div>
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"And yet you do destroy it, each of you. Each of you contributes daily to the destruction of the world."</div>
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"Yes, that's so."</div>
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"Why don't you stop?"</div>
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I shrugged. "Frankly, we don't know how."</div>
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"You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live."</div>
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"Yes, that's the way it seems."</div>
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"So. You are captives—and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it?—your captivity and the captivity of the world."</div>
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"Yes, that's so. I've just never thought of it that way."</div>
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"And you yourself are a captive in a personal way, are you not?"</div>
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"How so?"</div>
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Ishmael smiled, revealing a great mass of ivory-colored teeth. I hadn't known he could, until then.</div>
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I said: "I have an <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">impression</em> of being a captive, but I can't explain why I have this impression."</div>
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"A few years ago—you must have been a child at the time, so you may not remember it—many young people of this country had the same impression. They made an ingenuous and disorganized effort to escape from captivity but ultimately failed, because they were unable to find the bars of the cage. If you can't discover what's keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual."</div>
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"Yes, that's the sense I have of it."</div>
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Ishmael nodded.</div>
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"But again, how does this relate to saving the world?"</div>
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"The world is not going to survive for very much longer as humanity's captive. Does that need explication?"</div>
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"No. At least not to me."</div>
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"I think there are many among you who would be glad to release the world from captivity."</div>
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"I agree."</div>
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"What prevents them from doing this?"</div>
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"I don't know."</div>
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"This is what prevents them: They're unable to find the bars of the cage."</div>
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"Yes," I said. "I see." Then: "What do we do next?"</div>
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Ishmael smiled again. "Since I have told you a story that explains how I come to be here, perhaps you will do the same."</div>
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"What do you mean?"</div>
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"I mean, perhaps you will tell me a story that explains how you come to be here."</div>
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"Ah," I said. "Give me a moment."</div>
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"You may have any number of moments," he replied gravely.</div>
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<br /></div>
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7</h2>
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"Once when I was in college," I told him at last, "I wrote a paper for a philosophy class. I don't remember exactly what the assignment was—something to do with epistemology. Here's what I said in the paper, roughly: Guess what? The Nazis didn't lose the war after all. They won it and flourished. They took over the world and wiped out every last Jew, every last Gypsy, black, East Indian, and American Indian. Then, when they were finished with that, they wiped out the Russians and the Poles and the Bohemians and the Moravians and the Bulgarians and the Serbians and the Croatians—all the Slavs. Then they started in on the Polynesians and the Koreans and the Chinese and the Japanese—all the peoples of Asia. This took a long, long time, but when it was all over, everyone in the world was one hundred percent Aryan, and they were all very, very happy.</div>
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"Naturally the textbooks used in the schools no longer mentioned any race but the Aryan or any language but German or any religion but Hitlerism or any political system but National Socialism. There would have been no point. After a few generations of that, no one could have put anything different into the textbooks even if they'd wanted to, because they didn't <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">know</em> anything different.</div>
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"But one day two young students were conversing at the University of New Heidelberg in Tokyo. Both were handsome in the usual Aryan way, but one of them looked vaguely worried and unhappy. That was Kurt. His friend said, `What's wrong, Kurt? Why are you always moping around like this?' Kurt said, `I'll tell you, Hans. There <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">is</em> something that's troubling me—and troubling me deeply.' His friend asked what it was. `It's this,' Kurt said. `I can't shake the crazy feeling that there is some small thing that we're being <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">lied</em> to about.'</div>
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"And that's how the paper ended."</div>
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Ishmael nodded thoughtfully. "And what did your teacher think of that?"</div>
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"He wanted to know if I had the same crazy feeling as Kurt. When I said I did, he wanted to know what I thought we were being lied to about. I said, `How could I know? I'm no better off than Kurt.' Of course, he didn't think I was being serious. He assumed it was just an exercise in epistemology."</div>
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"And do you still wonder if you've been lied to?"</div>
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"Yes, but not as desperately as I did then."</div>
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"Not as desperately? Why is that?"</div>
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"Because I've found out that, as a practical matter, it doesn't make any difference. Whether we're being lied to or not, we still have to get up and go to work and pay the bills and all the rest."</div>
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"Unless, of course, you <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">all</em> began to suspect you were being lied to—and <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">all</em> found out what the lie was."</div>
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"What do you mean?"</div>
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"If you alone found out what the lie was, then you're probably right—it would make no great difference. But if you <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">all</em> found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed."</div>
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"True."</div>
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"Then that is what we must hope for."</div>
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I started to ask him what he meant by that, but he held up a leathery black hand and told me: "Tomorrow."</div>
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8</h2>
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That evening I went for a walk. To walk for the sake of walking is something I seldom do. Inside my apartment I'd felt inexplicably anxious. I needed to talk to someone, to be reassured. Or perhaps I needed to confess my sin: I was once again having impure thoughts about saving the world. Or it was neither of these—I was afraid I was dreaming. Indeed, considering the events of the day, it was likely that I was dreaming. I sometimes fly in my dreams, and each time I say to myself, "At last—it's happening <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">in reality</em> and not in a dream!"</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px;">In any case, I needed to talk to someone, and I was alone. This is my habitual condition, by choice—or so I tell myself. Mere acquaintanceship leaves me unsatisfied, and few people are willing to accept the burdens and risks of friendship as I conceive of it.</span><br />
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People say that I'm sour and misanthropic, and I tell them they're probably right. Argument of any sort, on any subject, has always seemed like a waste of time to me.</div>
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The next morning I woke and thought: "Even so, it <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">could</em> be a dream. One can sleep in a dream, even have dreams in a dream." As I went through the motions of making breakfast, eating, and washing up, my heart was pounding furiously. It seemed to be saying, "How can you pretend not to be terrified?"</div>
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The time passed. I drove downtown. The building was still there. The office at the end of the hall on the ground floor was still there and still unlocked.</div>
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When I opened the door, Ishmael's huge, meaty aroma came down on me like a thunderclap. On wobbly legs, I walked to the chair and sat down.</div>
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Ishmael studied me gravely through the dark glass, as if wondering if I was strong enough to be taxed with serious conversation. When he made up his mind, he began without preamble of any kind, and I came to know that this was his usual style.</div>
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<br /></div>
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ARTICLE: http://www.filmsforaction.org</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; line-height: 23px;">This article summarizes the ideas of <a href="http://www.ishmael.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #990b0b; text-decoration: none;">Daniel Quinn</a>, first written about in The Story of B, which was a sequel to <a href="http://www.filmsforaction.org/news/ishmael_by_daniel_quinn/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #990b0b; text-decoration: none;">Ishmael.</a> The longer, original essay can be read <a href="http://www.filmsforaction.org/news/the_great_forgetting/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #990b0b; text-decoration: none;">here</a>, and comes highly recommended. </em></div>
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The Great Forgetting refers to the wealth of knowledge that our culture lost when we adopted our new civilized lifestyle. The knowledge that allowed indigenous cultures to survive, the knowledge that we had once also been tribal and the understanding that we were but one mere culture of thousands. All of this disappeared in a few short generations.</div>
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The Great Forgetting accounts for an enormous cultural collapse as once tribal people found themselves in a new and strange mass centralized society. New beliefs, new ways of life rushed into this cultural vacuum to fill the void. But without being tested by natural selection over thousands of years this new culture was evolutionarily unstable.</div>
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It is only recently that the Great Forgetting has been exposed. Understanding it holds the key to making sense of our destructive culture. And remembering what it is that was forgotten holds the key to our future.</div>
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How The Great Forgetting Took Place</h2>
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It began around 10,000 years ago when one culture in the Near East adopted a new way of life that humans had not tried before.</div>
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They began to practice an intensive form of agriculture which enabled them to live in a settled location.</div>
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They developed large food surpluses which led to a population and geographic explosion. What began as farming communes eventually turned into villages, then into towns, and then kingdoms. Civilization began.</div>
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But it was a long time before anybody began to write down history, several thousand years later in fact. What happened in between was that the people of this culture forgot what had happened. They forgot that they once were hunter gatherers and foragers who lived a nomadic lifestyle. They assumed that mankind arrived on the planet at the same time as civilization. They assumed that civilization and settled agriculture was the natural state of mankind, as natural as living in a herd and grazing is to buffalo.</div>
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Naturally this gave rise to the belief that we were only a few thousand years old, that mankind had began when civilization began.</div>
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The primitive cultures that lived on the fringe areas of early civilization would appear to suggest that humans had lived another way. But they were easily explained away. They had fallen from the natural state of civilization; they had degraded into savagery. They had once lived as fully fledged humans but they had forgotten the way and now they were inferior, they were sub-human.</div>
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The Philosophical Roots of Our Culture</h2>
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This collective cultural memory lapse; this belief that humans had arrived in the world as civilization builders was held by the foundation thinkers of our culture.</div>
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The philosophers, historians and theologians of the ancient civilizations: Sumer, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, India and China wove the Great Forgetting into their work.</div>
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Those that followed – the Hebrew authors of the Bible, Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah and Jeremiah, the great Western thinkers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and the great Eastern thinkers Lao Tzu, Gautama Buddha and Confucius - all wove the Great Forgetting into their work.</div>
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The thinkers of more modern times also followed suit, they didn't take any Great Forgetting into account. Why would they? They had no reason to believe that humans had not come into this world as civilization builders. They had no reason to believe that this wasn’t our natural state. So Thomas Aquinas, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton and Rene Descartes carried on our culture with the Great Forgetting at its root.</div>
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The Truth Is Revealed</h2>
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Palaeontology exposed the Great Forgetting. Palaeontology made it clear that mankind had not arrived on Planet Earth when civilization emerged. We had lived for a very long time, millions of years in fact, in a completely different way. Mankind hadn’t fallen from the natural state into primitive living. That was how we began.</div>
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Looking back on it one could assume that the exposure of the Great Forgetting would have been a momentous discovery. It should have shook the very foundations of our way of thinking, the very foundations of our culture. One could have assumed that this would have led to some fundamental changes about who we are and how we should live.</div>
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But it didn’t. The Great Forgetting just got explained away. Instead of admitting that two very different and legitimate ways of living had been adopted by mankind in his history the thinkers of the 19th Century came up with this: man may have been born into this world as a primitive savage but he was destined to become a civilization builder.</div>
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In essence they said: “Who cares that we didn’t arrive as a civilization builder. It was our destiny to become a civilization builder. Now that we are here who cares what went before us. Those people that lived before us were just a precursor to us. They weren’t important.”</div>
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We didn't arrive as a civilization builder. But it was our destiny to become one.</blockquote>
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The historians came up with a convenient way to disregard those humans that walked the earth those millions of years before our culture emerged.</div>
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Instead of accepting that they were part of history the historians relegated them to pre-history. They were before history, because history began when civilization began. We are the good stuff; we are the ones who are fulfilling the destiny of mankind. We are the ones who should be studied.</div>
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The Myth of the Agricultural Revolution</h2>
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Our culture’s transition from hunter gatherer to civilization builder was also explained away. The term our thinkers coined was “The Agricultural Revolution.” </div>
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This is how it was explained: Before the agricultural revolution humans didn’t know how to farm or how to practice any kind of agriculture. They lived as hunter gatherers and foragers. Once they discovered farming they were then able to settle down and build civilization. The agricultural revolution was the foundation from which all the greatness of humanity stems.</div>
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It was explained in such a way that leads us to believe that the agricultural revolution was:</div>
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<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Something that happened more or less by everybody.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Something that happened more or less at the same time.</li>
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The story is told so we think that one group of people figured it out and those nearby saw what they were doing and thought “aha what a better way of doing things, what a better way of living.” Once a group was enlightened with the knowledge of agriculture they immediately stopped their primitive hunting and gathering ways and settled down to practice the better way. They could see that this was man’s destiny and they eagerly took it up.</div>
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This myth has permeated our culture since the 19th century thinkers created it to support their idea that civilization is the divine destiny of mankind. However the agricultural revolution was not a revolution and it had absolutely nothing to do with agriculture.</div>
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Agriculture had been practiced in many different ways and forms by thousands of different cultures around the globe. Agriculture is not unique to civilization. What is unique to civilization is a particular form of agriculture, that Daniel Quinn terms totalitarian agriculture.</div>
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The Agricultural Revolution had absolutely nothing to do with agriculture.</blockquote>
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Totalitarian agriculture subordinates all life forms to the relentless single minded production of human food. It is the belief that the whole world is ours by right and we should turn all of the land into human food.</div>
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This generates huge surpluses which generates rapid population growth and rapid geographical expansion.</div>
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Through sheer weight of numbers totalitarian agriculturalists overrun neighboring regions obliterating other cultures and their way of life. The agricultural revolution wasn't something that started and finished thousands of years ago. It is still happening today, being driven forward by our cultural doctrines which tell us that the earth is a foe that must be conquered.</div>
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The agricultural revolution wasn’t about humans finding a better way to live. It was about a single culture out of thousands beginning to live in a way that only worked through exponential growth. Civilization didn’t spread because it was a good idea. Civilization spread through force. The exponential growth of the totalitarian agriculturalists displaced anybody and everybody else. It wasn’t a revolution; it was an experiment that became a runaway train.</div>
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So when the Great Forgetting was exposed it was quickly covered up. Our culture went from believing this:</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">First Humans<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />|<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Us</span></div>
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To believing this:</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">First Humans<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />|<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Paleolithic Humans<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />|<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Mesolithic Humans<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />|<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Neolithic Humans<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />|<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Us</span></div>
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When in fact the reality looks more like this:</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">First Humans<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />|<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Paleolithic Humans<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />|<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Mesolithic Humans<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />|<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Neolithic Humans<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />|<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Great Forgetting</span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">| |<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />10,000 other cultures Us</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343434; font-family: Times-Roman, serif; font-size: xx-small; font-weight: normal; line-height: 30px;">Ishmael is a gorilla who was captured in the wild while he was still very young. He spent most of his adult life in different forms of captivity including becoming in the care of a man named Walter Sokolow. Because of the experiences he obtains from his various captivities he grows more and more self-aware of the world around him. While in Walter’s care, Walter encourages Ishmael’s intellectual growth through their telepathic communication.</span></h2>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-18754974870982009782015-09-04T10:52:00.000-10:002017-10-10T20:12:04.028-10:00Muscle Shoals<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Located alongside the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals, Alabama has helped create some of the most important and resonant songs of all time. Overcoming crushing poverty and staggering tragedies, Rick Hall brought black and white together to create music for the generations. He is responsible for creating the “Muscle Shoals sound” and The Swampers, the house band at FAME Studios that eventually left to start its own successful studio known as Muscle Shoals Sound. Gregg Allman and others bear witness to Muscle Shoals’ magnetism, mystery and why it remains influential today.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zGETqdKB0pM/VeR-7g03AnI/AAAAAAAAEHM/AyKq_m7t404/s1600/film-still-11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zGETqdKB0pM/VeR-7g03AnI/AAAAAAAAEHM/AyKq_m7t404/s640/film-still-11.jpg" width="640" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TEhe9emPwIU/VfVFHbFKIoI/AAAAAAAAEJo/iDd-oyDmFXs/s1600/muscleShoals.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TEhe9emPwIU/VfVFHbFKIoI/AAAAAAAAEJo/iDd-oyDmFXs/s640/muscleShoals.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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A documentary that celebrates Rick Hall, the founder of FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and the signature sound he developed in songs such as "I'll Take You There", "Brown Sugar", and "When a Man Loves a Woman".<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-72460615696722104282015-09-01T05:22:00.000-10:002015-09-12T23:44:04.788-10:00Fantastic Man<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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You Need To Hear This is proud to present 'Fantastic Man' a documentary investigating Nigerian musician William Onyeabor, a man shrouded in mystery and myth. Directed by Jake Sumner (Alldayeveryday) the film tells the story of a label's attempt to track William down, speaking to fans such as Damon Albarn, Caribou and Femi Kuti and travelling to Nigeria to meet those who've worked with him in a bid to uncover the truth about his story.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uRRJa00SvPQ/VeXD1LWjmkI/AAAAAAAAEH0/y1KutNusi-o/s1600/williamonyeabor-anythingyousow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uRRJa00SvPQ/VeXD1LWjmkI/AAAAAAAAEH0/y1KutNusi-o/s640/williamonyeabor-anythingyousow.jpg" width="632" /></a></div>
<br />
http://williamonyeabor.com/<br />
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http://www.alldayeveryday.com/<br />
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http://youneedtohearthis.com<br />
Follow 'You Need To Hear This' on Twitter: <br />
https://twitter.com/YNTHT_UK<br />
#YouNeedToHearThis<br />
<br />
Click here to buy the album:<br />
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/wor...<br />
http://luakabop.com/onyeabor/<br />
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**</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-63029084478693170302015-08-29T06:07:00.000-10:002015-09-01T05:31:54.898-10:00Kubla Khan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Kubla Khan</h1>
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<span class="author" style="color: #4d493f; display: inline-block; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0.05em; text-transform: uppercase;">BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;"></span><br />
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<i>Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. </i></div>
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In Xanadu did Kubla Khan </div>
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A stately pleasure-dome decree: </div>
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Where Alph, the sacred river, ran </div>
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Through caverns measureless to man </div>
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Down to a sunless sea. </div>
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So twice five miles of fertile ground </div>
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With walls and towers were girdled round; </div>
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And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, </div>
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Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; </div>
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And here were forests ancient as the hills, </div>
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Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. </div>
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But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted </div>
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Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! </div>
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A savage place! as holy and enchanted </div>
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As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted </div>
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By woman wailing for her demon-lover! </div>
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And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, </div>
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As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, </div>
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A mighty fountain momently was forced: </div>
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Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst </div>
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Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, </div>
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Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: </div>
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And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever </div>
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It flung up momently the sacred river. </div>
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Five miles meandering with a mazy motion </div>
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Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, </div>
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Then reached the caverns measureless to man, </div>
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And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; </div>
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And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far </div>
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Ancestral voices prophesying war! </div>
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The shadow of the dome of pleasure </div>
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Floated midway on the waves; </div>
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Where was heard the mingled measure </div>
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From the fountain and the caves. </div>
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It was a miracle of rare device, </div>
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A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! </div>
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A damsel with a dulcimer </div>
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In a vision once I saw: </div>
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It was an Abyssinian maid </div>
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And on her dulcimer she played, </div>
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Singing of Mount Abora. </div>
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Could I revive within me </div>
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Her symphony and song, </div>
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To such a deep delight ’twould win me, </div>
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That with music loud and long, </div>
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I would build that dome in air, </div>
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That sunny dome! those caves of ice! </div>
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And all who heard should see them there, </div>
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And all should cry, Beware! Beware! </div>
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His flashing eyes, his floating hair! </div>
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Weave a circle round him thrice, </div>
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And close your eyes with holy dread </div>
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For he on honey-dew hath fed, </div>
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And drunk the milk of Paradise.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-85385815561333921002014-06-23T00:03:00.005-10:002014-06-23T00:03:44.021-10:00The Pervert's Guide to Ideology<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cultural theorist superstar Slavoj Zizek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes (The Pervert's Guide to Cinema) for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. With infectious zeal and a voracious appetite for popular culture, Zizek literally goes inside some truly epochal movies to explore and expose how they reinforce prevailing ideologies. As the ideology that undergirds our cinematic fantasies is revealed, striking associations emerge: What hidden Catholic teachings lurk at the heart of The Sound of Music? What are the fascist political dimensions of Jaws? Taxi Driver, Zabriskie Point, The Searchers, The Dark Knight, John Carpenter's They Live (one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood Left), Titanic, Kinder Eggs, verité news footage, Beethoven's Ode to Joy and propaganda epics from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia all inform Zizek's stimulating, provocative and often hilarious psychoanalytic-cinematic rant.</span></span></center>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-28322971657001419752014-06-22T13:19:00.000-10:002014-06-22T13:19:01.863-10:00The Pervert's Guide to Cinema<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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CINEMA IS THE ULTIMATE PERVERT ART. IT DOESN'T GIVE YOU WHAT TO DESIRE - IT TELLS YOU HOW TO DESIRE</div>
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- SLAVOJ ZIZEK</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="background-color: white; text-align: justify; text-transform: uppercase;">THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA</strong><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"> takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made. Serving as presenter and guide is the charismatic Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst. With his engaging and passionate approach to thinking, Zizek delves into the hidden language of cinema, uncovering what movies can tell us about ourselves. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA offers an introduction into some of Zizek's most exciting ideas on fantasy, reality, sexuality, subjectivity, desire, materiality and cinematic form. Whether he is untangling the famously baffling films of David Lynch, or overturning everything you thought you knew about Hitchcock, Zizek illuminates the screen with his passion, intellect, and unfailing sense of humour. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA applies Zizek's ideas to the cinematic canon, in what The Times calls 'an extraordinary reassessment of cinema.' </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The film cuts its cloth from the very world of the movies it discusses; by shooting at original locations and on replica sets, it creates the uncanny illusion that Zizek is speaking from within the films themselves. Described by The Times as 'the woman helming this Freudian inquest,' director Sophie Fiennes' collaboration with Slavoj Zizek illustrates the immediacy with which film and television can communicate genuinely complex ideas. Says Zizek: 'My big obsession is to make things clear. I can really explain a line of thought if I can somehow illustrate it in a scene from a film. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA is really about what psychoanalysis can tell us about cinema.' </span></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ibrOefmwuow/U6dijA0HYdI/AAAAAAAAD50/j2X7AJSyWdM/s1600/fullwidth.504cf584.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ibrOefmwuow/U6dijA0HYdI/AAAAAAAAD50/j2X7AJSyWdM/s1600/fullwidth.504cf584.jpg" height="392" width="640" /></a><br />
<span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA is constructed in three parts. Says Fiennes: 'The form of the Guide is a deliberately open one. There are three parts, but there could be more. Zizek's method of thinking is exciting because it's always building. Things relate forwards and backwards and interconnect into a mind-altering network of ideas. The film's title is something of a McGuffin - just a way to get you into this network.' </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.thepervertsguide.com/trailers.html" style="background-color: white; color: #5c5c5c; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><strong style="text-transform: uppercase;">PART 1</strong></a><br style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">What can the Marx Brothers tell us about the workings of the unconscious? And why exactly do the birds attack in Hitchcock's masterpiece of horror? Part 1 explores the fictional structures that sustain our experience of reality and the chaotic netherworld of wild drives and desire that undermine that very experience. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Providing a blueprint for approaching cinema through a psychoanalytical lens, Part 1 explores key Freudian concepts such as the psyche's division between Ego, Superego, Id, death drive and libido. Zizek shows how the visual language of films returns to us our deepest anxieties, arousing our desire while simultaneously 'keeping it at a safe distance, domesticating it, rendering it palpable!' </span></span><br />
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PART 2</strong></a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">Playing on cinema's great tradition for romantic narratives, Part 2 unlocks what these narratives tell us about the critical role that fantasy plays in sexual relationships. 'Why does our libido need the virtual universe of fantasies?' asks Zizek. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">Zizek excavates the nightmarish truth behind Tarkovsky's dreamy sci-fi Solaris and its chilling reverberations with Vertigo, Hitchcock's great romantic epic. The consequences are alarming. For the male libidinal economy it appears, 'the only good woman is a dead woman.' Zizek argues that it is the very excess of female desire that poses a fundamental threat to male identity. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Fantasy can be both pacifying and radically destabilizing. From David Lynch's Lost Highway and Ingmar Bergman's Persona to Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher, fantasy is the battleground of the war between the sexes. Part 2 interrogates the structure of fantasy that makes the sexual act possible. But it also asks whether this very plague of fantasies is finally staged - like cinema itself - as a </span>defense<span style="font-family: inherit;"> against anxiety. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.thepervertsguide.com/trailers.html" style="background-color: white; color: #5c5c5c; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><strong style="text-transform: uppercase;">PART 3</strong> </a><br style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">Part 3 plays with appearances. Appearances are not deceiving, but extremely efficient. When Dorothy & Co discover The Wizard of Oz is actually an old man behind a curtain, they nonetheless expect him to work his magic. And so he does: the illusion persists. Says Zizek, 'There is something more real in the illusion than in the reality behind it.' </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">With iconoclastic gusto, Zizek evokes the Gnostic theory of our world as an 'unfinished reality' where 'God bungled his job of creation'. If film itself is structured through cuts, edits and missing scenes, then so too is our own subjective experience. This is perhaps why we can believe in cinema - as well as other systems of faith, paternal, religious and ideological. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Zizek shows us that the key to cinema is beyond the narrative, beyond the 'story' that we witness. What provides the density of cinematic enjoyment is material form beyond interpretation.</span></span>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-23309955824799423852014-06-12T06:04:00.003-10:002014-06-12T06:04:59.895-10:00Home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">With aerial footage from fifty-four countries, 'Home' is a depiction of how Earth's problems are all interlinked.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The film HOME by Yann Arthus-Bertrand is a beautifully shot panorama of the Earth and the damage done to it by modern humanity. It includes a moving narration about the evolution of the Earth, nature, agriculture, humans, and the crises of habitat destruction, energy depletion, climate disruption, degradation...of the environment, health, economic disparity, and more. They are well integrated in the film, but many assumptions in the script make this film hard to recommend unless accompanied by a reality check on energy and the value of traditional ways.</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rk5zWkyRSPc/U5nPSCsfY-I/AAAAAAAAD5I/loGtMUj4BGw/s1600/PFs3S7VJoZ.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rk5zWkyRSPc/U5nPSCsfY-I/AAAAAAAAD5I/loGtMUj4BGw/s1600/PFs3S7VJoZ.png" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Statements such as "education is a privilege" treat upbringing and learning as if they are only modern phenomena. The same thinking produce the statement "The memories of thousands of years' scrabbling for food [as hunter gatherers] faded [with the agricultural revolution]." So-called primitive societies work less and have tighter families and community. HOME goes on to claim "For humanity, agriculture is a prerequisite of survival." What about how people survived before 6,000 years ago?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Fascinating statistics include "Half the population of the world tills the soil, over three quarters of them by hand." And one quarter of the world lives as all of us did 6,000 years ago with only the energy available from the sun and biomass of the area.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"A liter of oil produces as much energy as 100 pairs of hands in 24 hours."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"In the United States, only 3 million farmers are left. They produce enough grain to fee two billion people. But most of that feed is transformed, as in all industrialized countries.. for livestock or biofuels."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Over the last century, three quarters of the varieties developed by farmers over thousands of years have been wiped out."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Thirteen thousand liters are required to produce one kilo of beef, while 100 liters of water are required for one kilo of potatoes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ninety-five percent of soy farms in the Amazon region, which has shrunk by 20% in the last 40 years, goes to Europe for livestock and poultry. So a forest is turned into meat.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6ZSYfQtB4Ic/U5nPaDpnVII/AAAAAAAAD5Q/v0cPmcWityI/s1600/PATTERNITY_ARIELICESHATTER_HOME2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6ZSYfQtB4Ic/U5nPaDpnVII/AAAAAAAAD5Q/v0cPmcWityI/s1600/PATTERNITY_ARIELICESHATTER_HOME2.png" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But the narration reveals a lack of understanding of the implications of peak oil. Additionally, technology is romanticized, guaranteeing that the Earth's crisis will not be solved by those wedded to present concepts:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"This pocket of sunlight [fossil fuels] freed humans from their toil on the land. With oil began the era of humans who break free from the shackles of time."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The assumption is that energy extraction can be sustained, as in "Oil might run out; we can still extract oil from the tar sands of Canada." Not that the film makers wish to see that, but they are not aware of the inability of tar sands to satisfy much demand when conventional oil extraction is already starting its plummet.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Helpful perspective:</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"The concentration of carbon dioxide hasn't been so high for several hundred thousand years. Humanity has never lived in an atmosphere like this."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Greenland's ice contains 20% of the fresh water of the whole planet. If it melts, sea levels will rise by nearly seven meters."</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">But:</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Everybody can prosper and earn a decent living... Let's be responsible consumers; think about what we buy..." These are outmoded concepts. The Earth has too many people for everyone to prosper. Instead of earning a decent living, we need to live decently. We must stop being consumers, and avoid buying by making and bartering what we need.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"All we have to do is cultivate the sun" to replace the energy used that is 80% from fossil fuels. -- Sounds like a nice thought, if you think we need so many appliances and believe they can somehow be manufactured for long. This film is part of the technofix lobby and the delusion of progress for civilization. The film makers have no concept of the limiting role oil plays in the technofix industries, nor how these technologies only produce electricity (and not nearly as efficiently as the cheap oil that is gone).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The chief sponsor of the Home movie is the PPR Group, which includes fashion-clothing companies employing a total of 80,000 people. The top management no doubt feel proud comfort for putting a nice feather in its cap. Unfortunately, this film is another case of people understanding the severity of the crisis and then turning it into an opportunity for perpetuating nearly the same status quo.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">At best, good intentions can save some forests, cut back some on greenhouse gas emissions, but trends will not turn around until the capitalist model of growth is terminated for lack of energy and materials. Petrocollapse will take care of this. But after how much damage? This is why people need to be the change we need now, rather than waiting for governments and corporations (or some old-time revolution) to make things right -- they will never do it because of corruption by the greedy and predatory.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4FhQ2faoB6I/U5nPhcNmgbI/AAAAAAAAD5Y/3nf5zqA__h8/s1600/Last-Train-Home-2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4FhQ2faoB6I/U5nPhcNmgbI/AAAAAAAAD5Y/3nf5zqA__h8/s1600/Last-Train-Home-2010.jpg" height="358" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The compelling and captivating film works partly because of the high-resolution cinematography used to present our high resolution global environment, documenting the wide time span of terrestrial evolution through to the present. Clearly explained is the urgent situation that we must resolve or our planet will suffer more deep catastrophic damages from climate and environmental disruption. We just wish there was less obsession with the renewable energy industries as "the answer."</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p9MVV1x4C9w/U5nPnSq9drI/AAAAAAAAD5g/9divsO7qLDA/s1600/vlcsnap-134751.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p9MVV1x4C9w/U5nPnSq9drI/AAAAAAAAD5g/9divsO7qLDA/s1600/vlcsnap-134751.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The style of the film makes it quite educational for audiences of all ages. There's a vast number of local and global issues that must be resolved. This film shows us the interconnected dependency of these issues. Expect to see this film used in elementary school presentations all the way through universities, neighborhood gatherings, movie theaters, corporate presentations and more. The gravity and urgency of the global environmental quality of life crisis affects us all. So will false "solutions" along with the dismissal of ancient, proven ways of surviving and thriving.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In overview of the images near the end, where the "solutions" are presented, the solutions presented are technological and industrial in nature, reconstructing the power sources with wind, solar, geothermal, and wave energy, clean coal, and more jobs. But many of the details and challenges are left out, so it is up to the reader to learn more about the science and magnitudes of various problems and "solutions." It all must be accounted for in appropriate sustainable relationship to the reality of energy from petroleum.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Is our behavior controlled by industrial grids of electricity and transportation, resource usage, products, food availability? Where is the promotion for behavioral change? For local agriculture? For vegetarian diets? Sometimes it is presented in HOME, but subtly, between the lines as implications or evocations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The last lines put each of us squarely in the context of responsibility, although in chasing a Holy Grail of so-called clean energy: "We know that the solutions are there. We all have the power to change, so what are we waiting for?"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">FULL DOCUMENTARY AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE (COULDN`T EMMBEB)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU</b></span></div>
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<b>via - resilience.org</b></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-63558904530728820592013-10-14T00:05:00.000-10:002013-10-14T00:05:36.954-10:00Underwater Sculptures by Jason deCaries Taylor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Jason de Caries Taylor is the artist and the diver behind the Musa Project in Mexico and Grenada Underwater Park, West Indies. He graduated from London Institute of Arts in 1998 with a BA Honours in Sculpture, and besides being a qualified diving instructor and underwater naturalist, Taylor is also an award winning underwater photographer. Tom’s photos where he captures the effects of the ocean on his evolving sculptures is what earned him the recognition.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">In 2006, Taylor founded the world’s first underwater sculpture park, in Grenada. This amazing monument is now listed as one of the Top 25 Wonders of the World by National Geographic. Later in 2009, Taylor Jaime Gonzalez Cano of The National Marine Park, Roberto Diaz of The Cancun Nautical Association created MUSA. The MUSA Project (Museo Subaquatico de Arte) is a monumental museum with a collection of over 450 public sculptural works, submerged off the coast of Cancun, Mexico, one of the world’s most unique travel destinations.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Taylor got involved with plenty underwater projects: Alluvia, Canterbury, Kent, UK, Inverted Solitude (Smart art) at The National Diving and Activities Centre, Chepstow, UK or the T.A. Marryshow Community College Project, initiated with Helen Hayward of T.A. Marryshow Community College, where he worked on the Moliniere sculpture park.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Check out his web site for amazing shots of under water sculptures!!</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: start;">Source: </span><a href="http://www.underwatersculpture.com/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #d01900; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">underwatersculpture.com</a></span></div>
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Viccisitudes</h2>
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Depth 5m, Grenada, West Indies<br />
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The Banker</h2>
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Inertia</h2>
<a href="http://www.boredpanda.org/under-water-sculptures-by-jason-decaries-taylor/?image_id=underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor-1.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignnone" height="587" src="http://bp.uuuploads.com/underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor/underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor-1.jpg" width="880" /></a><br />
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Depth 5m, MUSA Collection, Punta Nizuc, Mexico.<br />
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Man on fire</h2>
<a href="http://www.boredpanda.org/under-water-sculptures-by-jason-decaries-taylor/?image_id=underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor-3.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignnone" height="589" src="http://bp.uuuploads.com/underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor/underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor-3.jpg" width="880" /></a><br />
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Depth 8m, MUSA Collection, Cancun/Isla Mujeres, Mexico</div>
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Reclamation</h2>
<a href="http://www.boredpanda.org/under-water-sculptures-by-jason-decaries-taylor/?image_id=underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor-6.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignnone" height="660" src="http://bp.uuuploads.com/underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor/underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor-6.jpg" width="880" /></a><br />
Depth 5m, MUSA Collection, Punta Nizuc, Mexico<br />
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The silent evolution</h2>
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Depth 8m, MUSA Collection, Cancun/Isla Mujeres, Mexico.<br />
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TamCC</h2>
<a href="http://www.boredpanda.org/under-water-sculptures-by-jason-decaries-taylor/?image_id=underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor-13.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignnone" height="619" src="http://bp.uuuploads.com/underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor/underwater-sculptures-jason-decaries-taylor-13.jpg" width="880" /></a><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1258872399763398359.post-22031685839461786982013-10-11T02:41:00.000-10:002014-03-26T08:31:44.426-10:00A first look inside Google's futuristic quantum lab<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
n May, Google launched the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab with hardware from the Canadian quantum computing company D-Wave and technical expertise from NASA. It was an ambitious open research project aimed at exploring both the capabilities of quantum computer architecture and the mysteries of space exploration — but in the months since, they've stayed quiet about exactly what kind of work they've been doing there.
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Tomorrow, they're breaking the silence with a brief short film, set to debut at the Imagine Science Films Festival at Google New York. The film takes a look at various researchers working on the project, as well as the computer itself, which has to be operated at near-absolute-zero temperatures. Researchers hope the quantum architecture will eventually be used to optimize solutions across complex and interconnected sets of variables currently outside the capabilities of conventional computing. That could allow for new solutions in computational medicine or help NASA to construct a more comprehensive picture of the known universe. "We don't know what the best questions are to ask that computer," says NASA's Eleanor Rieffel in the video. "That's exactly what we're trying to understand."
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Beyond the film, Google says it's made great leaps in recent experiments with the quantum chips, determining which algorithms work better in a quantum setup and providing further evidence that the D-Wave processor uses quantum entanglement, a behavior that links particles with no apparent physical connection between them. D-Wave has always claimed that its chips involved entanglement, but it had been difficult to conclusively demonstrate before now.
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The first practical application has been on Google Glass, as engineers put the quantum chips to work on Glass's blink detector, helping it to better distinguish between intentional winks and involuntary blinks. For engineering reasons, the quantum processor can never be installed in Glass, but together with Google's conventional server centers, it can point the way to a better blink-detecting algorithm. That would allow the Glass processor to detect blinks with better accuracy and using significantly less power. If successful, it could be an important breakthrough for wink-triggered apps, which have struggled with the task so far.
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Source: http://www.theverge.com</div>
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