A hop and a skip, YouTube-style
[ by Charles Cameron — on a brief random walk through YouTube, an ambulation for a sedentary soul — nothing serious, I promise ]
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Back when I was a wee lad at Oxford there was another wee lad, also of a poetic disposition, named Heathcote Williams. For some reason, the other evening I stumbled on a clip of Heathcote performing the role of a psychiatrist in a movie I haven’t seen, but will probably keep an eye out for.
Here’s that (somewhat ob)scene:
Well, I’m the nomadic type, and my eye somehow strayed from there to this:
Okay? I get the sense I’m on a roll here, Salma Hayek is compellingly beautiful, and so I compulsively gamble away a few more minutes of my precious time, and find… You’ll forgive me, I hope, and see this clip through to the end, because in its own light-hearted way it’s about miracles.
And as you know, I have theological interests:
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So that was my evening’s delectation a couple of days ago, delivered here today for yours.
If, however, you are willing to take a grander leap into anti-monarchical, pro-poetic, anti-theological polemic, you might take a look at Heathcote’s fiery account of Shelley, his volatile predecessor at Oxford, in seven parts beginning on YouTube here: Shelley at Oxford.
Heathcote takes the liberty of speaking his mind, and consequently several of my own sacred cows get scorched to steak along the way — you have been warned.
May 29th, 2013 at 9:00 pm
Charles, that was a very nice diversion from zp’s overtly military & millennial themes .. on the topic of Percy Bysshe Shelley, I recall hearing a fascinating radio broadcast by Paul Foot dealing with Shelley’s radicalism (anarchism really, that and he and his wife Mary’s vegetarianism, atheism and advocacy of free love) which can be found on this page – http://mp3.lpi.org.uk/ – which again reminds me, in that lateral-swerving way the web will, of Shelley’s long poem “The Revolt of Islam”, here described by the poet in a letter to his publisher:
And here – http://standpointmag.co.uk/print/3878 – from May 2011, is a discussion of the foreshadowing of the Arab spring – in full swing at the time – in Shelley’s prophetic vision of an Islam roused to revolution.