zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — I found this little not-so-random walk educational ]
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1. Tina S plays Vivaldi:

2. Joshua Bell plays Vivaldi:

3. Tina S plays Van Halen:

**

Tina S was fourteen when her two video clips were made.

There are things I’d like to post, that I don’t post at Zenpundit because I don’t want to take it too far afield, and I don’t post elsewhere because Zenpundit is where I post — so I’ve decided to post at least some of those things here on Sundays as “Sunday surprises”. I hope Sundays will give some of you a little extra time to listen, watch or contemplate… and that some of these offerings will be to your respective and varied tastes…

[ by Charles Cameron — history was minted here ]
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Today is the fortieth birthday of Plato Notes — the “first permanent, general-purpose online conferencing system”, brainchild of my online friend David Woolley.

**

You can read Brian Dear‘s PLATO Notes released 40 years ago today for the general story, or David’s own PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community from 1991 — but best of all perhaps would be this video, which will give you a sense of the man as well as the relevant history —

— and historic this truly was.

Happy fortieth, David — and more thanks from so very many of us than I quite know how to express.

[ by Charles Cameron — what can these two stunning performances tell us about conflict and / or peace? ]
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I’m not sure if I’ve said it here before, but conflict resolution is pretty much the same as peace making, hence my title for both parts of this post, Blessed are the conflict resolvers (Matthew 5.9). In the second part of this post, I’d like to shared with you two stunning and highly stylized situations in which peace and conflict are brought together by sheer art.

Battle as dance, from Carlos Saura‘s Carmen — in the aftermath of a gambling disagreement, the jealous rivalry of two men over the young female lead bursts into violent dance:

And …

The battle of songs, from Breuer and Telson‘s Gospel at Colonus. Oedipus, played here by Clarence Fountain and the Blind Boys of Alabama, at the end of his days, wishes to enter the city of Colonus and find rest and the peace prophesied for him at last — the people of Colonus, knowing him accursed, try to resist him:

**

What can we learn from these two examples of conflict circumscribed within the parameters of art?

For comparison, here are two reports of the stylized Beating Retreat ceremony at the Wagah Border crossing, jointly performed each evening by the Indian Border Security Force and Pakistan Rangers and aptly described as a “synchronized display of stomps and shouts” — with some suggestive comments about the rivalry between the two nations in each.

From Michael Palin:

and from Voice of America:

[ by Charles Cameron — nothing strategic or serious, just dropping a little beauty your way ]
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Here’s a DoubleQuote that doesn’t fit my usual graphic format, but that gives me enough delight that I thought I’d post it anyway.

It all begins with a friend pointing me to this video — it’s quite beautiful, it’s a commercial, and it’s promoting a Lifebuoy campaign, in their words, “to help reduce the deaths of two million children before their fifth birthday” by means of their “handwashing behaviour change programmes”:

Okay: so I like the video very much, but I know nothing about Lifebuoy, their politics, their labor practices, the things that might make me hesitate to be quite as delighted by the video as I might be if there wasn’t a massive “international” tied in with the short and moving narrative. So I googled “Lifebuoy”…

**

And found this poem, which has nothing to do with soap but a great deal to do with telling a short and beautiful story — albeit with the simplicity of words, of poetry:

Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy
–Thomas Lux
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For some semitropical reason
when the rains fall
relentlessly they fall

into swimming pools, these otherwise
bright and scary
arachnids. They can swim
a little, but not for long

and they can’t climb the ladder out.
They usually drown—but
if you want their favor,
if you believe there is justice,
a reward for not loving

the death of ugly
and even dangerous (the eel, hog snake,
rats) creatures, if

you believe these things, then
you would leave a lifebuoy
or two in your swimming pool at night.

And in the morning
you would haul ashore
the huddled, hairy survivors

and escort them
back to the bush, and know,
be assured that at least these saved,
as individuals, would not turn up

again someday
in your hat, drawer,
or the tangled underworld

of your socks, and that even—
when your belief in justice
merges with your belief in dreams—
they may tell the others

in a sign language
four times as subtle
and complicated as man’s

that you are good,
that you love them,
that you would save them again.

**

The video and the poem are very different — yet closely connected, coming to me as they did, hot on one another’s heels the other day. I celebrate them here as an informal DoubleQuote, with gratitude to Google.

May I recommend, to myself when my ship comes in and to others: Thomas Lux, New and Selected Poems: 1975-1995.

[ by Charles Cameron — what can these two stunning performances tell us about conflict and / or peace? ]
.

I’m not sure if I’ve said it here before, but conflict resolution is pretty much the same as peace making, hence my title for both parts of this post, Blessed are the conflict resolvers (Matthew 5.9). In the second part of this post, I’d like to shared with you two stunning and highly stylized situations in which peace and conflict are brought together by sheer art.

Battle as dance, from Carlos Saura‘s Carmen — in the aftermath of a gambling disagreement, the jealous rivalry of two men over the young female lead bursts into violent dance:

And …

The battle of songs, from Breuer and Telson‘s Gospel at Colonus. Oedipus, played here by Clarence Fountain and the Blind Boys of Alabama, at the end of his days, wishes to enter the city of Colonus and find rest and the peace prophesied for him at last — the people of Colonus, knowing him accursed, try to resist him:

**

What can we learn from these two examples of conflict circumscribed within the parameters of art?

For comparison, here are two reports of the stylized Beating Retreat ceremony at the Wagah Border crossing, jointly performed each evening by the Indian Border Security Force and Pakistan Rangers and aptly described as a “synchronized display of stomps and shouts” — with some suggestive comments about the rivalry between the two nations in each.

From Michael Palin:

and from Voice of America: