[ by Charles Cameron — following on Advertising series 01: Music — maybe I’ll post three today — here’s the second ]
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Ludacris Mercedes– there’s a moment in the middle of this magical commercial where magic transforms opera into rap — the Mercedes driver’s preference, as we see at the end of the commercial, when he instructs the car to play his music:
Volvo’s new spokesmodel for its SUVs, the Queen of the Night from Mozart’s “Magic Flute” (Diana Damrau), ordering up the murder of Sarastro, the High Priest of the Sun, in a production at Covent Garden.(Royal Opera House)
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Ha! For a different take, an opera-rap mix, see Twist of Fate Wines’ Embrace the Unexpected ad:
Like it? Switch modes of culture-clash:
Flight of the Bumblebee:
And go to Calvinball:
Last but not least, give things a sacred twist? Hallelujah:
[ by Charles Cameron — this series has been quiescent, and that’s a pity — so I’ll post two today, to re-kick-start the series ]
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Jaguar:
You’ll likely have seen the jaguar (cat) keeping pace with the Jaguar (e-pace), the cat and the car in parallel..
The cat-car association is embedded in the name: the addition of a beautiful woman never hurt from an ad-man’s perspective. Here’s a 1959 ad for an XK150 Roadster:
The same formula works today —
Eva Green features in an alluring, almost purring commercial in which her cat accompanies her to her car:
Jacob’s ladder, on which angels are show ascending and descending, is revealed to Jacob in a dream: sheer magic — and how richly strange to see the ladder emerge from a simple loop of string..
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Act Two: Pavel Tchelitchew, The Concert {via Alabandine]
That the string figure should become a stringed instrument, plucked by the teeth and accompanied by tambourine.. again, we are raised an octave above our grounded selves..
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Act Three: Bob Dylan, Song and Dance Man
And the song and dance musician magician Dylan — his harmonica, making an anthem for us all.
[ by Charles Cameron — Vlahos is a mighty analyst warrior poet –used to teach at the Naval War College and Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Programs, and I wouldn’t mind at all if the poet came towards the fore in some future works ]
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You might think magic is nothing, a whisp of imagination good for fantasy novels with hair and silks trailing in the wind — but Ferdinando Buscema, the Institute for the Future‘s New Magician in Residence would disagree, the erudite >Erik Davis too, Hannibal Lecter, and Ioan Couliano, author of Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, as would Dumbledore, Gandalf and Merlin, and notably the poet and practicing magicianWB Yeats, and before him Queen Elizabeth‘s Dr Dee — but that’s far enough back, King Arthur‘s Merlin and Queen Elizabeth‘s Dr Dee between them should give you pause for thought.
Magic is imagination. And imagination is power.
Shakespeare‘s Prospero:
It was mine Art..
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Michael Vlahos is not unaware of the power of imagination, or morale as it is often, shape-shifting as is its wont, called on the field of battle. Indeed, Vlahos has written brilliantly about the magical properties of dreams, discussing UBL‘s dreams before 9/11 in Terror’s Mask: Insurgency Within Islam:
Usama bin Laden: “He told me a year ago: ‘I saw in a dream, we were playing a soccer game against the Americans. When our team showed up in the field, there were all pilots!’ He didn’t know anything about the operations until he heard it on the radio. He said the game went on and we defeated them. That was a good omen for us.”
Shaykh: “May Allah be blessed!”
Usama bin Laden: “Abd Rahman al-Ghamri said he saw a vision, before the operation, a plane crashed into a tall building. He knew nothing about it.”
Shaykh: “May Allah be blessed!”
You remember those dreams? What’s stirring in the unconscious is always potent as motive.
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Vlahos, therefore, on violence as the necessary in civil war:
Violence is the magical substance of civil war. If, by definition, political groups in opposition have also abandoned the legitimacy of the old order, then a successor constitutional order with working politics cannot be birthed without violence. Hence violence is the only force that can bring about a new order. This is why all memorable civil wars, and all parties, enthusiastically embrace violence.
Think on that, in our present context, or read his whole article — and one that preceded it:
It’s the hypocrisy that almost defines the human condition. Ouroboric situations — situations where a serpent bites its own tail — are fine vehicles for irony, and hypocrisy is among the sharpest serpent-toothed human behaviors.
Zenpundit is a blog dedicated to exploring the intersections of foreign policy, history, military theory, national security,strategic thinking, futurism, cognition and a number of other esoteric pursuits.
