Modes of Transport and Classical Music

Listening to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony this morning, I had an image of a man, Schubert I suppose, riding a galloping horse.  And I wondered could early 19th century romanticism be linked to the main form of transportation at the time - horse riding? Romantic painters like Delacroix and Gericault certainly loved to give us graphic images of horses straining at the bit, eyes enlarged in fear, nostrals flaring.  Could these wild horses be present in romantic works like Schubert's symphonies as well?

Delacroix: Lion attacking an Arab on a Horse

And now that I think about it, is it a coincidence that the jittering movements  and improvisations of jazz coincide with the onset of our modern obsession, the darting automobile, again reflected in the visual arts in the late works of Mondrian, such as "Broadway Boogie-Woogie".

And what of today? Do not Steve Reich's tedious works of repetition reflect the barley perceptible coughing motion of the modern high-speed train? I can imagine enjoying them on my iPod while riding the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto, but surely not seated on a saddle.  Do not the pared down and depersonalised sounds of the works of Philip Glass reflect the atmosphere of airports and commercial flights? And if I need a parallel from the visual arts, let me pick the abstract  works of Robert Nymann, as white and featureless as the atmosphere through which we fly, broken only by the turbelence of his rippled surface.

Robert Nymann

Marx said something like - show me your technology and I'll show you your government.  Doolan now says, show me your means of transport and I'll show you your music. Just a thought.

ZIS Lipdub

This year we decided to do something a little bit different - shoot a short film with the teachers, staff and nearly 500 teenage students in our school. And here is the result. Hope you enjoy it:

Esther de Vries Poem: Mandala

Last year I posted a link to the Esther de Vries poem "Layered" that had appeared in nthposition.
Here is another of her poems. This first appeared in issue 19 of the Liverpool poetry journal erbacce in 2010.

Mandala

Our breakfast table is a mandala:

at its corners white plates and cups of tea and coffee

flanked by cutlery of stainless steel,

blue and white Japanese bowls are dotted round,

in the middle a basket of bread

surrounded by jars of various colours.

At intervals hands move towards the center

to choose a croissant or a piece of zopf

but instead of calm chanting, there are raised voices.

A child screeches: “It’s my turn, listen!”

another snaps:

“Stop chewing so loudly, you’re disgusting”.

They lunge for each other,

prodding in whichever way might provoke

until one picks up a fork, yells and stabs

straight through the bread,

pinning the basket to the table.

“Up to your room!”

Off she storms,

leaving a flawed mandala in her wake.

There are also mornings when

words and smiles flow like sand

small shifts in mood don’t damage the picture

for a few minutes, it is still,

everything in its place 

until the table is cleared.

Esther de Vries

A Princess Comes to Visit

It isn't everyday that a teacher has a princess come to visit in the classroom, but that is exactly what happened when Princess Mette-Marit of Norway dropped into my class on Thursday.  Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary by flying to Zurich in order to attend the four day One Youth World conference, together with the likes of Desmond Tutu, Bob Geldof and keynote speaker Jamie Oliver. The Norwegian Royal couple decided to visit my school, in order to lead a workshop on Global Dignity.  I don't know how exactly it came about, but this Irish republican was landed with the job of playing host to the princess. 

We discovered that we had something in common, both being fans of the Australian rocker Nick Cave and his band, the Bad Seeds. Her Highness, a veteran of the Oslo rave scene and a well known rock fan, attended high school in Australia for one year. The most famous graduate of the school was Nick Cave.  The princess became quite animated when she told me that she had managed to track down some of Cave's old school English essays. These days Cave, former punk and heroine addict, is almost a type of royalty himself.  He lives in upper-class Hove, just outside Brighton; his albums are reviewed in the Financial Times, his novels are reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement, his films play at international film festivals. But he still rocks, especially when he appears with his pared down foursome, Grinderman.

I'll admit that having a princess in the classroom, being a bit out of the ordinary, did make the day a tad more interesting. But I wasn't overexcited.  Now if Nick Cave should come to visit...

Indonesian Protest Song

Sometimes the most unlikely thing becomes a powerful political symbol of resistance. Unintended meanings become invested into the object, which then becomes a vehicle for protest and anger.  Such was the case with the fairly innocent Indonesian song called "Genjer Genjer".  The song was written in 1943 by Muhammad Arif, during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies (Indoensia).  It tells a simple story of a desperately poor woman collecting ganjer, an aquatic plant normally used as cattle feed, which she sells on the market as human food. The message: life was tough during the occupation.

A recording of the song by a group called Dengue Fever became a huge hit in the mid-1960s and quickly became associated with the nation's burgeoning Communist movement, which was increasing agitating against the Sukarno government. In 1965 the military, led by General Suharto, stepped in, overthrew Sukarno and crushed the Communist Party, murdering at least a million people.  The danger of the overt symbolism of the simple song, intimately associated with the poor and the downtrodden, was not lost on the knew military dictator.  Suharto had the song banned, and it remained silenced for over 30 years.  Suharto was overthrown in 1998 and once again "Genjer-Genjer" has become a popular refrain.  Have a listen.

Dangerous Art - Symbols of Liberty

Delacroix's painting "Liberty Leading the People" is much reproduced, though it has come to be wrongly associated with the French Revolution of 1789. Half woman, half Goddess, with a tricolor in one hand and a gun in the other, a Phrygian cap on her head and her breasts bared, Delacroix’s creation embodies the Liberty in whose name the revolution of 1830 had been fought. She stands at the centre of a pyramid, leading the people towards their freedom, while at the same time evoking the memory of the radical First Republic, which had been founded in 1792 and had chopped the head off a king and a queen.

The painting was bought in 1831 by King Louis Philippe who had been brought to power by the revolution of 1830.  Alas, the Citizen-King, Louis Philippe, turned out to be a major disappointment and as his regime became more oppressive, and as the number of attempts on his life increased, he decided to distance himself from revolutionary ideals and Delacroix’s painting was quietly removed from view and locked away for a decade and a half.

In 1848 Louis Philippe himself was overthrown in a revolution.  Louis Napoleon was elected President of the new republic.  He found Delacroix’s “Liberty” and it was proudly hung in public again, now that Freedom was back on the throne.  But when Louis Napoleon carried out a coup in 1851 and crowned himself Emperor in 1852 Delacroix’s "Liberty" was once more considered to be a liability and was locked away from public view. When Louis Napoleon, now known as Napoleon III (or “Napoleon the Little” as Victor Hugo bravely called him) was overthrown in 1870 Delacroix’s "Liberty" was again taken out of the basement and exhibited for public viewing.  She is still there, hanging in the hall of 19^th century French paintings in the Louvre, admired by thousands of international museum goers every day.  Who knows what sort of message she sends to Chines tourists, and visitors from other dictatorships.

Another work by a French artist is the Statue of Liberty, designed by the Alsatian sculpturer Frederic  Auguste Bartholdi in 1886, and presented to New York to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution.  But this famous symbol of Liberty has been somewhat tamed.  Gone is the Phrygian cap, replaced by a saintly halo, and gone is the gun.  Most obviously gone are the bare breasts.  This is no violent Amazon leading a violent and radical revolution, but a steady, modest matron, holding aloft the light of enlightened progress while grasping a stone tablet that says: “4 July 1776”.

In 1989, two hundred years after the first great French Revolution, spring came early to Beijing and hundreds of thousands of democracy demonstrators filled the gigantic Tiananmen Square.  In late May some students from the art academy erected a statue to Liberty, made of plaster, wire and styrofoam. She became known as the Goddess of Democracy.  Chinese authorities leapt to the conclusion that she was based on New York’s Statue of Liberty, and this was proof, if proof was needed, that the student demonstrations were an American intervention in Chinese affairs.  In fact the work is made in Social-Realist style, almost Stalinist in its form, reminiscent of the type of art that had been approved during the years of Mao Zedong.  Alas, within a few days the square was the target of a military assault, the statue was destroyed, its makers slaughtered or imprisoned. Only a few photographs of the Chinese Goddess of Liberty remain.  Some day, perhaps, like Delacroix's liberty, she will be revived and one of her photographs will adorn Tiananmen Square.

This post has been inspired by my reading of Peter Burke's Eyewitnessing:The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence. Cornell University Press, 2001

The Green Men of Bali

I've been on the road for a couple of weeks with limited access to a computer, but arrived home in Zürich this morning after an exhausting two flight, 19 hour journey.  My head is spinning, but I hope to get a good night's rest (despite the fact that my brain is in another time zone completely) as work begins with a meeting at 8:30 tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, here is a photo I took during dinner two nights ago in Bali, Indonesia.  Five Balinese musicians, dressed in Green t-shirts, belting out a fine rendition of "The Wild Rover". What brings these gentlemen to dedicate their professional lives to playing Irish folk music every night of the week, I don't know.  Is this a sad case of the worst side of globalization, or is it something to be cheered and celebrated?  Like I said, my head is spinning, and maybe it isn't just the jet lag. All I know is that on Thursday night I had a great time on a tropical island in Indonesia, and by the end of it these Balinese musicians had me longing for the wind and the cold and the lashing rain of the country that reared me - Ireland.

Bali's The Leprechauns