An "art film" I actually understood...I think

At the weekend we watched, via Netflix, an "indie" movie titled Paterson, directed by arty farty specialist Jim Jarmusch. I'm not a big art film fan generally, haven't seen any other of Mr Jarmisch's offerings. Paterson, for the first 15 minutes or so was under threat of the big switchoff - by me. Husband is more of an art film fan, but even he had early doubts about this one. We persisted though, and I'm happy that we did.

Although I know not of Jim Jarmusch's work, I do know of Doctor William Carlos Williams and his poetry, which forms a kind of under-pinning of this film. When the film drew to its close I realised, and commented, that it was, in itself just like a William Carlos Williams poem. The ordinary, the undramatic, a celebration of everyday things: their everyday-ness evoking, eventually, something more than ordinary.

Bare-bones of the movie = a New Jersey bus driver called Paterson, in a New Jersey town called Paterson; his creative, slightly ditzy stay-at-home wife, and their English bulldog called Marvin. Marvin is the only one in the film exhibiting any sense of humour - with a name like "Marvin", as a bulldog, you'd have to, wouldn't you? The bus-driver is also a secret poet who writes his poems in an old fashioned notebook, during his breaks, and later at home, in his den in the cellar. He's a fan of William Carlos Williams, who had been a doctor practising in and around Paterson, the town.

Deeper into the movie's flesh and organs there are signs and symbols, things to be noticed : twins turn up frequently in the background, different sets, sometimes in the foreground too. Paterson's wife Laura's arty creations are always in black and white, repetitive and often circular in shape, repeating, repeating, like the bus driver's workday routines, Monday to Friday. Even Laura's cupcakes, baked for the farmer's market, are strangely repetitive, also decorated in black and white icing. Paterson does not carry a smartphone, own a laptop or computer; his favourite neighbourhood pub, where he drinks just one beer each evening, does not have a TV. Paterson lives in the world of Paterson, in his head and in his notebook.

Does anything exciting or interesting happen in this film? We waited for some kind of climax, and there came a couple of low-key events, but these proved even more low-key because of Paterson's own attitude to them. There was, though, a single event, involving Marvin. Marvin, by the way, does not get killed off for drama's sake in this movie, as dogs are wont to do in many movies. The Marvin event, for a while, shakes Paterson to his core, but a rather mystical, healing event follows.

Not everyone will appreciate Paterson, the movie. For viewers weaned on super-hero, slam-bammers, raunchy language, and soft-porn-ish scenes punctuating films, Paterson will seem like an anachronism and a complete waste of almost 2 hours. For anyone who enjoys the William Carlos Williams style of poetry, I suspect they would adore this film. I enjoyed it - didn't exactly adore it, but did appreciate what it was about, what it was doing.

There are a couple of my archived posts, from 2011 and 2015, about William Carlos Williams, including some astrology, HERE and HERE.

In closing this post, I cannot resist quoting a few lines from one of Williams' poems, The Forgotten City, where he recalled a "curious and industrious" working-class neighbourhood, he had driven through after a storm, and wrote:

.....I had no idea where I was and promised myself
I would some day go back to study this
curious and industrious people who lived
in these apartments, at these sharp
corners and turns of intersecting avenues
with so little apparent communication
with an outside world. How did they get
cut off this way from representation in our
newspapers and other means of publicity
when so near the metropolis, so closely
surrounded by the familiar and the famous?

Yes, how did they...the working class? Words as relevant today as on that day long ago when Doctor Williams drove through those streets and found inspiration for his poem.

Stardusty Music Monday ~ Mitchell Parish

Mitchell Parish (July 10, 1900 – March 31, 1993) was an American lyricist.

Parish was born Michael Hyman Pashelinsky to a Jewish family in Lithuania. His family emigrated to the United States, arriving on February 3, 1901 on the SS Dresden when he was less than a year old. They settled first in Louisiana where his paternal grandmother had relatives, but later moved to New York City. By the late 1920s Parish was a well-regarded Tin Pan Alley lyricist in New York City.

The melody of that lovely song, Star Dust, composed by Hoagy Carmichael in 1927, was enhanced by Mitchell Parish's lyrics in 1929. Remember them?

Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely night
Dreaming of a song
The melody haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you......

From a 1993 obituary in the New York Times:

Mr. Parish also contributed lyrics to many other well-known songs, including "Sweet Lorraine," "Sophisticated Lady," "Stars Fell on Alabama," "Deep Purple," "Stairway to the Stars," Moonlight Serenade" "Sleigh Ride," "Ruby" and "Volare"...........

The history of "Star Dust" illustrated Mr. Parish's conviction, expressed in a 1987 interview in The New York Times, that songs that are overnight sensations tend to be quickly forgotten, while those that become standards often take longer to be recognized.

The song was conceived by Carmichael in 1927 as a jazz instrumental, influenced by Bix Beiderbecke. Mr. Parish wrote the lyrics in 1929, and the song became a hit the following year in a recording by Isham Jones, the tenor saxophonist, band leader and songwriter who led one of the most popular orchestras of the pre-swing era. In 1931 Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong also had minor hits with the song.

Not yet a standard, "Star Dust" languished until the dawn of the swing era, when Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey both had hit versions released back to back on the same Victor 78-r.p.m. single. In late 1940, Artie Shaw recorded his classic version of "Star Dust" featuring Billy Butterfield's famous trumpet solo. Its popularity coincided with Tommy Dorsey's second version featuring Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers.

The song went on to have three other commercially significant lives, each in a different style. In 1957, it was a million-selling rhythm-and-blues hit for Billy Ward and the Dominoes. The same year, given a lush orchestral arrangement by Gordon Jenkins, it became the centerpiece of one of Nat (King) Cole's most successful albums, "Love Is the Thing." Of all the recorded versions of the song, Mr. Parish later recalled, Cole's was his personal favorite.

In 1978, Willie Nelson revived "Star Dust" as a spare country-swing ballad, making it the title of an album that sold three million copies.

There are countless versions of Stardust available, from just about every decade. Jo Stafford - what a great vocalist she was - is sometimes overlooked, so...

Saturday & Sundry Thoughts on Allegory as Side-effect

Allegory: we humans seem wired into it, a side-effect of human nature, encouraged and developed by early exposure to myths, parables, fables...and religion.

Allegory, as a concept, has been around since at least the days, and philosophers, of ancient Greece. I suspect that it was around but undocumented long before that. Its use and appreciation in matters religious, moral, political and general is accepted as another of our innate human characteristics.

Billy Collins' poem, The Death of Allegory, proposed that allegory is really a thing of the past. First verses are below, the rest at an archived post HERE.

The Death of Allegory
By Billy Collins

I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions
that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings
and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance
displaying their capital letters like license plates.

Truth cantering on a powerful horse,
Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils.
Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat,
Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended,

Villainy sharpening an instrument behind a wall,
Reason with her crown and Constancy alert behind a helm.
They are all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes.
Justice is there standing by an open refrigerator.........

It's a clever poem, nicely done, but in truth allegory is with us still, in literature, in art, in theatre, and in film.

A blog post is no place to be delving into every instance of recognised allegory. Blog readers, few as they may be in these Facebook-ridden days, are prone to ADD, as am I! That being so, I'm interesting myself here in just a couple of instances of allegory in movies, which had flown right over my head; perhaps I've not been alone in this.

A hat-tip to a piece at Taste of Cinema for this enlightenment. From the 14 examples of movies quoted - of those I'd actually seen - I found that the allegory in these two had zoomed right over my now silvery top-knot -

High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952)
The Plot: On the day of both his marriage to a pacifist Quaker (Grace Kelly) and supposed retirement, a town marshal (Gary Cooper) is given less than two hours to decide what to do about a gang of killers headed for his town – a conflict that, playing out more or less in real time, is complicated by his realization that none of his neighbors seem willing to help.

What It’s REALLY About: McCarthyism

Wait, What? To understand this one, one must take into account when the film was made. Shot in 1951 during the Korean War, the film’s plot is heavily influenced by events concerning the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Carl Foreman, the screenwriter, was called before HUAC as he was in the process of writing the script and refused to name names, causing him to be labeled an “uncooperative witness.” He was blacklisted shortly thereafter.

Watching the film with this background knowledge, it’s impossible to disregard the parallels between the town’s inaction in the face of incoming danger and the refusal of many in Hollywood to stand up for their persecuted peers. The film isn’t quite as blatant with this idea as other works about McCarthyism were at the time, such as the plays The Crucible (1953) and Inherit the Wind (1955), so it’s understandable how the message of this thoughtful Western could go over the heads of modern viewers unaware of the circumstances under which the film was made.

And

RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
The Plot: In a futuristic Detroit, Officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is brutally gunned down by a gang of criminals, only to be brought back to life as a crime-fighting cyborg (justifying the film’s tagline: “Part man. Part machine. All cop. The future of law enforcement.”).

What It’s REALLY About: Jesus Christ (once again)

Wait, What? Director Paul Verhoeven has made no secret of his aim to portray the title character as a Christ figure. After all, Murphy suffers a cruel and painful death at the hands of laughing sadists, only to be resurrected and become a savior figure. The biggest visual clue comes at the end, when RoboCop walks through shallow water, appearing to almost walk on top of it. Of course, turning the other cheek isn’t exactly RoboCop’s style. As the Dutch director has stated, he’s “the American Jesus.”

As it happens, I've just this week ordered a used DVD of the Robo-Cop re-make starring, in place of Peter Weller, a new favourite of mine, Joel Kinnaman, whose performance in the TV series The Killing impressed me so much that we're watching the whole Netflixed series for a second time! I shall be watching the Robo-Cop re-make with yet another layer of added interest now!

A final thought, fitting for the 21st century, from Flannery O'Connor,
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose :

“In any case, you can't have effective allegory in times when people are swept this way and that by momentary convictions, because everyone will read it differently. You can't indicate moral values when morality changes with what is being done, because there is no accepted basis of judgment. And you cannot show the operation of grace when grace is cut off from nature or when the very possibility of grace is denied, because no one will have the least idea of what you are about.”

Perhaps Billy Collins was right!

Arty Farty Friday ~ Quartet of Cancerian Painters

There are other painters whose birth dates fall during the next 4 or 5 days, but I've chosen the following for their diverse styles. (Hat-tip to Wikipedia.)

Félicien Rops (7 July 1833 – 23 August 1898) Belgian artist whose best known pieces are erotic or pornographic in tone and depict an imaginary underworld or subjects of social decadence.

Pornocrates, Pornokratès, La dame au cochon, or The Lady with the Pig

Artemisia Gentileschi (8 July 1593 – c. 1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio. In an era when women painters were not easily accepted by the artistic community or patrons, she was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence.

My archived post on her is HERE.


Judith & Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes

David Hockney, OM, CH, RA (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. An important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.

My archived post on him is HERE.

A Bigger Splash

Giorgio de Chirico(10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978), an Italian artist and writer. In the years before World War I, he founded the scuola metafisica art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. After 1919, he became interested in traditional painting techniques, and worked in a neoclassical or neo-Baroque style, while frequently revisiting the metaphysical themes of his earlier work.

The Song of Love

Over-thinking Overton?

The Overton Window - four years ago, in a post titled:
Peering Through the Overton Window

I began:

The Overton Window is a political theory which describes as a narrow "window" the range of ideas the public will find acceptable, and states that the political viability of an idea is defined primarily by this, rather than by politicians' individual preferences. It is named for its originator, Joseph P. Overton, a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. At any given moment, the "window" includes a range of policies considered politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too extreme to gain or keep public office.

That post bears a re-read, as do the comments there. I was prompted to seek it out after reading some comments at the naked capitalism website on Monday. These were from, among others, commenters HBE, jsn, & justanotherprogressive, who were surprisingly complimentary to The American Conservative magazine/website:

" [The American Conservative]often expresses more left leaning sentiment than any liberal publication (think the Atlantic, Huffpo, etc.)....Strange times indeed.

Responses included observation that
"The Overton Window has shifted so far to the right that traditional conservatism now seems “left”. The American Conservative espouses the same things traditional (not the crazies we have now who claim to be conservatives but are really right wing reactionaries) conservatives have always espoused – they really aren’t something new or more “liberal”……it just seems that way when you see what has happened to the Democratic Party……"
and
[The American Conservative]is actually Conservative which has more in common with the left (you can’t have a king without peasants) than Liberals do: people with out money are “useless eaters” to Liberals.

Overton Window...I wondered what else is being written this year on that, somewhat erm... steamed-up, topic?

From New Republic

The more divided we become, the harder it is to locate the Overton Window, let alone move it. There is now a window of policies that are acceptable to the Republican base, and another for Democrats, but on the national level, there is no window. Instead of a consensus edging one way or another, we have a choice between two poles. The Overton Window is ultimately a name for what we have lost, not an indication of where we are headed. Its popularity today represents a powerful nostalgia for the center. It doesn’t help us overcome fragmentation or rebuild a consensus. Its attractiveness lies in its reassurance that a middle ground once existed.

From Truthhawk

The current Overton window in America is wider than I could possibly have imagined.

Think about the following:

Liberal media is seriously all-in on the idea that Russia is hacking American democracy
Social media, with more young people, is even more ‘out-there’
Conservative media is seriously considering the idea that the CIA hacked an American political party, then ‘false-flagged’ it to make it look like the Russians did it
This was discussed on Hannity a couple nights ago – a late-night highly-rated show that will mostly get older viewers. The younger social media users are approaching full-on Alex Jones level.

I’m not going to pass judgment on these theories – that’s not the point. But can you imagine returning to the politics of 2005? 2010? Almost no idea seems beyond the American political imagination right now.

Where do we go from here? Let’s face it – the Overton window has intentionally been used by the media monolith to limit contrarian opinion. Real truths have been hidden outside the Overton window. Now that it’s blown wide open, those truths can be discussed in the mainstream, as it moves online.

Smart operatives and cunning entrepreneurs will find plenty of opportunity in a world without information gatekeepers. There is now one less limit on power, and one less bottleneck to the truth. Politics is permanently changed.

What, if anything can be made of those thoughts? Don't ask me - I'm not from around here! All that come to mind are words from a Tina Turner song:

STEAMY WINDOWS - ZERO VISIBILITY
STEAMY WINDOWS -COMING FROM THE BODY HEAT
STEAMY WINDOWS - STEAMY WINDOWS.

"I wonder what went wrong..."

I've sometimes offered a "Happy birthday USA!" type of greeting on 4 July in years past, but this year Americans, life and breath of the USA, seem anything but happy; such a greeting would be akin to flogging a dead horse.

Although I'm a US Citizen myself, I guess I'm not, and can never be, at heart "An American". I do love the land itself though, but not much of what goes on within it.

There's no real political left in the USA. It's out of balance. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of the corporations, one does a tango the other a waltz, but both dance for beaucoup dimes. A proper political left is needed, to provide balance, and support for the working class. Yet because corporations own the media and can manipulate and brainwash those Americans not deeply into politics, the rise of any strong 3rd party has become impossible.

Paul Simon's classic beautifully rendered by jazz singer Kurt Elling:

Music Monday ~ From Frankie to Ben, Stan & Billy via Some Country Roads

Continuation of last Monday's theme:

As the 1960s morphed into the early 70s Frankie (Sinatra) ruled, for me - with an occasional side-order of Neil Diamond.

Long playing records (33 and a third rpm), extended play records (45 rpm)persisted and were joined by a new idea - cassette tapes. I liked these - one could, with the right piece of equipment, record one's own stuff, from radio or from life. Cassette tapes were not well received by the music elite, however, and to be sure there were problems. The delicate mini tape would tangle, stretch, break, and cause all manner of frustrations.

As my life found a more stable basis, a permanent home, good employment, I bought what was known as a music centre, it looked something like the one in the photograph. This beauty could play LPs, EPs or cassette tapes, had separate stereo speakers. Ah yes - stereo - the great new "thing". CDs (compact discs), a new record format, began to appear in the stores, and I recall that my music centre was able play these too, one of the first on the market to do so - all very new-fangled! I loved my music center - but lost it, along with everything else we owned in a devastating fire in the mid-1990s.

Anyway....backing up:

During the mid to late 1980s, on our vacation trips from England to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, one evening we wandered by an open air cafe fronting the seashore, where a singer, with guitar and small backing group, was entertaining diners. We leaned on the promenade rail a few yards distant, watching the sea, and listened. I didn't recognise the songs, but I liked the atmosphere, the rhythm, and the voice. He was obviously either English, American or Australian. His accent was London-ish, the songs were American, and his outfit was reminiscent of Crocodile Dundee! We were intrigued. This was the start of a new musical trend for me. Tom Keenan, a Londoner, introduced us to country music that evening, we became fans of the music and friends of "the voice".

Songs of Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Don Williams, Patsy Cline and countless others had me hooked. Classic, intelligent, emotional and sometimes witty lyrics do not deserve the derision they often receive from music snobs. Country music was a whole new vista for me to explore. And I did, despite the fact that, at the time country music, or country and western as it was often called, was a rarity in England at that time. I ordered monthly country music magazines and newspapers, bought home-made "pirate" tapes brought back by travellers, from the USA. I snapped up whatever record imports became available. We relied on our many visits to Tenerife for true, live, sustenance.

Country music carried me through some good times, as well as some very sad and difficult times, during the 1990s, into the new century.

Until I met my husband, aka "anyjazz" in 2004, jazz hadn't figured at all in my music consciousness. He is such a longtime and dedicated jazz fan that it became impossible for me to ignore the genre any longer. He used to tell me that I'd probably been listening to jazz oriented music more than I realised, for jazz takes many forms. This was reassuring!

The first real jazz I found that I could easily relate to: Concierto de Aranjuez played by Miles Davis. Yes, this was good! I was later introduced to Ben Webster's easy to love sexy saxophone, and later still Stan Getz' silky style, also some of Billy Strayhorn's dreamy compositions struck the right notes for me. I haven't moved on far from there, jazz-wise. I dislike strident, "chalk on blackboard" type jazz. I need to recognise a melody - still can't manage without that!

The music scenery has changed yet again in the 21st century. Records, whether LP, EP or CD, and tapes became redundant, obsolete almost, as computers and the internet spread among the great unwashed. Enter new "things" known as i-tunes, mp3s, music downloads, YouTube etc. Yours truly slunk into a corner with her CDs and sulked! I eventually made friends with YouTube, the rest...not yet, not really.

Where I am now: I still enjoy my first musical loves: show tunes, a bit of light opera, and American standards. Country music can still bring a lump to my throat and a nostalgic tear to my eye; Sinatra's appeal: well, of course, that is eternal.

Saturday & Sundries

Meditation - If you've ever tried to meditate and given it up as a bad job because your brain will simply not shut up and...well... meditate, Headspace's 10-day free trial might help. I tried it a few weeks ago, during the time my blood-pressure became unruly after a change of meds. I found the trial period helpful, though haven't felt the need, as yet, to carry on into the "paid-for" sessions, my BP having been reined in, natural calmness, for the most part, is restored.

As an alternative to meditation proper, I've often found that 10 minutes just watching Bear Cam, live video from Alaska, can be beneficial, especially when the temperature is nearing 100 degrees outside, and humid with it. The videos resumed for a new season in the past few days. Bears should now be awake after their annual hibernation. There isn't a lot of beary action going on so far, but I still visit two or three times a day - just because I enjoy the sights and sounds.

I occasionally suffer the unpleasant feeling of having been left behind, like the kid (superannuated kid it has to be said!) who didn't quite get with the group following a Pied Piper - into smartphone-land. Should I, at last, get with the trend and treat myself to a smartphone? I've usually been quite late in catching up with any 21st century gimmick du jour. I didn't own a home computer until 2001, didn't start a blog until 2006, have not yet migrated from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and haven't used a mobile phone since leaving England in 2004. Back then I owned one of those early clunky jobs with a wire antenna to pull out. Husband currently has an out-of-date cellphone with a slider keyboard for texting, and uses it hardly at all unless we're away from home. At home we have an olde worlde land-line.

My left-behind feelings, smartphone-wise, eventually led me to investigate Blackberry's newest offering, the Key-One. Not sure why I chose to investigate Blackberry from the many smartphone choices available, except that I remembered that Hillary Clinton, a legendary doofus when it comes to technology, used to swear by her Blackberry. If she could do it, then I'll certainly be able to wrangle one into submission! In a wild moment of abandon I clicked "confirm" and found I'd ordered a Blackberry Key-One. 24 hours later, after much mental argument, I attempted to cancel the order, as the phone had not yet been marked as shipped. Cancellation should've been a possibility. "No-can-do", said the customer service person - "it has now shipped." Ah well - it'll offer yet another learning curve for me to scramble up! Phone arrived on Thursday.

The new learning curve I've set for myself could prove to be awkward at times, and steep in places. Android is the land in which I shall stumble, trying to learn its language. You never know, my efforts might even provide fodder for the odd blog post or two...or if frustration ensues, there's always meditation and bear-watching.

Finally: this is fun, for anyone interested in the vagaries of UK politics, Brexit, Theresa May, and for old Python fans:

Arty Farty Friday ~ "King of the Pencil" Didier Mouron

Not much to read today, but do take a few minutes to see the video and feel gobsmacked at the talent of this artist who produces so much from just a pencil, paper, black, white and every shade of grey. He has a birthday coming up next week:
Didier Mouron was born on 3 July 1958, a Swiss artist (naturalized Canadian), who has been called "the king of the pencil".



Also: the artist's website.

Astrological Wisdom

British Astrologer of the 20th century, Ingrid Lind:

It is fatal to think of "the Stars" as determinants. We must not turn them into inexorable or malignant gods. This is altogether to mistake their power and to misunderstand the function of astrology, which is to give us a glimpse of a cosmic purpose with which we should try to harmonise. A man imprisoned in Saturn's dungeons may find real freedom in himself, and the chaos of disillusion of Neptune may drive him inwards until he finds the secret of his own integrity. Hard times may turn him into a walking complaint or he may learn to enjoy freedom from possessions. There is no difficult condition that courage cannot turn to good use.
(From the Conclusion to her book Astrology & Commonsense .)

One never has to go far to find wise words from astrologer Robert Hand. From Chapter 8 of Essays on Astrology (1982):

There are rhythms in human development, rhythms that weave in and out of each other, sometimes working together to reinforce each other, sometimes working against each other. Astrologers have long known about these rhythms, for that is the central study of astrology: the relation between the rhythms of human development and cycles of the heavens. Astrology is nothing more than this. It is not an effort to chart Fate or to describe an individual's immutable destiny. Astrology teaches that every individual is a creature of the cosmos and reflects its cycles. These cycles in turn affect the probabilities of different kinds of experience happening within an individual's life at various times.

From astrologer Liz Greene's Mythic Astrology (1994):

No horoscope can indicate whether an individual will turn healthy self-assertiveness into violence, or imaginative self mythologizing into dangerous delusions of global dominion. Mozart's horoscope may look surprisingly like that of the school music teacher. Factors beyond the scope of astrology - heredity, environment, historical epoch - interact with individual character to produce unpredictable results.

Snippets from the section "Introducing the Moon" in The Psychic Explorer co-written by astrologer Jonathan Cainer, first published 1986. All astrological input was from Mr. Cainer:

Our modern world is very solar. Despite recent advances in the feminist cause, we still live in a society dominated by male energy - and perhaps that is one reason why masculine sun signs have become so popular! There is a strong tendency for most of us to accept glib, generalized information and simplified scientific truisms. The sun rules "simplicity", and it also speaks of "material growth and self-interest", two very characteristic 20th-century ideals. The lunar principles of compassion, sympathy and understanding do exist in our world, but most of us would agree that they normally play a muted second fiddle in the process of human motivation.

It is crucial to recognize that people of either sex have two sides to their personality. Inside every macho man is a soft, poetic, sensitive individual trying to get out. Inside every soft woman is a strong, capable and ambitious person waiting for an opportunity to express herself. However, most women, at least on a superficial level, find it easier to identify with the lunar side of their character, while most men have more affinity with solar energy. In other words, women are often more in touch with their moon signs and men with their sun signs.

If you can accept the notion that each individual is not just a one-dimensional personality with a cardboard cut-out facade but a complicated, sensitive mixture of differing (and sometimes opposing) inclinations, you are ready to enter the world of real astrology.

A need to speak out...

Last week actor Johnny Depp became the latest American "celeb" to make a thinly veiled allusion to the killing of President Donald Trump. He asked the crowd at the Glastonbury arts festival in England, "When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?"Depp later apologized ... well, he would wouldn't he? They all do this after grabbing a day's worth of headlines.

Glastonbury used to be thought of as an annual love-filled gathering, hippie-flavoured - filled with fun, goodwill.

In May, "comedian" Kathy Griffin posed for photos holding a mask styled to look like the bloodied head of President Trump.

At January's Women's March on Washington, "pop icon" Madonna stated in a speech that she'd "thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House."

A production of Shakesepare's "Julius Caesar" at New York's Public Theater, in which the depiction of the titular character bore resemblance to Trump caused unease. Sponsors, including Delta Airlines and Bank of America, pulled their support from the production and protests objecting to the portrayal interrupted the play.

Meryl Streep, when campaigning for Hillary Clinton last year, characterized Trump as a bully who disrespects others during a speech at the Golden Globes.

Alec Baldwin has portrayed Trump unkindly (that's putting it mildly) on "Saturday Night Live".

Jimmy Kimmel, while hosting the Oscars, made several cracks at Trump's expense. Every one of the late and late-late shows' presenters have been guilty of the same on a nightly basis for months, and it's no longer funny.

This rant is is no way defending President Trump, who himself has been criticized for making comments that have appeared to advocate violence against others, including those on the other side of the political aisle. But does that make it alright for others to declare open season on him in such potentially dangerous a manner?

Hat-tip HERE.

People of the USA, in living memory, have seen their president assassinated right before their eyes, and later the same president's bother killed in cold blood, as well as a beloved civil rights activist murdered. If so-called "celebrities" do not dredge up a smidgen of good taste and decency soon, the USA could find itself reliving some of its worst nightmares. Where is the communal outcry, by the entertainment community, against such loose-lipped, hate-drenched hyperbolic spewings as listed above? Some of those hearing such spewings, or even reading of them could become immune to the danger lurking within them. Others with an altogether different agenda might use those spewings as cover for their own dirty deeds. Is there really any need to explain further?

Long Ago and Far Away : From Bluebirds to Ciaos on Music Monday

In the beginning there was a wind-up gramophone, and records known as "78s" (78 rpm - revolutions per minute). These were of brittle, breakable, shiny black stuff. It was wartime in England, I was very young and the only songs I clearly recall from that time are:
"Bless 'em all, bless 'em all,
The long and the short and the tall,
There'll be no promotion this side of the ocean,
So cheer up my lads bless 'em all",
and
"There'll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover,
Tomorrow, just you wait and see."


With the coming of those bluebirds, war over, and a few more years having passed, newfangled "LPs" (long playing records, at 33 and a third revolutions per minute) arrived on the music scene. Instead of containing just one song on each side, these carried five or six, and were unbreakable, though in the early days eminently warp-able. A new record player was needed, wind-up models were no longer suitable. The first LP I bought, using saved-up pocket money: songs from "The Student Prince" sung by Mario Lanza. It cost me, I recall, 37 shillings and 6 pence - a huge sum back then!

78-rpm records were still on sale alongside LPs, and around this time Bill Haley and his Comets, with their seminal rock and roll, burst upon young English ear drums from t'other side of the Atlantic. I was never greatly enamoured of this new music style, preferring to stick with songs from the shows, or big band ballads. I was always something of a square or, perhaps being a tad obtuse by nature, just never keen to be one of the crowd

Late 1950s to early 1960s saw a burgeoning popular music industry throwing up new product at an alarming pace. Elvis, Buddy Holly, The Beatles, and others from both sides of the Atlantic burst forth into the limelight. Juke boxes and coffee bars provided easy entertainment and affordable popular meeting places for teenagers. Pop music had arrived! None of this impressed me much. Nothing of this new phenomenon really "got to me" - perhaps I was born just a couple of years too soon to be part of this avant garde of pop music, and appreciated more easily the previous generation's styles and tastes.

In the early 1960s I met and married an Italian guy. We spent some periods in Italy, and as it happened, Italian songs had become fashionable at the time, probably the result of a few recent Italian-flavoured movies, and the fact that travel to vacation destinations such as Italy were becoming more possible for ordinary people; attendant music flavours began to seep into popular culture. "Ciao Ciao Bambina", "Three Coins in the Fountain", "Volare", and a few other ditties popularly sung by Dean Martin and Perry Como became moderately popular in England. These proved much more to my taste. My then husband also helped me to appreciate a singer I had overlooked, amazingly enough : Frank Sinatra. I soon realised that in a singer (if not in a husband) I'd found "the real deal"!

Weekend Cyclic Wandering

I've not fallen down an internet rabbit-hole for a while, but did so this week, though this rabbit-hole was not as deep as many, and did eventually lead me back via a T-junction to my very own archives!
My stumble really began outside the internet, in reading an article in a February 1974 edition of The Saturday Evening Post I'd bought in an antique/vintage store on our last trip. I'd been attracted by the magazine's cover illustration of an astrological chart, with Henry Kissinger's photograph at its centre. Title of the article heralded by the cover:
Astrology - Who Believes in It?

The article which, oddly, is not credited to any specific author, is a long one - almost receiving the tl:dr from me(too long did not read). It's printed in fairly small, close font. I did skim it initially, going back to special tid-bits at different times. The piece is certainly not as dismissive as a comparable piece in any current national magazine would be, but then the 1970s were still under a fairly "New Age" atmosphere, astrology back then was enjoying a short respite from ridicule.

My tipping point for rabbit-hole entry was the snippet:

What has astrology to say further about mankind's future? The long-term 794-year recurrence of the two giant planets Jupiter and Saturn in the same part of the Tropical Zodiac correlates closely to a cycle found in history by the great British historian Arnold J. Toynbee. During about half of the cycle the component states of a parochial civilisation engage in civil strife and a "time of troubles". Then during the balance of the cycle they combine as a Universal State or Empire. Northern and Western Europe and North America comprise such a civilisation.......

A 794 year cycle, thought I - Saturn/Jupiter, astrological opposites: Saturn the restrictive limiter, Jupiter the excessive expander. When they come together in conjunction I'm not surprised they make a mark of some kind.

I then began my descent, finding the words of several astrologers on internet pages crossing my eyes, jangling my brain.

If Saturn/Jupiter cycles were the only cycles to watch it'd be easy-peasy, but there are numerous other cycles, certain of my archived posts have explored these. I'm thinking, though, that Saturn and Jupiter, though categorised as inner planets, and still far away are much, much nearer to Earth than outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto whose various cycles are discussed over and over again by mundane astrologers. Whether this fact makes Saturn/Jupiter cycles more significant to us here on Earth isn't clear.

From astrologer Mark Lerner:
[It's necessary to read the whole piece, but just a taster -]

It turns out that Jupiter and Saturn – major planets connected to the social realm, religion, philosophy, education, profession, government and economics – keep energizing the same elemental quality (fire, earth, air or water) in a series of 20-year conjunctions for almost 200 years. Then the Jupiter-Saturn unions shift to the next elemental quality for another series of conjunctions for around two centuries. After a long cycle of 794-800 years, the entire Jupiter-Saturn pattern begins over although never exactly energizing the same degrees of the zodiac as during the previous 800-year cycle.

What is particularly interesting to us, here in mid 2017, is the fact that the 794 year long Saturn/Jupiter cycle will hit a change point in December 2020, when the conjunction will occur in an Air sign, Aquarius, for the first time in around 180 years. Conjunctions have been occurring in Earth signs for the past 180 years. This could reflect the materialistic atmosphere the developed world has experienced during this almost two century time span. Does it indicate that, very gradually (VERY gradually) materialism might recede making way for more a more humanitarian, thoughtful and caring feel? Change of atmosphere will probably be kick-started by an Aquarian revolutionary period, gradually, oh so gradually, morphing into calmer airways during the Gemini and Libra phases.

Whether humans will still be around on planet Earth to encounter these changes is another matter. If climate change proceeds apace, perhaps only the very wealthy who have de-camped to the few safe places Earth will still afford, will be left. How long they could survive without an army of servants and protectors from who knows what, is questionable. So, in the end all speculation is somewhat, as they say, academic.

From my own archives, for any passing reader still interested in this topic, I'd recommend a look at these posts, not missing the comment threads attached too - some interesting stuff there!

http://twilightstarsong.blogspot.com/2010/08/ramblings-on-capitalism-astrology.html

http://twilightstarsong.blogspot.com/2012/09/600-year-arcs-capitalism.html

http://twilightstarsong.blogspot.com/2012/10/600-year-arc-capitalism-astrology-part-2.html

Amalgamating the Jupiter/Saturn pattern with other, outer-planetary cycles is a bit like trying to follow a complex knitting pattern. The full beauty, or otherwise, of the item or garment will not be fully discernible immediately; in the case of planetary cycles, really not fully for centuries, or until, continuing the analogy, we've completed a good few "repeat the above pattern [...] times more". That's a bummer for the average human's less than one century life span!

Arty Farty Friday ~ Michael Whelan

Fantasy artist Michael Whelan was born on 29 June 1950 - this video is a good place to begin discovering his style.



The artist's own website has lots of interesting content.

For a few large-sized images of some of his work, take a look at THIS WEBSITE.

Lots more examples accessible via Google Image

Michael Whelan's art immediately brought to mind the styles of two other arty Michaels I've covered in the past (and more than once): Michael Parkes and Michael Cheval.

Michael Whelan's natal chart is available at Astrotheme. It's easy to spot his "draw" to fantasy and sci-fi, his Sun and Uranus are conjunct at 7 and 5 degrees of Cancer. Uranus links to all things futuristic, unreal or "other". Neptune is thought to link to fantasy, yet, when one thinks on it, Uranus in its eccentricity has to have similar connection. His natal Sun at 7 Cancer, in any case, is in tight trine to Jupiter in Pisces (the Neptune-ruled sign).

Nonagenarian Clancy Sigal

Counterpunch, on Tuesday, posted among its selection of articles: The Big Con by Clancy Sigal. I enjoyed the read, and admired the writer's style. I can't put my finger on exactly why, it's just that some writers chime and some don't - this one did!

First paragraph

A bunch of men in suits and ties in front of TV cameras investigating another bunch of guys in suits and ties could be one of the great shell games of the Trump era. Meanwhile, as the “Russia probes” go on, memos and tweets flying like paper shrapnel, many Americans not in suits and ties sicken and die as a direct result of the suits’ indifference or plunder or both.

Counterpunch offered, regarding the author of the piece:
Clancy Sigal is a screenwriter and novelist. His latest book is Black Sunset.

I searched around the net for more information on Mr Sigal and found that he has led a very eventful life - and a long one. He was born in 1926, making him to be 91 this year. His natal chart, for anyone interested, is available at Astrodatabank. He has Sun and Moon in Virgo (Mercury-ruled), so writing - good writing - comes as second nature to him.

Three of his books:

From a synopsis of Blacklisted, a feature documentary chronicling the incredible adventures of writer, blacklisted Hollywood player & dissident, Clancy Sigal, created by Cai Howells :
Synopsis

Blacklisted is an examination of an extraordinary man in extraordinary times. Clancy Sigal was raised in the gangland of 1930s Chicago, he served in the occupation of Nazi Germany and witnessed the Nuremberg trials. After returning home he became a Hollywood player, agent to the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyk and Errol Flynn. In 1957, under pressure from the studios and the McCarthyist witch-hunts he was exiled to London. There, Sigal became the lover of Nobel prize-winning author, Doris Lessing. He collaborated with the radical psychiatrist, R D Laing on a halfway house for schizophrenic patients and later, American deserters. He won world-wide respect as a novelist and cultural commentator before returning to Hollywood as a successful screenwriter.

Clancy Sigal's life story plays out like the fanciful yarn of a bombastic Hollywood hack. Like a fiercely political and intellectual Zelig, an everyman compelled to live at the very edge of his times. He seems to have been present at many of the US and UK's most pivotal moments of the last seventy years. .........................

During my search I came across an interview with Mr Sigal, where he was asked for a book recommendation he regularly makes to his fans, he offered that George Orwell's Politics and the English Language will always be a must-read, and is so especially nowadays. Upshot of this: I ordered a used copy, await its arrival, after which perhaps a marked improvement might be noted in my own writing style!

It is the month of June, The month of leaves and roses...

It is the month of June, The month of leaves and roses, When pleasant sights salute the eyes and pleasant scents the noses. (Nathaniel Parker Willis).

June....Juno: yes, in a handful of past posts I've confidently written that the month of June was named in honour of goddess Juno; such archived posts can be accessed via "Juno" in the Label Cloud in the sidebar. I've lately stumbled across evidence that I (and countless other writers, bloggers and internet websites) could be mistaken in this supposition. An excerpt from a book The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic by William Warde Fowler throws doubt on the June/Juno theory. The author includes a passage, in Latin, from Macrobius which he claims shows that Roman scholars were "at sea" as to the answer on whether the months of May and June were named after deities in the same way that March was certainly named in honour of Mars, god of war. There's more detail on the May/Maia question, which I'll not include here. As for June/Juno:

One source giving a hint that June/Juno might be questionable is Encyclopedia Mythica, where it is stated:

June
The fourth month [In ancient Rome the year began in March] was named in honor of Juno. However, the name might also come from iuniores (young men; juniors) as opposed to maiores (grown men; majors) for May, the two months being dedicated to young and old men.

Solstice

Tinfoil Hat Time! Fire in the Sky; Jacques Vallée & Music Monday

We recently watched a 1993 movie, Fire in the Sky, didn't realise until around halfway through it that we had seen the film before. It'd be surprising if we hadn't already sampled it because sci-fi, UFO, speculative fiction in a movie always attracts our attention. This film, based on a true story, tells of what appeared to have been an alien abduction. One of a group of forestry loggers went missing for 5 days, in 1975, after leaving his co-workers and daring to investigate a strange, fiery looking object hovering over the Arizona forest in which they'd been working. There's a book by the abductee, Travis Walton, upon which the film is based. The story was met with general disbelief by the police and authorities, but each member of the logging group took lie-detector tests, and more than once, as did the abductee when he returned - all passed the tests.

In the movie, scenes aboard the space vehicle showing medical experiments on the abductee are made intentionally scary. The abductee himself has said, in more recent years, that he now suspects that he was not taken into the craft for experimentation, but to be healed after stepping into the space vehicle's power source and being accidentally lifted, then thrown violently to the ground unconscious. He now feels that he was being helped back to health - a different perspective entirely from the movie's story. Mr Walton has taken more complex lie detector tests over the years, using "state of the art" equipment, and has always passed the tests. There's a video, from a few years ago, showing Mr Walton, himself, explaining his thoughts, HERE.

Watching Fire in the Sky I recalled an old post of mine:

Back in 2010 I posted a series of pieces under a general heading of "Woo-woo". This is one of them: (Woo-woo (or just plain woo) refers to ideas considered irrational or based on extremely flimsy evidence or that appeal to mysterious occult forces or powers - Skeptic's Dictionary). If not already wearing one, don tinfoil hat...now!

Jacques Vallée, in a nutshell from UFO Watchdog's UFO Hall of Fame:

Astro Physicist, Author, Investigator, Silicon Valley computer scientist, author of numerous UFO books including Anatomy of a Phenomenon, Passport to Magonia, Challenge to Science, Messenger of Deception, and Dimensions among other historical UFO books. Testified at UN hearings stating that serious study was needed regarding UFOs, was reportedly the model for the government scientist in the move Close Encounter of the Third Kind, worked closely with Dr. Hynek.
Vallée initially supported the extraterrestrial hypothesis on the origin of UFOs, but was one of the first to change his mind. In Passport to Magonia he suggests the UFO Phenomenon has much in common with fairies, angels, ghosts, and other paranormal issues and that the sheer number of UFO sightings argues against their extra-planetary origins. In fact, he seems to believe in an Inter or Multi dimensional aspect to UFOs which would indicate they co-exist with us.

There's much more at Wikipedia.

In an even smaller nutshell, Vallée thinks UFOs could be looked on as windows to other dimensions, manipulated by intelligent, often mischievous, always enigmatic beings - as yet unknown to us, of course. As Vallée puts it: "I will be disappointed if UFOs turn out to be nothing more than spaceships."

I've oft surmised that UFOs could be visitors not from outer space, but from another dimension about which we currently know nothing, or even time travellers from our own planet. Vallée's theory is rather more subtle though. He had this to say in his book Passport to Magonia - reported at UFO Evidence.

When the underlying archetypes are extracted," he wrote, "the saucer myth is seen to coincide to a remarkable degree with the fairy-faith of Celtic countries … religious miracles… and the widespread belief among all peoples concerning entities whose physical and psychological descriptions place them in the same category as the present-day ufonauts.

When I speak of a control system for planet earth," he says, " I do not want my words to be misunderstood: I do not mean that some higher order of beings has locked us inside the constraints of a space-bound jail, closely monitored by psychic entities we might call angels or demons. I do not propose to redefine God. What I do mean is that mythology rules at a level of our social reality over which normal political and intellectual action has no power….

Yes....well, I'm lost already! A little further investigation turned up the theories of another scientist, Nick Bostrom who suspects that we may be living in some kind of simulation - computer simulation. I'm not surprised that some other UFO researchers, scientists also, became so disoriented as to commit suicide:
From the interview with Vallée at UFO Evidence, linked above:

Vallée:For another thing you don't want to go around chasing every UFO that's reported. If a sighting gets a lot of publicity, you should stay the hell away from it. Instead you should go after cases that you select yourself, ones that have received very little publicity and you've heard about through personal channels...........
Clark: Are you suggesting that the investigator should attempt to experience the phenomenon himself?

Vallée: Yes, I think that's sound scientific practice.

Clark: But isn't that rather dangerous - in the sense that there's a real risk the investigator, even if he is emotionally stable and intellectually sophisticated, might be overwhelmed by the experiences involved?

Vallée: Yes, there are dangers. Witness what happened to Morris Jessup or to Jim McDonald. But I think that now we're more aware of what the dangers are. Once you realize the phenomenon may be deliberately misleading, then you can use certain safeguards. I'm not saying that safeguards are always going to work. There is an element of danger you really can't avoid. There's no way to do that kind of study just by reading books.

It's a little bit like the study of volcanoes. You can learn a lot about them by watching them from a distance but you certainly learn a lot more when you can be right there - even if it's somewhat risky.

I called up Wikipedia's pages on the two names mentioned, Jessup and McDonald and find that both men, serious scientists, interested in UFO research and/or The Philadelphia Experiment committed suicide.

This is getting a little weird, even for my tastes!



For any astrology fan passing by here, there's also investigation of Vallée's natal chart at my original post HERE.


Not forgetting that it's still Music Monday. How about Robbie Williams and "Arizona"? I hadn't heard this one before, and it proved to be rather apt for this post.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order. Carl Jung

A few of husband's quirky photos from our trip last week:

 My caption:  Cleanest dirty shirt time!

Toilet? Sorry!  There were lots of sad animal pelts in this corner, and nowhere to barf!

 Mantoys?

 Mantoys II

 Husband's caption: "If you look a little bit closer, it's easy to trace
Oh, the tracks of my tears stairs."

My caption was:  
"Once upon a time
The world was sweeter than we knew
Everything was ours  stairs
How happy we were then
But somehow once upon a time
Never comes again."

My caption:  Ascendancy of The Greens