Hi Simon;
"The grace of wild animals" reminded me of my old Aikido teacher, Robert
Nadeau.
I found some you tube films of him. He still has that dangerous grace
some 35 years later!
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=robert+nadeau+aikido
-Joel
On 7/18/2014 4:18 PM, Simon Mclennan wrote:
Hi Joel, well I went off there at a tangent..
I do appreciate your comment - somehow it sparked something.
It was also re-reading the quote about the butoh body and the body
"that has been robbed", and I thought of wild animals and their
bodies (reminding me now also of my old Alexander technique teacher
speaking of the grace of wild animals), then I thought
about how we farm animals, and chain them and break them, like a horse
or an elephant, to do our labour. And the utter
sadness of that situation, when all is said and done, as we totter
about the earth, puffing ourselves up...
Cheers Joel,
Simon
On 19 Jul 2014, at 00:02, Joel Weishaus <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi Simon;
I wasn't aware that I made that particular link. But I do agree with
everything you say, except for "inert" rocks, as everything moves.
Some rocks just move very slow; while igneous rocks in a hot state of
volcanic eruption move very fast. It is also interesting that we
carry the DNA of almost every living, or having once lived,
substance. Contrary to how biologists classify life, we are all of
the same family.
And, yes, we've captured, enslaved animals and bred animals for our
own use, physical and psychological. We've made them into factories,
or "companions," neurotic to a point where and we now send them to
psychiatrists to make them feel more comfortable in their
enslavement, just as psychologists adjust people to a neurotic world.
This is incendiary stuff. But one job of the artist is to work the
bellows of the alchemical fire.
-Joel
On 7/18/2014 11:41 AM, Simon Mclennan wrote:
Cheers Joel - interesting link you made there.
Mmm, on the subject of the body, the animal body - when I think
about how other animals (let alone human on human) are taken for
granted by us,
as if they were a piece of inert rock, literally controlled, like
robots, or glove puppets. As if they are animations in a game, or a
pair of socks -
when I think how we take this for granted - how we exercise a power
so supreme over them - like gods - quite dirty, grubby gods -
how we manipulate their bodies through selective breeding, as if
something like THE BIBle said it was OK to do that, that a god in
the sky, Jehovah, told Adam that we could do as we pleased,
that this was OK, to use them for our pleasure and sport - for the
taste - the juice running down our lips , In Ur, - the joy of
owning a certain breed of dog - tiny little legs of a sausage dog -
flat faced pug to look chic in the sleeves of a mandarin, or on the
lap of a Hollywood diva, or
some chav from Solihull, Kensington of Quebec - how we experiment on
them, because we can, in cages, bred in tiny cages in China, in
America, for the taste of the bacon - we differentiate -
our dogs get pride of place - a pig, as intelligent and as sociable
as any dog - gets bred bred bred for ever Amen and the bacon grease -
The brutalised bodies of factory farm workers and meat workers,
slaughter men, underpaid and themselves brutalised to brutalise in
turn the chunks of living flesh
they process through - for the profit of the owners and the
shareholders - mmmmm - what bodies, what bodies, what bodies,
and the war we wreak on our fellow humans, will never ever ever
stop, until we treat other species with the respect they deserve -
that is, as fellow beings on
this "existential adventure" (Anat Pick - Creaturely Poetics)
It makes me so sad, and I urge you all to think and feel this one
through, please please think about it,
S
On 18 Jul 2014, at 17:39, Joel Weishaus <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Simon;
The bottom photo, B&W, grainy, figures zombi-like, even Butoh-like.
Something timeless here, out-of-time. Art.
-Joel
On 7/18/2014 2:10 AM, Simon Mclennan wrote:
"Butoh gropes beneath the overlay of socialisation and cultural
authoritarianism for
'the body that has been robbed'...the 'fiery body', the wild inner
flame in the heart of darkness." (Taghairm Arts)
To see a collection of most of my films, and history of street
painting:
http://simonmclennan.blogspot.co.uk
<http://simonmclennan.blogspot.co.uk/>
Simon
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