All Rung out (and out of bad puns, too)

So, what did I think of Götterdämmerung at QPAC last night?

I think the staging was very, very good, and the performances fine; but out of the 4 operas, I think I found Siegfried the best in performance for both orchestra and voices.   

My previous summary of the plot (after going through it on Youtube) is pleasingly accurate: but I do have to say that I've firmed up in the feeling this opera is a bit of a cheat on Wagner's part, in that they only talk about Valhalla going up in flames, we don't go there to actually watch it.   I mean, I feel we ought to at least get a cameo of Wotan with his hair on fire; but no, he and the rest of his dysfunctional household burn up off stage.   

But musically, it's still pretty satisfying.   

Now what can I say about the whole experience of a Ring Cycle?   I was convinced to see it due to a radio interview I heard by accident with some guy announcing it 4 years ago.  (I assume it was someone from Opera Australia).  I still remember some comments he made - one being that people think it's a "heavy" experience, but it's not: he said he has spoken to audience members at the end who would say they could immediately sit through the whole thing again.   I think he's right about that - for a story that is peak operatic melodrama (and  basically a doomed love story, as I guess most opera is) it doesn't really feel depressing or tiring at the end.   If I were the idle rich, I wouldn't mind seeing at least a "highlights" reel again next week, from a different seat too!

The opera guy also called it a "life changing" experience.   That is a little over the top, but it is certainly a unique one, with plenty to think about, as my many posts have indicated.   And I am very happy to have experienced it.

As a coda:  one peculiar thing I haven't yet mentioned - I was sitting in short row of 4 seats on the second balcony, so naturally you do find yourself making some small talk with them.  The guy right next to me (I was at the end of the row) was previously from England, and used to go to Covent Garden a lot.  He indicated he had been a bit disappointed with opera choice in Australia, but he would sometimes go to Sydney to see one, and come back the next day.  He was probably  in his 70's, and while chatting I found out that he lives in a very expensive newly developed area on the river.  The other two guys were also older (well, maybe 60's and 40's- probably a gay couple I suspect.)  The odd thing though was none of these 3 ever applauded. 

Curious about his lack of applause, I asked the English guy (before the start of the second opera) what he thought of the first, and he said something like "well I had read all the hype, and was a bit disappointed.  But then I thought about it more and how difficult it is to sing this opera, and perhaps I was a little tough."  I said that my impressions from the reviews on line was that the first opera had the most mixed response, but reviewers appeared to increasingly like the other three as the cycle went on.  

He then left 20 minutes early at the end of Die Walkure (the second one) to catch the ferry home!  I found out last night that he had missed the third opera (yay, an empty seat beside me) because he had to go to Sydney for some work or other and was delayed in his return - he is presumably semi retired.   As for the other two dudes in my row - they left early during the 3rd opera to catch a train, so I got separately interrupted at the climatic part of not one, but two operas!   Last night one of them commented to me that "oh well, we probably didn't miss much, did we?"

And then last night, when most of the audience is on its feet - I swear that no one in my row of unduly disgruntled old blokes clapped for even a second!

This, I thought, is just rude.   I really felt like asking the guy next to me if he familiar with the phrase "whingeing Pom", and if Australian opera isn't up to his standards, he can shove off with his money back to London and I don't have to hear his nose whistle during quiet parts of a musical again.  (I haven't mentioned that yet, have I?)  

How did I end up sitting in the one, short, row in the theatre with what seemed like the only 3 audience members who appeared to be continually unimpressed/uninterested, but kept coming back anyway?  

I guess it goes to show that it is "not for everyone" - or just that annoying people can turn up at the opera.

Anyhow, apart from an update I will make for an earlier post, this should be the end of my Ring cycle posts.  Maybe.  :)

The ring singularity

Ha ha.  In this explanation of a paper that Sabine Hossenfelder seems pretty excited about, regarding whether or not black holes have to have a singularity at their centre, there's a diagram showing a "ring singularity".

I'm soon off to my own Ring singularity - Götterdämmerung - starting at 4pm, and ending at 10.40pm. Yes, seeing all of a Ring Cycle takes some commitment.

One minor point that I hadn't realised before - that Kerr of rotating black hole fame is a New Zealander - and still at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.   Huh.  I would have assumed he was from a famous British or US university.

This disgraceful episode in US history

I've said it before, but I really despise anyone who thinks Trump election conspiracies are in any way excusable, when they have and had such dire real life consequences for innocent people:

Ruby Freeman, a former Georgia election worker, sat in a federal courtroom on Wednesday and told a jury: “Giuliani just messed me up, you know.”

She was referring to Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was sitting a few feet from her, as she described how her life has been upended since Dec. 3, 2020. That was the date Mr. Giuliani, then the personal lawyer to President Donald J. Trump, directed his millions of social media followers to watch a video of two election workers in Fulton County, Ga., asserting without any basis that they were cheating Mr. Trump as they counted votes on Election Day.

The workers were Ms. Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss.

Ms. Freeman, who is Black, recounted what followed: a torrent of threats, accusations and racism; messages from people who said she should be hanged for treason, or lynched; people who fantasized about hearing the sound of her neck snap.

They found her at her home. They sent messages to her business email and social media accounts. They called her phone so much that it crashed, she said.

The harassment got so bad that the F.B.I. told Ms. Freeman she was not safe in the home where she had lived for years. She stayed with a friend until she felt she put that friend at risk after law enforcement officials told her they had arrested someone who had her name on a death list.

Ms. Freeman’s name had become a rallying cry across conservative news outlets, embodying a conspiracy theory that Trump supporters embraced as they tried to keep him in office.

“This all started with one tweet,” Ms. Freeman said on Wednesday, the third day of a trial to determine what compensation she and Ms. Moss deserve from Mr. Giuliani. Judge Beryl A. Howell previously ruled that Mr. Giuliani spread lies about them, intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them and engaged in a conspiracy with others as he led the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office.

And look at the idiotic lawyer for Giuliani:

Ashlee Humphreys, a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism who testified as an expert witness for the plaintiffs, told the jury that the price tag for repairing the damage done to their reputations would be between $17.4 million and $47.4 million.

Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley IV, has said that size of damage award would be the civil equivalent of the death penalty — a description Judge Howell called “hyperbolic.”

So long, the Drum

The ABC has abruptly cancelled The Drum, a show which I would sometimes watch, mainly to marvel at how dull it could be. 

I feel mean for saying it, but of the hosts, I always found that Julia Baird (or should I say, Dr Julia Baird: it would seem she likes the title to be used) has a particularly dull and unappealing screen presence.  I always found something about Ellen Fanning much more likeable.  (She's also reading weekend news in Brisbane now, too.)

But the main problem with the show has been finding decent panel members.   Most were very, very ordinary, and without any particular expertise in the topics being discussed.  

It kind of surprises me that it has stuck around as long as it has...

The Ring effect

So I saw Siegfried (number 3 in the Ring Cycle) last night, and as you might guess, I have yet more thoughts:

*    some commentary I have read and posted before about viewing a Ring cycle indicated this, and I reckon it's clearly true:   it's a cumulative experience that feels a little like your brain being re-wired by music and light.   This might be a particularly true of this digital video heavy production, where the colour intensity is often very strong, and for the most part, pretty mesmerising.  I have never been bored or at risk of falling asleep, and the biggest physical effect on me was being really tired the day after Die Walkure.   

*    Is it because of that effect that I felt last night's performance, from both singers and orchestra, was particularly good?   My doubts about the orchestra disappeared, and I don't think I was alone - the applause at the end was the strongest and most sustained out of the three so far.   

*    Having said this - I still don't know that the dynamic between aunt and horny nephew in the last 15 or 20 minutes really makes a lick of psychological sense.   But the puzzle over whether the story makes sense is part of the fun - pondering whether it's just nuts, or hiding a deep psychological truth (and of whom - Wagner personally, society, Schopenhauer?) that's lurking beneath the lurid?   

More later...

Update:

On the matter of incest, from an interesting short piece in the New Yorker:

The “Ring” is more than a refashioning of myth; from the outset, Wagner intended an allegorical assault on modern capitalist society. In that light, taboo relationships assume a different character: they voice a defiance of bourgeois restrictions on sexuality. In a crucial scene in Act II of “Die Walküre,” which I discussed in an article for the magazine in 2011, Wotan debates changing mores with his wife, Fricka. The god has tried to create a freely acting hero who can win the Ring back from the dragon Fafner without violating prior contractual arrangements. Fricka argues that the union of the twins exposes the corruption of his scheme. Wotan replies: “Age-old custom / is all you can grasp.” He is undoubtedly speaking for the composer, who conducted scandalous affairs, had a fetish for satin, and welcomed gay men into his circle. Wotan’s defense of rebellious love in the face of cold morality resonated with listeners who had to suppress their natural urges and conform to norms, often by way of sham marriages. Early campaigners for gay rights considered Wagner an ally, if not one of their own.

The love of Brünnhilde and Siegfried carries a particularly forceful message. While the pairing certainly has its peculiarities—Lévi-Strauss says that Brünnhilde is a “supermother” to Siegfried, having protected him since birth—its depth of feeling stands in contrast to the calculated marriage contracts of “Götterdämmerung,” in which Brünnhilde becomes an object of exchange. Wagner was no feminist, yet he had many feminist fans, who took inspiration from such ungovernable female characters as Brünnhilde, Isolde, and Kundry, in “Parsifal.” The turn-of-the-century Wagner soprano Lillian Nordica, a campaigner for women’s rights, once said that the world of the stage was the “only place where men and women stand on a perfect equality where there is true comradeship.”

Update 2:   a good blog entry by someone from Melbourne summarising a whole book called Wagner and the Erotic Impulse.  More than you ever needed to know, like this:  

In the chapter titled Pathologies Dreyfus explores Wagner’s reputation for degeneracy of which his love of silk and perfume, which Dreyfus call fetishes, was considered a part. I’ve read before that he liked sumptuous silk and velvet clothing as well as expensive house-hold accoutrements but didn’t know the extent of it. Or how it influenced his music.

Wagner was first named as having a pathological condition in a widely read denunciation in 1873 in which he was accused of moral degeneration in both his use of language and his personal behaviour including his affair with Cosima von Bulow. He was accused of delusions of grandeur and moral insanity and an unnatural increase in sexual desire as evidenced by the erotic element in Tristan und Isolde where he glorifies adultery and Die Walküre where he glorifies incest. 

 Next came Nietzsche who having first been an admirer became increasingly vitriolic in his criticism of Wagner who he said represented the quintessence of decadence. The Wagnerian opera causes Nietzsche to break out in a disagreeable sweat as opposed to Bizet’s more agreeable Carmen which makes him feel happy, … patient, … settled. Nietzsche is particularly opposed to Wagner’s attempts to find redemption and his misunderstanding of love. He prefers Carmen which reflects the real nature of love which is the “deadly hatred of the sexes!” and where the act of murdering a gypsy constitutes the only conception of love … worthy of a philosopher”. 

Ha!   Good old, mad old, Nietzsche, hey?!

Anyway, back to degenerate Wagner:

The final section in this chapter looks at Wagner’s longstanding fetish for wearing and surrounding himself with soft fabrics, especially satin and silk, without which he found it difficult to compose music. Nietzsche knew all about this because he had been inveigled from time to time, when friendly with Wagner, to purchase such products. Wagner spent a fortune, mostly other peoples’ money, on pink textiles and rose scented fragrances. This first came publicly to light with the publication in June 1877, a year after the first Ring performance, of a series of letters to his Viennese milliner. These included his detailed requirements, including sketches, for pink satin dressing gowns with flounces, satin undergarments, silk quilts and upholstery and curtains and much more. He had rooms furnished completely in silk, including walls and ceilings. He also required warmth in his clothes so his pink dressing gowns were quilted. There is also evidence that he had women’s dresses made up for him. All of this was very important to his compositional process. And there are lots of references to flowers and pleasing perfumes in the works of which the most explicit are the Flower-Maidens in Parsifal.

Oh my.   

So, just how gay sympathetic was he?   As with everything about this strange guy, it's apparently complicated:

The final chapter, Homoerotics, considers Wagner’s surprising regard for same-sexual love; which also surfaces in his operas. Wagner was friends with many men and women who lived openly in same sex relationships; this in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He notes how Parsifal in particular was viewed as sympathetic to homosexuality.

Overall he contends that Wagner was also accepting of same sex relationships as well as deep friendships between men. Dreyfus then considers in detail the relationship between Wagner and his great protector King Ludwig II of Bavaria. This includes extracts from the passionate letters the King wrote to the composer and Wagner’s responses that were more muted in tone and passion but equally crammed with pretentious prose. Nevertheless he suggests Wagner was infatuated with the young King as indicated by a public poem dedicated to Ludwig that was published in 1864. Even allowing for poetic hyperbole Dreyfus finds that the correspondence between the two leaves an extraordinary impression of infatuated friendship.

However Wagner’s tolerance did not extend to the acceptance of carnal sodomy or pederasty. Their homoerotics – those of the Greeks – must be sharply distinguished from our homoerotics, and in this statement one can most likely detect the perfectly understandable line Wagner drew between his awareness of classical same-sex love and his own configuration of Freundesliebe.

Ambiguity as the key to analytical longevity

John said in a comment here recently:

I find that preoccupation as silly as the ongoing publications of Biblical commentaries. It's been 2,000 years. How much more can be written about it! The ambiguity and contradictions in the books of the Bible are among the first examples of postmodernist writing. 

But really, that's the great thing about ambiguity, isn't it? - it can be pretty "fun" trying to resolve it, no matter how many centuries it takes!

Which brings me back to Wagner.   I now know that the key to the never ending analysis of the Ring Cycle is due to its innate ambiguity, which is due to Wagner taking forever to finish it, and changing his favourite philosopher while doing so.

I thought this talk summarised it well.  Warning - spoiler alerts!  (Ha ha):

The Ring was composed between 1848 and 1874, and first performed as a cycle in 1876. By 1851 Wagner had planned a cycle of four operas, the first two bearing the titles they still have, followed by The Young Siegfried and Siegfried’s Death. The text for all four parts was completed in 1852 and privately published in 1853. Between 1853 and 1857, Wagner composed the first two operas and the first two acts of the third. Then he stopped, setting the entire work aside for twelve years. In 1869–after writing Tristan und Isolde (1865) and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868)–he took it up again, changing the ending to a tragic one. Instead of being taken to Valhalla by Brünnhilde, Siegfried is killed on earth, Valhalla is destroyed, and Brünnhilde ends her own life.

Wagner’s “muse” in the earlier compositional period was Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872). A strong influence on Marx, Engels, and other social revolutionaries, Feuerbach was a radical opponent of both class inequality and traditional religion. He defends a type of secular humanism, and views religion as a confused projection into the beyond of elements of human nature. Instead of remaining imprisoned by other-worldly thinking, we need a philosophy that focuses on human need and encourages the expression of love.

Wagner resonated strongly with Feuerbach’s social radicalism, which provided the work with its ending in early drafts. The loving couple end up in Valhalla, which is consumed by fire along with them – but the gods’ order is to be replaced by a human “world without rulers,” under the sway of love. Wagner ultimately discarded this ending; but there is still a lot in the Ring that is Feuerbachian: the strong condemnation of greed, the structuring contrast between greed/domination (Alberich, Hunding, Hagen) and love (Siegmund-Sieglinde, Brünnhilde). During the long compositional gap, however, Wagner steeped himself in the work of another philosopher whose ideas moved him powerfully, in ways totally opposite to the radical emancipatory vision of Feuerbach. That philosopher was Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), author of The World as Will and As Representation (1818), an eloquent work of extreme misanthropy that was all the rage in Wagner’s time.

For Schopenhauer, the world contains two forces that manifest themselves everywhere. One is “Representation,” through which objects appear to a perceiving subject. (Schopenhauer thought that we never attain knowledge of things in themselves, only of interpretations or representations of them.) That capacity is benign, and we can use it to study the world. But we are also driven, like everything in nature, by a dynamic erotic force that is often felt as desire, and that leads above all to the continuation of life. This force, which he called “Will,” is the cause of endless and unmitigated suffering. Influenced strongly by Buddhism, Schopenhauer thought that the only remedy for life’s pain was resignation, ceasing to want. We must resist all of life’s lures as so many fetters that bind us to pain. (He thought women were prominent among such lures, hence his intense misogyny.) The function of art, he held, is to make the hopelessness of life indelibly clear to us so that, grasping this truth in a calm moment, we can embark on the path of resignation. 

The rest of the essay explains in detail the Schopehauer influence on The Ring, as do many, many essays (and entire books).  

I have been reading so many links about Wagner lately that I'm not successfully keeping track, but I know I read one comment by someone that Wagner himself didn't really understand what he was trying to say, and I subsequently read an extract from one of his letters which was consistent with that -  he seemed to convince himself that he had unconsciously come to the right conclusion in the Cycle before understanding it.   

Must have a look for that article again...  

Does this case have some sort of curse attached to it?

Not that I am following it extremely closely, but once again I am amazed at how such a legal saga, starting with a woman found naked in parliamentary minister's office, has involved seemingly every single person involved in any way looking tainted in one way or another - on all "sides" of the matter,  including the media and journalists reporting on it, and up to and including the former judge inquiring as to what went wrong amongst other lawyers and police.

This post is prompted by the first link above - Samantha Maiden now passing on what Sky News publicised first - secret recordings from an "unknown" source eavesdropping on the Higgin's lawyer's conversation at a restaurant.   Oh yeah, "unknown person" - what are the chances that this is only because some political operative or other is financing a hunt for "dirt" on the Higgins side and told the private detective agency that they needed "plausible deniability" for the source.  ("So, outsource the job, and we don't want to know who did it.")

Also - yesterday, Higgins was complaining about a page of her diary appearing in the media again when it is obvious it was leaked to them by the police.

Of course, Higgins herself has had to admit to some lies as well, although as you can probably tell, I don't see how anyone with a brain would be feeling sympathy to Lehrmann, whose character is taking some major hits.   

But it is truly remarkable how it seems that absolutely everyone involved, right from the very start, seems to have stuffed up their response in one way or another.    

 

What a stupid creep

The recent gobsmacking adventures of Elon, via his platform:

 

Half Rung

So, I'm two operas done, two to go in the Ring Cycle in Brisbane.

I have thoughts!   Some, briefly, because I'm busy at work:

*   most famous person I have seen in the audience (and I was walking beside him on the way to the pub for an intermission dinner last night) - David Faulkner from Hoodoo Gurus.   I'm positive it's him, although he also seems to be in the company of  people who don't look at all like former rock people.   I don't know - I don't think I have ever been game to say hello to a famous person in public, even if I like their work and want to say something blandly nice like "love your work".   (I think it's a travesty that ACDC became the world famous loud guitar rock band from Australia over the Hoodoos, by the way.)

*  The staging:  very good for the most part, but a bit "fussy" in some bits.   But really - you're likely never going to be ecstatic about every artistic decision make over 15 or so hours of theatre.   

*  The singer's performances - seem pretty good to me, but I'm not an expert.

*  The orchestra's performance - from what I can gather, this is causing the most controversy, with some saying it's not "exciting" enough, but others perfectly satisfied.   Again, from a non expert point of view: I can see how there is a bit of an issue with this opera that it is easy to overwhelm the voices, and finding the balance between both is the trick, I guess.   For what it's worth, I think that the orchestra is doing well enough, but I think I can also see where some of the criticism is coming from, because in my (again, completely non expert opinion) the Opera North production which I have watched in full on Youtube did have a more dramatic feel to the performance.  I would be curious to see if the third cycle is the best for their performance, or if they will be exhausted by then.  

*  I have been reading about how Wagner created the operas and now understand a lot more about why so  much has been written about them - more on that in a separate post, I think.

*  The first opera didn't invade my dreams, but last night's Die Walkure did.  I forget the details, but there were swords, and confusion at work about Nordic names and how I had to fix errors in them.   Just what I need - Wagner invading one of those generic anxiety dreams that never seems to end!

 

Maybe I would rather not know?

This is the heading for an article in Science magazine:

What are farm animals thinking?

New research is revealing surprising complexity in the minds of goats, pigs, and other livestock

It's pretty interesting, even if the implications for eating meat are not so encouraging...

All about Alan

Wow.  Way back in 2006, near the start of this blog, and when I was much more conservatively inclined than now, I had some posts about Alan Jones and the Chris Masters book which publicised his unacknowledged homosexuality.    

This one indicates that I was very dubious of the "outing" as an unnecessary interference with privacy.

Subsequent posts over the years, though, show how Jones increasingly irritated me - and it is fair to say that I thought his behaviour and language towards Julia Gillard was absolutely appalling and transparently misogynistic in the worst possible way.    It was really a disgrace that he managed to keep within the Liberal Party club - and his job.

The other thing that has changed since 2006 is the Me Too movement and the very high number of media figures in all countries who were revealed as abusing their position to sexual harass, and worse.

So, yeah, I now have no sympathy at all for Jones regarding the report this week that he has acted the same towards underlings at work.   I mean, the accusations are basically being verified by other media figures:  it genuinely does appear that it is a case of an "open secret" that no one talked about because of fear of professional or legal repercussion.    And it makes the events noted in Masters book (especially the departure from his teaching position due to the apparent infatuation with one or more students) difficult to interpret in other than the worst way.   

I bet he does not sue over this, or if it does, it will be yet another massive self own of the Ben Roberts Smith/Oscar Wilde variety.

About to be Rung (and everything's connected)

Regular readers (all 3 of you - I think it may now be that low!) will recall that I have been preparing to see Wagner's Ring Cycle in Brisbane for about 3 years now - and finally, tomorrow night I get to see what all the fuss is about.

I'm going to the second in three runs of the cycle (so to speak) that Opera Australia is putting on at QPAC.   The first run has just finished [oh, my mistake - it finishes tonight], and the reviews are, for the most part, positive.

I have to say, I have been a bit disappointed in the lack of national media attention given to the production - I think it fair to believe the publicity that is a pretty massive undertaking, and I get the feeling that if it was being held in Sydney or Melbourne, more attention would be being paid.   I mean, I haven't even heard it being discussed on the ABC :(.  I guess bad news in the rest of the world does have a bit of a crowding out effect, though.

Anyway, here is a review of the entire set of operas in The Guardian with lots of pretty pictures.  The reviewer saw the dress rehearsals of all four, hence my earlier mistake.  I hope I have the same reaction:

After Das Rheingold’s gentle 155 minutes, the following three shows are much longer, but each have two welcome (and necessary) intervals. And yet across the show’s 15 hours, my alertness rarely flagged; the scale of the production and its sensory impact keeps it compelling, and the performances and pacing maintain momentum. As the Cycle headed to an apocalyptic conclusion in Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), I felt exhilarated – not only by Brunnhilde’s courage and wisdom to do what the power-hungry men couldn’t, but by the endorphin hit of reaching the finish line. (I even went back for the first two premieres, which took my cumulative time watching the Ring Cycle to nearly 22 hours across nine days.) 

My only concern is that I am sitting in a cheap, high second balcony seat, but in the side and forward section of said balcony, so closer to the stage.  I did check out the view from that part during the intermission in a stage show I saw there a couple of years ago, and I think it should be OK?   But it was a cheap seat, so I guess there must a reason for that, apart from the height.   Can I see the subtitles?   Would be a problem if I couldn't!

There is something else I want to talk about in this post - but I will have to come back later to explain...

 Update:  The other thing I wanted to add was that, given that I have reading about Buddhism lately, I Googled the topic "Wagner and Buddhism" just out of curiosity.   

It turns out (and in truth, I think I may have noticed this before somewhere on line, but didn't read much about it at the time) that Wagner was indeed interested in the religion, and in fact, started to plan an opera directly influenced by Indian Buddhism.

This essay - well, a lecture given by a Wagnerian scholar in 2013 - explains a lot, and is rather interesting in the more general picture it paints of German interest in Orientalism in the 19th century.  For example:

His interest in the east had been stimulated by his brother-in-law, Hermann Brockhaus who had married Wagner’s sister Ottilie in 1836. Hermann was an orientalist, and in 1848 he was appointed to the chair of ancient languages and literature at Leipzig University, specialising in Persian and Sanskrit. German, French and English philologists had discovered that Sanskrit – the liturgical and scholarly language of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – had much in common with European languages. All belong to the Indo-European linguistic family. Some scholars went further, arguing that there were also cultural connections via a common Indo-European ancestry.

In 1872 the Danish historian and critic Georg Brandes offered his own explanation for this sudden fascination with Indian culture. ‘It was not a surprise’ he wrote, ‘that there came a moment in German history when they – the Germans – started to absorb and to utilize the intellectual achievements and the culture of ancient India. It is because Germany – great, dark and rich in dreams and thoughts – is in reality a modern India. Nowhere else in world history has metaphysics bereft of any empirical research achieved such a high level of development as in ancient India and modern Germany.’

The American scholar, Suzanne Marchand, has written that the Germans were ‘the most important orientalist scholars between about 1830 and 1930, despite having virtually no colonies in the east’. The effect of this, she maintains, was that German orientalism, especially the study of Zoroastrian Persia, India and Mesopotamia, helped to destroy western self-satisfaction, and to provoke a momentous change in the culture of the west: the relinquishing of Judeo/Christian and classical antique models as universal norms.  

If this argument can be sustained, then it must be said that Richard Wagner made a noteworthy contribution to the process. During the last three decades of his life, he demonstrated a serious interest in the two great religions of India and, in a letter to Liszt of 1855 wrote admiringly of ‘the oldest and most sacred religion known to man, Brahman teaching and its final transfiguration in Buddhism, where it achieved its most perfect form’. He held the view that Christianity, although first appearing in the Greco-Roman world, had its distinguishing roots in India. One can find shared moral principles in the teachings of Jesus and the historical Buddha Shakyamuni who lived in the fifth century BC. In the same letter to Liszt, Wagner cited contemporary research suggesting that Buddhist ideas had flowed westwards after the spread of Alexander’s empire to the Indus in 327 BC, and had influenced Christian doctrine. Whether or not Buddhism did, in fact, have any influence on Christianity, all that matters for our purposes is that Wagner believed that it did, and this belief shaped his works, especially Parsifal.

Well, what a coincidence that I had, back in 2020, posted about the distinct possibility that Buddhism had reached Egypt (and other nearby places) well before Christ.     

Seems that all my interests of the last few years are colliding into each other.

Perhaps I've primed myself for a sudden religious conversion - except that my personality seems extremely adverse to sudden enlightenment on anything.  

Turbulent times in old Japan

I'm really enjoying the Charles B Jones book on Pure Land Buddhism, and have just been reading the section in it about the life of famous Japanese monk Honen, who's a key figure in the development of this strain of Buddhism in Japan.

I have looked at other online sources for his story, but none put it as elegantly as Jones.    It's full of drama and intrigue, and this summary paints the picture:

He was born in the fourth month of 1133 in Mimasaka province (modern Okayama prefecture) into a provincial military family. The military clans of Japan were then embroiled in a struggle with the nobility for control of agricultural lands, and in 1141 Hōnen's father, Uruma Tokikuni, was killed in a skirmish over possession of a local manor. The young Hōnen was sent to a nearby Tendai Buddhist temple, the Bodaiji, probably for protection from his family's enemies.

Hōnen seemed a promising candidate for a clerical career and was therefore sent in 1145 to continue his novitiate at the Tendai main temple of Enryakuji on Mount Hiei near Kyoto. His training went well, and in 1147, at the age of fourteen, he was formally ordained into the Tendai priesthood.

In Jones' book, he indicates that young Honen witnessed his father's death (he paints it more as a  unexpected assassination at home), and claims that he (Honen) was always haunted by the way it taught him that death could come at any instant.     Some other sources on line claim that the father gave this message to his son:

On his deathbed Uruma told his eight year-old son not to avenge his death but to become a monk and honor his father’s life with good deeds.

But back to the previous link:

Hōnen was a serious and dedicated monk. His early biographies reveal that in the years following his ordination he read the entire Buddhist canon three times and mastered not only the Tendai doctrines but those of the other contemporary schools as well.

Conditions then, however, were every bit as unsettled on Mount Hiei as elsewhere in Japan and hardly conducive to a life of study and contemplation. The great national struggle between the nobility and the provincial military clans (the same struggle that had claimed the life of Hōnen's father) was rapidly increasing in intensity, and the monastic establishments of the day, including the Tendai order, had become deeply involved in this struggle.

Not only was political intrigue rife on Mount Hiei, but numbers of monks had been organized into small armies that engaged in constant brawls with the monastic armies of other temples and with the troops of the Taira military clan, which had by then occupied Kyoto, the capital.

Yeah, Jones mentions the monk soldiers too.   I mean, I know Japanese history is chock full of back and forth between warring factions, but the fact that there were "monastic armies" I had not known.   A tad Jedi-ish, I guess you could say.  

Anyway, I guess I will skip through the development of his religious beliefs, and note how other established Buddhist temples complained about the behaviour of Honen's followers.   The big controversy latter in his life was this:

...late in 1206 two of his disciples engaged in an indiscretion that had serious repercussions:

During the absence of Go-Toba, the priests Anrakubō and Jūren led the Emperor's Ladies in a Pure Land devotional service that continued throughout the night.

The jealous Emperor was furious and acceded to the demands of the Kōfuku-ji monks.

Early in 1207, Jūren and Anrakubō were executed, the cultivation of Exclusive Nembutsu was prohibited, and Hōnen and several of his disciples were exiled to distant provinces.

OK, well, in case it wasn't already obvious, other sources indicate that you should put air quotes around "Pure Land devotional service that continued throughout the night".   Jones in his book notes that one of the priests was notoriously handsome, and could sing well.   

Jones, and other sources, also explain how the problem with "exclusive Nembutsu" - the belief that calling on the name of Amida Buddha was enough to guarantee a kind of salvation, and the  equivalent of salvation by faith alone in Protestantism - was that some took it as licence to not have to act morally at all.   This theological conundrum seems to have been an active problem earlier in the East than in the West.

Anyway - next up is the intriguing life of Shinran, the other big figure in Japanese Buddhism, and whose statute is often seen around temples.

Scenic China

Once again, I wish the political situation was different in China so that you could visit there economically and without fear of being arrested arbitrarily for looking the wrong way at some piece of infrastructure, or having the wrong link on your browser, or whatever.  

I mean, look at this stunning scenery and tourist set up, in this Youtuber who is well worth watching for all of her China content:

 

The big questions

It's hard to see what Israel thinks can replace the current governance of Gaza, but this article at Aljazeera gives a pretty good background. 

Update:  I had missed that the headline story at the Washington Post today is on the same topic.  Here:  I'll gift link it for you.

Update 2:  an opinion piece from The Observer with which I agree - Howard Jacobson arguing that "genocide" is not the right word:

When is a genocide a genocide? The word is much in vogue, though its precise meaning – the intentional destruction of a people – is hard to justify in the case of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which, though without doubt brutal in execution and heartbreaking in effect, falls a long way short of any ambition to exterminate an entire population.

Genocides don’t leaflet the populations they want to destroy with warnings to stay out of harm’s way, and Hamas, which Israel avowedly does want to see the back of, is not the Gazan people. For all the sensationalist pronouncements of academics who specialise in genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, settler-colonialism, etc, the words simply flutter like so many pennants at a medieval joust. Denoting, in the fading light, which side you’re on, no more.

The only party to a declared intention to commit genocide is Hamas. It is a matter of contention whether the chant “From the river to the sea” is also genocidal. But perhaps the circumstances allow for hyperbole. To accuse its enemies of wanton exaggeration is not to exonerate Israel. There has to have been, and there will need to be, a better way of securing peace for the country than the assertion of military might. But brutality isn’t genocide.

Words matter in war, and when a vocal third party to a war operates from the campuses of western universities, where words go off like hand grenades, we must be careful which we choose. Among the casualties of this war are the young, who are susceptible to lurid language and who get their disinformation from the internet and their rhetoric from their professors. We have been here before but with this difference: the vilification of Israel is more scurrilous and orchestrated this time because on 7 October Hamas breached not only a fence but a decorum that in the past has marked us out as civilised. We don’t – we didn’t – turn the traumatic history of a people into a justification for hating them. Post 7 October, we can say things about Jews we haven’t dared say before. At last, we can throw the Holocaust back in their teeth.

 Read the rest.  

 

What the hell?

There has been an increasing trend over the last few months on Twitter X (or at least, in my experience of it) for the "For You" time line to be including a lot of sensationalist video clips which could perhaps be called "clickbait-y" in other contexts, except they aren't selling anything, but presumably just trying to get some sort of engagement numbers.   

These videos in the last few days are, I reckon, suddenly including some high violence content, enticing viewers to watch to see incidents in which people either died or were injured.   You might not always see the injury - for example, you might see an explosion and be told that 20 people died, for example.   But they are pushing it beyond the boundaries that, say, mainstream TV would allow, and this content is not something I am wanting to see anyway, but videos usually start playing automatically and so it feels like violence porn is being forced upon me.

Just now, someone has put up a video of a black guy being literally shot in the side of the head (by accident, by a friend sitting in the car), and its gross and shows a huge amount of bleeding.   (It is made immediately clear by subsequent posts that the guy, somehow, actually survived this, with disability though.)

But in all the comments I have seen so far, no one is saying "wtf, why is a hyperviolent accident allowed on here at all and appearing in my time line??"

If Twitter and Musk really are in a death spiral, the end needs to come sooner rather than later, so we get to a substitute that has a sense of decorum again... 

Update:   It just keeps getting worse.  Today I had to block "CCTV shootings"  and "Crazy clips" and something else, all because they were showing clips of someone shot, or doing something which resulted in death of injury.

It's like a Chan4-trashification of the app is unfolding rapidly.

I see on Reddit that people have been complaining about this for many months - I don't know why it has just hit my account in such a wave.

If you build it, they won't necessarily come...

I saw this story on DW News, of all places, about a huge apartment development in Johor, Malaysia by a Chinese company that has an occupancy problem (in that few people actually live there):

A Reuters story about it can be found here.

Musk unravelling?

While there are quite a few people on Twitter saying it, I don't know that reporting in the main stream media is sufficiently stating what seemed pretty obvious:   Musk looked drug addled and/or otherwise mentally not very well during his lengthy interview.  Look at this bland report in the NYT for example.

I can't for the life of me understand how quasi-libertarians like him can't see the hypocrisy in getting upset when companies don't want to be associated with them.  Free speech, and freedom to spend your money the way you want, except when it comes to you, corporation whose advertising dollar I am relying on.

A pastel coloured day in Ohara, Kyoto

The photos in this post are from a recent day trip to Ohara, a semi-rural village on the edge of Kyoto with a group of impressive temples and gardens. My wife suggested it, as we were looking for parts of Kyoto with more advanced autumn colours, seeing we were there a couple of weeks before "peak autumn", and it seemed that Ohara was a likely place to go.  While it's still technically part of the city,  the bus and train trip takes about 50 minutes or so, and I think this alone may be the reason the place doesn't seem to have a huge number of Western visitors, but it is clearly pretty popular with the Japanese.  

While I like the photos here, I don't think they do the place justice.  Overcast days make the exposure of garden photos particularly tricky,  and although I like the pastel colour look in many of them, it's a pity the intensity of the moist green mossy ground cover isn't quite there.  I could fiddle with colour filters, but don't have the time for that form of cheating :) . 

Really, I think it was my favourite temple visit on this trip because of the grounds and gardens:  they were quite extensive, peaceful and charming; and there was one place where you sit on a terrace and contemplate the gardens in the very Japanese way (with a cup of matcha and sweet.)    

As for the large temple below:  it's called the Shorin-in temple, which has an interesting history in light of my recent reading about Pure Land Buddhism:

Ennin (794-864), posthumously known as Jikaku Daishi, was one of the monks famous for strengthening the practices of Tendai Buddhism in Japan after it was brought over from China, and is credited with bringing over the practice of shōmyō, Tendai Buddhist chanting.  In 1013, Shōrin-in was established by Ennin’s ninth generation disciple, the Tendai monk Jakugen, (secular name Minamoto no Tokinobu), the eighth son of the Heian period Minister of the Left, Minamoto no Masazane.  Alongside Raigō-in, Shōrin-in served as a training hall for shōmyō, a style of Tendai Buddhist chanting. 

In 1186, Shōrin-in was the host of what would later be called The Ōhara Debate.  In those days it was common for monks to meet and discuss the philosophical points of Buddhist law amongst themselves, and in this particular meeting Kenshin, a Tendai monk who lived in seclusion in Ōhara, had called upon Hōnen, (who would later go on to found Pure Land Buddhism), to debate the merits of the nenbutsu practice, which promised salvation to the Pure Land of Amitabha to those who simple called upon the divinity in sincerity.  Hōnen-in invited the monk in charge of reconstructing Tōdai-ji in Nara, Chogen, who arrived with an entourage of disciples curious to hear, and other Tendai scholars and Ōhara priests made it a large gathering that questioned Hōnen on the scriptures and support for the nenbutsu for a whole day before Kenshin, seized with passion, began to lead everyone in chanting the nenbutsu for what legends say was three days and three nights.

 Another website (oddly, a travel guide for vegetarians!) explains a bit more:

The reason why debates were required at the time is that the Pureland sect was a new Buddhist school.

The idea of the Pureland sect is simple. Any kind person who has accumulated a lot of good deeds can be welcomed into Amida Buddha’s Pureland if one can continuously focus on chanting the Buddha’s name (which is quite hard if you think about it).

Compared to other Buddhist sects, the Pureland sect’s way of achieving enlightenment is the simplest. Many commoners, therefore, switched to the Pureland sect.

Obviously, this upset some monks of other sects who had undergone difficult training. They just couldn’t accept the idea that one could be born into the Pureland by simply chanting the Buddha’s name.

Therefore, a large debate of 380 eminent monks vs. Hōnen was held. It is said that Hōnen responded to the 12 tricky topics perfectly, which set the groundwork for the Pureland sect in Japan. Being impressed by Hōnen’s understanding of Buddhism, the 380 eminent monks believe he is the reincarnation of Mahasthamaprapta, the Bodhisattva of wisdom.

Gaining faith in the power of chanting the Buddha’s name, the monks who joined the debate chanted ‘Amida Buddha’ for three days and three nights in the Hondō after the debate.

As is usual in Japan, though, the current temple building is not as old as the history of the place may first indicate - it seems that barely a temple in the country has ever survived more than three or four hundred years without having to be completely rebuilt due to fire or earthquake.  But given that they seem to always rebuild in the same design, temples do routinely look a lot older than they really are.   

This one caught my eye because the outer skin of the roof looks like corrugated iron - not a common feature on temples.  Looking around the web, it seems that there was renovation work done on the roof a few years ago, and my suspicion that this was a recent change was correct.

The rest of the temple, however, which was does look quite aged, was re-built in 1778, and the large gold statue inside (I do like my photo below) is also a reconstruction.  Its history:

The statue of the seated Amida Buddha (Amitābha, the Buddha of Immeasurable Life and Light) dominates Shōrin-in’s main hall.  A rope made of five colored threads woven together hangs down in front of the altar and is connected to Amida Buddha’s hands, allowing those who are praying to hold the rope and be connected to the divinity.  First made in 1013 and said to be created by Kōshō, a famed Buddhist sculptor of the mid-Heian period, this Amida Buddha’s body was recreated after fires in the Edo period, and its benevolent expression has been looking down on visitors for five hundred years.  Due to the story of The Ōhara Debate, this statue is known as the “Amida of Proof”.  

The vegetarian website throws a bit of folklore in:

...during the Ōhara Mondō debate, it is said that the hands of the Amida Buddha statue in the Hondō were glowing, indicating his approval of the truthfulness of Hōnen’s statements.

Unfortunately, those glowing hands were probably lost in one of the fires since then.

Anyway, I would strongly recommend it as a day trip for anyone staying in Kyoto.  This site is a good guide with some nice additional photos. 

Drug assisted religion?

Charles Jones' book on Pure Land Buddhism notes how early Buddhism always had "a trove of utopian imagery ready to hand."  He gives two examples, one of the alleged (but former) grandeur of the town where the original Buddha died:

 

And a second description from generic Buddhist cosmology of a fabled continent:

Okay.  That bit about using rubies to cook on reminded me of Minecraft, actually!   I wouldn't be surprised to find that some Buddhist nerd from Asian has been creating a "Pure Land" world in Minecraft as his life's goal.

But more generally, this has made me curious as to why Buddhism has, even from close to the start, had quite the thing about imagining what a "perfect" or heavenly realm looks like.   I mean, I would guess that it is something more likely to come from a religion originating in a desert, rather than one from a relatively lush part of the world such as India (or the other Eastern Asian countries it migrated to.)   But the Jewish and Christian imagination has not spent that much time on the question, comparatively.

It also made me think that imagining jewelled cities and gold trees and magical landscapes is something we now associate a bit with tripping on LSD or other substances, at least if it's a "good" trip, and this reminded me of the somewhat nutty theory semi-popular for a time in the 1970's - that Jesus was a completely imagined figure from a cult of psychedelic mushroom eaters hanging around the Middle East.   

I googled up topic of what natural drug might be most inclined to give visions of a jewelled heaven, and came up with Dr James Cooke, a neuroscientist into psychedelics research.  

As usual, I'm not the first person to have had this thought:

Mike Crowley, author of Secret Drugs of Buddhism, has argued that in both Hinduism and Buddhism, the blue peacock acted as a symbol for psilocybin mushrooms.  Psilocybin breaks down into psilocin and, when this happens, the chemicals give off a blue appearance.  As a result, mushrooms like psilocybe cubensis turn blue when bruised, and this color may have resonated with the appearance of the peacock.  The soma of the Vedas is also referred to as amrita, and this is the name of the sacrament consumed in Tibetan Buddhism.  In this tradition, amrita is also associated with peacocks.  Furthermore, the name of a Hindu order of monks who worship Shiva, matta-mayuri, translates as “the intoxicated peacocks”.  According to Crowley, this may be explained by the peacock symbolizing a psychedelic mushroom sacrament.

The deliriant datura has traditionally been used in Tibetan Buddhism.  A paste made from the seeds can be applied to the skin, formed into pills, placed in the eyes, or the wood can be burnt and the smoke inhaled in religious ceremonies.  Datura has been found at the site of cave paintings, indicating that it may have a strong legacy of being used in visionary religious ceremonies.  As with the other major religions of the Indian subcontinent, cannabis appears to have also been used.  Tibetan Buddhism formed out of the merger between Buddhism and the indigenous, shamanistic Bon religion of Tibet.  It may be this direct link to a shamanistic religion that accounts for the presence of mind-altering substances in this particular Buddhist tradition.

Western Buddhism has had a deep link with psychedelics, both emerging on the US scene in the 50s and 60s.  Both acted as avenues for self-transcendence and have been linked in Western culture ever since.  An exploration of the relationship between psychedelics and Buddhism can be found in a collection of essays entitled Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics.

He also has an entry on psychedelics in the Bible, in which he is sensible enough to dismiss the "Jesus was a mushroom" theory, but he lists various other ideas people have suggested for what may have been influencing Biblical figures.   

So, there you go.  Blissed out Buddhist visions of their version of a (kind of) heaven might have something to do with drug assisted reveries?   An interesting theory, at least. 

Update:   A lengthy old article in Tricycle, mostly about the relationship between interest in both psychedelics and Eastern religion in the West in the 20th century:

If the sixties was the high point of the Zen generation, the seventies belonged to the Tibetans. The proximate cause, of course, was the Tibetan Diaspora. But the hallucinogenic aspect of the psychedelic experience itself was certainly a contributing factor. The visual pyrotechnics of psychedelia made a close fit with the colorful flamboyance of the radiant gods and goddesses and fiery deities of Tibetan art. The putative correspondence was further strengthened by seeming similarities between the visionary experience of the most popular Tibetan text of the sixties, the Bardo Thodal or Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the psychedelic experience. These elements of psychedelia had their part to play in the increasing popularity of Tibetan Buddhism. But as most would-be practitioners soon discovered, the first wave of lamas were more interested in students who were willing and able to engage in a series of demanding practices. The point was not to have visions, but to visualize.