What is so remarkable about Disney before World War II was how wide a range of different projects they attempted. Some were simple and pleasurable diversions while others were serious and ambitious artistic endeavors. Walt Disney's most ambitious project was Fantasia, in this movie Disney was attempting not only to infuse animation and music, but to bring about a revolution in the concert experience. In Disney's mind Fantasia would function more like a yearly concert series. Every year Disney would re-release the movie with different segments added and others removed to showcase different pieces. Disney hoped that it would in many ways replicate the traditional concert series, people would dress up and there would be an intermission. The biggest hurdle Disney faced was the limited sound quality (mono no stereo) that many theaters at the time and so to make Fantasia work (who would consider an animated concert compatible with the live alternative if you didn't have somewhat decent sound) he had to construct and renovate a number of existing theaters with his own money, unsurprisingly this took a huge toll on the profits of Fantasia in fact it nearly destroyed Disney and the company and alas Disney's dreams with Fantasia went largely unfulfilled but what a film we were left with! The animation is among Disney's finest and their combination with the various musical pieces leads to some interesting new interpretations of the musical ideas (some more masterly then others).
Of the different works, one of the most famous (and this is quite a claim as a great deal of the pieces have become quite famous and well known) is the animation for Modest Mussorgsky's "A Night at Bald Mountain." Although it is perhaps the one piece that is interrupted most traditionally (it's animation is a representation of the actual story the music was written to represent). Visually it is always fascinating to see and draw demons and devils, ghost and goblins and watching them dance around malevolently and the scenes are drawn so amazingly. The chalk used to draw the ghosts, the fire dancers morphing into demons, the shadows creeping over the town, distorting the buildings as Chernabog raises the dead from the graves all are visually crisp and detailed. The whole piece is given a vague medieval time period and the ghosts of nights, queens, peasants and barbarians fly around represented on a thin line that dances back and forth between reality and fantasy. As the hellish party escalates with the music the partying gets more and more frantic but then dawn arrives and the church bells begin to chime and A Night at Bald Mountain quietly segues into Ave Maria and the result is stunning and beautiful. But don't take my word for it, watch it on youtube (and honestly you should buy the dvd if you find it enjoyable.)
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Here are some books that should be in your large pile of books to read
If they are not in it already that is. For anyone out there interested in reading books that are not merely escapist fare, this seems to be as good a list as any to start from, it's a recommended reading list for incoming college freshmen so the books should be reasonably achievable for anyone with a high school degree! Happy reading!
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Something Beyond Our Wildest Imagination Part 1
Greetings and salutations earthlings,
Our fearless leader welcomes you to our opaque planet in the sky. We hope you will enjoy your stay here in a land filled with rainbows, lights, and joys, which all connect to the minds and hearts of others. When mercy and kindness is shown in this world, the light from that kindness extends into the sky, and the gratitude of others is formed as a in your culture it would be a transparency type thing, it looks laminated. The light gains a texture which makes the light shine brighter, because where mercy and gratitude meet is where kindness shines the brightest. We hope you enjoy your stay on our planet and bring your own light to our home world. Only then will our light continue to shine, and also our light will shine to your own world. :) Peace earthlings,
This sounds like a mystical and wonderful planet doesn't it? A place where mercy, love, and kindness are always efficacious, when mercy is done it fills the backdrop of the sky with splendid color which radiates through being. And then this mercy spreads to everyone, because all can see it. Sadly, kindness doesn't always radiate in being, sometimes it is snuffed out by community which seeks to oppress the other, and other times doing the right thing does not appear to be efficacious because it is painful. Our existence does not appear to have the mystical backdrop of the world described above, at least at the surface. But what if I were to say that our actions can have this efficacious quality for others. What if deep down all our actions affect the horizon we paint, not just for ourselves, but for others as well?
To examine this claim, we must reflect on existence and think about the decisions we make each day, nothing in particular, but just our decisions in general. But first, we need to think about the foundation, or lack of foundation, in the background of every decision we make. We must build a landscape before we can plant the flowers so to say. After we do these two things then in my next post we'll examine how this affects community living.
The foundation of being is difficult to examine because it is an opaque concept. These ideas are a mere reflection which can always be improved. Now metaphysics and phenomenology (2 philosophical disciplines) have moved away from the idea of onto-theology (e.g. the idea of God as Being) for various reasons (some of the philosophers are atheists and don't like the idea of God, others think this places limits on God, though this is a bit of an oversimplification.) The greatest difficulty comes in the latter concept, the idea of placing limits on God by naming God. This is a claim on how people attain knowledge through identification. By naming something, we gain some idea of what something is, (e.g. a bottle is something that holds water, someone's name gives us an image of a certain self/object person whom we have memories of.) However, in order to name something and identify it, there have to be other things which a particular thing is not. (e.g. a bottle is differentiated from the self/object being I see in existence.) A good exercise (which was performed in my Trinity class by Professor Kim Belcher), is to take any scene of being which is around you. When looking at it, pay close attention to the differentiation of things. Trees are not grass, grass is not pavement, and pavement is not the self/object being walking to her car. However, when all the things are taken away, and this is most clear in a nature setting, there is this no thing which tends to be defined as sky. This no thing is a horizon, something which we need to see in order to define anything else, because without a horizon beings blend into each other. Differentiation is impossible because the horizon is the ultimate backdrop which allows to see what things are not.
The foundation of being then is a horizon which extends and the differentiation of objects which I experience in life. Based on this foundation, I interact with being in various different ways. I touch, I feel (the first active, the second passive (as in the Latin word passio to be acted upon)), I smell, I talk, I see, etc. These interactions all have consequences for how one examines the backdrop of being. The paradox in thinking about this backdrop is that there appears to be one backdrop, one horizon, yet everyone seems to have a different view of the horizon (and in a purer sense everyone does unless there is interference, more on that in the next entry.) Also, our actions affect how others see the horizon of being, they affect the feelings of others and what their radar towers attract. We can make people more sensitive to their environments, or less so. However, on the horizon of all these decisions, and all things which appear before us is a no thing, a thing with no name, except the name of the unnameable, God. Without this horizon, things which should be just things become more, they invade our lives, and take us away from being love for others. Without a horizon, and foundation for being, things, selves, and object being all merge into something which it is not, these things become God. When these things become God, our backdrop starts to have darkness creep in, because these other things become more important than the nameless one, God, and the nameless thing, (in its richest form) love.
The alien in the introduction teaches us a strong lesson about the importance of a nameless backdrop inspired by people's actions. In its richest form, love must take on many different characteristics, because people receive, give, and need love in different ways. Thus love becomes nameless and matches the characteristic of God being nameless. But some will say, "Oh Aristocrates, you're using a label of God by naming God." And these people are correct, but we also have to examine what we are assuming by using the name God, and what we think about in using that label. Also, we have to examine how communities form because of things which they make/label/utilize as God. These communities are what form our images of God, and cause us to act for what someone believes is a particular cause for good. However, we must always keep the infinite horizon in the background and see God's presence not just in the infinite, but in all the things we name which come forth, and how they reflect the infinity of love, wonder, and awe. When community is built in this way, God's love will reflect on the horizon and shine in people's lives. When community is not built in this way (more on this next time), then pieces of God's love will appear, but darkness will also creep in and overshadow the denominative (the lack of naming, or unnaming) effort to bring humanity into infinity by knowing God and love.
The horizon is more than we can imagine in our own small sphere of being. The horizon is painted by one master painter who is one great mystery after another, but all who participate in the painting affect the horizon by the choices they make (namely in the love they show.) "If they'll know we are Christians by our love" then the love we show must match the goal of infinity. Only then can one build true community which peers beneath the surface and causes a deep encounter with being and the self deeper than the object being by which we see most persons. Stay tuned to our blog for the next installment of "Something Beyond Our Wildest Imagination"
Our fearless leader welcomes you to our opaque planet in the sky. We hope you will enjoy your stay here in a land filled with rainbows, lights, and joys, which all connect to the minds and hearts of others. When mercy and kindness is shown in this world, the light from that kindness extends into the sky, and the gratitude of others is formed as a in your culture it would be a transparency type thing, it looks laminated. The light gains a texture which makes the light shine brighter, because where mercy and gratitude meet is where kindness shines the brightest. We hope you enjoy your stay on our planet and bring your own light to our home world. Only then will our light continue to shine, and also our light will shine to your own world. :) Peace earthlings,
This sounds like a mystical and wonderful planet doesn't it? A place where mercy, love, and kindness are always efficacious, when mercy is done it fills the backdrop of the sky with splendid color which radiates through being. And then this mercy spreads to everyone, because all can see it. Sadly, kindness doesn't always radiate in being, sometimes it is snuffed out by community which seeks to oppress the other, and other times doing the right thing does not appear to be efficacious because it is painful. Our existence does not appear to have the mystical backdrop of the world described above, at least at the surface. But what if I were to say that our actions can have this efficacious quality for others. What if deep down all our actions affect the horizon we paint, not just for ourselves, but for others as well?
To examine this claim, we must reflect on existence and think about the decisions we make each day, nothing in particular, but just our decisions in general. But first, we need to think about the foundation, or lack of foundation, in the background of every decision we make. We must build a landscape before we can plant the flowers so to say. After we do these two things then in my next post we'll examine how this affects community living.
The foundation of being is difficult to examine because it is an opaque concept. These ideas are a mere reflection which can always be improved. Now metaphysics and phenomenology (2 philosophical disciplines) have moved away from the idea of onto-theology (e.g. the idea of God as Being) for various reasons (some of the philosophers are atheists and don't like the idea of God, others think this places limits on God, though this is a bit of an oversimplification.) The greatest difficulty comes in the latter concept, the idea of placing limits on God by naming God. This is a claim on how people attain knowledge through identification. By naming something, we gain some idea of what something is, (e.g. a bottle is something that holds water, someone's name gives us an image of a certain self/object person whom we have memories of.) However, in order to name something and identify it, there have to be other things which a particular thing is not. (e.g. a bottle is differentiated from the self/object being I see in existence.) A good exercise (which was performed in my Trinity class by Professor Kim Belcher), is to take any scene of being which is around you. When looking at it, pay close attention to the differentiation of things. Trees are not grass, grass is not pavement, and pavement is not the self/object being walking to her car. However, when all the things are taken away, and this is most clear in a nature setting, there is this no thing which tends to be defined as sky. This no thing is a horizon, something which we need to see in order to define anything else, because without a horizon beings blend into each other. Differentiation is impossible because the horizon is the ultimate backdrop which allows to see what things are not.
The foundation of being then is a horizon which extends and the differentiation of objects which I experience in life. Based on this foundation, I interact with being in various different ways. I touch, I feel (the first active, the second passive (as in the Latin word passio to be acted upon)), I smell, I talk, I see, etc. These interactions all have consequences for how one examines the backdrop of being. The paradox in thinking about this backdrop is that there appears to be one backdrop, one horizon, yet everyone seems to have a different view of the horizon (and in a purer sense everyone does unless there is interference, more on that in the next entry.) Also, our actions affect how others see the horizon of being, they affect the feelings of others and what their radar towers attract. We can make people more sensitive to their environments, or less so. However, on the horizon of all these decisions, and all things which appear before us is a no thing, a thing with no name, except the name of the unnameable, God. Without this horizon, things which should be just things become more, they invade our lives, and take us away from being love for others. Without a horizon, and foundation for being, things, selves, and object being all merge into something which it is not, these things become God. When these things become God, our backdrop starts to have darkness creep in, because these other things become more important than the nameless one, God, and the nameless thing, (in its richest form) love.
The alien in the introduction teaches us a strong lesson about the importance of a nameless backdrop inspired by people's actions. In its richest form, love must take on many different characteristics, because people receive, give, and need love in different ways. Thus love becomes nameless and matches the characteristic of God being nameless. But some will say, "Oh Aristocrates, you're using a label of God by naming God." And these people are correct, but we also have to examine what we are assuming by using the name God, and what we think about in using that label. Also, we have to examine how communities form because of things which they make/label/utilize as God. These communities are what form our images of God, and cause us to act for what someone believes is a particular cause for good. However, we must always keep the infinite horizon in the background and see God's presence not just in the infinite, but in all the things we name which come forth, and how they reflect the infinity of love, wonder, and awe. When community is built in this way, God's love will reflect on the horizon and shine in people's lives. When community is not built in this way (more on this next time), then pieces of God's love will appear, but darkness will also creep in and overshadow the denominative (the lack of naming, or unnaming) effort to bring humanity into infinity by knowing God and love.
The horizon is more than we can imagine in our own small sphere of being. The horizon is painted by one master painter who is one great mystery after another, but all who participate in the painting affect the horizon by the choices they make (namely in the love they show.) "If they'll know we are Christians by our love" then the love we show must match the goal of infinity. Only then can one build true community which peers beneath the surface and causes a deep encounter with being and the self deeper than the object being by which we see most persons. Stay tuned to our blog for the next installment of "Something Beyond Our Wildest Imagination"
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