Who knew?

'As I recall from my own college days, the “genius” professors weren’t always as predictable or pleasant as those who seemed more devoted to the teaching profession than to their own ideas. But I remember them better. The feet of an impassioned, bizarre, and brilliant professor were worth sitting at. They (the professors, not the feet) challenged my perception of what reasoning was, what it meant to have an independent mind'. --The New Yorker

'The love of the light on the land and the blackbird's cry'

This photo montage, 'Blackbirds/Sally (Venice)' (and above), was not used in a recent web post that we submitted about our 'Grey and Pleasant Land' projects at Bournemouth University.

I have often commented on the insensitivity of the photographs used to illustrate stories about ageing. These are generally of two types: ones that infantalise older people or others that portray them as 'poor old dears'. Neither are acceptable or represent the wide diversity of older people or the range of possibilities to be found in later life, in my estimation.

This photo represents ageing as a reflective time of life and the opportunities that growing older provides through the latent potential of memories. This has resonance with Lars Tornstam's theory of gerotranscendence or 'a shift in meta perspective, from a materialistic and rational view of the world to a more cosmic and transcendent one, normally accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction'. (See Tornstam) I have written about gerotranscendence in The Spiritual Dimension: a gerotranscendental take on Akira Kurosawa´s film "Ran", linked on Tornstam's website.

The song, 'The Valley' by ISSA (Jane Siberry) ( below) inspired the photo montage as well as the short A/V production concerning our project, "Gay and Pleasant Land...", one of the seven Grey and Pleasant Land projects being carried out at four universities in the south west of England and Wales, part of the NDA programme of research on ageing in 21st Century Britain.

ISSA has graciously gifted us with the publishing rights to the song to use in our project. We hope to use the song in a short film that will be the outcome of three years of intensive research on old gay and lesbian citizens who frequently live isolated lives in rural settings in the south west of England and Wales.

The Valley (lyrics)
I live in the hills
You live in the valleys
And all that you know are those blackbirds
You rise every morning
Wondering what in the world will the world bring today
Will it bring you joy or will it take it away
And every step you take is guided by
The love of the light on the land and the blackbird's cry
You will walk in good company
The valley is dark
The burgeoning holding
The stillness obscured by their judging
You walk through the shadows
Uncertain and surely hurting
Deserted by the blackbirds and the staccato of the staff
And though you trust the light towards which you wend your way
Sometimes you feel all that you wanted has been taken away
You will walk in good company
I love the best of you
You love the best of me
Though it is not always easy
Lovely? lovely?
We will walk in good company
The shepherd upright and flowing
You see...
--Jane Siberry (I S S A)

Performance of 'The Valley' in Sydney by kd lang
"I'd have to say that Jane Siberry's 'The Valley' is probably my ultimate, all-time favorite song. I really love the sentiment of it," lang says. "I haven't talked to Jane directly about it, but what I've heard is that she wrote it when she lived across from a special needs facility. She used to see one of the residents walking...and she was trying to understand the world they were existing in. To me, that's a really beautiful way to basically approach everyone, because in essence we're all in the hills and all in the valleys, as the song says. It just depends on where your perspective is. But I just love the sentiment of [the verse] 'you will walk in good company' because we're all here."--Boston Globe - July 9, 2004.

YouTube Culture and the Politics of Authenticity

From Citizentube:

One of the most talked-about sessions at the Personal Democracy Forum conference we attended a few weeks back in New York was Professor Michael Wesch's speech, "The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube Culture and the Politics of Authenticity." Michael teaches cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, and has most recently focused on the impact of social media and digital culture on society.

Working alongside his students as digital explorers, Michael set out to learn about the YouTube phenomenon through experimentation. Just like a team of anthropologists living with tribes in the rain forest to learn about their culture, Michael and his students went "native" into the YouTube ecosystem, uploading videos, sharing them, talking with other YouTubers, and recording their thoughts along the way.

In essence, Michael and his students are exploring how our media shapes us. If the revolution of TV created a society where mindless suburbanites fixated on one-way conversations being blasted at them through their television sets, then the Internet has brought new opportunities for 2-way communication and community building through our computer screens. Yet the web also creates infinite opportunities to amplify the inane, and allows a new kind of anonymity that can lead to malaise and lack of responsibility. YouTube - which allows for both personalization and anonymity - represents this phenomenon in unique ways, and what Michael and his students discover in their research is thought-provoking. So much so that National Geographic recently named Michael an "Emerging Explorer." Not bad for a guy whose research involves watching a lot of YouTube videos.

This 30-minute speech he gave at the Personal Democracy Forum is well worth watching for anyone who's interested in YouTube and modern culture.

Academics Alert: Why it is time to stop hiding in ivory towers ...

Nationalist counterdemonstrators shout homophobic slogans at gay protesters in Moscow

'Many professionals in health, education, and community service roles are caught in a particular identity bind—living in a complex social borderland of credibility and professional authority while experiencing or having experienced the same discrimination,violence and/or trauma they’ve committed their working lives to helping others overcome. For some, the disclosure of their own stories of marginalization has become a tool for advocacy, for telling a larger truth; for others,self-disclosure is a more personal action, intended to assist those isolated in their suffering in developing trust and connection'.--‘Speaking Out’ by Linde Zingaro

When we uncover injustice,prejudice and (quite frankly) illegal hatred and bigotry in the process of carrying out our work, we are ethically bound to out it. Expediency, by keeping such outrage quiet, hidden and out of view, is the greatest unethical practice of all. There are times when academia needs to stop being just a 'talking shop' and take a stand on principle.

The bigot may cry: "Oh! You've have misrepresented and vilified me!" I respond: "Then why did you engage in such verbal abuse in the first place? Your insults are perceived as encouraging hatred amongst your peers towards me and others like me." I have protected your anonymity in order that you might think about your actions and the damage that they may cause to others. I expose your actions as an example from which others may learn. I 'speak out' so that such behaviour and abuse will not continue unchecked.

Hypnotic (thanks, Helen)

Playful, fun, inventive. Contribute.
Eternalmoonwalk

The original

"Got to. This America, man"

“You show me anything that depicts institutional progress … anything that somebody can get a promotion on, and as soon as you invent that statistical category 50 people in that institution will be at work trying to figure out a way to make it look as if progress is actually occurring when actually no progress is... The same game is played everywhere – nobody’s actually in the business of doing what the institution is supposed to do... If there’s an institution that is supposed to serve you or that you are supposed to serve, and it’s supposed to care for you and be a societal positive, it will betray you.” David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Bill Moyers interview with David Simon.

Farewell to Pina Bausch

Pina Bausch (1940 - 2009) Photo by Peggy Jarrell Kaplan

Some of her videos.

The one about Princess Margaret

Place: New York City Time: 1965

An auto-ethnography/auto-biography/auto-ephemera audio/visual production that describes its creator as a member of a culture at a specific time and place: being queer in 1965 on one night in New York City at a famous (straight) mod nightclub, “Arthur”.

Themes include being different, the celebration of being an outsider, seeing oneself from outside of the “norm”, and the interior conflicts of “coming out” within a continuum as a (gay) male in a straight world. These observations are set within the flux and instability of a period of great social change, but which are often viewed in retrospect as consistent and definable. Being straight or being gay can also be viewed in a similar way within the wider culture’s need to set up a sexual binary and force sexual “choice” decision-making for the benefit of the majority culture.

As auto-ephemera, it documents minor transient personal moments of everyday life: something transitory, lasting a day. Through the device of the fleeting moment, the story interrogates the certainties and uncertainties of the “norms” of modernity.

'The one about Princess Margaret'

The script for the video is available. An article about how the video came to be, "How Did I Get to Princess Margaret? (And How Did I Get Her to the World Wide Web?)" is also available. See also: Exploring Online Methods at Leicester University and Ethnography And The Internet: An Exploration

The Alistair Stories...

Alistair. There’s a book in my Alistair stories to be told someday. He wasn’t famous, but yes, we admired the same famous people. Laurie Anderson was one of them.

I met Alistair in a Philadelphia gay disco standing next to a popcorn machine at a Sunday afternoon ‘tea dance’ sometime back in the early 80s. He was from New Zealand, travelling around the US on one of those one-price open tickets, had just been in NYC staying at the Chelsea Hotel (to soak up the atmosphere) and had come to my hometown of Philadelphia to visit its wonderful Museum of Art.

I didn’t know where NZ was exactly, but I thought it was near Japan. I gave him my Japan (David Sylvian) badge (a band I loved at the time).

After a lot of push/pull, a lot of doubt and angst and, only on his second night in Philadelphia, we slept together. I say angst, because he was the kind of “with it”, young beauty with just enough NZ exoticism to make him totally out of my league. So of course, I was immediately smitten and fell in love and went into my sick puppy act. He was leaving on the morning of the third day. How could he? I had just found him. My club friends were jealous so I knew that he must be a catch.

I wanted him back and had no money to follow him to Washington DC. Walking through a square in Philadelphia, tears streaming down my face, I reached into my pocket and found about $15. A florist's shop was just ahead of me and I walked in. I asked the person at the counter, "can you send flowers to DC?" "Yes. Of course. What would you like?" "Flowers like the one's in the film, 'Diva'." "What?" "Just call DC, they will know what I want." The person on the other end did know the film and even squealed, I think, when it was mentioned. The gay mafia. So the flowers were ordered and I was broke.

That Parisian bouquet did finally convince him to return a few days later. We spent almost a week together. A lot of art talk, a lot of fucking.

Then he left for the west coast, never to return.

I was devastated. I couldn’t think of anything else but getting him back to the east coast (and he had that open ticket too). I called him several times a day on the west coast until he stopped answering the phone.

I thought about the famous people he had mentioned to me. I got Divine’s autograph for him. I found some of the hair from disco diva Sylvester’s weave on the floor of my friend’s club and saved it for him.

Then I met Laurie Anderson. She had a one woman show at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art and so I took my broken heart along to see if viewing someone's work admired by Alistair would remind me of him. ( I told you that I was in bad shape) It was the opening night, so Laurie Anderson was there. The only art I remember was a little muslin doll in a rocking chair on the floor of a gallery with her image projected on it talking to gallery visitors. I thought it was quite funny. (Was I going off the deep end?)

I found Laurie. She was very friendly and we began to chat. Of course, all of my conversations at the time were about Alistair and how in love I was and how I would never see him again and how he was going to leave LA and fly to New Zealand (wherever that was) and how I would never see him again!

I guess I was quite convincing. Laurie responded (I did let her get a word or two into the conversation), “Get a poster or something and I will write him a message”. I grabbed one of her exhibition posters and a marker. She wrote in grand lettering: "Alistair, Come back! He loves you. Laurie Anderson”.

A day or two later I was phone-stalking Alistair in California again. Finally, he picked up.

“I think that you want me to come there, don’t you?"I asked.

“I thought you’d figure it out eventually” he chided. "Meet me in Los Angeles next Monday. I will be at LAX around noon waiting for you with a gelato. Don’t call again.”

I hung up the phone excited beyond belief. I had never even been on a plane before. I had no money. Fortunately, my brother, convinced by my sob story, bought the ticket. I was going to LA to be with Alistair for two weeks!

Alistair, dead centre, as an extra in 'Merrry Christmas, Mr Lawrence'

 

I took Laurie’s message with me and handed it to him shortly after I arrived. He acted quite laid-back (it was California after all and he had had a bit part in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence).

Underneath his slight smile or smirk, I guessed that Laurie had pleased him, even I had pleased him somewhat by coming to California.

The airport departure two weeks later is a story for another time. Suffice it to say that we believed that we would never see each other again.

A few years later, I went to Paris for the first time only because it was a place that Alistair had said that he wanted to visit (although I never admitted to this at the time). I sent him a sarcastic postcard soon after arrival. This postcard journey opened a whole phase in my life (again, a story for another time).

We did meet up again, years later in Philadelphia, when he was on a shoot for the BBC and then several more times when we were both living in London. I was involved with someone else at the time. He seemed more serious and not so light and carefree then. I missed that. We tried to be friends, tried to rekindle something, but it never was quite the same.

Laurie was right. He should have come back when she told him to.

[You can read a short piece of mine in the Journal of Nursing Research on emotion and art. The painting that I talk about in the article is of the beach where Alistair and I spent many days whilst in California. This was my second venture into autobiography 'by stealth' in academic journals. Now you have the back story to that paper too.]

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Long Lines Form Outside Museum to See Secret Art Show:
Banksy Versus Bristol Museum
Artdaily.org - The First Art Newspaper on the Net

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