The Cailleach

Clay in her mouth,

clothed in darkness, caged in stone.

She speaks in

the crumbling of mountains,

creeping of oceans across continents.

She pauses;

earthworms devour boulders.

(from Above Ground Below Ground)

Amazing footage from 1896

Who said "The cinema is an invention without a future"?

Frenchman Louis Lumiere, inventor of the Cinematographe, a portable motion-picture camera, film processing unit and projector. Though not the first to projected film, (Edison 1891), himself and his brother were the first to present projected movies (1895) to a paying audience and so are the inventors of cinema. Their invention popularised the medium and does mark the beginning of the motion picture era.

Anyway that's who said it; but as you can see below, they had an eye for the eye-catching and that must surely have helped kick-start the new craze. The first motion picture ever was made by Eadweard Muybridge in 1878:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PmWqM5Mn9s

Lumiere Brothers Danse Serpentine 1896

Rollin Safari

I don’t normally include animations, but this is brilliant. Congratulations to the students involved.

Directors: A. Habermehl, K. Buschor, C. Päplow

Producers: P. Wolf, V. Brüning

Technical Directors: T. Hartmann, S. Langer,

M. Kranzler, C. Westphal, D. Kirchner

Music: Stephan Schelens

FMX trailers are created by students of the Institute of Animation, Effects and Digital Postproduction at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg.

How it goes - stages of decay

The Barracks, Cootehall

Time takes away. My own Roscommon home flattened, I don’t really want to go down the road I lived on; too many memories were flattened with it.

But sometimes time removes slowly and poignantly: the Barracks at Cootehall,Co Roscommon, immortalised  by John McGahern in “The Barracks” looks in good order today but the last garda gone, it now stands empty. What next?

Hanna Greally's Cottage

Hanna Greally as author of “Bird’s Nest Soup” recounted her almost 20 years incarceration in St Loman’s psychiatric hospital in Mullingar, “Mentally well, but unclaimed”. She eventually came to live in a cottage, "Sunny Acre", not far from Roscommon town. She died in 1987; her cottage is on its way back to oblivion.   

Ruins of Church, Kilgefin Graveyard

Bithia M Croker was the colossally successful author of books such as “The Road to Mandalay”, “Babes in the Wood”, “In Old Madras”. Born in Kilgefin, Co Roscommon, where her father was rector, she and her books are now almost forgotten in spite of huge popularity in the 40’s. The remains of her father’s ministry have all but disappeared and with them all marks that she ever had connections with this part of the world.

There are no indications that Croker or Greally ever existed at these sites, and that is a pity. 

Then

                              

It was the time of Afton and Albany,

Joe O’Neill’s band and the Adelaides,

hay forks sharing pub windows

with Daz and Persil; the Smithwicks sign

and the Harp sign, half-ones of Guinness.

It was a time of pipe-smoking

beneath naked bulbs and neon strips,

the priest in his cassock,

Hillman Hunters, Ford Corsairs,

Wilkinson Swords and Fruit Gums.

Of scarved heads at mass, berets,

the Messenger and the Far East,

dress makers and blacksmiths;

hollowed faces in the County Home,

yanks in the sitting room.

(previously pub in Cyphers)

Corrupting Religion

I saw this religious ceremony on the main evening news when  the first cruise missiles were being deployed in Europe.

Cruise Missiles          

Jesus, the padre prayed,

direct these missiles onto the heads

of our enemies.

Except that’s not what he said. He said

we pray that these missiles will be efficient

in their function.

Then. Up Jesus,

ride them clean down their throats.

Except, of course, he didn’t say that either;

but blessed them with holy water.

After that, the missiles were dispatched,

American missionaries to Europe.

A Worthy Cause And You Can Help

A friend of mine has sent this message to me. It's not an area I know much about but I have inquired and it is a cause that urgently needs to be redressed. The petition (link below) is genuine and the situation described is true.

A campaign against speculation with food prices is being circulated  in change.org. "After the real state bubble burst investors moved to speculate with raw materials and basic commodities. This is understood to significantly contribute to the spike in food prices that was behind the 2007-2008 and current food crisis. 450 economist worldwide petitioned G20 leaders to introduce stricter regulations in stock exchanges in order to curb the effect of speculation on food prices. A rise in prices is devastating to those in developing countries, as they spend between 50-80% of their income on food. There is cause for some optimism as some regulating measures have been introduced in the American and European markets. These are, however, understood not to be sufficient.

I believe this is an urgent matter and that we can put pressure on our governments and leaders to act decisively. At the very least it will serve to publicise this seldom mentioned factor in famines. That is why I am doing something rather uncharacteristic…….” I’m asking you to sign this petition and send it off to others, blog it or put it on Facebook."

An Extraordinary Anti-War Speech

This anti-war speech made in 2008 by war veteran Mike Prysner is extraordinary for its bravery, lucidness and honesty.

It seems to me that the powerful are so insulated from true answerability that the people are no longer rigorous at all in demanding proper morals and standards from our leaders. We seem to have reached such levels of complacency that we applaud the style, disregarding the substance. And so, a succession of patently self-serving leaders has waltzed through various corridors of power in recent years and no doubt will continue to.

Poetry is painting using words

Poets and painters are chips off the same block, here’s a selection of quotations that demonstrates it.

"Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

 “Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.”  

-Thomas Gray

“I look at a nude. There are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver.”

 - Pierre-Auguste Renoir

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”

― Leonardo da Vinci

 “What do you think an artist is? ...he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

― Pablo Picasso

“A line is a dot that went for a walk.”

― Paul Klee

“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.”  - Edgar Allan Poe

“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see....”

― René Magritte

“Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.”

 - Georges Brague

“Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible.”

― Paul Klee

“Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows.”

  -Edmund Burke

“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”

- Plato

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.

- Marc Chagall

Remembering

A lot has been written on the subject of the Irish famine; most of what’s needed to be said has been said. However, when I found myself digging potatoes in water-logged soil beneath the Bluestacks, gathering up marble-sized potatoes; I couldn’t but be reminded of the value even these had for families whose survival depended on ground such as this. 

Hard to appreciate, but the span of two just lifetimes (by today’s standards) would land us right back into the middle of those years, and hard to credit also, that affluence and starvation still live cheek by jowl today. 

Remembering 

In November, this charcoal month of sagging

clouds slung low between granite mountains,

while the trap-jawed landscape stalks,

diggers hunched double to the ground

are harvesting bright potatoes that constantly

endeavour, like mice, to escape, scuttle back

into the sodden soil, where roots compete

for water, and decay is life rekindling.  

Round-backed labourers, boulders fallen off

the mountain, sieve the soil for each stunted práta,

(size of a fingernail, ten minutes of a child’s life),

that scampered off the sleamhán, scuttled back

into the earth, fugitives from scrabbling fingers.

Potatoes, apples of the soil, sole currency of life

to those whose DNA shaped these fingers,

now rough with working the same earth.

Where education fails

I am very doubtful about the value of much of what we accept as education. In science, for example, too much deadening information, not enough regard given to what excites a young person’s interest. I think we’ve got it backwards: enthuse the young with the cutting edge of our enquiries and they will come back for the basics.  

For example, noble prize winner, English scientist, Sir John Gurdon was the first person to clone an animal from a single cell. I mention this because his Biology report from Eton said “I believe he has ideas of becoming a scientist. On his present showing this is quite ridiculous; if he can’t learn simple biological facts he would have no chance of doing the work of a specialist, and it would be a sheer waste of time, both on his part, and of those who have to teach him.” 

Okay, it's only one example but it's a good one. Mind you, there are risks in making any statements as the following school reports/comments demonstrate, 

Charlotte Bronte: “She writes indifferently and knows nothing of grammar.”

WB Yeats: “Only fair. Perhaps better in Latin than in any other subject.”

Albert Einstein: "He will never amount to anything"

Robert Graves: "Well, goodbye, Graves, and remember that your best friend is the wastepaper basket”

 

And there's another thing, how can education systems miss the potential in the likes of the above?

 

from "Above Ground Below Ground"

Gull I fly, spark from an anvil;

cormorant standing, sopping rag.

Goat leaps, flame flaring;

horse exhales piston jets of steam.

Hound I dart, arrowed to bull’s eye;

hare sitting on a jewelled morning.

Lizard slithers, tress down stone;

bull pounding bodhrán of the earth.

Dead End

Pared down to

tongues and mouths;

 

mouth to mouth,

tongue to tongue,

we are one.

 

At orgasm,

 

pared down

to tongues and mouths;

 

mouth to mouth,

tongue to tongue,

each is alone.