crash course for the ravers
Topsail schooner Eric Borgman
Photo: Mike Eaton
Later renamed the Port Bougainville, after his Florida real estate in Key Largo, the Eric Borgman was Fritz Scharenberg’s 175 ft topsail schooner.
In an earlier blog post, I mentioned that i had spent a few years sailing the Eric Borgman across the Atlantic and up the east coast of the US. Several crew members got in touch in the comments, and stories where told – it makes interesting reading: The Cutty Sark and Cape Town
Thanks for the photo Mike, hope to see the rest one day soon.
There is no progress
“There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love. There are simply different ways of doing it.”
— Man Ray, in his essay “To Be Continued, Unnoticed” (1948)
Artist William Kentridge on charcoal drawing
Artist William Kentridge on charcoal drawing | Art and design | The Guardian.
For me, the drawing is the process of arriving at this image. This process is usually very fast to begin with. I work with charcoal and charcoal dust, and within the first minute, the large expanse of white paper can be turned into a dirty grey. I’ll put lines across it, finding vague geographies of where things will go, and then the process of drawing is the remaining hours or days it takes to work through the drawing. The art is to try to finish at the same speed you begin with – to not let the drawing become more and more cramped, to try to keep a looseness and an open-endedness right to the end.
Often, the finished drawing is different from what I had in my head when I started off, and the better ones are those that don’t look anything like I thought they would. The ideas are not the driving force in drawing, nor is meaning. The need to make an image is the driving force. It isn’t like a writer who has a story they have to tell, and so they write a novel. It isn’t as if I have an image the world has to see. Rather I have a need to be making marks on paper. Drawing isn’t a decision, it is a need.
Meaningless
or the end of the line..
The end of our civilization
The end of our civilization. If you believe in global climate change and Al Gore, which I do (both) then as much as Gore doesn’t want to say it because it would be counter-productive for him to, our civilization is on the path to self-extinction.
Why should we fight to get our economy growing again? Isn’t growth the whole problem? Shouldn’t we see the economic downturn as not only inevitable, but as our last hope for salvation? These are fair questions imho.
The inescapable truth that no one wants to speak out loud is that we have too many people, and we’re adding more people at too fast a clip. The planet can’t sustain what we have now without destroying the climate, yet we haven’t done anything to limit growth.
So maybe this isn’t the biggest downturn since The Great Depression? Maybe it’s bigger than that. Maybe this is a corner-turn for the human race, maybe last September was when it finally occurred to us, collectively, that we couldn’t keep going as we were going, and we hit the brakes in the way the Invisible Hand does. Maybe the efforts to “jump start” the economy won’t work, and maybe that’s as it should be, and maybe that’s a good thing?
John Martyn – Lyrics – Solid Air
via John Martyn – Lyrics – Solid Air.
You’ve been taking your time
And you’ve been living on solid air
You’ve been walking the line
And You’ve been living on solid air
Don’t know what’s going wrong inside
And I can tell you that it’s hard to hide when you’re living on
Solid air.
Nelson Mandela’s message to Barack Obama
Dear Mister President,
We are greatly honoured to join the millions around the globe congratulating you on taking office as the President of the United States of America. We believe that we are witnessing something truly historic not only in the political annals of your great nation, the United States of America, but of the world.
Your election to this high office has inspired people as few other events in recent times have done. Amidst all of the human progress made over the last century the world in which we live remains one of great divisions, conflict, inequality, poverty and injustice. Amongst many around the world a sense of hopelessness had set in as so many problems remain unresolved and seemingly incapable of being resolved. You, Mister President, have brought a new voice of hope that these problems can be addressed and that we can in fact change the world and make of it a better place.
We are in some ways reminded today of the excitement and enthusiasm in our own country at the time of our transition to democracy. People, not only in our country but around the world, were inspired to believe that through common human effort injustice can be overcome and that together a better life for all can be achieved.
Your Presidency brings hope of new beginnings in the relations between nations, that the challenges we all face, be they economic, the environment, or in combating poverty or the search for peace, will be addressed with a new spirit of openness and accommodation.
There is a special excitement on our continent today, Mister President, in the knowledge that you have such strong personal ties with Africa. We share in that excitement and pride.
We are aware that the expectations of what your Presidency will achieve are high and that the demands on you will be great. We therefore once more wish you and your family strength and fortitude in the challenging days and years that lie ahead.
You will always be in our affection as a young man who dared to dream and to pursue that dream. We wish you well.
Sincerely
Signed N R Mandela
The Wild Frontier at The Times » Blog Archive » Nelson Mandela’s message to Barack Obama – full text.
Rian Malan | Books | The Observer
I ask him the question that has been nagging, the question that lay at the heart of his book and at the heart of the country: is his vision of South Africa born of objective analysis or psychological necessity? Is it out there in the city, or inside his head?
‘The thing was,’ he says, ‘if I had been born black in this country would I forgive me, people like me? Would I fuck. I would cheer for Mugabe as well. It seems so logical to me. South Africa needed to have this really brutal dialogue with itself: black South Africa would say, “Look, you came here, you stole our lands and our cattle, you raped our women, you destroyed our lives completely, we hate you.” And white south Africa would respond, “Yes, but look at you now in your BMW with your cell phone; everything about you would not be like that if we had not been here. It cannot possibly be as simple as just to say race no longer matters in South Africa.’
Tim Adams travels to Johannesburg to meet the controversial writer Rian Malan | Books | The Observer.
God is the Question
I am an atheist, but recently I started an RSS search feed in my feed reader (FeedDemon) to search the blogs and news for the keyword “God”.
The problem with the word GOD, or GAAD in American Baptist (GAWD in London), is that no one can define what they mean by GOD – it could be almost anything, from a bearded man in the sky, to a general term for the sum total of everything. And if the answer is GOD – what is the question?
There is no point rattling on about a term if there is no clearly defined definition. I have a feeling that if you manage to define the term you will be half way to forming a new religion – and before long you will have more money than god (who is always broke).
Should you be able to define Gaad , you will also probably discover all his hidden names, and he will appear before you and split your head asunder. Though I doubt you can find any of His names, as God uses a different vocabulary to the average mortal – when was the last time you used the word “asunder” (or “smite”)?
But using “God” as a search term is always rewarding, you get the occasional theological discussion, a lot of cussing/swearing, a fair smattering of politics (too much GW Bush perhaps), the latest news on just about every war on the planet, and a not inconsiderable amount of Eric Clapton and various guitar legends. Not a half bad search term for a broad view of the general zeitgeist of the day. Economical to type, mostly entertaining and informative, even a little mysterious.
