Ravi Shankar died the other day. He was 92.
"Ravi Shankar was the ideal ambassador for Indian culture. As an artist
he was a great hybridizer, respecting tradition but innovating freely.
Collaborating with George Harrison on the “Concert for Bangladesh”;
giving lessons in Indian classical music to John Coltrane; merging new
musical technologies with classical Indian instruments and dancers from
the Bolshoi in a stunning live performance inside the Kremlin; working
with Philip Glass on the chamber-music album “Passages”; writing film
and TV scores: Shankar’s unbounded and creative curiosity, steeped in
the classics but pointed always at the new..." from Ravi Shankar (namesake American writer and editor), NY Times, Dec 17, 2012
For me the deceased Ravi Shankar has been a partner in music since university days. The complex musical tradition that he almost single-highhandedly introduced to the world beyond India was alien-sounding yet completely in sync with the mood of the 1960s. It is liquid and extemporaneous but also very spiritual. Still exotic to Western ears, it speaks to us in a soulful way. I have copies of Shankar's Russian collaboration and that with Yehudi Menuhin, both gifted works of art.
I vividly recall, while driving a rental car through one fine summer evening a decade or so ago, listening enthralled to a BBC radio documentary on the differing traditional musical styles to be found down the Indian subcontinent. Some of my forbears were in military service in the former Raj and motoring down the prehistoric spine of England helped the artistic richness of another complex and ancient land resonate as a place of connection.
Before Shankar there would have been no such documentaries to enrich my travels. His contributions to our shared global culture were extraordinary. I shall miss him.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Masters or Slaves
From Colin Brezicki of St. Catharines in an Ontario newspaper article titled 'Books not read': -
"As an English teacher, I sympathize with essayist Robert Costanzo’s fear that 'deep, prolonged reading is losing its relevance'. My own take on students’ apathy to reading literary fiction is that they are now empowered by their technology, able to traverse the cyber universe with the swipe of a finger, while reading fiction has always required a surrender of the imagination to the writer. Empowered and entitled 'digital natives' are not hardwired for surrender.
In the new cyber culture of instant gratification, distraction and multitasking, the literary imagination takes too long, is too slow and unwavering, and so it will shrivel from lack of use. Or, at the least, become a vestigial organ, an appendix.
The irony, of course, is that the masters of technology are also its slaves, a paradox that literary fiction has explored from many angles. But no one goes there any more."
Great books that require "deep and prolonged reading" may sometimes be made into movies. Sometimes the result works, like 'Lord of the Rings' or the 'Life of Pi'; other times it doesn't so well. It seemed to me that the recent release 'Midnight's Children' was in the latter camp. Salman Rushdie's droll, meandering prose doesn't really work as a picture. Much of the wit and whimsy is lost. One needs to linger over his text as with any great writing. Is the rising generation learning how to linger over anything? Devote single-minded attention to one thing for hours at a time? Be master of their time and attention?
"As an English teacher, I sympathize with essayist Robert Costanzo’s fear that 'deep, prolonged reading is losing its relevance'. My own take on students’ apathy to reading literary fiction is that they are now empowered by their technology, able to traverse the cyber universe with the swipe of a finger, while reading fiction has always required a surrender of the imagination to the writer. Empowered and entitled 'digital natives' are not hardwired for surrender.
In the new cyber culture of instant gratification, distraction and multitasking, the literary imagination takes too long, is too slow and unwavering, and so it will shrivel from lack of use. Or, at the least, become a vestigial organ, an appendix.
The irony, of course, is that the masters of technology are also its slaves, a paradox that literary fiction has explored from many angles. But no one goes there any more."
Great books that require "deep and prolonged reading" may sometimes be made into movies. Sometimes the result works, like 'Lord of the Rings' or the 'Life of Pi'; other times it doesn't so well. It seemed to me that the recent release 'Midnight's Children' was in the latter camp. Salman Rushdie's droll, meandering prose doesn't really work as a picture. Much of the wit and whimsy is lost. One needs to linger over his text as with any great writing. Is the rising generation learning how to linger over anything? Devote single-minded attention to one thing for hours at a time? Be master of their time and attention?
The Yawn of Flash and Dash
Have you noticed how advertising for 'performance' car and truck is looking more and more like a James Bond movie? Trucks pull enormous boulders or other behemoths across terrain the like of which no buyer will ever encounter. Cars race up snow-covered mountain pathways or tear down alpine hairpins at insane speeds.
The best car I ever owned was an Audi Quattro. It ran well and was the safest thing I've driven on our winter roads. But the current "Land of quattro" promotion, with its acres of deep wilderness snow which should never see anything mechanical that doesn't have tracked propulsion, is absurd. Gone are the ads for sensible Swedish Volvos which save you in that roll into the snowy ditch that we Northern drivers all face at some point. Instead we have Vorsprung durch Technik which resembles a Mars Lander on steroids.
To counter this Euro-Japanese souped-up-dodgem-car hutzpah, American manufacturers extoll the virtues of the automobile as infotainment centre. Anything your laptop/tablet/smartphone can do can be done en route in comfort. Never mind drugs and booze for getting high while you drive. You can get all the kicks you need from your dashboard. Connection is always in. No need to feel lonely or worry about what's going on outside.
Everyone knows today's road vehicles are reliable, durable and much safer. So what's left to say about them other than hyperbole...and 'Zoom, Zoom'?
The best car I ever owned was an Audi Quattro. It ran well and was the safest thing I've driven on our winter roads. But the current "Land of quattro" promotion, with its acres of deep wilderness snow which should never see anything mechanical that doesn't have tracked propulsion, is absurd. Gone are the ads for sensible Swedish Volvos which save you in that roll into the snowy ditch that we Northern drivers all face at some point. Instead we have Vorsprung durch Technik which resembles a Mars Lander on steroids.
To counter this Euro-Japanese souped-up-dodgem-car hutzpah, American manufacturers extoll the virtues of the automobile as infotainment centre. Anything your laptop/tablet/smartphone can do can be done en route in comfort. Never mind drugs and booze for getting high while you drive. You can get all the kicks you need from your dashboard. Connection is always in. No need to feel lonely or worry about what's going on outside.
Everyone knows today's road vehicles are reliable, durable and much safer. So what's left to say about them other than hyperbole...and 'Zoom, Zoom'?
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Multi-ism
The major Toronto local coverage newspaper this summer did a piece on the shifting ethnic composition of its Greater Toronto Area. A not untypical online comment: "Great story
about how quickly things can change when we open our doors to people
from all over the world. We need them all here, anything to dilute the
white bread existence our English/Scottish uptight ancestors imposed on
us. It's a much more exciting place than it was 50 years ago, and it's
most welcome." As a bona fide 'white-bread' (but the ancestor of only a handful of Canadians), I marvel at how easy it is to dismiss what white-breads 'imposed'. Law, order and good governance for example. Plus the English language, today's lingua franca.
If as is predicted we 'uptights' are soon to be supplanted as the majority by immigration from currently dysfunctional societies like Somalia, the Arab countries, Haiti and Pakistan or totalitarian China, one cannot but wonder how long those core values that underpin the Shangri-La that multi-culture fans believe we are building will last. We could certainly be living in an 'exciting place' but in the way that say Brazil is exciting with its pollution, environmental over-exploitation, business and government corruption and crime. Time will tell but our scale of immigration (highest in the Developed World), and the accelerating accompanying integration and acculturation difficulties make me doubt it is going to be an all-fun filled adventure.
If as is predicted we 'uptights' are soon to be supplanted as the majority by immigration from currently dysfunctional societies like Somalia, the Arab countries, Haiti and Pakistan or totalitarian China, one cannot but wonder how long those core values that underpin the Shangri-La that multi-culture fans believe we are building will last. We could certainly be living in an 'exciting place' but in the way that say Brazil is exciting with its pollution, environmental over-exploitation, business and government corruption and crime. Time will tell but our scale of immigration (highest in the Developed World), and the accelerating accompanying integration and acculturation difficulties make me doubt it is going to be an all-fun filled adventure.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
The Blame Game
We blog here about the experience of being a boomer.
One of those experiences is to function as whipping boy for the ills of the generations behind. A national columnist called Gary Mason leads the local newspaper blame brigade. His latest tirade starts: “When is an economic recovery not an economic recovery? When you’re among the hundreds of thousands of young people being left out of any revival in the jobs market.” Follow along and once again one quickly finds it's all our fault as selfish and uncaring boomers.
One of those experiences is to function as whipping boy for the ills of the generations behind. A national columnist called Gary Mason leads the local newspaper blame brigade. His latest tirade starts: “When is an economic recovery not an economic recovery? When you’re among the hundreds of thousands of young people being left out of any revival in the jobs market.” Follow along and once again one quickly finds it's all our fault as selfish and uncaring boomers.
The comment thread on this particular rant is huge and much of it is about just who's to blame. I especially enjoyed this riposte by a fellow calling himself 'Cosmic Wheels': -
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