“All happy families are alike; …

…each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

~Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

All writers wish they had written the first line of Anna Karenina – and not only because of its aphoristic brilliance. Tolstoy's opening cuts straight to the heart of much of 19th and indeed 20th century fiction. The novel is, apart from all the other things it may also be, the complex and variegated story of the making and breaking of families.

In Tolstoy, the theatre is often something to be mistrusted, both as art-form and social occasion, a place of absurdity and vanity either side of the footlights.  So it is an interesting, even subversive idea for screenwriter Tom Stoppard and director Joe Wright to have contrived an adaptation of Anna Karenina set in one place: a theatre.

It is an interesting film, alas, and this has been true of all visual translations, the subtlety of Tolstoy’s characters is lost. 

I recalled, as a sat and watched the movie, that in Russia, writers have always had a unique status.  For more than 180 years, laboring under censorship and repression, they’ve came to be seen as special transmitters of essential truth; the voices of the people’s spirit, its government-in-exile. 

When I traveled in Russia between 1960 and 1990 I thought that nowhere on earth, perhaps, was there such a reverence for literature (and for its truth) as there was in Russia.  The queues to renew subscriptions to literary journals were longer than those for vodka. New literary novels and volumes of poetry sold out in a matter of hours.  Poets filled sports stadiums; writers talked nightly on television to millions of people; and out-of-print books routinely fetched more than a week’s salary on the black market. 

The great Russian writers of the past, too, are still worshipped today in a way unknown to us in the West.  For they are the cartographers of the national identity, the creators of the country’s alternative-and therefore living-history.  Their graves are banked high with the flowers, and their apartments and country houses are places of pilgrimage, where the workrooms have been meticulously preserved and the clocks have been set to the exact times of their death. What you feel most when you visit these places is how near, how present in Russian life, these writers actually are: from Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s Shakespeare, on whose lips the modern Russian language was born; to the novelist Maxim Gorky, at a party in whose flat in 1930 Joseph Stalin is said to have invented the term “socialist realism.” A Ukrainian novelist at the turn of the 19th century wrote: “My country is not Russia; it is Russian literature.” 

Budmo!

may you have a transporting weekend

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Words are…

…how the world works.

“Language can shape and limit people's ambitions: "We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.” ~Stephen Frye

“If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized” said Irish born London based writer and poet Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 – 1900) when he was 28 years of age and already a cultural icon. Speaking English is like being on a constantly changing journey, one you have to experience first hand, while moving through time and space.  It’s a mystery, mostly to the people who speak it, certainly for those who are trying to learn it and, for those desperately trying to understand and comprehend its many complexities. As a language it is reputedly the hardest for other language speakers in the world to learn, understand and embrace a creative cocktail of social history, literature and linguistics. It is all about tone, shape, style and context, as well as construction.

Stephen Fry acting Oscar Wilde

The television series Stephen Fry’s Planet Word, when it was released in 2011 was billed as a round-the-world trip of a lifetime. Television director and writer John-Paul Davidson had the witty British actor Stephen Fry offering the diversity and delight of a wonderful world of words, wooing people with his style. It’s an interest they both shared and a journey on which it was possible to find out who the 105 year old man that invented modern day Chinese was and how he all but eradicated illiteracy.

It was an intelligent five part monologue surveying the evolution of language from ancient Sumeria the first linguistically identifiable urban literate society, to the contemporary world of blogs and twittering. You were able to build your trivia knowledge by finding out why in Japan the go-light is blue and, why superstar rock legend Mick Jagger embraced a ‘cockney’ accent. For a man with a huge intellect, hyperactive mind and an incredible ability to emphasize the point, Fry made complete use of cleverly crafted words in a series that must have been both a challenge and a joy for him to present.

Fry uncovered the origins of language and explained how different peoples around the world are identified through their language, by examining its development. This included slang words and swearing and what effect they have on our lives. He explained language in an engaging way and it helped that he was a bit of a wit, a total wag and master word smith. No wonder has an ever growing number of ‘twitter’ fans, over three million and counting, who hang on his every word. On Planet Word Stephen Fry explores language, helping us to understand how we learn it, write it, sometimes  lose it and, why it defines who we are. He and special guest David Tennant spent time talking about the wonderful words that make up Shakespeare’s Hamlet because words are how the world works.

Up until a gramophone and tape recorders were invented there were no ways of recording the languages on our planet and how they were being spoken. The only clues came from how words were written down and, in the case of English, writing them down has meant a whole set of rules that for centuries has been constantly changing, or being broken. This has just added to the confusion for those already challenged by its constant state of flux.

It was after the Elementary Education Act of 1870 in England that the educated élite would rebuke someone who said ‘loik’e instead of ‘like’. Up until then everyone had spoken the different dialects of the British Isles with great pride. This is the point where accent levelling became a social status marker.

An approved ‘tone’ also needed to be acquired as it was now ‘desired’ that a whole new ‘standard’ of English be spoken, especially when the age of the recorded voice and electrically transmitted sound began. This is when teaching elocution became a new age profession.

According to Davidson’s publishers, Penguin, the book about the series with an erudite forward by Stephen Fry, ‘uncovers everything you didn’t know you needed to know about how language evolves: from feral children to deaf Tourette’s, fairy-tale princesses and wicked stepmothers to secrets codes, invented languages, back slang – even a language that was eaten’.

It also informs us that according to the Snohomish tribe of North America, we speak different languages today because of a row about a duck.

It asks do you ‘take a bath’ or ‘have a bath’, do you use a ‘napkin’ or a ‘serviette’ and are you wearing ‘spectacles’ to read this or your ‘glasses’? How we speak and what we say (or don’t say) reveals much about our identity. But does where we come from influence how we think? Does a Frenchman better understand love? Has a German-speaker a more technical way of looking at the world?

The only place language seemingly remains static is once it is in a printed format, especially a dictionary. Those published in the many different languages of the world over the centuries will become collector’s items in the years ahead. They provide a valuable record of language and cultural development. Those in English will also offer a rare insight into the progression and pace of change, of surely one of the most fluid of all our world’s languages.

According to statistics provided by Penguin, there are still more than 6,000 languages spoken today, some by only a handful of people. However by the end of this century the prediction is there will be only about 900 left. Eventually experts tell us, we will no longer have a need for a written language at all, only using pictures and symbols to communicate instead?  With a heart being the first graphic to enter the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) are we already well on our way? Are we going back to the future, to a whole new world of hieroglyphics?

The story of English reveals how people can fasten their anxieties about changes happening daily on to words, utterly believing that to say something ‘incorrectly’ or not in the right context is just about the end, at least for them, of civilisation as we know it.

This is rubbish; language should be and is a constantly movable feast, which is what makes it so damn interesting.

It is easier for a majority of people in out world of words to dwell on the well-catalogued and recorded past, rather than live in the present, world. The whole idea of an even more rapidly evolving life of words, via phone texts and twitter is for many people, completely overwhelming.

Stephen Fry’s Planet Word is absolutely sensational, and celebrates the complexity, variety, and ingenuity of language all around the world.



Enjoy yourself...

...It is lighter than you think.

~John Cage

Good morning friends, following that oh-so-tiresome theme of my last post...

...another pearl from cyberspace.

Just when you thought...

A handsome 36-year-old single Parisian posed (clothed) for a full-page photograph in a popular, French woman’s magazine.

Readers desiring a romantic relationship were invited to read an interview with the man and write him, care of the magazine, with details of their lives and romantic aspirations.

185! women replied. Each letter was a manifestation, often powerful, of female desire. The bachelor, overwhelmed, decided to not meet a single woman.

The letters, ten are typed, 175 are handwritten, collectively represent a striking case study of female desire and loneliness, impulsiveness and creativity. Best of all, they could have been yours for a paltry $12,200 on EBay.

Further excerpts from the seller’s eBay listing:

185 love letters in French, sent from 185 women to a Parisian, offering an unmediated view of female desire in turn-of-the-millennium France. Ten of the letters are typed; 175 are handwritten.

The manuscripts are sold as a single lot. Many contain poems, drawings and photographs. Some of the sheets of paper, parchments and envelopes have been sprayed with perfume, painted with watercolors. One envelope contains a stick of still-fragrant incense. The collection includes a large selection of stamps affixed to envelopes for replies. (The buyer will receive the part of the self-addressed stamped envelope with the stamp or France’s La Poste sticker, but not the part containing the writer’s name and address.) The letters were written in France, save a dozen or so penned in Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Spain and Switzerland. The letters embody France’s strong epistolary tradition, which greatly values detailed expressions of sentiments, romantic recollections and beautiful penmanship. (Only 10 of the letters are typewritten; one is partially typed.)

The letters offer an unmediated view of fair-sex sentiments in turn-of-the-millennium France. Taken together, the collection provides insights—unfiltered by academics and sociologists—into French women’s emotional prerequisites for sex. (Careful reading is not always necessary; a large number of letters were written with disarming directness.)

Broadly speaking, the writing styles are variations of come-hither prose, at times perhaps coy. One young woman writes: “Le plus beau cadeau que j’ai pu offrir est mon corp [sic] mon âme oui m’offrir à un homme est le plus beau cadeau je crois.” (“The most beautiful gift I can give is my body, my soul, yes, I believe that giving myself to a man is the most beautiful gift.”) Another writes of her “charmant accent du Midi” (“charming Midi [southern-France] accent.”). Another explains that her favorite way to lift her spirits when feeling blue is to “faire l’amour” (“make love”). Another promises her “premier cadeau” (“first gift”): A “massage très long et très doux” (“a long and tender massage”).

The lot is sold with the agreement that no letter in its entirety may be published (electronically or otherwise). The buyer must return a signed legal agreement before the box will be shipped. Entire letters may, however, be used in art projects. Excerpts of the letters may be used for art projects, scholarly works, press articles, poetry, scripts, screenplays, novels and non-fiction writings. Publishers or authors interested in publishing the letters (or a selection of the letters) in their entirety should contact the seller to discuss a special arrangement.

The buyer is encouraged to use the letters for the teaching of French, French culture, psychoanalysis, psychology, gender studies, penmanship or other subjects. As time passes, the letters will provide an increasingly rare and poignant portrait of turn-of-the-millennium France and its women.

Interested buyers may review the letters for free and without obligation in Paris (contact the seller to discuss other possible arrangements for pre-sale review of the letters). Sales are final.

And how was your weekend Vicomte de Valmont?

“We the people...

…of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

 “…hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” . . .

 “… And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

“Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult.”

~ Hippocrates

Stars, Planets and The Meaningless Life

This morning you woke up, got yourself through the morning routine. You did this yesterday and you will do it again tomorrow. The days come and they go. You do your best. You try not to hurt anyone, try to be helpful. But sometimes — just sometimes — the fog of real and imagined urgencies parts. Staring across the abyss of your own brief time on this world, you wonder, “Does any of this matter? Does any of it matter at all?”

I had that experience and I am still reeling.

I was attending the American Astronomical Society‘s summer meeting, held this year in Anchorage. Being in Alaska this time of year, with its in-your-face mountain ranges and near continuous daylight, is enough to yank anyone out of the day-to-day. But the 21 hours of daylight and the brief bear encounter (hello Mr. Enormous Black Bear) were not the keys that opened the door to the abyss for me.

It was an image, a single picture.

I was sitting in a morning session on the Kepler mission. Kepler is a small space telescope designed to find exo-planets, alien worlds orbiting other stars. Kepler has been very good at its job.

Kepler discovers new planets by staring at stars and looking for tiny periodic decreases in their brightness. Dips in starlight can occur for many reasons but if they happen in just the right way, over and over again, then astronomers know they’ve observed a planetary transit, a planet passing across the face of its host sun (yes, this is exactly what happened with Venus a few weeks ago).

Once the existence of the planet is established, astronomers can extract a cornucopia of information from the data. Using Kepler (and other observations) astronomers can nail down the size of the planet’s orbit, its mass, its temperature and, sometimes, its density. The light that glances through its gaseous perimeter can even be used to determine the characteristics of the alien planet’s atmosphere.

More than 72 new worlds have been discovered by Kepler, with a few thousand more considered candidates. Many of these are gas giants like Jupiter. Some are so-called Super-Earths, planets a few times larger than our own. Astronomers are not yet sure of their structure. Some may exist as wholly liquid water-worlds (that is why density measurements matter). A number of the Kepler discoveries are true planetary systems, with up to 6 worlds orbiting the host star. But most important of all, a few of Kepler worlds are the size of Earth. They are, most likely, rocky worlds like our own.

The talks on Kepler were delightful and I drank in all the new science like a thirsty kid on a hot summer day. But none of what I learned pushed me out of my comfort zone and on to the ledge of my own mortality. Then, innocently, one of the speakers flashed an image related to the Kepler search strategy.

It showed the region of sky where Kepler would be looking for its planets. The probability of a planet and star lining up just right for us to see a transit is pretty low (just 0.5% for system like the Earth and Sun). That means Kepler has to stare at a lot of stars for a long time. To accomplish this the team keeps the telescope pointed at just one region of sky in the constellation Cygnus.

That patch night is not very big. Your hand at the end of your outstretched arm held up against the sky pretty much covers it. The speaker also showed an image of the galaxy and how much of it Kepler would be able to explore. It was a tiny wedge set against a vast galactic disk of stars and dust.

That is what did it to me.

Those images catapulted me out of the room, out of the meeting, out of the day. It felt as if the floor of all my routine concerns dropped out from under me: the bills I forgot to pay before I left; the car brakes that need fixing when I get back; my relationship with my cousins; my concerns about the election; my concerns about the cough that is taking too long to go away; all of it just deflated against one single and inescapable fact.

In a small patch of sky, in a small wedge of space, there are worlds out there right now. There are, most likely many thousands of them. These are places just like here, places where you can stand and look around. These are places with landscapes. Many of them are barren and lifeless, but some may show the colors that only a biosphere can create. Either way, they exist right now as I write these words.

I was reeling and shaken to the core. For that one moment all the meaning and concern I schlep from one day to the next evaporated before my small place in this very big galaxy.

It was dizzying and it was delightful. To be human is to suffer great and small. Even given all our blessings, we can still find ways to fill the day with urgent concerns. And when great suffering falls to us — health, economic, family — our horizons constrict to darkness. Thus, for me, anytime I can be lifted from the crushing sense that this is all there is, it’s a good thing. Anytime I can be reminded that there is more, so much more, than this mortal coil, it feels like a good thing.

One doesn’t have to search the Kepler archive to find that feeling. It can arrive in the form of art, poetry, your kids, laughter or just looking up and out. 

I hope you get a moment to do that today.  May you have a moment without meaning.

~Adam Frank, astrophysicist 

For my Little Urban Hipsters on this 4th.

May the words of a more reasonable seasoned soul counter the banality and predictability of today's rabid, quick triggered responses and  shallow, sluggish thinking.