Author Archives: eflaherty

…wish you were here…

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…wish you were here…

Trance–not music…or musical ride into trance?

The yodeling exuded the essence of all music…humans, without words, communicating from, and to, some magical landscape node.  The yodeling had freedom, it had discipline, it had beauty and it conveyed, at the same time, a pleasant, almost jolly reverence, and an aura of relaxation.

Listening to music is a linear experience, just like walking though a garden, a landscape.  Music and beauty.  Gardens and beauty.  Portals to transcendence.  There has to be a linkage.  Timeless experiences. Trance? Yodeler trance?

He stood up, stretched, decided to take a walk outside back down toward the center of town.  The evening air was sharp and cool.  It was quiet, Wednesday near 9PM, really quiet.  Grindelwald was at the top end of the valley.  No through automobile traffic.  He paused, listened…maybe he could hear the Lutschine River, about two hundred or so meters down hill, in the valley bottom.  When he started walking again, all he could hear were his own footsteps.

Then somewhere up ahead, he heard what he instinctively knew had to be yodeling.  Softly at first, then it filled his ears.  It was like barbershop, a cappella, unaccompanied singing, a group.  His ears carried him.  His ears, transforming like a delicate cocoon…and the music wrapped him.  He was inside the music…inside the music…suffused by an intense hypnotic, timeless, yet strangely joyful experience.

In no more than a hundred meters, and in the dark, the yodeling had led him just off the main street.  On his left, behind a large tree, he saw a shop or something, tucked behind a hillside.  The yodeling was coming from that direction.  On a weakly lighted, simple sign attached to the side of a smallish free standing building, he saw the name…Blumisalp Stubbe

The Stubbe had an outdoor terrace, facing the mountains, facing the Unterergletscher, and that was where he found the yodelers, about a dozen, maybe a dozen and a half of them.  Everybody he knew always chuckled when yodeling was mentioned, something Americans had once seen back in the 1950s or early 1960s on the Ed Sullivan or the Lawrence Welk television variety shows.

But, in the still of these extraordinary evening mountains, in the quiet of the night, when the mountains were the foreground, middle ground and background all at once, that yodeling had a strong resonance that seemed appropriate to the scale of this place and respectful to its character.

He thought, I don’t know anything about this, so, who am I to judge…but…it does have a very nice feel, a certain sweetness, that’s for sure.  He stood and listened.  For a moment, he couldn’t put words to it, but for the briefest moment, he thought he almost felt the very beginning of that same warm feeling that had overwhelmed him yesterday afternoon, the first time the mountains possessed him.  Then, as soon as the thought formed…the feeling was gone…the intimation disappeared…instantaneously absent.  It was, nevertheless, in its brevity, enjoyable.

The yodelers were on the terrace of the Stubbe.  All the Stubbe terrace doors were open.  The yodelers stood in two lines, at the side of the terrace, singing to the mountains and the Stubbe guests simultaneously.

The yodelers were organized by height, shorter in front, taller behind.  They yodeled two more songs that seemed to have verses and choruses…always a cappella…the singers were men and women, a combination of young and old, all in native clothes, native costumes, somewhat Amish-like…very clean costumes, dominated by black and white, well pressed, black trousers, white shirts and black vests with black lapels and black collars, tastefully accented with smallish embroidered wild flowers–gentian blues–edelweiss silver greens.

The men stood rather casually with their hands in their pockets, but there was definitely a grouped organization.  And the ladies, well, they, too, looked like Amish people…simultaneously proud and humble…lots of white lace over black cloth…very discreet, no asset display…and their decorations, too–mountain wild flowers.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/217597274″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]
Jodlergruppe Edelwyss-Starnen, from Grindelwald, singing Mys Alpli, one alp is a field, a pasture, a productive piece of mountain land where farm animals graze. Thus in the background of this you can hear the bells of the sheep, goats and cows. The full version can be found at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/jodelgruppe-edelwyss-starnen/id329166348

Not Music

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…but I can't hear it…

This is not music…but they are a part in….

…I don't need to hear it…

This is music…and it is definitely a part in….

And this is what passes between humans and the landscape when all the communication barriers are open.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/217597274″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]
Jodlergruppe Edelwyss-Starnen singing Mys Alpli, one alp is a field, a pasture, a productive piece of mountain land where farm animals graze. Thus in the background of this you can hear the bells of the sheep, goats and cows. The full version can be found at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/jodelgruppe-edelwyss-starnen/id329166348

It is what music might be–if you are receiving. Listen to it and look at the above images.

The minute I write, or you think, ‘yodel’, the magic is gone.

It is about ‘being’, like all great music, you become captured and captivated at the same time.

It is a right brain, left brain thing. Above is my weak attempt at right brain.

And this is for your left brain:

1.Where? High in the Swiss Alps, Berner Oberland, above 1,000 meters, where it is just you, the yodelers and the mountains.

2.Who? Yodelers are the people, generations deep living in that landscape.

3.The timing should be when your heart and ears are both wide open to spectra only available where you find yourself in that Berner Oberland landscape.

When you ride that music, the experience is not music.

Words don’t work. This is not music. This is beyond love, beyond service, beyond respect. Language fails–being with the landscape. Humans and landscape…it is deep.

It is what music might be.

Existential Garden Visits–Borges

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International Authors' DayBetween 14-18 July 2015, on each day, I will be making a post in celebration of International Authors’ Day, featuring review of works by Kenneth Grahame, J.L. Borges and Algernon Blackwood, authors whose works have been formative inspirations for me.

These posts will be made as part of a Blog Hop as can be seen and visited through the links at the bottom of each post.

Today is 17July2015.

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Existential Garden Visits: J.L. Borges
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1899-1986 Jorge Luis Borges, some of his works can be found here.

…I was just there…

Erik Desmazieres’ illustration of Borges’ Library of Babel (courtesy of funambulist)

Library of Babel. This image I share with all of you who are convinced that the written word is at the center of our lives and a library houses the efforts of all people who share your convictions…J.L. Borges called it Library of Babel.

Here is a two minute sound clip featuring Borges’ description from The Library of Babel:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/214955959″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]
If you tried to call his work based upon themes, you would have to include dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors–the stuff that provides portals to the madness of existence–the madness of questions some of us ask, some of us become obsessed and others by the grace of God, never even think of–so, some of you would be better off not reading any further.
In one of his stories, most often quoted, analyzed, The Garden of Forking Paths, he takes the reader on a garden journey wherein movement through a labyrinth is required, however the labyrinth folds back in on itself through networks of time, none of which are the same, all of which are equal, an infinite regression.
The concept itself is incredible and the masterful skill of writing that creates the experience–beyond words. Fantastic writing, fantastic imagination–and you must ask yourself upon reading that–you must ask yourself where did I come from, where am I going and what is this thing we call life.
But it all starts with books because books, like gardens…always take you…somewhere unexpected…if you let them. Libraries, gardens, landscapes…what more could you want? And Borges is supreme at enticing his reader into the garden, as in this 4 minute sound clip:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/214956284″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]
But there is too often a dreary end to existential inquiry–I prefer the garden, or a walk out into the landscape–places where discovery captivates, enthuses.
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In the garden just like every book, just like every piece of music--in the garden are discoveries to be made--portals with thresholds waiting to be crossed--it is up to you.

In the garden just like every book, just like every piece of music–in the garden are discoveries to be made–portals with thresholds waiting to be crossed–it is up to you.

Plants: how do they inspire you?

Please answer that question in the comments below, because on the last day of this International Authors’ Day Blog Hop, I will randomly select a winner to receive The 23 Club, Beta 6, a free giveaway for your reading enjoyment.

The 23 Club (Beta 06)

Table of Contents

  1. Desertification
  2. It’s 2AM
  3. Spike Lounge
  4. The Walk
  5. Rub Al Khali Coastal
  6. Rub Al Khali Inland
  7. Liwa Qsar
  8. The Plant Nursery
  9. Tamarind Gardens
  10. Library Majlis
  11. Villa Patio
  12. Long and Short
  13. Pilgrimage
  14. Wanderweg

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Landscape Mysteries: Algernon Blackwood

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International Authors' DayBetween 14-18 July 2015, on each day, I will be making a post in celebration of International Authors’ Day, featuring review of works by Kenneth Grahame, J.L. Borges and Algernon Blackwood, authors whose works have been formative inspirations for me.

These posts will be made as part of a Blog Hop as can be seen and visited through the links at the bottom of each post.

Today is 16July2015.

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Landscape Mysteries: Algernon Blackwood
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1869-1951, Algernon Blackwood’s work can be found at Gutenberg.

…at the portal…

W. Graham Robertson illustrates the forest landscape in Algernon Blackwood’s, The Man whom the Trees Loved. (courtesy of callumjames blogspot)

Algernon Blackwood is an author who continues to inspire my senses when I take a walk in the garden, a walk in the landscape. Some have called him a cross between an outdoorsman and a mystic.

In his stories, the reader encounters a mystery–and that is where the story begins. Blackwood, at the point at which a character begins to uncover an internal mystery, takes the reader across a threshold–very carefully, step by step, revealing the experience.

Mysteries in the landscape only remain so if a person does not carefully question their reveal. Algernon Blackwood carefully questions their reveal in fine stories such as, The Initiation, The Man Whom the Trees Loved, Descent into Egypt, The Willows and many others.

Blackwood was a prolific writer; but my preferences are the stories where he carefully takes his reader on a journey into the reveal of mysteries found in the forest, in the landscape. He brings the reader to greater appreciation of those experiences that seem, how can I say…too normal?  Or too unusual?  Or too troublesome.

But we all have experienced them.

In the following two minute sound clip, on the Sussex weald, Algernon Blackwood’s character was helpless in the landscape, under the power of something quite ancient…
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/214796977″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]

Algernon Blackwood was taken by the landscape of the upper coniferous forests in the Swiss Alps–you can almost feel it in the following three minute sound clip:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/214797324″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]

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…inhale again…deeply…

Upper Alpine coniferous forests breathe an air that humans find exhilarating…beyond words. What is it about those trees and the understory they protect and nourish?

Plants: how do they inspire you?
Please answer that question because on the last day of this International Authors’ Day Blog Hop, I will randomly select a winner to receive The 23 Club, Beta 6, a free giveaway for your reading enjoyment.

On Ecology–Kenneth Grahame

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International Authors' DayBetween 14-18 July 2015, on each day, I will be making a post in celebration of International Authors’ Day, featuring review of works by Kenneth Grahame, J.L. Borges and Algernon Blackwood, authors whose works have been formative inspirations for me.

These posts will be made as part of a Blog Hop as can be seen and visited through the links at the bottom of each post.

Today is 15July2015.
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On Ecology–Kenneth Grahame
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Kenneth Grahame, 1859-1932, access to his works at Gutenberg.

…now where is that portal…

Especially in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, E.H. Shepard’s illustrations imparted the author’s deep feelings for the forest landscape and its inhabitants.

While many think of Wind in the Willows (1908) as Toad of Toad Hall–it really is an intimate picture of the landscape around which Kenneth Grahame grew up and always loved.

I think of him as the first Ecologist. Most of us, when we think of ecology, think first of the Odum brothers in the 1950s. But for me, it was the observational powers of Kenneth Grahame–how the flora and fauna intimately interacted on diurnal and seasonal bases in his own local patch.

The following two minute sound clip documents Kenneth Grahame’s heartfelt understanding of the landscape.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/214642771″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]

I respect, I highly value his powers of observation. Unfortunately his efforts have been blacklisted, by some cultural revisionists, as anthropomorphic, but…that bit of censoring is only as transient in time as a slight breeze on a hot, still, summer day.

Kenneth Grahame’s work will return–be it Wind in the Willows, 1908 or Pagan Papers, 1893 when he was already asking ‘Are we irrevocably cut off from the natural world, or might there still be a way back to it?’

He knew of the power in the landscape.
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Plants: how do they inspire you?
Please answer that question because on the last day of this International Authors’ Day Blog Hop, I will randomly select a winner to receive The 23 Club, Beta 6, a free giveaway for your reading enjoyment.

Landscape Story–what is it?

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International Authors' DayBetween 14-18 July 2015, on each day, I will be making a post in celebration of International Authors’ Day, featuring review of works by Kenneth Grahame, J.L. Borges and Algernon Blackwood, authors whose works have been formative inspirations for me.

These posts will be made as part of a Blog Hop as can be seen and visited through the links at the bottom of each post.

 

 

Today is 14July2015.

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Landscape Story–what is it?
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These landscape stories are classic quests–journeys. Maybe a landscape story should start with some context, some definition.

On the earth, humans see the surface and what they see is landscape. The difference between landscape and garden is that a garden is cultivated by humans, is protected by humans and is relatively safe from threats of death to humans. Whereas in the larger landscape, the threat of death, by other life forms including humans, known or unknown, may be just ‘around the corner’, or even ‘in your face’.

Myself, I always have looked at it like this from a larger historical perspective: in the beginning humans moved in the landscape–hunting and gathering, I think is the currently popular way to describe their activities. When humans found the dangers in the landscape, when they found the threat of death in the landscape too great, they built shelters–the realm of architects today, shelters.

Then humans put fences around their shelters, cultivated plants and called those outdoor areas, gardens. Gardens are places dominated by plants, places where humans offer some personal service to plants. Gardens are places relatively safe from the danger of death. In the garden, there is protection. In the garden, the intense human energy for self defense can be suspended, enabling finer instincts of humans to be accessed.

Gardens and landscapes both are essentially the environment of plants. And plants  are the domain where the most dynamic interactions remain to be discovered by humans. Landscape stories explore dynamic interactions between humans and plants in gardens and landscapes.

A landscape story moves beyond furniture and setting. The plants, gardens and landscapes begin to have lives of their own…kind of like real life…and beyond. In the works of literature, arts and music, plants, gardens and landscapes have forever been the source of seemingly unlimited human inspirations. Of particularly rich inspirations for me have been works by Kenneth Grahame, by Algernon Blackwood, by J.L. Borges. Inspirations of sensual thresholds, of emotion, of intellect, of design, of beauty, of spirit, of existential uncertainty, of connecting essence, of source, of…

In The 23 Club, Erik Chalmers, a landscape architect, follows his obsession to build beautiful and captivating gardens in strange places…this time to the Empty Quarter in the Arabian Peninsula. On his way, he stops over in Bahrain and, in a kismet moment, bumps into an old friend, Jean-Claude Thibaut.

Jean-Claude Thibaut, an ethnobotanist, was born in the Belgian Congo and had built his career around exploring ‘borderline’ human cultures, Bedu, Gypsies, Berbers and their interactions with plants and landscapes. Erik finds out that Jean-Claude had recently been to the Empty Quarter to advise an Emirati on his masters thesis–a study of how people from the Liwa Oasis traditionally used plants in their extremely arid sand desert environment.

In the following 4 minute sound clip, Jean-Claude explains some of the unmappable experiences he had during his nine months driving everyday from Abu Dhabi to the Liwa Oasis, in the heart of the Empty Quarter–the very location of Erik’s new Liwa Qsar project, a five star resort destination series of courtyard gardens.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/214477123″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]

Then there is another facet to these landscape stories. They are fiction, but they use geography, history and botany to give the stories some ‘real life’ anchors, as in the following three minute clip where Erik Chalmers and Jean-Claude discuss the Spice Route over a plate of biryani at a truck stop in the middle of the ‘almost’ Empty Quarter.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/214535236″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]

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…inspiration…

…where is it…

Plants: how do they inspire you?
Please answer that question because on the last day of this International Authors’ Day Blog Hop, I will randomly select a winner to receive The 23 Club, Beta 6, a free giveaway for your reading enjoyment.

International Authors’ Day

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International Authors' DayBetween 14-18 July 2015, on each day, I will be making a post in celebration of International Authors’ Day, featuring reviews of works by Kenneth Grahame, J.L. Borges and Algernon Blackwood, authors whose works have been formative inspirations for me.

These posts will be made as part of a Blog Hop as can be seen and visited through the links at the bottom of each post.

Also at the bottom of each post please find the giveaway question:

Plants: how do they inspire you?

Please answer that question in the comments section. On the last day of this International Authors’ Day Blog Hop, I will randomly select a winner to receive The 23 Club, Beta 6, a free giveaway for your reading enjoyment

Landscape Story–what is it?

14July 2015

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On Ecology–Kenneth Grahame

15July2015

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Landscape Mysteries–Algernon Blackwood

16July2015

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Existential Garden Visits–JL Borges

17July2015

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The 23 Club, Beta 6 Giveaway

18July2015

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In The 23 Club, Erik Chalmers, a landscape architect, follows his obsession to build beautiful and captivating gardens--this time to The Empty Quarter.

In The 23 Club, Erik Chalmers, a landscape architect, follows his obsession to build beautiful and captivating gardens–this time to The Empty Quarter.

Humans Need Not Apply

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&w=560&h=315]

And then, what?

Easy, humans will have more time in the landscape, in gardens, with plants, exploring, asking… Older, forgotten knowledge, accessible via plants, will be re-learned.

And what have we forgotten? Perhaps you will share with me?

PS And maybe we will have enough time to have measured discussion on…say… the difference between a republic and democracy, or…how to balance individual freedom with personal, local and national security? 😉 But what does that have to do with plants?

Bauhaus

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…sunset…Is the sun finally setting on Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus?

Walter Gropius brought together various engineers, architects and artists to do under one roof, what they had always done in separate buildings in the past. The effort to do multi-disciplinary work with all the resources in the same room…an earth shattering concept?

In June 2015, I went to the old Weimar Republic, and visited the Bauhaus in Dessau where various international academics and practitioners, in conference, discussed the gathering of all the multi-disciplinary data inside a computer to do on a screen what they had previously done on paper–planning and designing buildings in the landscape.

Seems like the Bauhaus principles are alive and well–contrary to the sunset photo above.

Sleeping two nights in these original Bauhaus buildings gave me cause, 80 years after their creation, to mull over–form and function of my shelter in the landscape.

And the result…?

Myself–in my own personal living space, after the functions are well sorted–I prefer the intimate, expertly crafted details from William Morris, Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and more recently from Christopher Alexander in his Timeless Way of Building and The Pattern Language.

Bauhaus modernism from the 1930s? A bit like the five star version of a Solzhenitsyn gulag.