[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLoBWpiOczQ?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
Sharon Liese directed and produced the above video, The Gnomist.
Made me think about plants, trees, forests, landscapes…and how human access to them can occur on so many levels–physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual–amazing.
Shouldn’t every city have these gnome ecosystems within a ten minute walk from everyone’s front door? Why not?
Dreams, aspirations…realities…take the journey.
…plants, animals, humans…
…shelter…and all are in the landscape.
It’s that time of year for snow–mid-November, northern hemisphere, in highlands ski country, though the weather is not quite ready to play.
…but we can fix that…fire up the snow machines!
…in the mountains…in one hour.
Autumn leaves are like forty years of a happy marriage.
The future is always unseen, uncertain, filled with anxiety.
Died and gone to heaven–all is clear.
These images revealed themselves over 15 minutes during an 800 meter climb on a cogwheel train in the Bernese Oberland Swiss Alps.
Mountains, civilized? Ha!
Not these behemoths!
Since written history and before, the Bernese Oberlands have frightened and inspired humans, including Goethe, Byron, Hesse, Mann, Strauss, Schiller, Mendelssohn, Doyle, Haller, Hodler, Savrasov, Koenig, Bierstadt, Wolf, Fearnley…the list goes on and on…and thousands of others who have followed their footsteps.
It is that human consensus which has inspired local people, evolving from agricultural dependency into the modern world, to build technically complex, electrically powered, narrow gauge cogwheel trains up the Bernese Oberlands mountain slopes to what is known today in the Swiss Alps as the Top of Europe.
So, now, humans climb these incredibly steep slopes, sitting on padded seats, with central heating, enjoying visual delights through floor to ceiling polarized glass windows–civilized access to the not nearly civilized mountains.
Access–maybe just a tiny bit civilized.
…Pop-Up City Center…
I slept well. I dreamt deep.
When I opened my eyes…it was hard to focus…near and far…both fuzzy. Then the foreground cleared and I could see in the distance…across the broad green pastures…I saw the city center.
It had developed over time, drawing resources and energy from the sun, the earth and water–all the while transforming those flows into new forms, new shelters.
The shelters were populated by all diversities of living entities with energy flows, day after day, night after night, until…until…like a Roman settlement in North Africa, they just no longer could sustain neither the energy flows, nor the diversities of living entities.
And the next day, the sun rose; and I was home before the sun set.
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.
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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
This is not music…but they are a part in….
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.
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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.
Between 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.
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:
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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:
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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.
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
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Between 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.
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…
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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:
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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.
