be very interested with your heart

'Heart and Soul'

Just One Thing

This episode of Just One Thing with Michael Mosley has a good summary of the health benefits of T'ai Chi.

Finding your flow

An interesting episode of Life Cycle on Radio Scotland today, encouraging people to do less... Available to listen again here for a month.

Hillbilly Sutra

A great friend sent me this podcast and I very rarely listen to them, let alone click on links I have been sent. But it's two hours of the best, most succinct, funny, realisation that I have ever heard. Don't judge the host, the accents, the format, (I did, and then I laughed at my judgements and carried on anyway) if you can manage it, just listen, enjoy, laugh. Wei wu wei.

A cheery wave

I have been posting here very little the last two months as family and work commitments have been intense. Today while I work I am listening to a BBC Radio 3 program recommended to me recently that T'ai Chi colleagues may find interesting, in a thread that you might like to explore, (I know some of you do already).
The Three Second Rule

A good program, yet still dispiriting how much people refer to themselves as machines, with programming, wiring, and so on. A hall of mirrors... with ego at the centre... but worth knowing about, so that we can offer and inhabit a creature-like resistance, an embodied response, a connected way in the world.

The common frequency of waves on the shore, 0.3hz, the same rate as the electrical activity of the relaxed brain. The pulse of the Short Form, when it feels just right?

Superb quote near the end of the piece, from the artist who made the program, Susan Aldworth: 'That idea of Descartes that the body and the soul were two separate things - I think he was profoundly wrong.'

Yes! So do I... So does Iain McGilchrist, so do most indigenous and traditional peoples... Yet the dichotomous view of 'haunted meat' (a great Charlie Brooker quote) is what is trashing the world today. How would we live if we knew that our embodied animal selves were not our 'inadequate vehicle' but instead our true means to great connection? The laying waste of the planet is the result of the hubris of joy-denying, left-hemisphere dominant people, forming a way of life that separates body and brain, people from other people, creatures and life-forms from each other, and puts the needs of the worst part of humans at the centre of the story.

What would it be to sit on the shore of our own lives, inner and outer, to watch the waves of our thoughts, feelings and desires come and go. To notice their rate, their quality. their roughness or timbre? The colour of the foam, the texture of the shingle. Sometimes there will be sharks, at other times turtles. Maybe it is full of waving fronds of kelp, or tickle by cormorant wings. I am not fighting the natural rate of my life-waves any more, or indeed its tides. Perhaps I would like the storms not to return, but that's just a preference, not a demand. And look, there're shells...

********

I am working on softness, left side form, some weapons ideas.
Greetings from the river.

Classes in London with both myself and Mark continue until 18th December.
Aberdeenshire workshop will continue as planned, more info next week.

Ursula LeGuin

I've just been told by a friend that Ursula LeGuin has died, aged 88. The closest thing I have to a hero, her writing, and example, have been a huge influence on me all my life, starting in my teens, and continuing to the present moment, (I was only reading one of her essays 'Cosmic Crone' the other day). On my shelf is the second of her Earthsea books, ready for a friend's young son. I have delayed giving it him as I planned to read it first... I even carved a yew-staff when I was 15, so that I could be like Ged, the wizard.

She was a superb mixture of feminist, Taoist and anarchist - ah, I hope I can walk just a few steps in that same oblique omnidirection. She was for me, both the epitome of a great artist and a real human being. It is time to reread the Hainish Cycle again, I think, and to finish the last few books I had not yet read. The BBC produced a great radio version of her award-winning 'The Left Hand of Darkness' a few years ago. Perhaps that will be available online again. Seek it out. A few recommendations for her books will follow from me, when the sad news is a little less new.

Thoughts from the dark river

Greetings and love to Marie who has injured her wrist - we send love and hope it heals soon and well.

The night is peaceful apart from the Egyptian geese who squawk at each other at the weir.

I am away from Mark's Tuesday class again with a cold. I want to be well to teach tomorrow and go to class Thursday, as well as teach all weekend. So I am reluctantly absent again. However, I am resting, so that's good, right?

The Heathrow flight path changes make all our lives hell here when the wind is Easterly. They have the hubris to put up a huge hoarding here at the station explaining how the new runway at Heathrow will benefit the whole UK. Is that benefit as in make us all into exhausted sleep-deprived stress-suffering zombies? May have to do an ad hack soon.

I discovered The Dark Mountain after reading a review of The Wake which I had almost bought last month on impulse due to the beautiful cover (yes, beauty could make an impulse book-buyer of me too), but I had a train to catch, and so I walked on. I have now ordered the book from Wordery, and may well subscribe to the Dark Mountain books too. I didn't realise quite a few other people felt similarly to how I did about 'nature' (as supposedly opposed to 'culture'), the 'environment', 'progress' and other mass hallucinations. Along these lines also read: Le Guin's 'Always Coming Home', and 'The Word for World is Forest', as well as Hoban's  'Ridley Walker', and Beatty's 'Pollard'.

Last night a DJ saved my life: Radiolab's Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich have added so much to my life this last 2 years since I discovered their show and subsequently their podcasts. A recent gem: In The Dust Of Our Planet - go listen.

This week's visual offerings:

Top left of the hill - a white chalk horse. Made my heart sing on the train west.

If only it were that easy.

This giant, late, bulbous football sized beauty is in the ash pile right now.

Family White, late last night.

The Slow Coach

I only caught a snippet of this programme on Radio 4 today, but the little I heard on the  effects of mindfulness sounded very interesting. It's available to listen again for the next 7 days.

Radio Lab

I haven't been listening to the radio much the last month, as I am rarely in the mood for extra man-made sound now that the birds have finally started their spring session. However, whilst cooking the other day I popped Radio 4 on and discovered a wonderful thing, a show all about Radio Lab. (Four days left to listen from the UK as I write this).

Radio Lab, from a public radio station in NYC, may well be my dream radio programme. I now even have their app... If you love science, experimental sound, things explored deeply in their unique contexts, and to be surprised and delighted, this is for you. It can be accessed on the web and pod casts are available.

Belief

Just back from a great family trip to Prague, and still busy with things needing doing over this Easter holiday, so it'll be next week before I get a chance to post photos and T'ai Chi news. Hope you are all having a good break, or at least some time off.

Last night Stephen Batchelor was on BBC Radio 3, he is running the week long retreat I'll be attending later this month. You can listen on iplayer this week by clicking the link. I find Joan Bakewell's questions a bit predictable, theocentric and occasionally trite, but maybe that's just a fair reflection of our wider culture...

Sounds of the night

This interesting and atmospheric programme was on Radio 4 earlier today.

This composed feature by Nina Perry explores the problem of sleeplessness and the crucial relationship between sound and sleep, all set within a soundscape of noises heard during a sleepless night interwoven with specially composed music. How do we respond to sound emotionally, physiologically and hormonally. Are the sounds of the night changing? Are silent nights a thing of the past?

castaway

Just at home waiting for the plumber to mend my boiler, after 8 days with no heating or hot water, which after being used life aboard has actually been no trouble. Plenty of time to do something I almost never do: listen to Desert Island Discs. Today featured Aung San Suu Kyi who was refreshingly unsentimental and famously inspiring. What particularly touched me was (to paraphrase) that if you have chosen a path of action through your own free will, then you should walk it, as a gift to your life, and to the world, and not make a show of how hard or challenging it is.

How unlike the tone of every cover of almost every magazine and newspaper one has to pass each day.

This is from Ean at Tuesday class:
Hi y'all
Just a reminder that Bib will be performing for the last time ever this weekend.

You can hear us playing 3 songs live on the radio on the Dexter Bentley Hello Goodbye Show on Resonance FM (www.resonancefm.com - 104.4 FM) on Saturday 13th October just after noon in preparation for our live performance at the "Waves of Canned Laughter" night in tribute to Ferris Blood at The 12 Bar on Sunday 14th October.

Details of the Hello Goodbye show can be found here - www.hellogoodbyeshow.com - which also has a link to ResonanceFM - www.resonancefm.com

Shine, evaporate and fall

Last night I was at The Globe again for Twelth Night, with Mark Rylance reprising his role as Olivia and the excellent Stephen Fry as Malvolio. I laughed so much, was captivated by the wit and timing of the actors, and was moved greatly by this play, which I had not seen before. Olivia moved as though upon tiny wheels, a wind-up toy of a mourning woman at first gliding, inexpressive, in her impenetrable grief and later skittish and moving impulsively when she falls in love. Each time I see Rylance I am more deeply impressed and glad to have had the fortune to see him play. Standing in the yard of The Globe, close-in with all the other audience members, I felt a sudden awareness of the continuity of humans who had done this before, in specific, the people in this country who had come for over 400 years to see this play, heard these words, and laughed at the bawdy jokes. It was a peculiar and heartening feeling. Having a drink at The Swan after the show, we met three of the company and thanked them for the performance, and for their part in Richard III, which we saw earlier in the season.

Davina sent me a link to a wonderful interview with Rylance on Radio 3's Nightwaves, which I have just listened to. As is often the case, the interviewer had too much of an agenda, but Rylance comes across as a deeply soulful person, committed to the exporation of life and meaning through his art. His understanding of the essential nature of a real human connection to the wild, and the importance of really 'waking up', being present in each moment, were particularly well said. I guess I am really quite a fan of the man now...

sounds: interesting

Just got posted these from Stew...for the experimental music fans in the schools, (there are a fair few of us...) Will try to catch both.

INDETERMINACY

JOHN CAGE - INDETERMINACY. WITH STEVE BERESFORD, TANIA CHEN, STEWART LEE & ALAN TOMLINSON. TOUR OF LONDON - SEPTEMBER 2012
I say, “Please come. These shows are always a little bit magic.”
Three contemporary musicians and a comedian tour John Cage’s Indeterminacy around London in a three night marathon of unusual events. Indeterminacy was originally recorded in 1959, with David Tudor playing the piano and John Cage reading aloud 90 stories, each lasting one minute.
Tonight, fearless contemporary pianists Tania Chen and Steve Beresford will assume the role of Tudor, accompanying the comedian Stewart Lee reading Cage's stories, with occasional unrelated events on the piano (and other things).
This is a performance which disorientates and transfixes and audience.
Beresford addresses its strange effect: 'There's no word for it, which is why it's worth doing.'
The first half of the programme will comprise a performance of John Cage’s Solo For Sliding Trombone, by Alan Tomlinson, and improvisations by Steve Beresford and Tania Chen.
1) Sunday 23/9/12 Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, Battersea, London, SW11 5TN Box Office: 020 7223 2223 £10/8 Time 7pm http://www.bac.org.uk/whats-on/
2) Monday 24/9/12 Kings Place, 90 York Way, LONDON, N1 9AG Box Office 020 7520 1490. £12.50, Time 8pm http://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on-book-tickets
3) Tuesday 25/9/2012 - Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, London, E8 3DL Box office 020 7923 1231 8pm £8/£10 http://www.wegottickets.com/event/172410

A SOUND ADVENTURE

‘A Sound British Adventure”, written by Mark ‘Palace Of Light’ Brend and presented by comedian Stewart Lee, discovers how after World War 2 a small group of electronic pioneers began tinkering with their army surplus kit to create new sounds and music, and traces the development of Electronic Music in Britain.
The show transmits on BBC Radio 4 Tuesday 14th August 2012 at 11.30am and is repeated Saturday 18th August at 3.30pm.
It will also be on the BBC iplayer for seven days after broadcast.

Belief with John Burnside

I just heard this lovely programme on Radio 3. Listen Again is available until the 11th of April.

The writer John Burnside has had a good year. His latest poetry collection, Black Cat Bone, recently won both the Forward Poetry Prize and the TS Eliot prize. In a new episode of Belief he talks to Joan Bakewell about the influence of spirituality on his life and writing and he explains how he came to his beliefs. Raised a Catholic by a hardworking mother and a hard-drinking father John once thought of becoming a priest but he ended up following in his father's footsteps - drinking heavily and taking drugs until he ended up in a mental hospital. But years of reading and contemplation eventually led John to discover the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism and now he leads an altogether quieter life according to Taoist principles.

From Caro 7.4.12
Just listened to this - excellent, except for Joan Bakewell's lack of understanding of philosophies outside a montheistic tradition, tipified by the contrast of her use of words such as 'fatalistic', 'belief' and 'faith' in contrast to Burnside's 'understanding' , 'flow' and 'observing'. His exposition of his evolving relationship to the way of things, is as good an introduction to the Tao, as currently practiced here in the west, as I have ever heard. I have just ordered 'Black Cat Bone' from the library, and will add him and Thoreau to Gary Snyder, for books I will read at the Kuti in June. His words near the end of the broadcast about 'entering a discussion to close it down' were insightful and instructive. I will listen again soon. 

Regarding him feeling like he is on another planet from the mainstream of people's thinking... I wish he didn't feel so alone... there are a fair few of us out there whose thoughts and feelings he would resonate with.

Friday 24th Radio 3, 20 minutes: The sound of one hand clapping 

Including "Steve Reich and Zen guru Bart Simpson"

This was great! Thanks to Davina for the link.

 

"matching your outside to your inside"
Rudi Richardson, on this morning's Midweek on Radio4

Stephen K Amos

Just listening to Radio 4 where the award winning comedian is describing his 1980's childhood paper round down the road I used to live in, in fact it seems he lived right opposite me... Nice to hear Balham on the radio. Yesterday featured Knockando and its mill (no mention of its fine whisky, however). I'm having an audio tour of my old haunts.

Stewart Lee will be guest editor of the Today programme on R4 on 31st December.