Sunday, 7 February 2016
Le Recherche & Hypnosis
Stanislavski is all too familiar to every professional actor, especially if they attended one of my universities, Rose Bruford in Sidcup. He is de rigueur there. So this one with it's usual discursiveness is the interconnections of Proust, emotional memory, acting theorists, it's role in hypnosis.
This article also explains the main reason why many posts here are about the 1970s. It's not simply nostalgia, the purpose is to cultivate the collective memory of ephemeral & established culture and oral history which plays an important but neglected part of psychological & recording changes in culture and history of society. Also chronicling the most fragile part cultural history that is oral history and ephemera.
Stanislavski is most famous for his emotional memory, which Lee Strasberg based his whole Method Acting upon. Most of Strasberg's contemporaries walked out of the Actors Studio stating that he was over emphasising the technique, and Stanislavski himself treated it as merely a minor technique; more on all that another time.
But before Stanislavski there was Marcel Proust whose sniffing of that madeleine biscuit triggered a tsunami of earlier memories transcribed into the tsunami of 7 voluminous volumes.
His À la recherche du temps perdu is the non plus ultra of involuntary memory or involuntary autobiographical memory. The affective memory of Stanislavski & emotional memory of Strasberg.
The significance of this in psychology is it's multisensory engagement including emotional and synesthesia occurring: images & symbols which did not appear in the original memory but have an important unspecified aspect in the current memory.
Hypnosis connection-
The above affective memory is usually the recalling of a childhood experience, and at its most intense and vivid.
From my own research, which corroborates experimental psychology, the use of regression & regression memory produces hyper suggestibility: the brain responds more effectively to hypnotic suggestions than by standard techniques.
The more sensory information is remembered or vividly imagined the more powerful the hypnotic operation. Therefore the more of the senses that are engaged in conjunction with using feelings is the ideal.
The long term memory especially childhood recall unleashes a far more intense and deeper hypnotic response. The response can be measured through the intensity of the imagination, the immersion into the cognition, ie the thoughts being experienced, and physical responses perceived by the subject or physiological responses measured by medical instruments.
The Books-
I had the good fortune to find in Bexley libraries a copy of Anthony Blythe's 1974 book Autohypnosis. As a medical doctor his writing on the subject is from the objective of a medical and psychological purpose; instead of the sensationalist tomes which became popular since the 80s.
His father Peter Blythe, also a doctor quel surprise. wrote an earlier book on hypnosis but it lacks the hypnotic scripts that his son had transcribed, taken from medical practice of various professionals.
R.N. Shrout wrote another superior text which included the Time Dilation practices which were established as efficacious in experiments at Harvard Music School in the 70s.
Anthony Blythe referenced a book called PSI: Secrets behind the Iron Curtain written by two American psychology post grads in '69. It contains discussions with Soviet psychologists. Much of this is sensationalist & over enthusiastic and typifies the fin-de-siecle that ended the 1960s on a wave of optimism believing Transcendental Meditation & positive waves would put an end to the bad vibes. Within months America was secretly carpet bombing Cambodia which turned a tiny Communist group into the ever growing Khmer Rouge filled with grief stricken survivors who's families and villages had been destroyed. So much for meditating under your pyramid!
Anyway, the PSI book contains Blythe's reference: Artificial Reincarnation, a hypnotic technique which is very powerful. The Russian psychologist interpreted it in terms of psychic communication. The more prosaic and accurate mechanism is that it bypasses the subjects self concept & self esteem, or lack of it. The mind responds to the positive suggestions unconditionally.
Thursday, 4 February 2016
Donald Trump!
Prior to 2015 an egomaniac who's vanity did not extend to that thing living on his head.A billionaire who had a number of failed businesses, a phallic complex with regards to Trump Towers that would have had Freud keeping on the crouch for an extended period. And, a nepotistic inclination through making his kids board level directors despite no experience to merit this; and too young to obtain the experience. He has also ruined parts of Scotland with the craven submission of the SNP who are not concerned with Scottish interests when there's a quick buck involved.
Having previously sucked up to the Democrats & helped Hiliary Clinton's campaing he has now reinvented himself as the most deranged of political conservatives, attacking Mexican & Muslims with generalisations that would make the KKK blanche.
He would be an ideal president in the next USA political comedy hopefully the American voters will have more sense than making fiction into reality.
Having previously sucked up to the Democrats & helped Hiliary Clinton's campaing he has now reinvented himself as the most deranged of political conservatives, attacking Mexican & Muslims with generalisations that would make the KKK blanche.
He would be an ideal president in the next USA political comedy hopefully the American voters will have more sense than making fiction into reality.
Tuesday, 2 February 2016
St Josephs Convent (this is a reprinted article see the 2015 article for the history of the Convent)
St Josephs Convent salvaged from Friends Reunited (multiple)
I was aware of this website a number of years ago due to all the reports about it breaking up marriages! People who were at school together were contacting each other after 20,30,40 years & declaring their love for each other, resulting in swift dumping of a spouse or partner.
After searching for information on my much loved convent & her nuns, I found the appropriate page. With the impending closure some valuable information was going to be lost irretrievably. The convent wasn't simply a school. It possessed aesthetics, spirituality, a vitality and ethics that would be hard to find anywhere outside of a large Italian abbey filled with religious art.
Like some other public schools St. Joseph's retained an ambiance of an early age. There was still a sense of Edwardian or late Victorian England present into the 1980s with the addition of whatever ethos a group of French nuns who were born 1870-1920 (a few around 1840) brought to this piece of France in England. It had something of P.G.Wodehouse, or Vivian Stanshall & his Sir Henry Rawlinson character to it.
I was part of the very last 'classic era' of the convent *This would be the equivalent of Black Sabbath's Sabotage album!: half of the staff were nuns, the boys had the daily influence of Sister Theresa & Sister Denise, and I knew the founder and sister superior, Sister Marie.
By 1981 half of the nuns I knew were dead or retired to France. There was a shift in the atmosphere of the school as younger and lay teachers were recruited. I visited a couple of times during school hours and the headmistress Mrs Wren had me washing art brushes with her after an art class. But the Convent had become diminished by its lack of women who had taken Holy Orders.
There was a sense of optimism in the final years of St. Joseph's which by 1983 had embraced the Pope's popularity. This was the period when John Paul II was still seen as an internationalist, opposing Communist oppression and had brought vigour back to the Roman Catholic Church. Many bishops were already aware of the reactionary he was; Cardinal Franz Konig who had secured his elevation to the Bishop of Rome, regretted his efforts as former Cardinal Wojtyla removed any progressions obtained by the Vatican II Council.
In the few interviews I have conducted with former pupils, now dating back to the class of 1939, I have always wanted to discuss with the 1988-89 pupils. I have a fancy that St. Joseph's was akin to the last days of Saigon. The inevitable was coming and a very different atmosphere would have descended on a nunnery which will forever be part of me. It's ingrained, inculcated, my spiritual DNA.
Fame- the heroin that screws up artists
Picasso was famous long before he completely lost it. His greatest period was probably 1934-1939. His Crying Woman a depiction of the Spanish Civil War & Guernica are from this period & were a return to the vigour of Nude in the Forest in 1908. 1951 he produced Massacre in Korea, an awful rehash of his tropes particularly from the 1920s accompanied by metalised execution squad ala Doctor Who monsters. The whole painting is a laughable parody of Goya's The Third of May (Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo) the execution of Spanish resistance against Napoleon during the Peninsula War.
Picasso's abilities had not deteriorated, he had lost the fire and the passion for art. Fame, privileges & money had brought comforts that made him lazy & apathetic. Now he churned out paintings, one an hour, either sloppily executed or tediously transgressive, such as Woman Pissing (1965), it's only transient interest is the subject which is as trivial as a student's posturing artwork- a plague which has infested one of my former universities at Goldsmiths, except they don't do it in art anymore, now it's just hot air in the name of post modern bollocks.
Pavarotti similarly fell into the stupor of the 'complacent artist'. He still maintained his daily exercise of refusing to speak until he had done a couple of hours of humming, but as a tenor his performances dropped drastically in the 1980s (many things deteriorated in the 80s). In the 60s when he was still largely unknown, he would run, unthinkable with his later bulk, from the school where he was teaching to perform at the local opera house. He didn't need to exert himself but his desire to get to the stage drove him on.
In the 1970s, now famous amougst opera fans he still had the hunger, passion and excitement to perform. La Boheme & Rigoletto show his focus and intensity not only as a singer but as an operatic actor. Then suddenly he started to lose it. International & public or plebeian fame resulted in a more relaxed attitude, the voice was still there in its strength and timbre, he was never the greatest living the tenor by the way, but that acting skill he had in his performances evaporated.
Pavarotti coasted assured by instant sell outs of his stage performances that an uncritical public would attend a production he was in. And those opera performances were reduced in favour for the far less demanding aria recitals; no acting required & often less demanding vocal works.
As for his ubiquituous Nessun Dorma, he made sure that 'none shall sleep' by bellowing out the whole aria, devoid of any of the emotional intensity that is the fibre of the song. The tenor is singing about their impending execution if they don't discover Turandot's name by sunrise which is fast approaching.
Picasso's abilities had not deteriorated, he had lost the fire and the passion for art. Fame, privileges & money had brought comforts that made him lazy & apathetic. Now he churned out paintings, one an hour, either sloppily executed or tediously transgressive, such as Woman Pissing (1965), it's only transient interest is the subject which is as trivial as a student's posturing artwork- a plague which has infested one of my former universities at Goldsmiths, except they don't do it in art anymore, now it's just hot air in the name of post modern bollocks.
Pavarotti similarly fell into the stupor of the 'complacent artist'. He still maintained his daily exercise of refusing to speak until he had done a couple of hours of humming, but as a tenor his performances dropped drastically in the 1980s (many things deteriorated in the 80s). In the 60s when he was still largely unknown, he would run, unthinkable with his later bulk, from the school where he was teaching to perform at the local opera house. He didn't need to exert himself but his desire to get to the stage drove him on.
In the 1970s, now famous amougst opera fans he still had the hunger, passion and excitement to perform. La Boheme & Rigoletto show his focus and intensity not only as a singer but as an operatic actor. Then suddenly he started to lose it. International & public or plebeian fame resulted in a more relaxed attitude, the voice was still there in its strength and timbre, he was never the greatest living the tenor by the way, but that acting skill he had in his performances evaporated.
Pavarotti coasted assured by instant sell outs of his stage performances that an uncritical public would attend a production he was in. And those opera performances were reduced in favour for the far less demanding aria recitals; no acting required & often less demanding vocal works.
As for his ubiquituous Nessun Dorma, he made sure that 'none shall sleep' by bellowing out the whole aria, devoid of any of the emotional intensity that is the fibre of the song. The tenor is singing about their impending execution if they don't discover Turandot's name by sunrise which is fast approaching.
Monday, 1 February 2016
Jung- that Synchronicity stuff, you predicted this?
(The main article on the history of St Josephs Convent, Sidcup, is the one article listed under 2015)
Looking to retrieve the census for Hatherley Road and my French nuns convent, St Joseph's Convent, one of the first images that appeared for 1901 was the following. Unexpectedly it is for Devon, not Sidcup. Then it gets stranger. This 1901 page for Devon is for the Soper family, the very family that my father, Edward, spent part of the Second World War as an evacuee and had such happy memories that he remained close to the the family decades later. He showed me around the area in the 1980's and where his school used to stand in Totnes in Devon, long since demolished, as is my convent.
Looking to retrieve the census for Hatherley Road and my French nuns convent, St Joseph's Convent, one of the first images that appeared for 1901 was the following. Unexpectedly it is for Devon, not Sidcup. Then it gets stranger. This 1901 page for Devon is for the Soper family, the very family that my father, Edward, spent part of the Second World War as an evacuee and had such happy memories that he remained close to the the family decades later. He showed me around the area in the 1980's and where his school used to stand in Totnes in Devon, long since demolished, as is my convent.
Good teachers wasted by old methods (St Josephs Convent, Sidcup & Storm Warrior articles below are my recommendations)
As an actor I dislike the custom of listing the places where I trained whenever I am in a play.You see this is programmes when the actors are professional. My particular chagrin is that it is listed prominantly as though it has superiorty over your other achievements or credits the actor is proud of. And, the question of education leads to this:
Baker Street, made famous by the Gerry Rafferty song & preceding that Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull's pleasures of living in the vicinity as recounted in his Baker Street Mews from the Minstrel in the Gallery album; one of the compulsory cultural requirements before university admission. It should be, along with The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.
Baker Street is part of the music shops that are gathered around the Royal College of Music. I go there a couple of times a year to get my rosins & strings for violins & cellos, until I discovered one next to Westminster University which had a pulchritudinous Italian young woman, reeds for my oboe & clarinet, the world & early music shops to get my wish list of purchases, and the brass shop for my valve oil for my trumpet & now string for my french horn.
I took up the trumpet aged 10 as it was one of two instrument tuition offered at my school. The other, the guitar, I still regarded as an inferior instrument in those ancient days. For over a year I had 'formal classical training' on the trumpet, practicing most lesson s from the Tune A Day books 1 & 2, and found the whole thing interminably dull, resulting in my discontinuation of the trumpet. Preceding that the trumpet was thrown down in frustration while struggling with some low notes.
A few years later my trumpet was 'repaired' ie 2 of the 3 valves were transferred to a more high quality instrument at a very cheap price at the Baker Street brass shop & I rediscovered an enthusiasm by following my own tutorial methods.
My trumpet teacher was skilled, patient and experienced, but what he was teaching due to the Tune A Day books, killed off any interest. When I began teaching myself I discovered some invaluable techniques through my own efforts. Barbara Cartland had reprinted a book from an aristocratic lady circa 1920 which described an invaluable mouth exercise which was perfect for brass players. I learnt from a book a breathing technique used by flute players which is more important for brass. To produce notes on a trumpet, the lips can be moved upwards for high notes, lower for the low ones and pull away from the lower lip slightly for the lowest possible register. None of this I was ever taught, but discovered by any my own perseverance.
The most important lesson in playing the trumpet I discovered was to ignore the cardinal lesson in trumpet playing. 'Suck your cheeks in' is the mantra from brass teachers and probably Oscar Wilde when he was 'supping with panthers'. This lesson should be retained, with the exception of Dizzy Gillespie's bullfrog impression, but that's to do with circular breathing. The variation to introduce is that on lower notes to allow a small expansion in the cheeks which increases the size of the mouth cavity with the consequence that the lower notes are far more alacritous.
Teachers provide invaluable knowledge and skills, but certainly in the arts, the adding of an existential component & if need be disowning the formal methods is significant. Pioneers such as Stanislavski did exactly that, overthrew standard methods. I only use the first 5 minutes of my formal classical training, my playing has improved as a result
Baker Street, made famous by the Gerry Rafferty song & preceding that Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull's pleasures of living in the vicinity as recounted in his Baker Street Mews from the Minstrel in the Gallery album; one of the compulsory cultural requirements before university admission. It should be, along with The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.
Baker Street is part of the music shops that are gathered around the Royal College of Music. I go there a couple of times a year to get my rosins & strings for violins & cellos, until I discovered one next to Westminster University which had a pulchritudinous Italian young woman, reeds for my oboe & clarinet, the world & early music shops to get my wish list of purchases, and the brass shop for my valve oil for my trumpet & now string for my french horn.
I took up the trumpet aged 10 as it was one of two instrument tuition offered at my school. The other, the guitar, I still regarded as an inferior instrument in those ancient days. For over a year I had 'formal classical training' on the trumpet, practicing most lesson s from the Tune A Day books 1 & 2, and found the whole thing interminably dull, resulting in my discontinuation of the trumpet. Preceding that the trumpet was thrown down in frustration while struggling with some low notes.
A few years later my trumpet was 'repaired' ie 2 of the 3 valves were transferred to a more high quality instrument at a very cheap price at the Baker Street brass shop & I rediscovered an enthusiasm by following my own tutorial methods.
My trumpet teacher was skilled, patient and experienced, but what he was teaching due to the Tune A Day books, killed off any interest. When I began teaching myself I discovered some invaluable techniques through my own efforts. Barbara Cartland had reprinted a book from an aristocratic lady circa 1920 which described an invaluable mouth exercise which was perfect for brass players. I learnt from a book a breathing technique used by flute players which is more important for brass. To produce notes on a trumpet, the lips can be moved upwards for high notes, lower for the low ones and pull away from the lower lip slightly for the lowest possible register. None of this I was ever taught, but discovered by any my own perseverance.
The most important lesson in playing the trumpet I discovered was to ignore the cardinal lesson in trumpet playing. 'Suck your cheeks in' is the mantra from brass teachers and probably Oscar Wilde when he was 'supping with panthers'. This lesson should be retained, with the exception of Dizzy Gillespie's bullfrog impression, but that's to do with circular breathing. The variation to introduce is that on lower notes to allow a small expansion in the cheeks which increases the size of the mouth cavity with the consequence that the lower notes are far more alacritous.
Teachers provide invaluable knowledge and skills, but certainly in the arts, the adding of an existential component & if need be disowning the formal methods is significant. Pioneers such as Stanislavski did exactly that, overthrew standard methods. I only use the first 5 minutes of my formal classical training, my playing has improved as a result
Mystery of the Red House - Sidcup
Sidcup again, a strangely special place in the 70's as it combined parts of rural England with the urban, without the excesses of the urban world: grime and a hectic atmosphere.
Up to around 1978 a large detached mansion stood proud about 50 yards from St Lawrences church, away from the High Street. An incongruous relic from the Victorian age when Sidcup was a series of detached houses set amoungst the countryside. And, had that vista survived it would now be a tourist attraction protected by National Heritage. But from 1905 onwards the developers hammer & an equally heavy handed vision has decimated the elegance of the earlier era, Good ol' days is usually a myth.
This big red house: standing surrounded by 3 storey flats from the 1950s it glared out until a weekday morning I was on my way to St Josephs Convent and witnessed this gothic edifice biting the dust. It was being torn down by mechanical diggers, it's death rattle made sonic by it's flesh coloured wood breaking through the blood red paint job. It appeared to be an entirely wooden structure.
That I remember this so vividly from the moment I saw it conveys the powerful presence this house cast over its neighbours. And I know no further details about it! I would love to find as many details as possible or photos of this most iconic building in Sidcup.
This was the location & what now stands in it's place. I could be slightly off the location, 120 Main Road Sidcup
I ADORE Glauca Pendula trees, that is the shaggy looking one on the right, a variation on the Alaskan Blue cedar.Should / when I am fortunate enough to have that rose covered cottage in Cornwall or East Sussex it's one of the species which shall be sprouting everywhere, Couple of oaks naturally too. English not American oak!
Up to around 1978 a large detached mansion stood proud about 50 yards from St Lawrences church, away from the High Street. An incongruous relic from the Victorian age when Sidcup was a series of detached houses set amoungst the countryside. And, had that vista survived it would now be a tourist attraction protected by National Heritage. But from 1905 onwards the developers hammer & an equally heavy handed vision has decimated the elegance of the earlier era, Good ol' days is usually a myth.
This big red house: standing surrounded by 3 storey flats from the 1950s it glared out until a weekday morning I was on my way to St Josephs Convent and witnessed this gothic edifice biting the dust. It was being torn down by mechanical diggers, it's death rattle made sonic by it's flesh coloured wood breaking through the blood red paint job. It appeared to be an entirely wooden structure.
That I remember this so vividly from the moment I saw it conveys the powerful presence this house cast over its neighbours. And I know no further details about it! I would love to find as many details as possible or photos of this most iconic building in Sidcup.
This was the location & what now stands in it's place. I could be slightly off the location, 120 Main Road Sidcup
I ADORE Glauca Pendula trees, that is the shaggy looking one on the right, a variation on the Alaskan Blue cedar.Should / when I am fortunate enough to have that rose covered cottage in Cornwall or East Sussex it's one of the species which shall be sprouting everywhere, Couple of oaks naturally too. English not American oak!
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