Bric-à-brac for January 2020

1. The World's Oldest Olive Tree
... as far as we know, is located in the village of Ano Vouves in Crete (Greece), and is about 3000 years old (or more). Durable and enduring as all olive trees are (which is why they have been cultivated for thousands of years throughout the Mediterranean), this tree continues to produce fruit - and to live. (You can learn more about the Vouvos tree on this blog and in this article.)

In the video below you can see some drone-filmed images of the tree, with its ancient, contorted, and now mostly hollowed-out trunk. Looking at it, and thinking about it - and learning that is used to be surrounded, millennia ago, by a cemetery - brings to mind the sun-scorched ages of man in the Mediterranean, the lives and the societies that surrounded - and used - this tree, the length of time that preceded us - days that were not shorter nor longer than ours; a "present," then, that was equally a "present time," as is our own "present;" in short, duration, or, in fact, human duration (always the same, and always equally oblivious of its own past).

In any case, enjoy:



And, since you asked about the process of making olive oil out of the fruits of the tree, here is a primer that presents both the traditional and the modern methods of production.



2. The Aftermath of Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier is, of course, the father figure of a school of architecture and urban planning that represents, in many ways, the quintessentially Modern vision - namely, the idea of designing and implementing ("on" human beings) a masterplan for their lives that is guided by (purportedly) the most "enlightened" and "humanist" ideals, but which is also far removed from, and even disdainful of, the lived messiness of human existence, of its floral diversity, gregarious needs - and of its actual history.

It does have a certain charm, or so I find, this "brave" vision of a new future, which combines hopefulness (i.e. naive idealism) and hubris, reflecting that typically Modern combination of half-digested Enlightenment ideas with the promise and enticing power of the empirical sciences (that we will "measure" the world and take complete control of it - Die Vermessung der Welt, the French encyclopedists). Of course, from similar hubristic-yet-well-intended metanarratives resulted also the catastrophic ideologies of the twentieth century...

Part of Le Corbusier's philosophy was the creation of "machines for living" that were designed (in total disregard for architectural traditions, heritage, and context, but) following rationalist and utilitarian principles - pure and angular geometric forms, made mostly using exposed concrete, and following rational rules about what the human beings want and need. In other words, a top-down vision about designing human habitation that rejects all things "organic" and messy, and aims for pure rationality (rationalism, in fact) and utility (utilitarianism, in fact). If this does not sound all too friendly or appealing, well, perhaps you have to be taught how to live (by these buildings). (At the other end of the pendulum swing, but perhaps with quite a few similarities, would be Gaudi, whose "organicist" architecture isn't terribly "human," either; just as the jungle is the not the friend of man.)

I would note here that I do find Brutalism, as an architectural style, to have its own charm, in isolated exemplars and reduced quantities. In other words, I would not say the same thing about the aforementioned principles of urban planning, nor of habitations made entirely of Brutalist buildings, streets and squares. (Of course, this idea of teaching people how to live, and of forcibly re-making the world, still holds appeal - the remains of the days of Modernity.)

But, as much as we want to re-make existence based on pure, rational, measurable principles (all for the "higher good"), life takes over, life flows beyond the human-set bounds; it turns out that we will not measure, categorize and put in neat boxes the entire world, all of existence; it seems, then, that time and life win, and win, over and over again. It does not help either that concrete is an ugly construction material, especially when affected by said passing of time and by the elements.

One of the major projects in which Le Corbusier was involved, which gave him relatively free reign both in urban and in architectural design, was the planned city of Chandigarh, the capital of the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana (a planned city like Brasilia, the capital of Brazil). (See more info on Chandigarh here - but do watch the video, as it is more instructive than the text itself - and one has to see it.)

Given what was said above, I find the video below quite poetic; it is of a building in Chandigarh, and, if modernist architecture is inherently futuristic, this video seems to express a post-apocalyptic version  - and also the organic denouement - of said vision. Quite ironic and quite poetic, I find.




3. Sport & the Arts
At the commemoration of 70 years since the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the local football team, V-Varen Nagasaki (playing in J-League's second division) launched a dedicated “Pray for Peace” kit that featured an origami crane (a symbol of peace) and an image of Seibo Kitamura’s Peace Statue (statue located in Nagasaki's Peace Park, and which is meant to symbolize both the atomic threat and the mercy and peace of God).

Here are the jerseys:

UK Soccer Shop

On the brighter side of the same topic of sport & the arts (and, in fact, of football and the arts), some creative minds decided to start awarding the Fallon d'Floor award (the name is a spoof on the prestigious Ballon d'Or award), for the best "dive" (faking a foul, and following that with a spectacular fall) of the year. Although such dives can indeed be artistic, that is not the aspect that brought this issue under this sport & the arts heading, but the fact that in 2014 the same creative minds spiced up the awards by creating mock film posters for each dive (also spoofing in the process the titles of major movies).

Here are a couple of examples, and you can find more at this link. Regarding the first poster, a bit of context: it makes reference to the incident at the World Cup when Argentinian player Luis Suárez (whose most recognizable physical characteristic is a significant overbite) bit (!) Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini on the shoulder (!!), and then pretended that it was the Italian player who actually hit him in the teeth (!!!) with the shoulder (and I ran out of exclamation signs).

4. Morricone on the Streets, courtesy of Italo Vegliante
... and featuring a variety of instruments (or instrument sounds). The esteemed street artist featured in the video, signor Italo Vegliante, besides being a minor (Internet) celebrity today, was an Italian B-movies star (in the 80s), and is, most obviously, a talented musician / guitarist / entertainer.

The Radio (An Ode or Elegy)

Was it evenings, or was it early mornings? It was during the evenings that, in a small village in Central Europe, my grandfather used to tune in, probably on long waves (marked LW on the radio's dial), with the antenna extended, searchingly inclined toward the angle where the signal was stronger, to BBC's foreign service programming. The song I used to hear, during such evenings, in-between the programs and amidst heavy static, was It's a Long Way to Tipperary, interpreted by an army choir (or something that sounded like that).

Early mornings, around 5.30 am, in a city in Central Europe - it is the early 1980s. I sneaked into my grandparents' room (my other grandparents) the night before, to sleep there, and now I am awoken by the sound of the radio. The receiver is tuned in to Kossuth Radio, and I hear, every morning, while dawn is breaking outside, crisp and clear, a stylized fragment of that Kossuth song that is the station's signature.

It is noon, or early afternoon, and my mother and grandmother are baking, cooking, doing things in the kitchen. I am there with them, and we are all listening, amidst doings and goings, and playing, to the radio: the program where the man talks and plays with kindergarten children; the one where listeners call in with comments, opinions, their questions; the classical music quiz, around noon, in which the guest has to guess the piece from which he just heard a small part; the hourly news reports; then the music - always sad, charming, melodious, already old. The soundtrack of the kitchen was provided by the radio - the soundtrack of our days, weekdays and Sundays (when I would look forward to that program with the quirky news from around the globe... always listening to it during dinner, or immediately after).

The sound of early mornings, of the dawn, for me, is that of the radio. The sound of distant places - of an unattainable, noble, civilized UK, for example, or of any place that still holds the promise, because it is unattainable, far and remote, and noble-sounding. The sound of afternoons spent cooking, of the warmth of the home, comes from the radio.

[image source: http://www.qsl.net/ve3sre/rehabstuff.html)

Which "radio," though? What do you mean? Any signal transmitted through waves long, short and medium (medium waves that still feel warmer than FM)? No! The empty, commercials-and-Top40s blasting, pre-programmed stations, with no face, no personality, no human presence? No. 

Instead, radio as the medium of sociality. Where life is, where my society lives, where I hear its pulse, its everyday beating - nothing special, is always special. Where I meet it and learn about it and keep in touch with it; where I live in the society of which I am a part, about which I care, and which has to care about me. We are a part of it, it is with us - and the radio is its voice, and thus our common voice. The medium that creates community, inasmuch as it broadcasts it everyday. There is a we also because we share in an awareness of the we, through the medium of the radio. A medium that is human, that is intelligent, cultivated, whose music makes sense and moves the intimate recesses of the heart (even if you don't know it); that can be common and everyday, just like us; that can be silly, or laugh-out-loud funny, or childish - when talking to children. That is like us, because it is we who are mediated - by intelligent, cultivated, professional people, whose careers are the radio, whose lives are in and with the radio, whose vocations are to be this radio, this voice of ours - a part of who we are.

Addendum: Perhaps not the most fitting, but the most famous. And it is about this future we live in today.    

  

The City

In the middle of looking for and frustratingly not finding this week's issue of The Times Literary Supplement, at the local outlet of that big name bookstore, I stumbled upon another small miracle: Lapham's Quarterly, of which I never heard, and its current issue titled, "The City."

The urban environment is my native space; the distant sound of the city in the middle of the night; the yellow leaves on the trees in the park; the people walking busily, to and from their business, midmorning; the smell and cheerfulness of squares filled by the yearly Christmas market, with people lingering midday over mulled wine, home-made sweets or dried fish.

What makes a city? What does a city need? In which of its elements does it really subsist? Minneapolis is not a city, Baltimore is not a city (or large parts of it are not) - not anymore. Philadelphia is suffering; its downtown gave me the painful sensation of something wasted, something missed, something that was beautiful but is now unsafe, impersonal; a lost opportunity. (Its two-way boulevard leading from downtown to the Museum of Art was built for carriages and couples talking walks on autumn evenings; now its sidewalks are neglected by human beings, while the roads are lonely with automobiles.)

It is space, and it is the people. The beauty of the buildings and of their setting in Chicago; the Danube passing through the heart of Budapest, with pretty bridges adorning it; the neoclassical, tree-lined boulevards of Milano; the squares and the tram-lined streets of Strasbourg... but none could actually be imagined without the people walking along Michigan Ave., or the teeming life on the banks of the Danube, spilling unto the bridges in various forms (bike, car, pedestrian); and so on.

One could make a reference to Aristotle, who says that having a group of people live in the same place, under the same laws, does not yet a society make; a society requires constant, everyday, physical meetings between its members. The city is nothing without its people. Banal-sounding, perhaps, but it also means that the true form of the city is given by its members in constant interaction (or, by the constant interaction of its members?). This is why I could feel instantly comfortable, the moment I came out from the subway and unto the streets of lower Manhattan; because I  instinctively and immediately recognized the atmosphere, because I  knew right away how to behave on a street busy with people pursuing their own business - stepping into a deli for a sandwich, waiting for the light to change etc.; it was Novi Sad, it was Rome, it was Karlsruhe (just taller).

I think this is what makes the city my environment, my space. This lived space, of people interacting (verbally,  physically; sharing a space, sharing in each other's life) and inhabiting a place that was built not just for functionality, but for beauty, too (yet drab exteriors do become beautiful, their bricks and iron railings aged by the people living with them, for years, decades, entire lives).

Man is inherently social, and if your being has been defined... - well, if you came to know yourself through knowing the others whom you met every day - on the street, in the shop, on the tram, or just by playing outside; then it becomes very hard, almost an amputation of the self, to live without that.

This current issue of Lapham's Quarterly, then, titled The City, is a small miracle. It contains texts from writers ranging from Plutarch to Bulgakov, from Marco Polo to Iréne Nemirovski, from Rabelais to F. Scott Fitzgerald - about a given city, about the city.    

The everyday of beauty

By way of an article by Roger Scruton, about The High Cost of Ignoring Beauty, some thoughts that are in syntony with his own (or the other way around). One feels quite disarmed when one has to explain here, in North America, the use of public aesthetics. Yet, driving down the long "pikes" of this continent, you will pass endless rows of so-called strip-malls: one-story buildings, drab, nondescript, lined around an asphalt wasteland of a parking lot. One-story buildings whose architecture is not meant to say anything, because its only meaning is to provide a (cheap) space to be rented out. And you drive on, and on, and you pass the same buildings and places. If you enter in some of the businesses that have rented out these spaces, sometimes you will be surprised by what you find inside; sometimes you will find a delightful Indonesian restaurant, with atmosphere, taste, and good food.

(As a side-note, it is quite sickening that most of these businesses renting out these infinite-like strip-malls are restaurants; sickening not qua restaurants, but because, instead of being places of long hours of lazy delight spent in the company of friends, they are utilitarian places serving about the same function as a retail clothing store, or a doctor's office - you go in, you do what you have to do (in this case, eat), and when you're done, you move on. Why would anyone spend hours there? Unless you bring your laptop, to "do some work." This piece here,  Bringing the Buzz Back to the Café, talks about this.)

Thus, you drive on - not walk, by the way, because you need to get somewhere - and isn't this an unnecessary clarification, in fact, the fact that "you need to get somewhere?" Of course you do, otherwise why would you be on your way? But why should you "get somewhere?" Yes, I ask: why? But what else would you do on the street, if not go somewhere? Well, perhaps just walk. Without purpose? Well, is breathing without a purpose? Does joy need a purpose? (Notice that I am not using the word "fun," which usually has a purpose, and thus is time-enclosed and task-like; "I want to have fun." Well, perhaps just walk, and look around, and watch the other people. Live, breathe the others' presence, and imbibe the music of the buildings, of the architecture that surrounds you.

Or drive, past others, just like others drive past you,, while passing by miles and miles of strip malls. Nobody is on the streets, walking; and the "music" of the buildings hurts your mind.

The problem, of course, is not that these strip-malls are shopping places, sometimes with good restaurants (as mentioned above). The problem is that, just like the bridge over the Mississippi in the heart of Minneapolis, they were built with the sole purpose of serving a (very drab) function. And yet, just like the air we breathe, or the water we drink, or the books we read, the order and cleanliness of our home, the architecture that surrounds us is a very important part of our own selves. These are the elements of the language of our souls, and our souls are shaped by them. What is around us can not be separated by what is inside us - not radically.

We are intrinsically open beings. It is not only that what is inside is influenced by what is outside. Inside and outside are misleading expressions. We are open beings, and what surrounds us, is us - whether it generates defensive reactions from the depth of our selves, or a general sensation of - what is the expression we use? - well-being. (A wonderful depiction of the nature of human beings, intrinsically open, and shaped by the relationships we have with all that surrounds us, is to be found in the very poetic Book of Genesis, as read in    these meditations on the "Original Unity of Man and Woman.")

Thus, rather than being only a matter of function (which it is not), architecture is the very aesthetics of the world that surrounds us. As such, just like music, literature, images, it is an essential part of our actually being human. Thus, it matters. It is not the same if we are aiming at being truly human, or towards being like the animals; as we all know, both alternatives are sadly possible; the difference is what we call civilization.

Modern ways to empty life: more on civilization and its discontents

Speaking of civilization - which, if you ask me, is not a product of man, but a part of him, as no man exists as a lonely atom, but only within relationships of I-Thou and I-It, of which he is an integral part; which explains why isolation is used as punishment or torture, or is a symptom of mental illness - speaking of civilization, then, looking back I feel a certain barrenness to this past 20th century. Yes, just look back, with the eyes of your mind, towards the past couple of centuries, and the twentieth will seem barren, or more barren than the 19th, which seems more barren than the 18th... An illustration of this barrenness I perceive is the work of Le Corbusier about which there is this interesting article (less interesting the last two paragraphs).

I grew up in a neighborhood in Central Europe populated, well actually made of, square apartment buildings of reinforced concrete; yet my general sentiment about that neighborhood of my childhood is never one of barrenness. The buildings, the place, were very much alive - teeming, in fact, at times, with kids running around, playing soccer on the street, people spending time in front of them, walking around in pursuit of their business (the main means of transportation being the feet); in that sense, a much, much warmer place than the American suburb I inhabit now, where people walking on the street is a rare sight. Suburbs are machines to live in, while malls are machines to shop in, while downtown districts are machines to work in (look at their appearance), while restaurants are machines to eat in. It is interesting that - and I am not saying things that have never been uttered before - a society essentially shaped by the pursuit of money and the spending of that money one earned (which is one sort of capitalism; there are others, perhaps), is just as barren as one shaped by other phenomena of modernity, as were the totalitarian ideologies.

They have little in common. What they do have in common is the preeminence given to one aspect of human existence (the mechanisms of the economy, the significance of class etc.) over all others; furthermore, it is the violent imposition of that one factor over everything else, which drains and desiccates society of its essence: its very humaneness.

A few years ago we agreed with an American friend that life in Europe is somehow more "humane" - and, in that specific context, the discussion was about eating and drinking - as a way, I think, to point to something broader. But the judgment expressed then is incomplete, and less than truthful, for anyone who has been to Chicago, New York, San Francisco, or even Toronto. Generalizations that start with "Europe is..." or "America is..." are mostly wrong. Their mistake is similar to that committed by the demons of modernity mentioned above: they neglect (and oppress, and brutally simplify, and thus stifle) reality: the floral unpredictableness and multifariousness of human life.

The highest expression of which we can call civilization.