Today is the 90th birthday of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama . To celebrate this I am republishing, without further editing, the 2014 photo essay about my close encounter with His Holiness at the Kalachakra Initiation in Ladakh, northern India. The Paradox of Our Age , a short but powerful essay credited to the present Dalai Lama, is widely available in Ladakh in northern India, a region known as 'Little Tibet'. The text ends with the observation that: 'These are times of fast foods but slow digestion/Tall men but short characters/Steep profits but shallow relationships/It’s a time when there is much in the window but nothing in the room'. Tibetan Buddhism is widely viewed as an appealing alternative to materialistic Western society, so, not surprisingly, The Paradox of Our Age is widely circulated on the internet and Twitter - see photo tweet below . I bought The Paradox of Our Age on an exquisitely printed little scroll in the Tibetan refugee market in the re...
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That's for sure--but wow, that would be quite an experience if they do.
I've heard that Stockhausen was not adverse to taking LSD in the late 60's/early 70's. That interview seems to confirm it! :-)
I heard Stockhausen's Oktophonie (1991) at Berlin's New National Gallery in 2003, and I have little recollection of it (though I have an extensive, beautiful little program booklet from the evening). While before reading the Guardian interview, I had recalled that the work involved 8 loudspeakers situated at the corners of a darkened cube, I had forgotten about the theatrical sliver of moonlight and Stockhausen dressed all in white.
That evening before the concert in 2003, I spoke briefly with Stockhausen downstairs at the Museum. He looked distracted (in his white costume), and I thought to myself "Oh my", the two years since his 9/11 comment must have been disturbing for him. However, once on stage, he commanded the evening's audience with his charisma and spoke clearly and crisply for 25 minutes about the technology of the work and its "vertical" sound innovation. He struck me then as a composer-engineer, and not the distressed shaman that he had appeared an hour earlier. Again, I recall little of the evening's music, though I will say that I do continue to respect Mr Stockhausen for his contributions as an experimental sound and musical artist.
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(I recall much stronger, Jenny Holzer's huge LED installation on the ceiling of Berlin's New National Gallery, the previous year.)