After common sense has been removed


An artist is a person who lives in the triangle which remains after the angle which we may call common sense has been removed from this four-cornered world.
Natsume Sōseki explains, or perhaps doesn't explain, the title of his novel The Three Cornered World. Header image is a detail of Edo to Mejii, silkscreen on ceramic tile, by Tadanori Yokoo. I will be back soon.

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Travels beyond TripAdvisor

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These photos were taken on my recent spirit quest in Morocco to the Sufi shrine of Sidi Chamharouch, which is seen above. A 75 minutes drive from Marrakech brought me to Imlil where the road ends and the mountains begin. The hamlet of Sidi Chamharouch - which is one of those blessed places which returns a blank in a Trip Advisor search - is at an altitude of 2350 metres and is reached by a tough and potentially dangerous two hour climb up a rocky path. Access is impossible for wheeled vehicles and supplies are brought in by the mules seen in my photos. Beyond Sidi Chamharouch is Jebel Toubkal, which at 4,167 metres is the highest mountain in North Africa. During my trek I was struck by the similarity between the High Atlas and Ladakh on the border of India and Tibet . Film director Martin Scorsese was also struck by the similarity. With Tibet a no-go zone he used this region for location shooting of his 1997 movie Kundun ; this depicts the Dalai Lama 's flight into exile fro...
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A Brief History of Time

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Philip Glass is sometimes wrongly credited with composing the soundtrack for the 2014 biopic of physicist Stephen Hawking The Theory of Everything . This is because the theatrical trailer for the movie used the track Runaway Horses from his score for another movie, Mishima , whereas Jóhann Jóhannsson actually composed the soundtrack . But Philip Glass did provide the soundtrack for the earlier Hawking documentary A Brief History of Time . I was reminded of Philip Glass' soundtrack when reading Graham Farmelo 's newly published biography Hawking: His Life and Work . When reading non-fiction books, one of the first things I do is to turn to the 'Acknowledgements'; because this puts the provenance of the book and therefore the possible agenda of the author into context. So I was somewhat concerned to read that Farmelo's biography was commissioned by Stephen Hawking's Estate . Fortunately my concerns were almost unfounded. This new and meticulously-researched bio...
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The purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness

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Who am I?

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While researching another post I came across, completely by chance, a perceptive appreciation of Leonard Bernstein's Mass. The following was written by a well-known musical figure. But who was it? Answers please to be added as using the comments feature at the foot of the post. I'm interested to see if anyone can correctly identify the author as the tone of the piece is quite surprising once you know who wrote it. On Friday I'll add the next section that the mystery author wrote, which should make the answer clearer. "Kennedy Centre opened on September 8th 1971. The opening of the Opera House preceeded that of the Concert Hall by one day with Leonard Bernstein's Mass, written for the occassion. The work made a deep impact upon the emotionally pre-charged audience, not least because of the re-emergenceof the Kennedy name and the Kennedy tragedy. This worked-up state of mind of the public was, perhaps, detrimental to a true appreciation of the work, and the fixed da...
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The concert would not be worth presenting

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Are we ready for an Islamic interpretation of Wagner?

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