Zen and the art of walking away


'A  cat sits until it is done sitting, then gets up, stretches, and walks away' - Alan Watts
Photo taken at Sidi Ifni, Morocco; another cat plays a cameo role in On the road with a Sufi saint. Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2014. Any other copyrighted material is included as "fair use", for critical analysis only. Also on Facebook and Twitter.


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billoo said…
"a cat is never on the side of power"

--Chris Marker
4:58 am
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Scott Ross and the paradox of genius

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On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of his great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the château, the harpsichordist gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos below were taken by me on a
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Fruitcakes do provide food for thought

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Timothy Leary was reputedly branded 'the most dangerous man in America' by Richard Nixon, although that attribution now seems apocryphal . Many will consider LSD guru Leary a fruitcake; but, like many brilliant mavericks, he provided much food for thought. During his time as a clinical psychologist at Harvard Leary proposed that behavourial change was not triggered by extended exposure to subliminal influences such as therapy, but to a single revelatory experience which he termed the 'vitalizing transaction'. It was the search for a consciousness-raising vitalizing transaction that led to Leary's love affair with LSD.  Past Overgrown Path posts have explained how my 50 year passion for classical music  was sparked by vitalizing transactions. These included 1950s performances by the  Bournemouth Symphony of the Pathetique and of  Holst's Planets  by a local amateur orchestra ,  Emerson, Lake and Palmer's heretical take on Pictures At An Exhibition , and
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