by Neil Vodavzny

Earth Mother I heard on a Jefferson Starship live album on a mud-splattered field (Roswell), and the sentiment could be taken to represent a desire for something approaching the primitive.

This monophonic composition is by the little-known 13th century pet and composer Jehan de Lescurel:

Triste Plaisir is a 15th C rondeau by Gilles de Binchois:

There is something exquisitely formal in the rondeau which doesn’t immediately bring to mind mud-splattered fields. The formality engenders a mental state, languid and dreamy, a state of being in a certain milieu. In Binchois’ case it’s principally that of chivalric etiquette and honour.

In both cases, the formality is a type of art-craftwork, primal feelings honed by a diligent apprenticeship to the craft. To that extent, the style is unchanging to modern ears, hallmark of a tradition. So, by that fact, you sort of detect very subtle qualities of phrasing, allusive lyricism. Subtlety is the chief beneficiary of formality.

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Dr Christian Lindtner, renowned Sanskrit scholar and author of standard reference works on Buddhism and comparative religion, talks to Daniel and GW about his acceptance of the Holocaust as an historical event, and about his latest book, Revelation of Bodhicittam, which uncovers the Pythagorean roots of the New Testament Gospels, and finds the story of Jesus Christ to have been transmitted from earlier Buddhist writings.

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Dr Christian Lindtner, renowned Sanskrit scholar and author of standard reference works on Buddhism and comparative religion, talks to Daniel and GW about his acceptance of the Holocaust as an historical event, and about his latest book, Revelation of Bodhicittam, which develops a thesis striking at the very foundations of the Christian faith. 1hr 32min; 89 MB.

Tom returns to MR radio to discuss the state of political nationalism in Europe, deep antagonisms that still exist among Europeans, problems of negative identity arising from that, and the performance of intellectual nationalism at this point in our struggle.
         
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MYTHS AND MENDACITIES: THE ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS - TOMISLAV SUNIC (The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 4, Winter 2014–2015), run in addition to the podcast:

When discussing the myths of ancient Greece one must first define their meaning and locate their historical settings. The word “myth” has a specific meaning when one reads the ancient Greek tragedies or when one studies the theogony or cosmogony of the early Greeks. By contrast, fashionable expressions today such as “political mythology” is often laden with value judgments and derisory interpretations. Thus, a verbal construct such as “the myth of modernity” may be interpreted as an insult by proponents of modern liberalism. To a modern, self-proclaimed supporter of liberal democracy, enamored with his own system-supporting myths of permanent economic progress and the like, phrases like, “the myth of economic progress” or “the myth of democracy,” may appear as egregious political insults.

For many contemporaries, democracy is not just a doctrine that could be discussed; it is not a “fact” that experience could contradict; it is truth of faith beyond dispute.(1)

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Tom Sunic talks to GW and Daniel about the state of political nationalism in Europe and the problem of negative identity, and about the progress of thinking nationalism. 1hr 4min; 59.0 MB.

Adventures of a racialist following trance and fate - to Sicily and Poland.

Continuing to expound upon said adventures here and here.

It marked a difference of this group, an Amherst Alanon meeting of thirty or so, as I bluffed in the same way that I would, by standing up and pretending to shoot with my finger – Bang! Bang! Bang! But from this group ensconced at a church literally across the street from Emily Dickinson’s house – nothing. No reaction. They looked calmly upon me as only a harmless fool - A bullfrog on a lily pad. ..I’m nobody, who are you?

I foretold them that the Sicilians would act differently.

More than a year later, it was August of 1996, when at a similarly conciliatory meeting of similarly normal people seated in the same circular formation, I stood up, raised my finger like a gun barrel and shouted Bang! Bang! Bang! aiming at the Sicilians in rapid turn around the room in Aci Creale to their immediate fright and panic. To them, it was quite possible that this would be a real gun.

I woke up late on a morning as it turned September to see an unusual funeral procession moving through Piazza Duomo. Two coffins were being moved.
                                                                                                                                           
I saw the names of those who I would learn were Salvatore Botta 14 and Santa Puglisi 22, the nephew and niece of a rival mafioso. They were shot on August 27th while attending the funeral for Santa’s husband – who had also been shot..

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by Neil Vodavzny

Comparisons may be in order here. In one hugely significant way Japanese pop-culture is way ahead of ours, with much more organic interaction between anime, music, literature, folk-culture. In a word, the islands of the rising sun are full of Japanese natives. It’s a shocking state of affairs, and one the leaders of the free world are less than amused by. While their breeding rate is dismal and they’re getting older, culturally-speaking there is a continuity we can only gasp at.

While Japan may be superficially cutesy, its pop-culture is not. It’s full of tropes such as the teen misfit, the schoolgirl popette, the emotional cyborg, hangups galore. The tribal mentality imprints itself on these gaudy trinkets of cyber-culture. That’s the attraction of Planet Japan – it’s sexy, not surrendering. Anime is a completely fetishistic artform, sex and tech in perfect harmony, Evangelion being the perfect example (prev).

The closest Europe gets to a harmonious pop-culture is (or was) Eurovision, a naïve folk-culture which is identifiable in Swedish pop-icons Abba. Though they sometimes come across like a beer-cellar oompah piano collective unconscious, make no mistake, they are sentimental optimists. It’s pop-Euro-folk as opposed to strident national sentiment.

If Eurovision was the circus of Europe, politically-motivated cynicism of the eastern states sabotaged its musical authenticity. So I have to say the only way to identify Europe is through its emblematic cohesion. Abba make a big effort to be pan-European, picking up Spanish guitar for Chiquitita. What we’re searching for is a naïve and non-cynical truth, something like pure tribalism. Without those emblems of harmony we are merely technically European, cynically so, without our hearts and anthems. “It’s about the music”, trumpeted the guy at the Turkish takeaway; they left in protest at the vote-rigging and who can honestly blame them? They are as folkloric as we are; listen to outside voices.

That is the spirit-road, and one shouldn’t deny that song and dance, effortless and free as a bird, are part of that route. I was trying to figure the “formula” of Abba; there’s one uptempo number goes “to fill the hole in your soul”. It’s a type of mock-tragedy, light as a bird with a hint of mystery.

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by Neil Vodavzny

French “village cartoonist” Crumb was invited by Liberation and submitted this, which actually covers his ass as it isn’t a “representation of the Prophet”. That’s class.

If I may speak in religious terms for the nonce: he game of insulting the Prophet is old and in the way. Where in the Koran is there a para on the merits of totalitarian psychos? Both the Islamic and the Catholic worlds (restricting the argument to Rome for the present – maybe including American orthodox sects), have a vested interest in repelling the false prophets of militant unIslamic ideologies, who want a phony Crusader conflict. Actually, the best way to do this is to be pro-Islamic in the sense of recognizing the good prophets speaking through the words of Koran orthodoxy.

This in itself implies that we agree with orthodox Muslims on at least one thing, namely that there is a universe which can be recognized through religion, a philosophical universe. Any philosophical universe aims to explain the self, or at least has the self as its starting point. That is what a prophet is; self and universe correspond in terms of ethical principles.

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