Reading about Leon Fleischer in the New Yorker: “There are so few notes,� the pianist Leon Fleisher said, �but so many implications.� The setting was a recent master class at Carnegie Hall. Fleisher, the master in question, was leading four young musicians through the mystical landscapes of the late sonatas of Schubert. He was speaking about the Andante movement of Schubert�s B-Flat-Major Sonata, but he might as well have been describing Bach�s �Well-Tempered Clavier,� or Brahms�s Intermezzos, or any other music in which a smattering of notes conveys a world of feeling. �There are so few notes, but the implications …
Kennetch Charlette I’m nearly moved to tears after reading Ceremonial Healing Theater by Ae Ran Jeong and published at if… (to whom I am hugely grateful). It was offered up as a response to my posting on decolonization as an opening and it contains a bunch of really powerful quotes that support this notion as well as look at how this opening is supported by healing. The article is an interview with Kennetch Charlette, a fine actor and the artistic director of the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company. In the article, Charlette explains his work as an extension of the work …
More great and inspiring news from the Aboriginal youth world. On April 17-18 on the Musqueam First Nation right beside Vancouver, the First Nations Youth At Risk organization will be sponsoring a best practices conference. There is a lot I like about this group, staring with the fact that it is entirely supported by private sector grants, and that the President is Harvey McCue, Waubegeshig, the man who started the Native Studies program at Trent University, of which I am a graduate. And most importantly, these folks are doing some amazing work. For example, here is the description of a …
Reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow and soul and I came across this great quote which speaks to all this philanthropy I’ve been running across lately: When you look at the pre-Christian version of “soul,” you see that what they meant wasn’t so much a soul that was a different substance infused or injected into the body. It referred to a quality in a person who was able to use surplus energy for the benefit of others, not needing to get it all for himself. I came to the conclusion that “soul” is really our way of thinking about not devoting …
This is too good not to quote extensively. From an artcle in The Tyee on eating contests: How the Coast Salish squared off Coast Salish eating contests were as personal as the ones Jacobs entered. The difference is that only one person or one team ate, and it was always the guests. The object was, literally, to eat the host out of house and home. Drop by my house at the right time, and this could take less than 15 minutes – which was of course, the point. The eater�s boast: �My power can consume everything you own.� The host�s …