yoga bear…

Ricardo on 17th February 2011

bear demonstrating yoga posture "dancing bear"

This picture is one of several taken by Meta Penca, a 29 year old web programmer from Slovenia, of Santra the bear doing her exercises at the Ahtari Zoo in Finland. Strangely, or not so strangely, this is exactly the same as the yoga posture Merudasana, Balancing Bear Posture (rather more prosaically also known as Upavishta Konasana, Seated Angle Posture.) Taking this name into account and comparing the two photographs, it seems obvious to me where the idea came from – it seems unlikely the bear is copying some human.

In the past humans learned a lot from animals. Yoga is filled with examples, then so is T’ai Chi (a part of one form is called White Crane Flaps Wings). Now you might say that the reason for this is because our forebears (*grin* no pun intended) were much closer to nature. However, I imagine that bears were no easier to watch then than they are now in our zoos, books or TV. I would suggest the real difference is that our forebears actually considered animals worth learning from. For them, the gap between us and animals was much smaller. Clearly by the time our civilizations began industrializing this gap had grown almost unbridgeable (some of this is down to religion, but that’s another issue).
If it had not it is hardly to be supposed that Darwin’s revelations about our origins would have caused quite so much consternation. In spite of now knowing that we are directly descended from apes (and they from other creatures all the way back to the first organism), we still have an ‘us and them’ attitude to our fellow animals. That we no longer feel we have anything to learn from them is an example of our hubris, and is not just our loss, but also theirs…

50 in New York

Ricardo on 13th February 2011

ricardo in Time Square...

Something I’ve rabbited on about before is how the world is homogenising – the more I travel, the more it seems to me that everywhere is becoming the same. If this is even true for Sri Lanka, then how much more so is it for travelling between the UK and New York?

But before I go into that (I think this is going to become quite a ramble, but hopefully you will forgive me, now that I am becoming so very aged *grin*), I would like to lay before you a rather brilliant observation made by the peerless historian Arnold Toynbee that seems to explain why globalization naturally leads to cultural homogenisation.

Toynbee points out that this has happened before: in the Neolithic a flint spear point in western Europe would be indistinguishable from one being made on the same day in China. This is because, at that time, whatever innovations in technique these spear points might incorporate, the rate of innovation in technology (and culture) was far slower than the rate at which news of it could be spread. Once this rate of innovation started speeding up to be faster than the rate of spread, then regional cultures started emerging – the innovations piling up locally faster than they could spread to other cultures. Thus China became very different from Europe. However, in the past hundred years or so the rate of spread has dramatically increased – even though the rate of innovation has also sped up. With the internet anything innovated anywhere can quickly become known to everyone everywhere. So, welcome to the New Neolithic! The Cyberlithic where our stone tools now consist of silicon chips *grin*)

New York is of course remarkable – though perhaps as much for its associations as for what it actually is. It has been for so long ‘the’ world city that we all of us think we know it. There are people everywhere who probably have seen more of New York (through Hollywood’s charmed eyes) than they have the capital of their own country.

I had never been there before, and so there was that strange shock of seeing in reality that which I had seen in so many other virtual ways. The relationship of one thing to another, the geography, the relative and absolute scales of things – these were all different from those I had arrived with in my head.

I did all the touristy things – it seems only polite on a first visit. It was particularly cold, more so even than in Scotland! so I’m not entirely sure I saw the city as it is typically. New York is impressive – how could it not be? Wonderfully cosmopolitan – though perhaps not more so than London with which I am familiar. It has the same range of treasure houses – the Metropolitan Museum, for example, and the glorious (and vainglorious) examples of architecture that wealth adorns cities with. For some reason I kept on thinking that this would be how Babylon might have appeared to an ancient visitor – but then Babylon is perhaps much on my mind. Perhaps what most distinguished it for me from a European city is some of its infrastructure: Paris would be embarrassed to have her bowels riddled by the New York subway. Though simply functional it lacks some of the civic care and elegance that would be lavished on it by a European capital. One surprise: I had expected natives to be rude – that’s the cliché – but they weren’t. In fact the New Yorkers I encountered were the friendliest people I have come across in any Western city.

It was my birthday that led me on this winter visit to New York. A 50th should probably be made a fuss of, but I couldn’t bear having anything organized at home. Too much pressure. Besides, I’m really rather shy about attention – not so attention for my work!! *grin* In one way 50 is just an arbitrary number – if we counted in base 12, then the significant birthdays would be 12, 24, 36, 48, 60… and I would still be in my early 40s *grin* Not that I am trying to deny that there is something significant in these time markers. Jung had an image of life as being like a single passage of the sun through the sky. We are born and then, for the first half of our lives, we ascend, growing ever brighter, seeing ever further. When we reach our midday that is as high as we go, as bright. Thereafter, we begin the slow fading to our sunset. No wonder then that so many of us have ‘mid-life’ crises. Clearly, psychically, something profound happens to us as we near the midday of our lives, and once we become aware of our inevitable decline. Jung maintained that the morning of our lives, though filled with struggle, is relatively straightforward. It is the afternoon that it is difficult to deal with. And the secret of a good life is how we handle that. I passed my midday a while back (however much our lifespans are lengthening) but I am still coming to terms with being in the afternoon of my life.

Showering before going to catch my flight home, I began thinking of the life I was returning to. It occurred to me how strange it was that I should be thinking nothing of the crossing of the Atlantic. This vast ocean that for so long kept the Old and New Worlds apart, the crossing of which had profound effects that we still are living through. Images crossed my mind of all the people to whom that crossing was one way – and a vast, frightening and dangerous undertaking. That I had mentally ‘skipped over it’ shows again just how virtual our world has become. In the West we so rarely exit the envelope of human reality that often the ‘actual’ world hardly seems to be there at all. And even as New York seemed to me not very different from London… soon it will not seem so different to Cairo, Nairobi, Shanghai… And yet, even if I rode the virtual teleport of my aeroplane back home (admittedly a rather tedious teleport lasting 6 hours), this did not mean that below me there was not thousands of kilometres of cold heaving ocean.

Ming vases…

Ricardo on 19th January 2011

Wen Zhengming painting

Even in childhood I was baffled as to why oil paintings sold in auction houses for countless millions, while equally exquisite works of art from other cultures seemed lucky if they fetched thousands. One exception is the ubiquitous ‘Ming vase’… examples of which appear in everything from Tin Tin to baroque palaces across Europe. Another are ancient artefacts, though these again seem to be valued less for their aesthetic qualities than for how close they fall to the traditionally accepted path of ancestry of Western culture.

Surely, what this is all about is some kind of bigotry? There are schools of painting in China that are as sophisticated, as accomplished, as those in Europe, and yet – though most people will have heard of Van Gogh or Rembrandt – who among us can name any Chinese painters?

The strange anomaly of the Ming vase perhaps only helps to further make this point. Chinese porcelain as an object of admiration and desire dates from a time when Europe was somewhat in awe of China – and it seems to me that human beings, when they respect others – and nothing breeds respect quite like perceiving that the other appears to be rich and successful – that they also respect their art; what is art after all but an incarnation of a people’s soul?

Well it seems that, as the ‘developing’ world becomes richer, people there become interested in reclaiming their heritage. Nothing draws attention to something quite as much as someone paying a lot of money for it. No doubt Western art critics will now begin to ‘discover’ this other art and their reappraisal will see it slowly raised to a comparable status with Western art. About time!

(there is a related point on ‘manners’ in an earlier post.)

manners

Ricardo on 8th January 2011

Moctezuma meets Cortez

When Cortez first met Moctezuma, the emperor of the Aztecs advanced towards him half-carried by a couple of his relatives, as if he were some fragile invalid. This affectation was one that Moctezuma could allow himself, lord as he was of the conquerors of Central America that, to its inhabitants, was the navel of the Earth and the greater and best part of the world. No doubt this kind of posturing was copied by lesser lords who aspired to the power and sophistication of their masters.

Wealthy Chinese grew their finger nails to such lengths that they had to protect them with jewelled sheaths. Such elevated personages were thus rendered incapable of even dressing themselves. This of course was the point – for it showed that they were above the need to use their hands for anything practical. Indeed, in China, it was long a tradition that men of august rank should become increasingly effeminate as a consequence and sign of their refinement. Even Mao, a son of peasants, cultivated this tradition.

There are countless other examples of elites becoming ever more mannered – imagine the courts of France, with their bouffant white powdered wigs, their extravagant lace cuffs, their beribboned shoes, their rouged cheeks and beauty spots. What I find interesting is that these affectations are only sustainable as long as the society that contains them is a dominant one. The moment that it ceases to be so, the once admired and copied manners become if anything an object of contempt and even mockery. The warrior who is feared can be a lover of men – the Spartans, the samurai – but once he is defeated, such habits become despised. If the Japanese had won the Second World War, perhaps their men would be less likely to wear Western suits. If China begins to dominate the 21st century, it seems to me likely that it will be their manners that the rest of the world will emulate, not those of the Americans. So it is that we have perhaps not come as far from aping the alpha male as we might like to think we have.

angels and visitations

Ricardo on 4th January 2011

When I am ‘actually’ writing I rarely listen to music, finding that its rhythms can interfere with those of the prose I am composing. However, when I am working on planning I often have something on in the background. I use playlists to accompany general ‘thinking’ – Harold Budd, Brian Eno, etc – and much baroque – Bach, Rameau, Couperin, Byrd etc. During more intense ‘thinking’ I might listen to Tangerine Dream, Piazzolla, Varese, Philip Glass.

When more focused on actual scenes, I have developed a habit of assembling pieces into a ‘soundtrack’: sometimes music that represents a specific theme or character in a process somewhat analogous to Wagner’s leitmotifs; or that I use to accompany a particular chapter. It is one of these last that I would like to present here.

Angels and Visitations is by the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, one of several modern composers that I have found myself gravitating towards more and more as I have grown older. He creates soundscapes that I find exquisitely atmospheric and that mesh fruitfully with the images in my mind.

I listen to all my music from hard disks and have been unable to find the original CD with its booklet, however, what I remember (perhaps erroneously) is that Rautavaara wrote this piece as a reaction to a time when he was lying ill and perceived an angel to be standing at the foot of his bed; a being that utterly terrified him. This story found strange resonance with the Masters in my Stone Dance trilogy who consider themselves angels and are a terror to those they rule. Angels and Visitations formed part of a particular constellation of themes, but became the dominant soundtrack for the chapter Blood Gate in my book The Third God in which my trilogy reaches a final crisis of the utmost violence and atrocity.

Angels and Visitations is in itself a drama that it seems to me could only have been written post Freud. For beneath its Hieronymous Bosch surface (The Garden of Earthly Delights perhaps?) I sense there moves the leviathan of what Jung would call our collective unconscious, so that this piece does with sound what I feel works of fantasy seek to do with words.

(I have included a link above (and here) to Angels and Visitations because it seems to me rather pointless to discuss a piece of music without it being possible to listen to it. I realize that this may be seen as breaching copyright, however, I do this with the hope that it may cause people to go out and buy some Rautuvaara and thus that what I am actually doing is promoting his work)

Calabi-Yau manifolds…

Ricardo on 14th December 2010

Having emerged in recent years from gestalt therapy, the Stone Dance (my own copyrighted version of auto-therapy *grin*) and a general focus on the internal world of the psyche (thus much interest in Jung) – all pursuits that favour subconscious over conscious, intuition over cognition, I have found myself becoming increasingly interested in looking outwards (as far indeed as the Universe) towards science and mathematics. No doubt this is part of some process of achieving balance between the outer world of light and logic and the inner world that is hidden in mythic shadow. The book I am going to talk about here might be seen by some as a rather extreme swing ‘the other way’ – but if so it seems to me the application of the T’ai Chi precept that if you want to move right, first move left; if left, first move right.

Now a book about string theory might appear at first to be only of interest to those of a rather esoteric turn of mind. That Shing-Tung Yau’s book seeks to explain this theory through mathematics might have you on the verge of surfing off to a more reasonable webpage, beginning a scream or simply fainting away with the sheer terror of such a thought. Please do none of these things, but give me a chance to explain.

The Shape of Inner Space is a truly remarkable book. It seeks to explain perhaps one of the most subtle and complex adventures that the human mind has ever attempted. It explains the way in which mathematicians, exploring abstract worlds of many dimensions, have seduced physicists with a vision of a solution to the rather thorny problem of how to reconcile two theories, both deliriously successful: Einstein’s General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Each of these theories beautifully describe, respectively, what we observe of the very large (planets, galaxies), and the very small (atoms and sub-atomic particles)… The bizarre thing, the thorny problem, is that there seems to be no way to reconcile the two. And yet, there must be some way… because these two worlds: the very large and the very small, clearly must form a single continuous world…

Some twenty years ago, Yau discovered a geometry, a ‘shape’ (really a family of very closely related shapes) that is called a Calabi-Yau Manifold. This shape exists in 6 dimensions. Mathematicians regularly explore geometries of any number of dimensions – what makes this one different is that it is claimed that it ‘actually’ exists. In an argument that for me recalls the maddest and most eccentric theological discussions of the ‘how many angels can dance on the head of a pin’ variety, Yau and his maths confederates came up with a solution to the ‘thorny problem’ that requires 10 dimensions: the 3 of space and 1 of time we live in and another 6. Where, may you ask, are these mysterious 6? Well, of course, since we can’t see them, they must be somehow hidden. In fact they must be so small, so tightly bound, that they are actually VASTLY smaller than the radius of an electron. These extra 6 dimensions, ladies and gentlemen, form an exquisite convolution of the most infinitesimal size that is some flavour of Calabi-Yau manifold.

So far, so crazy. It gets crazier. It is inconceivable that we could ever find a way of actually directly perceiving these tiny hidden realms. And yet, as you read this book, and you glimpse (for only delving directly into the fiendishly complex mathematics could you hope to ‘see’) the strange and bizarre landscapes described, you begin to see how one theorem is strung together with another, when you begin to get some understanding of the interplay of maths and physics, of the interactions between the practitioners of one and the high priests of the other – an astounding picture begins to form in your mind of this most breathtaking of ventures. Nothing less than an understanding of the universe.

What also comes across is how desperately ambitious this venture is. Even if at every point in our spacetime a Calabi-Yau is attached – and it may not be this kind of manifold – it could be something more ‘complex’ – there are, apparently, 10 120 (that is 10 followed by 120 zeroes) possible Calabi-Yau – each incredibly complex – so how do we find out which one describes our universe uniquely?

Ok, enough rabid enthusiasm. I can’t hope to explain here what I’ve gleaned by reading this book. What remains to do is to encourage you to read it. I won’t pretend to you that I fully understood what was going on all the time. However, Yau is aided by Steve Nadis, a brilliant science writer. Together they make great efforts to explain what is going on in ways that a reasonably intelligent person can cope with. Throughout there are many excellent diagrams and examples are given that really help clarify things. What is perhaps most important is that Yau comes at this from the point of view of a geometer. That means that he is constantly focusing on ‘visualizing’ the maths. Focusing on this topological approach certainly worked for me.

Most importantly, I read this book with my mind slightly out of focus – that is, not ‘clinging’ to the text too hard – if there is something you don’t grasp – reread it – if it still doesn’t ‘go in’ – just move on. I don’t think it’s the details that matter here, but the general drift of the argument.

Perhaps I’ve lost my marbles in trying to encourage you to read this book. Of course it’s a difficult thing to attempt. On the other hand it is trying to give you an insight into perhaps one of the most complex and bizarre ventures humanity has thus far attempted. Ultimately, I found it simply the most exhilarating trip imaginable.

Quincunx

Ricardo on 4th December 2010

armillary sphere with Portuguese shield

The quincunx is an object, an image, that has long exerted a fascination over me. It is not an uncommon symbol—after all it appears on one of the faces of every die

the national flag of Portugal

Then, yesterday, the symbol again sprang into my mind in the context of the novella I am writing (Matryoshka) and I went to wikipedia to explore it a little—only to find the ‘Portuguese shield” staring at me… I was actually a tad stunned, since I’m not aware of having ever consciously noticed that those quincunxes were there—that they were at the heart of the flag of my country of birth. (Interestingly, the quincunx here apparently represents the five wounds of Christ that he received on the cross – those on his feet, his hands and the lance in his side…)


Then I recalled that I had chosen the quincunx as the armorial sigil for the gatehouses that give access to each of the five radial roads that issue from the Wheel, a marketplace in the City at the Gates, in my Stone Dance books. Now you may say that it is obvious to choose this symbol to represent five things. However, considering that Osrakum in some ways represents Portugal—or at least the Portugal of my childhood—in my ‘auto-mythological’ understanding of the Stone Dance, that the entrance should be marked with the quincunx seems to me suggestive

The more I learn of the way the unconscious acts in us, the more amazed I become. It is as if each one of us, bobbing along in our little personal rowing boat in the full light of consciousness, is shadowed in the deep waters beneath us, by an immense shape sliding in the depths of our hidden mind

force majeur

Ricardo on 1st December 2010

Snow has fallen heavily along the coast of the British Isles – 60cm, perhaps. With our maritime climate, this kind of weather is unusual enough that it has never been worthwhile investing vast resources in proofing our infrastructure against it: but common enough that when it happens it brings chaos. From the midst of this chaos rises the usual outcry: why can’t they do something about it? The same voices would be the first to complain of the waste if resources were squandered preparing the whole country for these few days of snow… It is really MOST tedious…

Of course, I can sit quietly at home enjoying the beauty that the skies have gifted us. Easy for me, you might say, because you don’t need to go out. That’s true. But then I wonder how many of us do… This frantic need to ‘get into work’ seems to me indicative of our hubris. The way that we insist that our routines must continue come what may. That the human ‘virtuality’ must trundle on irrespective of what is going on in the world. It is this kind of thinking that may well be leading us into the self-made disaster of global warming… It’s not as if we work all the time. We take time off. But those days of holiday are mandated by us. Perish the thought that we should have time off imposed on us by the climate, by the planet.

It seems to me that it’s about time that we started going more with the ‘flow of things’. Our climate deploys energy at levels that still dwarf those that we control. Yet, like the gods we feel ourselves to be (want to be!), we constantly set ourselves against these forces. This does not strike me as being wise…

more from Fórum Fántastico

Ricardo on 28th November 2010

Raquel Garrido had already kindly given me links to the talk I did in English on World Building [parts one, two, three, four, five, and six]

She has also given me links to the video she took of me in conversation with Rogério Ribeiro in Portuguese [parts one, two, three and four]

If that wasn’t enough, Daniel Cardoso also made audio recordings of the talks which he has sent to me suggesting that some people might be interested in having them to listen to in this format.

So here is the talk on world building (in English), and the conversation with Roger Ribeiro (in Portuguese).

at Fórum Fantástico 2010

Ricardo on 16th November 2010

It was hell getting to the Forúm Fantástico. I flew from Edinburgh at the unearthly hour of 6am… I’ve NO idea why it is necessary to be there 2 hours before the flight, and I wasn’t, but still! I loathe flying – it is by far one of the most unfortunate modes of transport devised by the human species. All that queueing, waiting, undressing, unpacking, dressing, packing, waiting, going here, waiting, going there, waiting, being sardined into an aluminium tube then squeezed out the other end. Could anything more ludicrous be conceived than a metal box hurtling through the air jammed full of hassled, short-tempered apes?! I would’ve rather gone by camel.

Amsterdam was suffering a gale. When the pilot managed a hair-raising landing, we all spontaneously burst into clapping to thank him for having saved our lives. Of course my connecting flight was also delayed. By the time I arrived at my hotel in Lisbon, I had been travelling for nearly 13 hours. It took me less time to get to Cambodia!

Hours late, I got a taxi to the convention. The driver hadn’t a clue where that was, and we wandered utterly lost before Rogério Ribeiro came to my rescue – not for the last time. The poor man organized the whole thing on his own (with some help from Safaa Dib) from Pisa!?

Eventually, a whole load of us went out for dinner. I had a real laugh with Daniel Cardoso, Inês Rôlo and Sofia Correia, chums I knew from facebook…

After yet again not enough sleep, I opened the morning’s proceedings with a talk on ‘World Building’… from which come all the gesticulations above. I did this in English because it would have been unfair to inflict such a ‘technical’ talk on my audience in my ropey Portuguese. (I found out later that Raquel Garrido had filmed the whole thing and you can find it here (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). This was followed by a talk on ‘Technology and Atmosphere’ by Stephen Hunt and another on ‘Characters and Characterization’ by Peter V. Brett. I later had interesting chats with both of them.

When I got back from lunch with my editor Raquel Dutra, I watched a panel on ‘Fantastic Lisbon’ with four Portuguese authors who, with delightful fluency and wit, opened my eyes to a world of Portuguese fantasy and sci-fi I simply hadn’t realized existed. It’s easy to fall into believing that speculative fiction is entirely an English language affair.

After David Soares launched a book, I did an interview with Rogério in my less than sparkling Portuguese. Daniel produced a recording of this and I will try and put it online once I have it.

Stephen and Peter did their interviews. Then we all did a signing.

Then it was out for dinner (with among others Guadalupe Cabral and Inês Botelho), bed and the flight home the next morning.

Though quite a small convention, Fórum Fantástico was beautifully located, smoothly organized with a great mix of warm and bright people. As speculative fiction increases in popularity in Portugal, I am told that the Forum will grow bigger. I hope so, it deserves to be even more of a gathering than it already is.

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