tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14496565.post3721234147222947573..comments2008-09-28T22:33:34.540+01:00Comments on The Silver Eel: The Silver Eelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03615661656637047142noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14496565.post-69195586417519380832007-12-10T22:26:00.000+00:002007-12-10T22:26:00.000+00:00Late response. Apologies. I absolutely agree wit...Late response. Apologies. I absolutely agree with the notion of resonance, which seems to me to be the only way to explain the effect of certain places - an example being Thursbitch valley. For how many hundreds of years was it being used as a centre of what we would today call religious practice? A few years back a friend visited one of the famous Zen Buddhist temples in Japan, and she said it was absolutely impossible to feel disturbed or in any way upset while she was there. Eveything just seemed to settle down of its own accord.The Silver Eelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03615661656637047142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14496565.post-32592881766129333822007-12-03T12:31:00.000+00:002007-12-03T12:31:00.000+00:00I think it is as well to remember that all these e...I think it is as well to remember that all these ecstatic or otherwise altered states are projections of the inner life upon the outer world, often resulting from the stimulus of the outer world upon the senses, and possibly to do with the way others have interacted with the "spirit of place" before us, which is somehow stored in the resonance & memory of the place (as I once found at Arbroath Abbey, a very resonant place).<BR/><BR/>Also there are <A HREF="http://pagantheologies.pbwiki.com/What%20is%20ritual%20for" REL="nofollow">four modes of ritual</A>: liturgical, celebratory, ceremonial, and magical, each of which has a different style, intent, and outcome. Sometimes the magical breaks in upon the liturgical in the way you describe.Yewtreehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02028699564003381058noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14496565.post-78188658673549197232007-11-09T15:04:00.000+00:002007-11-09T15:04:00.000+00:00Or when it comes to childhood: fear of just about ...Or when it comes to childhood: fear of just about everything, clothing made from synthetic materials, and rotten central heating. Yes, maturity and penicillin have much to commend them.<BR/><BR/>My use of "civilized" and "primitive" was ironic. I checked to make sure.<BR/><BR/>Muir is no doubt as guilty of selective memory as any of us, but he captures moments of revelation or transformation, particularly ones associated with childhood, brilliantly - the point to this poem, as I read it. Also the implication that access to such moments becomes rarer with time. (There are compensations, of course.) His <A HREF="http://www.canongate.net/AnAutobiographyEdwinMuir" REL="nofollow">autobiography</A> is well worth reading, and makes clear that the conflict between two worlds which has been, for Alan Garner, a source of creative tension, was near-fatal for Muir. Of course, <I>he</I> was simply picked out of one milieu and dumped in another - though the reason the family had to move was that his father had been twice shifted off farms. Muir's account of Glasgow, and of working in Port Glasgow, is harrowing. Culture shock was only part of it - his father, mother and two brothers died, and he was often ill himself. They had to re-learn everything - not to open the door to beggars and feed them, for example, because there were just too many.<BR/><BR/>Parenthetically, the old name for the Orkney Mainland is Hrossey - the island of horses.<BR/><BR/>Regarding Golden Ages in general, and notwithstanding my agreement with what you've said, I just read this morning in Donald Smith's <I>Storytelling Scotland</I> (p98)a quote from James Hunter's <I>Last of the Free</I>:<BR/><BR/>'It is easy to respond to such sentiments by observing, quite correctly, that South Uist never was the earthly paradise Peggy McCormack believed it to have been, but that is wholly to miss the point she so eloquently made. During Peggy McCormack's lifetime there had been deliberately destroyed, both in South Uist and in much of the rest of the Highlands and Islands, socially cohesive and generally self-assured communities of the type she had been born into.'The Silver Eelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03615661656637047142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14496565.post-76078264191463616962007-11-08T23:08:00.000+00:002007-11-08T23:08:00.000+00:00Very true, it is one of the things that amuses me ...Very true, it is one of the things that amuses me about organised, mainstream religions who tend to pretend they don't do that sort of thing, but in reality such experiences are as much about inducing altered states as rituals in older, pre-Christian religions, 'primitive' (as they are rather poorly labelled) tribal religions etc - or even dancers at a solid rave for that matter. Transgress the everyday mundane, loose the behaviour a bit and transcend the normal. Of course, they could just drop a tab and listen to the Floyd too...<BR/><BR/>The Muir is very interesting, although not doubting his feelings of loss at moving from his rural home to the Dear Green Place it also strikes me that is has elements of the classic 'lost' golden time, be it childhood or a more generalised view of how much better things were in the simpler, old days which we all partake in to a certain extent, but which I notice rarely talks about the not so nice elements of those days such as short life spans, poor food, little medical care... Oh how we love our Golden Ages...Joehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257155435655575336noreply@blogger.com