The Wake, by John Caselberg

I'm (very slowly) restoring stuff that used to be on my geocities site to the new jimdo one. Yesterday I uploaded John Caselberg's poem, The Wake, which doesn't appear to be on the Net anywhere else, as far as I can see. The only other reference to it is in relation to Colin McCahon's canvas panels on which he painted the entire poem (not always very readably).

I first came across these panels at the Hocken library (here in Dunedin) when it was still within the University compound and not at its current ex-cheese factory site. They're typical of McCahon's 'written' art works - the words scrawled over the canvas without any obvious style, and the background painted in various gloomy colours. They're interesting, rather than masterworks, in my (humble) opinion, but because they've got the name 'McCahon' on them, they are highly rated.

The other good thing about yesterday, besides the visit of my wife's brother (and his wife) - the first time my wife and her brother had seen each other in forty years - was that I found that some of the old material that used to be on geocities is still hidden away on my computer, under 'oldharddrive', a place where it was put by an IT guy who increased the memory on the system and did some other work a couple of years ago. So this means I can begin using it elsewhere on the Net again.

Finding Myself

I'm sure I'm not the only person who does this: sits in an idle moment, types in their name into Google, and sees what comes up.

I'd been typing data entry stuff a good deal of the day and gave myself a few minutes respite, this afternoon. Amongst some of the more unusual results were these:
I'd mentioned Catherine Zeta-Jones in a post somewhere and got picked up by a site called Boxxet, which apparently is a site where you can share content. Someone, I presume, has shared my post and there I am on Boxxet, all unawares. I might investigate Boxxet further, if I have the time.

All my mentions of HitTail in posts struck gold. I now have an entry on the Everyone Loves HitTail site (quite honestly I was beginning to think I was the only person who knew what HitTail was). This site is: Dedicated to collecting quotes and testimonials about using HitTail, a decidedly inspiring Web 2.0 long tail writing suggestion tool.

The comment that goes with the mention of my post is this: This belongs in Funny Suggestions. Oh, the things you learn about your site, your readers, and the world when you use HitTail!

Yes, well. I think that's a compliment.

Thirdly, and rather to my amazement, I got quoted by a local freebie paper called Deadline.
They archive their previous editions online, and there in a discussion of John Caselberg's poem, The Wake, they quote a section as follows from my old site.

John Caselberg is best known perhaps for his poem ‘The Wake’, described as an “astonishing poem” which became the subject of a series of paintings by the Caselberg’s contemporary Colin McCahon. Mike Crowl notes “Wake is an extremely well-crafted poem, making full use of the language with its aural resonances, its varied rhythms, its inner rhyming, its broad vocabulary
and complex sentence structures. More than that, it takes the death of a beloved animal, a family pet, and extends this into a ringing wake for the tragedy of the deaths of all beloved ones, including humans”.

So, there you go. Oh, there was one other. In a site rather strangely called, isthisyour.name, there's a reference to Fiona Henry, a local singer. I have my suspicions that Fiona's name has just appeared on there out of the blue, but anyway, my post about her has appeared there as well. The more you do on the Net the more visible you become....slowly. It's like a gold chain that keeps on growing - though the gold is a bit slow coming.

On Retreat

I’ve just spent the last night and most of today at a Retreat organised by a couple of the leaders from my church. It was a fairly quiet affair, with only nine participants, but it was well worth going to. I used to do fairly regular retreats just on my own, and need to keep doing more. There’s nothing quite like a day away from the norm, especially if it takes place at some beautiful spot - even if it’s near a beach. (I usually try and make sure my retreats are.)
Anyway, I took with me an old notebook which had Retreat Vision on the cover, and thought I’d fill up some of the blank pages. Turned out that the book had been begun in 1997, and it was interesting reading back through some of the notes I’d made in those long-ago retreat times.
But what I want to mention here now is that there are a couple of quotes from books in the notes, and one of these comes from a book on Colin McCahon that I was reading at the time.
The book’s title is Colin McCahon Artist, by Gordon Brown, and in chapter 4, page 28, Toss Woollaston, (the poster at the side relates to him), another famous NZ artist is quoted as writing: The Spirit that creates Nature and Art is God…an artist must lose his dependence on his optical vision in order to find his spiritual vision, and then paint his picture, carve his sculpture, and it will be authentic art.
I made a note at the time that the whole chapter has great relevance to ‘Christian’ art. I must check the book out again!

Get your theology right - it always helps.

In the Auckland City paper, there was an article published on the 19th March, 2008, called Easter embraces host of views.

This was an Easter exhibition with a non-sectarian approach; in fact, the more you read the articles it seems to be that it was a secular approach to Easter. The general lack of understanding by the artists – at least those who were quoted – showed there was little Christian viewpoint at hand.

For example:

Each artist was assigned a station. Hamish Tocher drew what is usually the last station, the resurrection – although this exhibition includes the entombment as the 15th station. Mr Tocher said he enjoyed the experience, having spent the last few years studying Catholic paintings. He is not religious but is interested in the history of art.
‘Colin McCahon did the Stations of the Cross in his paintings,’ he says, ‘and other New Zealand artists have too. It’s a Kiwi medium, not just a Christian one.’

The last station is the resurrection? I don’t think the resurrection has ever been in the Stations of the Cross. And then to add a 15th, the ‘entombment’ makes a bit of nonsense of having the previous one as the resurrection. Apparently, in this theology, Jesus rose before he was buried. Curious.

So the Stations of the Cross is somehow a Kiwi medium, just because McCahon and others have used the stations as a basis for art. Gee, what do they teach these artists at Art School?

Douglas Lilburn

I know Douglas Lilburn is supposed to be one of the greatest composers New Zealand has produced, but for the life of me I can’t enjoy his music. Almost without exception it seems to have nothing I can call a melody, or even a melodic line. Okay this might not be considered any big deal, except that he seems to rely on little rhythmic phrases or small movements repeated again and again, and in the end there’s nothing you can hang your hat on.
His early music almost gets melodic, and then it’s as if he eschewed (word of the day) the idea of melody and decided as time went on he’d go for nothing that struck anyone in the nature of a melody. Now there are plenty of composers who can’t be considered melodic in the first instance, but none of them seem quite to throw melody out the window, the way Lilburn does. By the time he’s in the middle of his career he’s writing stuff that floats around the piano but doesn’t seem to have any beginning, middle or end, and in his later works he’s even tossed that stuff aside and gone for electronic music – which of course makes him very modern and therefore the darling of all those who chase modernism as an idol to be adored at all costs. Even their musical commonsense.
I struggle to like his music, as I mostly struggle to like Colin McCahon’s paintings. I hear the crowd saying both are very good, but I struggle to hear or see it. More on this anon, no doubt!
Just remembered that I have performed Sings Harry with a singer, Brent Read, in the last few years, and yes, there is some music there, but.....
What am I trying to say about it? That it's an exception to my criticism above. Maybe. It certainly has a melancholic quality, but it's also fairly early in his canon.
You can hear some of his music by clicking here.