Any views that get you in the pit of the stomach and make you want to smile, or cry, or otherwise wring some emotion from you?
Now, you might ask yourself what such a question has to do with the music, so if you bear with me, I'll attempt an explanation.
Danny started a thread about credos/personal philosophy the other day which suggested that, for him at least, the music is one element in a holistic world-view ...
I'm able to concur with him on that ... while I wasn't able to articulate a personal philosophy in that thread, I feel that the music has qualities which have great appeal for me personally. Honesty, rawness, impish humour, stateliness, directness, timelessness, imperviousness, the impression that the essence refuses at times to reveal itself - it has to be found, ... etc. (That last bit sounds like God/Hobbit-bothering pop-mysticism, sorry!)
And it occurs to me that many of the other artefacts/experiences, etc. which appeal to me have many of these self-same qualities.
Take views, landscapes. There are some of these that "do my heart good" in exactly the same way that listening to or playing the music does. Here are a few that transport me ... any of you good people ever succumbed to landscape in the same way and do you think that this tendency is in any way related to your gra for the music?
1. Approaching Clifden from the Sky Road, with the town huddling below you and the Twelve Bens towering above.
2. Looking over Dugort strand from the post office, with Slievemore presenting its most interesting profile beyond.
3. A bitter, crisp winter's morning on the shores of Lough Neagh, particularly one of those wooded shores found near to where I grew up, each footstep disturbing clumps of bog-mint and sending their smells into the air. Light and distance conspiring to make the solitary human feel insignificant.
4. The view across country from the room where I used to sleep when I lived in Ireland to Sawel. Though now spoiled by the building of yet another "starter-home" estate right next door to my ma's house, (I know, I know ... "when I was growing up it all just fields round here!" ... but it was, honest!) the sight of Sawel, particularly when it's snow-capped and gleaming in the sun, is one of those experiences that simply says "home".
And many, many more. And I swear that when I'm gazing on -or wandering through - one of these landscapes, I hear the music in my head much more clearly ...
I hope the next contributions will be more succint Aidan, I'll never get through forty of these. But some lovely thoughts anyway. Now, back to bitching about those pesky spoon players....
That all kind of reminds me of why people really enjoyed Walkmans when they first came out -- lots of people said it was like hearing a movie score swelling up during the film of their lives.
What I love is when I'm driving through the country (I've done an awful lot of driving between touring and trips out and about, including four cross-country trips annually for four and a half years) and the music matches up to the scenery. On tour, we used to call it "driving music" -- "oh wow, that's great driving music." The big sky, desert, and mountain states are great for that -- Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Utah, and upon occasion even Nevada (which is the state where I usually make the most phone calls out of sheer boredom while driving through it).
Landscapes that remind me that the world is big and I am small always get me in the gut.
* Sunset on Killala Bay, Co. Mayo, with the cows walking across the bay to be milked.
* The really quiet spot at the top of Grouse Mountain, Vancouver, where you can look down on the city.
* Icebergs off Newfoundland.
* Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
A session, packed with people of every age, colour, background, religion etc that are all getting along and having a good time and NOT plotting who to invade next.
I think that everyone should, just once in a while, step back from what ever they're doing and just LOOK.
Not in any particlicur order of merit:
Sitting under a certain cafe pergola on a summer Sunday morning in Fiesole, Tuscany, looking down over the red-tiled roofs and domes of Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance.
Standing on the Cliffs of Moher on a calm sunny autumn evening looking out over the Aran Islands and the Atlantic
The luminous beauty of Julia Ormond in the film Smylla's Sense of Snow
Countless vistas of San Francisco and The Bay Area
The next pint viewed through the bottom of the empty glass of the one too many you've just had
When I visit Ireland I don't do any organized site seeing. I'm usually there in the off-season, so the weather is very dodgy most of the time. The only site seeing happens when we wake up and notice that it happens to be a sunny day -- and we all pile into the car for a drive. One time we were in Galway and it had snowed all day and night. Huge dollar size snowflakes were floating down and landing on Imer's massive red hair. (A beautiful bodhran player I met and sat next to at the Crane pub that evening.) The next day I woke up to find a beautiful sunny day with cream cheese like frosting on all the hedges and walls. We all piled into the car and headed for Connemara. Because it was late in the day we arrived at the Twelve Pins during a spectacular sunset. The golden colors of the sunset were reflected on the snow-capped peaks of the Twelve Pins. When we rounded the corner where Kylemore Abby is the combination of the sky, colorful snow-capped peaks, and the vibrant colors of the moss and grass actually made my eyes well up with tears.
We were very lucky the following day because it was a repeat of that day weather wise. We piled into the car again and headed out to Connemara once again. This time we headed for the coast of Galway Bay and found ourselves driving over small bridges hopping from island to island. When we reached the furthest point it was again a spectacular sunset and it reflected on the mirror-like surface of the Bay on a very calm day. The hills and shoreline around us were glowing with the delicious vibrant colors of the sunset on the various kinds of moss and grass. I got out my hanky of course.
- the hills and farmland south of Edinburgh, although it is now so badly spoiled by development, because almost every spot holds a memory of a nice ride or a hilarious horsey shenanigan of some kind
- the landscapes of my childhood in Colorado which I often see now in my dreams
Sitting in the Dunlewy Lounge, sipping Guinness, warming toes by the fire and looking out onto the Poison Valley. Or coming around the corner, battling car sickness, and getting your first look at the Glens of Antrim.
Or the look on your friends face after he has hiked from Miltown Malbay to land in The Field pub in Connemara, where he finds you sitting, having just arrived in a lovely warm car from base camp Westport.
gee, Galway comes up trumps a few times, I live 5 miles from Kylemore abbey, 7 from the Letterfrack side of the Sky Road to Clifden, 10 from the beautiful Killary Habour, 6 from the Inishboffin Island , 2 minutes from Diamond mountain and Connemara National Park and 65 miles from a public Hospatial !
Wandering back in.... I'm from the southeast corner, Zina. Small village (very small) called Manzanola, in the Arkansas Valley (somewhere between Pueblo and La Junta).
I like watching the sun go down behind Mt Fuji here in Japan. This time of year its all covered with snow. And when the sun is out of sight, Fuji glows like a burning ember. Really beautiful.
You don't need hostipals out there, compaqjohn. It's like what Robert Redford said about another spectacularly beautiful part of the planet: "Who needs therapy when you've got Utah". My screen saver is a Paul Henry painting of a Connemara landscape that I scanned in. It's a tonic to behold. The Canadian Rockies, Mt Fuji, Pueblo.... I need to take a year off.
Kris, believe it or else, I think I know of someone from near there -- there was an art thing going on down there when I was on the Governor's Board for the Arts and the Humanities (this was in the 80's) and we got to give them a grant -- it was something to do with the Stations of the Cross or something, I can't quite remember. Beautiful country down there, really...
I like the view out of the window of my little home office where my computer and instruments are, now that it's all snowy and frosty out there but I'm toasty in here.
My work office has a good view too, over the Dee, which has had ice floes floating down it the last two days, something I've not seen before. Strange grey/white tonal composition on the shortest darkest day of the year.
Don't get me started here. Apart from every Thursday at the Blythe to see the assembled troops, what can I say?
Maybe the view at dawn on Chimborazo in Ecuador at nearly 20,000 feet, when the red dawn sun made the snow turn pink. And the sky the most deepest azure blue imaginable. Those colours so intense even with snow glasses on, and not many other hues to invade this cold starkness. Shortly about then I got altitude sickness, aided by next to no sleep the night before (midnight starts on these big ice climbs) so maybe the hallucinations were just kicking in.
Another one was going up le "M", an m-shaped twin pair of peaks right next to Mt. Blanc, above Chamonix, France. We had gotten so far up when we had to retire because of an impending thunderstorm but also through complete exhaustion, to a shallow cave beneath a rock outcrop. Shortly thereafter the thunderstorm started for real, and we were witness to the most dramatic pyrotechnic display Mother Nature could offer. I'd heard the myth that Ice-axes hum during (or more like before) a thunderstorm, now I saw it for real. They do hum, and I believe, it's due to a build-up of static electricity. There was some sheet lightning swooshing down into the Chamonix valley, but mostly massive great forks, of several bifurcations which lit up the whole night sky...again, me being a wimp, I fell asleep through sheer exhaustion only a short while into this display...
The view from the top of Goat Fell on Arran. The view from the top of Ben Lomond or Beinn Mhor, or looking up at Staic Pollaidh, or nearly anywhere around north west Sutherland. Or the Maroon Bells in Colorado, or the Grand Canyon, or the Cuillins in Skye, or Kuranda near Cairns in Queensland, or the looking across into Arnhemland from Kakadu, just the smell of Northern Territories...or Venice, so unique, surreal and beautiful..Dubrovnik, Seville, Quito, Las Cajas, Rome, Kuala Lumpur, Granada, Lisbon, San Sebastian and so on.......or the moment I truly became addicted to Irish music, after really liking it......July 1982, Glenties/Ardara, Donegal, in a bashed up old student car with some mates of mine at the time, from Portaferry, Edinburgh and Rosslea. We'd had a pint or two of the black stuff from Dublin and a toke or two of the black stuff from Afghanistan, which had somehow managed to emigrate across the border in my backpack. The scenery was magical with leprechauns jumping into the bushes at every turn of the road. Yer man from Portaferry (the driver) had a fair collection of the music on the car tape machine..the Bothies, Paul Brady& Andy Irvine, Planxty and so on. It all just seemed so....right. I'd been playing the whistle for a couple of years before then but early the next year I went and got myself a flute and thereafter took things a bit more seriously.
Any view from the ascent, or the summit, of Yr Wyddfa.
Caernarfon castle, the estuary, and Ynis Mon from the top of the Twt Hill.
The strip of the Olympic Mountains you can see from the Aurora Bridge in Seattle, especially at sunrise when the new light is touching the tops of the peaks.
Grizzly Peak, here in the Rogue Valley, on a fine morning, from the southwest side.
Now, I've had some discussions with artist friends of mine who're aware of Henry's work and some of them are very scathing about his paintings. (That having been said, one of my acquaintances, who is quite well-regarded and who has no connection with Henry or the landsacpes/people that were his subject matter, holds Henry in the very highest regard!)
Maybe I'm not much of a judge of art, but I have to disagree with Henry's critics. I've spent a lot of time on Achill, Henry's chief muse, and he captures not just the physical, visble beauty of the place but also its "feel".
As far as I'm concerned, there's an underlying sadness in the Achill landscape/environment. That may be due to the fact that my dad died there when I was a little kid on holiday and thus the place is always going to have sad associations. But I think it extends deeper than that.
The beauty of some of the landscapes are so achingly beautiful. But unlike some parts of the world, the grandeur is on a human scale. There are no Grand Canyons; no Everests. The scale of the place is well within the bounds of comprehension; however the stark beauty remains a complete mystery.
At the heart of even the most frenetic Irish dance music I often perceive a deep vein of sadness. So, perhaps, even the most beautiful, picturesque scenery may contain elements which connect us with melancholy ...
I am a fierce collector of stunning landscapes, though I do not even have a camera. And be it Ireland, Scotland, Poland, Russia or anywhere else. In my job, I do a lot of driving around the country. I deliberately choose remote, small and winding roads, to find myself in the middle of nowhere. The real advantage of this country is that you can get all kinds of empty, hauntingly beautiful places just driving off the beaten track/highway.
The last time...
The last time was in the Gory Sowie (you could translate is as Owl Mountains) - really remote, God-and-human forgotten place, with about 1 tourist a season. Misdirected by some locals (as usual - you can always count on locals to misdirect you) I drove onto a mountain road which led me to one of the most beautiful spots ever seen. I got off the car and just looked at the snow and the mountains, and the horizon, for an hour or so. I'm desperately looking forward to getting another business trip in this area.
"Honesty, rawness, impish humour, stateliness, directness, timelessness, imperviousness, the impression that the essence refuses at times to reveal itself - it has to be found, ... etc."
Beautifully put, Aidan!
For me, it's the journey from Shrewsbury into Wales, where Shropshire ends and Montgomeryshire starts, as you pass the bracken-covered hill, Criggion. Any view of the Breidden hills from any distance or angle, is seared into my psyche like the tower mountain in 'Close Encounters'...
Anywhere at all that reminds me of the Mid-Wales hills, whether the Basque country or East Clare, brings a feeling of calm recognition and home, and a bit of a lump to the throat.
Can I add aural elements? The sound of curlew - indescribable. Even the sound of sheep at dusk. Sigh.
I suppose one day, when I leave East London, the sound of police sirens will take on a misty nostalgia. Do you think?
Maybe there are so many police sirens going off because the inhabitants don't get a chance to see all the stuff we've been describing, I don't know. I forgot about the area near our caravan in Suffolk - Dunwich Heath and Minsmere. Not as grand as some of the vistas described above but remote raw and rural.
I believe that Paul Simon had the same problem. Apparently one of his most famous songs started life as follows ...
Hello darkness my old friend
I'm drifitng off to sleep again
And just as my eyes are closing
As I'm on the verge of dozing
The screech goes tearing through my brain
And tonight again
I'm woken
By the sound of sirens
Haha, Aidan!
It's not just sirens, it's choppers as well. I was lying awake in the small hours last night as a police helicopter scoured the locality for some villains or other.
I wanted to record a bit of siren noise, and sneak it onto my recordings, for local colour. I thought I'd disguise it in with the pipes...
Didn't get round to it, though. Or did I?
Another "landscape experience" has just asserted itself.
It was halfway through a long stint on the West Coast and the late nights and the music and the lack of routine ... very invigorating, normally ... began to take their toll.
A very kind and very beautiful member of the vague "company" that had formed that summer noticed that I was slowly becoming enveloped in a fog of melancholy and gloom and came to my rescue.
She marched me down to the beach; one of those many-mile-long west-facing storm beaches. There was moonlight; no stars. Pitch-black. I was seeing in black-and-white. A grey shore, tailing into black, looming cliffs. The tide was well-out and we stopped out near the sea's edge on the hard, wet sand.
She told me to keep looking out to sea and she'd fetch me in a while. I heard her troop off to the boulders and light a cigarette.
And then I became unaware of her as I stood there, looking out to sea. After a while the pounding of the surf, the roar of the wind and the smell of the Atlantic were all I was aware of. I can close my eyes and bring myself back there so easily. I don't think I've ever stood so still for so long and just experienced the vastness and power of the world.
Twenty minutes or more I must have stood there until herself came back and begun to explain ...
Nothing esoteric. She just wanted me to experience the fact that the world is vast and each individual is a mere blip. All of my concerns of the evening were about me, me, me. But if I'm so insignificant, why attach so much importance to my little worries?
Now, ninety nine times out of a hundred, I'd have laughed off such an event as a load of oul' whatever. But at that moment in time, given all of the circumstances, it worked like a dream (it felt like a dream, after all). I was very clear-headed; the weight of the world had lifted. ("The world can look after itself; you look after yourself.") Despite a feed of whiskey and porter, I felt as sober as a judge ...
It was a trite thing really, in the scheme of things. But it might it be one of the memories that stays with me to the grave!
I used to live on the 28th floor of a tower block in West London. We were once treated to the sight of a helicopter rising *up* towards our window from below, God knows what they were up to. Admiring the balcony plantings perhaps?
"But of all the fine places that I've ever seen
There are none to compare with the Cliffs of Dooneen"
I would like to instigate a geographical debate for a change and this is a good a place as any to settle for once and for all the question as to where exactly these famous cliffs are. I believe they are somewhere north of Ballybunion in North Kerry and afford a vantage point from where you can look across the Shannon Estuary to Clare. I have frequented the area for a long time - the beautiful beach in Ballybunion was where we used always go when we were children - and I know people there, but even a very good friend of mine from North Kerry has not been able to enlighten me as to the precise location of the Cliffs of Dooneen. Can anybody shed some light on this matter?
I used to have a pal who could not start off playing the Cliffs of Dooneen without accidentally but inevitably ending up playing the Dark Island - or vice versa. So try Benbecula!
Aidan, the chopper capital of the world (civilian that is) is and has been Aberdeen for the last 25 years.
But choppers right over the town is bad - that usually means they are going to Forresterhill (the hospital), whether from an oil rig, a trawler, a standby boat, a mountain rescue, a traffic accident, or some medical emergency that the hospitals in Shetland or Orkney can't handle. The worst was the day of the Pipe Alpha explosion. A constant cacophony of choppers in a day that is burned into everyone's memory. 167 dead and God knows how many injured or traumatised.
There are pipe laments for that but I've never heard anyone attampt to play them at a session in Aberdeen, nor would I really want to.
Left Greenwich at sunrise this morning, nothing like a sunny sky in December, and the nicest station into London is Charing X - well done for reminding us of the great sights close to us Orson!!!
It's very close to there. Gory Sowie as such are a small and obscure range and their major advantage is their remoteness, obscurity and wildness. Plenty of places to have for yourself. Really an experience.
As all South of Poland is mountainous, and you get all types of mountains on the way, some people around here take a month's leave and go backpacking all along Polish southern border, to get all the mountainous (and cultural) caleidoscope.
Orson - I used to do a fair bit, mostly on rock, but I'm not even a social climber these days (as you may have noticed). And yes, the view from Waterloo Bridge, especially at night, in any direction, is spectacular...or even Waterloo Sunset.
Janek - you should get a job with the Polish tourist board, you're making it sound very enticing!
The boyhood ones that impressed me most were in / near County Durham where I live, especially in the North Pennines to the west. The whole County slopes upward towards them, and the country west of the A68 seemed another world. It had its own climate: it was often startlingly white with snow at easter, when the lower lands were making grudging concessions to spring. It had at times a peculiarly vivid, glowing light of its own of great beauty. Climate change seems to have done away with both, though it has given the North-East a proper spring and summer that weren't there before (it was very often cold, grey and miserable).
The whole North Pennine area is tiny compared with the big country people describe in America or parts of Europe, but it's very big indeed if you find yourself in a blizzard up on a fell miles away from lower ground and shelter, weather that could be expected from November to April inclusive. (On the last weekend in May, 1973, I saw large patches of snow on the Pennines' highest hill, Cross Fell, that would have lasted into June.)
Views? The light I mention could shine on any moor or field or building and seem to utterly transform it: in the winter months it appeared too in the lower-lying parts of the North-East. I missed it in the Midlands and South.
(I saw all this as an angler / hill-walker / would-be painter, rather than as a player of any kind of music.
Views ...
Views ...
Any views that get you in the pit of the stomach and make you want to smile, or cry, or otherwise wring some emotion from you?
Now, you might ask yourself what such a question has to do with the music, so if you bear with me, I'll attempt an explanation.
Danny started a thread about credos/personal philosophy the other day which suggested that, for him at least, the music is one element in a holistic world-view ...
I'm able to concur with him on that ... while I wasn't able to articulate a personal philosophy in that thread, I feel that the music has qualities which have great appeal for me personally. Honesty, rawness, impish humour, stateliness, directness, timelessness, imperviousness, the impression that the essence refuses at times to reveal itself - it has to be found, ... etc. (That last bit sounds like God/Hobbit-bothering pop-mysticism, sorry!)
And it occurs to me that many of the other artefacts/experiences, etc. which appeal to me have many of these self-same qualities.
Take views, landscapes. There are some of these that "do my heart good" in exactly the same way that listening to or playing the music does. Here are a few that transport me ... any of you good people ever succumbed to landscape in the same way and do you think that this tendency is in any way related to your gra for the music?
1. Approaching Clifden from the Sky Road, with the town huddling below you and the Twelve Bens towering above.
2. Looking over Dugort strand from the post office, with Slievemore presenting its most interesting profile beyond.
3. A bitter, crisp winter's morning on the shores of Lough Neagh, particularly one of those wooded shores found near to where I grew up, each footstep disturbing clumps of bog-mint and sending their smells into the air. Light and distance conspiring to make the solitary human feel insignificant.
4. The view across country from the room where I used to sleep when I lived in Ireland to Sawel. Though now spoiled by the building of yet another "starter-home" estate right next door to my ma's house, (I know, I know ... "when I was growing up it all just fields round here!" ... but it was, honest!) the sight of Sawel, particularly when it's snow-capped and gleaming in the sun, is one of those experiences that simply says "home".
And many, many more. And I swear that when I'm gazing on -or wandering through - one of these landscapes, I hear the music in my head much more clearly ...
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Aidan Crossey
Re: Views ...
I hope the next contributions will be more succint Aidan, I'll never get through forty of these. But some lovely thoughts anyway. Now, back to bitching about those pesky spoon players....
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Cath
Re: Views ...
twilight over Mallaig, seen from Skye, October (when it's not raining)
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Cath
Re: Views ...
That all kind of reminds me of why people really enjoyed Walkmans when they first came out -- lots of people said it was like hearing a movie score swelling up during the film of their lives.
What I love is when I'm driving through the country (I've done an awful lot of driving between touring and trips out and about, including four cross-country trips annually for four and a half years) and the music matches up to the scenery. On tour, we used to call it "driving music" -- "oh wow, that's great driving music." The big sky, desert, and mountain states are great for that -- Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Utah, and upon occasion even Nevada (which is the state where I usually make the most phone calls out of sheer boredom while driving through it).
Landscapes that remind me that the world is big and I am small always get me in the gut.
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Views ...
* Sunset on Killala Bay, Co. Mayo, with the cows walking across the bay to be milked.
* The really quiet spot at the top of Grouse Mountain, Vancouver, where you can look down on the city.
* Icebergs off Newfoundland.
* Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Just a person
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The view down Herschell Street to the welcoming Glow of the pub of the same name...
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Ottery
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You really do go places Orson
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Cath
Re: Views ...
Views....
... the inside of my eyelids ... just before dawn, the morning after a great house session.... can still hear the music... then it's back to sleep.
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by brianc
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The little island that appears in the bottom of the whisky bottle.
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by showaddydadito
Re: Views ...
You know what I really like seeing?
A session, packed with people of every age, colour, background, religion etc that are all getting along and having a good time and NOT plotting who to invade next.
I think that everyone should, just once in a while, step back from what ever they're doing and just LOOK.
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Folkie Junkie
Re: Views ...
Oh, and an ice-cream van.
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Folkie Junkie
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michael g walking into the session on a Tuesday night, then we know it's going to be a good 'un!!!
# Posted on January 28th 2005 by Fiddlemad
Re: Views ...
Not in any particlicur order of merit:
Sitting under a certain cafe pergola on a summer Sunday morning in Fiesole, Tuscany, looking down over the red-tiled roofs and domes of Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance.
Standing on the Cliffs of Moher on a calm sunny autumn evening looking out over the Aran Islands and the Atlantic
The luminous beauty of Julia Ormond in the film Smylla's Sense of Snow
Countless vistas of San Francisco and The Bay Area
The next pint viewed through the bottom of the empty glass of the one too many you've just had
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by An Goban Saor
Re: Views ...
When I visit Ireland I don't do any organized site seeing. I'm usually there in the off-season, so the weather is very dodgy most of the time. The only site seeing happens when we wake up and notice that it happens to be a sunny day -- and we all pile into the car for a drive. One time we were in Galway and it had snowed all day and night. Huge dollar size snowflakes were floating down and landing on Imer's massive red hair. (A beautiful bodhran player I met and sat next to at the Crane pub that evening.) The next day I woke up to find a beautiful sunny day with cream cheese like frosting on all the hedges and walls. We all piled into the car and headed for Connemara. Because it was late in the day we arrived at the Twelve Pins during a spectacular sunset. The golden colors of the sunset were reflected on the snow-capped peaks of the Twelve Pins. When we rounded the corner where Kylemore Abby is the combination of the sky, colorful snow-capped peaks, and the vibrant colors of the moss and grass actually made my eyes well up with tears.
We were very lucky the following day because it was a repeat of that day weather wise. We piled into the car again and headed out to Connemara once again. This time we headed for the coast of Galway Bay and found ourselves driving over small bridges hopping from island to island. When we reached the furthest point it was again a spectacular sunset and it reflected on the mirror-like surface of the Bay on a very calm day. The hills and shoreline around us were glowing with the delicious vibrant colors of the sunset on the various kinds of moss and grass. I got out my hanky of course.
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Phantom Button
Re: Views ...
Sitting at the Piper's Chair, Doolin looking across to the Aran Islands, The Twelve Pins and Galway Bay in one vista. Words couldn't even begin to...
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Leftheris
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- pretty much anywhere on Islay
- the hills and farmland south of Edinburgh, although it is now so badly spoiled by development, because almost every spot holds a memory of a nice ride or a hilarious horsey shenanigan of some kind
- the landscapes of my childhood in Colorado which I often see now in my dreams
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by kris
Re: Views ...
Sitting in the Dunlewy Lounge, sipping Guinness, warming toes by the fire and looking out onto the Poison Valley. Or coming around the corner, battling car sickness, and getting your first look at the Glens of Antrim.
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Jode
Or the look on your friends face after he has hiked from Miltown Malbay to land in The Field pub in Connemara, where he finds you sitting, having just arrived in a lovely warm car from base camp Westport.
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Jode
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I didn't realize you were from Colorado, Kris. Where in Colorado?
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by Zina Lee
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gee, Galway comes up trumps a few times, I live 5 miles from Kylemore abbey, 7 from the Letterfrack side of the Sky Road to Clifden, 10 from the beautiful Killary Habour, 6 from the Inishboffin Island , 2 minutes from Diamond mountain and Connemara National Park and 65 miles from a public Hospatial !
# Posted on December 21st 2004 by compaqjohn
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Lucky bastard.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Phantom Button
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What's a "hospatial"?
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Phantom Button
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The Canadian Rockies make me feel happy.
The Bombay/Mumbai slums make me want to cry.
Odd experience, seeing both within the same week.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by grego
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The shadow of the raven flying overhead and the sound of its call echoing from the cliffs across the pond.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by ʎɹoʇısuɐɹʇ
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Wandering back in.... I'm from the southeast corner, Zina. Small village (very small) called Manzanola, in the Arkansas Valley (somewhere between Pueblo and La Junta).
Thanks for asking.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by kris
Re: Views ...
I like watching the sun go down behind Mt Fuji here in Japan. This time of year its all covered with snow. And when the sun is out of sight, Fuji glows like a burning ember. Really beautiful.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Ani Trec-Noc
Re: Views ...
You don't need hostipals out there, compaqjohn. It's like what Robert Redford said about another spectacularly beautiful part of the planet: "Who needs therapy when you've got Utah". My screen saver is a Paul Henry painting of a Connemara landscape that I scanned in. It's a tonic to behold. The Canadian Rockies, Mt Fuji, Pueblo.... I need to take a year off.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by An Goban Saor
Re: Views ...
Kris, believe it or else, I think I know of someone from near there -- there was an art thing going on down there when I was on the Governor's Board for the Arts and the Humanities (this was in the 80's) and we got to give them a grant -- it was something to do with the Stations of the Cross or something, I can't quite remember. Beautiful country down there, really...
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: Views ...
I like the view out of the window of my little home office where my computer and instruments are, now that it's all snowy and frosty out there but I'm toasty in here.
My work office has a good view too, over the Dee, which has had ice floes floating down it the last two days, something I've not seen before. Strange grey/white tonal composition on the shortest darkest day of the year.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Bren
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Small world
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by kris
Re: Views ...
Don't get me started here. Apart from every Thursday at the Blythe to see the assembled troops, what can I say?
Maybe the view at dawn on Chimborazo in Ecuador at nearly 20,000 feet, when the red dawn sun made the snow turn pink. And the sky the most deepest azure blue imaginable. Those colours so intense even with snow glasses on, and not many other hues to invade this cold starkness. Shortly about then I got altitude sickness, aided by next to no sleep the night before (midnight starts on these big ice climbs) so maybe the hallucinations were just kicking in.
Another one was going up le "M", an m-shaped twin pair of peaks right next to Mt. Blanc, above Chamonix, France. We had gotten so far up when we had to retire because of an impending thunderstorm but also through complete exhaustion, to a shallow cave beneath a rock outcrop. Shortly thereafter the thunderstorm started for real, and we were witness to the most dramatic pyrotechnic display Mother Nature could offer. I'd heard the myth that Ice-axes hum during (or more like before) a thunderstorm, now I saw it for real. They do hum, and I believe, it's due to a build-up of static electricity. There was some sheet lightning swooshing down into the Chamonix valley, but mostly massive great forks, of several bifurcations which lit up the whole night sky...again, me being a wimp, I fell asleep through sheer exhaustion only a short while into this display...
The view from the top of Goat Fell on Arran. The view from the top of Ben Lomond or Beinn Mhor, or looking up at Staic Pollaidh, or nearly anywhere around north west Sutherland. Or the Maroon Bells in Colorado, or the Grand Canyon, or the Cuillins in Skye, or Kuranda near Cairns in Queensland, or the looking across into Arnhemland from Kakadu, just the smell of Northern Territories...or Venice, so unique, surreal and beautiful..Dubrovnik, Seville, Quito, Las Cajas, Rome, Kuala Lumpur, Granada, Lisbon, San Sebastian and so on.......or the moment I truly became addicted to Irish music, after really liking it......July 1982, Glenties/Ardara, Donegal, in a bashed up old student car with some mates of mine at the time, from Portaferry, Edinburgh and Rosslea. We'd had a pint or two of the black stuff from Dublin and a toke or two of the black stuff from Afghanistan, which had somehow managed to emigrate across the border in my backpack. The scenery was magical with leprechauns jumping into the bushes at every turn of the road. Yer man from Portaferry (the driver) had a fair collection of the music on the car tape machine..the Bothies, Paul Brady& Andy Irvine, Planxty and so on. It all just seemed so....right. I'd been playing the whistle for a couple of years before then but early the next year I went and got myself a flute and thereafter took things a bit more seriously.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Rudall the time
Re: Views ...
Jack, I don't now what a hospatial is but its wright across from the sccholol I used to to two.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by compaqjohn
Re: Views ...
Any view from the ascent, or the summit, of Yr Wyddfa.
Caernarfon castle, the estuary, and Ynis Mon from the top of the Twt Hill.
The strip of the Olympic Mountains you can see from the Aurora Bridge in Seattle, especially at sunrise when the new light is touching the tops of the peaks.
Grizzly Peak, here in the Rogue Valley, on a fine morning, from the southwest side.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by sara g
Re: Views ...
Ah ... Paul Henry.
Now, I've had some discussions with artist friends of mine who're aware of Henry's work and some of them are very scathing about his paintings. (That having been said, one of my acquaintances, who is quite well-regarded and who has no connection with Henry or the landsacpes/people that were his subject matter, holds Henry in the very highest regard!)
Maybe I'm not much of a judge of art, but I have to disagree with Henry's critics. I've spent a lot of time on Achill, Henry's chief muse, and he captures not just the physical, visble beauty of the place but also its "feel".
As far as I'm concerned, there's an underlying sadness in the Achill landscape/environment. That may be due to the fact that my dad died there when I was a little kid on holiday and thus the place is always going to have sad associations. But I think it extends deeper than that.
The beauty of some of the landscapes are so achingly beautiful. But unlike some parts of the world, the grandeur is on a human scale. There are no Grand Canyons; no Everests. The scale of the place is well within the bounds of comprehension; however the stark beauty remains a complete mystery.
At the heart of even the most frenetic Irish dance music I often perceive a deep vein of sadness. So, perhaps, even the most beautiful, picturesque scenery may contain elements which connect us with melancholy ...
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Aidan Crossey
Re: Views ...
I am a fierce collector of stunning landscapes, though I do not even have a camera. And be it Ireland, Scotland, Poland, Russia or anywhere else. In my job, I do a lot of driving around the country. I deliberately choose remote, small and winding roads, to find myself in the middle of nowhere. The real advantage of this country is that you can get all kinds of empty, hauntingly beautiful places just driving off the beaten track/highway.
The last time...
The last time was in the Gory Sowie (you could translate is as Owl Mountains) - really remote, God-and-human forgotten place, with about 1 tourist a season. Misdirected by some locals (as usual - you can always count on locals to misdirect you) I drove onto a mountain road which led me to one of the most beautiful spots ever seen. I got off the car and just looked at the snow and the mountains, and the horizon, for an hour or so. I'm desperately looking forward to getting another business trip in this area.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Janek
Re: Views ...
"Honesty, rawness, impish humour, stateliness, directness, timelessness, imperviousness, the impression that the essence refuses at times to reveal itself - it has to be found, ... etc."
Beautifully put, Aidan!
For me, it's the journey from Shrewsbury into Wales, where Shropshire ends and Montgomeryshire starts, as you pass the bracken-covered hill, Criggion. Any view of the Breidden hills from any distance or angle, is seared into my psyche like the tower mountain in 'Close Encounters'...
Anywhere at all that reminds me of the Mid-Wales hills, whether the Basque country or East Clare, brings a feeling of calm recognition and home, and a bit of a lump to the throat.
Can I add aural elements? The sound of curlew - indescribable. Even the sound of sheep at dusk. Sigh.
I suppose one day, when I leave East London, the sound of police sirens will take on a misty nostalgia. Do you think?
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Nell
Re: Views ...
Maybe there are so many police sirens going off because the inhabitants don't get a chance to see all the stuff we've been describing, I don't know. I forgot about the area near our caravan in Suffolk - Dunwich Heath and Minsmere. Not as grand as some of the vistas described above but remote raw and rural.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Rudall the time
Re: Views ...
Nell ...
I believe that Paul Simon had the same problem. Apparently one of his most famous songs started life as follows ...
Hello darkness my old friend
I'm drifitng off to sleep again
And just as my eyes are closing
As I'm on the verge of dozing
The screech goes tearing through my brain
And tonight again
I'm woken
By the sound of sirens
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Aidan Crossey
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Aidan, have you ever thought of writing for Mad Magazine?
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Cath
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Sorry ... I'm an obsessive parodier.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Aidan Crossey
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Haha, Aidan!
It's not just sirens, it's choppers as well. I was lying awake in the small hours last night as a police helicopter scoured the locality for some villains or other.
I wanted to record a bit of siren noise, and sneak it onto my recordings, for local colour. I thought I'd disguise it in with the pipes...
Didn't get round to it, though. Or did I?
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Nell
Re: Views ...
Another "landscape experience" has just asserted itself.
It was halfway through a long stint on the West Coast and the late nights and the music and the lack of routine ... very invigorating, normally ... began to take their toll.
A very kind and very beautiful member of the vague "company" that had formed that summer noticed that I was slowly becoming enveloped in a fog of melancholy and gloom and came to my rescue.
She marched me down to the beach; one of those many-mile-long west-facing storm beaches. There was moonlight; no stars. Pitch-black. I was seeing in black-and-white. A grey shore, tailing into black, looming cliffs. The tide was well-out and we stopped out near the sea's edge on the hard, wet sand.
She told me to keep looking out to sea and she'd fetch me in a while. I heard her troop off to the boulders and light a cigarette.
And then I became unaware of her as I stood there, looking out to sea. After a while the pounding of the surf, the roar of the wind and the smell of the Atlantic were all I was aware of. I can close my eyes and bring myself back there so easily. I don't think I've ever stood so still for so long and just experienced the vastness and power of the world.
Twenty minutes or more I must have stood there until herself came back and begun to explain ...
Nothing esoteric. She just wanted me to experience the fact that the world is vast and each individual is a mere blip. All of my concerns of the evening were about me, me, me. But if I'm so insignificant, why attach so much importance to my little worries?
Now, ninety nine times out of a hundred, I'd have laughed off such an event as a load of oul' whatever. But at that moment in time, given all of the circumstances, it worked like a dream (it felt like a dream, after all). I was very clear-headed; the weight of the world had lifted. ("The world can look after itself; you look after yourself.") Despite a feed of whiskey and porter, I felt as sober as a judge ...
It was a trite thing really, in the scheme of things. But it might it be one of the memories that stays with me to the grave!
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Aidan Crossey
Re: Views ...
Choppers ... don't talk to me about choppers ...!
My most hated sound in the world. Bad connotations if you grew up in Norn Irn.
But I've never been as pestered by helicopters so much as since I moved to South-East London. Surely the copter capital of the world.
I'm awaiting the "Apocalypse Now!" flyover of gunships any night now.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Aidan Crossey
Re: Views ...
I used to live on the 28th floor of a tower block in West London. We were once treated to the sight of a helicopter rising *up* towards our window from below, God knows what they were up to. Admiring the balcony plantings perhaps?
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Nell
Re: Views ...
"But of all the fine places that I've ever seen
There are none to compare with the Cliffs of Dooneen"
I would like to instigate a geographical debate for a change and this is a good a place as any to settle for once and for all the question as to where exactly these famous cliffs are. I believe they are somewhere north of Ballybunion in North Kerry and afford a vantage point from where you can look across the Shannon Estuary to Clare. I have frequented the area for a long time - the beautiful beach in Ballybunion was where we used always go when we were children - and I know people there, but even a very good friend of mine from North Kerry has not been able to enlighten me as to the precise location of the Cliffs of Dooneen. Can anybody shed some light on this matter?
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by An Goban Saor
Re: Views ...
I used to have a pal who could not start off playing the Cliffs of Dooneen without accidentally but inevitably ending up playing the Dark Island - or vice versa. So try Benbecula!
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by kris
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Aidan, the chopper capital of the world (civilian that is) is and has been Aberdeen for the last 25 years.
But choppers right over the town is bad - that usually means they are going to Forresterhill (the hospital), whether from an oil rig, a trawler, a standby boat, a mountain rescue, a traffic accident, or some medical emergency that the hospitals in Shetland or Orkney can't handle. The worst was the day of the Pipe Alpha explosion. A constant cacophony of choppers in a day that is burned into everyone's memory. 167 dead and God knows how many injured or traumatised.
There are pipe laments for that but I've never heard anyone attampt to play them at a session in Aberdeen, nor would I really want to.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Bren
Re: Views ...
Piper Alpha that is.
# Posted on December 22nd 2004 by Bren
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Hey Janek - I hear there are some stunning peaks right at the South end of Poland ...is that where your Gory Sowie mountains are?
# Posted on December 23rd 2004 by Rudall the time
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Sirens ... don't talk to me about sirens ... where would be be without them? Especially the siren song?
Rab - didnt know you were a climber
Just in from the Xmas session that dare not speak its name ... but then why we *don't* list sessions is a whole new thread
# Posted on December 23rd 2004 by Just a person
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Oh, and one more view: London seen from Waterloo Bridge ... this is a beautiful place, it's so easy to forget.
# Posted on December 23rd 2004 by Just a person
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Left Greenwich at sunrise this morning, nothing like a sunny sky in December, and the nicest station into London is Charing X - well done for reminding us of the great sights close to us Orson!!!
# Posted on December 23rd 2004 by Cath
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Danny,
It's very close to there. Gory Sowie as such are a small and obscure range and their major advantage is their remoteness, obscurity and wildness. Plenty of places to have for yourself. Really an experience.
# Posted on December 23rd 2004 by Janek
Re: Views ...
As all South of Poland is mountainous, and you get all types of mountains on the way, some people around here take a month's leave and go backpacking all along Polish southern border, to get all the mountainous (and cultural) caleidoscope.
# Posted on December 23rd 2004 by Janek
Re: Views ...
Orson - I used to do a fair bit, mostly on rock, but I'm not even a social climber these days (as you may have noticed). And yes, the view from Waterloo Bridge, especially at night, in any direction, is spectacular...or even Waterloo Sunset.
Janek - you should get a job with the Polish tourist board, you're making it sound very enticing!
# Posted on December 23rd 2004 by Rudall the time
Re: Views ...
The boyhood ones that impressed me most were in / near County Durham where I live, especially in the North Pennines to the west. The whole County slopes upward towards them, and the country west of the A68 seemed another world. It had its own climate: it was often startlingly white with snow at easter, when the lower lands were making grudging concessions to spring. It had at times a peculiarly vivid, glowing light of its own of great beauty. Climate change seems to have done away with both, though it has given the North-East a proper spring and summer that weren't there before (it was very often cold, grey and miserable).
The whole North Pennine area is tiny compared with the big country people describe in America or parts of Europe, but it's very big indeed if you find yourself in a blizzard up on a fell miles away from lower ground and shelter, weather that could be expected from November to April inclusive. (On the last weekend in May, 1973, I saw large patches of snow on the Pennines' highest hill, Cross Fell, that would have lasted into June.)
Views? The light I mention could shine on any moor or field or building and seem to utterly transform it: in the winter months it appeared too in the lower-lying parts of the North-East. I missed it in the Midlands and South.
(I saw all this as an angler / hill-walker / would-be painter, rather than as a player of any kind of music.
# Posted on September 16th 2006 by nicholas