The English Way To Fight

Next week: the Scots Way to Fight featuring Master Begbie!

Bildung

"Eine Ausbildung durchlaufen wir mit dem Ziel, etwas zu können. Wenn wir uns dagegen bilden, arbeiten wir daran, etwas zu werden - wir streben danach, auf eine bestimmte Art und Weise in der Welt zu sein."

"Der Gebildete ist ein Leser. Doch es reicht nicht, ein Bücherwurm und Vielwisser zu sein. Es gibt - so paradox es klingt - den ungebildeten Gelehrten. Der Unterschied: Der Gebildete weiss Bücher so zu lesen, dass sie ihn verändern.[....]
Das ist ein untrügliches Kennzeichen von Bildung: dass einer Wissen nicht als blosse Ansammlung von Information, als vergnüglichen Zeitvertreib oder gesellschaftliches Dekor betrachtet, sondern als etwas, das innere Veränderung und Erweiterung bedeuten kann, die handlungswirksam wird. Das gilt nicht nur, wenn es um moralisch bedeutsame Dinge geht. Der Gebildete wird auch durch Poesie ein anderer. Das unterscheidet ihn vom Bildungsbürger und Bildungsspiesser."
http://www.hwr-berlin.de/fileadmin/downloads_internet/publikationen/Birie_Gebildet_sein.pdf

Siehe in diesem Zusammenhang z.B. auch hier:

http://vimeo.com/11547370

http://vimeo.com/55928150

Young Academic

Mr. Schleberger, author of a very practical book on Hindu iconography

The taxonomy of mudras and godforms (postures) within this work is not only very revealing from a cultural-historical viewpoint but also applicable to the mystic: merely try to focus some 'qi' or mental or emotional energies in any given situation of your life through these channels and see what they will effect for yourself! It is great fun indeed. There is also an equally recommendable corresponding work on Buddhist iconography to be found here.

Ovidius (Metamorphoses)

If human beings suffer, they are incited to change whereby the catalyst of such change are often superior (meta-human) agents called the gods.

Beim Heurigen

Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu (銀河英雄伝説)

I have rediscovered this anime from my student-days recently. If you have about 90+ hours time, enjoy alternate history, fantasy and a good story then definitley check it out!

Start here

Then continue here

And then go through seasons 1-4. Have fun!

Tattersall-Check

Art-History!

The crazy discipline of art-history is a multi-refractive sort of humanistic speculation on the highest cognitive and aesthetic level; it is also quite useless like poetry culture and life so naturally I am infatuated with it. Here are some interesting books and worthy authors for your most esteemed consideration:

e.g. Sedlmayr, Belting, Warburg, Wölfflin, Alpers, Didi-Huberman, Panofsky etc.

Good, New Perfume

The combination of new and good sounds like an oxymoronic expression but from the range of more recent perfumes- not considering such all-time favourites and classics like Penhaligon's BB, Creed's Green Irish Tweed or Knize 10- this is one of the better ones! (not better than e.g. Acqua di Parma, but still quite good...)

Italian Style

 Source

Summer Drink

Large glass of chilled mugicha: roasted barley tea directly imported from Japan,

double shot (or more?) of goodish whiskey -e.g. Tullamore Dew- within

+ 3-4 large ice cubes from virgin spring water.

Most natural and harmonious!

Hilfiger

Recently I went to the new Hilfiger store in Vienna on a Saturday. I wore very old fucked up clothes: a 20 year old washed-out red polo shirt by RL, some tailored navy corduroy trousers and old dark brown suede moccasins from Timberland, some too stodgy and already unfashionable auburn-coloured Ray Bans.

 Until a short time ago I had thought not too favourably of TH but both the new line and the nearly impeccable behaviour and manners of the employees at the shop have changed my mind. I finally bought some bordeaux red Weejun loafers and while I waited, some nice assistant not only offered me a drink but the friendly vendeuse-upon returning with yet another item to show me- also shoo-ed off the persistent society-photographer who wanted to take pictures of me (they had some re-opening celebration at that day with several models and I obviously fit 'in'). I'm extremely shy and dislike any such public stuff and would I have known, I'd never have come there, but as I said: the girl who sold me those shoes was highly professional which unfortuantely is a rare phenomenon nowadays. Good company, there.

 

"The Willing Suspension of Disbelief"?

As anyone who enjoys fictions knows, it is only too easy to immerse oneself in alternate worlds. The difficulty is not to suspend disbelief in them but contrarily consists in not completely losing ones belief in so-called reality. Because there is always something alluringly true about the reality of illusion that makes us want to become irreconcilable to that which is real.

There is danger in this way of thinking, yet this ability of multi-refractive reflection is the greatest chance of our self-initiated evolution.

American -Political And Social- Activism

Imagine this scenario: there is this superpower whose armies march across the earth, its aircraftcarriers, planes, drones, spies are everywhere, it converts and infiltrates other cultures with its ideas, ideals and memes and as a peak to that all there is that (partly staged) little self-righteous activism it allows itself- marginal, nearly pointless on a global scale but yet another piece of the propagandistic puzzle whose expanding 'truth' its participants can tap while they believe themselves to be rebellious and alternative.

Viewed from the outside it's quite ridiculous.

Eternity

Every instant can be an eternity because eternity does not belong to the order of time but to the order of intensity.

The Field

It Needn't Be New...

An Aristocratic Enfilade from Portugal

Incipit Tragoedia:

'About the same time, there came to London a young gentleman of the name of Aubrey: he was an orphan left with an only sister in the possession of great wealth, by parents who died while he was yet in childhood. Left also to himself by guardians, who thought it their duty merely to take care of his fortune, while they relinquished the more important charge of his mind to the care of mercenary subalterns, he cultivated more his imagination than his judgment.

 He had, hence, that high romantic feeling of honour and candour, which daily ruins so many milliners' apprentices. He believed all to sympathise with virtue, and thought that vice was thrown in by Providence merely for the picturesque effect of the scene, as we see in romances: he thought that the misery of a cottage merely consisted in the vesting of clothes, which were as warm, but which were better adapted to the painter's eye by their irregular folds and various coloured patches. He thought, in fine, that the dreams of poets were the realities of life.

 He was handsome, frank, and rich: for these reasons, upon his entering into the gay circles, many mothers surrounded him, striving which should describe with least truth their languishing or romping favourites: the daughters at the same time, by their brightening countenances when he approached, and by their sparkling eyes, when he opened his lips, soon led him into false notions of his talents and his merit.[...]' (John Polidori: The Vampyre)

A Tragic Demiurge: Modern Man and His Artificial Worlds

The plan of escape from the world is the blueprint to a future fortress that only can be recognized as yet another prison when one is forced to live in it.

Knowledge Can Be Dangerous?

...or was that ignorance?
 (Nietzsche, for example, favoured former theory).

A Comprehensive History of German Opera:

Fidelio and Wagner.

Intermediate Whisky Studies: Mothballed and Closed Distilleries (Malt Mill, Brora, Rosebank)

According to a recent youtube video, Malt Mill, even more so than Brora, is somewhat the Holy Grail of obscure whiskies. The few bottles that are left seem to be safely locked away but parts of the output can still be found in the White Horse blend up to the 1970s:

Malt Mill Distillery, Established 1908

When Sir Peter Mackie lost his bitter legal dispute to retain the sales agency for Laphroaig whisky in 1907 he reacted in characteristic style by deciding to make his own "Laphroaig" type whisky, and in 1908 built a traditional small pot-still distillery within the Lagavulin complex. Despite hiring staff from Laphroaig and attempting to copy the Laphroaig recipe, it did not succeed, perhaps because it used a different water source. Malt Mill tried to replicate a traditional style of Islay Whisky, using only peat-dried malt, and it is reputed to have had heather added to the mash. It was always a small scale operation producing 25,000 gallons of proof spirit (113,500 litres) in its first year, compared with 128,000 gallons (581,120 litres) at Lagavulin. What is perhaps surprising is that it survived until 1962 when it was merged with Lagavulin and its coal-fired stills moved to the latter's still house for another seven years use. The Malt Mill distillery building is now the reception centre within the Lagavulin Distillery site.

http://www.islayinfo.com/lostdistilleries.html

.

I recently started my own more humble adventures into closed-distillery-land with a 1991 G&M bottling of a Rosebank; a Lowlander that I bought at a fair price and that the late Michael Jackson- the whisky-connaisseur- described as ‘a floral, light whisky for lovers and poets’, and me, being an enthusiastic dilettante and poseur of those arts, had to get it in order to test its magico-projective qualities. I’ll try it at some more or less special occasion later in the year since it doesn’t seem to fit the winter season.

Die unmutige Epigonenkunst des 20. Jahrhunderts:

Da sich die moderne Kunst nicht eingestehen konnte in einer historischen Tradition zu stehen, aber trotzdem nicht auf die Geschichte als Inspirationsquelle verzichten wollte, zitierte sie diese nur und beraubte sich somit ihrer Tiefe. Die Skizze als Anfang ist profund (da sie das vollendete, klassische Werk und dahinter das Presque-rien einer metaphysischen Unendlichkeit erahnen lässt), wenn sie sich jedoch zur Weltdeutung aufbläht, begründet sie eine Tyrannei des Makels.

The Ability to Judge and the Agony of Choice: A Decidedly *Parisian* Dilemma

A Present For a Girl

Girls love bottles like these or the ones from Perrier-Jouët ...look at those hearts in the top-middle of the label! I have no idea how this tastes, though...

Long Live the Countryside!

Atheismus

Leute, die ihren eigenen Atheismus thematisieren sind (in diesem Punkt) Idioten, da man entweder glaubt oder nicht: da gibt es nichts zu argumentieren.