Showing posts with label bardic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bardic. Show all posts

Wednesday 16 August 2017

Courage

What's Wrong With Being Afraid..?

"EVERYTHING...!!!"

"FEAR is the Path to The Dark Side!"

FEAR leads to ANGER
ANGER  leads to HATE
HATE leads to SUFFERING...!!!"

NO! NO! NO!

FEAR  leads to COURAGE
ANGER  leads to RETRIBUTION
HATE  leads to FORGIVENESS

And Only Through SUFFERING
Will The World Be Redeemed.


MARTOK: 
7 battles and 7 victories. 
What Hero of Legend have done as well? 

WORF: 

Heroes of Legends don't ache so much. 


MARTOK: 
Your Federation friends have taught you modesty, but this is no time for modesty. 

When we return to the Klingon Empire, I will seek out Keedera himself and tell him of your glorious tale. 

He will write a song worthy of you. 

BASHIR: 
Well, be sure to send me a copy. 

MARTOK: 
I'll do better than that. 
I can make sure that he mentions you, The Healer who bound The Warrior's wounds, so he could fight again. 

WORF: 
Right now, the only part of the song that I wish to hear is the verse that tells of our escape. 
What good is defeating every Jem'Hadar soldier in this compound if it does not bring us closer to our freedom?

BASHIR: 
We have to come up with a new escape plan. 

GARAK: 
That won't be necessary. The original one will work. 

I just have to finish what I started. 

After all, a verse about the Cardassian who panicked in the face of danger would ruin General Martok's song. 

MARTOK: 
And would be unfortunate. 

GARAK: 
Now, if you'll excuse me, my dungeon awaits. 

MARTOK: 
There is no greater enemy than one's own fears. 

WORF: 
It takes a brave Man to face them.

Sunday 26 February 2017

Upon This Rock : Take U Back

The Bardic Tradition of Magick

There are three orders against whom no weapon can be bared—
  • the herald, 
  • the bard, 
  • the head of a clan.
There are three sons of captives who free themselves,—
  • a bard, 
  • a scholar, 
  • a mechanic.

There are three orders who are exempt from bearing arms,—
  • the bard
  • the judge,
  • the graduate in law or religion.

“Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if you'd pissed off some witch, then what's she gonna do, she's gonna put a curse on you, and what's gonna happen? Your hens are gonna lay funny, your milk's gonna go sour, maybe one of your kids is gonna get a hare-lip or something like that — no big deal. 

You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skilful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous,lamepatheticworthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing, at what a twat you were.”


― Alan Moore

Take U Back,
Do Do Do Do

Well, I been told by, 
some people and they all,
say to take U back, 
take you back like a bore. 

I don't call that a reason, 

I just call it believin' in my self.
Do Do Do Do
Even in my self.
Do Do Do Do
I don't call that a reason, 


I just call it believin' in my self.
Do Do Do Do
Even in myself, 
Do Do Do Do
in my self.....



Wednesday 28 December 2016

The Storyteller


"The Bardic tradition of magic would place a Bard as being much higher and more fearsome than a Magician.  

A Magician might curse you.  

That might make your hands lay funny or you might have a child born with a club foot.  


If a Bard were to place not a curse upon you, but a satire, then that could DESTROY YOU.

If it was a clever satire, it might not just destroy you in the eyes of your associates; it would destroy you in the eyes of your family. 

It would destroy you in your own eyes.  
Print of Kean playing Richard III, from a mid 19th century performance of the play.

And if it was a finely worded and clever satire that might survive and be remembered for decades, even centuries. 

 Then,years after you were dead people still might be reading it and laughing at you and your wretchedness and your absurdity."

- Alan Moore





GEORGE LUCAS: 
You know, the psychology of developing fantasies is a very interesting and delicate thing. 

I’ve come across people that have no imaginations at all, and it’s a very interesting… .

BILL MOYERS: 
They become journalists.

GEORGE LUCAS: 
Well, it’s — it’s — it — 

I was shocked the first time I came across it.

And — because I just assumed everybody had an imagination.

And when you — you confront somebody who doesn’t, especially a child, it’s a very interesting and profound thing to me. 

It — an imagination is a — is a trait, you know. 

It’s like anything else. It’s a — it’s a — it’s a talent, or it’s an ability you have to cope.

 Like dreaming.


Friday 25 November 2016

Satyr and Ridicule

"The most potent weapons known to Mankind are Satire and Ridicule."

Saul Alinsky

Very oftentimes, the most powerful and feared member of the Royal Court was the Jester - since he was often the only man sufficiently intelligent enough to seek to play The Fool.

You will notice, if you watch Hamlet, one of the main sources of all the trouble and discord in the Royal Household of Denmark is that the jester has been dead for 20 years.




Francis Bacon relates in his Apothegms New and Old (1625) that 

‘Pace the bitter Fool was not suffered to come at the Queen because of his bitter humour. Yet at one time some persuaded the Queen that he should come to her; undertaking for him that he should keep compass. 

So he was brought to her, and the Queen said: 

“Come on, Pace; now we shall hear of our faults.” 

Saith Pace: 
I do not use to talk of that that all the town talks of.”’

" Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are Satire and Ridicule.

A sense of humor enables him to maintain his perspective and see himself for what he really is: a bit of dust that burns for a fleeting second. 

A sense of humor is incompatible with the complete acceptance of any dogma, any religious, political, or economic prescription for salvation. 

It synthesizes with curiosity, irreverence, and imagination. "




In all of magick there is an incredibly large linguistic component.  

The Bardic tradition of magic would place a bard as being much higher and more fearsome than a Magician.  

A Magician might Curse you.  That might make your hands lay funny or you might have a child born with a club foot.  

If a Bard were to place not a curse upon you, but a Satire, then that could destroy you.  



If it was a clever Satire, it might not just destroy you in the eyes of your associates; it would destroy you in the eyes of your family.  It would destroy you in your own eyes.  

And if it was a finely worded and clever Satire, that might survive and be remembered for decades, even centuries. 


Then, years after you were dead people still might be reading it and laughing at you, and your wretchedness, and your absurdity.  "




" Here is the list of the ideal elements of an organizer - the items one looks for in identifying potential organizers and in appraising the future possibilities of new organizers, and the pivot points of any kind of educational curricula for organizers. Certainly it is an idealized list - I doubt that such qualities, in such intensity, ever come together in one man or woman; yet the best of organizers should have them all, to a strong extent, and any organizer needs at least a degree of each.

Curiosity
What makes an organizer organize? He is driven by a compulsive curiosity that knows no limits. Warning clichés such as "curiosity killed a cat" are meaningless to him, for life is for him a search for a pattern, for similarities in seeming differences, for differences in seeming similarities, for an order in the chaos about us, for a meaning to the life around him and its relationship to his own life - and the search never ends. He goes forth with the question as his mark, and suspects that there are no answers, only further questions. The organizer becomes a carrier of the contagion of curiosity, for a people asking "why" are beginning to rebel. The questioning of the hitherto accepted ways and values is the reformation stage that precedes and is so essential to the revolution.



Here, I couldn't disagree more with Freud. In a letter to Marie Bonaparte, he said, "The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick." If there is, somewhere, an answer about life, I suspect that the key to it is finding the core question. Actually, Socrates was an organizer. The function of an organizer is to raise questions that agitate, that break through the accepted pattern. Socrates, with his goal of "know thyself," was raising the internal questions within the individual that are so essential for the revolution which is external to the individual. So Socrates was carrying out the first stage of making revolutionaries. If he had been permitted to continue raising questions about the meaning of life, to examine life and refuse the conventional values, the internal revolution would soon have moved out into the political arena. Those who tried him and sentenced him to death knew what they were doing.

Irreverence
Curiosity and Irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. 

Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is this the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner nothing is sacred. 

He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search for ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest. As with all life, this is a paradox, for his irreverence is rooted in a deep reverence for the enigma of life, and an incessant search for its meaning. It could be argued that reverence for others, for their freedom from injustice, poverty, ignorance, exploitation, discrimination, disease, war, hate, and fear, is not a necessary quality in a successful organizer. 

All I can say is that such reverence is a quality I would have to see in anyone I would undertake to teach.

Imagination
Imagination is the inevitable partner of irreverence and curiosity. How can one be curious without being imaginative? According to Webster's Unabridged, imagination is the "mental synthesis of new ideas from elements experienced separately. . . The broader meaning. . . starts with the notion of mental imaging of things suggested but not previously experienced, and thence expands. . . to the idea of mental creation and poetic idealization [creative imagination] ..." To the organizer, imagination is not only all this but something deeper. It is the dynamism that starts and sustains him in his whole life of action as an organizer. It ignites and feeds the force that drives him to organize for change.

There was a time when I believed that the basic quality that an organizer needed was a deep sense of anger against injustice and that this was the prime motivation that kept him going. I now know that it is something else: this abnormal imagination that sweeps him into a close identification with mankind and projects him into its plight. He suffers with them and becomes angry at the injustice and begins to organize the rebellion. Clarence Darrow put it on more of a self-interest basis: "I had a vivid imagination. Not only could I put myself in the other person's place, but I could not avoid doing so. My sympathies always went out to the weak, the suffering, and the poor. Realizing their sorrows I tried to relieve them in order that I myself might be relieved."

Imagination is not only the fuel for the force that keeps organizers organizing, it is also the basis for effective tactics and action. The organizer knows that the real action is in the reaction of the opposition. To realistically appraise and anticipate the probable reactions of the enemy, he must be able to identify with them, too, in his imagination, and foresee their reactions to his actions.

A sense of humor 
Back to Webster's Unabridged: humor is defined as "The mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating ludicrous or absurdly incongruous  elements in ideas, situations, happenings, or acts. . ." or "A changing and uncertain state of mind..." The organizer, searching with a free and open mind void of certainty, hating dogma, finds laughter not just a way to maintain his sanity but also a key to understanding life. Essentially, life is a tragedy; and the converse of tragedy is comedy. One can change a few lines in any Greek tragedy and it becomes a comedy, and vice versa. Knowing that contradictions are the signposts of progress he is ever on the alert for contradictions. A sense of humor helps him identify and make sense out of them. Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.

A sense of humor enables him to maintain his perspective and see himself for what he really is: a bit of dust that burns for a fleeting second. A sense of humor is incompatible with the complete acceptance of any dogma, any religious, political, or economic prescription for salvation. It synthesizes with curiosity, irreverence, and imagination. The organizer has a personal identity of his own that cannot be lost by absorption or acceptance of any kind of group discipline or organization. I now begin to understand what I stated somewhat intuitively in Reveille for Radicals almost twenty years ago, that "the organizer in order to be part of all can be part of none.

A bit of a blurred vision of a better world
Much of an organizer's daily work is detail, repetitive and deadly in its monotony. In the totality of things he is engaged in one small bit. It is as though as an artist he is painting a tiny leaf. It is inevitable that sooner or later he will react with "What am I doing spending my whole life just painting one little leaf? The hell with it, I quit." What keeps him going is a blurred vision of a great mural where other artists – organizers - are painting their bits, and each piece is essential to the total.

An organized personality
The organizer must be well organized himself so he can be comfortable in a disorganized situation, rational in a sea of irrationalities. It is vital that he be able to accept and work with irrationalities for the purpose of change. With very rare exceptions, the right things are done for the wrong reasons. It is futile to demand that men do the right thing for the right reason - this is a fight with a windmill. The organizer should know and accept that the right reason is only introduced as a moral rationalization after the right end has been achieved, although it may have been achieved for the wrong reason - therefore he should search for and use the wrong reasons to achieve the right goals. He should be able, with skill and calculation, to use irrationality in his attempts to progress toward a rational world.
For a variety of reasons the organizer must develop multiple issues.

Not only does a single- or even a dual-issue organization condemn you to a small organization, it is axiomatic that a single-issue organization won't last. An organization needs action as an individual needs oxygen. With only one or two issues there will certainly be a lapse of action, and then comes death. Multiple issues mean constant action and life.

An organizer must become sensitive to everything that is happening around him. He is always learning, and every incident teaches him something. He notices that when a bus has only a few empty seats, the crowd trying to get on will push and shove; if there are many empty seats the crowd will be courteous and considerate; and he muses that in a world of opportunities for all there would be a change in human behavior for the good. In his constant examination of life and of himself he finds himself becoming more and more of an organized personality.


A well-integrated political schizoid 
The organizer must become schizoid, politically, in order not to slip into becoming a true believer. Before men can act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced that their cause is 100 per cent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 per cent on the side of the devil. He knows that there can be no action until issues are polarized to this degree. I have already discussed an example in the Declaration of Independence - the Bill of Particulars that conspicuously omitted all the advantages the colonies had gained from the British and cited only the disadvantages.

What I am saying is that the organizer must be able to split himself into two parts - one part in the arena of action where he polarizes the issue to 100 to nothing, and helps to lead his forces into conflict, while the other part knows that when the time comes for negotiations that it really is only a 10 per cent difference - and yet both parts have to live comfortably with each other. Only a well-organized person can split and yet stay together. But this is what the organizer must do.

Ego 
Throughout these desired qualities is interwoven a strong ego, one we might describe as monumental in terms of solidity. Here we are using the word ego as discussed in the previous chapter, clearly differentiated from egotism. Ego is unreserved confidence in one's ability to do what he believes must be done. An organizer must accept, without fear or worry, that the odds are always against him. Having this kind of ego, he is a doer and does. The thought of copping out never stays with him for more than a fleeting moment; life is action.

A free and open mind, and political relativity
The organizer in his way of life, with his curiosity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, distrust of dogma, his self-organization, his understanding of the irrationality of much of human behavior, becomes a flexible personality, not a rigid structure that breaks when something unexpected happens. Having his own identity, he has no need for the security of an ideology or a panacea. He knows that life is a quest for uncertainty; that the only certain fact of life is uncertainty; and he can live with it. He knows that all values are relative, in a world of political relativity. Because of these qualities he is unlikely to disintegrate into cynicism and disillusionment, for he does not depend on illusion.

Finally, the organizer is constantly creating the new out of the old. He knows that all new ideas arise from conflict; that every time man has had a new idea it has been a challenge to the sacred ideas of the past and the present and inevitably a conflict has raged. Curiosity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, a free and open mind, an acceptance of the relativity of values and of the uncertainty of life, all inevitably fuse into the kind of person whose greatest joy is creation. He conceives of creation as the very essence of the meaning of life. In his constant striving for the new, he finds that he cannot endure what is repetitive and unchanging. For him hell would be doing the same thing over and over again.
This is the basic difference between the leader and the organizer. The leader goes on to build power to fulfill his desires, to hold and wield the power for purposes both social and personal. He wants power himself. The organizer finds his goal in creation of power for others to use. These qualities are present in any free, creative person, whether an educator, or in the arts, or in any part of life.

Communication
One can lack any of the qualities of an organizer - with one exception - and still be effective and successful. That exception is the art of communication. It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event you are not even a failure. You're just not there.

Communication with others takes place when they understand what you're trying to get across to them. If they don't understand, then you are not communicating regardless of words, pictures, or anything else. People only understand things in terms of their experience, which means that you must get within their experience. Further, communication is a two-way process. If you try to get your ideas across to others without paying attention to what they have to say to you, you can forget about the whole thing.

Friday 15 July 2016

The Bardic Tradition of Ghostbusters : The Ballad Of Ray, Egon and Pete





"Gonna tell you a story
About a little town I know.

They had a real big problem
With some big mean local ghost.

Those spooks were making
The whole city lose control

Well, the Mayor was frantic
The town was panicked
Cause they had no sense of fear
Cause they knew they were missing
Those boys with a mission
So they called them up right chere

They were boxing and trapping
And shooting through the joint
Stepped right in and
Got down 2 the point
Those Ghostbusters came in
Cleaning up the town

Oh, yeah

About five o'clock, those boys came up
And they could see those spooks were real
And they knew they'd better get right to work
So they revved up the Ectomobile

Yeah, the boys were ready
Their aim was steady and
Their hearts were made of steel

Well, the Mayor, he started ranting around
And the whole town started to roar
And they're seeing this town that rocked
Those slimers dropped down 2 the floor


They were boxing and trapping
And shooting through the joint
Stepped right in and
Got down to the point
You shoulda seen those
Spectres in the trap saying
Those boys, make 'em dance

Well, New York
New York's so happy now
They rocked that building, boy
But if the boys hadn't come to the rescue
The spooks might still be making noise"

They were boxing and trapping
And shooting through the joint
Stepped right in and
Got down to the point
Those Ghostbusters came in
Cleaning up the town



"Who're you callin' 'Spook', Peckerwood..?"

"Run Home to Yo' Mamma, Boy..!!"



"2 hot 2 handle, 2 cold 2 hold

They're called the Ghost busters and they're in control
Had 'em throwin' a party 4 a bunch of children
While all of the while the slime was under the building

So they packed up their group, got a grip, came equipped
Grabbed they Proton packs off their back and they split
Found about Vigo, the master of evil
Try 2 battle my boys? 

That's not legal!"



Tuesday 12 July 2016

Tiger Feet

....but what else is there..?

"Is that all there is?
Is that all there is...?

Is that all there is...?! ?!"

Fergie, 
Shut Up (Black Eyed Peas)
2006



O, That's Nice...

GAMES4MAY

The Greatest Hits.

NEVER buy the Greatest Hits.

Except just this one time, it's okay.


"The Bardic tradition of magic would place a bard as being much higher and more fearsome than a magician.  

A magician might curse you.  
That might make your hands lay funny or you might have a child born with a club foot.  

If a Bard were to place not a curse upon you, but a satire, then that could destroy you.  

If it was a clever satire, it might not just destroy you in the eyes of your associates; 
it would destroy you in the eyes of your family.  
It would destroy you in your own eyes.  
And if it was a finely worded and clever satire that might survive and be remembered for decades, even centuries. 

 Then, years after you were dead people still might be reading it and laughing at you, and your wretchedness, and your absurdity.

The Sage of Northampton

I will pay to see that...


Teresa May was born on December 15, 1966 in Surrey, England as Teresa Betteridge. She is an actress, known for Nude & Naughty(1998), Petticoat Passions Vol. 1 (2001) and Lesbian Student Nurses (2000).


Performed under the name Ella for her glamour videos for the Fiona Cooper company (#283, #286, #287, #288, 289, #361, #363, #400, #431, #433, & 3864).


Star Sign
Sagittarius

Personal Details

Born
Teresa Betteridge
December 15, 1966 
Surrey, England, UK

Height: 5' 3" (1.6 m)