/cloud school

Proviso

2011-10-18T18:34:00.001+08:00

My area of focus may be cautiously stated as independent ascetic arts research methodology with a strong infiltrative-cum-anthropological data acquisitional bias. My work is rigorously non-institutional aside from the fact that the varieties of South, Southeast and Far East Asian ascetic arts customs it investigates are deeply institutional of themselves. To the best of my knowledge, my findings

Independent Ascetic Arts Research

2011-09-04T20:45:00.019+08:00

I resent being drawn into affiliation with any ideology or dogma trend and the pressing concerns for ascendancy, contrived legitimacy and genealogical purity that typically attend such pointless enterprise. This largely explains why I train my sights on independent ascetic arts research. Compared to ideology, art is understood as a milieu accessible to abstract tendency—and there the "school" of

Hauschka - Morgenrot

2011-07-07T19:37:00.001+08:00

Hauschka - Morgenrot from Jeff Desom on Vimeo.

Evolution and the Birth of Yoga

2011-04-19T11:39:00.005+08:00

Lawrence Durrell somewhere wrote, "When early man stopped walking on his knuckles, yoga came into existence." He was using evolution as a metaphor, I think. But then, human evolution may itself be viewed as little more than a poetic metaphor. What (instrumentally) is the human being as a species? An earlier, perhaps related species was Homo erectus, "the man who stood up." But present man refers

Tohoku spring 2011

2011-03-19T16:24:00.003+08:00

hushed recitation in the grimy footfall in plaintive march with the vanishing spirits gliding through the gapes of an interfaciality elapsing in a crumbling facade and veneer of a series of obliterated Japanese townscapes.

The fetishism of human choice

2011-02-23T16:06:00.000+08:00

The fetishism of human choice is the methodological impasse of a paradox. This reaches no one further than the standard, the norm, which is more or less nowhere (new).

The Evolution Metaphor & the Origin of Yoga

2011-02-16T17:05:00.002+08:00

Yoga is presumed to be of Indian birth, but this is not altogether certain. It is, nonetheless, a very ancient practice. I prefer the idea that yoga was born precisely at the time that the human being was born... See Introduction, http://sritantra.co.uk/intro/intro.htm

Found Poem/ Santidhammo Bhikku

2011-02-12T16:41:00.007+08:00

Found Poem The time will come when they will sell you even the rain. The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities rain fills the woods rain on the roof steady drumming The talk of the rain all day long over the ridges the talk of the water courses speech pouring down selling nothing Festival of rain there are always a few people who are in the woods at night in the rain (because if there

Japanese skinship, food and communion with kami

2011-02-02T15:48:00.016+08:00

I have very strong dietary, emotional and other "skinship" (Japanese sukinshippu) bonds with Japanese culture. My mother died when I was still more or less a child. Afterwards I began to live with a Japanese American family in Diamond Bar, California. So my second mother was Japanese. That's where it started. Focusing on food, I suppose in ancient agrarian times the Japanese were essentially

Notes on the Era of Industrial Yoga

2011-01-20T16:40:00.008+08:00

1. American yoga is for me hardly more than an embarrassing ad in an industrial publication. 2. But even now in India everything has shifted to Industrial yoga's generic procedure where "the class", for example, has a life of its own and where teachers are interchangeable and students disposable commodities. 3. It's as if the industrialists had so deftly succeeded in strategically constructing

Review: Recipes for Immortality by Richard Weiss

2011-01-15T12:04:00.013+08:00

Recipes for Immortality (Medicine, Religion and Community in South India) by Richard S. Weiss / Oxford / 2009 Richard Weiss' Recipes for Immortality is certainly a demanding academic work, especially for those who have never gone in for a specific study of traditional Tamil Siddha medicine. However, those fairly strong in peripheral areas should follow the discourse without much trouble and

The smooth generic nightmare of contemporary yoga

2011-01-04T12:43:00.064+08:00

When I take a look around me I'm really quite startled by the radical stance that my teaching assumes in open opposition to industrial yoga's universally replicated procedural models. A careful deconstruction of contemporary yoga exposes the industry's cold pursuit of money and power. Industrial yoga is a powerful force that engineers perceptions and manipulates desires of yoga practitioners

A fragmentary note on yoga branding

2010-12-14T14:26:00.118+08:00

A fragmentary note on yoga branding, perception management, strategic communication, and the basis of style in industrial yoga It's considered now traditional in the contemporary context of modern postural yoga practice that the yoga teacher, school or centre marshal a gallery of brands and styles. However, why this is done is a question rarely probed. In the meantime there's a war going on

Paul Facchetti has passed away

2010-12-07T11:33:00.016+08:00

Paul Fachetti I was recently informed that photographer and gallery owner Paul Facchetti died on 27 November 2010. He was 98 years old. Facchetti was the consummate mid-20 to early-21st cen global art-historical patriarch. Paul was among Rene Laubiès' earliest supporters in the 50s in Paris and his Galerie Facchetti was the first to exhibit a selection of Laubiès' work under the banner of

Photo of Laubies

2010-10-19T15:08:00.007+08:00

Here is an image of colonial French painter Rene Laubies (ca 1917-2006) captured at Gallery Alain Margaron, Paris in 2000. See also http://www.galerieamargaron.com/index.php/news/26/60/Laubies-Rene/d,expoEnCours_detail.html

Nuagisme

2010-09-15T05:40:00.006+08:00

Nuagisme (literally "cloudism") is a French art-critical term that was advanced in the 1950s by art critic Julien Alvard (1916-1974). The term nuagisme initially designated the painters René Laubies, Frédéric Benrath, René Duvillier, Fernando Lerin and Nasser Assar whose work was seen as broadly comprising a modern naturalist non-representational abstract movement that remained aloof to

Pound's portrait

2010-06-28T14:52:00.007+08:00

Laubies' portrait [of Ezra Pound] only underscores what he told me personally (ca 1989) about visiting Pound at the facility for the criminally insane in the late 50's. He remarked that Pound – having been there for about ten years – was 'not at all affected by the environment. He got on well with a supervising official and all sorts of people were able to visit him.' He characterized Pound as 'a

"Song" by Mang Ke (1979)

2010-06-03T03:08:00.002+08:00

a dream maybe understand my mood a lyric of me eluded by you, ah... countless eyes 歌也许是梦猜透了我的心情才替我来抒情啊，那被你欺骗着的数不清的眼睛

Ezra Pound

2010-06-01T22:50:00.010+08:00

I do not remember ever having had any difficulties returning to visit Pound at St. Elisabeth's Asylum. I asked him whether the surroundings bothered him: "Not at all, these are the only acceptable Americans." It was a pleasant irony of fate at the time that he became both famous and celebrated. He had the Bollingen Prize and a Pound newsletter telling of his works being translated into 14

Laubies on Nuagiste procedure

2010-05-25T23:13:00.003+08:00

When a Chinese painter of the ancient high period began to paint, he first burned incense and gathered his thoughts in the calm of silence, concentrated his mind and meditated. He let life's annoyances slowly fade. His spirit free, he created space and communicated with the vital force that impels the universe. In harmony with Nature, it was She who guided his brush... This is how I meditate and

Laubies, Aphorism No. 9

2010-05-25T22:53:00.005+08:00

A painter who claims to paint what he wants is mistaken. The painting is imposed on us, changes its course, goes left and right, then suddenly stops. It knows when to stop. Aging painters lay it on more and more. Heavy toil does not restore grace. Chinese painters of the classical period knew when to stop. They accentuated accidents detected in nature. A poetic and musical work of art owes

Laubies, Aphorism No. 8

2010-05-25T22:00:00.002+08:00

Pre-war abstract and geometric painting (Mondrian, Kandinsky, Circle and Square, De Stilj) has no great diffusion. It's only after 1950 that abstract painting starts to be recognized, and at the same time attacked. It is lyrical abstraction, Tachiste, informele, Nuagiste that carries. And this is why I think that abstract art is still in its infancy. It should return to nature (which is abstract

Paul Facchetti

2010-05-25T15:58:00.003+08:00

The flair is unexplained, if not for that it would be too easy, and everyone would have some! When seeing a painting for the first time Facchetti senses what is new in it, what is personal, while the others all look at what can sell, at what it resembles. In the film that was recently dedicated to him, one sees Facchetti walking in his gallery. It's his garden: Sima, Pollock, Hundertwasser,

Jean Fautrier

2010-05-25T14:43:00.004+08:00

Passing through "la Vallée-aux-Loups", one arrived to Messagier's house. Fautrier had filled it with old furniture, dolls, Indian wall paper. Fautrier received sumptuously: glasses from Venice, old dishes and the ferocious machine-gunning of his contemporaries. Especially Dubuffet, César and others. There were always many writers and pretty women (at a given moment, a veritable harem: arriving

Bei Dao 北岛，"Zhu Zhu 朱朱"*

2010-05-04T14:54:00.019+08:00

I believe this story should walk each step on a steel wire hypothesis that you call the "Other" by chance. This genealogical gap I see between the "titled" stars and the "lowly" space they occupy may well be the spring to its understanding: this rebellious taking the "tradition" to pieces. (Bei Dao, 北岛, 1949- ) 我相信历史的每一步都走在偶然的钢丝上，而你所说的 "其他人" 也是对偶然的一种假设. 在我看来，"星星" 画会的成员 "贵族的" 家庭背景和他们的自身的 "卑贱的"