Whale hunting and breastfeeding while wearing ancient Greece-style tunics
I just e-mailed my article, the article that took over all my not-in-the-office time and stopped me sleeping, to my editor. I have that wonderful feeling of lightness, of the thing that's been constantly in your mind for ages (well, 4 days) suddenly being gone.
My fellow ex-anthropologists will be amused to learn that the article was on an exhibition of art by indigenous people living in the polar regions of Canada and Russia. That's right, those same people we learned about who believe that a whale will give itself up to be eaten if the people in the village are kind to each other. And that same subject (the anthropology of art) that Michael, Ally and I were lectured on every week in our third year. I managed to get in most of the issues, and I think Ami Henare at the Haddon Museum would be proud - I mentioned the New York "Primitivism" exhibiton in despairing tones, and said that this art showed us art "could also be the process as well as the finished product"...
I'm also working on an article on a social group for breastfeeding mums, apparently the largest of its kind in the world. It's called the "Mommy Milk Meetup" - while interviewing its founder last week, her husband suddenly came in with their baby daughter and said, "I think Emma's hungry now..." The mum was very cool about it however - "Don't worry, I'm a stealth breastfeeder," she said. Although when I turned up at one of the meetings on Tuesday with a photographer, the rest of the mums weren't so comfortable, and breasts were conspicuous by their absence.
A third article, which I still haven't written after weeks and weeks, is on a dance group who wear Greek tunics and improvise. The head of the group is a psychologist at Moscow State University, and it turns out that while dancing, the dancers are actually undergoing therapy, at least very gently. It's based on ancient Greek ideas of the harmonic person, which, I think, mean that by unblocking blockages in the body and releasing a person from a self-consciousness of the body, the mind will be similarly free and relaxed.
They're also trained to improvise, if that's not too paradoxical. "It took me six years to learn how to walk," said one of the members. They're taught to listen attentively to music, and to express what they hear in musical movement. They then improvise dances based on this ability. The strange thing is, sometimes this means that the dancers respond in precisely the same way to the music, even if they're not looking at each other. "It looks organized because we are inside the music together," shouted the exuberant, beaming dance director over the music. "We hear the same thing, we react the same way."
The weather here is so much better. It's currently -5 and snowing, but still - you don't have to wear a scarf! Or a hat! The slush is awful though, ankle-deep and hiding under seemingly stable pieces of ice.
After its snowed here, you find that you're not walking through for it long. From nowhere, an army of men with huge shovels appear and clear all the pavements.
My fellow ex-anthropologists will be amused to learn that the article was on an exhibition of art by indigenous people living in the polar regions of Canada and Russia. That's right, those same people we learned about who believe that a whale will give itself up to be eaten if the people in the village are kind to each other. And that same subject (the anthropology of art) that Michael, Ally and I were lectured on every week in our third year. I managed to get in most of the issues, and I think Ami Henare at the Haddon Museum would be proud - I mentioned the New York "Primitivism" exhibiton in despairing tones, and said that this art showed us art "could also be the process as well as the finished product"...
I'm also working on an article on a social group for breastfeeding mums, apparently the largest of its kind in the world. It's called the "Mommy Milk Meetup" - while interviewing its founder last week, her husband suddenly came in with their baby daughter and said, "I think Emma's hungry now..." The mum was very cool about it however - "Don't worry, I'm a stealth breastfeeder," she said. Although when I turned up at one of the meetings on Tuesday with a photographer, the rest of the mums weren't so comfortable, and breasts were conspicuous by their absence.
A third article, which I still haven't written after weeks and weeks, is on a dance group who wear Greek tunics and improvise. The head of the group is a psychologist at Moscow State University, and it turns out that while dancing, the dancers are actually undergoing therapy, at least very gently. It's based on ancient Greek ideas of the harmonic person, which, I think, mean that by unblocking blockages in the body and releasing a person from a self-consciousness of the body, the mind will be similarly free and relaxed.
They're also trained to improvise, if that's not too paradoxical. "It took me six years to learn how to walk," said one of the members. They're taught to listen attentively to music, and to express what they hear in musical movement. They then improvise dances based on this ability. The strange thing is, sometimes this means that the dancers respond in precisely the same way to the music, even if they're not looking at each other. "It looks organized because we are inside the music together," shouted the exuberant, beaming dance director over the music. "We hear the same thing, we react the same way."
The weather here is so much better. It's currently -5 and snowing, but still - you don't have to wear a scarf! Or a hat! The slush is awful though, ankle-deep and hiding under seemingly stable pieces of ice.
After its snowed here, you find that you're not walking through for it long. From nowhere, an army of men with huge shovels appear and clear all the pavements.
posted by alimoscow at 11:55 AM
1 Comments:
That art article sounds so amazing... and years in the preparation, not just four days!
Check you, check you out.
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