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There Will Always Be An England
Jan. 8th, 2011 09:01 amStill Points, Turning Worlds about daydreaming, silence and people who practice it. One of the great artistic achievements, quietly and practically achieved without bullshit, is this style of aural pastiche by the BBC.
It has a yoga teacher just counting and speaking to his class in a rich, baritone, commoner accent, the fluting voice of Canon Lucy from some venerable London cathedral who went off to Wales to practice Loyola's precepts in silence for a month, the rock composer, Kieran McFeely, who moved from the city to the country and whose avant-garde music changed profoundly (nice bite of his country opus, "Serotonin" (!)) and then just standing in the silence and listening to the far off train whistle passing. There's the headmaster who says that attention deficit disorder is universal among his charges, and who on Monday mornings expends an enormous amount of directed quiet time getting his kids unplugged, and into their own energy, which they need for both study and sports. This, he says, is dissipated every weekend; aurally he's standing by the Thames and listening to birdsong.
NPR is just so poseur and lugubrious and mush-mouthed -- I remember one 80s TV show, "Thirtysomething", in which all the actors spoke as if they were storing Coca Cola froth against their gums, and NPR has a similar just-shoot-me-now corporate tone -- in comparison. So very strange.
Just, wow.
It has a yoga teacher just counting and speaking to his class in a rich, baritone, commoner accent, the fluting voice of Canon Lucy from some venerable London cathedral who went off to Wales to practice Loyola's precepts in silence for a month, the rock composer, Kieran McFeely, who moved from the city to the country and whose avant-garde music changed profoundly (nice bite of his country opus, "Serotonin" (!)) and then just standing in the silence and listening to the far off train whistle passing. There's the headmaster who says that attention deficit disorder is universal among his charges, and who on Monday mornings expends an enormous amount of directed quiet time getting his kids unplugged, and into their own energy, which they need for both study and sports. This, he says, is dissipated every weekend; aurally he's standing by the Thames and listening to birdsong.
NPR is just so poseur and lugubrious and mush-mouthed -- I remember one 80s TV show, "Thirtysomething", in which all the actors spoke as if they were storing Coca Cola froth against their gums, and NPR has a similar just-shoot-me-now corporate tone -- in comparison. So very strange.
Just, wow.
