Edward Flaherty's Blog: flahertylandscape, page 38

Why Our Author Brand is More Important than Ever Before

flahertylandscape:

Here is a nice bit of context in the dramatically changing world of publishing.

Originally posted on Kristen Lamb's Blog:

Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Mike Licht

For the past few months I’ve been focused on writing and not on social media. Hey, even the Social Media Jedi can get burnout ;) . But now we’re going to shift gears because, aside from writing the actual book, social media (branding) is the biggest part of our job. And I can hear the moaning and gnashing of teeth already.

Here’s the thing. We don’t have to do social media. No one will take us to writer jail if we don’t. So I will narrow this down. If you simply love the art of writing and don’t necessarily long to be paid for writing, social media is not that big of a priority. Social media is only important for those of us who like money.

Thus, for those of us who want to make a living as a professional author…

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Landscape Architecture Corollaries

Try this.

The next time you step outdoors to take a walk, imagine you see indoors and outdoors according to these Landscape Architecture Corollaries:

Corollary 1. In the beginning there was one: landscape.  Landscape harbored danger for humans.

Corollary 2. Humans constructed shelters.  Then there were two: landscape, and, the shelters in the landscape.

Corollary 3. And today still, humans essentially move through the landscape from shelter to shelter.

Corollary 4. Architecture is shelter.

Corollary 5. Landscape is everything else in which the shelters sit.

Corollary 6. Landscape Architecture is the dramatic craft concerning the quality of experience, during the movement of humans from shelter to shelter through the landscape.

Then when you come back indoors, ask yourself about the quality of your walk, according to those Landscape Architecture Corollaries.

Might be fun?!

 

 

Can’t find my way home

The various clouds appear, disappear, move and change at many different speeds simultaneously–and today they hid the giants of Jungfrau, Monch and Eiger–normally visible in this frame.

I am working on a story, The Orient Express, whose beginning and dénouement occur in the mountains surrounding Mürren in Switzerland.

This landscape inspires me because its very presence is mysterious–a consuming presence that forces me to interact with an elusive and overwhelming mystery…without beginning, without end…

Landscapes such as this are beyond my words.

Lucid Dreaming

flahertylandscape:

Lucid Dreaming: a short history

Originally posted on The World according to Dina:

“We can make all our dreams come true, but first we have to decide to awaken from them.”
“Unsere Träume können wir erst dann verwirklichen, wenn wir uns entscheiden, aus ihnen zu erwachen.”

Josephine Baker

We are so excited, we have learned something mind blowing from our dear Master! And now we can’t help we must share it with our blogging friends whilst our Master is writing a book about this subject on request of an international publisher. Any idea what it is all about?

Wir sind soooo aufgeregt, denn wir lernten etwas völlig Verrücktes von unserem Masterchen. Das müssen wir unbedingt jetzt mit euch teilen, während unser Master eifrig an einem Buch zu diesem Thema sitzt und wir so genug Zeit haben. Na, habt ihr schon eine Ahnung, worum es geht?

You guessed it, it’s about lucid dreaming. By the way, did you see the film “Inception”

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…wish you were here…

Trance–not music…or musical ride into trance?

The yodeling exuded the essence of all music…humans, without words, communicating from, and to, some magical landscape node.  The yodeling had freedom, it had discipline, it had beauty and it conveyed, at the same time, a pleasant, almost jolly reverence, and an aura of relaxation.

Listening to music is a linear experience, just like walking though a garden, a landscape.  Music and beauty.  Gardens and beauty.  Portals to transcendence.  There has to be a linkage.  Timeless experiences. Trance? Yodeler trance?

He stood up, stretched, decided to take a walk outside back down toward the center of town.  The evening air was sharp and cool.  It was quiet, Wednesday near 9PM, really quiet.  Grindelwald was at the top end of the valley.  No through automobile traffic.  He paused, listened…maybe he could hear the Lutschine River, about two hundred or so meters down hill, in the valley bottom.  When he started walking again, all he could hear were his own footsteps.

Then somewhere up ahead, he heard what he instinctively knew had to be yodeling.  Softly at first, then it filled his ears.  It was like barbershop, a cappella, unaccompanied singing, a group.  His ears carried him.  His ears, transforming like a delicate cocoon…and the music wrapped him.  He was inside the music…inside the music…suffused by an intense hypnotic, timeless, yet strangely joyful experience.

In no more than a hundred meters, and in the dark, the yodeling had led him just off the main street.  On his left, behind a large tree, he saw a shop or something, tucked behind a hillside.  The yodeling was coming from that direction.  On a weakly lighted, simple sign attached to the side of a smallish free standing building, he saw the name…Blumisalp Stubbe

The Stubbe had an outdoor terrace, facing the mountains, facing the Unterergletscher, and that was where he found the yodelers, about a dozen, maybe a dozen and a half of them.  Everybody he knew always chuckled when yodeling was mentioned, something Americans had once seen back in the 1950s or early 1960s on the Ed Sullivan or the Lawrence Welk television variety shows.

But, in the still of these extraordinary evening mountains, in the quiet of the night, when the mountains were the foreground, middle ground and background all at once, that yodeling had a strong resonance that seemed appropriate to the scale of this place and respectful to its character.

He thought, I don’t know anything about this, so, who am I to judge…but…it does have a very nice feel, a certain sweetness, that’s for sure.  He stood and listened.  For a moment, he couldn’t put words to it, but for the briefest moment, he thought he almost felt the very beginning of that same warm feeling that had overwhelmed him yesterday afternoon, the first time the mountains possessed him.  Then, as soon as the thought formed…the feeling was gone…the intimation disappeared…instantaneously absent.  It was, nevertheless, in its brevity, enjoyable.

The yodelers were on the terrace of the Stubbe.  All the Stubbe terrace doors were open.  The yodelers stood in two lines, at the side of the terrace, singing to the mountains and the Stubbe guests simultaneously.

The yodelers were organized by height, shorter in front, taller behind.  They yodeled two more songs that seemed to have verses and choruses…always a cappella…the singers were men and women, a combination of young and old, all in native clothes, native costumes, somewhat Amish-like…very clean costumes, dominated by black and white, well pressed, black trousers, white shirts and black vests with black lapels and black collars, tastefully accented with smallish embroidered wild flowers–gentian blues–edelweiss silver greens.

The men stood rather casually with their hands in their pockets, but there was definitely a grouped organization.  And the ladies, well, they, too, looked like Amish people…simultaneously proud and humble…lots of white lace over black cloth…very discreet, no asset display…and their decorations, too–mountain wild flowers.

Jodlergruppe Edelwyss-Starnen, from Grindelwald, singing Mys Alpli, one alp is a field, a pasture, a productive piece of mountain land where farm animals graze. Thus in the background of this you can hear the bells of the sheep, goats and cows. The full version can be found at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/jo...

Not Music

This is not music…but they are a part in….

This is music…and it is definitely a part in….

And this is what passes between humans and the landscape when all the communication barriers are open.

Jodlergruppe Edelwyss-Starnen singing Mys Alpli, one alp is a field, a pasture, a productive piece of mountain land where farm animals graze. Thus in the background of this you can hear the bells of the sheep, goats and cows. The full version can be found at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/jo...

It is what music might be–if you are receiving. Listen to it and look at the above images.

The minute I write, or you think, ‘yodel’, the magic is gone.

It is about ‘being’, like all great music, you become captured and captivated at the same time.

It is a right brain, left brain thing. Above is my weak attempt at right brain.

And this is for your left brain:

1.Where? High in the Swiss Alps, Berner Oberland, above 1,000 meters, where it is just you, the yodelers and the mountains.

2.Who? Yodelers are the people, generations deep living in that landscape.

3.The timing should be when your heart and ears are both wide open to spectra only available where you find yourself in that Berner Oberland landscape.

When you ride that music, the experience is not music.

Words don’t work. This is not music. This is beyond love, beyond service, beyond respect. Language fails–being with the landscape. Humans and landscape…it is deep.

It is what music might be.

Future Landscape Architecture

A satirical social media look into future landscape architecture.

I feel the sand giving way under my feet.  It must be that dry quicksand of the desert that I’ve heard about.

Strangely, I do not feel panic or fear.  I am slowly sinking through the sand, like the sand has larger air spaces between the particles and can not support me…I feel, not out of control, but moving down at the speed of a slow escalator.

As the sand reaches my chin, my nose, my eyes…my breathing and sight have not been affected.  My downward speed has increased but I am still upright. If I have gone under the sand how can there still be daylight?

…however, I can breathe and what is it that I am seeing?

The light level is low, but enough so that I can still see.  It is cooler and there is humidity.  It reminds me of the large, centuries-old, university buildings in London, or Istanbul, just barely tolerable low light, huge spaces, high ceilings that always disappear into some historically ambiguous, uncertain details, dissolving into distant mists…  In front of me there is a lecture hall with the doors open, and a lighted lectern, and I can see inside…who is lecturing?  And on what?  I try to look in, but my movement forward can not be impeded.  I can not slow down.  I can not turn around.  I can not go backwards.

My movement feels more like an airport people mover, except I am moving down.  But wait, my feet are moving like I am walking…I can not tell if I am moving vertically or horizontally and I am suddenly dizzy…getting dizzier…losing all orientation of up and down…

Fight the flow…or…go with it…

There is someone next to me, I turn.  I can just see the rear 3/4 of a hooded figure, in a Maghrebi djellaba, dark brown coarse wool, deep hood, well over his face.

I ask, “Can you help me?  Where are we?”

The djellaba’d character agitatedly spits out over his shoulder, “Shaikh will fix, Shaikh will fix.”

“Shaikh?”  I ask, “Shaikh who?”

The djellaba’d man disappears around a corner.  I follow and am confronted by another large double door entering another lecture hall…this time with a large crowd, dimly and indirectly lighted all about…I see a spot lighted lectern at the front…who is that lecturing and what is he saying?

It sounds serious.  The lecturer sounds like he is serious.  Who?  What?

Before I can process any thought, I am aware, in my peripheral vision, of a growing uproar…I strain to turn my head to look…there is a huge crowd in the hall and way up high, in the fourth balcony, a major ruckus with banners, ‘DON’T CRAMP ME STYLE’ banners…rowdiness…Rastafarians, Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, South Africans, Australians…it looks like a Cricket World Cup crowd…all trying to shout down the speaker…

I hear, I hear…it is in English…but there is too much rowdy noise…what’s that he is saying…he is saying, “…and the importance of green to landscape architecture is…”  What, what?  …the crowd noise interrupts and the speaker…I can’t believe my eyes, who is the speaker…it looks like…it is…it’s Will Ferrell…it looks like Will Ferrell…all hell is breaking loose…cricket gloves, stumps, bails, pads, stuff, all are being thrown from the balconies…

Ferrell shouts, “What do you think this is some kind of fucking holiday?  We are serious here.”

The crowd goes wild…someone comes up behind Ferrell and starts trying to wrestle the microphone from him…it…it is…no it can’t be…the guy is threatening, shouting, “Don’t walk through MY words!!!”

It is, no, not Charlie Rangel…no, it’s Eddie Murphy playing a Charlie Rangel part…it looks like Eddie Murphy is on stage trying to elbow Will Ferrell from the microphone…and this time he’s got the microphone and yells, “Got to show some respect!!!”  Eddie Murphy and Will Ferrell are wrestling and shouting over each other.  “Don’t walk through my words, got to show some respect!!!”  The crowd is screaming…it’s wild…chaos reigns!

…from the back of the stage dozens of Star Wars type sand people in black, fine wool burnooses, with large oversized hoods, emerge, each with an old English Bobby truncheon…all at the same time converging on the melee at the lectern…both Ferrell and Murphy are still yelling at each other, “…you ain’t heard me out yet, you ain’t heard me out yet…”

Before I can even assess satire and reality, I move along and almost bump into the djellaba’d man still mumbling…“Shaikh will fix, Shaikh will fix.”

I try to grab him to talk, he slips away into a lecture hall saying, “See the Shaikh.  Shaikh will fix.”

I don’t know any Shaikh…and now the lighting is from a very high clerestory, I look up to see the sky and the light source is so high up it is like a visual pins and needles experience in my peripheral vision.  I’m blacking out…vertigo has descended on me.  My knees are weak.  I look up again at the clerestory and see twice as many pins and needles, this time they are moving, they are beckoning me, they are calling me…increasing and decreasing in brightness, throbbing in my head and causing me shortage of breath.  Then…then it is…all black…

Conscious again, I am sitting in a seat, a lecture hall seat, in the front row with two lighted lecterns directly in front of me.  The lecterns each have a speaker and each speaker has his name plate in front of the lectern.

The man speaking is Professor Hartmann, talking about the history of landscape architecture and its purpose being to preserve and protect those landscape experiences that captivate and inspire humans to higher goals in life.

Hartmann then says to us all, “I am sure you would all like to hear what the Shaikh has to say on this subject.”  I hold my breath.  The crowd rustle with anticipation.

Hartmann continues, “As soon as the Shaikh finishes his ablutions, I am sure he will comment.”  The other lectern occupies my attention.  There is a heavy weight, bald man, bent over a bowl, taking water to his face, in ablution style, slowly and deliberately massaging it over his shaven head, then over his forehead, as if purging himself of all that could be unwanted.  The Shaikh’s name plate reads, not Shaikh, but Colonel, Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.  Taking a clean white towel to his face, he speaks while daubing off the water.

Even still his voice is clear, “Pride, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth…”  …the crowd are alert.  He puts his towel down and looks out for the first time over the amassed crowd, and continues,  “My students, these are immortal; and so is our fight against them…”

I can not begin to address these words because the face and the emotions of the Shaikh are the face and the emotions of Marlon Brando as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in ‘Apocalypse Now’.

I turn to the ‘student’ next to me, it is the dark brown djellaba’d man, his hood still well over his face, saying to me, “Shaikh is good, Shaikh is good.”

I look over my shoulder at the rest of the large numbers of ‘students’ in the lecture hall and see more dark brown djellabas dotted here and there always with faces hidden within the shadows of the hood; but even more disconcerting are the diverse group of ‘students’ taking up the rest of the seats…they look like garden gnomes, live garden gnomes…looking like iterations from ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’.  I feel trapped as never before, can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t move.

Then I opened my eyes. I was flat on my back, my arms bound to my sides by loosely woven netting. I was uncertain. I wanted to hear Shaikh. I closed my eyes, all was dark. I opened my eyes, all was dark. I tried to move, tried to stretch. Nothing.

Oh…I started to realize…am I trapped in a hammock? I tried hard to focus my thoughts…some linear history opened for me…some clarity…no, not yet…edge of dream…not dream…what…where…and…a mystery…always dark…humans and landscape…it is not resolved.

Parc Güell , Barcelona

flahertylandscape:

Contemporary look at Gaudi’s Park Guell

Originally posted on Life as we see it..:

Parc Güell is a must see in Barcelona. And I suggest you to go there for an excellent panoramic view of the city. You can by metro or bus. But if you go by metro, you have to walk quite a lot. Bus drops you just in front of the gate of the park. The park is UNESCO world heritage site.

 

You may take Bus 24 from Parallel metro or 90 from Hospital de Sant Pau.

 

 

Colonnaded pathway  is an unique  architechture, where the road projects out from the hillside, with the vaulting forming a retaining wall  which curves over to support the road, and transmits the load onto sloping columns.

  

 

The outside park does not need any ticket. Only the monument area needs ticket, which is 7 euro. The park is a public park system composed of gardens and architectonic elements located on Carmel Hill. Carmel Hill…

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Existential Garden Visits–Borges

Between 14-18 July 2015, on each day, I will be making a post in celebration of International Authors’ Day, featuring review of works by Kenneth Grahame, J.L. Borges and Algernon Blackwood, authors whose works have been formative inspirations for me.

These posts will be made as part of a Blog Hop as can be seen and visited through the links at the bottom of each post.

Today is 17July2015.

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Existential Garden Visits: J.L. Borges

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1899-1986 Jorge Luis Borges, some of his works can be found here.

Erik Desmazieres’ illustration of Borges’ Library of Babel (courtesy of funambulist)

Library of Babel. This image I share with all of you who are convinced that the written word is at the center of our lives and a library houses the efforts of all people who share your convictions…J.L. Borges called it Library of Babel.

Here is a two minute sound clip featuring Borges’ description from The Library of Babel:



If you tried to call his work based upon themes, you would have to include dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors–the stuff that provides portals to the madness of existence–the madness of questions some of us ask, some of us become obsessed and others by the grace of God, never even think of–so, some of you would be better off not reading any further.

In one of his stories, most often quoted, analyzed, The Garden of Forking Paths, he takes the reader on a garden journey wherein movement through a labyrinth is required, however the labyrinth folds back in on itself through networks of time, none of which are the same, all of which are equal, an infinite regression.

The concept itself is incredible and the masterful skill of writing that creates the experience–beyond words. Fantastic writing, fantastic imagination–and you must ask yourself upon reading that–you must ask yourself where did I come from, where am I going and what is this thing we call life.

But it all starts with books because books, like gardens…always take you…somewhere unexpected…if you let them. Libraries, gardens, landscapes…what more could you want? And Borges is supreme at enticing his reader into the garden, as in this 4 minute sound clip:



But there is too often a dreary end to existential inquiry–I prefer the garden, or a walk out into the landscape–places where discovery captivates, enthuses.

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This Blog Hop is hosted by Debdatta, please visit. 

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In the garden just like every book, just like every piece of music–in the garden are discoveries to be made–portals with thresholds waiting to be crossed–it is up to you.

Plants: how do they inspire you?

Please answer that question in the comments below, because on the last day of this International Authors’ Day Blog Hop, I will randomly select a winner to receive The 23 Club, Beta 6, a free giveaway for your reading enjoyment.

The 23 Club (Beta 06)

Table of Contents

Desertification
It’s 2AM
Spike Lounge
The Walk
Rub Al Khali Coastal
Rub Al Khali Inland
Liwa Qsar
The Plant Nursery
Tamarind Gardens
Library Majlis
Villa Patio
Long and Short
Pilgrimage
Wanderweg

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Landscape Mysteries: Algernon Blackwood

Between 14-18 July 2015, on each day, I will be making a post in celebration of International Authors’ Day, featuring review of works by Kenneth Grahame, J.L. Borges and Algernon Blackwood, authors whose works have been formative inspirations for me.

These posts will be made as part of a Blog Hop as can be seen and visited through the links at the bottom of each post.

Today is 16July2015.

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Landscape Mysteries: Algernon Blackwood

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1869-1951, Algernon Blackwood’s work can be found at Gutenberg.

W. Graham Robertson illustrates the forest landscape in Algernon Blackwood’s, The Man whom the Trees Loved. (courtesy of callumjames blogspot)

Algernon Blackwood is an author who continues to inspire my senses when I take a walk in the garden, a walk in the landscape. Some have called him a cross between an outdoorsman and a mystic.

In his stories, the reader encounters a mystery–and that is where the story begins. Blackwood, at the point at which a character begins to uncover an internal mystery, takes the reader across a threshold–very carefully, step by step, revealing the experience.

Mysteries in the landscape only remain so if a person does not carefully question their reveal. Algernon Blackwood carefully questions their reveal in fine stories such as, The Initiation, The Man Whom the Trees Loved, Descent into Egypt, The Willows and many others.

Blackwood was a prolific writer; but my preferences are the stories where he carefully takes his reader on a journey into the reveal of mysteries found in the forest, in the landscape. He brings the reader to greater appreciation of those experiences that seem, how can I say…too normal?  Or too unusual?  Or too troublesome.

But we all have experienced them.

In the following two minute sound clip, on the Sussex weald, Algernon Blackwood’s character was helpless in the landscape, under the power of something quite ancient…

Algernon Blackwood was taken by the landscape of the upper coniferous forests in the Swiss Alps–you can almost feel it in the following three minute sound clip:

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This Blog Hop is hosted by Debdatta, please visit. 

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Upper Alpine coniferous forests breathe an air that humans find exhilarating…beyond words. What is it about those trees and the understory they protect and nourish?

Plants: how do they inspire you?

Please answer that question because on the last day of this International Authors’ Day Blog Hop, I will randomly select a winner to receive The 23 Club, Beta 6, a free giveaway for your reading enjoyment.