[f_minor] The Idea of North -- GG's Winnipeg-to-Churchill MNwilderness train in a few weeks! Polar bears! Aurora!

[maryellen jensen]

"And none will hear the postman's knock
 Without a quickening of the heart
 For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?"

 - W.H. Auden (1936)

 Another, older, better train of thought 

 When Glenn Gould was 4 years old living at "The Beaches" district of Toronto Canada, there happened to be a great English poet Wystan Hugh Auden and a great English composer, conductor, pianist Benjamin Britten who, working with/for John Grierson (later to head Canada's NFB) created one of the most breathtaking, original documentaries ever: "Night Mail" - 1936 - starring a train (see "Night Mail" Wikipedia): "According to F. Hardy's biography of Grierson, "Auden wrote the verse on
 a trial and error basis. It had to be cut to fit the visuals, edited by
 R. Q. McNaughton, working with Cavalcanti and Wright. Many lines were 
discarded, ending as crumpled fragments in the wastepaper basket. Some 
of Auden's verbal images -- the rounded Scottish hills 'heaped like 
slaughtered horses' -- were too strong for the film but what was 
retained made Night Mail as much a film about loneliness and 
companionship as about the collection and delivery of letters. It was 
that difference that made it a work of art." 

 For those who have never seen "Night Mail" before now, you're in for the ride of your life: "the gradient's against her but she's on time": 

- this is the finale of the film featuring Auden/Britten:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmq6mFAEqNQ

- this is the entire film (all 22 magical minutes of it):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkLoDg7e_ns&feature=related

 
 Trains. Distance. The Post. Connections.

 Nuncle Pat and Bob, I'm not at all thrilled with Idea of North as a work of anything. Gould's tiresome alliteration and tone of voice annoy me to the point of distraction. Forget Bill Burroughs (who I have met and have heard 'reading' live) - Gould saw far too many episodes of Roger Serling's "The Twilight Zone" and for some unfortunate reason or other decided to adopt Serling's "tone of voice" throughout all of his (Gould's) documentaries be they film or radio. I laugh because it's so utterly dreadful; all that's missing is Serling's cigarette and accompanying curls of smoke. I love Rod Serling for his slightly mad gravitas presenting the weird of life but GG was a rank amateur and noone dared tell him to cut it out. Who was it that said "but then he would play and it would be alright" or words to that effect?? (from Bazzana's book) Well whoever it was was a real friend of GG's although GG wouldn't have even known it.

So now crucify me,

Mary
 
From: pzumst at bluewin.ch
To: bobmerk at earthlink.net; f_minor at glenngould.org
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:30:16 +0200
Subject: Re: [f_minor] The Idea of North -- GG's Winnipeg-to-Churchill	MNwilderness train in a few weeks! Polar bears! Aurora!









and this is what I left as a 
comment on Bob’s blog, slightly edited and remixed here
 
As romantic as the idea of GG recording 
the interviews on the Muskeg Express is, he actually conducted the interviews in 
CBC studio in Toronto. One person remembers that he did ask quite intelligent 
questiona and was “conducting” during the interview. It would later take weeks 
for the whole thing to be cut and pasted together again. What would now be quite 
easy with Cubase must have been tedious work back then ! ! 
It was the first ever broadcast in 
stereo by the CBC if I remember correctly and even if some issues are out of 
date now it is still fascinating to hear. I also heard that the Muskeg is no 
longer in use, so Bob’s Adventure is now History, like flying with Swissair or 
going to the post office for stamps.
 
If you are new to GG and never heard 
IoN before you can do so here:
http://www.cbc.ca/gould/audio.html (60s section) and while you are there please also check 
out the other documentaries he did (Memnonites and Newfundland).
 
Maybe his idea of mixing IoN the way he 
did was remarkable, but hardly revolutionary. Artists like Steve Reich in his 
pieces Come Out and It’s Gonna Rain used similar concepts before and I assume 
that GG borrowed a few ideas from chaps like Pierre Scheffer, John Cage (Happy 
100th !) and if he was aware of what William S. Burroughs was doing with his 
sound cut-ups then I would not be surprised this found its way into IoN, 
probably more unconcious than not. Avantgarde being absorbed by a highly 
conservative musician, but there you have it.
The funny thing about IoN is that it 
works both as a sort of “ambient” recording but also as a serious, yet dated 
documentary and is also quite revealing about GG himself, probably more than he 
ever realized.


These days it is so easy to record and manupolate 
sond/sounds/samples, it would be interesting to get the master tapes of the 
Opening Trio and try to remix the intro just for fun but that is probably just 
me daydreaming...

 

Our former f_minor list owner MaryJo Watts had a 
sort of fantasy of playing IoN full blast in an empty football stadium. I like 
that idea, with the NHL walkout that could be tried in a hockey arena with the 
chill as a welcome effect...

 

Pat


From: Robert Merkin 
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2012 9:12 AM
To: Discussion of the Canadian pianist Glenn 
Gould. 
Subject: [f_minor] The Idea of North -- GG's Winnipeg-to-Churchill 
MNwilderness train in a few weeks! Polar bears! Aurora!
 

Hi et salut hallo f_minorites,
 
Been busy lately, pecked about the ankles by 
angry ducks ... so I'm sorry if I haven't posted much lately. But I faithfully read (almost) every post.
 
* * *
 
Between the last week of September and the 
first week or two of October, (mostly male adolescent) polar bears will make 
their annual migration around and through the tiny Hudson Bay freight shipping 
port town of Churchill, Manitoba Canada.
 
I guess rich pervs can comfortably fly 
there, but for Normal Human Beings, you catch a train (diesel, 'cause you're 
going Way Off The Electric Grid) in Winnipeg and head North through the vast 
gorgeous Canadian forest wilderness for 2.5 days until -- far beyond the Tree 
Line, in Arctic permafrost tundra -- it finally reaches Churchill.
 
(Like all beach towns, you'll be just a 
block or two from the beach, which is the astonishingly otherworldly Hudson 
Bay.)
 
One Human Being who rode this train there 
and back again was Glenn Gould. In 1967 the CBC asked what he'd like to 
contribute to a big Anniversary, and GG took a tape recorder and talked to the 
passengers riding this train to the Canadian North. The result -- after GG's 
revolutionary mixing -- was his first radio documentary, "The Idea of 
North."
 
(If you've never heard TIoN, a little web 
shopping or library surfing could get all three radiodocs to your ears in a few 
days.)
 
It's my wish that the world-unique train 
trip, the wilderness, and annual polar bear migration might seduce just 1 or 2 
or maybe 3 addled f_minorites to investigate buying a round-trip seat or sleep 
box on This Amazing Train.
 
I promise any GG fan addled and 
irresponsible enough (as I once was) only The Adventure of a Lifetime. I promise 
nothing more than that. 
 
(Except up-close-and-personal encounters 
with polar bears, polar bear warning signs, barred doors up and down main street 
to keep out the poar bears ... )
 
For a week you'll be Less Than No. 1 on the 
Food Chain. Running shoes are much better than great wildnerness 
boots.
 
For whacks like me, this is one of the most 
famous train journeys on the planet, the subject not just of TIoN, but of 
documentaries that have peppered TV for decades.
 
Likely, you've waited too long to book this 
famous trip -- but it's been my experience that if you want a journey bad 
enough, and you whine, and bribe, and lie, and wheedle, and then just show up 
waving cash, they usually find space for you and your backpack.
 
Or for you and a pal, and both your 
backpacks.
 
The crammed snack bar car -- this is a 
heavy-drinking frontier train, affordable transportation for the people in these 
parts -- is possibly the most interesting cage of colorful people I've ever 
spent hours in.
 
You could semi-officialize something This 
Train has never had -- a living, travelling memorial to GG's 1967 trip, what it 
meant to him, and what it did to his creative life. By just chatting with 
passengers, or lending them flash drives of TIoN, f_minor could treat Glenn to 
another train ride to Churchill. Glenn made Hudson Bay his own just as much as 
Toronto.
 
The buzz is that Churchill is the world's 
hottest, most active spot to view the Aurora. It sure looked astonishing to me. 
The Native-Canadians are mostly Inuit, some Swampy Cree, they have their own 
(missionary-introduced) alphabet, and if you are lucky they will share some of 
their experience with you. 
 
The food's very interesting, some of it 
stunningly delicious, and unobtainable in civilized regions. (Calling Churchill 
"civilized" would be a stretch.)
 
In my Amazing Adventure, there was no hint, 
no rumor, no whisper that the polar bear -- the largest and best 
hunter-carnivore on Earth, mostly it hunts seals on winter ice -- might be 
coming to the end of its mellennia as undisputed ruler of the circumpolar 
Arctic. The anomolous numbers of polar bear drownings hadn't yet been reported 
by US federal scientists. 
 
GG's earlier trip ditto -- everyone assumed 
the great and dangerous wild polar bear migration would be there for humans to 
marvel at forever.
 
So now, as you ponder a wildly irresponsible 
and impulsive adventure, there's an added urgency. We're looking at a future, 
some now think in our lifetimes, when there'll still be polar bears ... but only 
in the world's zoos. As the polar ice melts, the wild bears will drown trying to 
swim to the next ice cake.
 
If you are completely impulsive and 
irresponsible -- bring me back photos and souvenirs, send me a 
postcard!
 
Bob
Massachusetts USA
 
 
News, Global 
Warming, Mozart, Sports, Intergalactic Travel, sausages, 
VOLCANOS!!! opera, 
PIRATES!!! Filth in Extinct Lingos, 
Big Integers & 
BOINC: http://VleeptronZ.blogspot.com/
Remarkable Older Stuph: http://Vleeptron.blogspot.com/







 		 	   		  
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