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

[Anita Monroe]

Mary Ellen,  You are dead on about the imitation of Rod Serling.  It
happened to an entire generation of people.  That man was absolutely
mesmerizing and just about everyone with any talent wanted to sound like
him.  You have to remember that GG was AWFULLY young and impressionable,
just like all the other people of his age in his generation.

Most of them, however. know that "noone" is not a word.  For years when I
was teaching writing I put "noone" on the board with a big X over
it to warn people of its dangers.  So be careful.  It's a sneaky and
treacherous word that will someday gain a foothold in the English language,
but NOT yet.

Best,
Anita

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 8:11 PM, maryellen jensen <
maryellenjensen28 at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> "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 <bobmerk at earthlink.net>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 19, 2012 9:12 AM
> *To:* Discussion of the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.<f_minor at glenngould.org>
> *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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