Objects of Desire – Are You Smelling the Roses?

 

Like almost every morning, I took the dogs to the park for a good, over an hour walk. While they were enthusiastically hunting and chasing squirrels, I discovered this beautiful clean and completely intact pine cone. I thought of a brief chat I had had with a very friendly Korean woman, a few weeks ago, who, in her broken English, had shown me how she uses simple objects from nature, like pine cones, or the rough bark of a tree to massage parts of the body. The principle being that of traditional acupressure.

So I picked the cone up and carried it with me, alternatively clenching it in each hand for a few minutes, the opened, flexible scales giving way in the process, massaging the palm of my hand and strengthening my fingers. I am very much a practical, hands-on person who loves writing and playing the piano. So I like to keep my hands and fingers strong and nimble. I also believe, that being in touch, so actually touching something from nature is per se healing. My favourite yoga teacher mentioned the other day that walking barefoot, also known as “earthing”, is actually a scientifically-researched practice with a number of remarkable health advantages that stem from the relationship between our bodies and the electrons in the earth. The planet has its own natural charge, and we seem to benefit greatly when we’re in direct contact with it.

img_8539Walking my rounds with the dogs, pine cone in hand, I passed one of the homeless people who occupies the same park bench every morning at around 8am. My best guess is that he is schizophrenic because sometimes you can hear him angrily shouting obscenities from the other side of the park. But then, when he has his “lucid” moments, he is a very chatty, well educated and friendly gentleman who always has his belongings stacked very neatly and tidily next to him and a handkerchief on his lap when eating his breakfast.

In passing, I greeted him and he immediately asked, “What’s that? A pine cone?” I said, “Yes, I’m massaging my hands with it and later, I’ll take it home…” He interrupted and said, yes, you can decorate the table with them at Thanksgiving.” We immediately struck up a conversation about all of the things you can do with pinecones, smell them, eat the pine seeds, burn them (the sap ignites fires very well) and I mentioned how beautiful they are in their perfect symmetry, and he added, “like everything God creates”. I replied that sadly, many people don’t see these beautiful things that surround them anymore. No, he said:

“They don’t stop to smell the roses, they’re too busy cutting them”.

I thought his point was well taken. I think that today, most people are fixated on “owning” things, as in having a collection to show off to others that is as vast as possible. This collection of images serves to then quasi adorn a virtual online persona for others to admire. Objects are taken into possession via photographs on Facebook and Instagram but only hastily and superfluously consumed and accessorized but not emotionally absorbed. Historically, a photo acted as a substitute, a token, a memento. Now it seems to have replaced the actual experience. When the image is then shared there’s no authentic contact with the actual object, the full experience is kept out of range, not only visually but also tactually. It’s a way of distancing oneself from an authentic experience in quite a detached and guarded but also very possessive way.

Feeling a sense of connection to nature or life itself

Even science backs this up: a study in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences suggests that appreciating both the meaningful things and people in our lives may play an even larger role in our overall happiness than previously thought. Rutgers University psychology professor Nancy Fagley’s survey zeroed in on eight aspects of “appreciation“, including awe – or feeling a sense of connection to nature or life itself – and living in the present moment.

And you, have you stopped to smell the roses today? Or are you too busy cutting them?

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Creative Influences ~ Poetry. The Sun at Midnight

 

I had first come across the sonnet The Sun at Midnight a few years ago. It was around the time of the first studio recording of my song Mr. Moon, a jazz tune, which is centered around the various characteristics of the moon with its magical and comforting but also seductive elements. I had been singing Mr. Moon a lot live but on one tranquil Sunday afternoon, I just became curious to read other poems on the moon, I started doing some research. That’s when I came across Joseph Mary Plunkett’s The Sun at Midnight. It’s a two-versed sonnet, which is known as a deep meditation on the love of God.

BLOOD Moon

The Irish poet, journalist, and author of Sun At Midnight, Joseph Mary Plunkett (1879-1916) was born in Dublin and educated at Catholic University School, Belvedere College, and Stonyhurst College. His study of the mystics, John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, and Francis de Sales was discernible in his poetry. However, as one of the signers of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, he was imprisoned by the English army and executed in 1916 at the age of only 28. His sonnet, I Saw the Sun at Midnight, Rising Red, which is the original title, was published in Plunkett’s first poetry volume The Circle and the Sword in 1911.  A year after his death Sun at Midnight was also included in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, by D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee, The Clarendon Press, Oxford 1917.

I actually felt inspired – by what I perceived as a very beautiful and mystical poem – to add my own verse. So I freely swapped out his last verse [1] with mine, changing the whole direction from God to a loved one. I was going through a very difficult separation at the time so I took the blood-red moon as a metaphor for deep but very intense, painful, and sometimes inexplicable feelings. Besides, love, whether towards a mortal being or a heavenly figure, like a God, will always stay a quite mystical phenomenon.

 

Sun at Midnight

by Joseph Mary Plunkett [1] and Frances Livings [2] 

I saw the sun at midnight, rising red,
Deep-hued yet glowing, heavy with the stain
Of blood-compassion, and I saw it gain
Swiftly in size and growing till It spread
Over the stars; the heavens bowed their head
As from its heart slow dripped a crimson rain,
Then a great tremor shook it, as of pain—
The night fell, moaning, as It hung there dead. [1]

Before the day could claim me
I had awoken from this dream
limbs heavy from humidity, languid from this scene
as pearls of sweat trickled like raindrops from my brow
the earth creaked and ached, again the heavens bowed
and from my heart slow dripped a crimson rain
A great tremor shook me – in agony, in pain—
from my sun at midnight bled the last drop of you.

(The night fell, moaning, and life claimed me back again)

 

The Mysterious Allure of the Moon

The mysterious allure of the moon goes back to the beginning of human history. And despite man- and womankind having now even set foot on it, it still has that effect. I personally find its transitions most wondrous. The moon can change so vastly in size and shape, growing from the slightest sliver of a crescent moon – with as little as 1% of its surface illuminated – to a full round globe. Take a look at this great website with an array of interesting information on the moon, created by The Royal Observatory, the home of Greenwich Mean Time!

Depending on the light, its colour and texture can also dramatically vary. A low-hanging, fat harvest moon will look welcoming and generous when in October – when it takes on a golden, orangey-yellow glow. In the winter, a small bluish-silvery moon can seem like a distant reminder of magical, outer-worldly spheres, unknown and intangible, so far away in the sky. No wonder, so many artists have not only written poems about this celestial body but also hundreds of jazz songs – whether Moon Over Bourbon Street by Sting, Sarah Vaughan’s Midnight Sun – or my piece Mr. Moon…

 

April’s Pink Moon Turning Into a Blood Moon

April’s full moon is traditionally known as the “Pink Moon” in northern Native American culture, named after a species of early wildflowers common to the area. I had written this post in April, after sitting out in the garden, letting the pictures of a wonderful weekend glide by, and simply enjoying the mild night. Quite mindlessly, I was gazing into the sky when I spotted the full moon – the pink moon.
I suddenly remembered that we were approaching a total lunar eclipse which made it even more special. Later I learned, that it was the first in more than three years to be visible and uninterrupted by sunrise. When a total lunar eclipse occurs, dispersed light from all the Earth’s sunrises and sunsets fall on the face of the moon at mid-eclipse. This is what gives it a reddish hue and has coined the name “blood moon”. So a few nights ago, the moon had yet again undergone a transformation when after midnight it turned into an amazing, coppery red blood moon.

The moon will glow red three more times in the next 18 months, scientists say. It’s part of a lunar eclipse “tetrad”; a series of four consecutive total lunar eclipses that happen at about six-month intervals. The moon passes into the Earth’s shadow and will begin to appear bright orange or red because of the way sunlight bends through the Earth’s atmosphere. The sunset hue can last up to an hour.

After revisiting The Sun at Midnight, I was sure that if I found a moon calendar from the late 19th or early 20th century, Plunkett’s night of inspiration, his sighting of a blood moon could be pinpointed. I find that quite amazing and symbolic manifests that:

The cosmos – all elements of nature – will autonomously and relentlessly pursue their cycles. Whether in the past, present, or future – when we are all stardust.

This shows yet again, in a very beautiful and haunting way that on earth we are all just visitors. On the other hand, for thousands of years, men- and womenfolk have made these very same experiences. They have been in awe or threatened by nature’s moods and spectacles, gazed at the same moon, sun, and stars. This means we are all connected which makes the poem and that night indeed a very spiritual one.

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[2] Plunkett’s last verse is: O Sun, O Christ, O bleeding Heart of flame! / Thou givest Thine agony as our life’s worth, / And makest it infinite, lest we have dearth / Of rights wherewith to call upon Thy Name; / Thou pawnest Heaven as a pledge for Earth / And for our glory sufferest all shame.

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Listen to Jazzy Moon Songs in This Playlist:

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Livings In Los Angeles. Public Parks and Gardens and their Impact on Mental Health and the Creative Mind

 

The title of my poem Evaporated may not suggest it, but I drew its imagery draws the different contrasting botanical areas at the Huntington Gardens in San Marino. It has been one of my favourite places to visit ever since I first came to Southern California in 2005. The 207 acres of space, of which 120 acres are landscaped parks and gardens, showcase a variety of botanical areas. One of the most fascinating ones – probably for any European or East-coaster – is the ten-acre large desert garden which features more than 5,000 species of succulents and desert plants.

Barrel cacti and Agave at The Huntington Desert Gardens, San Marino, CA

Succulents have always fascinated me, their shapes and characteristics and their ability to survive on so little and yet be able to bloom and flourish in the most extraordinary ways. As a teenager, I had a small collection of cacti: My room faced South so out of thin planks of wood I constructed swing-like benches for the large window for them to sit on and relish the sun rays. They were small and very common species but they sometimes even bloomed. But never did I expect to see such alien monstrosities or small insect-like clusters of cacti like I did at the Huntington gardens years later.

After having completed the poem I started to think about how, throughout my life, the experience of different landscapes and topographies has influenced my perception and awareness of my surroundings. Especially when living in a city, visits to gardens and urban parks have not only sometimes saved my sanity but also influenced my work as an artist and writer. The following piece for instance, which I recorded on my first solo album, I wrote after a visit to the beach in Santa Barbara. It’s short and melancholic, almost like a tone poem:

Listen to Pebbles in my Hand here:

My personal experience is that nature, even in contrived areas like in parks and gardens, can evoke emotions in us that are often not released otherwise. And it is a widespread and well-researched fact that nature leads to increased mental health and psychological development.

It was only after I had moved to Los Angeles that I became aware of how vastly different not only cityscapes but also landscapes can be, how much the climate can hinder or support certain activities. On the whole, I realized, I had been lucky to have spent the first three decades of my life in very green, fertile, and geographically non-threatening environments – no black widow spiders, earthquakes, mudslides, or mountain lions. But I can also see that not everyone in this city is able to make these choices and therefore experiences.

In most parts of the city of Los Angeles, there is no alternative to street culture. The city has paid little attention to small urban green spaces that should be available for all members of society, either within walking distance or at all times fully accessible by public transportation and an integral part of daily life. Some studies even show that “there is an obvious correlation between poverty, food access and lack of open space” like stated in a blog entry posing the question “Is the lack of recreational space making us fatter?”.

 

Parks and Gardens in Northern Europe

Having grown up in England as a child, the long history and culture of the English garden and park and my family’s interest in their natural surroundings influenced my relationship with and awareness for nature, whether in a natural or a contrived state. With my parents, we visited some of the most interesting estates, strange sculpture gardens, and vast parks, like the famous Hyde Park in London. My Nanna was a passionate gardener and cook, who made jam from her home-grown black currants and pies from her apples and even managed to grow some figs and tobacco on her large allotment in Suffolk.

After I was literally “deported” to Germany as a pre-teen, I felt that the flat and boring landscape, dotted with stoic, grass-munching cows, was a hard contrast to the hilly and lush countryside of East Anglia. I have tried to convey some of these emotions in a yet unfinished piece ‘Wasteland’, playing with these landscape features as synonyms for my interior landscapes. Nevertheless, nature was accessible and if it hadn’t been for the trauma of being moved away from my family, it would have been a theoretically non-threatening experience.

As a student, I then moved to the city of Hamburg. Perhaps it was a mere coincidence that Hamburg ranks as one of the top ten greenest cities in Germany and was awarded The by the European commission in 2011. But I truly enjoyed the fact that even though it rains a lot of the time (which can be depressing on another level and obviously helps the vegetation to flourish) there are so many green spaces, rivers, and canals accessible from all parts of town, mostly in walking distance.

 

Los Angeles’ National Parks

During my time here in Los Angeles I have therefore sought out many of the parks the County has to offer, like Griffith Park, situated in the Eastern Santa Monica Mountain range, in the northeastern part of the city.

Native Oak Trees in Griffith Park, CA, photo: Donna Grayson

With over 4,210 acres of both natural Chaparral-covered terrain and landscaped parkland and picnic areas, it is the largest municipal park with urban wilderness area in the United States. Two famous landmarks are the recently restored observatory, opened to the public in 1935, and the Greek theatre, the famous music venue.

Represented in Griffith Park – in a similar way to Topanga State Park in Pacific Palisades – are California native plants and in small quantities, even some threatened species.

Franklin D. Roosevelt had already seen the health benefits of national parks and became an energetic supporter as president. He wrote:

There is nothing so American as our national parks. The scenery and the wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native. It is, in brief, that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us. The parks stand as the outward symbol of the great human principle.

He obviously also had a strong nationalistic agenda: Even in the midst of the Depression, national parks were being dramatically improved by Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps and highly publicized and therefore politicized. I doubt whether the city of Los Angeles is currently really interested in designing and financing green urban spaces in low-income zones.

King’s Road Park in West Hollywood, CA, photo: Frances Livings

In middle-class neighbourhoods, like West Hollywood public parks, if existent, are tiny and still rare – like a small oasis nearby our home on King’s Road (very much the opposite of King’s Road in London…).

It features a beautiful small waterfall (I doubt whether from a natural water source), a Gingko tree, and tropical shrubbery, like banana plants and Bird of Paradise. It would, at the most, hold 50 people, tightly seated attending a one-woman flute concert. But on my almost daily dog walks it is a small oasis where I often sit down on one of the park benches, switch my iPod off, and can find tranquility.

 

Los Angeles’ Historic Parks and Gardens

Other communities that have long histories of parks surround Pasadena, a small college city about twenty miles north-west of Los Angeles that is famous for the annual Rose Parade, its craftsman houses, like the Gamble house by the architects Greene and Greene and the Millard house by Frank Lloyd Wright from 1923.

Nearby, in La Canada Flintridge are the Descanso Gardens which are well worth a visit throughout the year, but especially in January and February when the Camellias are in bloom.

The Arboretum in Arcadia, CA, photo: Frances Livings

Located in the city of Arcadia, the Arboretum is home to plant collections from all over the world, including many rare and endangered species. The Arboretum also houses some interesting outdoor historical landmarks, like a Victorian Queen Anne cottage, representative of the major phases of California history. And like mentioned above the Huntington in San Marino whose desert gardens I am so fascinated by.

But unless you live in San Marino, ranked by Forbes Magazine as the 63rd most expensive area to live in the United States and where the median list price of a single-family home is almost 2 million US dollars you will always require private transportation to these places (unless you can afford a taxi).

These national parks and historical gardens are exclusive and exclude suburban oases. There is no train and hardly any busses. The entrance fee per adult (without an annual membership) is at the Huntington’s a staggering $20. So especially with a family these trips involve a steep budget, planning well ahead, and/or making reservations for the one free day of the week.

 

“It Never Rains in California”

Most people tend to perceive the Southern Californian climate as extremely friendly. They think of the beaches, of blonde and bronzed surfer dudes, of a place where it never rains. How often do you see tourists in an open tour bus without sunscreen and a hat – we all know that they’ll be close to a sunstroke by the time they’ve passed the 28th villa in Beverly Hills in which Barbara Streisand is supposed to have lived.

‘Sun Screen’ (c) Mark Boster printed in the L.A. Times, Sep. 9, 2011

Being here all year round has made me realize that the sun can be very cruel and relentless. In August and September, I find it almost impossible to walk anywhere – it is the desert sun.

Unlike residential areas close to places like Griffith Park or the Huntington Gardens, the poorer parts of the city, like Compton or Torrance, offer hardly any escape from the desert-hot sun or relief from everyday problems and anxieties in a rejuvenating environment.

Not only green areas, like parks and gardens are missing but a large part of Los Angeles’ inner cityscape doesn’t even deliver much shade. Partly because a lot of areas lack trees with foliage (palm trees grow best) and, because of earthquake danger, the buildings are mainly low-rise complexes and strip malls. The wide streets are barren and dry, dusty and often excruciatingly un-embracing, uninspiring and insular.

 

The Problem with Urban Heat Islands

Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles

When the sun most violently smacks down on the dark asphalt and heats up its environment up to four degrees Fahrenheit more than in green areas, so-called urban heat islands are created.

Urban heat islands not only decrease the air quality but have an impact on nearby water bodies. But not only does Los Angeles lack public green areas that could be integrated into our daily lives and routines, but sources of water.

The only canals I know of are in Venice beach, surrounded by some of the most expensive real estate. The L.A. River is less picturesque with its concrete beds which act as water basins for melting snow gushing down the mountains in the spring. In the hot summer months, they are mostly dry.

Unlike in places like London with the River Thames or Paris with the romantic Seine, these areas are also not offered as spaces of contemplation or restoration in the middle of the city, mainly because they completely lack natural vegetation or wildlife.

It is a known fact that enclosing shrubbery and the foliage of trees in parks can foster crime, which is why some city planners have argued against them. Central Park in New York has (perhaps falsely) become a synonym for heinous acts of crime – like those often depicted on TV. But studies have also proven the opposite: Next to the urban study departments of many Universities, the APA, the American Planning Association, an independent, educational non-profit organization has conducted research programmes that show:

Time spent in natural surroundings relieves mental fatigue, which in turn relieves inattentiveness, irritability, and impulsivity, recognized by psychologists as precursors to violence. Green spaces also support frequent, casual contact among neighbors. This leads to the formation of neighborhood social ties, the building blocks of strong, secure neighborhoods where people tend to support, care about, and protect one another.

(c) Frances Livings 2011. All Rights Reserved.

 

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