[pct-l] off topic, but not really...

[arm chair]

Fascinating article. With Video too.

I pulled some quotes from the article, but you should read it for yourself.

-----------
No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the
Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest
classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music
ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made.
-----------
But there was a caveat. Paul Guyer of the University of Pennsylvania, one of
America's most prominent Kantian scholars, says the 18th-century German
philosopher felt that to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions
must be optimal.
-----------
We're busy. Americans have been busy, as a people, since at least 1831, when
a young French sociologist named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the States
and found himself impressed, bemused and slightly dismayed at the degree to
which people were driven, to the exclusion of everything else, by hard work
and the accumulation of wealth.
-----------
Not much has changed. Pop in a DVD of "Koyaanisqatsi," the wordless, darkly
brilliant, avant-garde 1982 film about the frenetic speed of modern life.
Backed by the minimalist music of Philip Glass, director Godfrey Reggio
takes film clips of Americans going about their daily business, but speeds
them up until they resemble assembly-line machines, robots marching lockstep
to nowhere. Now look at the video from L'Enfant Plaza, in fast-forward. The
Philip Glass soundtrack fits it perfectly.

"Koyaanisqatsi" is a Hopi word. It means "life out of balance."
-----------
The experiment at L'Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, he said -- not
because people didn't have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it
was irrelevant to them.

"This is about having the wrong priorities," Lane said.

If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to
one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written;
if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to
something like that -- then what else are we missing?
-----------

Those on the PCT will be seeing some of the world's best beauty, may each
savour a moment and appreciate that which is around them.


Thanks girlscout!

- armchair

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Pea Hicks <phix at optigan.com> wrote:

> i thought y'all might appreciate this article:
>
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html
>
> although its specific subject matter is music, the issues it brings up
> are quite relevant to the hustle-n-bustle of a pct thru hike as well.
>
>
>
>
>
> girlscout
> _______________________________________________
> Pct-l mailing list
> Pct-l at backcountry.net
> http://mailman.backcountry.net/mailman/listinfo/pct-l
>