Cultured Views

What’s the best way to ruin paradise?

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Of course the answer is simple…tell the whole world about it! Let everyone in on the secret of your Utopia and every man and his dog will want a piece as well. And it is not often that the English like to share a nice piece of someone elses country that they have effectively colonised for themselves. But that is what has happened in a part of France, Dordogne, and the town of Eymet. Anyone who has been there will vouch for the fact that it has attracted British expats to buy and live there in their hordes. In fact, British people now account for 50 per cent of home ownership there.

For this trend the French can surely blame Peter Mayle and his books about Provence some years back. Personally I found them dull and uninteresting and, in a small way, patronising to the French characters he wrote about. Ever since Mayle wrote about how he bought a ruined barn for a few pence and did it up the Brit’s in their thousands have followed in his wake. Within a few short years Provence was teeming with pale skinned men in socks and sandals and women in knee length shorts, white trainers  and tank tops. They bought up all the ruined barns that Peter Mayle couldn’t be bothered with, did them up, and then sold them for a fortune.  Unable to afford Provence any longer fellow expats discovered the poor Dordogne, or as it is known now, Dordogneshire.

They fell upon places like Eymet and Sarlat snapping up homes from the unsuspecting French; the Brits arrived with hundreds of thousands to spend but paid only tens of thousands for their ‘bargains’. The French have since caught on about this!

They also snapped up all the ruined barns, abandoned farm houses, run down water mills - basically if it had a wall in place the Brit’s would buy, renovate and live in a toilet block if it was cheap enough to buy. They love buying a pile of rubble and doing it up. Their reasons are many; England has gone to the dogs, it’s not safe anymore, the education is no good anymore, it’s too expensive…France is safe, it’s cheap, the education’s good…

Makes you wonder about this. The Brit’s have stuffed up their own environment so they abandon ship and move into another one that suits them better. They are good at this kind of thing though. But what do they do in order to protect their little paradise? They boast in a newspaper article about how no-one locks their doors, no-one locks their cars, people leave their wallets in the cars at the shops ’because no-one will steal it here’. I mean… DUH!

These proud and gloating expats have just made Eymat very easy pickings!

Popularity: 26% [?]

Just fly me to the moon!

I am a sucker for eclipses - no, not one’s of the heart - but the lunar and solar types. I always wondered why devotees raved on so much about these nebulous things until I went to Turkey in 2006 and saw the total solar eclipse…absolutely brilliant!

Standing on a beach at midday and watching as the world around you turns from brightest daylight into pitch black nighttime in the space of 30 minutes is an experience you should all try at least once in your life…some people even find them a life changing experience.

The lunar eclipse last night was just as stunning but for the bloody clouds…kind of reminds us all just how insignificant we all really are in the bigger scheme of things.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Can music be visual as well as aural? The Messiaen experience

Nothing annoys me more than musical or artistic snobbery. Those who oppose the the artist’s right to freedom of expression; well, not actually oppose but denigrate the form which an artist uses to portray what he/she see’s, hear’s, and feel’s. It seems that too many people have a comfort zone and when presented with the alternative to their idea of the norm they are immediately insecure and defensive.

Many great artists have lived in the face of public criticism, had scorn poured over their work and even inspired riots by their very uniqueness. Think Stravinsky back in 1913 when premiered his Rites of Spring - this jagged and edgy masterpiece was revolutionary - the Music  and choreography were considered barbaric and sexual and caused the audience to grow more uneasy by the minute during the first performance. A riot eventually ensued with the police being called in; this was in Paris of all places, a city where, even in 1913, the unconventional was accepted and alternative lifestyles the norm.

Olivier Messiaen was a composer of extraordinary music and is the focus of a Festival in his honour in London very soon. Messiaen, like Mozart almost 200 years earlier, did not just hear music in his mind, it was a physical experience to him. Messiaen saw music in forms and colours not with his eyes but in his head. He drew his influence from geological formations, from wildlife; each shade of colour from the strongest to the weakest representing the highest to the lowest octaves. Through such sensory perception he gave us such masterpieces as La Transfiguration and the lush Turangalila. It takes a certain musician to interpret these works and bring them to life; pianists such as the iconic Messiaen-ist Australian  pianist Micheal Keiran Harvey; and Mark Rowan-Hull, abstract artist and pianist, who will perform Messiaen’s works at the Festival: both have the ability to tap into the visions that Messiaen experienced as he composed his works and bring them to life for us. Rowan-Hull particularly will link the visual art of Messiaen with his music…what a treat for the senses. You know what? I wonder what would have been the result of a collaboration between Messiaen and Vincent van Gogh - both masters of the visual art of colour and form…we will never know, but I always wonder.

Brave, fantastic, daring, confronting and brilliant. Who needs a comfort zone when you have all this?

Mark Rowan-Hull. Gives sight to Messiaen’s sounds.

Popularity: 24% [?]