THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION (BREAK ON THROUGH)

The Doors concert at the Singer Bowl in Queens on August 2, 1968 was my first big-deal, legitimate rock concert experience outside of the home territory of my local high school, which on a couple of occasions hosted rather wonderful “package tours.”  (Once I saw The Shirelles, Neil Diamond and Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, all at their best then.)

I was only 15, but the Long Island Railroad was an efficient way to get around and for some reason (ignorance, probably), my parents were ok with me attending the show, although I was going alone.  The Doors were at their early huge-est and The Who (at the time the U.S.-only Magic Bus compilation with that great cover photo of the psychedelic London omnibus was in release) were second on the bill.  Also, a group called Kangaroo, which featured ubiquitous drummer Norman Smart, who later played with all sorts of people.

 

Here are a couple of atmospheric shots from the show.  The Doors photo, showing Jim Morrison weakly lying on the stage, is mostly what I remember from their performance, along with a strong version of Break On Through (To The Other Side).  After Jim failed to stir himself for a while, I left early.  It was pretty disappointing and I can see why, as charismatic as he was, he must have been trying to cope with as a colleague.  (Much later in my life, I heard some hysterical stories from their former manager that added detail to my understanding of the man and band and put things into perspective.) 

 

The Who were simply astonishing.  Pete Townshend’s guitar solos alternated between the inspired and boring, but the splendor of The Who in full and literal flight (i.e., apart from John Entwistle, the band seemed constantly to move in all dimensions) playing their Happy Jack/Sell Out material (plus Fortune Teller and Summertime Blues) was riveting, stunning and timeless.  I’ve never seen anything like it since.

The Doors took their name (by way of Aldous Huxley) from a section of William Blake’s The Marriage Of Heaven and Hell (1790-93) reading: 

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narow chinks of his cavern.”

I’m a little more “I suppose so,” and less gung-ho on those sentiments than I once was, perhaps, but year’s end brings both summing-up pessimism and (still, thank heaven) the seeds of optimism.   I’ve given myself marching orders and will once again try to put my shoulder a little more firmly and forcefully to the wheel and first do no harm.

By the way, don't the upcoming shows on the poster look great?  Jimi Hendrix and Soft Machine, Rascals and Vagrants.  The photo below shows me giving my school report about the concert.  I was much younger, shorter and friendlier then than I am now.

The Doors: Break On Through (To The Other Side) (Link)

The Who: I Can See For Miles (Link)

Exultant Strangeness

Graham Sutherland, Welsh Landscape With Roads, oil on canvas, 1936

29 June - 15 September 2013, Abbot Hall Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria

"Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) was one of the great British landscape painters and, during the 1940s and 50s, one of the most famous artists in this country. Initially inspired by the visionary landscapes of eighteenth and nineteenth-century artists such as William Blake and Samuel Palmer, Sutherland transcended his influences to create a vocabulary that was uniquely his own. This show highlights the brilliant power of Sutherland’s imagination and demonstrates the diverse ways in which he transformed his experience of his environment.


The exhibition consists of striking, otherworldly landscapes from throughout Sutherland’s career: early, meticulous etchings which owe a debt to masters such as Rembrandt, Whistler and Palmer, wonderfully fluid drawings and iconic paintings from the 1930s and 40s with their haunting forms, sinuous lines and daring compositions, and mysterious late landscapes, rich in colour and often monumental in scale."


Note: Encountering this exhibition announcement today, I thought: 


1. Everything about Graham Sutherland is worth observing closely, just as he observed closely.


2.  How fascinating it is that he received his training as an engraver and etcher and that he turned to painting only after the UK print market collapsed in 1930, a result of the Great Depression.


3.  How much I would like to visit the Abbot Hall Gallery, Kendal and Cumbria.  Locked in place for a while, I'm looking forward to resuming travel, moving on through with Caroline, Jane and whomever we happen to meet.

Graham Sutherland, Estuary, oil on canvas, 1940

Music: Suedehead by Morrissey (Link) 

Greek

Nothing will be said in this chapter about the development of the concept of the soul.  The Homeric idea of the psyche or breath-soul as an insubstantial image of the body, giving it life and surviving it in a wretched, bloodless existence in Hades, is too familiar to need description here.  Pythagoras was possibly the first Greek explicitly to treat the soul as something of moral importance, and Heraclitus first clearly indicated that some knowledge of the soul was relevant to knowledge of structure of the cosmos.

Yet the conception that the substance of the soul was related to aither, or to the substance of stars, seems from fifth-century B.C.  poetical contexts to have existed for some time already as part of the complex body of popular beliefs, alongside the distinct Homeric concept of a breath-soul.

  

 

 

G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge, At The University Press, 1971

QUINCES 2X (JANE GRIGSON)

 

Quinces Baked In The French Style (Coings Au Four)

Allow one for each person. Peel and hollow out the cores of six to eight quinces, being careful not to piece through the bottom of the fruit.  Sprinkle each one with lemon juice as you go.  Stand the quinces in a buttered gratin dish.

     Mix together to a cream 150 g (5 oz/2/3 cup) caster sugar, 100 g (3 ½ oz/scant ½ cup) lightly-salted or unsalted butter, and 3 generous tablespoons (1/4 cup) of whipping cream or double cream.  Stuff the quinces with this mixture – if there is some left, add halfway through the cooking.  Top each quince with a level tablespoon of sugar and bake at gas 5, 190 degrees C (375 degrees  F) until the quinces are tender.  Serve with cream and sugar.


Note:  Baked quince was Sir Isaac Newton’s favourite pudding.

Quince Vodka

A long time ago I wrote that quinces made everything delicious.  ‘Yes,’ replied one reader, ‘but first catch your quinces.’  And he enclosed a recipe for quince vodka, for those who can only bag a couple.

     Allow the quinces to become really ripe and yellow.  Wash them well, rinsing away any grey fluff that might remain.  Then grate them – peel, core and all – and put them into a litre bottling jar (1 ¾ pint/scant 4 ½ cups).  Add 60 g (2 oz/ ¼ cup) caster sugar.  Fill jar with vodka (or rum, gin or brandy for that matter).  The jar need not be full, but the fruit must be covered. Close tightly.  Leave in a dark place for at least two months.  Taste, and decide whether to leave for another two months or longer – it improves with time, and much depends on the quality of the quinces in the first place which can vary from year to year.  Add extra sugar if you prefer a liqueur sweetness; train off the liquor into a clean bottle.

From Jane Grigson's Fruit Book.

What a beautiful piece of fruit of such rare quality, like William Blake's extrarordinary 1795 rendering (color print with pen, ink and watercolor) of Isaac Newton as "divine geometer."   Yesterday we drove north from sweltering, parching heat into slightly less sweltering, parching heat.  Around dusk, a cooling storm erupted, scaring the daylights out of one of our dogs and reanimating the other, who is recovering from a malady and seemed actually to welcome the lightning, thunder and excitement.  The quince vodka pictured above, borrowed from the Baroque In Hackney blogger, who in turn borrowed it from The Quince Tree, looks exactly right for this climate, mood, breeze and moon.