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

[michael macelletti]

wow !!!               what a totally overwhelming experience  you  have created. 
  it sure has brightened up my somewhat dreary connecticut evening.     glenn 
would have loved it . 



________________________________
From: maryellen jensen <maryellenjensen28 at hotmail.com>
To: "f_minor at glenngould.org" <f_minor at glenngould.org>
Sent: Fri, September 21, 2012 8:13:06 PM
Subject: Re: [f_minor] The Idea of North -- GG's Winnipeg-to-Churchill 
MNwilderness train in a few weeks! Polar bears! Aurora!

 

"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 
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2012 9:12 AM
To: Discussion of the Canadian pianist Glenn  Gould. 
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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