history is a matter of perspective

the angle taken by a museum is very often through the lens of where it's located. we went to the maritime museum in barcelona yesterday. since i'm currently writing about the long voyage from amsterdam to the cape in 1723, i'm very keen on learning i can about what ships and life on ships were like back then. i didn't exactly learn that at the maritime museum in barcelona.

it was a beautiful building, almost danish in its skillful combination of old and new architecture. the main feature was a 60-meter long replica of a galley, an oared warship, made to fight the ottomans in the mediterannean in the 1500s. those oarsmen were slaves and did not have a good life. the captain, however, did, with fine inlaid wood floors and art up in the quarters on the stern, from which he dictated the battle. it was elaborately decorated with both painting and carved reliefs. there was a medusa's head on the back, to strike terror in all who approached from the back. the figurehead was a beautiful carved neptune, riding a fish and covered in gold leaf, showing undoubted dominion over the sea.

it was a confusing exhibition, and hard to find the way through to see all of the exhibits. we finally did, but not in the right order of things and it did get a bit hazy as they leaped from those mediterranean incursions to trade with the americas. because they were focused on ships built in barcelona and the catalonian sailor in general, they skimmed over that whole thing with the spaniard columbus and his role in accidentally discovering the new world when he tried to find a new passage to india, undoubtedly because the spaniards couldn't keep up with the portugese and dutch on their well-established routes around the cape to the far east. (phew, that was a long sentence.)

there were displays about the trade with the new world and the goods that went back and forth - sugar, cotton, tobacco and yes, they even mentioned the slave trade. i think they handled it well. you stepped into a little room, where the walls were covered with official documents regarding the slave trade, and a whispered voice said that it was an ugly bit of history that no one really wished to talk about, but it needed to be done, and it was a dark time for humanity. those plantations in the american south could do with a bit of inspiration there.

and it all had me thinking, once again, about how history and how the story is told, is a matter of who is telling the story. maybe i need to head to amsterdam to hear their perspective, they must have a maritime museum there.

ghost ship

photo from the Irish Times article

i'm a bit obsessed with the story of the M/V Alta, a ghost ship that washed up on a remote shore in ireland after last weekend's storm dennis. it was unmanned and had been abandoned and floating derelict in the atlantic for 17 months. it's 77 meters long, built in 1976 and last registered to an unknown company under tanzanian flag. its last voyage was said to be from greece to haiti, which seems a strange route. it had some kind of irreparable engine failure somewhere off bermuda and the 10-person crew (i cannot find any info about the nationality of said crew) first had supplies air-lifted to them and then was rescued by the US coast guard ahead of an oncoming hurricane in september 2018. the owner was supposed to tow the ship somewhere for repairs, but it seems that never happened. there are rumors that it was being towed to guyana when it was hijacked and then left to drift again. none of the reports mention what cargo was onboard at its abandonment, nor have i been able to learn the nationalities of the crew. it's all very mysterious. the last sighting of the ship was by a british navy vessel at some undisclosed location last august-september (they're very cagey about precisely when and where). in a couple of the articles, it was mentioned that it was sighted off africa and spain (possibly out near the azores or canaries?) in recent months. it must have been caught in the gulf stream and carried north. another article i read suggested it went north along the US coast and then crossed the Atlantic from higher up.

the other night at the bar, an old maersk captain came in and i asked him what he thought about it. he immediately grinned and said, "it's the flying dutchman!" - the legendary ghost ship! he also said that such vessels are not at all unusual. some nefarious character picks up a ship for cheap, hauls one illicit cargo - drugs, weapons, supplies that are under embargo, etc. - and then abandons the ship. it would stand to reason that sailing between greece and haiti, it could have had some unusual cargo on board, as that doesn't seem like a normal trade route. but, i wonder what happened to that cargo? perhaps the reports of the ship being towed to guyana are actually a rendezvous with another ship that offloaded the cargo and sailed off with it, leaving the ship.

it seems strange that the owner is so hard to trace and strangely enough, an owner seems to have presented themselves to the irish authorities and was awaiting verification. that could be anyone, wanting a ship - that was my brother-in-law's first idea, that we should claim it and then we'd have a ship - a 44-year-old ship that had been abandoned and drifting for a year and a half. when i showed the maersk captain the picture, he said, it was a "russer" - at least built in russia, just by looking at it. i haven't read that, but it could be. none of the articles have talked about earlier names or owners through the years, but there must have been many. i just can't stop thinking about it. there must be more to the story. so many unanswered questions.

if it was a nefarious owner, wanting to use it for one illicit cargo, i imagine the crew was filipino and i wonder what their fate was - how did they get back home if the owner had abandoned them and the ship? and what about the cargo? they hadn't yet reached their destination when they broke down, so there had to be a cargo on board. i'm imagining all kinds of stories for this! maybe i need to work in such a storyline to our story. we have lumke's voyage in 1723 and a contemporary voyage - hmmm, how to connect them? or is this a whole new story? i was always fascinated by the kursk sinking as well and voraciously read everything about that back when it happened. if you told that story, you'd want them to be rescued though, as the ending there wasn't a good one for everyone on board. that was in putin's early days and he didn't handle that very well - he handled it like a KGB agent, not a leader.

but, back to the alta. what was it that broke down and couldn't be fixed? were there no spares on board, so the crew couldn't get it running again, or was it a cheap, third-rate crew that didn't have the know-how? the owner, wanting it for just the one voyage, didn't plan on needing to repair it. anyway, it's all very interesting and would be a story worth telling - even if i have to make up most of the details.

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new information from marine traffic - it was panama flag, not tanzania. and there is a list of the names the ship has had...

very weird with a norwegian flag and name after the alta name...this story is so very curious.

wait! more from marine traffic: "She was also in the news in 1983 when she sank off Norway. Raised and repaired she continued trading." this story gets better and better!

what are you listening to?

ever since serial, the fabulous podcast that changed the way we all think of podcasts, ended i've been a bit bereft and in need of other stories well-told. so i've been on quite the podcasting binge. of course, one turns to serial parent this american life, but you are quickly out of episodes of that as well, since they don't seem to leave them up for long. also a TAL spin-off is invisibilia, which is brand new and wonderful, tho' wonderful in a different way than serial. the hosts lulu miller and alix spiegel are charming and the episodes are self-contained, but fascinating in their mix of stories and science and they too leave you longing for next week's instalment. also arguably a TAL spin-off is startup, where TAL and planet money alum alex blumberg chronicles the start of his...you guessed it...podcasting business. if you have an inner entrepreneur, you will find yourself practically taking notes and definitely encouraging all of your entrepreneurial friends to listen to it as well. reply all is the first podcast released by blumberg's gimlet media and is definitely worth a listen if you like the internet (which i assume you do if you're here). last among these good ones is criminal, the first podcast i discovered from the radiotopia collective. unlike serial, it explores, in self-contained episodes, short tales of often very strange crimes, including a baby-killing pig who was put on trial and hanged in 18th century france. as an example to other pigs, so they wouldn't turn to a life of crime as well. you can learn a lot listening to podcasts.

as i already said, in recent days, i've stumbled onto some podcasts that are part of a collective called radiotopia. 99% invisible's roman mars seems to be at the helm of this particular collective and his podcast is definitely worth a listen if you're looking for different stories. but my favorite of the bunch is probably strangers, which has a danish host, tho' she's been in the US so long you can't hear it. lea tau, the host, was involved in the moth at one time and that shows in her storytelling ability. another one worth listening to is benjamen walker's theory of everything, which did a recent awesome 5-part series on the "dislike club," his dream of a platform for people who are tired of facebook and twitter (the last episode of it is found on another podcast called radiotonic). snap judgement is interesting too, but love & radio didn't capture my attention at all.

the cool part of all of these podcasting collectives (feral audio is another one, heavy on comedians), is that they refer you to their other podcasts, so it's a little like following an endless string of hyperlinks and you can discover lots of cool stories. i don't subscribe to all of them. generally, i download a couple of episodes to see if i like them and then subscribe if i do. if they are so engrossing that they can make me forget that i'm mucking out stalls then i subscribe. radio diaries and the truth are also part of radiotopia and i haven't yet decided about them. i listened to a rather terrifying story on the truth (which oddly, isn't truth, but is small mini fictional radio plays, not reporting) while i did chores this evening. it was a story that will probably give me nightmares tonight. but i think it's good to have stories that stick with you. slumber party i downloaded only the episode with the oatmeal's matt inman, because i wanted to hear him. i will not be subscribing as the two hosts are rather full of themselves in that way that only people from LA can be and poor matt hardly got in a word edgewise, the way they prattled along.

hello internet is insufferable and i'll be deleting it. in fact, i just did.  i've listened to entirely too many of the thinking sideways podcast. the three hosts are just average people with mediocre brains, a marginal ability to google things and too much access to recording equipment. they prove that although anyone can put out a podcast, maybe not everyone should. i've only listened to as many episodes as i have because they do like to cover mysteries like the voynich manuscript and jack the ripper. however, because they seem to get all of their information by reading wikipedia, i suggest you take a shortcut and just read the wikipedia yourself so that you don't have to hear the one dumb guy say he's not an expert (as if you hadn't noticed) while the pretentiously-named girl devon tries to blame it all on aliens.

spilled milk is another one that proves that not everyone should podcast just because they have a microphone in their macbook. i loved molly wizenberg's blog and cookbook, but she and her sidekick (whose name i've blocked out) in this one just annoy the hell out of me. i only tried it out because they were going to talk about cocktails. the sublime one below it also contains a cocktail episode which i haven't yet listened to. i think spilled milk is another one i'll be getting rid of.  there are too many good podcasts out there to waste time listening to crappy ones. 99% invisible with roman mars, as i said above, is a keeper. big ideas features some longer, more professorial talks by scholars. you have to be in the right mood for those.

last up in this rundown is the moth podcast. they were telling stories before it became fashionable and they are damn good at it.

you may wonder when i'm doing all of this listening. generally, it's when i'm on a long drive. but since that doesn't happen all that often, i tend to put on headphones and listen while i'm making dinner, doing the evening chores or cleaning out the stalls on a sunday afternoon. i can also listen while i sew, tho' i haven't sewed anything much lately. when i can't listen is when i'm not doing something else...if i try to listen at bedtime, i fall asleep immediately and miss the whole thing. i also can't listen and read or type something, so i'm not listening right now. i will say listening to podcasts has cut into my netflix time, but i think that's quite all right.

did serial get you into podcasts? if so, what are you listening to? any and all recommendations are most appreciated.

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and in case this isn't enough, here's a list of the best podcast episodes ever (according to slate). and a whole language for talking about them from a critical perspective, in case you really want to nerd out.

the soundtrack of our lives

i recently went to hear a storyteller. he had fully embraced the hippie lifestyle back in the 60s and it seems that he even managed to remember a lot of it. as he began, he read some introductory remarks from prepared notes. he was a bit stiff in his presentation and i was a bit worried about how the evening would go. but then, he took off his reading glasses, abandoned his notes and began to really tell his story. he was transformed into a different person - warm, lively, authentic and real.

he had brought a record player along and real LPs and he used music throughout to tell his story, which began clear back when he was in the fourth grade. a substitute teacher introduced the kids to the kind of jazz that was performed by a Danish jazz musician called Papa Bue and it was a revelation for him. in my ears, it sounded much more like 20s and 30s dixieland music, not 60s, but my musical upbringing came later and in a different cultural context.

what i loved was the way he used music to underline his story and to trigger his memories. and even tho' much of the music was before my time, it still brought forth my own memories of music. for him, the radio station you had to tune into was radio luxembourg. he sat with his ear glued to it and even recorded favorite songs from the radio, being frustrated when they interrupted a song before it was over. it made me recall tuning in late at night to AM station KOMA in oklahoma, where they played the beegee's tragedy every evening around 10 p.m. during one long summer in the early 80s. we couldn't get KOMA during the day, only at night, but even that was pretty amazing, considering there were two whole states in between us and them.

it got me reminiscing about my own musical memories. one of the earliest is of sonny and cher. i can remember listening to cher's gypsies, tramps and thieves on our very advanced 8-track player. i recall the feel of the buttons and the click as it moved between tracks and the scratchy blue carpet that was on the floor in front of the stereo. cher's hair and costumes were just spectacular, and i could picture them as i listened to the stories she told with her songs.

there were a lot of country music stations in the area where i grew up, and i remember singing along to the oak ridge boys and alabama and swingin' by john andersen. some of the first non-country music i had, on LP, was barry manilow. "oh mandy, well you came and you gave without taking..." along with the soundtrack to grease, i practically wore those records out. it was difficult to be a rebel when you were listening to barry manilow, so it may give you an idea of what a tame sort of child i was.

after that came the gogos and the cars and steve miller band's abracadabra. there were other storytellers, like john cougar mellencamp, tho' i don't think i ever owned any of his albums. (why oh why don't songs tell stories anymore?) and then there was madonna. and cyndy lauper. i couldn't choose between them, i loved them both, they spoke to my very soul. and prince, i remember thinking his song kiss was a message to all of us ordinary people, that we had a chance (you don't have to watch dynasty, to have an attitude...). there are so many memories attached to all of that music. much of it involving long drives in the car. i can still picture a stretch of road between madison and brookings where i heard dire straits' money for nothing on my way back to college one sunday night.

some music i came to late. i was only able to ascribe meaning to the eagles' hotel california after i lived in california for a couple of years and experienced for myself the soullessness of orange county in the late 80s. then that whole, "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave" line made so much more sense to me.

we all have an individual soundtrack to our lives. some of it shared. most of it deeply private. some of it indelibly linked to memories, some of it just washed over us, leaving no trace. it was nice to be reminded of that by hearing someone else's story. we need more storytelling in our lives, good old-fashioned spoken word.

knowing the story is the key

i read in the atlantic that storytelling may be the key to our evolution. whether that's true (or provable) or not, i know that it's the key to my ability to negotiate my way through the world. from the stories i tell myself in my head about various situations to the ones i relate out loud to generate a laugh to the ones i write for my clients, stories are pretty much the central feature of my existence.

this week, a very interesting story has unfolded that has made me so much more able to handle the situation with my nemesis the troglodyte. probably the biggest problem i've had with him has been that i could find no logic in his behavior or even for his involvement in the group, let alone his desire to so firmly grip the reins of control that everyone else's thoughts and contributions are obliterated. but thanks to a story, that all makes so much more sense. because it can all be explained by plain old boring selfish economic interest. it turns out that the troglodyte owns several properties which are adjacent to one of the potential locations for our project. his desire to place a new building on a square near his properties and his stubborn and oftentimes nasty refusal to consider the possibility of remodeling the existing building that's being used a "culture house" today make so much sense in light of his selfish interest in his own bottom line. i also learned that he's in the process of trying to sell the properties to a developer, one to whom he has undoubtedly promised that the new culture house will be built nearby and bring traffic to a new square right in front of the properties. hmm, i wonder if such petty little town kings (which are surely not rare) reflect in those world corruption list standings?

funnily enough, as the various options progress with our architect, it turns out that reusing just part of the old building will result in 1500 square meters of usable space for the money that's been budgeted, whereas a new building on the tiny lot on the square will result in 410 square meters of usable space. it seems there isn't much choice there. and it will be very interesting on monday evening to see what story he tells to he continue to justify his desire for the project on the square, adjacent to his own properties.

i have the most evil delicious sense of delight in the fact that he doesn't know that anyone knows that he's the owner. he doesn't realize how easy it is to google your way to answers. he's also been very dismissive of our group's online presence and the internet in general. it seems that one doesn't do well to underestimate the power of a girl and her computer. i can't wait for this story to unfold.

is this art? a torso project update

it's time for a little torso project update. some of the creative women from the original torso project weekend met up yesterday to show their finished products/works in progress and to discuss next steps towards showing the work.

the end results are as diverse as the women themselves. as i see it, the common thread for all is autobiography. these casts of our very bodies, frozen in a moment in time, are the canvas for a snapshot of all that we feel has made us who we are, right here and right now.

words, photos, maps, yarn, paint, drawings, color - all have been used to depict the individual lives of each of us. how we see ourselves and how we imagine that others see us. these torsos hold fragments of our memories, our lives, our documents, our experiences. they are there, written on our very bodies.

but i find myself thinking about whether they are art. we used artistic techniques - collage, paint, photography, one person even "drew" in yarn, as you can see above - but did we achieve actual art?  which raises the more complicated question of what is art anyway? it's a bit like that old joke about pornography, "i know it when i see it." and i can't help but think that what we made wasn't art per se.

but if it's not art, then what is it? it is expressive. and highly personal. it is storytelling. and a bit of art therapy, in that i think we all found it therapeutic to look within for our memories and stories. but to ask a museum to display our work would be a stretch. a big one. maybe it would be different if yoko ono or madonna had been part of our project - they would lend caché and would have perhaps lifted us all in our visions and our work. one of the most powerful things we did yesterday was that each person shared the thoughts behind their torso. and it made them so much more meaningful to hear people's stories.  but art needs to be able to stand alone, as we can't stand them beside at an exhibition and explain them to people.

but the fact is that we are a bunch of creative people in a little town in the middle of nowhere in denmark who happen to have tried to tell a little piece of the story of who we are in the form of a plaster cast of our own bodies. and while a few members of the group are trained as artists, as a whole we are not. we are teachers and office workers and librarians and nurses and consultants and physical therapists and prison guards. and those are wonderful things to be.

what we had was an amazing experience - to make those torsos together in a room of 20+ women. baring ourselves (literally) and opening up our hearts and experiences and stories and sharing them is a powerful thing, a wild woman sisterhood sort of thing. but where do we go with it? we are going to exhibit them locally at the end of august, but i wonder beyond that. they might fit well in a library exhibition, connected to other forms of autobiography, or to part of a storytelling conference. but i honestly don't think we'll convince a museum or a gallery to show them.

here's mine, i'm not done yet. it's filled with words that resonated with me - many in danish, because those are the newspapers that i have at hand. i've given those words first a wash of sepia, followed by a a wash of watered down paynes grey ink, as i don't want to completely cover them. tho' i do intend to cover them to an extent with small paintings and drawings of places and memories that are important to me. but mine isn't art either, but it is a personal expression of me. words are important to me. as is expressing myself. right now, it's darker and more foreboding than i actually feel, which is interesting, but doesn't reflect the hazy vision of it that resides in my head. and that's a big part of the process too.