Nilgai: Khajuraho, Harbin Hot Spring's field notes as poetry, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, UC Berkeley talk on Khajuraho

Hello Sari,

Very nice to meet you and nice to talk about Khajuraho in the UC Berkeley anthropology department, especially vis-a-vis your talk there (yesterday - http://www.tourismstudies.org/news_archive/Vijayakumar2013.htm), and vis-a-vis the conference in Switzerland on "Tourism Imaginaire.'

When I looked through my blog again, I found first only one reference to Khajoraho in a poem as field notes :) I wrote in 2010, -

"The Minarets and Lake Ediza: Harbin Poem Field Notes"
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/12/minarets-and-lake-ediza-harbin-poem.html -

which also touches on aspects of Harbin that I appreciate, and ethnographically especially.


And then I searched my blog again under Khajuraho and found a few further entries (and a few unpublished ones, including an interview with Ishvara, Harbin's founder :):


"Fish: Who are those Harbin artisans - (are they French? - yes, some are) - who keep the Harbin waters clean, Spiritual and Intimate?" -

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/09/fish-who-are-those-harbin-artisans-are.html -


"Wilson's Bird of Paradise: Friends' Dalton Letter" ...
http://scottmacleod.com/daltonletter.htm ... can be helpful ... & enjoyable" -

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2011/04/friends-dalton-letter.html -


(I've since changed the spelling to khajuraho for all of my blog entries).


Looking forward to your talk, and see you perhaps before then.

Regards and Namaste, :)
Scott



I also added you in academia.edu and you can see my Harbin talk at Cal in the Gifford room from last year.

:)
Scott




Hi Scott,

It was very nice to meet you too. And it was great to know that you have visited Khajuraho. Looking forward to talk more about it soon.
Your poem on Harbin is a wonderful read. The idea of a virtual Harbin is enticing. I will try to read more from your blog soon. So many interesting things under the categories list.

Thank you for adding me on academia.edu. I definitely want to see your last year's talk.

More soon,
Sari




Hi Sari,

Thanks for your email.

I enjoyed this video -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oczaIplm9k - and music on your Tumblr page - "Remembering Raghav Sreyas" ( here http://life-in-the-bay.tumblr.com/post/29066881204/ethereal-the-music-is-so-disturbingly-good-that ) ... I enjoy Raga too a lot ... esp. Ravi Shankar's (see the Raga category, for example, in my blog).


Here's the Khajuraho 15 minute video in the Treasures of the World series in German, I mentioned :

Khajuraho, Indien, Folge 171
Liebesspiele für die Götter (Love play of the Gods)
http://www.swr.de/schaetze-der-welt/-/id=5355190/did=7045896/pv=video/nid=5355190/1d56bhw/

(I critiqued other Schaetze der Welt videos and their representations of some Middle Eastern UNESCO WHS for a peer-reviewed chapter I wrote, published in 2006).

And in terms of internet video representation, here's a fairly typical Youtube with more views than many:

India - Khajuraho Erotic Temples - Travel - Jim Rogers World Adventure -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAGGdyUqyyQ.


I like the Khajuraho video that is linked to in my poem video notes -

"The Minarets and Lake Ediza: Harbin Poem Field Notes"
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/12/minarets-and-lake-ediza-harbin-poem.html -

but none of the videos I know of are like being there, yet the videos often provide much information and video of things I might not have otherwise seen, for example. All are stimulating and somehow beautiful though, in their representation of sublime Khajuraho. It's an interesting field site for a life time of study :) as is Harbin :)

How to 'realize' the bliss (if blissful they are) of such representations in novel and exploratory ways are interesting questions, both ethnographically and in life (touristically too?) - and perhaps of Khajuraho as well as Harbin. More about this later perhaps.

If I can be of help in any way with your presentation (which is already written, it looked like), please let me know.

Happy Khajuraho,
Scott





Hi Sari,

I like this video because it's reflective and it presents an appreciative and thoughtful point of view, both eastern and western, about Khajuraho -
https://myspace.com/theloveplayofthegods/video/the-love-play-of-the-gods-trailer/107381214 .

What do you think of this video?

It might be interesting to meet Dr. Shobita Punja, - http://ncf.nic.in/ncf_contactus.htm - the historian in this film at some point, as well as Dr. Vikram Prakash at the University of Washington, for learning academically about Khajuraho - http://faculty.washington.edu/vprakash/ . Do you know either of them?

It's interesting to me how a specific culture - Chola and the Chandelas - about 1,000 years ago, produced these temples, in the context of age-old vedic culture of India, with such connectednesses, yet also ascetic and chaste traditions (which I associate with many/most spiritual traditions and religions ). This culture, in my interpretation, created a kind of opening to represent the erotic sublimely in art and religious sculpture, and in what is now India.


Any interest in hearing/attending some of these upcoming, UC Berkeley Philosophy talks with Crispin Wright on next Monday (at 4), T (at 4), W (at 3), or Th (at 4), and / or meeting for a coffee before or after? (On Monday I give a bagpipe lesson in the early evening, so probably won't be at Cal that day).

http://philosophy.berkeley.edu/events/upcoming

Philosophy lectures and colloquia at Cal can be very far-reaching, and another interesting culture.

In the video on your Tumblr site, - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oczaIplm9k - I also appreciate somehow the beautiful fuzziness and related connectednesses of its music, as well as a kind of vision or thinking, which I associate with amazing, mother India (which I've only visited twice :).

Do you know Ravi Shankar's CD "Three Ragas" from the late 1950s? It's a particular favorite of mine, and generates a kind of bliss in itself. :)

What moves you particularly about Khajuraho (which I may hear in your upcoming talk)? What generates bliss for you there?  ... might be a fun conversation to develop, musically even somehow. Do you play a musical instrument?

Friendly regards,
Scott


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Scott














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