In regione caecorum, rex est luscus.
[In the realm of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.]
(Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, Collecteana Adagiorum, 1500)

[...]How an one eyed man is
Well syghted when
He is amonge blynde men?
(John Skelton, Why Come Ye Nat To Courte, 1522)

In the kingdome of blind men the one ey’d is king.
(George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs, 1640)

The one-eyed person is a beauty in the country of the blind.
(Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, Arabic Proverbs, 1830)

[...] and through his thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain:–
‘In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King.’ [...]
(H.G. Wells, The Country of the Blind, 1904)

In The Kingdom Of The Blind The One-Eyed Are Kings

If it were within,
within our power
beyond the reach
of slavish pride,
to no-longer
harbour grievances
behind the mask’s
opportunists facade,

we could welcome responsibility
like a long lost friend
and re-establish laughter
in the doll’s house once again.

For time has imprisoned us
in the order of our years
in the discipline of our ways
and in the passing of momentary stillness

You can see our chaos in motion
our chaos in motion
We can view our chaos in motion
view our chaos in motion…

…and the subsequent collisions of fools
well-versed in the subtle art of slavery.
(Brendan Perry, The Serpent’s Egg, 1988)

I also never realized that this principle is phrased in one way or another in so many religions including Christianity and Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Taoism. I didn’t know it was mentioned as early as in ancient Greek times and that is has been so essential to mankind across the world and a foundation of living together regardless of any cultural or religious beliefs.

This Wikipedia entry also presents a few interesting criticisms of the golden rule. George Bernard: “Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.” Or Karl Popper: “The golden rule is a good standard which is further improved by doing unto others, wherever possible, as they want to be done by.” A concept that has recently been called The Platinum Rule. Others ask how one would know how others want to be treated, or point out possible differences in values, interests or situations.

Well, that was all for today…being such an important and so often discussed rule I sometimes wonder why so few people would actually live by it.

When I saw somebody’s album of collected autographs a few weeks ago I remembered this poetry album again and was wondering if this old tradition does still exist today in Germany, and if it ever existed in the United States? Next time I visit home in Germany I have to try and find this old album. I am afraid it might not exist anymore. I have a vague memory of giving it to somebody who never returned it to me. But I am not sure…it has been more than 20 years since I used to keep this album.

I think it was a very beautiful tradition not only because of its value as a keepsake, but also because it helped to connect with people on a more intimate, personal level than one would generally allow to happen in day-to-day life. All the thoughts, words, poetry or drawings showed a side of the person one might not have expected before. This book was in many ways invaluable as a key to friendship and appreciation.

To find out more about today’s poetry albums and how common they are in other parts of the world I looked them up on Wikipedia. The German branch of Wikipedia confirms my own memories of the poetry album and adds some interesting facts on their historical background.

At the end of the 16^th century it was a tradition to write name, emblem and a motto into a friend’s family book. In the 18^th century people added a lot of personal dedications, endearments and drawings, so eventually they turned from a family registry to more general remembrance albums. They experienced the peak of popularity in the 19^th century when members of literary circles shared poetry and artistic contributions with each other in dedicated poetry booklets. This was mostly a tradition amongst adults at that time.

In Europe, this more than 300 year-old tradition is passed down from one generation to another only in German-speaking countries and the Netherlands. It is unknown in Scandinavia, Ireland, Great Britain and the Romanic countries.

The English branch of Wikipedia describes friendship books which unlike the German poetry albums are not kept to yourself, but passed from one penpal to another, sometimes also becoming a way to meet new penpals. Sometimes they are also made for someone else rather than themselves.

Interesting… I think it might be worth to revive this old tradition. But I wonder if I just handed a book to somebody, would people know or understand what to do with a poetry album? I briefly thought about a digital version of the old poetry album, but it would never be the same, and I suppose platforms like MySpace already serve as a sort of virtual album without its thoughtfullness.

Geheimnisvoll aber nicht Geheimniskrämerei”

• from Ember Glance – The Permanence of Memory
  by David Sylvian & Russell Mills
• original source is unknown

This line plays with the German word “geheim” which can appear in “geheimnisvoll” as something mysterious or arcane, something that is just hidden to some people due to lack of exposure, but not necessarily hidden by someone for a specific purpose. It can also appear in “Geheimniskrämerei” as secretiveness, something that is kept in secret by someone with a specific intent. This quote could perhaps be translated as “arcane but not secretive”?

It was used in the instrumental soundtrack to the Ember Glance installation by David Sylvian and Russell Mills. I found its appearance always very fascinating, not only because it is a quote in German which I would not really expect in David Sylvian’s work. But it also seems to fit so perfectly to the subject of their installation which dealt with those seemingly forgotten memories, that from time to time still manage to reach to the surface of consciousness for a very brief moment. Just like embers’ glow would become visible in one moment and fade away in the following. I also liked how a closer, more careful look reveals such a subtle difference… just like a closer, more careful listen to music can reveal so many subtleties over time.

The voice sounds familiar, but I have never heard anything more about its background story or origins. During this time David Sylvian worked with Holger Czukay on several projects and I think that Holger may be responsible for this voice fragment. Was it Holger Czukay himself, or was is a quote by Karlheinz Stockhausen? Or somebody else?

I still wonder who said it, when and in which context. Or was it really specifically recorded for Ember Glance?

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…

• from Howl, Part 1
  by Allen Ginsberg

Believe it or not, I have known about beat poetry, Allen Ginsberg and his significance for many years, but I have never read any of his works or listened to him reading one of his poems before. A trailer for a documentary about him teased with the quote from his most famous work Howl and made me curious enough to look for the complete work. An audio-sample and the text can be found at poets.org.

I have quoted an excerpt below. I’m not going to attempt to write an essay about it…many other people have done it already. I’m just amazed and impressed by the powerful imagery created in words, phrases that are as memorable as a painting, its proximity to presence and my generation. All poetry I have been exposed to in school was very unapproachable, abstract or written in a long past time I have had no connection to all. It never helped to be forced to write about poetry in the hopes the teacher would approve and give a good grade. Poetry is like art, music, dance, paintings, photography… some manage to touch you in one way or another…others don’t…that is the nature of art. And Howl is a work that touched me.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
cohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless
ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
lyn Bridge,

lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
off Empire State out of the moon,

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,

whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
Synagogue cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
City Hall,

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
drawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight in the
railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
father night,

[more at poets.org]