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Here's something I learned today.
Composer Akira Ifukube, famous - in Japanese classical music, film score and Godzilla fan circles - as the creator of the original soundtrack for Godzilla - including the appropriately majestic theme (the quality of which I only appreciate now in my youthful old age) died in February of this year.
It's almost always an odd experience to learn the creator of art - yes, even pop art such as the big G - that effected your consciousness has passed on.
There's a tendency to imagine them as eternal forces of nature. -
I remember when Douglas Adams died. The shock was paramount to being told I did not exist! The mortal coil should be a special designated zone given in honour to those minds who make being alive worth the hassle... When they go, we go too.
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I've wondered about this too, the deaths that most affect me are, most importantly, those of people who've brought me laughter and insight. Spike Milligan, Dave Allen, Graham Chapman, John Candy, Bill Hicks, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, Frank Zappa, Janis and Jimi. but I must confess, I had no time for those who gnashed and wailed at the death of Lennon, 'they're gonna crucify me'.
My friend Paul met Douglas Adams at one of the E conflabs, they were both mad guitar collectors, obsessed with the minutiae of manufacturing histories, but both simple journeyman players. They got pissed, talked guitar for hours, Hitchikers was barely even mentioned. He was a lovely man I'm told....who could doubt? -
I fear for the day when David Attenborough passes.
Britain will never be the same again... -
We need to do some Hagiogrphy. A litany of the truly inspiring.
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In my third year at university me and my housemates set out to amass what later would be called "The Wall of Dons".
'A Don' is an individual who has come to respresent their chosen field of inspiration. The activity undertaken by this Don must have been, in the major, a benefit to humanity (otherwise Hitler could be claimed as a Don : he was surely the 'Don' of murdering Jews).
Our wall had some hundred faces on it by the end of the year, many of whom were still a matter of controversy to certain members of our house (the whole thing got a bit silly by the end and caused arguments aplenty, mainly because of the wall space involved).
Dons included: George Orwell, David Attenborough, Marie Curie, Darwin, Einstein, Shigeru Miyamoto (from Nintendo), Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Jesus (the Don of crucifixion), Bill Hicks, Al Pacino, Jorge Luis Borges, Nelson Mandela...
...and so on (as you can see, our tentacles of inspiration were thrown wide in acceptance)...
We also had an anti-Don wall just over the cistern of our toilet. George W. Bush was the soul entrant.
A discussion of Dons could be arranged... -
Ah, I like this concept...Dons and anti-Dons.
It's so much more inclusive, I think, than the more generally used "genius".
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Talking of genius. i thought this was rather interesting.
From New Scientist, on the tainted 'genius' of one William Shockley. Nobel Laureatte for his work on the transistor, and later in his life an obsessive advocate of eugenics:Shockley's obsession destroyed his reputation. It was particularly perverse, Shurkin writes, because Shockley was "a living embodiment of the weakness of IQ tests". As a boy, he was tested twice by Lewis Terman, developer of the Stanford-Binet IQ test, and both times fell short of the score of 135 that would have included him in Terman's lifelong study of "geniuses". Shockley joked about it, yet insisted Terman's geniuses must have gone on to greater things. In that he was wrong; none won a Nobel prize, and Terman's test also failed to spot a second physics laureate, Luis Alvarez. - full review of new Shockley biography
In their lifetime the 'Genius' can be easily misunderstood, mislead or driven to self destruction. 'Dons' on the other hand have to earn their status, and keep it, by definition.
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