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The 2022 Winter Olympics have started and Ferrebeekeeper watched the opening ceremony so that you don’t have to! The Beijing-style pageantry and pomp was omnipresent…yet markedly different than in 2008 (when covid, climate-change, and autocracy had not yet taken their toll on Earth’s beleaguered folk). My most dazzling part of the whole affair was the giant flower (above) made of huge green LED rods and a troupe of brilliant, careful dancers working seamlessly together. That was incredible! Do a sea anemone next! I also enjoyed how NBC sporadically cut-away to show Vladimir Putin sitting alone in his VIP dictator box. When the Russian athletes came out he blew kisses. When the Ukraine athletes came out he pretended to be asleep while a dream-bubble featuring him devouring the Ukraine appeared above his head. Then when the camera was not on him, he sneaked off to purloin the gold judo medals (the joke’s on you, strongman, there IS no judo in the winter Olympics). What a show!
After the giant flower made up of people, the show-makers got even more serious about hammering home their political message of Chinese unity. Like Europe, China is made up of many ethnic groups (Hui, Miao, Bai, Manchu, Kam, Yao, Uyghur, Tibetan, Gelao, etc, etc, etc…). All of these people are annealed together under Han leadership. The opening ceremony illustrated this, by presenting actors dressed up like the various ethnicities working together to conquer covid, set up the games, and carry the national flag to the seamless, goose-stepping Chinese military which marched it into place.
The most popular part of the opening is the parade of nations, when each nation’s athletes enter the stadium wearing appropriate costumes. The fashion winner was…Kazakhstan (sigh), which took a break from pogroms and crackdowns to put together these stunning outfits which look like they came out of a beautiful Central Asian version of “Return of the Jedi”.
Americas’ outfits at least looked warm, practical, and tough for a change.
Each nation’s delegation was preceded by a gorgeous Chinese model bearing a snowflake with the country’s name. Snowflakes were the theme of the opening ceremony. After the parade of nations, these nation-snowflakes had further roles to play in the ceremony.
In the west, snowflakes represent individuality (since no two are the same). In America, the pro-totalitarian opponents of liberty have taken to calling their liberal-minded political opponents “snowflakes” to mock the idea that anything different can be special or worthwhile (and also, presumably, to show that those who support democracy are fragile and weak). The whole thing is a stupid and contrived metaphor, which China disturbingly recontextualized by featuring hundreds of identical mass-produced snowflakes (the national “nametags” from the parade of athletes) being held by heterogeneous children from around the world. Through some kind of Chinese artistry, these identical snowflakes were then annealed together into a giant super snowflake–which also looked exactly the same. All of this was against the larger backdrop of identical machine-made snow (without which the winter Olympics could not happen in drought-stricken Beijing).
NBC tried to sprinkle some Hollywood tinsel onto this very Chinese show in the form of a pre-taped segment with professional wrestler and not-exactly-master thespian Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson bloviating about how great America’s Olympic athletes are. Although I fully believe that the Rock knows how challenging it is to keep to a steroid regimen, he does not have anything else to do with the Olympics and his form-fitting shirt-sleeved shirt and obvious LA backdrop made him seem even more jarringly out of place.
The real high point of the show was the appearance of China’s uncrowned emperor, Xi Jinping, in a mask and simple unadorned winter coat. He spoke a word and the sky was filled with dazzling fireworks and the games officially began! As you may be able to tell, I have some reservations about all of this (during the worldwide Democratic crisis, the IOC’s very biddable affections seem to all lie with totalitarians), but that hardly means I’m not going to enjoy the Olympics… Let me know what you think, and we will blog more about what is happening on the ice and on the piste of the world’s most populous capital city!
Since I was a child, I have loved the Olympics, but a lot has changed in the world since the black-and-white moral conflict of the cold war (and a lot has changed for me since I was a child living in blood-red rural America). As one of the few venues where the nations of the Earth convene, the Olympics gives us a god’s eye view of the international order (albeit through the darkened lens of corporate sponsorship and whatever NBC thinks will appeal to the most American viewers). As the games proceed we can talk about some of what we are viewing. For example, I think the Tokyo Olympics will illustrate how America’s ongoing political crisis is leading to precipitous national decline even more starkly than say the manifold failures of our navy or the savage buffoonery of our national legislature. But we will see! The games have yet to be played and there are always surprises. First let’s talk about the opening ceremony.
One of the ways the Olympics outshine quotidian sports contests is by throwing little tidbits to other disciplines like fashion, music, technology, art, and dance. The original Olympics had medals for music, literature, and the arts, and, although such cultural contests have been subsumed by the dictates of modern broadcasting, elements remain within the pageantry and protocol of the games. Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening ceremony–which certainly showcased Japan’s continuing expertise at robotics (and also featured some delightfully preposterous dance routines). However the real spectacle worth watching is the parade of nations! We get to see almost all of the other nations of Earth and a sample of how they dress for fancy occasions, not to mention a prime lineup of extremely fit human beings of all shapes and varieties.
It was wonderful, like it always is. Also, after a year or more of watching anxious and sick people on TV, the athletes looked particularly happy and healthy. I don’t know about you, but my heart soared with delight seeing that flag holder from Ghana dance into the stadium with such graceful & proud bearing.
And there was so much more! There were Bermudans in Bermuda shorts! There were magnificent gleaming Hercules chests (these days, Tonga is not the only nation headlined by a magnificent oiled muscleman!)
There were jewels and gold from the Persian Gulf.
Of course there were also fashion choices which failed to “stick the landing” too. Hungary is an amazing country but their outfits made them look like the title sequence of the gory film I watched in driver’s ed! Maybe let’s try to avoid red spatters in future costumes.
Sartorial magnificence of every flavor was on display. However to my eyes, the most beautiful costumes belonged to the athletes from…Benin? Their regal embroidered tunics and dresses of royal blue featured fluorescent pink and aqua floral icons. These matched their magnificent satin hats (of name unknown to me). I wasn’t expecting the word’s 163rd wealthiest nation to win the international fashion contest (in fact half of my favorite things from my notes are from nations on the Gulf of Guinea!), but like I said, half of the delight of the Olympics comes from joyful surprises.
America’s outfits were fine, I suppose, but the dark navy blue on top of dark denim read as almost black. Also, I always worry that our nation mistakes casual comfort for elegance, which is to say I thought we maybe looked a bit like lazy villains (which suits the past four years, I guess).
Anyway, the opening parade is over and we can get back showing off in venue which primatologists (or bio-scientists of any stripe) will instantly recognize: physical competition. But before we get too competitive I hope we hold onto a bit of the international amity and open delight in the appearance and actions of foreigners which characterized the opening ceremony. Something tells me we are going to need to love each other a lot more if we are going to survive what is coming (much less make it through to a glowing future of thriving forests, healthy oceans, joyful children, and giant space arks). But somewhere in that Olympics parade there are always things that make me think that such a world is at least possible.
Ok! We (finally) had our 2000th post yesterday, and the great Ferrebeekeeper jubilee continues apace. I promised give-aways, special posts, contests, and…pageantry. Now I have plenty of weird art and cool toys to give away (provided I can think up a contest), but what do we do for Gothic pageantry (it’s Gothic because, well, what other sort would we feature?)?
Alas, my plans to hire great troops of pipers, marchers, ornate festival birds, and dancers have come undone because of coronavirus concerns (although hopefully you are all enjoying the very special fireworks displays which I orchestrated throughout the nation). Thus, due to, uh, the constraints of this era, our pageant will have to come together in our imagination rather than in the real world. We can list out the elements here though and fantasize them coming together as a sort of parade!
When I thought about what sort of Gothic pageant we would want, my first question was whether those splendid glistening white peacocks are available in Gothic black. It turns out that they very much are (although such peafowl are quite rare)
Next I wanted pipers, and when I looked up “gothic pipers” I was taken straight to Ferrebeekeeper’s own long forgotten post concerning pig bagpipers (which were a popular medieval ornament for reasons which are now subject to debate). Obviously these musical pigs are perfect, so after the sable peacocks lets have some of them.
Following the peacocks, pigs, and pipers, it would be good to have some soldiers (who esteem pageantry on a supreme level that only the most flamboyant showfolks can ever hope to match). I have taken a page from the pope’s book here: my favorite soldiers (for decorative novelty use only, of course) are late medieval/early Renaissance billmen with ridiculous heraldic garb. The pope’s own Swiss Guard are instructive here, although of course pipers in our procession would be wearing magenta, vermilion, and icterine.
I think a legion of such characters would be extremely impressive (especially coming immediately after the black peacocks and the musical pigs).
Next we would need fashion mavens dressed in resplendent gowns covered with lace appliques and dark ribbons. I couldn’t find the right picture on line (and I started to get scared/alarmed by how many dress pictures there are), but this sort of thing should do.
Finally, we would need a parade float to serve as centerpiece. My favorite underrated artist, the matchless Piero di Cosimo, was famous in his time for designing parade spectacles and, although the actual originals are, of course, long gone, I imagine that his floats would be much like the monster in his masterpiece, Perseus Rescuing Andromeda. I would have a similar float to Perseus and the monster, except it would be Cronus mounted upon an enormous flounder.
Sadly, this is how my brain works and I could go on and on like this forever…creating ridiculous fantastical processions which the world will never see, but I think we had better wrap up by putting the entire extravaganza in a great pleasure garden with a Gothic folly tower in the middle.
The The real world example which best suits my taste is St. Anne’s Church in Vilnius, Lithuania (pictured above) which I think is the prettiest building ever, however the master illuminators of Belgium also loved such structures and they drew them without any real world constraints which bedevil architects.
Imagine all of those strange magical animals and people and frogfish passing in front of this, and I think you have imagined the Ferrebeekeeper parade we would have staged…if only we could fully assemble outside right now (and if I were an impossibly rich archduke of fairyland).
The fun of this exercise is really imagining what sort of procession you would craft if you were a grand parade master and could do anything. Tell me your ideas below! Maybe we can incorporate some of your plans into my next parade…as soon as I finish teaching these pigs to play the pipes and sewing all of these orange and purple striped tights for mercenaries.
Tonight is the last night of Carnival…tomorrow is Ash Wednesday which begins the ritual austerities of Lent (which means spring is now truly on the way). I grew up reading eye-popping tales set in Venice during Carnival (or in Medieval France, or New Orleans, or Rio de Janeiro), yet somehow I always miss out on carnival’s over-the-top pageantry and mad frolics. I blame this on my Methodist upbringing: Protestants conceive of Lent very differently than Catholics! (even fallen Methodists) but maybe I should blame the weird schedule. I am sure there are carnival festivities going on somewhere in Brooklyn right now, but, come on, it is Tuesday night. I just got home from work: there is no time to put on 50,000 beads and learn a samba routine.
\Anyway, to capture this strange mixture of temptation, wariness, sin, redemption, and multi-color ultra-spectacle (and as a call-back to yesterday’s rainbow serpent post), I have decided to post pictures of some snake themed carnival floats from around the world/internet.
The snake is obviously an important carnival animal, and I can see no other interpretation of the reptile other than in its Biblical role as a representative of temptation and sin (which are obviously themselves major components of carnival). Perhaps the snake’s ribbon morphology is a secondary component (since this is a great shape for floats). It is worth noting though the the West African religions which syncretized with Christianity to create the vodou faiths of the New World are very snake oriented. One of the most august Vodou loas is the great fertility/father figure Dumballah, who is represented as a great serene river serpent. I wonder if he might be an influence on some of these displays.
Hopefully these ARE carnival snakes. As I was looking for them, I kept finding Chinese “Year of the Snake” floats and Saint Patrick’s Day “Get these snakes out of Ireland” snakes (to say nothing of Hindu cobras and Australian snakes of some unknown provenance). Maybe parade-goers simply love snakes because all parades kind of are snakes at some level. Or perhaps there is a deeper cultural connection which eludes me on Tuesday night and must be looked into further in snake-themed posts of the future. In the meantime Happy Shrove Tuesday! Go eat some colorful cake and start getting ready for a new season!
The Great Flounder Float at the start of the 2019 Mermaid Parade
I’m sorry about last week’s paucity of blog posts. I was busy building a float for the 2019 Mermaid Parade at Coney Island! This annual festival to Poseidon occurs on a Saturday close to the Summer solstice and is the scene of enormous creative extravagance and burlesque merriment…all in the name of ocean appreciation, of course. Last year I attended with a rolling flatfish float, and although that was a hard day, it was also a noteworthy success.
Mermaid Parade 2018
Alas, parades are like Hollywood blockbuster movies…sequels require even bigger and better special effects (and it is easier to get things wrong). Last year’s float worked and people really enjoyed the spinning wheel of horoscope signs, but it was nearly impossible to transport. After an unhappy run-in with the front door, my roommate and I ended up death marching the thing to Coney island (which is about 7 miles away) at 2:00 AM the day before the parade. Thus, for this year’s Mermaid Parade, I decided to build a magnificent 6.5 meter (21 foot) flounder puppet out of fabric which I could roll up and transport with ease! Genius! We could handle the flounder high above our heads with 3 meter (10 foot) wooden poles and their would be no difficulties like last year.
A quick trip to the trimmings district provided me with hundreds of iridescent ultrasequins to use as scales. Then it was just a matter of hours and hours and hours with the scissors and the hot glue gun (coincidentally, I don’t think I have fingerprints anymore). I bullied some hapless friends into attending the parade with me and another one of my friends, the great Lebanese artist Lara Nasser took these pictures (you should check out her brilliant but disquieting art which contextualizes the uneasy nexus of religion, politics, and gender in contemporary Beirut).
Now, people who have jobs as actuaries, account supervisors, and crooked economists do not recognize this, but when you make actual things, there are always unexpected problems. I should have built some prototype giant puppets, or at least watched old footage of carnival in Brazil. Although I did some test runs and reinforced the fish with some struts made of rigid plastic tubing (cough, chopped-up hula hoops), the great flounder float had a tendency to droop when there was not a stiff wind. When there was a stiff wind, the mighty halibut was more than capable of manhandling the puny humans trying to move it around the Coney Island environment.
The giant tablecloth was weirdly translucent, yet it was heavier than expected as well, as were the 10 foot poles. In the disorganized scrum to line up we kept getting stiff armed by groups of majorettes and half-naked flamingos.
Then, as the parade started in earnest, so did the wind and we were suddenly wrestling a giant sky halibut. It must have looked like a sad episode of “America’s Stupidest Catch” as we reeled around Surf Avenue trying not to get knocked down. The fish gods were angry!
Although we tried valiantly to contain this situation, the float was stronger than the three of us. The glistening flatfish snapped the two outermost poles and then angrily bludgeoned the woebegone attendants with its fins as the audience watched with good-natured drunken derision. We tried to carry the flounder horizontally (like the tablecloth it originally was), but soon there were recriminations, counter proposals, and a decision to withdraw. Arguably this was the right decision, but we were trapped in a 2 mile chute bounded by steel barricades. There was no escape except a long sprint of shame with the now unworkable fish sadly dangling behind us.
This stung at the time, but, in retrospect, who cares about a good competent performance? This is America in 2019 and what we love most here and now is a hot mess! Parades are about spectacle anyway.
So, um, does anybody want to come with me next year? I am not sure how I can top being beaten up by a 21 foot long flatfish in front of 50,000 people but we will think of something (although this particular group of friends may not be into additional parades). There is no way to know what will happen in 2020 (not without some sort of all-knowing oracle, anyway), but I have a feeling it is a year which will feature plenty of new melt-downs and unintentional floundering.
Every year, at or around the summer solstice, Coney Island hosts a festival honoring Poseidon and the oceans…and sea maidens of course (hence this week’s theme). This year’s Mermaid Parade is tomorrow and I have been busy building a flounder float to show my esteem for the watery realms of Planet Earth. I’m sorry I was so busy on it that I didn’t get a chance to write my sirenian post…but don’t worry we’ll get back to dugongs and sea cows soon…
But for now here is the “Great Flounder” parade float. Here are some pictures of me building the giant novelty fish.
One side features a pulchritudinous mermaid waving her tail (since the leitmotif of the parade compelled me to include the titular mythical being). The other side is functional…sort of. There is an oracular wheel with all of the signs of the zodiac. A querant can learn their heavenly destiny (or the zodiac sign of their future mate or something) by merely spinning the wheel.
I have a costume and everything and I really hope that if you are in New York City you can swing by the parade tomorrow, but for right now I have failed to rent a box truck and I need to push my creation from central Brooklyn down to the ocean. Wish me luck and may Lord Poseidon smile upon you and all your ventures.
![20180428_133709[1].jpg](https://ferrebeekeeper.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/20180428_1337091.jpg)
It is May Day! This weekend I was thinking about whether to celebrate the ancient pagan festivals and rituals associated with this holiday of seasonal rebirth or whether to instead write about the international day honoring workers. This latter manifestation of May Day came about in the nineteenth and early twentieth century as a response to the excesses of the industrial revolution and the undemocratic forms of power manifested by the cartels and monopolies which sprang up with the railroad, the mills, the mines, and the oilfields. I was sitting in my yard looking at the spring blossoms when the issue was decided for me. Sirens and chants of “The only SOLUTION is COMMUNIST revolution!” filled up the garden. I ran out to the street and a parade of communists was marching up Flatbush in Brooklyn. They were waving blood red flags and waving placards. Most were wearing red shirts and some were riding in a huge old flatbed lorry which looked like it came out of 1960s Cuba.
Although I can respect the socialism of Jaures and I am fascinated by the social democracy of modern forward-thinking northern European countries like Holland and Denmark, I have trouble uncoupling communism per se from the ghastly totalitarian abuses of Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot et al. (plus I grew up in the shadow of the Cold War) so I stared at the communists in shock—as though medieval monks or Sumerian charioteers were riding through. A number of people in the crowd joined them or eagerly grabbed their manifestos though. Evidently the communist message was not as outside of time as I thought.
A lot of these recherche movements have been springing up lately. There are communists, confederates, tea partiers, celibate terrorists (?), and syndicalists popping up all over the place. There are even confused ultramontanists angry that they can’t understand the current pope sufficiently to treat him as an emperor.
The oligarchs who reap the greatest benefits of globalized capitalism have not been sharing the benefits of global commerce, nor reinvesting in next generation technology, nor even buying epochal flounder-themed art (although there is always time, great masters!) Moneyed interests are not even hiding the extent to which they are manipulating the American political system, except maybe with some awkward metaphors about how the financial system is like blood. They are breaking the system to exploit it and weirdness, old and new, is seeping into the cracks.
Our democracy and our fundamental economic system are having serious troubles. It is unclear if these are growing pains, or if they are the onset of the sort of changes which felled Athens or undid the Roman Republic. The ossification of our system has combined with rapid social and economic change to completely undo one political party (albeit through mechanisms which would look more familiar to Tiberius & Gaius Gracchus and Huey Long, than to Ayn Rand or William Buckley Junior).
But back to the communists in Brooklyn—who were, after all, surrounded by police (to a disquieting degree, actually) and drew far more chuckles and eye rolls from the Flatbush crowds than they got converts. It is a reminder that we all need to laugh less at the dysfunction in Washington. Fascist totalitarians are cropping up on the left as well as the right. We need to have some serious conversations about democratic reforms and how to reestablish useful and helpful mechanisms and norms to deal with the changes in the world. Otherwise unexpected weirdos will make those choices for us and instead of a comic stunted Mussolini with porn stars and Russian business ties we might end up with a high theocrat or a tribunal of the people. Things are moving fast: let’s talk more and think more clearly!
Journey of the Magi (Benozzo Gozzoli, 1461, fresco)
One of the metaphors commonly used to describe the entirety of humankind is the image of a parade. We hear it all the time and hardly think about it: the parade of nations, the march of progress, the triumph of man….I think it is a good image to hold in one’s head when thinking about people taken as a collective entity (and despite our pretensions of self-sufficiency, these days we are very much a super organism like a clonal colony or a hive of army ants).
Here’s how I picture it.
Imagine a new frontier (be it a virgin land, outer space, a scientific breakthrough, a manufacturing notion…anything). Out there today are theoreticians and dreamers who are trying to envision a way to use new resources and new ideas. Then suddenly someone has an epiphany based on a half-heard sentence, or a daydream, or a happy column of numbers and the true parade commences. First come the explorers—robotic probes, Ponce de Leon, bathyspheres, runners-of-the-woods, and lonely obsessive men in labcoats. Next are the early adapters: hipsters, the curious, the desperate, and the visionaries. The progress begins to swell as politicians, business leaders, and media stars proceed past. Upon the backs and shoulders of the multitude, the great and the mighty are carried like juggernauts as ticker tape falls down around them and they preen on top of gilded palanquins. Soldiers and legionnaires ride by frowning in their glittering armor. The middle class pass by in sensible cars and comfortable shoes holding the hands of children with happy smiling faces.
Next come rank upon rank of the underemployed and the working poor. They are struggling to get along beneath the yellow checks cashed signs and the shadow of the workhouse. Finally at the back of the parade are the old and the sick. The diseased and the lost are laboring to keep up. The wounded conscript is lying in the muck barely crawling forward as the parade leaves him further and further behind. A senile nonagenarian sits down in a rocking chair and never gets up.
And behind us all there is the detritus of our once great endeavors. The landscape is strewn with rubbish and cast-offs. A great winding pathway is built of garbage from gum wrappers to whale bone corsets to smashed bronze cannons to gnawed mammoth bones. Along the empty road there are old cities waning away to irrelevance and there are cities entirely lost—burned, abandoned, or buried in the sand–going back to ancient Eridu itself. And there is an endless trail of corpses slowly returning to the mud.
Ultimately the trail leads back to the dry highlands of eastern Africa, but where the parade is going is anyone’s guess. Picture it in your head dear reader. Smile and wave while the golden light shines on you and the horns play impossibly beautiful music tinged with sadness…
ferrebeekeeper 