website

Weird, when I had the new site up pretty well, the amount of visitors rose enormously according to my stats, From 11-12.000 visits (not hits of course) in July, August and September the amount took a rocket-fly upto over 26.000 in October and November. December was back to 18.000 and if Januari continues as it does, I guess it will end around 15.000. I wonder what October and November were all about. New visitors, spam-bots, webcrawlers, something wrong in the software or database? I guess I will have to start studying logs. It almost seems as if one version of WP resulted in more visitors (or ‘visitors’)…

I don’t know if it’s just me, but the rapid degeneration (Americanisation) of the English language really works on my nerves sometimes. When I learned English at school many years ago, we had this ‘golden rule’ that ing-conjugations cannot be applied to verbs that you “cannot be busy with”. So, “I’m working in the garden.”, very good; “I’m baking a cake.”, alright. For some time people also seem to be able to sit in a corner and feel a little, so “I’m feeling fine.” became alright and “I was wondering if…” as well. Since then people “are having” ideas, “are assuming that you are saying”, “are seeing” something, etc. Yeah, let’s go to the pub and be, asume or see for a little while.
The thing that upsets me most, is that these crooked conjugations are not only found on forums where people usually type something rapidly, but also in books, such as my English translation of Guénon’s books. An American said to me many years ago, that I use old-fashioned English, which indeed may be the case from the American viewpoint (that is why I used the term “Americanisation” which I deliberately don’t write with a “z”), but recently I notice that even the conservative Brits “are taking over” these constructions. Is this developement / modernisation of language or degeneration because in our rapid age, we want to think as little as possible about correct grammar?
How much longer before I can write: “Hi, I’m being Roy” without anyone blinking an eye?

Today I read a short newsarticle that made me wonder. Doctors in Antwerp were operating on a man’s ear. They accidentally activated a part of the his brain that gave him an out-of-body experience. It proves that these experiences could be repeated ‘as often as they wanted’ so to say, they weren’t ‘lucky shots’. The experiences were about 15 to 21 seconds each and made the man feel like he was floating about halve a meter diagonally behind his body. Meanwhile two parts of the brain became hyper active. Does this ‘button’ imply that there is a connection between the body and the soul and that the latter can be ‘forced out’ by use of ‘the button’ or is it simply that the brain misinterprets incoming signals and give an idea of separation? Does the man have out-of-body experiences (does he see his body) or is his system just shaken up a little? A nice point to investigate for a neurologist I suppose! (And maybe also for ‘spiritually minded’ people.)

“Art” a concept that I have some problems with. When I go to a museum, especially one of “modern” or “contemporary art” I always have to think of the idea that Ananda Coomaraswamy had about art. “Real art” in the eyes of Coomaraswamy is produced when an artist raises him-/herself upto the heavens, takes the ‘idea’ down and makes a good ‘copy’ of it in our domain. (Compare the idea to the world of ideas of Plato.) The work of art is something usefull, something that is used in daily life. With this in mind, a spoon is a work of art, a painting in most cases not. So did the word “art” undergo a grave degeneration? Did the meaning change so drastically that art can now be a large piece of canvas painted black or is there something else? In several books Coomaraswamy questions the usefullness and necessity of museums. Why look at things that should actually be used and if the pieces cannot be used, what is the use of them? Does what we call art today still serve a purpose or is art nothing more than estheticism or the result of someone’s creativity? In most cases it is “look but don’t touch”, now and then something interactive may be made. Also it seems that 99% of the works of art are made to be displayed in a museum, in some public space or elsewhere.
When in New York we visited three museums of modern art; the famous MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), the even more famous Guggenheim and DIA: a bit “upstate” in Beacon. DIA: is an enormous factory complex turned into a museum with large rooms. It has some dull pieces, such as circles and squares on the floor of a large room or dozens of almost-the-same Warhol paintings on the four sides of a large room and enormous metal objects. Nice to look at maybe (sometimes), but is this what we call art nowadays? The Guggenheim has an exhibition of Richard Prince. This exhibition goes from too all-American photos of bikers, biker-women, streetcars, etc. to large plates with jokes to sculptures made from car-parts. Here and there these things are come up with nicely, but in general it all was too American for me. When I was ahead of my girlfriend a bit too far, I sat down and started to listen to the audio-set that was pushed into my hands when entering the museum (which I didn’t really want) and heard some of the background of the artist, the exhibition and the ideas behind the pieces that are shown. It proved that the artist wanted to enlarge typical American things as a form of criticism. When listening further the ideas were actually quite interesting and the exhibition became more enjoyable even when I didn’t really like most of the pieces. Also my girlfriend bought a DVD about and including interviews with Joseph Beuys who supposedly has been a major figure and influence in the field of modern art. Beuys had some peculiar and sometimes interesting ideas and obviously wanted to convey a message with his weird installations, a spiritual message even. It seems that afterall this kind of art does have a message, or at least wants to confuse people so that they start to think. The purpose of art seems to have shifted from material usefullness to ‘mental usefullness’. The point with many contemporary artists is -though- that you won’t get the message if you don’t know the idea behind the works. Moreover, art has become a matter of esthetics and taste. While a spoon not necessarily has to be beautiful, a contemporary artist won’t make it just because of his or her message. Some art-scene-bigcheese will have to like the work in order to bring it to museums and to bring some acknowledgement to the artist.
All in all, modern art is not really my thing. Sometimes there is some amasement, but when I see that most museums of modern art, whether in Europe or America, mostly have the same artists and styles and that “modern” often means 50 years old, I have my doubt about the ‘groundbreakingness’ of modern art or even the esthetic value. It seems that what used to be called art, is nowadays called “craft” and what was creativity is now called art. Museums seem mostly to be for recreation and art to provide the people something different from daily life. The way concepts change…
So what do you think? Is shit in a can in a museum, art? Is a painting of Mondriaan art? And a painting by Rembrandt? What makes art, art?

We have just been in New York City for just over a week. It was mostly as expected: huge buildings, millions of people, a too-American society (in a way, at least). We have seen the usual things, the “WTC Site” (ground zero), Lower Manhatten with its financial district (huge shiny office skyscrapers) and Battery Park with a view on the Statue Of Liberty (because of the amount of tourists we didn’t take the ferry to have a closer look), the popular modern art museums (MoMA, Gugenheim and DIA up north), Time Square (awfull, but impressive for its amount of people and advertisement), the hip neighbourhoods in Soho and “The Village”, we some some of the major churches (Thomas, Trinity, Patrick’s, etc.), strolled through Central Park (tip: take the Northern half), shopped at Strands and the Virgin Mega Store, etc., etc. You surely need a guide in the city, because it’s not like everything is nicely in an overseeable area and even with the subway you sometimes have to travel long, but I think I’ve got an idea of the city. It’s amazing how prominent the (what I call) hiphop livestyle is, especially in neighbourhoods in Brooklyn that are mainly black (for a short time to come, since they are being taken over by hip white people). Also it is weird to see that there are so many different cultures (Afro, Latin, Hispanic, Jewish, you name it) with all their own culture and their own language, while in my country everybody is more or less forced to be the same) and these cultures mainly live right alongside eachother without much interaction. The latter goes for the city as a whole. Everybody is so stressed and in a hurry, that they don’t even have/take the time to argue or have a fight, so generally speaking, NYC is a very modest city where you don’t have to worry about looking the wrong way to someone. When in traffic, a New Yorker becomes a madman though. Pedestrians wait for that tiny hole in a long line of cars in the middle of the road and just to get on the other side when the sign still says “don’t walk”. Cars zigzag over the streets with massive speeds, avoiding the few pedestrians that did wait for “walk” and if half a second of delay seems at hand, its honking, honking, honking. Honking all day long (imagine that with thousands of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks driving through the town). NYC is so noisy that your ears start to hurt and you are forced into one of the larger parks, or even better: leave town. A city that never sleeps, where you can get anything you want, 24/7. A city full of surprises, but I’m glad I’m just back behind my computer in my own, tranquil neighbourhood.

On page 157 of The Destiny Of The Warrior (see book reviews section) Georges Dumézil speaks about the battle of Thor and Thjalfi with the giant Hrungnir and his clay dummy. In this well-known passage it is said that Hrungnir has a heart of stone, a heart with three corners (or “horns” in the translation of Dumézil) “which then became that of the runic sign called the ‘heart of Hrungnir’.” Often this heart of Hrungnir is taken to be the Valknutr, but Dumézil, in a note, writes the following: “A vertical stroke with two diagonal strokes branching upward from the middle of the vertical, each half as long as the vertical and at right angles to each other; this sign equals hr (van Langenhove).” This can hardly be seen as a description of a Valknutr! But what to make of it then…?

The upper line as three interpretations of the description of Dumézil, the bottom line the two runes that are the H and the R. I cannot think of a combination of these two runes that come even close to Dumézil’s description! Does anybody have a better idea and/or know this Van Langenhove that Dumézil refers to?

However I still am unable to prevent other websites than my own to use images from my server, I did find a way to see what images are hotlinked to (I thought the term was “deeplink”, but “hotlink” as a term results in more and better information). Go to Google image search and in the search field type: site:yourwebsite.com. You will see the images that Google has indexed and under each image you can see the source. If this source is not yourwebsite.com, then you found a hotlink. Of course this doesn’t work with forums that work with usernames and logins (and unfortunately also not with Myspace…), but for example weblogs are easily detected. What I didn’t think of immediately and what is also pretty irritating, is that hotlinks to images on Monas.nl are also redirected to Gangleri. The hotlinker doesn’t get an image, but I do get a hit and a note in my webstats which become a total mess (“referrers” that never sent a visitor through, etc.). Oh well, a result of the overly-public internet. I will look into it some more, maybe the Google tip is something for you if you have a similar problem with your images.

Today I discovered the most hilarious thing. I was looking for something with Ask.com (as alternative for Google) and then I thought to try out how high Gangleri would come out if I looked for something. I wasn’t disappointed by the result, but my eye immediately fell on the line “translate this site”. When I clicked on it, I was directed to an Ask.com page, on which in the lower half -after some waiting- Gangleri appeared, in Dutch! The translation is of course cracky and hilarious with band- and labelnames, musical styles, etc., etc. translated. I had the laugh of the week!! So, if you happen to have a not-English Windows (or Mac), you may want to read a site just as mine in ‘your own language’ with the help of Ask.com.