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Tracey Thorn On 'Tinsel And Lights' (And Boxing...
Throughout her career — from Marine Girls to Everything But The Girl to her solo work — Tracey Thorn has quietly rebelled and diverted from predicatable routes. While a Christmas album of mostly covers might sound like a surprising choice for her, especially for a fourth solo record, the unconventional path Thorn has chosen for her beautiful new release, Tinsel and Lights, is evergreen, extending far beyond the holiday season and edging its way towards spring.
Thorn's thoughtful song selections, from the White Stripes to Scritti Politti to Sufjan Stevens, are wise and wintry walkabouts of reflection, redemption and regeneration, the journey of long, dark days spent adhering to expectations or tradition, yet uneasily pondering the future. It's an album unafraid of loneliness, finding real comfort and joy in moments of solitary abandon, far from the relentless bustle of December.
As exquisitely curated as the covers may be, the heart of Thorn's album is found with her two original songs: the powerful, lucid reality of "Joy," steeped in sighs of relief and aching doubt, and the sparkling New York stroll, "Tinsel and LIghts," framed through a filter of old memories. Both songs are gentle reminders that the holidays are often the chance for a clear assessment of our past, present and future, a yearly culmination of pleasure and pain, bright hope and harrowing despair.
Nestled betwen lyrically rich and restless songs like Dolly Parton's "Hard Candy Christmas" or Low's "Taking Down the Tree," a shivery duet between Thorn and Scritti Politti's Green Gartside, the inclusion of two very familiar holiday standards — Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and Joni Mitchell's "The River" — seems piquant and oddly transformative.Thorn smartly finds a keep-calm-and-carry-on fortitude to "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," reclaiming it from syrupy excess and shifting the song from a forlorn sigh to a crisp fresh start. "The River" is carried to the side of the Thames, with a crookedly charming brass accompaniment.
Tinsel and Lights, produced by Ewan Pearson and also featuring some guitarwork and other contributions from Thorn's husband and EBTG partner Ben Watt, is available now through Merge and Strange Feeling. In early February, Thorn — who is a funny, observant and candid writer — releases her autobiography, Bedsit Disco Queen.
The Alternate Side had a chance to chat with Tracey Thorn over email from London this week. Not only did she discuss her new album, but revealed some of her family's Yuletide traditions, from clementine cake to slightly inebriated Boxing Day quizzes:
Kara Manning: I was so moved by the first line of your new song "Joy" which begins the journey of this beautiful album: "When someone very dear/Calls you with the words, 'Everything's all clear'/That's what you want to hear/But you know it might be different in the new year." Was this song the real starting point — and heart — of this album?
Tracey Thorn: Yes, I wrote this song last Christmas. A family member was waiting on medical test results, and it was looming over the whole of Christmas. It made me realise how these things just become such a normal part of life as you get older, and they make you really need the moments of celebration even more. The song is about Christmas being a sort of defiance of darkness - that we have to strive for joy even in the face of its opposite. (PS: the test results finally came back in the New Year and were all good, so it has a happy ending!) Once I'd written the song I knew I could do the whole album, as it seems to be a justification for Christmas, and for taking it seriously.
Kara: The songs you chose — and I read you began with around 50 — seem to be quite specific about the emotional import of this time of year. What was behind your decision to record a full album of holiday songs?
Tracey: I did start off with a big list — also on it were all the more traditional Christmas album songs, [like] "Winter Wonderland," "Santa Baby," "Baby It's Cold Outside" — but I thought I would probably end up finding that a bit boring, so I extended the list to include songs about winter, snow, ice, cold, skating, etc. It just became a theme for me to hang the songs on. Then I just sat down a tried all the songs on the list, and chose the ones which worked — because I was able to sing them, or had an arrangement idea for them, or something. Quite practical considerations.
Kara: Christmas albums and songs can become iconic — part of our traditions — and some even have longevity that far outlasts the bands or artists that recorded them, like the Waitresses or the great Kirsty MacColl. For you, what makes a great contemporary Christmas song? And in making choices for this album — and writing your own songs — were you more ruled by your heart or what made sense musically?
Tracey: I think I was ruled by my heart in making the initial list — they all had to be songs I had some love for — then it came down to musical decisions when I made the final choices, just which ones worked best. The thing I quite like about Christmas songs is that there are certain rules to be adhered to, and you have to decide how strongly to adhere to them. It seems to be that in order to work, a Christmas song HAS to mention certain things — snow, lights, the tree, cold, lights, candles, the list goes on — but it's how you use those elements that then makes each song individual.
Kara: What were you determined to avoid, either thematically or otherwise?
Tracey: I was trying to avoid irony. I didn't want to make a record that was either too kitsch, or too knowing, or seemed to have an air of ironic detachment about it by trying to be too cool or alternative. I wanted to choose some slightly alternative or unusual songs, but do them all in a very sincere way, to show that I really meant what I was doing.
Kara: You worked with your longtime collaborator Ewan Pearson again. Was he surprised by your determination to do this?
Tracey: He wasn't surprised, he knew I wanted to do this! Also I think we understand each other in terms of realising that a Christmas record from me would inevitably have a certain melancholy undertone to it, and we both understand and like that mood.
Kara: "Tinsel and Lights," another original track, is set in New York. You and Ben once lived in the city for a spell.
Tracey: Yeah, this song is about a Christmas we spent in New York with two close friends, quite a few years ago. It was a lovely Christmas, and full of quite iconic Manhattan moments for us Londoners, so it has an almost magical resonance in my memory. The song is really about how much time has passed since then, and how much has changed, and only I really know the full details of all that has happened to the four of us since that Christmas.
Kara: You cover one of my favorite Scritti Politti songs — "Snow in Sun" — and you also collaborated with Green Gartside on the Low duet "Taking Down the Tree." What is it about Green's sensibility — lyrically and otherwise — that matches your own?
Tracey: We don't know each other well, but have been in contact over the last couple of years, trying to get together to work on something - and then this idea came along and I asked him to sing with me and it just worked out! The thing I love about his "Snow in Sun" song, and the reason I wanted to include it, is that it's such a sad but brave song. It's about feeling very down and low about yourself, and yet trying so hard to keep thinking positively and believe that things will get better: "There'll be something good about me soon." That fits in with the mood of this record.
Kara: Your choices on the album range from the White Stripes to Sufjan Stevens to Dolly Parton. What did you love about these songs ... and are they any that you regret not recording?
Tracey: I think I like them each for different reasons, they each have a slightly different mood and meaning - the one I most wanted to record but didn't is "Last Christmas", which I love, but I just couldn't work out an arrangement to do it justice. Maybe next year.
Kara: You cover two very well-known classics — "The River" and "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas." As a vocalist, especially a vocalist with such a unique, emotional voice — what was most challenging for you in tackling both of those extremely well-known songs?
Tracey: I think as with any cover, just to try and forget the original and sing it like it's your own song that you've just written. I always try to believe that I've written the lyrics, and that they are about me, so that I can be inside the song.
Kara: What are some of your favorite - or most cheerfully eccentric - family traditions around Christmas?
Tracey: I get together with the whole of my family on Boxing Day now, and there are quite a lot of us, and we all congregate in my Dad's flat, which isn't large, so we're using every single chair and still some of us are sitting on the floor. We all bring whatever food is left over from the day before, and then we cook more just to be sure. So there's loads. Too much. And the tradition is that once we've all had plenty to drink, we have a family quiz, which has been prepared by either my brother-in-law, or sometimes Ben. We get in teams, and have pens and paper, and answer the questions the quizmaster asks. It gets competitive. Everyone's a bit drunk. We're trying to remember when was the Battle of Bosworth, or who was number 1 at Christmas in 1984, or what the capital of Estonia is.
Kara: As a gardener, you must have a big say about the tree — what is the perfect sort of tree? How do you enjoy decorating it?
Tracey: For a few years I went mad and we had an artificial tree. Then a couple of years ago I suddenly came to my senses and we have gone back to a real tree. I've found a great company in London who deliver, and they are great - the guys all turn up in elf hats and are really friendly and helpful. I do enjoy decorating it, yes, but I have to stop myself getting too controlling about what colour baubles go where. The kids are supposed to help, but sometimes I MOVE things after they've finished. I say sometimes, I mean always.
Kara: You have tweeted extensively (and quite amusingly) during the Great British Bake-Off — do you love to bake? What's your favorite kind of Christmas biscuit, pudding or pie?
Tracey: YES. Nigella Lawson's clementine cake is the best Christmas thing ever. I make it every year for the Boxing Day gathering, and it is amazing. Also last year I made florentines and they were delicious. [Ed. note: see Tracey's recipe for a Yule Log below].
Kara: What is the most meaningful gift you've ever received or Christmas and why?
Tracey: Oh I don't know about meaningful. I usually get gardening gloves.
Tracey Thorn has also been keeping an advent calendar for fans, including special videos, a Spotify playlist and her recipe for a delicious (slightly complicated) Yule log with reindeer and Santa galavanting across the chocolate frosting (recipe below). Head here for the balance of Tracey's countdown to Christmas.
Tracey's Yule Log
First you have to make a chocolate Swiss roll. You need:
50g self-raising flour
20g cocoa powder
4 eggs
65g caster sugar
Sift the flour and cocoa powder together. Whisk the eggs and sugar in a bowl until the whisk leaves a trail. Fold in the flour mixture. Turn the mixture into a lined and greased Swiss roll tin, about 20 x 40 cm and smooth the surface. Bake in a preheated oven, 200 deg C (400 F) gas mark 6, for 12 to 14 minutes or until springy to the touch. Turn out onto lightly sugared greaseproof paper place on a slightly damp, clean tea towel and remove the lining paper. Roll up tightly from the short edge with the sugared paper inside. Leave to cool for about 20 minutes.
While this is cooling, make some chocolate butter icing. You need:
125g unsalted butter
250g icing sugar
sifted 2 tablespoons cocoa powder blended with 2 tablespoons boiling water
then cooled 1 tablespoon milk
Beat the butter with half the icing sugar until smooth. Add the remaining icing sugar with the milk and chocolate flavouring. Beat until creamy. Unroll the sponge, and remove the sugared paper. Spread with some of the chocolate icing and roll up again. Now cut a short diagonal wedge off one end of the roll and join in to the side of the log with icing, so that it looks like a branch. In the picture above I did two branches, but that was just showing off. Place on a cake board, and cover the whole log with icing. Make lines on it with a fork to resemble the bark of a tree. Sprinkle with icing sugar for snow and decorate with all sorts of novelty Christmas items.


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Attendees from Canada and Mexico are reminded to bring a valid passport to cross into the United States. Citizens of 35 countries in Europe and the Far East may visit the U.S. for up to 90 days without a visa if the attendee has a passport with a computer-readable bar code under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). Details can be found at the U.S. Department of State web site at http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html or contact your local American consulate.
International visitors to the U.S. under the Visa Waiver Program are now required to apply for travel authorization online. To apply visit the Electronic System for Travel Authorization web site at http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/id_visa/esta/.
If you do not already have current ESTA authorization, we recommend that you apply as soon as you know you will be traveling to the United States under the VWP.
Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) is an automated system used to determine the eligibility of visitors to travel to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). ESTA approval authorizes a traveler to board a carrier for travel to the United States under the VWP.
ESTA is not a visa. It does not meet the legal requirements to serve in lieu of a U.S. visa when a visa is required. Travelers that possess a valid U.S. visa may travel to the United States on that visa for the purpose it was issued. Travelers traveling on valid visas are not required to apply for an ESTA. In the same way that a valid visa does not guarantee admission to the United States, an approved ESTA is not a guarantee of admission to the United States.
ESTA became mandatory January 12, 2009. VWP applicants are required to complete a green Form I-94W and a white Customs declaration upon arrival in the U.S. whether or not they have an ESTA authorization.
Approved ESTA applications are valid for a period of two years, and multiple trips to the United States without the traveler having to re-apply for another ESTA. The ESTA travel information may be updated before each trip to the U.S., but it is not required. When traveling to the U.S. with the approved ESTA, you may only stay for up to 90 days at a time - and there should be a reasonable amount of time between visits so that the CBP Officer does not think you are trying to live here. There is no set requirement for how long you must wait between visits.
Travelers whose ESTA applications are approved, but whose passports will expire in less than two years, will receive an ESTA valid until the passport's expiration date.
A new ESTA authorization is required if:
DHS recommends that you apply for ESTA authorization as soon as you know you will be traveling to the United States under the VWP.
If you need a letter of invitation, please contact Lysia Zavala at email@example.com. For security reasons, letters of invitation are provided only for registrants who have already registered and paid the appropriate fees.

subset: commoncrawl


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DURHAM — The University System of New Hampshire's board of trustees voted unanimously to name Todd Leach chancellor at its quarterly business meeting Friday, June 28.
Leach has been serving as interim chancellor since March 2, when former Chancellor Ed MacKay retired.
"Having watched Dr. Leach serve as interim chancellor, the board became convinced he was the best choice to lead the University System of New Hampshire," said Richard Galway, chair of USNH's board of trustees. "Dr. Leach demonstrated an incredible vision and work ethic. He's an innovator and will continue the great work being done for our state at the university system."
Leach is the president of Granite State College, one of the four USNH institutions. He serves on the USNH board of trustees and as one of New Hampshire's commissioners of higher education. He is also a member of the boards of the New Hampshire College and University Council and the New Hampshire Forum on the Future. He has presented at numerous national and international conferences on the subjects of distance learning and professional education.
"Todd Leach brings to the chancellorship a keen understanding of education in the 21st century, and the importance of a relevant education to a strong economy. As president of Granite State College, he has led it to stunning growth and national rankings. As interim chancellor of the entire university system, he has won respect from state leaders for his informed and personal approach on key issues facing USNH. We are fortunate that he will now continue that leadership as the full-time chancellor of this most important state asset," said Fred Kocher, president of New Hampshire's High Technology Council.
Under Leach's leadership Granite State College has achieved the highest enrollment levels in its 40-year history and in 2013 celebrated its largest graduating class. He also pioneered the development of the college's first-ever master's level programming and created the Office of Graduate Studies. Most recently, U.S. News & World Report ranked Granite State College #27 in the nation for best online bachelor's programs.
Leach holds a Ph.D. from Northeastern University and an MBA from Bentley University and has more than two decades of experience as an academic leader and faculty member. He earned an associate degree at Mass Bay Community College and a bachelor's degree from Worcester State College. The institutions each honored him, in 2011 and 2012 respectively, with Distinguished Alumni Awards.
"The University System of New Hampshire must be an integral part of the solution to our emerging workforce challenges. I am honored to serve as chancellor during this significant time of change and look forward to working with the board, the presidents, policymakers, system staff, business leaders, and New Hampshire citizens to develop new partnerships amid the workforce and college access challenges we face," Leach said.
For more information visit http://www.usnh.edu/about/chanc.shtml.


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[Dhaka, Bangladesh; September 14. Image via Getty]
A Bangladeshi left-of-centre political activist holds a placard as she takes part in demonstrations during a half day general strike in Dhaka on September 14, 2009. The strike was called by left-of-centre political parties after the government announced it would give drilling rights for gas and oil in the Bay of Bengal to US energy giant ConocoPhillips and Irish company Tullow. The half-day hartal in the Bangladeshi capital is the first since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to power in January, but police reported none of the violence that was commonplace in previous strikes in the city. AFP PHOTO/Munir uz ZAMAN (Photo credit should read MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP/Getty Images)


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GORM support for Hadoop HBase
compile "org.grails.plugins:gorm-hbase:0.2.4"
- Grails 1.3.1
- Java 6
- Hadoop Common 0.20.2 (which must be run as pseudo or fully distributed, not standalone)
- HBase 0.20.4 (which must be run as pseudo or fully distributed, not standalone)
- Remove the default Hibernate plug-in
grails uninstall-plugin hibernate
- Install the GORM-HBase plugin
grails install-plugin gorm-hbase
Required Configuration
- HBase CLASSPATH element in
hbase-env.shto include the transactional jar file, e.g.
export HBASE_CLASSPATH=$HBASE_INSTALL/contrib/transactional/hbase-0.20.4-transactional.jar
- If Grails is not running on the same machine as your ZooKeeper Master configure
<grails-appl-base-dir>/conf/hbase-site.xmlto point to the name or address of the machine running your ZooKeeper Master,
<property> <name>hbase.zookeeper.quorum</name> <value>localhost</value> <description>Comma separated list of servers in the ZooKeeper Quorum. For example, "host1.mydomain.com,host2.mydomain.com,host3.mydomain.com". By default this is set to localhost for local and pseudo-distributed modes of operation. For a fully-distributed setup, this should be set to a full list of ZooKeeper quorum servers. If HBASE_MANAGES_ZK is set in hbase-env.sh this is the list of servers which we will start/stop ZooKeeper on. </description> </property>
Optional Configuration
- Edit
<grails-appl-base-dir>/conf/DataSource.groovyto control whether HBase tables are,
- either dropped (if they already exist) then created, or, left untouched, and whether
- sorted queries are acticated by enabling indexing on the HBase datasource when the application or tests start.
dbCreate element is honored. By default both tables and data are not dropped, created, or updated in any way unless this one option is coded,
If sorting is required on dynamic finder queries then indexing must be activated as shown in this example,
dbCreate = "create-drop"
dataSource { dbCreate = "update" indexed = true }
- Edit
<grails-appl-base-dir>/conf/Config.groovyto control logging. Until you are comfortable with the behavior of this plug-in it is recommended you at least configure
infolevel debugging,
info 'org.grails.hbase'
OverviewThis plug-in persists domain class data to a Hadoop HBase 'nosql' database and implements the GORM api to facilitate retrieval of persisted data.
Release 0.2.4Upgraded to run on the following,
- Grails 1.3.2
Release 0.2.3Upgraded to run on the following,
- Grails 1.3.1
- Hadoop 0.20.2
- HBase 0.20.4
Release 0.2.2Initial SQL-like capabilities provided in extended,
- findAll() support
- find() support
Release 0.2.1
- Dynamic Finders
- Ability to define finder filters as native HBase filters
- find() support
- Multiple And/Or operators in method names now understood by dynamic finders
- 'Like' and 'NotLike' are now valid operators in dynamic finder names and use regular expressions
- 'Operator.LIKE' and 'Operator.NOT_LIKE' are supported by FinderFilters
Release 0.2
- Dynamic Finders,
- findAll()
- findAllBy()
- findBy()
- Improved consistency with the default Hibernate based GORM implementation,
- Return null when get() fails to find an object
- Return correct values from save()
- Return null from delete()
- Support getters on one-to-many association
- Support of standard HBase 0.20.3 instead of custom version of 0.20.0
- All Grails supported basic types are persisted in an upgradeable manner
Release 0.1
- DataSource.groovy - the
dbCreatevalue can be set to
"create-drop"to drop existing HBase tables and create new tables. Any other setting should leave the HBase database untouched.
- A subset of GORM related Domain class methods and properties,
- 'count()' with no arguments
- 'delete()' with no arguments
- 'get()' with the
- 'hasErrors()' with no arguments
- 'list()' with support for
- 'save()' with no arguments
- the
- Optimistic locking
- Lazy loading
- Associations between domain classes,
- One to One
- One to Many
- All Grails supported basic types can be persisted
- Secondary index support using HBase Indexed Tables
- Table name spaces - a similar idea to schema names in RDBMS - whereby each table created has a name prefixed with an identifier constructed from the Grails application name
findAll()Instead of the Hibernate Query Language (HQL) being supported this plug-in provides two alternate options,
- Small number of api classes
- HBase filters
- SQL-like capabilities
For example,
DynamicFinderFilter, FinderFilter, FinderFilterList and Operator
Operators supported by FinderFilter,
// The domain class class Book { String title String author Date releaseDate }// everything def results = Book.findAll()// a basic example using built-in filter support import org.grails.hbase.api.finders.FinderFilter import org.grails.hbase.api.finders.FinderFilterList import org.grails.hbase.api.finders.Operator // defaults to 'Operator.EQUAL', DynamicFinderFilter filter = new FinderFilter('author', 'Dan Brown') results = Book.findAll(filter)// the same finder with a native HBase filter, import org.apache.hadoop.hbase.filter.Filter import org.apache.hadoop.hbase.filter.SingleColumnValueFilter import org.apache.hadoop.hbase.filter.CompareFilter.CompareOp import org.apache.hadoop.hbase.util.Bytes import org.grails.hbase.store.Constants import org.grails.hbase.util.HBaseNameUtils def columnName = Bytes.toBytes(HBaseNameUtils.getDomainColumnName('name')) def value = Bytes.toBytes('Dan Brown') Filter filter = new SingleColumnValueFilter(Constants.DEFAULT_DATA_FAMILY, columnName, CompareOp.EQUAL, value) results = Book.findAll(filter)// examples with max/offset usage DynamicFinderFilter filter = new FinderFilter('author', Operator.NOT_EQUAL, 'Dan Brown') // first 10 books without Dan Brown as the author results = Book.findAll(filter, [max:10]) // 10 books without Dan Brown as the author starting from the 5th book results = Book.findAll(filter, [max:10, offset:5]) // 10 books from Dan Brown staring from 5th book ordered by release date DynamicFinderFilter filter = new FinderFilter('author', 'Dan Brown') results = Book.findAll(filter, [max:10, offset:5, sort:'releaseDate'])// example with multiple filters // all books written by Dan Brown or J K Rowling DynamicFinderFilter filterList = new FinderFilterList(Operator.OR) DynamicFinderFilter filter1 = new Filter('author', 'Dan Brown') filterList.addFilter(filter1) DynamicFinderFilter filter2 = new Filter('author', 'J K Rowling') filterList.addFilter(filter12) results = Book.findAll(filterList)// examples using SQl-like syntax // All books written by Terry Pratchett def results = Book.findAll("author = 'Terry Pratchett'", [sort:'title']) // All books written by Terry Pratchett or Dan Brown results = Book.findAll("author = 'Terry Pratchett' or author = 'Dan Brown'") // All books written by Terry Pratchett from May 31st, 2005 results = Book.findAll("author = 'Terry Pratchett' and releaseDate >= '2005-05-31'") // All books written by Dan Brown or books written in 2000 by Terry Pratchett results = Book.findAll("â€â€ author = 'Dan Brown' or ( author = 'Terry Pratchett' and releaseDate >= '2000-01-01' and releaseDate <= '2000-12-31' ) "â€â€)
Operators supported by FinderFilterList,
EQUAL, NOT_EQUAL, GREATER, GREATER_OR_EQUAL, LESS, LESS_OR_EQUAL, LIKE and NOT_LIKE
Operators supported by SQL-like queries,
AND and OR
=, <, <=, >, >=, !=
find()The same syntax as findAll() above, the only difference is that this method returns just one object not a list of objects,
// Find Dan Brown's third book with a single filter,
DynamicFinderFilter filter = new FinderFilter('author', 'Dan Brown')
results = Book.find(filter, [offset:3])
findAllBy()This finder is very similar to the default Hibernate based implementation. For example,
// The domain class class Book { String title String author Date releaseDate }// basic examples def results = Book.findAllByAuthor('Dan Brown', [max:10, sort:'title', offset:2] ) results = Book.findAllByTitleNotEqualAndAuthor('Digital Fortress', 'Dan Brown') results = Book.findAllByReleaseDateGreaterThanEquals(firstDate)// example with Like using a regular expression // All books written by an author called Brown Book.findAllByAuthorLike(".+Brown") // All books not written by authors called Brown or Rowling Book.findAllByAuthorNotLike(".+(Brown|Rowling)")// multiple and/or conditions // 'and' is resolved before 'or' (c.f. Java) so this finds all books released in 2001 by J K Rowling books or // in 2002 by Dan Brown Book.findAllByAuthorAndReleaseDateOrAuthorAndReleaseDate("J K Rowling", date2001, "Dan Brown", date 2002)
findBy()This finder is very similar to the default Hibernate based implementation. Effectively it is exactly the same as the findAllBy() finder above,
// The domain class class Book { String title String author Date releaseDate }Book result = Book.findByAuthor('Dan Brown', [max:10, sort:'title', offset:2] ) result = Book.findByTitleNotEqualAndAuthor('Digital Fortress', 'Dan Brown') result = Book.findByReleaseDateGreaterThanEquals(firstDate)


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Art is a microcosm of civilization. If, as Plato was to say, justice consists in a certain ordering of parts according to their nature, then art is an idealization of this arrangement, one anticipating its coming into being. Pieces of the whole are found naturally there, manifesting themselves as such a part. An aesthetic manifesting the idea of justice is the human intellect striving to realize the pieces of a whole subsumed under the concept of justice itself. Both the parts and the whole are shown as manifesting what they truly are. Art, as Plato would not say, is an understanding of justice as an idealization of the real. These are two quite distinct things. The former is the anticipation of the Good under the medium of an artistic expression. The expression itself takes its beginning from the concept of justice itself. The latter takes its starting point from the real, from natural objects and states of affairs. By "idealization" one means the concept of justice itself, a concept immortalized in the definition of Logos, or the arrangement of elements forming a whole. Art seeks the elements of justice within natural objects, and attempts to bring out its defining features in ways currently not socially grasped. Artistic creation is the ability to see potential for further ethical growth in the natural and social order. It is the realization of essence, if only in symbolic form. Art can find no separation from this. Art apart from the Logos is degeneracy.
The lack of vision in modern art is one of the most painful and most obvious signs of American and Western social collapse. It is such that even the most untrained minds can see the lack of any hope in society's most subtle modes of self-expression. Art is a window to society, and much can be learned through an examination of art, or the collective social expression. Much is learned about social cohesion and collective values through art. Classical Byzantium and its successor state, Imperial Russia —perhaps two of the most healthy societies in world history—expressed themselves in that antithesis of decadence, iconography. Iconography is the aesthetic of counterrevolution. Even at the start of the "Enlightened" revolution with Thomas Hobbes and the Renaissance (of which he was the intellectual apogee), art had an evocative nature, even a transformative one. However fleshy, sensual, and hyper- realistic, Gothia showed mankind at its essence, in a powerful relationship with the Creator of all things —humanity, that is, as reaching fulfillment only in such a relationship. Mankind's essence as a rational being is actualized only in communion with its creator. Religious art was the poetry of the soul, in that it could transcend the mundane and show mankind's final resting place. This was the repose of the human soul, and poetry could capture it as theological speculation never could. This is the aesthetic of the liturgy, and even of scripture itself.
After the great El Greco attempted the fusion of the icon with Western realism—certainly one of the greatest experiments in art history—the residual transcendent understanding of art had a rather short life. As liberalism and utilitarianism took over the realm of ethics, art no longer had any metaphysical base from which to proceed. Decadence and decay were soon to follow.
If art is the expression of the Logos, or the arrangement of elements in a whole according to the fullness of their essence, then modernity was the death of art. The ideology of modernity declared that essences were non-existent. Following the ideas of the English Schoolman, William of Occam, Enlightenment philosophy considered objects as merely a bundle of properties. An essence was merely something invented by the observer to make sense out of the properties themselves, to bring unity to that which was brought to the senses. Essences had no independent existence. There were no "objects" strictly considered, but merely an understanding of universal causality. There was no central purpose to man, the human intellect was reduced to a bundle offeelings and impulses. No art worthy of the name can proceed from such a psychology.
It was mankind, according to Francis Bacon and John Locke, that was to impart meaning to objects, rather than science being a study of objects in themselves. Rationality, vis-à-vis a just social order, concerned the scientific establishment applying the understanding of universal causality to the social realm—the birth of the social sciences, reaching its apogee in Comte. The concept of a social science was the elite arrangement of social entities (self-moving pieces of matter idealized into "human beings") in such a way that the response to stimuli was to lead the entities in the preordained direction —it was the social planners who were to define justice, and, if the human intellect was a fiction, then all that was needed was a skillful manipulation of sentiments and impulses. The greatest and most unfortunate expression of this idea is within the pages of Hobbes's Leviathan (1651).
The effect on aesthetics was nothing short of revolutionary. With the concept of an object fully expressing its essence now dissipated in Enlightenment social science, objects were merely to reflect the moods and drives of the viewer. Classical art was not something that essentially extended from the intellect of the artist, or, more accurately, the sentiments and "will to power" of the artist, but from the object itself, the object expressing an intrinsic essence through the medium of the intellect.
That essence being fully actualized in direct communion with God is the very aesthetic of iconography, reflecting faithfully the philosophy of a fully Christian social order as well as a Christian psychology. The iconographer, usually a monastic, would fast for extended periods of time before attempting to capture this concept. Fasting was to release the spirit at the expense of the flesh, bringing the artist into a fuller communion with the essence of all essences, pure being itself, God. This is the aesthetics of the spirit, the aesthetics of Christian civilization.
Enlightenment social science created an aesthetic that merely reflected the drives of the artist, for there was no essence to be actualized, no spirit to soar above the ever earthbound flesh. Art became the "idealization" of the piece of matter-in-motion of the Leviathan. Mankind was expressed in art, eventually, as the tortured and imprisoned bundle of passions at the mercy of drives. Soon, this idea was to reach its fullness in the Existentialist school; that school of thought that still haunts Western man to this day. Art and music began to express dread and fear. Mankind had no purpose and the universe was absurd, but man was still forced to make moral judgments, still forced to live in society and cherish his pathetic modicum of earthly contentment.
There can be no question, with exceptions such as Goya, that the Enlightenment ushered in the age of decadence in aesthetics. No longer was the human form illumined from outside, but humanity was seen, following the Weltgeist of scientism, to possess this for itself, as itself. This myth was not to last long. Mankind, quite the contrary from proving it was the bearer of the "divine spark," showed that it was capable of the basest evil. Such ideas came into painfully sharp focus as World War I began.
Artistic creation was to become blurrier and blurrier as humanity was severed from any transcendent purpose. By the end of the nineteenth century, van Gogh, Sickert, Seurat, Prikker, van de Velde, and so many others had severed humanity from its origin—and, explicitly so, had Gauguin. Mankind was not renewed, as in classical iconography and sculpture, but distorted, taken away from its transcendent origin and place of repose; the human form became the plaything of arbitrary will. Art became the idealization of the bureaucracy. Ovid's Metamorphosis had reasserted itself in the age of the social sciences. The onslaught of Comte, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, as well as their famous predecessors such as de Sade and LeMettrie, posited man not only as lacking purpose and ethical basis, but subject to forces beyond human control. Humanity became something to administer, to regulate, to place in arbitrary units for its own good. This culminated in the communes of Paris and in the collectivization of the Soviet period.
The will of the artist imitated the will of the bureaucrat and the will of the industrialist. The structures of modern social science replaced the human essence as the final resting place of artistic creation. If
mankind was to be manipulated according to its passions, impulses, and drives (the only realities in modern psychology), then it became an inevitability that art reflected the powers of the new order. Art Deco became the symbol of bureaucratic art, the art of the social scientist, the aesthetic expression of John Dewey and John Maynard Keynes.
World War I, of course, eliminated the human form altogether, giving birth to a true Existentialism, one that is still the official creed of the modern mass man. The destruction of the aristocracy, by those who protected classical culture (in, however, a vulgar fashion), came simultaneously with the destruction of the human form in aesthetics. It was just a few years until Picasso distorted the human form by following the ebb and flow of his own libido—the very apogee of arbitrary, that is, non-rational, will in art. E. Michael Jones, in his Degenerate Moderns, clearlyshows Picasso as merely being the reflection of his own sexual lust and extremely short attention span.
The connection with Enlightenment—and Existentialist—metaphysics should be clear. The manipulation of the properties of the human form, truly the only relevant subject of artistic creation given the demise of the human essence (or the human form in the highest sense), became the only purpose of artistic creation, reflecting fully the bureaucratization of social life in accord with the final victories of the social sciences and their patron, the techno-bureaucratic and industrialized state. As masses of humanity were herded to death in war and into the factories, art reflected this new reality in the lifeless and meaningless depictions of mankind. Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (1864) became one of the greatest artistic creations of social protest, both affirming and denying human freedom and the human intellect, depicting a mankind that both loved and hated freedom, or the idea that mankind possesses an intellect.
On the other side of the canvas, art was exemplified by the drives and carnal desires of the artist. The Enlightenment had won and mankind was now completely a material object, a purposeless, functionless blob of desires and passions meant to be shaped into a harmonious whole by the scientist and the bureaucrat. Art had followed the new idea of mankind as well as the new idea of justice.
All of this falls into the perennial danger of the essayist, that is, a stultifying simplicity, and one that I admit. A solid essayist, however, is interested in essences, not in chronology. I notice one interesting thing, however. As the human form was gradually destroyed between 1890 and 1918—though the origins go back at least to the early Enlightenment—the concept of sculpture remained highly realistic and romantic, with horrible exceptions like Rosso. People like von Hildebrand and Gerome did maintain a classical understanding of sculpture. Dalou in sculpture and Liszt in music may well have found a second but not entirely unrelated spur to the glorification of the human form in the idea of the nation.
Dalou's Triumph of the Republic (1899), however much it included that prostitute "goddess" of reason at its head (the ever present revolutionary symbol and a mockery of human rationality, and indeed its death sentence), finds its clarity in the idea of the nation. Hegel's concept of the nation as the divine- historical manifested on earth, or the concept in all its terrestrial fullness, may have well breathed new life into the concept of humanity and its eternal purpose. The idea of the nation, particularly in its more conservative aspects, created a super- reason of the national patrimony. It created a new man, the nation, or the collective man, from which art could spring. One must understand, however, that even this was not to last. The wars of the twentieth century put an end to that.
We need look no further than Picabia's Girl Born Without a Mother (1915) to find the final guttering out of Western aesthetics. Mankind has completely become a machine, and the traditions of the past no longer existent for European humanity. The lack of a "mother" was not only the lack of an intelligible patrimony but also the consummation—long anticipated by Hobbes—of fear into a fundamental idea of human life. This fear was the fear of Existentialism: the existence of moral ideas in a person supposed
to be merely material; the absurdist contradiction between mankind as allegedly material with the idea that mankind can consider the future. This was the fundamental contradiction of modernism and the fullest explanation of the fear that gripped twentieth-century man—reflected faithfully by the Existentialists. It finally took Toorop and Brauner to view humans—including themselves—as corpses, or at least as possessing a corpse-like countenance. Mankind without an essence, mankind without a final and transcendent purpose, mankind as being merely a bundle of properties (externally) and a bundle of passions (internally) showed itself to the artist as form without a life, function without a purpose. The corpse became the living symbol of Enlightenment philosophy through its art.
The simple fact of meaning here is that modernity has made it intolerable to be human; Existentialism itself quickly followed upon the debris of the broken promises of modern science. The promises of the Enlightenment—well-placed by Goya and others—went unfulfilled as science failed to impart meaning to the human community. Science was never to replace what classical philosophy had, without exception, understood: an intrinsic meaning and purpose to the human function and form, or an understanding of function through the form.
Socialist realism rediscovered the human form buttressed by ideology, but art on orders from the state cannot be interpreted except through the demands of the state system itself, and contains nothing but the ever present demands for propaganda only. Indeed, art in the twentieth century reflected the socialist school in that it was a product of the New Order of mass capital and state manipulation. The proof of this can be found in the dragooning of art into the service of mass advertising, reflecting, in the most vulgar way imaginable, a mankind that the scientific class considered as merely a tool for the enrichment of mass capital and as cannon-fodder for the newly formed and entrenched total warfare state.
Socialist realism understood the classical function of art much better than the various schools at the time. For Marxism, art was the reaching for human justice, a fullness of man's "being"—a "being" that was entirely self-created through the various new technologies. It stood to reason, however, that once "paradise" had come to earth, art lost its function; it was merely to report what it had seen, for there was nothing to "idealize" since ideals were already manifested within the socialist state. Thus, ordinary human forms doing ordinary human things became the sole domain of artistic expression, in other words, socialism had claimed to have transcended art in bringing it into reality. The socialist state system, then, demanded the dissemination of "realism" in art to show, if nothing else, that the paradise had indeed arrived on earth. Socialist realism is a necessary outgrowth of socialist theory, and served not the reality of socialist life, but merely the demands for propaganda by the socialist elite.
What, then, is the aesthetic of counterrevolution? It is the perennial aesthetic of the icon. What makes this the rock of anesthetics—a true aesthetic of civility—is its vision of human destiny, a final repose outside of earthly desires and fleshly passions. It was the eros of Plato rather than the erotica of Picasso. Humanity does not contain its "own light," as the neo-gnostic Enlightenment assured us; nor does science have the ability to recreate the "divine spark" in its own image. The classical aesthetic of the apostolic Christian world is that humanity, first, is fallen, and, second, is capable, through communion with the Creator, of recapturing the glory of his nature manifested to the fullest extent. This is the aesthetic of iconography. The psychology of iconography is to be found in the final victory of the spirit (or the upper reaches of the intellect in Orthodox Christian theology) over the flesh. This victory is not found in the radical suppression of the flesh, as the ancient gnostics taught, but rather in that fundamentally Orthodox notion of the transfiguration of the flesh.
What Plato understood, in spite of himself, was that the flesh was an intrinsic part of the human person. His view of justice was not the elimination of the flesh, but rather its being brought into subjection to powers that are naturally superior to it. The spirit and intellect were, by nature, superior to the flesh in that they could generalize about natural contingency and understand the universal hidden therein. Only
then could the flesh find its proper function in the world. The passions, or the active principle of the flesh, were not to be eliminated, but placed in the service of the intellect. This is the psychology of civility, and was productive of an artistic vision that idealized the final victory of the spirit.
One must, however, not forget the idea of the nation. The very concept of the Christian collective, reinforced by its national idea, is the true spur for considering the eventual human glorification in the super-nation of heaven. Following Vladimir Soloviev, artistic beauty is the divine light penetrating the material humanity. One can extrapolate, first, the idea of the nation as the material condition for the divine penetration, collectively speaking, of divine grace, and second, the Christian society as its light. The life of the nation, in other words, can be transformed by the church, and society can become actually Christian. Christian society takes on the look of a large church, and it is the light of Mount Tabor that makes a nation a theological organization rather than merely a mundane one, as Saint Augustine taught.
This is to say that, if the entire collective is transformed, there is no object of nature that cannot be considered transfigured, and thus, a thing of beauty. Beauty for those like Soloviev and the classical tradition in general follows from the Holy Transfiguration of Christ. Art represents the transfiguration of nature. It is not the slavish imitation of nature, nor is it its nullification, but rather its fulfillment. This is the purpose of art, this is the artistic genius. Justice, then, is the Christianization of the collective because only it can redeem man from his intrinsic fallenness, manifested by the predominance of human passion and impulse. Justice follows from the Transfiguration, for only when the flesh of man and his community is transformed can mankind live as he should, according to his essence.
But if nature is to be receptive of this transformation, then the collectivity itself must be transformed. This is to say that the society in general must be dedicated to manifesting the supremacy of the spiritual and intellectual over the carnal. The Christian nation, then, becomes a work of art, for it is the transfiguration of social life. It is the idealization of the famous seal of the Byzantine Empire, or the two-headed eagle, the joining of the mundane to the spiritual in one transformative and transformed unity, the highest aspiration of social theory.
Even the architecture of the church itself speaks of the idea of the Transfiguration. The church itself, in its state closest to the ground, or the earth, is square. This represents the mundane world with its boundaries, pain, limitations. Above it and expressing a unity with the square is the dome, and within it, the icon of the Pantocrator, the creator and maintainer of all things. The divine circle rests upon the human square. The circle transforms the limitations of the mundane world, making pain and limitation necessary ingredients to one's spiritual transformation, itself a precursor to the final glorification of the church in heaven. The altar itself is always a square (tetrapod), while the body of Christ, offered upon it, is in the form of bread baked in a circle. The circle has no beginning or end, while the square is well defined by its intrinsic limitations.
The lack of the rational state of justice—the transformed human collective—is the end of artistic creation worthy of the name. If the collective is not dedicated to this state of affairs, or the spiritualization of the collective, then nature cannot be seen as transfigured, but merely as the object of human desire. This is the very definition of decadence and is the ground for abstraction—or the nullification of nature—in artistic creation. Nature is "conquered" by the spirit and made to be seen anew, as expressing value in itself. Outside of this, nature is viewed as Locke viewed it, merely a means to mankind's passions.
Nature can be three things in artistic representation: abstract, real, or transfigured. Imitating nature as it is makes little sense—no one needs an artist for this, but merely eyes. This is the art of socialist realism that claims that idealization is unnecessary because the ideal is now the real. Abstraction is the view of nature as the object of technical manipulation, nature as nullified, subject to outside powers.
Transformation is the glorification, through the light of the Transfiguration, of nature to its original state, a state of cooperation, abundance, and humanness.
This is the meaning of art, and it has a spiritual as well as social component. The social life is to reflect the Church in its demand for the supreme rule of the spiritual and the intellectual, as the Church imparts the grace needed to make this a reality, not a part of the dreams of the Platonists or the Stoa. The church is the true spur to art in its fullness in that it is the mystical body of Christ itself, thus redeeming us from our base passions. Humanity can finally be represented in its wholeness, in its place of repose. In classical times this ideal existed, but remained a distant object of speculation, something Plato painfully took to his grave. There was no "bridge" between the current passionate state of humanity and the ideal of the rational life. This is, further, the aesthetic of counterrevolution, the art of anti-decadence, the art against carnality.
Simply put, then, art is about transformation, collective as well as natural. The Christian nation is an icon of heaven, as the monarch is the icon of Christ; it is the transformation of collective life. Art seeks to capture this transformation and present it to those who find difficulty in comprehending a mass transformation as a theological matter. Christian faith, in its highest and most complete expression, is a collective phenomenon; when it becomes an individual phenomenon solely, the end of Christian society is near if not present. The nation has, in both East and West, been the repository of the Christian collective. Its health—as Blessed Augustine was to say—is the health of the Church. Both are necessary to the transformation of human life, and thus, to the existence of true art. The light of Tabor enlightens and transfigures the collective life as the national expression encourages all to acts of penance and repentance. Christianity does not exist with a series of monasteries or hermitages alone, but as a vibrant collective phenomenon in the nation taking on the externals of a Church in itself. The nation participates within the mystical body of Christ on earth, and is not something foreign to it. This is the beginning of transfiguration, and also the impetus to aesthetics. It is the aesthetics of civility, the aesthetics of the new man.


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Amalienborg Palace (Denmark)
Amalienborg Palace is a must for anyone with a taste for royal history and the life of Denmark's royal family who still resides inside the palace.
Experience royal history at the museum and sense the present of one of the world's oldest monarchies from the beautiful palace square where you can watch the changing of the guards.
Changing of The Royal Guard
Amalienborg is famous for its Royal Guard, called Den Kongelige Livgarde. Every day you can experience the changing of the guards, as they march from their barracks in 100 Gothersgade by Rosenborg Castle through the streets of Copenhagen and end up at Amalienborg, where the changing of the guard takes place at 12:00 noon.
Surrounding the palace square with its statue of King Frederik V from 1771, Amalienborg is made up of four identical buildings. These are Christian VII's Palace (also known as Moltke's Palace, used as guest residence), Frederik VIII's Palace (also known as Brockdorff's Palace, home of the Crown Prince family), Christian IX's Palace (also known as Schack's Palace, home of the Queen) and Christian VIII's Palace (also known as Levetzau' Palace, used as guest palace for Prince Joachim and Princess Benedikte). It's in this building you'll find Amalienborg Museum.
Visit the museum and experience royal life past and present
Amalienborg Museum presents the private interiors of the most recent kings and queens and an exhibit on the monarchy today with its many traditions.
The scope of the museum stretches back 150 years to Christian IX and Queen Louise, who were known as "the in-laws of Europe" because four of their children ascended to the thrones of England, Greece, Russia and Denmark respectively.
As in a journey through time, the rooms of Christian IX, Queen Louise and their descendants stand intact. Each reflects the modern taste of its period and the personalities of the kings and queens, whether it is in military, Victorian, or knightly style.
The large garden room offers an insight into royal life and the monarchy in the 21st century. Royal life entails many duties and traditions, and there is plenty of opportunity to explore them and gain an understanding of what it means to be royal today.
On most days, there is admittance to the Gala Hall and the other magnificent rooms on the Piano Nobile. The royal reception rooms are still used by the royal family for representative purposes. Children are guided by signs designed to meet their needs and engage them.