『Triptych Conversations』のカバーアート

Triptych Conversations

Triptych Conversations

著者： Mark Meynell Joel Bain Sophie Killingley
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今ならプレミアムプランが3カ月 月額99円

2026年5月12日まで。4か月目以降は月額1,500円で自動更新します。

概要

 3 friends (@quaerentia @perishandfade @joel.a.bain) + 3 unrelated artistic masterpieces = insights for modern life (hopefully!)All content © Mark Meynell. アート キリスト教 スピリチュアリティ 社会科学 聖職・福音主義
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  • Triptych Ep 2:1 | Buechner’s Godric, Jenkins’ Armed Man, Penn’s McCandless

    Triptych Ep 2:1 | Buechner’s Godric, Jenkins’ Armed Man, Penn’s McCandless
    2026/04/18
    The Masterpieces 1. GODRIC by Frederick Buechner (1981) Frederick Buechner (1926-2022; pronounced ‘Beakner‘) was an American Presbyterian minister, theologian and, most notably for our purposes, writer. He was prolific in both fiction (15 novels), poetry and non-fiction. He was heralded in his lifetime for his brilliance and creativity, though inevitably, his books have perhaps not maintained their deserved popularity.The novel for which he is best known is surprising! A relatively short work, Godric tells the semi-fictional story of an obscure figure from 12th century Northumberland. Godric of Finchale (apparently pronounced ‘finkle’ acc. to English Heritage!) was a hermit with a heavy conscience, a former Crusader who essentially withdrew from society to a cave on the River Wear, north of Durham. He longs to be left alone to seek God and avoid his past. But the Bishop of Durham was having none of it, and so the Abbot of Rievaulx Abbey sent a young monk, Reginald, to live with Godric in his very old age, to write up this holy man’s life. The result is a hagiography (literally writing about a saint). The word has since come to mean a biography primarily concerned to present the subject in the best light with all warts removed (with probably a few miracles thrown in). But Godric is infuriated by this, not least because he knows his past.The result is an extraordinary, moving and compelling book, wrestling with the nature of good and evil, sin and righteousness, guilt and forgiveness; essentially it’s about how messed up we all are. It’s no surprise that it was a finalist for the 1981 Pulitzer Prize.Buechner wrote:I picked up a small book of saints and opened it, by accident, to the page that had Godric on it. I had never so much as heard of him before, but as I read about him, I knew he was for me, my saint. 2. INTO THE WILD (dir. by Sean Penn, 2007) Chris McCandless was utterly disenchanted with the hypocrisies and platitudes of modern, especially suburban, American life, as exemplified by his parents. So in May 1990, freshly graduated from university, he leaves home without telling anyone to escape to the wilderness. He travels all over in his clapped out car until it’s wrecked in a flood. He hitchhikes, meeting various people with extraordinary stories of their own. He is aiming for Alaska, and he eventually finds an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness in April 1992. He sets up his base there, naming it ‘The Magic Bus’, and all seems ideal. However, things start to go wrong, especially as the weather turns. He also comes to realise how much he desperately craves human company. But when he tries to retrace his steps, the stream he crossed before has become a lethal torrent, forcing him back. He has to resort to foraging for food, and then becomes fatally ill after eating a poisonous plant. He keeps a journal as he slowly declines. Some weeks later, hunters find his body and the family are contacted. Sean Penn’s film is a heart-breaking story adapted from the research of mountaineer and writer Jon Krakauer, whose book Into the Wild stayed at the top of bestseller lists for 2 years. It is beautifully shot and well-paced, with a superb performance by Emile Hirsch in particular. (Sadly, he seems not to have landed the productions or parts that enabled him to reach such heights since). To top it all, the soundtrack is simply stunning: Eddie Vedder (of Pearl Jam) wrote and sang the songs. I’ve had seasons over the years of keeping the album on repeat. But the film is more than the sum of all these extraordinary parts and is one of those that stays with you long after viewing. 3. Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man Peace Mass (2000) Sir Karl Jenkins (1944- ) is a Welsh Composer who started out as a jazz-fusion multi-instrumentalist. He trained at Cardiff university and the Royal Academy of Music in London. You may think that his music is unfamiliar, but especially through its use in advertising, his compositions seem to get everywhere. They’re the sorts of familiar tunes that you can never place but instantly associate with banks or insurance or whatever! Composing such music is no mean feat, and requires a certain kind of geniusBut he is the writer of far more than atmospheric mood music. He’s best known for Adiemus, and more recently the Armed Man mass for peace. There is a long mediaeval tradition of composing settings of the Catholic mass liturgy around popular melodies and one of the most used was from a folk song called ‘L’Homme Armé’ (or the Armed Man). Jenkins updates the concept at the Millennium, describing the previous century asthe most war-torn and destructive century in human history Our very own Doodler, Sophie Killingley, with the great man himself (some time ago it should be said!) Commissioned by the Royal Armouries Museum to mark its move from London to Leeds at the Millennium, ...
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    1 時間
  • Triptych Ep 8 | A Rock, A Mother’s Yellow Wallpaper, and a Local Hero

    Triptych Ep 8 | A Rock, A Mother’s Yellow Wallpaper, and a Local Hero
    2025/05/30
    The Masterpieces 1. The Yellow Wallpaper (1890) Charlotte Perkins Gilman (as she became after her second marriage) suffered intolerable hardships in the lead-up and aftermath of giving birth in 1885 to her only child, Katherine. Today, she would be swiftly diagnosed with severe postpartum depression, but of course in the 1880s and 90s, the concept was light years from a medic’s vocabulary. She was given a ‘rest cure’, a strictly policed form enforced solitude and passivity: confined to bed, barred from social interactions, limited diet, minimal mental stimulation (so little or no reading or writing). If anything was guaranteed to aggravate mental illness, this was it. Highly unusual for the time, she finally divorced her husband Charles Stetson in 1894, although both had recognised that would be necessary as early as 1888. She wrote what would become her most famous short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, in 1890, about a young mother’s ghastly plummet into madness in circumstances that clearly echoed her own. It is brilliantly paced but utterly chilling in its artful, unreliable narrative that manages to speak with piercing clarity. It’s easy to see why it became a staple of feminist literature, but it shouldn’t be confined to such labels. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (r) with her daughter, Katherine Beecher Stetson, ca 1897 (Schlesinger Library, Harvard) It is astonishingly good writing, pure and simple. Here are some relevant links: Read The Yellow Wallpaper (in various e-formats)Gothic FictionThe doctor who devised ‘rest cure’ therapy, Silas Weir Mitchell.Including women in Clinical trials before 1993. Mentioned in passing: Daphne du Maurier’s RebeccaM. R. James’ Ghost Stories (complied 1931)Aimee Byrd’s Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (NB cover!) 2. I am a Rock, by Simon & Garfunkel (1965) Paul Simon is one of the true greats of American popular music. I mean, who else living has both his creative range and longevity? A brief ChatGPT query offers only Willie Nelson and Dick van Dyke (!?, though he is 100 this year). Both great folks – but IMHO not a patch on Paul Simon. You mention Bob Dylan, Herbie Hancock, or Johnny Mathis? But their careers are marginally shorter, believe it or not. He first came to global fame (as well as Sophie’s obsession) through his 10-year partnership with fellow New Yorker, Art Garfunkel. It was hugely successful, but towards the end, became highly fraught; they formally split in 1970. This song, I am a Rock, was first released in 1965 but only in the UK. It would gain a global hearing when included in their 1966 album Sounds of Silence. Simon and Garfunkel, 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert, Madison Square Garden 2009. (Kevin Kane/WireImage) Paul Simon’s official site In Passing: Meditation XVII (No man is an island) by John Donne 3. Local Hero (dir. Bill Forsyth) (1983) In an earlier episode, we shared our artistic proselytising failures: those things we loved that failed to impress anyone else. Mine was Local Hero. So we put it under the Triptych microscope, with interesting results! Bill Forsyth wrote and directed (on the back of his success with Gregory’s Girl), David Puttnam produced (fresh from Chariots of Fire Oscar glory). The film’s scale is simultaneously tiny and global. Its tone is light and quirky, almost absurd at times, but manages also to prompt serious questions. It’s nostalgic certainly, and perhaps trades in caricatures of a long-past Scotland. But it is a film with heart that really grows on you (though only perhaps, as Joel says in the discussion, once you have an idea of what to expect!). The premise is simple. US megacorp oil company wants to buy remote fishing village on Western Highlands coast to turn it into a massive refinery. Agent sent from Houston to soften the inhabitants up for the deal. That’s it. But nothing goes smoothly. And that’s the joy of the whole. A wonderful cast (including Burt Lancaster in one of his last big roles; the great Fulton Mackay, Denis Lawson, not to mention Peter Capaldi in his very first etc), brilliant script, and dollops of wonder and natural beauty. Oh and Mark Knopfler’s gorgeous soundtrack. As several critics have pointed out, it is effectively a modern fairy tale. Lovely tribute to the film and to Pennan (where some of the filming took place), 40 years on. Oh, and I was wrong – they DID have, and STILL have a red phone box!The Bechdel-Wallace Test: a simple (and therefore not uncontroversial) means of analysing the portrayal of women in fiction (esp. film): does the work feature at least two women in conversation about something other than a man, and do they both have names?The legacy of Monty Python‘s absurdism?10 fun facts about the movie! Other Mentions ...
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    1 時間
  • Triptych Ep 7 | Through Black Mirror to Lake Street Dive, pursued by Derek Walcott

    Triptych Ep 7 | Through Black Mirror to Lake Street Dive, pursued by Derek Walcott
    2025/05/17
    The Masterpieces 1. Black Mirror 3:5 "Men Against Fire" (2016) Black Mirror is both a phenomenon and an outlier, one that has gained cult status in some quarters (though perhaps there’s a generational divide there? You’ll need to ask our producer Owen for more on that. He has views…). It started life on the UK’s once quite edgy and adventurous Channel 4, the brainchild of journalist, arch-satirist and presenter, Charlie Brooker. He has either written, or prompted creative discussions for each episode, working with his producer Annabel Jones. Stripe’s commander Medina, played by the one and only Shiv Roy (aka Sarah Snook!!) But what makes it incredibly unusual is that it is an anthology show; in other words, one made up of a series of unrelated, stand-alone episodes. This is obviously much more expensive than a regular show because new sets, casts, designs etc are needed every time. The common thread is the impact of technology, socially, relationally, economically, and politically. Some gripe that it often piggy-backs on ideas that are developed at greater length elsewhere, but that does seem nit-picky when the production values are so high and the provocations so thoughtful. If that was not the case, it’s unlikely Netflix would have thrown huge budgets at it or so many A-list stars given their right arms to be in it. That said, it is rarely comfortable viewing and sometimes incredibly dark. As this episode is… the discussion we had was very ‘interesting’! The premise of Men against Fire: soldiers are given neural implants that affects their perceptions, especially of enemies, so that they appear as lethal grotesques, or ‘roaches’. However nothing is as it seems. But what is interesting is that none of the ethical issues are as straightforward as they first seem. In this clip, psychiatrist Arquette (played by the brilliant Michael Kelly) explains the ethos behind the implants to protagonist Stripe (Malachi Kirby). Brooker was initially inspired to focus on propaganda by a British John-Pilger-made documentary about the Iraq war called The War You Don’t See.But his thinking was subsequently shaped by Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command by military historian S L A Marshall, and Dave Grossman’s On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.An intro to the concept of ‘Othering’Finally, a flavour of Brooker’s less intense work (apols for some of the NSFW language) 2. Love after Love by Derek Walcott (1976) The total population of the 16 Caribbean nations comes to only around 44 million (so 0.54% of the world’s population). But just stop for a moment to think of its cultural impact: this is a region punching well above its weight: in music (eg mambo, calypso, dancehall, ska, reggaein international cuisine with the joys of things like jerk cooking or rumin sport (cricket and athletics especially)on many other cultures via its diasporasthrough its joyful festival and carnival culturein intellectual clout with the likes of CLR James (Trinidad) and Frantz Fanon (Martinique); not to forget the Nobel-winners: Sir Arthur Lewis (St Lucia) for Economics; V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad & Tobago) and Sir Derek Walcott (St Lucia) for Literature. [Plus I’ve not even MENTIONED our very own Carib genius, The Crooner — just a matter of time, surely — let alone anything to do with pirates] So it’s to Derek Walcott that we turn now (1930-2017). He won the Nobel in 1992 for his varied writing (plays, short poems, epic poetry, criticism), work that bridged all kinds of different influences making him one of the leading post-colonial writers of his generation. In this episode we discuss his beautiful, Love after Love, which was his publisher’s Poem of the Week only the other day. Receiving his Nobel in 1992 Some other connections George Herbert’s LOVE IIITimothy Keller’s short book (based on a talk he often gave) The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness.Joel even mentioned Calvin’s Institutes, so more on them here. 3. Making Do by Lake Street Dive (2021) Lake Street Dive is a highly talented and versatile band made up originally of friends who met at music college over 20 years ago (the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston). Since then, they have successfully experimented with different genres while the line-up has changed slightly. There is so much to love about their music, with its invention, virtuosity, flexibility and joie-de-vivre. This song, Making Do, is deceptively straightforward at first listen, though – and prompted a very interesting discussion. The core line-up on this 2021 album, Obviously, was: Rachael Price (original line-up) – vocals, writingBridget Kearney (original line-up) – vocals, background vocals, bass, synthesizer, writingMichael Calabrese (original line-up) – drums, writing, background vocals, ...
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    57 分
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