"I think there should be holy war against yoga classes. It detours us from real thinking. It's just this kind of...feeling and floating and meditation and whatever. It's as tourism in religions. People all of a sudden becoming Buddhist here in Los Angeles" --Werner Herzog (in a great GQ interview)
"[the] deplorable spectacle of a grown man occupied with the mumbo-jumbo of magic and the nonsense of India." --Wystan Hugh Auden (on Yeats' poetry)
Even as one who has enjoyed the relaxing effects of yoga, I am inclined to agree!
also, for the definitive scholarly take-down of the "ancient yoga" mythos:
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/living/not-as-old-as-you-think
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4 comments:
Ben! Have you been a Werner Herzog fan all this time and hidden it from me?
I wish! that would have been awesome. No - i heard about him for the first time in the press about his new film about that not-lascaux cave. And have subsequently learned about what a stud he is.
But i take it you are (a fan)? what films would you recommend?
Do you remember that Grizzly Man doc that we started watching and couldn't bring ourselves to finish? He did that. I re-watched it last year and found it a powerful, excoriating film about cheap romanticism and insanity. Give it another go.
I also saw the cave painting film last saturday (in 3-D!). Here's the thing: cave paintings are only interesting for about 30 minutes, and no matter how cool they are (and these ones are really cool), you can't pad it out to 90.
I'm not sure whether you'd like Herzog as a filmmaker--I've only seen three or four of his films, but the things he's interested in seem to be things you decry being interested in: things like insanity, obsession, the howling abyss. Still, re-check Grizzly Man, and perhaps his doc on Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World.
" things you decry being interested in: things like insanity, obsession, the howling abyss."
I am constantly suprised at the depths to which you know me. :)
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