Isto é uma entrevista que dei ao Diário de Notícias de 22/5/10… não é fácil ler o artigo assim, mas o texto também está aqui… As fotos foram tiradas num daqueles dias de chuva em maio – e estava muito frio – deve ser por isso que parece que tenho uma cara de enterro… *sorriso*
(edited text courtesy of Daniel Cardoso)
© Diário de Notícias 2010
© Diário de Notícias 2010
© Diário de Notícias 2010
Tags: astarte, auschwitz, catholicism, christianity, foucault, freud, ishtar, joseph campbell, jung, mesoamerica, moorcock, mythology, portugal, psychology, religion, tolkien, wagner
Posted in interviews, portugal, stonedance | 29 Comments »
lançamento O Terceiro Deus - Feira do Livro, Lisboa 2010/ launch The Third God - Lisbon Book Fair 2010
entrevista com/ interview with João Seixas
fila para a assinatura dos livros / queue for book signings
eu (e a Inês) assinar um livro / me (and Inês) signing a book...
actualmente a assinar um livro / actually signing a book...
(version in English follows that in Portuguese)
Quando eu vim a Portugal, já não tinha estado lá à 18 anos… Eu não viajo muito, e quando eu saio da Escosia eu prefiro ir a sítios exóticos: Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Camboja etc – eu raciocino que quando estiver jovem suficiente para aguintar as condicões e climas destes pais vou visitar-lhos – e depois, quando estiver velhino, acho o tempo para viajar aos sítios mais próximos. Mas, quando eu cheguei a Portugal sabia logo mesmo que não é só um ’sítio próximo’… Se querem entender o que Portugal é para mim só é preciso ler o capítulo O Fruto Proibido nos Os Escolhidos – o Jardim do Yden (pronunciado idén com uma ressonância pretendida com o Jardim de Éden) é a minha experiência de Portugal quando era uma criança… Mas, também, vocês, que sabem o que acontece no Yden, têm alguma compreensão de como, para mim, isso não é só uma associação com a luz…
Com um a certa ressonância poética eu, que vim a Portugal para lançar um livro extremamente escuro, pareça trazer comigo o frio e a escuridão do inverno *sorriso* Mas esse frio foi compensado pelo calor da recepção que recebi da minha família portuguêsa e o pessoal dos meus editors, Editorial Presença. Com amizade e profissionalismo, esse pessoal (Raquel Dutra, Inês Mourão, Ricardo Sabino e Raul Martins) organizaram o eventos na Feira do Livro. O João Seixas entrevisto-me com habilidade e a audiência ajudou-me – ainda assim, a dificuldade de falar em português sobre as matérias subtis e emocionais da Dança de Pedra canso-me muito. Não que estou queixando – foi uma experiência maravilhosa…
Depois hove a sessão de autógrafos em que eu tive o grande prazer em encontrar-me com alguns de vocês, meus leitores – alguns que já conheci de email ou facebook… é só uma pena que não tivemos mais tempo para falar… Talvez na próxima vez… :O)
Eu gostaria de agradecer todos que fizeram a minha visita tal um prazer…
When I went to Portugal I had not been there for 18 years… I don’t travel that much and, when I do, I tend to prefer to go to exotic place: Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Cambodia – with the justification that while I am young enough to be able to cope with the difficulties, discomforts and climate of these places that’s the best time to go an visit them – there will be enough time when I am old to travel to the nearby places. But when I arrived in Portugal I quickly became aware that it was not just one of those ‘nearby places’… If you want to understand what Portugal means to me all you need do is read the chapter entitled Forbidden Fruit in The Chosen – the Yden (as an intended reference to the Garden of Eden) is a representation of my experience of Portugal when I was a child… Though, those of you who know what happens in the Yden will have some comprehension how, for me, this is not merely an association with the light…
With a certain poetic resonance, it was I who, coming to Portugal to release an extremely dark book, seemed to have brought with me the darkness and cold of winter (the weather during my stay was unseasonably cold and wet – so much so that it probably stopped a lot of people attending the launch events). But that cold was more than compensated for by the warmth of my reception by my family in Portugal and the representatives of my publishers, Editorial Presença, (Raquel Dutra, Inês Mourão, Ricardo Sabino e Raul Martins) who organized the events at the Lisbon Book Fair with friendliness and professionalism. João Seixas skilfully interviewed me and I was helped out by the audience being able, with their knowledge of English, to span the infelicities in my Portuguese. Even then, with the difficulty of talking about the subtle and emotional issues in the Stone Dance, I was left drained. I’m not complaining – it was a wonderful experience…
Afterwards there was a book signing when I had the great pleasure of meeting some of my Portuguese readers – some of whom I already knew from contacts through email and facebook… it’s only a shame that I did not have more time to talk to them…
Tags: eden, facebook, HBO, lisbon, mythology, portugal, religion, scotland, vampires
Posted in events, my life, news, portugal, stonedance | 15 Comments »
keyhole at Glastonbury © Michael Ely
Ten years ago, at a conference in Maastricht, I ran into an American fan of my work who asked me if I would put some examples of Quyan speech on my site. I told her that I would…. soon…. Well, this isn’t really ’soon’, but here it is (at the bottom of the page) nonetheless.
Forming part of the ritual of the Apotheosis, I have – rather melodramatically – added reverb to indicate something of the acoustics of the Pyramid Hollow. I’m afraid that it’s not very well ‘acted’ – but it was hard enough for me to speak it at all!
The Song to the Earth actually predated the writing of the Stone Dance. I didn’t fully understand what it meant at the time, though I did feel that it needed to go at the beginning of the trilogy. Later, I came to realize that it was the key that unlocks the puzzle that is the Stone Dance… as it is also unlocked my psyche…
Tags: aztec, biodiversity, humans, linguistics, mayan, mythology, portugal
Posted in stonedance | 15 Comments »
Avatar poster in China...
At a time when a great fuss is being made about Google’s sudden discovery of morality that has made them pull out of the Chinese market – it occurs to me that this apparent reaction in China to the film Avatar is suggestive. It is perhaps not the full frontal assaults of such ‘champions of freedom’ as American corporations or Western leaders lecturing their Chinese hosts about human rights that are going to bring down the Great Firewall of China, but rather the delicate tree-roots of mythology that connects all humanity…
(Incidentally, I wonder if the image shown here was selected because it resonates with a traditional ink and brush Chinese landscape painting?)
Tags: avatar, china, google, mythology
Posted in look at this, thoughts/opinions | 7 Comments »
Talos from Jason and the Argonauts
From ancient times man has dreamed of being able to give life to one of his creations. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus (Daedalus as well, I think?) constructed ‘robots’ (Talos, for example, Hephaestus’ gigantic bronze warrior of “Jason and the Argonauts” fame). It was not understood then how intelligence was going to be far more difficult to produce artificially than self-powered movement.
When I was at school, there was much talk about chess playing computers and how, once we had a device that could play chess brilliantly, then we would have artificial intelligence (AI). Of course, Kasparov, arguably the greatest human player of chess who ever lived, was beaten by IBM’s Deep Blue, but no one pretended it was possible to have a sensible conversation with IBM’s prodigy. It turned out, rather unsurprisingly in retrospect, that though for us it is difficult to play chess, for a computer with a fast enough processor it is a cinch. (Incidentally, as far as I’m aware, computers have not been able to beat master players of Go… and this only goes to show that, to play well, Go requires more of that elusive human intelligence, than does chess… and this again, to those who have played both, is not surprising.)
What was surprising was to discover that it was the things we find easy (recognizing our mother from different angles, under different lighting conditions, even if she’s wearing a disguise) that computers find almost impossible. Of course, the reason this was surprising was because we didn’t actually know what constitutes intelligence. We still don’t. If we did, then we would already have made a device mimicking it. Marvin Minsky has been making predictions for decades that, within a few years, there would be AIs around to whom we would appear imbeciles… Clearly, the man suffers from a delusion that he knows what intelligence is. He’s not alone.
Personally, though like so many others I have been fascinated by the idea of AIs most of my life, perhaps we should be careful what we wish for. No doubt a ‘real’ AI would be able to do everything we do INDEFATIGABLY – and there’s the rub. An AI could do everything we can do, but without needing to rest, without having moods, self-doubt. If we could make it, it could make a version of itself… and if it could do so, such that its creation was even infinitesimally more capable than it was, well, we would have started a new evolutionary line that would quickly out-evolve us… and then Dr Minsky would finally be right…
Tags: AI, chess, go, humans, intelligence, mythology
Posted in look at this, thoughts/opinions | 4 Comments »