Music Monday: Imaginaerum

The new Nightwish album is here! (EEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHH!!!) It’s been a long, hard wait, but totally worth it. I got to listen to the entire work a couple of days after it was released. The official first single is not among my absolute favourites (those have to be ‘Ghost River’ and ‘Turn Loose The Mermaids’, which just jumped up and grabbed me by the throat), but it’s quite obvious why it was picked. Fun times… When is the movie coming out, again?

Music Monday: Leaves’ Eyes & Midnattsol

I find myself listening to a lot of FFM (that stands for ‘female-fronted metal’; get your minds out of the gutter) when I’m writing, especially during NaNoWriMo. This past weekend I found myself listening to the full discography of two favourite bands in the genre, which, incidentally, are fronted by two sisters: Liv Kristine Espenæs-Krull (Leaves’ Eyes) and Carmen Elise Espenæs (Midnattsol). It’s only natural that I’d want to share some of their work today.

No official video here, but a bit of cinematic action suits the music. The song is ‘Enlightenment’, from the album Nordlys (2008).

Knowing Who You Are

The movie Eat Pray Love is based upon an individual’s search to find herself. A growing number of people spend much of their time wondering who they really are and what their real life purpose is meant to be.

We in general live a life of luxury. There is little real hardship in the way that we live in the Western world today. We have more money, more creature comforts and a greater ability to pursue myriad activities both near to home and far away. When you are being deprived of basic necessities in life, your focus inevitably remains glued to the task of survival; one doesn’t have time to luxuriate in ponderings about who you are or what your life’s purpose is. Your purpose is simply focused upon staying alive.

And so the more comfort you have in your life, the more time you inevitably have with which to focus your attention upon things of a more philosophical nature. Ironically, the more we have, the more dissatisfied we appear to become, as we simply move our focus on to different things. When, I wonder, will we as a community finally appreciate what we have got and allow ourselves to enjoy a feeling of balance and satisfaction in our lives?

Julia Roberts, in this movie, sets out on a course to find herself which takes her to Rome, India and Bali over the course of a year. In Rome she learns to enjoy food for its taste and not worry about calories or weight gain. She also learns to make platonic friends and to live alone instead of constantly being in one relationship or another. She’s not totally at one with this new experience, but she’s apparently learning from it.

In India she learns to meditate and to further relax her thoughts, to a certain degree. She feels a little more centered but still knows that her journey is not complete. On she moves to Bali. Here she has to face a challenge; can she enter a close relationship without losing herself once more?

I’m sure that many people could empathize with several of the emotional tussles which were being expressed in this movie. Many people wonder who they are or what they should be doing. Many more wonder where their soul mate is and how they are ever going to find them. Some people shy away from relationships because they feel they will lose themselves if they were to commit; others throw themselves into one relationship after another and find themselves molding their habits and behaviors to whoever they are with.

All of these scenarios reflect a certain amount of emotional conflict, instability or insecurity. The quest to find oneself frequently takes people away from home, in search of peace and quiet and tranquility. The fact remains that you find this peace only when your mind becomes peaceful; this does not necessarily mean you have to go away so as to find peace.

Having said this, sometimes one finds it easier to totally change their environment so as to break old habits. The thing to remember, though, is that you generally have to go home at some point and still have to take the peace which you have found back home with you too. Otherwise you have not achieved any long term resolution to emotional turmoil or insecurities.

And when it comes to relationships, if you have really found your peace, and found yourself, you will not fear losing yourself. You will feel confident and secure in being one of two whole people who share a relationship as opposed to being one small fraction of a whole. Fears are only ever borne from your own chosen (although often unconsciously so) perception of a situation.

An alternative approach to finding yourself is to take time examining your thought processes and expectations in life and then focus upon ways in which you could think more powerfully and productively. To feel balanced and satisfied in life you have to learn to feel happy with yourself as you are, to stop comparing yourself to others and instead to feel confident being you.

About the Author
Grab a free hypnosis mp3 from Roseanna Leaton’s website, check out her hypnosis confidence mp3 downloads and build your hypnosis confidence.

The author invites you to visit http://wwwRoseannaLeaton.com

The Bigger Picture: Lord of the Rings 3/3

The Fifth Age and Beyond
OK, so there actually isn’t a Fifth Age in Tolkien’s Legendarium. That’s because he stopped writing at the end of the Fourth. The Fifth Age is actually the Age that we’re living in now, although Tolkien did ponder a little as to whether we’re technically in the Sixth or Seventh, because the Ages have steadily been speeding up.

What’s this, you say? Middle-earth is actually our Earth? It is! But obviously only in mythological form, because we all know that our history is different (there was nothing in The Silmarillion about Elves fighting against dinosaurs, for instance, although possibly dragons and Balrogs might fit the bill if you really want to reach…).

Tolkien created a wealth of ancient legends that we can apply to our own past if we so wish, or choose to see as a pantheon of myths rather like the stories of the Greek Gods of Olympus. That hasn’t stopped scholars with nothing better to do and students with herb in the pipe from sitting down and working out a logical time-frame for events using our own calendar. Tolkien himself claimed that 6,000 years passed between the end of the Third Age and the 20th Century. In a 2004 issue of Mallorn, a journal published by the Tolkien Society, they posited that the Years of the Sun at the end of the First Age began on 25 March 10160 BC and that the Fourth Age actually began on 18 March 3102 BC.

The Bigger Picture: Lord of the Rings 2/3

The Third Age
And this is where the fun really begins… Unless you’re an Elf. You see, after pretty much ruling Middle-earth since Ilúvatar saw fit to introduce them to Arda, the Elves found themselves troubled by the seemingly endless wars going on, not to mention the rise of those troublesome Men. Cue a mass exodus to a mysterious place named Valinor (the Undying Lands), where the Valar were said to reside – comparisons to Heaven and its angels notwithstanding.

The Third Age is categorised by a slow lessening of magic in Middle-earth as its most powerful beings (besides Wizards) started buggering off and clearing way for the Age of Men. By the War of the Ring, Elves were largely restricted to Rivendell (under Elrond), Lothlórien (under Galadriel), the Silvan Elves of Mirkwood (who kidnapped the Dwarves in The Hobbit) and Lindon, ruled by the bearded Círdan.

The Bigger Picture: Lord of the Rings 1/3

In the latest of our new series, Total Film goes beyond Peter Jackson’s groundbreaking trilogy to explore the characters and the history of JRR Tolkien’s fantasy saga…

In much the same way as the original Star Wars trilogy was a mere three-chapter segment of a far bigger story, so The Lord of the Rings – both in book and movie form – are but a teeny tiny part of a huge universe. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (JRR to his mates) didn’t simply write a kids’ tale called The Hobbit and then whip up a more adult fantasy saga afterwards just for the hell of it. He spent a lifetime creating the ‘Legendarium’, a sweeping historical saga that even encompassed its own languages. And so, in honour of the now prepping-prequels, here’s all you need to know about a place called Middle-earth…

The First Age
The history and legends of Middle-earth are detailed (for the most part, as there are some omissions that appear in other books) in The Silmarillion, a podgy doorstopper that not only gives the Bible a run for his money when it comes to creation myths, but that also helped inspire the name of that ’80s band led by a bloke called Fish (but we’re not going to hold grudges).

Gangster Paradise, part IV

1. GoodFellas (1990)
Martin Scorsese’s flamboyant gangster film breaks the Mafia code of silence. It’s the real deal, not some bada-bing thing… Capiche?

As far back as he could remember, Martin Scorsese always wanted to be a priest. When he was in grade school in Little Italy, New York he used to go to the seminary after class. He bought into the whole Catholic deal: sin, redemption and the eternal flames of Hell. But what he didn’t do was impress the priests, who threw him out at the end of his first year for mucking about during prayers: ‘They thought I was a thug.’

Priest. Thug. Filmmaker. When he finally discovered the Holy Church of Cinema, Scorcese’s movies became the confession box for New York’s damned. And who better than Father Marty, the intense man with beetling eyebrows, to hear the sins of Johnny Boy, Rupert Pupkin or Travis Bickle?

The story of Henry Hill was different, though. He was a real-life sinner and his crimes had cost him everything. Born in 1943, Hill was a Sicilian-Irish kid seduced into joining the Brooklyn Mafia by the girls, the cars and the money. Hijacking trucks and robbing airports (including the spectacular ’78 Lufthansa heist) brought wealth, yet Hill was just another goombah until his arrest on narcotics charges in 1980. Convinced that he was due to be whacked by his former friends and unwilling to do a long stretch inside, Hill broke the omertà code and rolled over for the Feds.

Henry’s testimony sent a shockwave through the Mafia. He was immortalised in crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family – the most revealing look at the Cosa Nostra since Mario Puzo put pen to paper for The Godfather. When Scorsese, who’d sworn never to do another mob movie, read it during filming on The Color of Money, he rang the author immediately: ‘I’ve been looking for this book for years,’ he explained. The writer shot back: ‘I’ve been waiting for this phone call my entire life.’ The deal was struck. Marty would become Hill’s confessor.