Tag Archives: Caledonian Antisyzygy

The man with the child in his eyes

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The author Adam Nicolson in "Sea Room":

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The poet and doctor William Carlos Williams talked of an adventure:

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Mukul Kesavan in "Looking through glass"

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Captain Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited about Sebastian:

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Max Porter in "Grief is the thing with feathers":

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"Dallas", Boat of Garten home of John and Mary Scott:

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'The diary that washed ashore': Alexander MacCallum Scott:

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Peter Davidson in 'Distance and Memory':

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Hale Bopp rescues John and Mary Scott's teddy bears:

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Norman MacCaig, from the poetry wall outside the Scottish Parliament:

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A.L. Kennedy in 'Serious Sweet'

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Richard Holloway in 'Leaving Alexandria'

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Max Porter in "Grief is the thing with feathers":

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'Meet you at the statue in an hour' by Peter for Sian

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Liz Lochhead in "Fugitive Colours"

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'Deeside Tales: the stories of a small glen' by Peter J Gordon

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A timely approach to the diagnosis of dementia championed by Peter

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Candia McWilliams on her father Colin McWilliams:

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Mukul Kesavan in "Looking through glass"

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Margaret Drabble in 'The Pure Gold Baby'

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Liz Lochhead in "Fugitive Colours"

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Kenneth C Calman in "A Doctor's Line"

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The Body Lift

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This is a more experimental film and is based on attending a Conference by Aberdeen Council on the 27th October 2016 in the old Anatomy Department of Marischal College.

The Conference was on “customer experience” and was extremely well put together. This meeting truly realised the benefits of shared learning and wider thinking. I felt very lucky to be a part of it.

I gave a brief 5 minute talk on “bedside manner” in the old dissecting room where 28 years ago I had learned anatomy.

One of the talks I most benefited from was by the philosopher Dr Bob Plant. His talk made me think of divides – the dissections of understandings. The film ends with dissections on the body of “Caledonian Antisyzygy”.

This film begins with my friend Dr Flaxman going up in the old lift to the Town House Archives. We had just left another lift behind, the lift in the Anatomy Department where bodies were brought up to the “Drain”. That is why I have called this film “The Body Lift”

Gauch farm, Cabrach

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This is a film about a remote farm in Cabrach, Scotland.

This farm is called “Gauch” (phonetic pronunciation is ‘jaach’)

For centuries this was the homestead of generations of “Peter Gordons”. God Forbid! A family though that is unrelated to me.

I did not give myself the name “Peter Gordon” but it is the only name that remotely captures me. All other classifications fail. They are not even in the distant sky.

One of the sons of Gauch was Robert Gordon of Straloch who was pioneer map-maker of Scotland (17c)

Gauch farm has been empty for decades. The farmhouse was split in two to make way for Aldunie’s farm machinery.

Cut in-half the farmhouse has become a special place for me, where I find freedom from what its current form curiously symbolises: divides.

Such divide has been described as “Caledonian antisyzygy” but this is a guy muckle term that I find sticks in my throat.

How many splits can you think of?

Here are a few that Hole Ousia considers:

  • objective and subjective
  • mind and body
  • science and arts

This film is carried by the track “Distant Sky” recently released by Nick Cave.

The most lovely aspect of Gauch is that it now lets in sunshine and indeed the distant sky.

All footage is my own.