Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer, traveller and philosopher, revered as a great spirit, known for his belief in wilderness and solitude, and his experiences as a Japanese prisoner of w
On the island
Eight records
It's a bushman's song of women sitting as they sit in the huts in the evening waiting for the hunters to come back. I call it the grass song.
At night I used to lie on the deck in the tropics, looking at the mast, staring along at the star, and then unfailingly the principal Shakuhachi player among the crew would play this wonderful eternal bamboo of the Far East.
Because it reminds me of a period when I was quite young, I was in Natel and knew a remarkable Indian family. who brought the Upanishads, the sacred books of India, and above this music which is concerned with the greatest mythological story in Indian history.
Byzantine Chant: Passion and Resurrection
This is music of which I think often. It reflects something very ironic that happened to me in the war. I was sent. to create a college for teaching guerrilla warfare when I came out of Abyssinia in Palestine. and the place in which I had to teach it was a small monastery.
Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31 No. 2 'Tempest'Favourite
This Piece of Music by Brendel has meant an awful lot to me. I think Brendel is of course an incomparable pianist. He was a particular friend also of one of my greatest friends, who died much too young of cancer.
Lazy Bones in the song so reminds me of the black people in Africa who suddenly They're working very hard, would go and sit In the sun. And people say, Oh, look how lazy they are But they were sitting in the sun all day long. They were an area of themselves between their conscious and their unconscious self.
When I was in prison, the only sort of music one heard outside was Malay music. And there was a Malay love song. which the even the Japanese gods played on gramophone records. That has stayed with with me.
Cello Suite No. 6 in D major, BWV 1012
He went, and he played to them, and they played to him. And then when he came back, one day rang me up, he said he would like to come and say thank you to me. And he came to our house, and he came with that famous cello of his, and he said he was going to play something for us.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:29What did you dream about as a small boy sitting in your mulberry tree?
I don't think dreams were ever were idle. In my Mulberry Tree I usually I spent reading and thinking there, but I had already been launched in the direction… of listening to stories and telling stories and having a feeling that the whole of life was a story.
Presenter asks
3:33How old were you when you resolved to go out and apologize to the Bushmen?
It happened just after the First World War broke, nineteen fourteen. I was just getting on for eight.
Presenter asks
13:16What effect does it have on a man to witness such horrors [in the Japanese prison camp] with regularity?
I had a period when I was technically condemned to death. and where they took me out to see other people die. And I found that what was very important for our officers when we were taken out to witness this. That You must not look away. From the people. who are being killed.
The keepsakes
The luxury
piano, if I could, because then I can start playing again. I used to play the piano, I slightly. And it meant a great deal to me, but I'd love to learn to play properly. I would like, before I die, to learn to play the piano properly.
Presenter asks
Can you describe what happens when you go into the bush as therapy?
I felt I didn't want the CP. I've had enough of human beings. So next day I got a truck and I got supplies. I hired a gun. And I took two the black people with me, and I took off into the bush… I spent three weeks there. And by the day the war seemed to slip away from me, until one day I felt, Yes, I'm okay now, I can go and see you people.
Presenter asks
28:26Do you think that events now have proved that Nelson Mandela is a man of profound integrity?
You know that one hears very disquieting things. Why is Johannesburg? called the Murder Capital of the World. That didn't happen before. I don't know. I've not been there. And I'd rather not talk over.
Presenter asks
33:23Does seeing much death in life mean that you fear it more or less?
I always in a sense by what I've seen of death and dying, I'm comforted by the way it confers a great majesty on the people who die. I don't think Fear comes into it. Obviously I would hate to confront it consciously. But I think if one's blissed to have it happen naturally to one. One couldn't ask for a better welcome to the future.
“I'm going to go to them and beg their pardon for what we've done to them in the past.”
“I think if you ignore nature without, you also, as my experience taught me, you ignore nature within.”
“I would just like people. Do you remember that? Whatever happened to me in life was good. And that I think that I've loved people on the whole and I've loved life.”