Just a reference on your Bach. Immediately, I always remember tragic Steiner and his Toccata and Fugue from Dolce Vita (and Marcelo at the best).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss9reS6BZtw (2 min)

I prefer Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto (btw. Brandenburg is the original Serbian place – Branibor in the Serbian founded city of Berlin, so as British bombed Dresden, etc.). And for this type of music and for baroque – Handel.

May I suggest as a new experience something similar but different from my proximity – Serbian Requiem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2CiRRjIAA4 (11 min)

Yesterday, I posted here something light and popular (1973) as a half-joke re Serbian hijab and my contribution to the hijab’s Thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1Da4Ax6dqM (3 min)

Well, we had a interweaving of music (various), history (hidden, forbidden), geopolitics, religion, civilisation, culture (hijab ?) and as a pandan to E. Humperdinck’s Spanish eyes – L. Martin’s Serbian eyes.
All the best.

Thanks for reply, Charles. I read long time ago the book, I need to start rereading some past books (currently Mahabharata). Just couple side connections. Tomas Mann was born in Lubeck, the area where lived ancient Serbian tribes who were later Germanised. The original name was Ljubica which is a Serbian female name (=Violet, field flower). The Trave (river) is in Serbian – grass. Hesse lived in Swabia which got the name from Serbian tribe Svebi (btw. 70% of Germans are ethnically Serbs, even His Fight confesses). Hesse died in Switzerland, old name Helvetia which also got its name from ancient Serbian tribe Helveti (close to other Serbian speaking tribe Burgundy)….Hope a modest contribution to your concept weaving. Cheers

The conceptual web that fascinates me the most is the web of life in which each species is a concept, each organism an utterance ….

JustKnecht wrote:

One of my own interests in the weaving metaphor is the Loom of Form and Meaning which analyses the effect of varying contexts (a word etymologically derived from weaving) on themes>

Fpor JK’s accompanying image, see:

https://twitter.com/justknecht/status/1127472554950586369

I’ll try to incorporate the web of life & species and the loom of form & meaning — also the ocean and oceanic — where appropriate as I develop this series of posts. My thanks to all!

I am, as you might expect, a little shy about accepting that title — the only living human to whom Hesse himself gave the title was Thomas Mann, who features in the book as the Magister Ludi Thomas von der Trave. — but I am certainly grateful for your gracious comment, and very much hope you will enjoy the posts to follow

Slapstik:

I have an interest in, but very limited knowledge of, Kashmiri Saivism, through my long and treasured friendship with Mark Dyczkowski, who sat at the feet of Laksmanjoo.

Milan:

When I was a boy, history was the Kings and Queens of England, and geography was the map of the British empire and its trade routes and goods (bauxite?what the hell was that?). I failed to be interested, until Leakey’s brother taught me some cultural anthropology, introducing me to the Venus of Willendorf and onwards..

I cut through as much fog as I can for my own information, but what I’m concentrating on in these posts is Hermann Hesse’s Glass Bead Game, as described in his book, not the general past, present or future. The Game is about the great thoughts — whether verbal, musical, artistic, mathematical, etc, and how they interrelate.

Beyond that, my focus will zoom in on my own playable variant on Hesse’s game, in the hopes that some here may be interested in playing a round or two. This first post provided some very general context — I’ll get more specific as we go along.

BTW Milan, do you direct films? There’s a filmmaker of that name..

Since mahA pitRvya (grand uncle), somadeva bhaTTa, is mentioned my namaskAra to him! somadeva was cited by rAjAnaka kalhaNa too.

kathAsaritasAgara, compiled in 11c Kashmir, is one of the oldest compilations of old Kashmiri legends, interspersed with some Buddhist jAtaka-s. The rendition is distinctly shaiva. Some of the basic narratives survive to this day in Kashmiri Pandit folklore.

PS….forgotten…Ocean is a good metaphor for conceptualization. I spend every day couple hours (at weekends more) sitting 5 meters from the ocean trying to clarify and interweave my own concepts. Cheers.