Sariputta, one of Gotama Siddhattha’s first and foremost disciples, possessed the particular skill of extracting the essence out of teachings and concepts, and also speaking in such a precise manner. In one sutta he says: “Speak a little or a lot, but tell me just the gist. The gist is what I want. What use is a lot of rhetoric?”
Methinks he’s got a point. While I am still on the opposite end of rhetoric habits, I will now try to tell you just the gistWolfi of what has been going on in my recent weeks:
London. I spent another five wonderful days in London with my beloved girlfriend. This time the weather was more typical (lots of rain), so we visited some exhibitions and museums. The highlight was a louder-than-expected noise that I made in the National Gallery - now is that where the term “arty-farty” comes from? ;-)
Reunion. Upon returning back to Graz, I went to the 10-year-reunion of my former classmates. Both to and from the venue I lost my path while riding my new bicycle. What to do after such an outburst of scatterbrained confusion?
Puregg. The perfect remedy: a Vipassana retreat with Hannes Huber in Puregg! This time I shared 7 days of silence, yoga and meditation with Pepi, Hannes and 9 fellow meditators. Later I will describe this wonderful experience in more detail. For the time being, I invite you to read my entries from last year’s retreat: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6].
CERN. In Summer 2007 I will spend three months in France/Switzerland to work at CERN (programming in Python). Hooray! In a few days I’ll be on the train to Geneva. Extensive reports are about to follow here. :-)
Miscellaneous. I came in 2nd at a recent KaraNet photo contest - yay! And my father has just become the first and only Austrian “Master of Homeopathy”. And I love my new MacBook which will be very useful in Summer. And a dear friend of mine is getting married soon. And … I am blathering too much. Good night! :-)
I completely forgot to mention these news: After many years of work and ten thousands of unpaid working hours, we can finally and proudly unleash upon all mankind our wonderful 2DVD Director’s Cut edition of Jenseits!
The highly professional 2DVD set is packed with bonus material (218 mins on DVD #2) and provides a lot of value for money. We received some great reviews saying that they’d wish for many Hollywood productions to include so much interesting material (and such a good 5.1 surround sound mix)!
The soundtrack CD comes in a nice vinyl look and contains 79:35 mins of some modern tracks and the wonderful classical score from our Swiss composer Matthias Erb (performed by singers, orchestra and choir).
Watching the extensive DVD bonus material brought lots of memories back to my mind - a time of adventure, madness, challenges, surprises, teamwork, progress and achievement. Sometimes combined with ecstatic joy, sometimes with tension … overall an invaluable experience!
If you want to support our work (and help us clear our debts :-)), you can buy the DVD and CD in many Austrian stores, order through our homepage, or get it directly from the crew (the cheapest option). My humble advice: do it today! :-)
Instead of finishing one out of many incomplete postings, I’d like to recommend a new song by Nightwish members Tuomas Holopainen and Marco Hietala. It is called “While Your Lips Are Still Red” and will appear on the soundtrack for the upcoming Finnish movie “Lieksa!“, which looks promising according to the video.
The song is not a Nightwish track, but Tuomas composed it beautifully and Marco sings with an unexpectedly clean voice, which took me two or three listening cycles to get fully accustomed to. Now I just adore the song - although a decent female voice would surely make an excellent alternative version!
Speaking of female voices, I am really curious about the vocal abilities of their new singer Anette Olzon. She sounds lovely on the new radio single “Eva“, however I am slightly skeptical about her voice in the other song previews. We shall find out more in August and September when the new single “Amaranth” and album “Dark Passion Play” are released…
Meanwhile their former singer Tarja Turunen is not sleeping either, preparing a new solo album. For a non-Nightwish song with her from 2005, watch and listen here! :-)
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