A newly-researched Pictorial Biography of Johann Sebastian Bach

The recent forensic reconstruction of the real face of Johann Sebastian Bach has led FunkyPix2's Forensic Expert to assemble a revised pictorial biography, thus revolutionizing music history.

Here is Bach as a child:

...and as a carefree teenage rapper:

...and as a horny young man pursuing any skirt he could find, especially in organ lofts where he kept his etchings:

...then we skip to his more mature years:

...and on into his dotage:

However, this is where the plot thickens. One of the reconstructed photos clearly reveals some Sub-Continental Aryan genes [see below]. This would explain the mysterious appearance of an Indian raga in an obscure organ chorale he wrote in 1734, probably thinking that no-one except Vishnu would ever notice:

...and even more mysterious are Thai folk-music themes, written discretely into the orchestral viola part of the B-minor Mass! Wow! Had the Master ever visited Thailand? How did Kuhn Bach get there? The newly-discovered masterpiece 'The Well-Tempered Gamelan' is a possible clue. Research is indeed suggesting that he was far more traveled and cosmpolitan than previously suspected:

In fact, there appears to be a DNA connection to a little-known Chiangmai composer, one 'Piotr Golly-Sebastian', the odd chap sporting the chin-grass in the photo below. Piotr has been interviewed by the CNN rep from the scholarly journal The Musical Quarterly. He cunningly uses the nom-de-plume of *Peter Gore-Symes* to avoid being mobbed by delerious fans:

You can listen to (or download) some of his compositions here on MySpace (in a new window). When the MySpace dashboard appears, you can click on "Lyrics" to read a short blurb on each work before (or during) playback. The first piece on the list is a trio (There Came A Glance from Igor, for flute, oboe & bassoon). It opens in a Baroque purist Bach-like manner... but then gradually deteriorates into pure Stravinsky. Scores/parts for any of the works are available for the cost of printing and postage from Thailand, in the usual expectation that appropriate acknowledgement be made at performances, on programs etc.
The above link to Myspace is also available on another webpage ("Notes About Music") which Piotr keeps as an ongoing music journal, a Catalogue of Works, and a place where he can ruminate over philosophical or technical details about all his music, not only the six pieces on MySpace.

Now it gets bizarre. This next picture suggests the Bach family originally came out of Africa:

From the following reconstructed photo, Bach is now known to have had a previously unknown FOURTH compositional period. In a single stroke, the interest of musicologists has been highly aroused as they now better grasp the genesis of Bach's 'Air on the C-String'.

Botticelli painted a portrait of a previously unknown subject, now easily recognizable as an early member of the Bach clan:

Amazingly, the following El Greco masterpiece bears an unmistakable resemblance to Bach himself. The apparent existence of links between Bach's family and the Master Painters has certainly set the cat among we art historians. All scholarly notions of chronology are rent asunder:

Art historians have long been puzzled by the following late Renaissance portrait, c.1590. It is now speculated that this was another portrait of a member of the Bach clan. The painting is clearly an early manifestation of post-modernism, intended to demonstrate to potential employers that the Bachs were ultra cool dudes:

Bach got pissed sometimes when he had a (rare) RDO and wasn't busy manufacturing more children with Anna Magdalena. Here he was one Friday night at his favourite pub, Zimmermans, jamming the 12-Bach Blues with his mates:

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You may also be interested in confronting the real face of Jesus from a similar forensic reconstruction. He was a figure of lesser stature than Bach, but probably also got pissed from time to time, drinking his own blood disguised as wine after the main course. Weird shit.
(link opens in a new window).

Man trapped in computer: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Blogger

Helloooo, is anybody out there? ..Bloggers are free spirits (except in Egypt or Malaysia), but the Internet's impersonalism can incarcerate them behind impersonal glass walls of silence.

I frequently reflect on the fact that there are 800 million blogs whirling through cyberspace. Some even show signs of intelligence. In a good week, we FunkyPixers might get to read (superficially scan?) maybe 15 or 20 (maximum). By definition, therefore, we are well and truly out-of-touch on a percentage basis.

It begs the question: why continue to slave so diligently on this blog? It merely brings the total to 800,000,001. What drives me to continue it? Ego? Creativity? Getting a message over? Yes, all the above. Although FunkyPix2 is officially an Ego-Free Zone (see the header message), it was never a 'John Howard' core promise [*grin*]. Secondly, blogging is certainly an outlet for creativity… in my case, it’s aligning cool pictures with text in a semi-coherent manner. A fabulously funkylicious photo can sometimes explain SO much more than words if you choose it well and paste it in just the right spot. And lastly, I have things to say which I do (personally) think are worthwhile putting out there (ibid 'Ego').

Sometimes I feel eerie isolation behind the Internet’s walls of soundless glass, like a mime artist trapped in a silent suffocating nightmare, desperate to feel his way to an exit.

It’s all too easy not to connect with real people, or even other bloggers, from inside the cosy comforts of your own home page. In a zoo, who is the observed, and who the observer? Who the potter, and who the clay? Both them and us are trapped in mental cages of other people’s making:

Being a Progressive Left-leaning Humanist Atheist Cynic, there is no shortage of insane moral issues presenting themselves to me to bong on about - the world is a crazy and unfair place. For a start, it contains John Ducklips Howard.

I'm not trying to imagine that any blogger can single-handedly save the universe…

…but I'm more about shaking people out of their apathy and unquestioning acceptance of 'normalcy'. Presenting compassionate alternatives. Logic. Fairness. Re-fashioning the world using nothing but your own bare thoughts. I am a product of the Enlightenment, patriarchy, and the hippie movement. I blog, therefore I am. OK, OK, I confess... I am a BABYBOOMER... there, I said it. Most people I meet have been ruthlessly taught to believe what they’re told, to swallow propaganda, obey, obey, obey.....

Sure, the world could do with a little assistance in becoming a better place, but sometimes even FunkyPix2's great mentor Batman can’t produce the goods on demand when Gotham City Hall beams up for help:

I can sympathise with the condition known as Blogger Burnout:

We bloggers can’t pretend to be more than we really are…

...you know, One Swallow Doesn’t Make a Spring, etc. But on the other hand, many swallows make a flock, and lots of small raindrops can become a mighty river. I can contribute just a little: my glassful makes a tiny contribution to History. It might influence the thinking of a few people.

Consider the moral fable in this sequence of 4 quite remarkable photos of the construction of a large dyke wall in Dubai. Note the outcome of the tiny leak (bottom left):

Ooops. I often wonder what bloggers could do if there were some kind of web service which could allow us to team up, join forces, submit articles under categories. It's easy to snap a twig, but much more difficult to snap a bunch of twigs bound tightly together. But - oh dear - that might compromise individuality... and whose criteria to use for categories?

And so to blogge, perchance to dream...

London's TRAFALGAR SQUARE is the New Wimbledon: Please Step on the Grass

Turf’s up! London’s Trafalgar Square goes green. Pip pip!

I can’t help noting the cultural assumptions and double standards lurking behind London’s publicity stunt of carpeting Trafalgar Square with 2000 square metres of lawn-grass. No wonder poorer countries feel resentment against the West for such wasteful profligacy and flippancy. Am I just being a ‘goody-two-shoes’ party-pooper? Read on…

Yeah, the London city Council cheerfully admits that it’s a thinly-disguised tourism promo. That doesn’t change my argument, but in fact adds fuel to it. Could the same stunt ever happen in Nairobi, Dhaka, or Addis Ababa? Who would supply the $$ and resources? It points up yet again the widening discrepancy between Rich and Poor due to Globalisation, but western readers of newspapers probably just chuckle at the “Eton schoolboy” humour and flip to the Comics page without a moment's deeper thought. They're not sensitive to the fact that poorer countries have to prioritise spending away from tourism and watering unnecessary lawns, and into basic infrastructure like drinkable water, electricity for lighting, and malaria prevention.

But some more aware folks do retain a grip on the grim reality of England’s (and America's and Australia's) hypocritical and uncaring stance on Neo-Colonialism, Globalisation, eg, this act of defiance by members of FunkyPix2 in London:

A 'pre-lawn' photo of blood-stained Trafalgar Fountain after a demonstration against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. England is still fighting wars in order to increase its wealth at the expense of poorer countries. Globalization is merely the freedom to move Capital around the planet in order to maximize company profits. You didn't imagine Bush actually meant Freedom for people, did you?

Our western priveliged lifestyles admit of luxuries like recreation time, holidays-on-full-pay, welfare safety-nets, maternity leave, and sickness benefits. People in poorer countries don’t know what these things even mean. I recall grounds and cleaning staff at an English Language school in Phnom Penh (Cambodia) being utterly confused when told they had holidays for 3 weeks - on full pay. They thought it was a trick to sack them, and all faithfully turned up the next day with their hair brushed carefully.

“Village London”, as the Trafalgrass event is being labeled, has placed deck-chairs on the newly-watered lawns so people can relax and have picnics. That in itself is not intrinsically a bad thing, as long as we remind ourselves of our enormously privileged advantages which make possible these fun little parlour games in the first place. Millions of poor people must gape in envy that we have sufficient spare water to sprinkle on grass which cows will never graze!

(I wonder if there are Kurdish words for “picnic” or “lawn-watering”).

On BBC World or CNN, we beam images of our wealth onto screens throughout the Third World, shamelessly flaunting our advantage, rubbing it in their faces. They are force-fed our grief during nauseating annual 911 memorial services... but who among us ever gets to experience their grief, their lost children? We've already forgotten the Israeli bulldozer massacres of Palestinians at Jenin refugee camp because there are no ghastly images on our 40" plasma TVs. If these are available, they're suppressed by Big Brother George because we westerners don't like to look at crushed bloodied bodies - we're "civilised", remember? A Convenient Untruth.

…and as usual, FunkyPix2 presents a wheely idiosyncwatic option to the Twafalgar stunt - the Pwe-emptive Porta-lawn:

( How the heck do you calculate the carbon-footprint for this?)

Gallery of unusual Body-Art: tattoos, body-modification, plastic surgery and piercing

Mildly amusing but tame ones for starters. FunkyPix2 is a family-friendly site, so NO, we don’t do mutilation: you can google that up yourselves, sickos :-)

For those who are seeking ideas on self-beautification, here’s an array of ideas to provoke creative thought. We begin nice and easy then get more interesting:

More about permanently anchored spectacles.

More about eyeball jewelery set inside the eyeball.


Start ‘em way young, we reckons.