From the Slipped Sniff to the Sun's Fingers – The Kiss Continues...

"How did yesterday's exercise go? Did you fall into your own reflection?" 

 from Lesson Twelve

 It's Gemma Brockis' birthday today, which is an excellent reason to continue sharing her latest click-and-scroll adventures from The Kiss, Certificate II. Possible spoilers ahead...

  The Ninth Lesson emerges from immersiveness to recall, at a respectful second hand, the discovery in India three or four thousand years ago of smelling with the mouth via a misplaced sniff – literature's first recorded kiss. Alexander the Great, it is said, knew nothing of kissing until he came to India.

 

 The Tenth Lesson throws immediate doubt on this claim however, noting the introduction of the kiss to what would later call itself "The West" over a hundred years before Alexander's campaign, by Aspasia of Miletus, the Persian girlfriend of Pericles of Athens, as an a-romantic symbol of that couple's parity. There was also a kiss in Homer's Iliad – just the one though – a symbol of submission from the Trojan King Priam to Achilles as he begged the Greeks for the return of his son's corpse, even less romantically.

 

 The Eleventh and Twelfth Lessons travel with Aeneas from Troy to Rome, where the kissing of doorposts was instituted as encouragement to protect one's threshold. Other kisses would eventually be available: the Persian-style, aromantic but still unhygienic and consequently outlawed Oculum; the Indian-style taste sensation, the Savium; and the still unsourced but by now irrefutably romantic Basium, of which the poet Catullus begged loads, and then another load. Ovid's myth of Narcissus meanwhile provides the homework. (I didn't know when I first read this lesson that Narcissus had faded away and turned into a daffodil. I wonder if Marie Curie knew this. I'm not sure it would shed new light on their "Day of Reflection" either way.)

 Finally, the Thirteenth Lesson presents the first ever recorded image of a kiss: a kiss of life, passing from the hands of the sun, to the nose of the revoultionarily monotheistic Pharoah Akhenaten, and to his wife Nefertiti, and from them to the mouths of their children; a short-lived, city-founding tenderness inextricably tied to – and ultimately doomed by – the religious repression orchestrated by the man archeologist James Henry Breasted would later dub "the first individual in human history". (Well, look at him.)

 

IMAGES

Metamorphosis of Narcissus : Salvador Dali 1937

Representation of Cow and Family : Artist Unknown

Priam Asking Achilles for the Body of Hector : Théobald Chartran 1876

Narcissus : Caravaggio 1597-99

Akhenaten, Nefertiti and three daughters : the Armana Period c. 1345 BCE

And thanks to Extra Credits for being the only source I could find attributing Breasted's quote.

The Wisdom of Patrick Koluuunahmeheheh Tajnaahme

 According to at least one source, Patrick Koluuunahmeheheh Tajnaahme is the fictional novelist referenced by Captain Kirk in the Star Trek episode "The City On The Edge of Forever". The reason for the ruins you see littering the City here is another interesting – and dumb – piece of trivia...

 

    Apparently, Harlan Ellison's original script stipulated it should be covered in runes...

 

 And the set designer didn't know what runes were.

 Still, it's a hell of an episode, and well worth the quoting... Gemma Brockis has hinted she might, at some point, invite visiting lecturers to her online university to teach something other than the History of the Kiss. In case this happens, I've been considering a Cultural History of Kindness: Bill and Ted's two precepts will go in there, obviously, and maybe Michael Scott's mutant variant, and almost certainly the recommendation of Patrick Koluuunahmeheheh Tajnaahme.

 

 

"Let me help – A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He'll recommend those three words even over I love you."

Further Caressing, Further Kissing, Further Farahi

  The video on Behnaz Farahi below goes into a little more detail about "The Caress of the Gaze" mentioned in the previous post, and also touches on her work as an architect. This is what reminded me how easily I can be fooled into misdiagnosing intelligent life. The Mummenschanzy juddering of "Aurora"'s reactive ceiling panels may not remind me of anything alive specifically, but they do remind me of puppets, and my brain still expects puppets to have a puppeteer. In the introduction to the second term of Gemma Brockis' online university's History of the Kiss (which now has its own site), snogging's origin is traced back 540 million years, to the deuterostome Saccorhytus Coronarius who let its spittle drift from tiny mouth to tiny mouth in the ocean. Even if there never had been such a thing as puppets, seeing any object react to you would probably still read as a sign of Life, regardless of how little Life actually reacts to you.

 

 

Isn't it great what you can do with a 3-D printer?

More Espionage For Kids!

 Further to the spy kids' induction held over the weekend at the Imperial War Museum, here's a bold and beautiful set of Rainy Day activities from shunt's Nigel and Louise. I've not seen enough of their work since the shunt lounge closed, but these photos of the first "Spy Day" seem indicative of the kind of thing they've been up to: in this case, filling a warehouse in Weston Super Mare with children intent on defeating a man dressed as a raven.

 

 Thanks to the pandemic, the sequel to this show is now an adventure we can all go on. As with their more adult Party Skills For The End of the World, there's an embarrassment of exercises here that could easily fill the whole day, including passport forgery, and learning how to distinguish between a rook and a jackdaw. I personally have not yet tested the softness of my tread by laying a trip of toilet paper on the floor, nor built my own laser maze, but if you have time and children, and a bit of courage - it's recommended "for Dr Who aged kids (7-12ish)" - the whole thing is wonderful and free and waiting for you HERE.

 

 And speaking of the virtual work of shunt associates, you still have until Saturday the 31st to enjoy Silvia Mercuriali's Swimming Home in which I played a small part, and which I also enjoyed hugely as an audience, though some water did go up my nose, while Gemma Brockis' Winchester Mystery House of an online course, The Kiss, gets similarly immersive here.

 And finally, continuing the Frankenstein Hallowe'en countdown, here's what I wrote about 1939's Son of Frankenstein.

Kiss Revision

 I caught up with Gemma Brockis this evening on Islington Green, both of us wrapped up against the sudden cold but with an ice cube in each of our picpouls blancs - she'd asked for one and I copied her. Gemma was enthusing about the university as a tested theatrical model for lockdown, because students can still be part of something without having to leave their rooms. 

 

 

  Her own online university has embarked upon its Autumn Term, still teaching just the one (excellent) module, "The History Of The Kiss", but like Sarah Winchester before her Gemma's restlessly added extensions now, and secret passages. So even if you aren't new to the course I would still recommend revision. You will get lost. Here.

Looking Things Up. That Is How I Party.

 And according to this party I'm at, in the sixteenth century the English were considered very "kissy" by visitors from the continent.* Gemma, top left (her birthday today), suggests all that might have changed with the plagues. Other topics of conversation have included whether or not Saint Bernards were accompanied (we don't know)...

And when bananas were first introduced into the lyrics of the following...

Apologies for not posting more today. It's been a social whirl.

*UPDATE: Gemma's researched this further here.