ON HEARING OF THE PASSING OF LEONARD SIMON NIMOY
On hearing of the passing of Leonard Simon Nimoy(1931-2015) yesterday, I put together some of my writing about him to serve as a sort of quasi-eulogy. I have also integrated his life and my own since both he and I have had a keen interest in autobiography. Some readers may find this personal synchronicity annoying and for this I apologize before readers get going here with the following prose-poetic work. Readers who prefer short and pithy posts are simply advised to either skim or scan or stop reading now.-Ron Price, Australia
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Preamble 1:
Nimoy was an American actor, film director, poet, singer and photographer. He was known for his role as Spock in the original Star Trek series (1966–69), and his roles in multiple film, television and video-game sequels. I won't give you chapter and verse of his bio-data, beyond some general remarks below, because you can read about him in cyberspace, and you can even watch a eulogistic-video that went online in the first 24 hours after his passing.
Nimoy was born to Jewish immigrant parents in Boston, Massachusetts in the decade before my parents met in the late 1930s or very early 1940s. He began his career at the same stage in the life-span as I did, in his early twenties. He and I had quite different careers, his beginning in the 1950s and mine in the 1960s. At first he taught acting classes in Hollywood and made minor film and television appearances through the 1950s, as well as playing the title role in Kid Monk Baroni. Foreshadowing his fame as a semi-alien, he played Narab, one of three Martian invaders in the 1952 movie serial Zombies of the Stratosphere.
Preamble 2:
In the 1960s I began several PT jobs as I finished high school and went through university. Then in 1967, my first FT job was teaching Inuit children on Baffin Island. In the 1950s I was introduced to the Baha'i Faith which had been in Canada for a little more than half a century at the time, and had only several hundred believers in all of Canada when my mother joined in '53. Nimoy had a Jewish background the details of which you can read about on Wikipedia.
In 1965, Nimoy made his first appearance in the rejected Star Trek pilot The Cage, and went on to play the character of Mr. Spock until 1969 by which time I had left Baffin Island to return to the Golden Horseshoe. Star-Trek was followed by eight feature films and guest slots in the various spin-off series.
Preamble 3:
The character has had a significant cultural impact, and it had garnered Nimoy three Emmy Award nominations; TV Guide named Spock one of the 50 greatest TV characters. After the original Star Trekseries, Nimoy starred in Mission: Impossible for two seasons, hosted the documentary series In Search of..., narrated Civilization IV, and made several well-received stage appearances. He also had a recurring role in the science fiction series Fringe.
Nimoy's fame as Spock was such that both of his autobiographies, I Am Not Spock (1975) and I Am Spock(1995), were written from the viewpoint of sharing his existence with the character. I had taken an interest in Nimoy because I, too, had developed an interest in autobiography by the time Nimoy had completed both volumes, and I was on my way to an early retirement, a sea-change to a small town by the sea in Tasmania, at the age of 55 after a 50 year student-and-paid-employment life, 1949 to 1999.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Five Epochs, 28/2/'15.
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STAR-TREK
Modern Man in Search of A Soul1
Section 1:
You can read about the documentary Star-Trek: The True Story, at the following link. This doco was originally televised on 5/1/'13 in the US on the Discovery Channel. Go to:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star...The_True_Story. I will not give you, therefore, the details of this program that I watched last night,2 as the cocktail of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medication for my bipolar I disorder began to take effect and produce its sleepy-euphoric state, and as I was enjoying my late-night snack
I have enjoyed many of the Star-Trek episodes over the years since its inception in 1966 when I was just beginning my teacher training to obtain a B.Ed. from the University of Windsor to add to my three year B.A. at McMaster University where I had been a student in a four-year honours sociology, history and philosophy course in Ontario Canada.1 -Ron Price with thanks to: 1 Carl Jung, 1933, and 2ABC TV,10:55 to 11:40 p.m. 28 July 2013.
The Star Trek franchise created by Roddenberry has produced story material for five decades, all of my adult-life. It resulted in six television series consisting of 726 episodes, and twelve feature films. The popularity of the Star Trek universe and films inspired the parody, homage, and cult film Galaxy Quest in 1999 which was released as I was retiring from a 50 year student-working life: 1949-1999.Star-Trek also inspired many books, video games and fan films set in the various "eras" of the Star Trek universe which readers can read about in detail at Wikipedia.
Section 2:
I watched many episodes of Star-Trek
back in the 1980s and 1990s while my
son was growing-up….I never became
the enthusiast both he and his mother,
my wife, were and still are, as this TV
series continues its life beyond its first
decades toward the century: 1966-2066.
I found it interesting, somewhat surprising,
to hear about Roddenbery’s shortcomings
and failings as a human being......So often
we know so little about the real person in
life.....even if they run-the-gauntlet of the
TV interview. Perhaps that is why Freud
said......"true biography can't be written".
Still, writers will keep trying to unearth the
inside story of some human being. And so
it is that biographies and autobiographies
will continue on their merry-way into the
future as we try to understand ourselves!!1
Leonard Nimoy is a good example of such
a writer who plumbed-the-depths of his self
in his two volumes of Spock-autobiography.
Section 3:
1 “A man like me,” wrote Freud, “cannot live without a hobby-horse, a consuming passion,” in Schiller's words---a tyrant.” Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller(1759-1805) was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. “I have found my tyrant,” continued Freud,“and in his service I know no limits. My tyrant is psychology. It has always been my distant, beckoning goal and now… it has come so much the nearer.” Perhaps sci-fi was Roddenberry’s ‘tyrant’. I certainly know the tyrants in my life; indeed, there are several. I slowly became accustomed to them in the 1950s and 1960s: (i) before graduating from university in 1966/7 and (ii) before working within the Baha'i administrative Order in Canada's most southerly city, Windsor Ontario, in 1966/7.
1.1 “The life-work of Freud had been devoted to understanding as fully as possible the world of man’s soul. To Freud psyche and soul were the same, conscious and unconscious mental life. Psychoanalysis is the science of the soul.”--Erich Fromm, The Art of Listening, Constable, London, 1994, p.75.
1.2 Dreams are the result of the activity of our own soul. -Sigmund Freud in Freud and Man’s Soul, Bruno Bettleheim, A.A. Knopf, NY, 1983, p.71. The goal of psychoanalysis is to integrate the emotional life and the intellectual life. idem. Your unconsciousness is your companion. Persona is a protection. In my case my dreams, at least since going on my present cocktail of medications, seem to be the result of the affects of my medications on my brain.
1.3 “I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador. A conquistador is an adventurer, if you want it translated, and in my case it is a conquistador with all the curiosity, daring, and tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort.”–Freud in a Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, Feb. 1, 1900. The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904 (1985).
1.4 “The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which it may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little.”
Ron Price......29/7/’13 to 28/2/'15.
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STAR TREK: THE LAST STAGE OF HISTORY OPENS
"The Hanging Gardens, a current project of the Baha’is in Haifa, will be the most beautiful gardens in the world."-These are the words of Ya’acov Ron, the then Managing Director of the Haifa Tourism Board.
Just after the first message to youth
in the third year of that Plan,1 and
in the same week that I left home
to complete my university life in
teacher-training in Canada's most
southerly city of Windsor Ontario,
a sci-fi epic2 with the thrill of those
Saturday morning serials began and
it took us on a wagon train to stars
and galaxies where no man had ever
gone before. It was a world of the
imagination. The House of Justice
had taken those youth right back to
basics travelling in a quite familiar
galaxy, dealing with 3 great fields
of service3 & radiating the Message
to those among our contemporaries.
Meanwhile, in a poetic and romantic land
of dreams, in far-off galaxies, Rodenberry
Land, our perceptual reality was framed as
part of a new shift of vision to a planetary
civilization, electronic information systems
and world-wide webs: we were all getting
ready, little did we know, for a very great
fertilization of seeds long ago planted and
a begeming of our lives with these new &
heavenly teachings. For they had come with
confirmations & assistance from a threshold
of Oneness that is now in Hanging Gardens.
Ron Price
1/1/'97 to 28/2/'15.
1 The Nine Year Plan: 1964-1973
2 term used to describe Star Trek in the script of the TV program “Star Trek-30 Years and Beyond”.
3 Universal House of Justice, First ‘Message to Youth’ on 10 June 1966.
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end of document
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MARRIED FOR 48 YEARS, A TEACHER FOR 32, A STUDENT FOR 18, A WRITER AND EDITOR FOR 16, AND A BAHA'I FOR 56(IN 2015)
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