Casting a Spell? Practical and Religious Lessons for New Cane Converts

0 Kudo

Author	Comment
stickleyboy	Casting a Spell? Practical and Religious Lessons for New Cane Converts		Lead	[-]
Posts: 1 11/08/2007 13:50	Tags : casting, spell Most of the posters to the Forum seem to be cane veterans. I'm curious to know whether there are more folks like me that have gotten into the bamboo game recently, especially because they happened upon Black's Casting a Spell. The book certainly cast a spell over me. Perhaps the newbies could use this thread as an opportunity to join the Forum rather than lurk, to share tips about how to get into the game economically and successfully, and thereby consolidate some of the information that we've been busy searching out from all over the web. I'm also curious about others' responses to the quasi-religious aspects of Black's book. Black sets out the "search for perfection" as a theme that unites peple bitten with the bamboo bug. However, I've given a lot of thought to this point, and I've found that it doesn't quite capture the emotional/ psychological response that bamboo seems to illicit. Cetainly, there is an element in the psyche of us that desires perfection and authenticity, and a certain amount of obsessive behavior that goes along with that. What I found more interesting, however, in Black's book was the way the characters used bamboo rods (in various ways and with very varying degrees of success) to make peace with the fact that the world and ourselves always fail to match or live up to these ideals of perfection. My favorite scene is where a maker sums up his own buddhist-like philosophy that emerges from these issues. "Do good work and remember that this too shall pass." I've found that idea very helpful in dealing with my kids, my job, working on my cast, and selecting a bamboo rod. Curious to know your own reflections..... stickleyboy
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
fishnbanjo		#1	[url]	[-]
Posts: 5037 11/08/2007 14:11 the Canefather	Welcome aboard........... I know George Black and his book is near and dear to me even if I wasn't part of the information it tells......George is also a member here and posts as canebrook banjo Visit my website: Fishnbanjos Place
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
DrakeBob		#2	[url]	[-]
Posts: 1118 11/08/2007 17:16 Formerly Drake	Welcome aboard, stickleyboy. Here is a thread from last January in which we did, on occasion, actually discuss the book: Casting A Spell. George Black (canebrook, as 'banjo mentioned) chimed in on, I believe, the second or third page. Bob
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
Zenkoanhead		#3	[url]	[-]
Posts: 1115 11/08/2007 18:34	Welcome S. Careful of that Zen stuff though! It is exceptionally difficult for Westerners to appreciate Zen notions of perfection, although a good paradox always comes in handy. But in general, constant practice of any pursuit, done well, eventually frees up the mind from the usual attachments, and fishing with bamboo rods is as good a method of practice as any. My advice is to transcend the rod, Grasshopper! [But first fish like crazy!] Don
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
thegubster		#4	[url]	[-]
Posts: 1033 11/08/2007 19:19	Zenkoanhead wrote: But in general, constant practice of any pursuit, done well, eventually frees up the mind from the usual attachments, and fishing with bamboo rods is as good a method of practice as any. My advice is to transcend the rod, Grasshopper! [But first fish like crazy!] I should write this down to look at often..... Nice job. Jeremy.
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
Cane Head		#5	[url]	[-]
Posts: 2125 11/08/2007 21:29	Just another book in a growing plethera that's about bamboo in one way or another. Didn't have an epiphany when I read it. Actually found myself feeling rather sad about one character that seemed to be taken advantage of by the good ol boy fine tackle crowd this endeavor seems to attract. Cane
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
CTcanelover	Sam	#6	[url]	[-]
Posts: 11 11/08/2007 22:22	Would that be Sam? He used to come to our club meetings from time to time in Hamden and I found myself feeling very sad after reading the parts about him; I hear Dana is doing a fantastic job carrying on his name and I'm looking forward to seeing his work this weekend. I know my friend Ron saw a rod during the Lang's action and asked him if it was Sam's or his...it was Dana's. High compliment...BTW Ron has 3 Carlsons. I'll let him chime in if he wants to reveal his screenname for this blog.....
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
Dread Pirate Robert		#7	[url]	[-]
Posts: 26 11/08/2007 23:45	I enjoyed reading the book ~~ until I came to the one or two political places. I continued reading to the end but never really had the enjoyment that I had at first.
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
Cane Head		#8	[url]	[-]
Posts: 2126 11/09/2007 00:21	Yes - it was definitely Sam. I can picture the comments the muckity mucks might have whispered about his abode while wondering just how much more they could get for one of his rods than what he actually sold them for. Cane
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
CTcanelover	CCC	#9	[url]	[-]
Posts: 12 11/09/2007 09:16	No muckity mucks on our end....we fish our rods. Also many of my friends and I happen to live in or near what I like to call the CT Cane Corridor(CCC). Since you have read the book and are an obvious cane afficionado you know the history of the Mt. Carmel section of Hamden. Many of the Carlsons my friends own were acquired before they went through the roof. A perfect example of the sad journey of a Carlson is the recent sale of the late Ed Kluck's Carlson he received for his many years of service to the HFFA. That rod went for over 5K and I'm sure it was acquired in the mid hundreds by my friend Paul Uhlan to give to Ed...that rod better be being fished by somebody who likes to smoke a ! I guess AK Best summed it up best in one of his flytying videos: "Bugs are like people..they all die sooner or later." See you on the other side Ed.........
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
BlackHillsBill		#10	[url]	[-]
Posts: 2466 11/09/2007 11:26	Stickleyboy, welcome. As Bob pointed out, we've had quite a lengthy discussion of Casting a Spell. Black's book had a pretty good reception, too, although of course trained critical bamboo minds here did raise a few objections. These generally followed the line that a fellow writing about bamboo fly rods should either not have views about religion, politics, and society or else should keep them to himself. That this would render him an asocial, apolitical, amoral, and boring nitwit evidently didn't matter. But having read quite a number of books by boring nitwits, a few of them on our sport, I am always delighted to find one as rounded and interesting as George Black's. I lurked for the better part of a year before I got gumption enough to post. It isn't so much that forum folk are intimidating, but they do take a little getting used to. Don't worry, though, about the many "veteran" posters. Most of them, like me, are garrulous, opinionated, and wrinkled, but otherwise fairly harmless; and, like you, they find fishing with a bamboo fly rod fascinating, as well as a good measure of how a person goes about important things.
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
tedgolden		#11	[url]	[-]
Posts: 2269 11/09/2007 12:00 Moderator	I'm also curious about others' responses to the quasi-religious aspects of Black's book It's been a while since I read it and recall I felt the quasi religious inflections actually detracted from the theme and was somewhat gratuitous. Likewise the undertone of populist economics. Overall, a very worthwhile read.
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
DrakeBob		#12	[url]	[-]
Posts: 1119 11/09/2007 12:14 Formerly Drake	Sheesh… I may have to reread it. I was so busy concentrating on the bamboo stuff that I missed the religious, quasi or otherwise. But then, when I was a kid sitting in church on Sundays I was usually concentrating on Patty Riposo who sat a couple of pews ahead of us. But, that's just me. Bob
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
quashnet		#13	[url]	[-]
Posts: 1566 11/09/2007 13:02 Moderatus Muscae	An author who titles his book Casting a Spell has given fair warning that he has intentionally produced a descriptive, extended essay about his experiences with bamboo fly rods, that is likely to include personal observations and individual expressions of taste, preference, and philosophy, in a presentation deliberately intended to examine, and then to close, any perceived gap between mundane and metaphysical considerations. Now if he'd titled the book Physical, Chemical, and Structural Characteristics of Hexagonal and Square-sectioned Tapered Bamboo Fly Fishing Rods, you'd have a beef.
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
BlackHillsBill		#14	[url]	[-]
Posts: 2467 11/09/2007 13:06	Had that trouble, too, Bob. Always kept finding myself getting a quasi-paucity of religious experience in church. Some elsewhere or at least a good enough substitute. But once in front of the chancel I had no chance, so I started concentrating on bamboo rods instead. I thought there was something wrong with me. And there probably was. Of course, I didn't have George Black's book to fall back upon. I didn't have a Patty Riposo for an excuse either--only a few old Lutherans. What a wonderfully poetic name. Never got over her, huh? To examine, and then to close, any perceived gap between mundane and metaphysical considerations. There is a truly worthy task, Quash--a life's work, which can, with a little ingenuity, be conducted streamside. It goes on the wall of my fly-tying room. Last Edited By: BlackHillsBill 11/09/2007 13:32. Edited 1 time.
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
DrakeBob		#15	[url]	[-]
Posts: 1120 11/09/2007 14:56 Formerly Drake	I did get over her, Bill. Started attending a different church myself. ...likely to include personal observations and individual expressions of taste, preference, and philosophy... Unlike what we do around here.
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
stickleyboy		#16	[url]	[-]
Posts: 2 11/09/2007 15:11	Transcend the rod? Indeed that seems like good advise Z. It recalls the themes I so loved in the Herman Hesse novels I read in my twenties. But I'm not sure that transcendance is only to be found in the meditative experience of fishing. There's something about the rods, the prestige of great rods, the craftsmanship of the great makers, the history, the science of tapers and stress curves, and the big money- all of this together expresses a degree of complexity in values that is difficult to come to terms with- but I'm not sure the answer to all this tragic worldliness is to somehow transcend it. I've always found the Buddhist injunction to transcend attachment as yet another fundamentalist attempt at perfection that leads to contempt for life in its complexity. Black's book ultimately doesn't really provide an Eastern answer to these issues. Rather, I'm trying to say that it's art lies in precisely refusing to answer these issues- to highlight the paradoxes and resist the transcendance of them. Perhaps my Western mind can't grasp Zen notions of perfection, especially my Scandinavian mind, which seems to me to highten these paradoxes. I see a lot of myself, my Dad, and my Farfar in Sam Carlson's sadness, that tendency to hold oneself and others to impossibly high standards, to need social recognition and professional distinction and yet recoil from it in humility and reserve. Certainly this isn't exclusively Swedish, but it does seem distinctively Swedish in my experience. In a way Sam is tragic, caught as he is in these paradoxes and struggling more than we would wish for him. We want him to see and appreciate his legacy that we all recognize. But at the same time this sadness is very true and authentic. It's right to empathize but wrong to pity. I mean it is a violation of what's right that Sam didn't get more of the value out of his rods. The rod game wasn't especially kind to him. But it is also right that his work is valued the way it is by the cane community and the marketplace. Paradox indeed. But I'd like to celebrate the paradox, so I can appreicate the complexity in Sam's story as well, perhaps, in my own. So, I'm not interested yet in the transcendence of attachment. We Swedes can't do that apparently anyway. Right now I'm interested in the rod game.
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
Zenkoanhead		#17	[url]	[-]
Posts: 1117 11/09/2007 16:27	S. What you say is not far from the mark for the Zen abbots, but not as true of the Zen lay. I would recommend to you the works of Layman P'Ang. By the by, as a reluctant student of Ibsen and Strindberg I have some understanding of the Scandanavian view you express. I was messing with you a bit with the "transcend the rod" bit. Of course in Zen practice, you also have to transcend the notion of transcendence AND the mental exercise of contemplating the act of transcendence. I did read and enjoy Casting a Spell and took no particular offence to the political gibes [I just don't care]. As to whether life was fair to Sam Carlson, I leave that to the more contemplative. Fisherman-rod-water-fish, not all that complicated is it? [Except that it is!] Don
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
stickleyboy		#18	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3 11/10/2007 10:45	"transcend the notion of transcendence AND the mental exercise of contemplating the act of transcendence" Now there is good advice for an overly contemplative and wordy SOB such as myself. cheers, Jim Ommmm..... I think I'll go finshin'
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
BlackHillsBill		#19	[url]	[-]
Posts: 2468 11/10/2007 11:33	stickleyboy wrote: Ommmm..... I think I'll go finshin' Cautionary Note: Finshin' might look easy, especially after a few rounds with Sam's paradoxes, Strindberg, Hesse, and Zenkoanhead's assistance. But be sure you have someone along who has finshed with a bamboo fly rod before, just in case.
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote
Marterius		#20	[url]	[-]
Posts: 348 11/14/2007 16:44 A Blue Doctor	Hi, nice to see another Sweden on board! To me, the fascinating thing with the book was that he showed the people behind the rods, and the latter part of the book, depending more on interviews, was therefore the most enjoyable part for me. It is written by a professional journalist who knows how to get something important out of the sources he used - that makes a difference. The interview with Sam Carlsson was haunting. Regards, Martin in Sweden Like the hunter, the hawker and the fowler, the fisherman takes life in finding his pleasure. It is reasonable to ask of him that he make it as keen and thorough and satisfying, as productive of growth in himself as he reasonably can. For only then can it be the strong and sensitive pleasure of a civilised man. - Roderick Haig-Brown
Interact My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Invite Blocking Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Reply Quote