The story is that I was working in England at the time on North Sea Oil projects so had money and time off to spend in Europe. Our first son was born March 1977 and my Mother-in-Law had come over from Oz to help out, so in June we did a trip to the Alps Region in our E-Type Jag.
20 years later [in 1997] my son is off on his own trip to Europe so I did a website listing all the "must see" areas, eg like this one that he had already visited at 10 weeks old. So here is the footage, digitized from a Super 8 movie and with Wagner added. You see the outlaws up front tending the kinder then me eating a veener mit brot und senf, then the Falls. I will shortly improve the audio as it is but 32 MeatyBites here so a tad raspy on the corners.
[edit] OK this is the version with added MeatyBites, ripped and rendered at 128 MeatyBites
So as you can see my idea of an inspirational Monolith is a lot more "fluid" and POWERFUL than for Nietzsche. Here is the web site content for my son in 1997:
I just got a book by Bernard Levin out of the library, "To the End of the Rhine" by a Kraut Michael Palin (Pole to Pole) facsimile.
Just grab a look at this geyser, he is just sooooo typical Germanic. Smile? no he has never even raised a giggle - even at Octoberfest but he puts himself in every picture with his "my shit dont stink" expression.
However he has great feeling for Rhine etc.
Take it away Bernard!!!!
"..... I had not so far embarked upon the bosom of the Rhine. The next stretch of the journey seemed to call for a progress on the water, and I signed on, therefore, from Kreuzlingen on the Swiss side of Constance, for the voyage to the Schaffhausen Falls, where I trusted that the boat would stop safely short of the drop. (sic - hey dude, that was my little joke. You guys dont have jokes) (It is from the bridge across the Rhine at Constance that the river is measured; from there to Rotterdam there are huge boards on both banks, marking the progress of the Rhine, measured off in kilometres, with smaller boards marking the tenths. At the Constance bridge the first of the boards says defiantly, 'o'.) I was not to know that this placid stretch of water, strewn on both sides with tiny villages, castles, churches, monuments, inns, towers, meadows and life, would prove to be among the most beautiful and enchanted stretches of the entire river.
The Rhine at Basle, Strasbourg and Cologne is more imposing, at Mainz and Worms more historically significant, at Bonn more political, at Duisburg and Djisseldorf more powerful in their role of purveyors of goods and services to the twentieth century, along the route of Seventy Castles more enrapt in legend; but from the moment the Rhine leaves Lake Constance, via the southern arm at the western end, until the traveller hears the roar of Falls downstream as he approaches his journey's end, there is no part of the Rhine more powerful in the heart's-ease and delight that it provides."
Right on Bernard, just what I would have expected!!! Also you will notice the midpoint town of Stein am Rhein. Well as per my own observance (later on?) of the Kraut diligence in making every town boootiful, he sort of bears this out in also suggesting that Stein is a must to get off and have a peep.
And then Bernard backs me up on Wagner bit - I sort of like this blokenzie
"..... the Nibelungenlied takes place on its waters and its banks, and Wagner set to music not only the legend but the river itself; the Rheingold Prelude is one of the most lifelike musical depictions of a tangible scene ever written, and a blind man who had never heard of the composer, or for that matter the Rhine, could be in no doubt that he was listening to the flowing of a mighty river."
(dum de la dar dum, dum de la dar dum etc) Have a listen (extra loud) to Das Rheingold - Entry of the Gods into Valhalla to see what I mean. I'd say if you started it (10.5 minutes) on your Walkman at the top of the steps, you would reach the climax just as you got to the falls.
I'll send you a tape of a really great version by good old Otto Klemperer. It's on side A about half way (line up the tape and pen marks).
I hope I (and Bernard) have conveyed to you some of the sights and (especially) feelings to be sampled in this area, based on what I have seen/experienced and what I would still like to experience. But dont get too overcome and try to cross that rainbow bridge. There's a bit of froth in the way.
OK, that's the exact text (HTML) I did in 1998, but in 2003 I am now able to fully indulge in my fantasy with a full minute of old Super 8 movie of the Falls, with Wagner in the background (ie the final 60 seconds of the tape I speak of above).
Please believe me that it was no accident that the movie and music fit so well together (as Bernard says, even a blind man could be in no doubt of what this all about). The chords were ringing in my ears as I took the movie in 1977 and I knew at the time that sometime in the future I would put all of this together (but had no idea it would be on a thing called a computer).
PS - It is a tad ironic that exactly 100 years before I took this movie, Nietzsche trotted up to Bayreuth for the first ever performance at Wagner's new Theatre and the first ever piece played was this Rheingold. Nietzsche had a Hissy Fit saying it was too "Politically Correct", but Wagner was in great debt to the Mad King in building Bayreuth so maybe he should have "cut him a bit of slack".
But that explains why Nietzsche had to ask Strauss to give him something "Wagner like" for Zarathustra. For my own Monolith Moment I like the real thing from Wagner himself.
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