One of my favorite movies of all time is “Dead Poets Society.” I can’t begin to explain why, although I will eventually try in due course. (For many of you this is not necessary, of course.) Peter Weir’s movie is (at least for me) a pure artwork on many levels: one can easily watch the movie without any sound and experience the extremely strong visual power, but one can also listen to it as it were a record, enjoying the poetry and fantastic music of French composer Maurice Jarre. (Yes, the same genius who scored the music of “Witness” and “The year of living dangerously.” And wouldn’t you know – all three of these movies were directed by one and the same man.)

There is much much more.

(Before proceeding, I must confess to you, dear reader. I’ve always wanted to live inside that movie. Just be part of the class of mister Keating, feel the poets in the cave, and disappear in snow. And maybe attend the Mutt Sanders party. I tried it many times, but in one way or another, it usually didn’t work out. Still, if you pay enough attention, you might see me in some scenes.)

(Keating is played by another genius – Robin Williams. Although at some points his stand up talent is unleashed, this is one of his serious roles. And he is so good it. He was.)

The boys, who are really impressed by their new teacher, hear that Keating was part of a “Dead Poets Society,” when he himself was a young boy at Welton. They also hear that the society met at regular times in an old Indian cave not so far from the school, in which the Dead Poets took turn in reading poetry from Thoreau, Whitman, Shelley – “the biggies.” Every meeting started with with the phrase of Thoreau on sucking the marrow out of life. (Mister Thoreau – whose name in his days was articulated as “thorough,” – will come back to us in the “Into the wild” universe, by the way.)

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

The idea is then born to re-instate the Dead Poets Society.

On the first night that the boys escape the school to run to the Indian cave, one hears mysterious music (essentially) by the hand of Jarre, and much speculation has been made on the instruments in (the beginning of) that particular scene. The same kind of music and atmosphere appears when Neil commits suicide. Listen to the first half of the next clip – especially around minute 1.

Can YOU make up what instrument makes the hight pitched tones ?

One might be tempted to think about Uilleann pipes with some kind of subtle twist, or some other old folk instrument. But this particular instrument is … the human voice. Tuvan style, that is.

Many of us have experienced variations on this kind of singing, especially through the esoteric music of Tibetan Buddhist overtone chanting. In that specific form of overtone singing, emphasis is put on the low pitches, as is illustrated below in another variation called “Kargyraa” (by the famous Tuvan group Huun-Huur-Tu).

Virtually every single time that I heard overtone singing in one of its various forms, I got so enchanted that it was kind of inevitable (if you are me) that at some point in my life I had to try it. I did. And it seemed so natural to me, that I could easily “outsing” most of the guys who posted YouTube movies about their throat-singing capacities in a matter of weeks. Now, where weeks have become months, I try to work on my chanting when driving alone, and when I am not too tired (which is very often the case). It keeps getting better and better, and often sounds almost, well, uncanny, because it is so unearthly.

But enough about me – it is time to leave you, for now.

This is not the end of this story by the way, but in the next one, I want to be concerned with another question first.

How can one starve by eating rabbits ?