Meet Lawrence Blair
Born during the Blitz, swimming from the Mediterranean when the idea still had fish from the idea, schooled in Mexico as well as France as a boy, Lawrence Blair later pursued an academic career at Lancaster University, England where he wrote one of the first doctoral theses which defined the field of psychoanthropology, earning him a PhD. In 1972 Lawrence impulsively gave up the academic life to join his brother Lorne to make an adventure film in Indonesia. Capturing their experiences in over nine separate expeditions, their 5-part documentary film series Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey was picked up by PBS as well as the BBC. A condensed fourpart television series won two Emmy Awards in l988, bringing the Blairs international acclaim.
Their journeys around the Pacific Rim took them through one of the richest kaleidoscope of ethnic groups on earth. In their 10 years of wandering the archipelago without guides, radios or compasses, the brothers endured near drowning, starvations, falls as well as fevers. They were driven by storms in mountainous seas, dropped by light aircraft into jungle clearings, ran unchartered rapids in Dayak canoes, climbed erupting volcanoes, sluiced off roads in monsoon flash-floods, nearly vaporized by an exploding petrol truck as well as subjected to antagonistic hordes of howling stone-throwing children.
The authors lived among the Asmat tribesmen of Papua, dukun healers in Bali, as well as the elusive “Dream Wanderers” of Borneo. They encountered deadly Moluccan Blue-Ringed octopus, pythons inside of rancid bat dung-covered caves in Sulawesi as well as the “dancing trees” of the sensational Greater Bird of Paradise living 80 feet above the ground from the wild rainforests of the Aru Islands. The Blairs’ travel experiences to such places of innocence, adventure as well as danger were developed into a book, Ring of Fire: Exploring the Last Remote Places of the earth, published in 2010 by Editions Didier Millet.
Shells, butterflies, scuba diving, boogie boarding, domesticating weird wild animals as well as somewhat compulsively writing verse. I love living in Ubud, where our house as well as garden crawls with creatures.
Who has deeply influenced you?
The 19th Century explorer Alfred Russell Wallace, the prescient 20th Century psychologist Carl Jung as well as Rupert Sheldrake, the futuristic Cambridge biologist/ philosopher. I’m also impressed by James Lovelock who gave us the Gaia Theory as well as the late Lyall Watson, the South African biologist/author/explorer who’s left a little-known legacy of mind bending books, still well ahead of their time. If you haven’t heard of them, you will have by 2020, if we’re all still here. I’m a media addict, an omnivorous devourer of documentaries, animated features as well as anything directed by James Cameron, Peter Weir or Ridley Scott. They’re the dreams of our planet.
Was your Ring of Fire the first book you ever published?
In 1976 I published Rhythms of Vision: The Changing Patterns of Belief in which I discussed arcane topics such as sacred geometry, subtle energy, chakras, spiritual planes of existence. The book is actually perhaps best known for first discussing the Hundredth Monkey Effect as well as has been compared to the work of the occultist Corinne Heline as well as the theosophist Alice Bailey. My friend Lyall Watson wrote the book’s Foreword.
What was your last project?
In 2011, I co-produced Bali—Island of the Dogs, a 55-minute widescreen HD documentary about Bali’s semi-wild dogs. A film about the island’s unique canines was a way of seeing a more complete picture both of Bali, as well as of people’s attitudes, everywhere, to the wild world of the ‘some other.’
What is actually the film about?
The film is actually about the history as well as place from the local culture of the thousands of semiferal dogs which roam the island. Bali Dogs have ancient, uninterrupted genetic memories of the evolution of their closest neighboring species, man, as well as the idea was This specific which I wanted to explore. We look at the way these dogs ‘WHAT WE SEE OUT THERE is actually ONLY WHAT WE HAVE IN US TO SEE, as well as which ‘TRADITION,’ WHICH WE HOLD SO SACRED, CONTAINS BOTH DEEP TRUTHS as well as PATHETIC IDIOCIES.’ have become woven into the tapestry of the Hindu lifestyle in Bali, the improvements in their relationship with human society, as well as ultimately their importance to genetic science.
What’s the most critical question which your film tries to answer?
Have you made any some other films besides Bali—Island of the Dogs?
In 2007 I produced Myths, Magic as well as Monsters, a fivepart documentary series which explored the earth’s rarest as well as most mysterious reptiles, ocean dwellers as well as domesticated animals. There are still undiscovered species as well as tribes of people out there.
How was working on Islands of the Dogs different through working on your some other films?
Most of my work is actually real adventure filming in remote regions, so the idea was a joy to be working in my own home island again for the very first time since the ‘70s, when few people even knew where or what Bali was. The film is actually more an adventure of the mind as well as the feelings, as well as the idea was wonderful to explore the wilder parts of Bali Once more, as well as to focus, definitely for the very first time, on these remarkable, beleaguered as well as resourceful island dogs, which I’d long since only seen as just an inconvenient part of the background. I had no idea, until interviewing genetics experts from the USA, of the crucial importance of Bali’s dogs to our understanding not only of the evolution of dogs everywhere, yet of just when humans began populating these southern islands.
Do you personally like dogs?
Yes, love ‘em almost as much as cats. As someone said, “a dog comes when you call yet a cat takes a message as well as gets back to you… sometimes.” yet the idea’s nice to be adored for no Great reason all the time. I recently had a German Shepherd for seven years, yet he died through a cobra bite from the garden. He was love on wheels, yet he wasn’t as bright as my parrot, Dicky.
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Meet Lawrence Blair
Meet Lawrence Blair