Meet Lawrence Blair
Born during the Blitz, swimming within the Mediterranean when the idea still had fish within the idea, schooled in Mexico along with France as a boy, Lawrence Blair later pursued an academic career at Lancaster University, England where he wrote one of the first doctoral theses of 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 along with 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 along with 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 along with subjected to antagonistic hordes of howling stone-throwing children.
The authors lived among the Asmat tribesmen of Papua, dukun healers in Bali, along with the elusive “Dream Wanderers” of Borneo. They encountered deadly Moluccan Blue-Ringed octopus, pythons inside of rancid bat dung-covered caves in Sulawesi along with the “dancing trees” of the sensational Greater Bird of Paradise living 80 feet above the ground within the wild rainforests of the Aru Islands. The Blairs’ travel experiences to such places of innocence, adventure along with danger were developed into a book, Ring of Fire: Exploring the Last Remote Places of the globe, published in 2010 by Editions Didier Millet.
Shells, butterflies, scuba diving, boogie boarding, domesticating weird wild animals along with somewhat compulsively writing verse. I love living in Ubud, where our house along with garden crawls with creatures.
Who has deeply influenced you?
The 19th Century explorer Alfred Russell Wallace, the prescient 20th Century psychologist Carl Jung along with Rupert Sheldrake, the futuristic Cambridge biologist/ philosopher. I’m also impressed by James Lovelock who gave us the Gaia Theory along with 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 along with 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 will be perhaps best known for first discussing the Hundredth Monkey Effect along with has been compared to the work of the occultist Corinne Heline along with 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, along with of people’s attitudes, everywhere, to the wild world of the ‘various other.’
What will be the film about?
The film will be about the history along with place within 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, along with the idea was This particular of which I wanted to explore. We look at the way these dogs ‘WHAT WE SEE OUT THERE will be ONLY WHAT WE HAVE IN US TO SEE, along with of which ‘TRADITION,’ WHICH WE HOLD SO SACRED, CONTAINS BOTH DEEP TRUTHS along with PATHETIC IDIOCIES.’ have become woven into the tapestry of the Hindu lifestyle in Bali, the modifications in their relationship with human society, along with ultimately their importance to genetic science.
What’s the most critical question of which your film tries to answer?
Have you made any various other films besides Bali—Island of the Dogs?
In 2007 I produced Myths, Magic along with Monsters, a fivepart documentary series which explored the globe’s rarest along with most mysterious reptiles, ocean dwellers along with domesticated animals. There are still undiscovered species along with tribes of people out there.
How was working on Islands of the Dogs different via working on your various other films?
Most of my work will be real adventure filming in remote regions, so the idea was a joy to be working in my own home island again for initially since the ‘70s, when few people even knew where or what Bali was. The film will be more an adventure of the mind along with the feelings, along with the idea was wonderful to explore the wilder parts of Bali Yet again, along with to focus, actually for initially, on these remarkable, beleaguered along with 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 within the USA, of the crucial importance of Bali’s dogs to our understanding not only of the evolution of dogs everywhere, although 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 although a cat takes a message along with gets back to you… sometimes.” although the idea’s nice to be adored for no Great reason all the time. I recently had a German Shepherd for seven years, although he died via a cobra bite within the garden. He was love on wheels, although he wasn’t as bright as my parrot, Dicky.
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Meet Lawrence Blair
Meet Lawrence Blair