Dear Friends,
I am afraid we are entering yet another hiatus on this blog. Contrary to the hopes of certain members of the blogging world, I am not slinking away to reconsider my position on the explotation of women, men, animals, or anyone else. No, I am off for a two-week summer school session on Intelligent Design. I have always been sorry that I did not take more science in high school and college, so I am going to rectify that now.
I was going to say, "While I'm gone, read Michael Bérubé, because his writing always kicks ass." But oh great: he's taking a break, too--AND he got a load more writing done during his semester off than I did. Thanks for making me feel like a slacker, Michael, but really you needn't have any concerns about your prose. It is mighty fine.
But it looks like he'll have a couple guest contributors, so read them for me while I am away, and let me know what you think. I'll have a lot to catch up on when I return.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Monday, May 16, 2005
The leads are weak.
My favorite moments used to be when the "NOW HIRING CLOSERS" sign would appear at the local Burger King. It was my big moment to have one of those elitist private laughs at the business world, when it had inadvertently stepped into a literary critique of itself. I would wonder, at those moments, whether the handy instruction manual for Burger King closers might read, "Always be closing." I really, really hope it does.
Now I am also happy that the Patient Partner has taken to referring to our fancy schmancy coffee maker as The Machine. That way, when we have forgotten to set it up the night before, or I have to clean out its many parts, I can simply say, "Fuck the Machine!" To which the PP, except when he is really sleepy, obligingly replies, "Did you say, fuck The Machine? She said, fuck The Machine!"
At which point Jacques Monod is rarely amused, and says, "Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers."
But friends, these moments just don't stack up anymore.
Not long ago, the PP and I took a sojourn in New York, in part to see the new revival performance of Glengarry, Glen Ross.
I don't know if you are a David Mamet fan, but the production rocks, and not just because of the cast. I will confess that prior to this I had only seen the movie version, of which I am immensely fond. I have made the mistake of suggesting to people who work in sales that they should see it, no really they should, because it is so, so good. They usually come back and give me the look with which I am now familiar. It is a look that says, Why did you make me do that? and also wonders whether I am truly a friend.
I am, but really, it is so, so good.
So imagine my surprise, when the PP, upon returning from NYC, had lunch with some colleagues of his in the sales department at his company. They asked him how his trip was. He said how much he liked the subway and the great Vietnamese restaurants, and how good the play was.
"Oh yeah," one of them replied, setting down his third beer. "Our sales manager used to show clips from that movie during our motivational sessions."
Huh?
Now, granted: I could see how that Alec Baldwin scene, out of context, might--I say MIGHT--have some useful pointers in it. (Nota bene: that scene is not in the original play.) But surely, if the aforementioned sales manager were going to track down that scene, surely he would have HAD to have watched the whole thing?
But without sounding too much like Alanis Morissette, I suppose I could acknowledge that the world is full of such ironies. That it can be the people who claim to be defenders of freedom who smack you down when you stop goosestepping. Or I could note that sometimes people watch things, and they just don't get it.
Now I am also happy that the Patient Partner has taken to referring to our fancy schmancy coffee maker as The Machine. That way, when we have forgotten to set it up the night before, or I have to clean out its many parts, I can simply say, "Fuck the Machine!" To which the PP, except when he is really sleepy, obligingly replies, "Did you say, fuck The Machine? She said, fuck The Machine!"
At which point Jacques Monod is rarely amused, and says, "Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers."
But friends, these moments just don't stack up anymore.
Not long ago, the PP and I took a sojourn in New York, in part to see the new revival performance of Glengarry, Glen Ross.
I don't know if you are a David Mamet fan, but the production rocks, and not just because of the cast. I will confess that prior to this I had only seen the movie version, of which I am immensely fond. I have made the mistake of suggesting to people who work in sales that they should see it, no really they should, because it is so, so good. They usually come back and give me the look with which I am now familiar. It is a look that says, Why did you make me do that? and also wonders whether I am truly a friend.
I am, but really, it is so, so good.
So imagine my surprise, when the PP, upon returning from NYC, had lunch with some colleagues of his in the sales department at his company. They asked him how his trip was. He said how much he liked the subway and the great Vietnamese restaurants, and how good the play was.
"Oh yeah," one of them replied, setting down his third beer. "Our sales manager used to show clips from that movie during our motivational sessions."
Huh?
Now, granted: I could see how that Alec Baldwin scene, out of context, might--I say MIGHT--have some useful pointers in it. (Nota bene: that scene is not in the original play.) But surely, if the aforementioned sales manager were going to track down that scene, surely he would have HAD to have watched the whole thing?
But without sounding too much like Alanis Morissette, I suppose I could acknowledge that the world is full of such ironies. That it can be the people who claim to be defenders of freedom who smack you down when you stop goosestepping. Or I could note that sometimes people watch things, and they just don't get it.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Women who rock.
Snaps to Pem, who yesterday completed her first triathlon. I can personally testify to how strong she looked coming in and out of all the transitions as well, of course, as the finish. To those of you who have never watched or raced a triathlon, it is a crazy event, with people coming and going, swimming and biking, biking and running all over the place. The ins and outs of the transition area are great to watch: some racers have devised elaborate systems to get grass off their feet before pulling on socks, some don't bother with socks, some are pulling the top half of their wetsuit off as they race up the hill from the lake, while others shimmy out of the damp thing in the transition area itself. The front racers often come in with those solid race wheels humming, while some race on mountain bikes.
Read Pem's account of her race: it gives a great sense of the experience, and of all the details to think about in a race that involves three sports and quite a bit of time.
Congratulations, Pem. You rock!
Read Pem's account of her race: it gives a great sense of the experience, and of all the details to think about in a race that involves three sports and quite a bit of time.
Congratulations, Pem. You rock!
Friday, May 13, 2005
Happy Anniversary?
Welcome to May 13.
Can it be a happy anniversary, if it was twenty years ago today that police in Philadelphia dropped from a state police helicopter a satchel of explosives on a house on Osage Avenue?
And killed 11 people, destroyed 60+ homes, and left 250 people homeless?
If mayor W. Wilson Goode was "saddened" by reports of the fire's spread, beyond the bunker that was supposed to be the target?
As Alice Walker wrote from Paris in response to the bombing of the MOVE house, "Every bomb ever made falls on all of us."
It was what has become a classic case: MOVE members disliked the norms of society, chose to live another way, and brought down on themselves the anger and frustration of those around them. They wore their hair in dreadlocks (which other residents of their middle-class neighborhood thought odd and unclean). They espoused a back-to-nature lifestyle (which other residents thought dirty and smelly). They argued against the way children were taught and kept them out of schools (which made them truants). They rescued stray dogs (who barked at night, disturbing their neighbors). They broadcast their arguments over a bullhorn (which drove their neighbors insane). They did not pay utility bills and breached housing codes (which merited arrest warrants and later the bombing of their house).
Do you remember what Police Commissioner Gregore J. Sambor said from his bullhorn on the morning of the bombing?
Or what one of the neighbors of MOVE said afterwards?
Or do you remember the event at all?
Well, at least some people in Philadelphia are still talking about it, trying to make sense of the events, the media coverage, the memories and their lack. And Democracy Now featured an interview with the only adult survivor of the incident, back on the 15th anniversary. And there is a protest in Philadelphia tomorrow commemorating this anniversary.
If you go back and read some of the newspaper accounts of the event, you will be struck by how they present MOVE. There is no attempt to understand the group’s aims: they seem loony, radical. And if the event had happened today, they would no doubt be called terrorists.
For starters, check this one out from the Washington Post on 15 May 1985:
For counter balance you might read Marpessa Kupendua and Alice Walker.
And as Laurie Anderson might say, "In our country you're free, and so you're born, and so, they say, you're free. So happy anniversary."
Can it be a happy anniversary, if it was twenty years ago today that police in Philadelphia dropped from a state police helicopter a satchel of explosives on a house on Osage Avenue?
And killed 11 people, destroyed 60+ homes, and left 250 people homeless?
If mayor W. Wilson Goode was "saddened" by reports of the fire's spread, beyond the bunker that was supposed to be the target?
As Alice Walker wrote from Paris in response to the bombing of the MOVE house, "Every bomb ever made falls on all of us."
It was what has become a classic case: MOVE members disliked the norms of society, chose to live another way, and brought down on themselves the anger and frustration of those around them. They wore their hair in dreadlocks (which other residents of their middle-class neighborhood thought odd and unclean). They espoused a back-to-nature lifestyle (which other residents thought dirty and smelly). They argued against the way children were taught and kept them out of schools (which made them truants). They rescued stray dogs (who barked at night, disturbing their neighbors). They broadcast their arguments over a bullhorn (which drove their neighbors insane). They did not pay utility bills and breached housing codes (which merited arrest warrants and later the bombing of their house).
Do you remember what Police Commissioner Gregore J. Sambor said from his bullhorn on the morning of the bombing?
Attention, MOVE. This is America. You have to abide by the laws of the United States.
Or what one of the neighbors of MOVE said afterwards?
It was well worth it, because they're out. We'll be back and we'll be a community again, without MOVE.
Or do you remember the event at all?
Well, at least some people in Philadelphia are still talking about it, trying to make sense of the events, the media coverage, the memories and their lack. And Democracy Now featured an interview with the only adult survivor of the incident, back on the 15th anniversary. And there is a protest in Philadelphia tomorrow commemorating this anniversary.
If you go back and read some of the newspaper accounts of the event, you will be struck by how they present MOVE. There is no attempt to understand the group’s aims: they seem loony, radical. And if the event had happened today, they would no doubt be called terrorists.
For starters, check this one out from the Washington Post on 15 May 1985:
Members of MOVE live by a bizarre medley of philosophies that translates to the outside world as foul-smelling, unsanitary and violent.
Difficult to label, they have been described variously as a radical primitivist or back-to-nature sect and as armed anarchists and revolutionaries.
The little group was founded in 1972 by handyman Vincent Leaphart, a black third-grade dropout, and Donald Glassey, a white college teacher with a master's degree in social work. Their first home was a ramshackle Victorian mansion in Powelton Village, a university bedroom community of west Philadelphia known for its tolerance of counterculture movements.
For counter balance you might read Marpessa Kupendua and Alice Walker.
And as Laurie Anderson might say, "In our country you're free, and so you're born, and so, they say, you're free. So happy anniversary."
Thursday, May 12, 2005
OPB
While I have not been writing much here, I have inadvertently started a shitstorm on Other People's Blogs.
If you're interested in following it, have a look at bkmarcus's original post and the comments. Then his engaging response.
Did I mention the comments? It seems that a Matthew Bryan got his manpanties in a knot over my expression of concern, and if his comment is not enough for you, check out his measured response on his own blog.
Oh, you got me good, Mr. Bryan. I am most impressed with your wit.
If you're interested in following it, have a look at bkmarcus's original post and the comments. Then his engaging response.
Did I mention the comments? It seems that a Matthew Bryan got his manpanties in a knot over my expression of concern, and if his comment is not enough for you, check out his measured response on his own blog.
Oh, you got me good, Mr. Bryan. I am most impressed with your wit.
A Gift
As I write this, there is a pileated woodpecker beating the crap out of a pine tree in my front yard with its face. I’ve been watching him now for about ten minutes. When I came to my desk, there he was, across the yard, on a stump—just a bright swathe of red with his darker body blending into the stump. Then, scooting backwards down the trunk, he tore apart the tree about 10 feet from my window. Amazing. Every so often with his limber neck he would pull some unsuspecting wood-boring bug out of the tree, or search around in the shards of bark he had knocked to the ground. Hard to see him now, especially now that my cat Sazha is staring out the window at himtoo, but I can still hear his hammering.
We used to see these a lot, but recently I’ve hardly seen them, and certainly not to watch for this long.
This makes me want more than ever to see an ivory-billed woodpecker. It is hard to imagine that it is another three or so inches larger than the pileated. And how magnificent is it that guys from Cornell have spotted it for certain?
Now the pileated is flying from tree to tree, holding wide his amazing black and white wings, showing off his frilly crest. And though he's probably not thinking about how much helooks like a dinosaur, and neither is Sazha, I sure am.
We used to see these a lot, but recently I’ve hardly seen them, and certainly not to watch for this long.
This makes me want more than ever to see an ivory-billed woodpecker. It is hard to imagine that it is another three or so inches larger than the pileated. And how magnificent is it that guys from Cornell have spotted it for certain?
Now the pileated is flying from tree to tree, holding wide his amazing black and white wings, showing off his frilly crest. And though he's probably not thinking about how much helooks like a dinosaur, and neither is Sazha, I sure am.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Hammertime
It's almost rare enough that a new issue of The Wire reviews an album I have already purchased, that such would merit a post here. But compound that by being able to compare reviews in May issues of The Wire and Gramophone? O, how could I resist?
The album, as you may already have guessed, is the new Deutsche Gramm recording of Pierre Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître (with Derive 1 and Derive 2).
Maybe it is a sign of a shared cultural heritage (or careful cribbing from the liner notes) that both reviews quote Stravinsky, who said the the piece was "the only truly significant work of the new age." The piece, whose title translates as "The Hammer Unmastered," consists of three interlocking cycles based on three poems by René Char: the titles of the sections and of the whole piece come from Char's work. I admit that it is difficult to hear the lyrics (of course, my French leaves much to be desired), but the liner notes for the album include the text and translations.
The Wire review (written by Philip Clark) opens:
It is true that Boulez is the big maestro on campus these days, and the DG recording of him conducting the Bartók Piano Concertos is mighty fine. But it is a far cry from Boulez's own compositions, which, though they might merit a place in the Difficult Listening Hour, are fascinating and repay keen listening.
In Gramophone, Arnold Whittall notes that by his count this is Boulez's fifth recording of the piece, but I admit is the first I've heard. Philip Clark says that in some earlier recordings, the opening has "had a big girl's blouse quality," while this time it is "clangorous and faintly demented." This is a good thing.
About the mezzo-soprano part, performed by Hilary Summers, and seizing on my favorite aspect of this piece, Philip Clark says,
Maybe this is the perfect examination of the relationship between poetry and free verse. The meaning from the poetry comes as much from the music as the language, but you cannot predict the relationship.
About the instrumentation, Arnold Whittall says,
I close with my own cribbing from the liner notes, with another comment from Stravinsky—one that better speaks to my experience with the piece. He said,
Listen to it several times, and several ways—listen straight through, with the text in front of you, along the paths that let you explore the interlocking cycles.
p.s. If you do not subscribe to The Wire, then you have not received in your mailbox their latest sampler, Marke B 05. Centering on May's Marke B festival, which showcases "Berlin's network of electronic music labels," the disc has tracks from Non Standard Institut, ISAN, Duran Duran Duran (track? "I hate the 80s," with fab destruction of a Yaz sample), Dominique, Barbara Morgenstern, and my favorite, Frivolous, whose name I might have to steal. If I were as fancy as The Cod, I'd give you MP3s, but then I'd probably get hauled off by the FBI, and what fun is that?
The album, as you may already have guessed, is the new Deutsche Gramm recording of Pierre Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître (with Derive 1 and Derive 2).
Maybe it is a sign of a shared cultural heritage (or careful cribbing from the liner notes) that both reviews quote Stravinsky, who said the the piece was "the only truly significant work of the new age." The piece, whose title translates as "The Hammer Unmastered," consists of three interlocking cycles based on three poems by René Char: the titles of the sections and of the whole piece come from Char's work. I admit that it is difficult to hear the lyrics (of course, my French leaves much to be desired), but the liner notes for the album include the text and translations.
The Wire review (written by Philip Clark) opens:
Pierre Boulez's jowly face breaks into a broad grin on the cover of this new recording of his Le Marteau sans maître--his record company would like you to think Boulez, now in his 80th year, is cuddly. OK, his demeanour is more sober on the Piano Sonatas disc, but Deutsche Grammophon are doing the best to sweeten what for many listeners remains a bitter pill.
It is true that Boulez is the big maestro on campus these days, and the DG recording of him conducting the Bartók Piano Concertos is mighty fine. But it is a far cry from Boulez's own compositions, which, though they might merit a place in the Difficult Listening Hour, are fascinating and repay keen listening.
In Gramophone, Arnold Whittall notes that by his count this is Boulez's fifth recording of the piece, but I admit is the first I've heard. Philip Clark says that in some earlier recordings, the opening has "had a big girl's blouse quality," while this time it is "clangorous and faintly demented." This is a good thing.
About the mezzo-soprano part, performed by Hilary Summers, and seizing on my favorite aspect of this piece, Philip Clark says,
Boulez confuses the point where text ends and music begins. The voice is heard in its familiar guise as a solo line, but then gets buried deep within the ensemble as the instruments assume a vocal quality.
Maybe this is the perfect examination of the relationship between poetry and free verse. The meaning from the poetry comes as much from the music as the language, but you cannot predict the relationship.
About the instrumentation, Arnold Whittall says,
Flute, guitar and viola are never overshadowed by the more resonant sounds of the percussion duo, and there’s the kind of edge-of-the seat interplay which can only be achieved by players who have the music in their bones as well as under their fingers. As for the final duet for flute and metal percussion, this stands out for its incantatory gravitas, and for the hint of un-Gallic pathos that underpins its eloquence. It might not please the great composer/conductor to realize it, but Le Marteau has become a modern classic.
I close with my own cribbing from the liner notes, with another comment from Stravinsky—one that better speaks to my experience with the piece. He said,
I will not explain my admiration for it but merely offer a variation of Gertrude Stein's answer to the question of why she liked Picasso's pictures—"I like looking at them"—and say "I like listening to Boulez."
Listen to it several times, and several ways—listen straight through, with the text in front of you, along the paths that let you explore the interlocking cycles.
p.s. If you do not subscribe to The Wire, then you have not received in your mailbox their latest sampler, Marke B 05. Centering on May's Marke B festival, which showcases "Berlin's network of electronic music labels," the disc has tracks from Non Standard Institut, ISAN, Duran Duran Duran (track? "I hate the 80s," with fab destruction of a Yaz sample), Dominique, Barbara Morgenstern, and my favorite, Frivolous, whose name I might have to steal. If I were as fancy as The Cod, I'd give you MP3s, but then I'd probably get hauled off by the FBI, and what fun is that?
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Swimming through oceans & sailing through libraries
I have finally discovered the Google search that best sums up this blog: a websurfer in the Netherlands searched (the Dutch word, if you're curious, for the verb to search is zoeken) recently reached this blog by looking for "avignon + donuts".
Welcome aboard, O Seekers of French fried pastries!
Apologies for thin posting of late: even after returning from travels, I've been mobbed with work.
But I want to pitch the book I'm reading. Lucky for you, I have not finished it, so I will not blow the plot--a special bonus, since it is a mystery.
I don't know if you have read any books by the Spanish novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte, but I have yet to find one that I have not loved. His books are absolutely absorbing, full of wild characters, and capable of making you think you need to become a restorer of old paintings or an enforcer for the Vatican. The stories require you to use your own brain if you are to have any chance of figuring out the mystery, but he always provides you the tools to do so. The Flanders Panel, for instance, whose plot involves an elaborate chess game, has the board diagrams and everything, so a reader who is acomplished in chess can start to anticipate moves. (That reader would not be me: I know how to move the pieces around and everything but have no skills.)
But what I am reading now is The Nautical Chart. I know next to nothing about sailing and ships, but now I feel like I am a part of that world--if only briefly. And if you do know something about sailing, and perhaps already crave a life at sea (and dahling, you know who you are!), You'll love this one.
The set-up is a treasure hunt for a long-lost Jesuit ship, and the main character is a sailor who, as a result of an accident, is exiled from piloting ships, and a bit, as it were, adrift. Enter a beautiful woman who at an auction bid powerfully on an old nautical atlas, and for conflict,the Dalmatian man with two-different-colored eyes who bid on the same atlas, but lost. Lots of echoes of Melville, Conrad, Coleridge, occasional trips through archives and plenty of shady folks.
It's summertime people: treat yourself to a fun read.
Welcome aboard, O Seekers of French fried pastries!
Apologies for thin posting of late: even after returning from travels, I've been mobbed with work.
But I want to pitch the book I'm reading. Lucky for you, I have not finished it, so I will not blow the plot--a special bonus, since it is a mystery.
I don't know if you have read any books by the Spanish novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte, but I have yet to find one that I have not loved. His books are absolutely absorbing, full of wild characters, and capable of making you think you need to become a restorer of old paintings or an enforcer for the Vatican. The stories require you to use your own brain if you are to have any chance of figuring out the mystery, but he always provides you the tools to do so. The Flanders Panel, for instance, whose plot involves an elaborate chess game, has the board diagrams and everything, so a reader who is acomplished in chess can start to anticipate moves. (That reader would not be me: I know how to move the pieces around and everything but have no skills.)
But what I am reading now is The Nautical Chart. I know next to nothing about sailing and ships, but now I feel like I am a part of that world--if only briefly. And if you do know something about sailing, and perhaps already crave a life at sea (and dahling, you know who you are!), You'll love this one.
The set-up is a treasure hunt for a long-lost Jesuit ship, and the main character is a sailor who, as a result of an accident, is exiled from piloting ships, and a bit, as it were, adrift. Enter a beautiful woman who at an auction bid powerfully on an old nautical atlas, and for conflict,the Dalmatian man with two-different-colored eyes who bid on the same atlas, but lost. Lots of echoes of Melville, Conrad, Coleridge, occasional trips through archives and plenty of shady folks.
It's summertime people: treat yourself to a fun read.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Blame Tim.
In a comment to my previous post, Jarrett wrote: "Good luck with the music catalogue work! I am very curious to see where your research takes you."
So everyone can blame him for this post, which is about just that.
If you have never been curious about the intricacies or intimacies of academic research, then you are in trouble, and might rather not read further.
But if you do quit now, you'll miss out on the exciting account of my recent encounters with a most sophisticated device of torture invented by a well meaning Dane with more organizational aplomb than he should have.
Now are you curious?
Then let me tell you about Peter Ryom's catalogue of the works of Antonio Vivaldi. If you are a classical music listener, then you may be familiar with the RV numbers that often follow descriptions of Vivaldi's pieces in album liner notes (like the BWV numbers for Bach works or the K numbers for Mozart). Vivaldi composed over 770 pieces of instrumental music, and Ryom attempted to organize them in a systematic manner, so that any smart person could identify a particular piece of music and then know what its manuscript sources are, whether it was published in Vivaldi's lifetime, whether it exists in multiple copies, etc. He helpfully provided thematic openings for every movement of each piece, so that if you're looking at a score you can identify the piece easily.
That all sounds good, right?
Well.
To use Dr. Ryom's catalogue you first determine whether the piece in question was written for one instrument and a basso continuo, two instruments and continuo, three instruments and continue etc. Or whether for one instrument, a string orchestra, and continuo; two instruments a string orchestra and contiuo and so forth.
Then you determine what the solo instrument is, or whether, in the case of pieces for more than one solo instrument, the two instruments are the same.
Then you determine the key in which the piece was written. In cases where the 3 movements are not all in the same key, see Ryom's note in his introduction.
Is your head hurting yet?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that I met Dr. Ryom's catalogue and I was afraid. A couple of afternoons of work with it drove me toward my usual forms of stress relief, which were really no help.
But I have mastered that catalogue, yes I have. Faced with a list of about 25 Vivaldi pieces that I needed to identify, I covered every last one.
The more skeptical among you are now saying, well, that doesn't seem so bad. After all, the Ryom catalogue is very well ordered. Identifying music in it should be easy.
Here is the trick: my main man Ezra Pound copied Vivaldi scores from microphotographs of original manuscripts. And regardless of the composition of the piece, he set it up for solo violin and keyboard accompaniment.
(That kind of arrangement really was not uncommon during the 1930s, when people wanted to produce music at little cost.)
So whether the piece is for solo violin, orchestra and continuo or whether it is for 2 violins, 2 oboes, 2 salmoe, 2 bassoons, orchestra and continuo, the scores all look the same.
That left me with the key signature and themes to work with: Yes, that's right: a score with no sharps or flats would leave me to search through every piece written in C major or A minor.
But damn it, I did it.
And the good news is that it looks like it will be worth it. These scores say so much about Mr. P's involvement in the music of Vivaldi.
(For more detail than that, you'll need to read the book. When it comes out in about 8-9 years, if I am lucky.)
You might not know that prior to the 1930s, Vivaldi was a little known composer. Very little of his music was known, and he was routinely dismissed as a fine performer and mediocre composer. He ranked about 3 paragraphs in the Grove's Dictionary of Music.
But all that changed during the 1930s, thanks in part to the work of Pound and friends, and that is what I have been trying to piece together for the last 4 weeks.
So the next time someone claims that Gabler's edition of Ulysses is one of the most efficient torture devices known to man, you can tell them they are wrong, wrong, wrong.
So everyone can blame him for this post, which is about just that.
If you have never been curious about the intricacies or intimacies of academic research, then you are in trouble, and might rather not read further.
But if you do quit now, you'll miss out on the exciting account of my recent encounters with a most sophisticated device of torture invented by a well meaning Dane with more organizational aplomb than he should have.
Now are you curious?
Then let me tell you about Peter Ryom's catalogue of the works of Antonio Vivaldi. If you are a classical music listener, then you may be familiar with the RV numbers that often follow descriptions of Vivaldi's pieces in album liner notes (like the BWV numbers for Bach works or the K numbers for Mozart). Vivaldi composed over 770 pieces of instrumental music, and Ryom attempted to organize them in a systematic manner, so that any smart person could identify a particular piece of music and then know what its manuscript sources are, whether it was published in Vivaldi's lifetime, whether it exists in multiple copies, etc. He helpfully provided thematic openings for every movement of each piece, so that if you're looking at a score you can identify the piece easily.
That all sounds good, right?
Well.
To use Dr. Ryom's catalogue you first determine whether the piece in question was written for one instrument and a basso continuo, two instruments and continuo, three instruments and continue etc. Or whether for one instrument, a string orchestra, and continuo; two instruments a string orchestra and contiuo and so forth.
Then you determine what the solo instrument is, or whether, in the case of pieces for more than one solo instrument, the two instruments are the same.
Then you determine the key in which the piece was written. In cases where the 3 movements are not all in the same key, see Ryom's note in his introduction.
Is your head hurting yet?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that I met Dr. Ryom's catalogue and I was afraid. A couple of afternoons of work with it drove me toward my usual forms of stress relief, which were really no help.
But I have mastered that catalogue, yes I have. Faced with a list of about 25 Vivaldi pieces that I needed to identify, I covered every last one.
The more skeptical among you are now saying, well, that doesn't seem so bad. After all, the Ryom catalogue is very well ordered. Identifying music in it should be easy.
Here is the trick: my main man Ezra Pound copied Vivaldi scores from microphotographs of original manuscripts. And regardless of the composition of the piece, he set it up for solo violin and keyboard accompaniment.
(That kind of arrangement really was not uncommon during the 1930s, when people wanted to produce music at little cost.)
So whether the piece is for solo violin, orchestra and continuo or whether it is for 2 violins, 2 oboes, 2 salmoe, 2 bassoons, orchestra and continuo, the scores all look the same.
That left me with the key signature and themes to work with: Yes, that's right: a score with no sharps or flats would leave me to search through every piece written in C major or A minor.
But damn it, I did it.
And the good news is that it looks like it will be worth it. These scores say so much about Mr. P's involvement in the music of Vivaldi.
(For more detail than that, you'll need to read the book. When it comes out in about 8-9 years, if I am lucky.)
You might not know that prior to the 1930s, Vivaldi was a little known composer. Very little of his music was known, and he was routinely dismissed as a fine performer and mediocre composer. He ranked about 3 paragraphs in the Grove's Dictionary of Music.
But all that changed during the 1930s, thanks in part to the work of Pound and friends, and that is what I have been trying to piece together for the last 4 weeks.
So the next time someone claims that Gabler's edition of Ulysses is one of the most efficient torture devices known to man, you can tell them they are wrong, wrong, wrong.
Why I had to tell Arianna no.
I know that both of my readers have been wondering whether I am going to abandon this humble blog in favor of Ariana Huffington's new venture. The answer is no.
Disapointed? Well, so was Ms. Huffington. But I explained to her, look, I have barely been able to keep up with this blog over the last month, what with all the xeroxing and manuscript transcription I've been up to. She tried to argue that her venture is more important than my research, but I stared at her in disbelief and she just shook her head. Besides, the post of overseeing the "Recent Archival Finds" section was already taken, dammit. But Ms. Huffington was relieved when I suggested that David Mamet might be willing to fill in for me.
So fear not: in less than a week I will be up to more of my usual sporadic mischief. In the meantime, wish me good luck with the music catalogue work and a safe trip home.
Disapointed? Well, so was Ms. Huffington. But I explained to her, look, I have barely been able to keep up with this blog over the last month, what with all the xeroxing and manuscript transcription I've been up to. She tried to argue that her venture is more important than my research, but I stared at her in disbelief and she just shook her head. Besides, the post of overseeing the "Recent Archival Finds" section was already taken, dammit. But Ms. Huffington was relieved when I suggested that David Mamet might be willing to fill in for me.
So fear not: in less than a week I will be up to more of my usual sporadic mischief. In the meantime, wish me good luck with the music catalogue work and a safe trip home.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Never let me go.
I should start about by saying that I have always loved it that in The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro uses an unreliable butler to present a portrait of Englishness. By "unreliable butler" I do not really mean that Mr. Stevens is a bad butler, or that his unreliability impacts his performance as a butler. Quite the contrary: as a butler, he has been impeccable, always privileging his work, doing everything a person could--and really more than post persons could--to perform as a surperb butler. His unreliability has more to do with his general humanity: it is his emotions, his ability to make choices that most of us would judge as "good," and his narrative that make him unreliable.
Most important, though, is his narrative. And because Kazuo Ishiguro is a brilliantly subtle writer, most readers don't notice how unreliable he is until a good ways into the story--i.e., too late to start out with their guard up.
But we should be very guarded in reading his story, when he explains to us what it means to be a good butler, why his proudest performance as a butler came on the night that his own father was dying, when he aimed to fulfill his duties impeccably, even though that meant paying little attention to his father's dying. And we should not trust him, either, when he says he pulled this off, because the tale tells us that those he was serving could tell something was wrong. Where the teller tells us he was a brilliant butler because he sacrificed his own feelings and needs to his work, the tale tells us that really he did neither well.
The story takes place within and between the great houses of England, so it is not surprising that it works as a story about England itself--its history, its sense of itself, the workings of its power structure. But what makes that story exciting is that the reader's focus is always on the people who are actually making things happen, the facilitators, the enablers, the actors, the staff. But not in an Upstairs Downstairs kind of way: the point here is not just to ooh and ahh and what is happening behind the curtain, but to see how life looks from the perspective of someone who cannot help but ooh and ahh at same, even though he is the object of his own admiration.
These kinds of vaguely outsider portrait are what Kazuo Ishiguro does so brilliantly, and the characters (and especially the narrators) in his novels seem always to have this status. (I am talking less about The Unconsoled than about his other books; sure, The Unconsoled did some interesting things with its representation of perception and relationships between a person's psyche and the environment, but it did not really work for me as a novel--or else it made me immensely anxious--so I am not talking about it, so much as An Artist of the Floating World, When We Were Orphans, and The Remains of the Day.)
The narrator of Never Let Me Go is no exception, although at first past Kathy and her friends Tommy and Ruth seem like the standard elite English public school children who might occupy a position widely accepted as central. But they differ from that standard in some important and surprising ways—-surprising enough to lead Sarah Kerr in yesterday's Times to call this Ishiguro's take on the science fiction genre. And as she points out, the situtation of this novel figures centrally enough that it is hard to talk about it without blowing the plot. If you want the plot blown for you, you can read her review here.
But the question I want to ask does not require that plot detail, if you accept that these elite students differ from the "normal" in some important ways. What I want to ask is, what does it mean to have these normal-seeming not-at-all-normal students stand in as a vision of Englishness? As is the case for the staff characters in The Remains of the Day, the normal characters in this novel require these less normal characters in order for their lives to run smoothly, normally. And the normal prefer not to think of the sacrifices made by the not normal, even as they are unwilling to ask them to stop. What is it about English society--and maybe not just English society--that requires these sacrificial figures to function?
Most important, though, is his narrative. And because Kazuo Ishiguro is a brilliantly subtle writer, most readers don't notice how unreliable he is until a good ways into the story--i.e., too late to start out with their guard up.
But we should be very guarded in reading his story, when he explains to us what it means to be a good butler, why his proudest performance as a butler came on the night that his own father was dying, when he aimed to fulfill his duties impeccably, even though that meant paying little attention to his father's dying. And we should not trust him, either, when he says he pulled this off, because the tale tells us that those he was serving could tell something was wrong. Where the teller tells us he was a brilliant butler because he sacrificed his own feelings and needs to his work, the tale tells us that really he did neither well.
The story takes place within and between the great houses of England, so it is not surprising that it works as a story about England itself--its history, its sense of itself, the workings of its power structure. But what makes that story exciting is that the reader's focus is always on the people who are actually making things happen, the facilitators, the enablers, the actors, the staff. But not in an Upstairs Downstairs kind of way: the point here is not just to ooh and ahh and what is happening behind the curtain, but to see how life looks from the perspective of someone who cannot help but ooh and ahh at same, even though he is the object of his own admiration.
These kinds of vaguely outsider portrait are what Kazuo Ishiguro does so brilliantly, and the characters (and especially the narrators) in his novels seem always to have this status. (I am talking less about The Unconsoled than about his other books; sure, The Unconsoled did some interesting things with its representation of perception and relationships between a person's psyche and the environment, but it did not really work for me as a novel--or else it made me immensely anxious--so I am not talking about it, so much as An Artist of the Floating World, When We Were Orphans, and The Remains of the Day.)
The narrator of Never Let Me Go is no exception, although at first past Kathy and her friends Tommy and Ruth seem like the standard elite English public school children who might occupy a position widely accepted as central. But they differ from that standard in some important and surprising ways—-surprising enough to lead Sarah Kerr in yesterday's Times to call this Ishiguro's take on the science fiction genre. And as she points out, the situtation of this novel figures centrally enough that it is hard to talk about it without blowing the plot. If you want the plot blown for you, you can read her review here.
But the question I want to ask does not require that plot detail, if you accept that these elite students differ from the "normal" in some important ways. What I want to ask is, what does it mean to have these normal-seeming not-at-all-normal students stand in as a vision of Englishness? As is the case for the staff characters in The Remains of the Day, the normal characters in this novel require these less normal characters in order for their lives to run smoothly, normally. And the normal prefer not to think of the sacrifices made by the not normal, even as they are unwilling to ask them to stop. What is it about English society--and maybe not just English society--that requires these sacrificial figures to function?
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Charming Hostess
If you were a fan of the Bulgarian ladies (or even that Georgian men's choir with the basso profundis) back in circa 1990, then you'll find yourself in familiar territory on the first couple of tracks of Charming Hostess's album Sarajevo Blues, a pretty recent release in the Tzadik label's Radical Jewish Culture series. There are three women in Charming Hostess, and their harmonies have that Byzantine quality that got me so charged up back then.
But if you think that the traditional-looking costumes on the cover, and the first couple of numbers put you in the "safe world music" realm (i.e., lyrics you don't understand and therefore don't have to think about), you're wrong.
After the first couple of tracks, you're back into and out of English, in songs that take up something of the day-in day-out living during wartime. (Charming Hostess provides translations for those songs not in English, so you have no excuse.) And even though the songs make direct reference to the civil wars and genocide in former Yugoslavia, their implications are more far-reaching than that. These are songs about how the local communist party might interfere in a love affair, about a familiar man blown away by a grenade, about a (presumably western) photographer taking a picture of a woman trying to dodge sniper fire. They are also about race and religion and identity, but without suggesting that a listener take a side. Things can be bad all around.
It's also about here that Charming Hostess mixes those traditional sounding harmonies with a myriad of other sounds, including a much rougher something that comes from punk. Amazing.
(And may I note how much fun it is to have bought this CD in an actual store?)
I can't wait to check out the Charming Hostess Big Band's release Punch, which their website describes this way: "more bodacious babes belt the blues in Bulgarian while a punk-klezmer band rocks out in accompaniment--BUT EVEN BETTER!"
How much better could it get?
But if you think that the traditional-looking costumes on the cover, and the first couple of numbers put you in the "safe world music" realm (i.e., lyrics you don't understand and therefore don't have to think about), you're wrong.
After the first couple of tracks, you're back into and out of English, in songs that take up something of the day-in day-out living during wartime. (Charming Hostess provides translations for those songs not in English, so you have no excuse.) And even though the songs make direct reference to the civil wars and genocide in former Yugoslavia, their implications are more far-reaching than that. These are songs about how the local communist party might interfere in a love affair, about a familiar man blown away by a grenade, about a (presumably western) photographer taking a picture of a woman trying to dodge sniper fire. They are also about race and religion and identity, but without suggesting that a listener take a side. Things can be bad all around.
It's also about here that Charming Hostess mixes those traditional sounding harmonies with a myriad of other sounds, including a much rougher something that comes from punk. Amazing.
(And may I note how much fun it is to have bought this CD in an actual store?)
I can't wait to check out the Charming Hostess Big Band's release Punch, which their website describes this way: "more bodacious babes belt the blues in Bulgarian while a punk-klezmer band rocks out in accompaniment--BUT EVEN BETTER!"
How much better could it get?
Monday, April 11, 2005
Why I will never be paid to be a critic.
So now that Julius Caesar has officially opened, the reviews are piling up. Or I should say, more honestly--because honesty is the new theme here--I have read one or two bits about it in the Times. And the net result? Well, the hoity-toity of the New York theatre world appear to have turned up their collective nose at a play I thought was fascinating. In fact, Charles McGrath titles his review "The Play Shakespeare Wrote for Plebes," commenting, "Caesar isn't Shakespeare lite, exactly, but it can sometimes seem like Shakespeare on training wheels."
Nota bene: McGrath also opens his piece with reference to everyone's experience reading the play in high school. I can happily say that both my readers know I said it first! But then, this is not the first time I have been plagiarized by the Times.
But this is not my point. My point, and this is important if you ever read this blog, is that I tend to like things.
Take the latest Royal wedding. I am happy for them--honestly. And really, I am crazy for the hat Camilla wore to the church (her daughter's was a bit much). I feel no need to join in the snarking in which royals-watchers indulge.
But you should know this tendency of mine before I go on to say how much I absolutely loved Gurinder Chadha's Bride and Prejudice. Loved it. As in, I might go see it again tonight.
I used to think that an American high school was the only ideal setting for a revisiting of a Jane Austen novel--and really it was darn good--but now I see that, no, Bollywood is where it's at.
Of course, this is partly my love of that genre. What is not to love about a giant screen filled with people dancing in colorful costumes, moving their hips in ways that I can manage maybe once before I lose my footing? Or about the endless love stories, with arcane plot twists and casts of thousands?
Sure, sure I have read reviews that say this Mr. Darcy is made of cardboard. Fine. But cardboard can be nice to look at for 2 hours, right? And isn't so much of this genre about pretty things? And the music, of course.
I have been wondering for the last couple of days whether to blow a couple of the good details, and I have decided that I will. If you don't want them blown for you, skip this paragraph. Point is: Chadha's take on Bollywood taking on America is hilarious. Picture the couple in question having a romantic moment (during a musical number, of course) on a California beach. I doubt I need to tell you that it is sunset, and before you know it they are walking in front of several risers filled with a gospel choir, who are singing the back-up vocals for the song. But wait! Now it is a lifeguard and a surfer supplying the singing! Brilliant brilliant--and that does not even begin to touch the cross-dressed singer-dancers in the Amritsar you-are-about-to-be-married musical extravaganza.
What is more, given this genre's preoccupation with weddings, it really is the perfect venue for re-thinking Austen's novel.
My only complaint is that the film was too short. Knowing I was going to see a Bollywood movie, I had held off the liquids for hours in advance, ready for a bladder-bursting several-hour stint, and I was just settling in when it ended. Oh well: I suppose that is the downside of the Americanizing.
Nota bene: McGrath also opens his piece with reference to everyone's experience reading the play in high school. I can happily say that both my readers know I said it first! But then, this is not the first time I have been plagiarized by the Times.
But this is not my point. My point, and this is important if you ever read this blog, is that I tend to like things.
Take the latest Royal wedding. I am happy for them--honestly. And really, I am crazy for the hat Camilla wore to the church (her daughter's was a bit much). I feel no need to join in the snarking in which royals-watchers indulge.
But you should know this tendency of mine before I go on to say how much I absolutely loved Gurinder Chadha's Bride and Prejudice. Loved it. As in, I might go see it again tonight.
I used to think that an American high school was the only ideal setting for a revisiting of a Jane Austen novel--and really it was darn good--but now I see that, no, Bollywood is where it's at.
Of course, this is partly my love of that genre. What is not to love about a giant screen filled with people dancing in colorful costumes, moving their hips in ways that I can manage maybe once before I lose my footing? Or about the endless love stories, with arcane plot twists and casts of thousands?
Sure, sure I have read reviews that say this Mr. Darcy is made of cardboard. Fine. But cardboard can be nice to look at for 2 hours, right? And isn't so much of this genre about pretty things? And the music, of course.
I have been wondering for the last couple of days whether to blow a couple of the good details, and I have decided that I will. If you don't want them blown for you, skip this paragraph. Point is: Chadha's take on Bollywood taking on America is hilarious. Picture the couple in question having a romantic moment (during a musical number, of course) on a California beach. I doubt I need to tell you that it is sunset, and before you know it they are walking in front of several risers filled with a gospel choir, who are singing the back-up vocals for the song. But wait! Now it is a lifeguard and a surfer supplying the singing! Brilliant brilliant--and that does not even begin to touch the cross-dressed singer-dancers in the Amritsar you-are-about-to-be-married musical extravaganza.
What is more, given this genre's preoccupation with weddings, it really is the perfect venue for re-thinking Austen's novel.
My only complaint is that the film was too short. Knowing I was going to see a Bollywood movie, I had held off the liquids for hours in advance, ready for a bladder-bursting several-hour stint, and I was just settling in when it ended. Oh well: I suppose that is the downside of the Americanizing.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Saturday, April 02, 2005
The city don't know what the city has got.
Do not underestimate Virginia Woolf: an awful lot does depend (did you know she and William Carlos Williams shared syntax?) on having a workspace of your own.
Libraries here open at 10 on Saturdays, and, well, let's just say I wake up a bit before that. I am not trying to take type-A cred there. It just that the sun comes up FUCKING EARLY here.
So what to do until 10, after the bath is taken, deodorant is applied and the clothes are on? Important note: we are busily preparing for Noah's Flood up here. That means that when I arrived at what is, this morning, the Big 80s Coffee Shop (I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine), and found that it opened at 8:30 and it was only 8:23, I had to go nextdoor to the big chain sandwich shop to get something to fill those few minutes. Honest: I was more interested in the dry spot than in the cherry danish--really.
Then at 8:37 of course there was a new temporary sign up about how no coffee or Big Eighties for me until 9:00. Then one of those little frowny faces, as if that might stem my torrent of profanity.
All of which to say I regret my somewhat self-righteous and relieved tone of yesterday's post, where I suggested that being a temporary transient might make me a better worker, because less screwing around on the web.
When I wrote that I had not anticipated trying to read about fascist hierarchs in Italian while listening to La Isla Bonita! Not to mention the table next to me, with a self-involved graduate student describing the brilliance of her recent publication to a prospective student.
So I may blow this pastry stand sooner than planned, to hit the library when it opens. Of course that means another umbrellaless mad dash through campus. Think dry thoughts for me.
Libraries here open at 10 on Saturdays, and, well, let's just say I wake up a bit before that. I am not trying to take type-A cred there. It just that the sun comes up FUCKING EARLY here.
So what to do until 10, after the bath is taken, deodorant is applied and the clothes are on? Important note: we are busily preparing for Noah's Flood up here. That means that when I arrived at what is, this morning, the Big 80s Coffee Shop (I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine), and found that it opened at 8:30 and it was only 8:23, I had to go nextdoor to the big chain sandwich shop to get something to fill those few minutes. Honest: I was more interested in the dry spot than in the cherry danish--really.
Then at 8:37 of course there was a new temporary sign up about how no coffee or Big Eighties for me until 9:00. Then one of those little frowny faces, as if that might stem my torrent of profanity.
All of which to say I regret my somewhat self-righteous and relieved tone of yesterday's post, where I suggested that being a temporary transient might make me a better worker, because less screwing around on the web.
When I wrote that I had not anticipated trying to read about fascist hierarchs in Italian while listening to La Isla Bonita! Not to mention the table next to me, with a self-involved graduate student describing the brilliance of her recent publication to a prospective student.
So I may blow this pastry stand sooner than planned, to hit the library when it opens. Of course that means another umbrellaless mad dash through campus. Think dry thoughts for me.
Friday, April 01, 2005
WARNING: too much self-revelation
Forgive recent e-silence. You see, now I am working. Before, sure, I was working, but I was working at home, which meant too many chances to chat with you instead of work.
How are you?, you would ask, in that way you have, of poking around in my blog.
Not too bad. Could not give two shits today about my research, I'm afraid. Hey, check that out: look at who has been reading my blog! And check out that article about selling stupid crap in space! Soooooo much more interesting!
So what have you been doing lately?
Oh, you know, washing dishes, walking around the house to hear how the birds sound through different windows, seeing if a cat wants in, reading half of an article in Italian, surfing around to see who has something new to say...
So how exactly do you get any work done?
Shut up--I so did not ask for your opinion.
This week, though, I am a reformed being. I have come around to the ways of productivity. No really, I have, and it is all because I have to make an effort to find a web connection, and I might just as well open a book and read it.
Imagine--a book! For instance, I just finished Ali Smith's Hotel World. Apparently it was a Booker Runner-up (or is that Mann Booker--who knows). To tell the interwoven story of four women (one dead), it wends its way through different representations of time. Each chapter is named after a verb tense, for instance. And the action of the story centers around a hotel, where some of the characters work or have worked, and others stay. The hotel itself is the perfect setting, because hotels are such unreal places of fantasy, where we imagine lives of luxury or importance, or where we work to facilitate that fantasy for others. Anyway, don't want to blow the story. Tear yourself around from your own machine and go read it.
But here in my less-wired world, the question is, how do I convey to you, unsuspecting reader, what it is to spend a month away from home, working in an archive.
I will start with where I am, and save the archive for tomorrow. This town has, over the last 9 or 10 years, become my home of libraries. I have learned something of its nooks and crannies, and I love being the outsider with few local connections: I do not run into people I know, I do not have lunch dates, I neither cook nor have dinner cooked for me at any special time, I go to movies when I want to, I stay up as late or not as I want. I admit I do have little conversations with the people on the local NPR and jazz and classical stations. I practice the names of nearby towns, where I have never been, but whose projected high temperatures and chances of rain I learn every day. Does it matter that I wore this sweater yesterday?
I am staying next door to the music building on campus, so I can listen to students practicing, their piano and vibraphones mixing with amazingly trained voices (hard to imagine them coming from someone so young). My bathroom has a deep bathtub but a sticky dusty floor. My room has a single bed with a flowery spread and one outlet, with an amazing branching collection of splitters and extension cords. It supports two lamps, heating pad (for sorry back), hotpot, computer sometimes, alarm clock, phone charger.
I am still disappointed that the Cool Jazz Coffeeshop (does the place's real name matter?) has in the last year transformed itself. A few mornings ago it was the Lowkey R&B Coffeeshop. Not bad, all things considered, but not the CJC. I suppose it was the guy who worked in the mornings--who used to mock me for always ordering orange juice, dark-roast coffee and a cinnamon bun, but always having to consider it--who chose that station from all the other Sirius (Cerius?) satellite stations. This morning, I can only report a proliferation of red hot mamas, god-fearin women got the blues, dear mom and dad please send money, drinking bones and party bones, hell yeah I'm American, hick towns &c. on the cheesy country station, not to mention the ads about "before Sirius country came along, I had to talk to my wife--thanks Sirius!"
Eating alone in restaurants is its own art. Much easier to see a movie alone, if only because everyone in the theater is facing the same direction, and before long only notice what is on the screen (unless, like me, you have the bad luck to always share the theater with the man of many sinus problems). But restaurants are supposed to be about dates, or business dinners, or friends catching up after too long. Sometimes I do not mind that I am, again, encouraged to have a seat in the lounge, or that the host looks at me with that pity reserved only for single women. You have to have done this enough times not to buy into the look, or start to believe it and look for places offering take-away.
How are you?, you would ask, in that way you have, of poking around in my blog.
Not too bad. Could not give two shits today about my research, I'm afraid. Hey, check that out: look at who has been reading my blog! And check out that article about selling stupid crap in space! Soooooo much more interesting!
So what have you been doing lately?
Oh, you know, washing dishes, walking around the house to hear how the birds sound through different windows, seeing if a cat wants in, reading half of an article in Italian, surfing around to see who has something new to say...
So how exactly do you get any work done?
Shut up--I so did not ask for your opinion.
This week, though, I am a reformed being. I have come around to the ways of productivity. No really, I have, and it is all because I have to make an effort to find a web connection, and I might just as well open a book and read it.
Imagine--a book! For instance, I just finished Ali Smith's Hotel World. Apparently it was a Booker Runner-up (or is that Mann Booker--who knows). To tell the interwoven story of four women (one dead), it wends its way through different representations of time. Each chapter is named after a verb tense, for instance. And the action of the story centers around a hotel, where some of the characters work or have worked, and others stay. The hotel itself is the perfect setting, because hotels are such unreal places of fantasy, where we imagine lives of luxury or importance, or where we work to facilitate that fantasy for others. Anyway, don't want to blow the story. Tear yourself around from your own machine and go read it.
But here in my less-wired world, the question is, how do I convey to you, unsuspecting reader, what it is to spend a month away from home, working in an archive.
I will start with where I am, and save the archive for tomorrow. This town has, over the last 9 or 10 years, become my home of libraries. I have learned something of its nooks and crannies, and I love being the outsider with few local connections: I do not run into people I know, I do not have lunch dates, I neither cook nor have dinner cooked for me at any special time, I go to movies when I want to, I stay up as late or not as I want. I admit I do have little conversations with the people on the local NPR and jazz and classical stations. I practice the names of nearby towns, where I have never been, but whose projected high temperatures and chances of rain I learn every day. Does it matter that I wore this sweater yesterday?
I am staying next door to the music building on campus, so I can listen to students practicing, their piano and vibraphones mixing with amazingly trained voices (hard to imagine them coming from someone so young). My bathroom has a deep bathtub but a sticky dusty floor. My room has a single bed with a flowery spread and one outlet, with an amazing branching collection of splitters and extension cords. It supports two lamps, heating pad (for sorry back), hotpot, computer sometimes, alarm clock, phone charger.
I am still disappointed that the Cool Jazz Coffeeshop (does the place's real name matter?) has in the last year transformed itself. A few mornings ago it was the Lowkey R&B Coffeeshop. Not bad, all things considered, but not the CJC. I suppose it was the guy who worked in the mornings--who used to mock me for always ordering orange juice, dark-roast coffee and a cinnamon bun, but always having to consider it--who chose that station from all the other Sirius (Cerius?) satellite stations. This morning, I can only report a proliferation of red hot mamas, god-fearin women got the blues, dear mom and dad please send money, drinking bones and party bones, hell yeah I'm American, hick towns &c. on the cheesy country station, not to mention the ads about "before Sirius country came along, I had to talk to my wife--thanks Sirius!"
Eating alone in restaurants is its own art. Much easier to see a movie alone, if only because everyone in the theater is facing the same direction, and before long only notice what is on the screen (unless, like me, you have the bad luck to always share the theater with the man of many sinus problems). But restaurants are supposed to be about dates, or business dinners, or friends catching up after too long. Sometimes I do not mind that I am, again, encouraged to have a seat in the lounge, or that the host looks at me with that pity reserved only for single women. You have to have done this enough times not to buy into the look, or start to believe it and look for places offering take-away.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Ave Tim
I went looking around the web for a song that might work to celebrate Jarrett's acceptance into the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, but none of the ones I found--by the Rolling Stones, Alanis Morrissette, the Traveling Wilburys--seemed to say quite what I wanted to say. Congratulations for breaking my heart? Not really. It all felt a little like a parallel trip to the Hallmark store, where all the cards are too specific in their congratulations. A person accepted into a chorus is not (a) recently engaged or married, (b) the parent of a new baby, (c) the recipient of a new job or degree, (d) a new homeowner, (e) a new pet owner, or (f) the possessor of whiter teeth, and it is so very hard to find a card saying, "Congratulations on the continuance of your public singing career, you bad-ass tenor, you!"
Instead, I'll tell you about the TFC and their upcoming season:
In the spring of 1970, John Oliver was named director of vocal and choral activities at the Tanglewood Music Center and began the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. This summer, the TFC - now a Boston Symphony institution - celebrates its 35th anniversary, and on Sunday, August 7, the group joins Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos in three major but seldom-heard choral works by Brahms: his Nänie, Gesang der Parzen, and Schicksalslied. This program closes with Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. Mr. Frühbeck de Burgos leads his second BSO program at Tanglewood, featuring two works tied to the Don Quixote story, on Friday, August 12. Manuel de Falla's Master Peter's Puppet Show, based on an episode in Cervantes' Don Quixote, features small orchestra, vocal soloists, and puppets, here featuring soprano Awet Andemicael, tenor Peter Bronder, baritone David Wilson-Johnson, and the Virginia-based Bob Brown Puppets. The second half of the program offers a more traditional telling of this classic story in Strauss' Don Quixote, with cellist Truls Mork and BSO Principal Violist Steven Ansell as soloists.
Well, Congratulations on the continuance of your public singing career, you bad-ass tenor, you! I hope you're saving that green lawn chair for me.
(if only he could get rid of some of that snow.)
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
The Searchers
Confession: unlike freeman (though note follow-up and clarification), I am not opposed to the site meter. In fact, I am fascinated by it. I love the way you can take your data and put it into graphs and thereby pretend that you can predict traffic on your site. Even a computing moron like myself starts to feel all techie-like looking at it. I love it when for no good reason traffic is up, then the next day no one cares. What is not to fascinate?
But what I really like is the "referrals" page, saying how it is that people got to the site. I suppose it is a little like those marketing surveys, which ask, How did you learn about us?
A. From a friend
B. From the newspaper
C. From the radio
D. From your mom
E. Other ________________________
I am just crazy for the "Others," because mostly they arrive at this not at all humble blog (well, OK, humble in the sense of not too fancy, but still very much lacking in humility) through google and msn searches.
THOSE, friends, are my favorite.
Someone actually searched on "Don't get mad--get Glad!" and came to my site. And I've gotten a few hits from people looking for sea shanties, cowbells, not to mention those poor saps back in February trying to learn the calorie count of a paczek. (Give it UP: you don't want to know.) Thanks to March Madness, I am guessing, I have received a couple of hits from people searching for "jumping people," and even "reynolds wrap oven tempered for strength." (Do people just spend time searching the web for product slogans???)
The (as best as I can tell, based on entirely unscientific data-gathering practices) top hit-grabber, though, is "tinfoil hat emoticon." Now I frankly was pretty amused that there was such a thing, and so I could not resist mentioning it--but would you have guessed that people would search for it?
The trick is, I am starting to see, to write about mildly out-of-the-way and yet not entirely obscure things. I fear that no one searching on "Roomba" would be sent my way (and their loss, really).
Sometimes the site meter tells me that I am being watched. For instance, my post about 50 Cent, with its critique of the Daily Press, had not been up for 2 hours before Tribune Media Services (exact name?), the company that runs the paper, had read my post. I was honestly embarrassed: I still believe in my critique (such as it was), but I felt a little sorry that they read it. Because even though the Daily Press used to infuriate me in its coverage of national and world events, I feel a little nostalgic about it, because it serves my hometown.
And courtesy of the Patient Partner, I get a number of hits for "half-velocity coefficient." He concludes that this indicates that this term, championed by his diss director, is gaining ground in the engineering world. Go Jacques Monod!
But I am most sad to report, that against predictions from a smart friend, I have gotten no hits from google searches on "poo spirograph." Damn.
But what I really like is the "referrals" page, saying how it is that people got to the site. I suppose it is a little like those marketing surveys, which ask, How did you learn about us?
A. From a friend
B. From the newspaper
C. From the radio
D. From your mom
E. Other ________________________
I am just crazy for the "Others," because mostly they arrive at this not at all humble blog (well, OK, humble in the sense of not too fancy, but still very much lacking in humility) through google and msn searches.
THOSE, friends, are my favorite.
Someone actually searched on "Don't get mad--get Glad!" and came to my site. And I've gotten a few hits from people looking for sea shanties, cowbells, not to mention those poor saps back in February trying to learn the calorie count of a paczek. (Give it UP: you don't want to know.) Thanks to March Madness, I am guessing, I have received a couple of hits from people searching for "jumping people," and even "reynolds wrap oven tempered for strength." (Do people just spend time searching the web for product slogans???)
The (as best as I can tell, based on entirely unscientific data-gathering practices) top hit-grabber, though, is "tinfoil hat emoticon." Now I frankly was pretty amused that there was such a thing, and so I could not resist mentioning it--but would you have guessed that people would search for it?
The trick is, I am starting to see, to write about mildly out-of-the-way and yet not entirely obscure things. I fear that no one searching on "Roomba" would be sent my way (and their loss, really).
Sometimes the site meter tells me that I am being watched. For instance, my post about 50 Cent, with its critique of the Daily Press, had not been up for 2 hours before Tribune Media Services (exact name?), the company that runs the paper, had read my post. I was honestly embarrassed: I still believe in my critique (such as it was), but I felt a little sorry that they read it. Because even though the Daily Press used to infuriate me in its coverage of national and world events, I feel a little nostalgic about it, because it serves my hometown.
And courtesy of the Patient Partner, I get a number of hits for "half-velocity coefficient." He concludes that this indicates that this term, championed by his diss director, is gaining ground in the engineering world. Go Jacques Monod!
But I am most sad to report, that against predictions from a smart friend, I have gotten no hits from google searches on "poo spirograph." Damn.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
A plea for help
Can people out there who use mp3 players help me out here?
I was thinking about getting an iPod, because it is time for me to find a more up-to-date way to use my music. I am not looking to load my entire CD collection onto a player, because I don't have that much money, so this would be something separate, something portable. I do not want the shuffle, because I want more capacity than that (oh, how my walkman-porting self of about 18 years ago would faint at such snobbery). I am thinking something in the 4-5 gig range. Maybe.
But there are two things that concern me about the iPod, and here is where I could use some input.
1. I have only a USB port, not a USB 2.0 port. I believe that means that I cannot use one of the G4 iPods, right? And not the iPod minis either?
2. This video, whose assertion I have seen supported in one or two other places. Is there someone out there who has had an iPod for longer than a year who can speak to this subject? I understand the costs on replacement batteries have come down, but I am eager to hear testimonials.
So, I am looking at other brands, and then, despite a couple of hours spent on the Consumer Reports site, I feel completely adrift, since all I ever hear about is iPod, and so I know next to nothing about these other brands. Creative? iRiver? Samsung? Anyone?
Then of course there is the issue of format: some players will play stuff in some formats, others in others, but it does not seem that any player can use both WMA and iTunes formats. And is it only the iPod that will play the stuff from iTunes, or am I misreading these things? And am I right that napster does not connect with the iPod?
(And what the fuck is that anyway? "Uh, no ma'am, I'm sorry but this tape deck will only play cassettes sold by Island Records.")
I was going to make a prize remark about the new Ashlee Simpson Karaoke iPod, but then I worried that if I did that, the Burger King might think this whole post is in jest, which it IS NOT. Really, people, I need your help.
I was thinking about getting an iPod, because it is time for me to find a more up-to-date way to use my music. I am not looking to load my entire CD collection onto a player, because I don't have that much money, so this would be something separate, something portable. I do not want the shuffle, because I want more capacity than that (oh, how my walkman-porting self of about 18 years ago would faint at such snobbery). I am thinking something in the 4-5 gig range. Maybe.
But there are two things that concern me about the iPod, and here is where I could use some input.
1. I have only a USB port, not a USB 2.0 port. I believe that means that I cannot use one of the G4 iPods, right? And not the iPod minis either?
2. This video, whose assertion I have seen supported in one or two other places. Is there someone out there who has had an iPod for longer than a year who can speak to this subject? I understand the costs on replacement batteries have come down, but I am eager to hear testimonials.
So, I am looking at other brands, and then, despite a couple of hours spent on the Consumer Reports site, I feel completely adrift, since all I ever hear about is iPod, and so I know next to nothing about these other brands. Creative? iRiver? Samsung? Anyone?
Then of course there is the issue of format: some players will play stuff in some formats, others in others, but it does not seem that any player can use both WMA and iTunes formats. And is it only the iPod that will play the stuff from iTunes, or am I misreading these things? And am I right that napster does not connect with the iPod?
(And what the fuck is that anyway? "Uh, no ma'am, I'm sorry but this tape deck will only play cassettes sold by Island Records.")
I was going to make a prize remark about the new Ashlee Simpson Karaoke iPod, but then I worried that if I did that, the Burger King might think this whole post is in jest, which it IS NOT. Really, people, I need your help.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Poor Brutus, with himself at war
So how did you spend the Ides of March?
Me? Well, let's just say that if there is any way you can see the Daniel Sherman production of Julius Caesar, now in previews at the Belasco, go.
Go.
I confess it. I went because of Denzel Washington. I did not even know whether he would be good on stage. I am not proud of this, that I know so little about stage actors that I was drawn to the name of a cinema celebrity. (But privately, he was marvelous.)
In fact, I had little desire to see Julius Caesar itself.
Maybe you had a similarly horrid experience reading it in high school. There was no chance to SEE it, or maybe only in a very stilted filmic version from god knows when. And the language is so distant, so that when some kid is reading the part of Brutus they don't have any idea how to intone it, inflect, imbibe it. Then you can't picture what is going on--who is on stage? what is the context for this interminable speech? how are the people listening responding? Let alone everyone's--especially mine--lack of the political knowledge to understand the characters' motivations as well as the lack of emotional experience to imagine why someone might run on his sword, the coward.
I have a friend in London this semester who is in charge of a bevvy of college students and who is teaching them drama in part by taking them to see plays. Those lucky dogs--what I would not give to be in such a class!
But before my friend left for her semester away, we were talking about what the students would see, and it turned out their Shakespeare was to be Julius Caesar. Oh MAN, I said. I know, she said.
We were wrong.
I don't know if I had seen Julius Caesar performed before, but if I did it was during a summer Shakespeare festival at William & Mary when I was a wee thing, still unable to understand the damn thing. And probably everyone was wearing togas. And I see by the lack of a paperback copy of the play on my shelf that I did not read it in college or teach it as a TA.
All of which is fine, because all of this ignorance, all these low expectations, all this fear of cardboard rhetoric let my socks get blown off, right there in the fourth row at the Belasco.
Sherman's set puts the audience firmly in the decay of empire, with crumbling edifices, rebar peeking through, headless statues (holes revealing where metal has been torn for new purposes), rusting steel, exposed lightbulbs and scaffolding. It is a little like the crumbling Colosseum in Rome, but more. Maybe like that giant was back in the day when an unsuspecting Daisy Miller could get her share of malaria. But this Rome is grimmer than that: this is not tourism; it is civic dissonance.
You're right when you note that this is a weird historical move: after all, it was Julius Caesar who imagined an empire for Rome, and Augustus who consolidated it, finding Rome a city of brick and leaving it a city of marble. But this Rome, this imperial city, is already rotten.
The play's costumes are modern--suits, stubbly shaved heads, shades, machine guns. Armies fight with assault rifles and helicopters as well as swords, and they wear fatigues, berets. The murderous hordes avenge Caesar's death, killing 70-100 senators (depending on which report you believe), and they do it wearing black with black ski masks, and they behead their captives with swords--pace those videos that certain TV stations did not want to air.
In case you weren't sure whether such a historical play could resonate, remember this is a play about empire, set at the moment of the republic's death. The conspirators against Caesar are already nostalgic for republican ideals, even as they believe they can revive them through a single act of murder. After they kill Caesar (oh come on: did I really need a "spoiler" notice for Shakespeare?), and justify their act to his friend Mark Antony, the conspirators charge offstage, all bloody from their deed, cheering "Peace! Freedom! Liberty!"
For a brief moment, when Brutus is speaking to the crowd, explaining the deed--"not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more"--we believe that these ideals can win out.
But in a play also about rhetoric, one man's speech is so quickly trammeled by another's, and Antony's funeral oration--where he repeats not fewer than 6 times that Brutus is an "honorable man," emptying out those words of their meaning--wins the day, ripping the city into chaos.
And empire is impossible to beat, once its wheels are in motion. Octavius' arrival in the city quells some chaos, and his prowess on the battlefield defeats his opponents, the conspirators Cassius and Brutus. At the play's end, Sherman has the mantle which had signified Caesar's rise in power (and borne the proof of his murder) placed on Octavius' shoulders, and the symbols of kingship that had startled Brutus and Cassius at the beginning return, their power beyond that of the man whose shoulders they grace, whose portrait they hold.
Why is it that the people so desire a king? Who had bedecked the city of Rome with Caesar's trophies, those images that Murellus and Flavius disrobe in act I? Who cheered, when Antony offered Caesar a crown (one of these coronets)? Who denied the ideals of which Brutus spoke, preferring instead the tyranny that Antony offered? Octavius brings security, remember, his machine-gun-toting soldiers quelling the chaos that killed Cinna the conspirator and Cinna the poet.
This is the Pax Augustae. Clammoring for such peace, we might remember Arundhati Roy's remark, that
Me? Well, let's just say that if there is any way you can see the Daniel Sherman production of Julius Caesar, now in previews at the Belasco, go.
Go.
I confess it. I went because of Denzel Washington. I did not even know whether he would be good on stage. I am not proud of this, that I know so little about stage actors that I was drawn to the name of a cinema celebrity. (But privately, he was marvelous.)
In fact, I had little desire to see Julius Caesar itself.
Maybe you had a similarly horrid experience reading it in high school. There was no chance to SEE it, or maybe only in a very stilted filmic version from god knows when. And the language is so distant, so that when some kid is reading the part of Brutus they don't have any idea how to intone it, inflect, imbibe it. Then you can't picture what is going on--who is on stage? what is the context for this interminable speech? how are the people listening responding? Let alone everyone's--especially mine--lack of the political knowledge to understand the characters' motivations as well as the lack of emotional experience to imagine why someone might run on his sword, the coward.
I have a friend in London this semester who is in charge of a bevvy of college students and who is teaching them drama in part by taking them to see plays. Those lucky dogs--what I would not give to be in such a class!
But before my friend left for her semester away, we were talking about what the students would see, and it turned out their Shakespeare was to be Julius Caesar. Oh MAN, I said. I know, she said.
We were wrong.
I don't know if I had seen Julius Caesar performed before, but if I did it was during a summer Shakespeare festival at William & Mary when I was a wee thing, still unable to understand the damn thing. And probably everyone was wearing togas. And I see by the lack of a paperback copy of the play on my shelf that I did not read it in college or teach it as a TA.
All of which is fine, because all of this ignorance, all these low expectations, all this fear of cardboard rhetoric let my socks get blown off, right there in the fourth row at the Belasco.
Sherman's set puts the audience firmly in the decay of empire, with crumbling edifices, rebar peeking through, headless statues (holes revealing where metal has been torn for new purposes), rusting steel, exposed lightbulbs and scaffolding. It is a little like the crumbling Colosseum in Rome, but more. Maybe like that giant was back in the day when an unsuspecting Daisy Miller could get her share of malaria. But this Rome is grimmer than that: this is not tourism; it is civic dissonance.
You're right when you note that this is a weird historical move: after all, it was Julius Caesar who imagined an empire for Rome, and Augustus who consolidated it, finding Rome a city of brick and leaving it a city of marble. But this Rome, this imperial city, is already rotten.
The play's costumes are modern--suits, stubbly shaved heads, shades, machine guns. Armies fight with assault rifles and helicopters as well as swords, and they wear fatigues, berets. The murderous hordes avenge Caesar's death, killing 70-100 senators (depending on which report you believe), and they do it wearing black with black ski masks, and they behead their captives with swords--pace those videos that certain TV stations did not want to air.
In case you weren't sure whether such a historical play could resonate, remember this is a play about empire, set at the moment of the republic's death. The conspirators against Caesar are already nostalgic for republican ideals, even as they believe they can revive them through a single act of murder. After they kill Caesar (oh come on: did I really need a "spoiler" notice for Shakespeare?), and justify their act to his friend Mark Antony, the conspirators charge offstage, all bloody from their deed, cheering "Peace! Freedom! Liberty!"
For a brief moment, when Brutus is speaking to the crowd, explaining the deed--"not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more"--we believe that these ideals can win out.
But in a play also about rhetoric, one man's speech is so quickly trammeled by another's, and Antony's funeral oration--where he repeats not fewer than 6 times that Brutus is an "honorable man," emptying out those words of their meaning--wins the day, ripping the city into chaos.
And empire is impossible to beat, once its wheels are in motion. Octavius' arrival in the city quells some chaos, and his prowess on the battlefield defeats his opponents, the conspirators Cassius and Brutus. At the play's end, Sherman has the mantle which had signified Caesar's rise in power (and borne the proof of his murder) placed on Octavius' shoulders, and the symbols of kingship that had startled Brutus and Cassius at the beginning return, their power beyond that of the man whose shoulders they grace, whose portrait they hold.
Why is it that the people so desire a king? Who had bedecked the city of Rome with Caesar's trophies, those images that Murellus and Flavius disrobe in act I? Who cheered, when Antony offered Caesar a crown (one of these coronets)? Who denied the ideals of which Brutus spoke, preferring instead the tyranny that Antony offered? Octavius brings security, remember, his machine-gun-toting soldiers quelling the chaos that killed Cinna the conspirator and Cinna the poet.
This is the Pax Augustae. Clammoring for such peace, we might remember Arundhati Roy's remark, that
for most people in the world, peace is war--a daily battle against hunger, thirst, and the violation of their dignity. Wars are often the end result of a flawed peace, a putative peace. And it is the flaws, the systemic flaws in what is normally considered to be "peace," that we ought to be writing about. We have to--at least some of us have to--become peace correspondents instead of war correspondents.
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