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be my baby - the ronettes.
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Elaine Stritch: “Why Do The Wrong People Travel?” from Noel Coward’s Sail Away
I’m heading to London and Paris for the next two weeks…
Portrait de la journaliste Sylvia Harden – Otto Dix, 1926, peinture à l’huile et tempera sur bois, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne, centre Georges-Pompidou.
At first I thought they were gigantic safety matches, but is she smoking some version of these?
Image via
Bill Reid (1979)
by Jack Long
This documentary follows Haidan jeweller, wood carver, and artist Bill Reid.
Man oh man I love Haida art. Reid’s sculpture ‘The Spirit of Haida Gwaii’ is (was?) on the back of the Canadian $20 bill, and in 1995 was put in the international terminal of Vancouver Airport. Does that mean I would have seen it? Almost certainly I suppose. I do remember a big Haida art theme and sculpture in the airport when I arrived those couple of times in the nineties. And once in the ’00s? Wow. I am just so deserving of my CN passport.
Here’s the piece in the airport.
Is this how I remember it? Doesn’t quite fit with my memory of being on an upper floor balcony, with the large, floor-to-ceiling window to the right, and a big wooden sculpture (with wires?) in the far corner.
Ah, I think this is it!
Still not quite right though. Was it in this next area, but behind the taker of this photo?
Perhaps I have constructed this picture in my mind, merely inspired by reality. But how could that be, since memories are, as everyone knows, completely reliable at all times?
Now that I have these pictures, will they erase what I’m seeing in my head? I hope not. I have grown attached to it over the years. An incredibly botched attempt at sketching out this memory for posterity has only left me with something that looks like every other scribble I make. We will just have to hope truth’s steamroller doesn’t knock my original down to make space for its own progeny.
Shut up. Tortured metaphors are the best kind.
Making Hainan Chicken Rice for Dinner, Once Again
Forgive me, cha siu faan. I still love you. I still smile when I think of all our time spent together. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, that day? You were there for me. But I am far away now, and you are too unique to be exist in your true, beautiful, red and black and white and pink form in dreary countries like this. But Hainan chicken - no blowtorch needed. Wely simpoh la. I know, I know, I had started to drift even before our separation. But let’s not speak of that now. We’ll work through everything when we are face to face once more. And we will be, I promise. Drifting, the current will take me back eventually.
Judy Greer
Did Jason Bateman mention this in an Arrested Development commentary? Some vague memory is calling attention to itself in my mind. Judging from how different to this G.L. looks in all her other photos though, perhaps not.
Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, Mvmt III. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung
OK, I can’t put on quite the same version I’m talking about, but this will do for now…
Pow! Oh God am I really going to do this? There are few things I dislike more (ok, fine, probably quite a few more) than liveblogging. Or show recaps. Unless writtten by Jerry Saltz. But those aren’t quite recaps. Oh well. On to the piece.
I always think of taking that opening (the aforementioned ‘Pow!’) and using it for a phone ring tone. Except I haven’t had a phone able to do something so modern/ancient for a while now. Even when I had that crazy (not very crazy) Japanese phone. Red. A flip top. Still in my bag, ran away when I still had a contract. At least I had payed off the phone, so a minimum of residual guilt currently clings.
Damn I love this piece. I think I heard it first in Sixth Form, IB Higher Music. The one class I’d head to early. Or am I ascribing it to that time period just because it quotes ‘La Mer’? No, pretty sure I bought it as a super cheapo at HMV in Central.
Wow, at 5:50 already, and after yet more side tracks still haven’t really ‘live blogged’ it. Unconscious (never ‘sub-‘, as per some random (“OMG public school’s so random!”) book about Freud, and his disliking the supplicant position that ‘sub-’ ascribes to the unconscious, when really they (it and the conscious) are two sides of the same coin.) rebellion to a disliked form?
9:00 - OK this is not working at all. And I thought I typed and thought so much faster than this. (Hah - what’s new…). I haven’t even noticed much of the ‘La Mer’ (“‘The La Trattoria’? You do know that means ‘The The Trattoria’?”) I’ve been so preoccupied - ooh there it is! Ooh and more! (“Can’t stop the wars, can’t make the old younger, can’t lower the price of bread.”)
Well this was a bust. And I’m so cold. Well, not that cold. Shivering. But could be worse.
Haven’t typed for a minute now.
“Thank you, Mr. Boulez.”
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OK you know what? Let’s try it again. Plus reading is a lot faster than listening, so you would have finished it way before the corresponding moments in the piece, and that last line really wouldn’t have made much sense. Not that it makes too much more sense when contextualized.
I love a white noise of voices to accompany my music. Or a repetitious/non-sequitor…ous single voice that ends up serving much the same purpose. There’s a reason why Glass’ ‘Knee Play #1’ is one of the few pieces of his that I can unabashedly enjoy. Reich all the way. The (not so) new Callas vs Tebaldi? Hur hur.
I like the unplaceability of the narrator’s mid-Atlantic accent. (Huh, wonder why…).
“But I must have said this before, since I say this now.”
For a piece that I supposedly have such positive feelings for, one would think that I would know more about it. I can’t even remember all the pieces it quotes. Just the ‘La Mer’, a Ravel piece I can’t remember the name of (a march?), and some Mahler. I should remember the Ravel name, but due to my general dislike of Mahler I will let myself off the hook for him. I feel pretty cheesy for enjoying the Fourth Mvmt of his Symphony No. 5 and not much else of his though.
“Well, well, so there is an audience!”
5:10 - Mmm I do enjoy this horn and woodwind work. And the voices coming in at 5:30. Just my hypocritical self, I bet this bit’s the Mahler even…
5:40 - Sounds so much like Simone de Pury here. Wow, two ‘Work of Art’ references?
“Where now? When now?” “Keep going!” “Stop!” “Keep going!”
Man, I love this piece. With all my above parentheses in parentheses, words that spark involuntary ‘Summer Heights High’ quotations, Zelig-like (eugh, that movie) elastic accent (not evinced here), constant 頭の中のback-chatter static (他の言語でもあるなァ…) I suppose it’s not too hard to see why.
9:00 - Another couple seconds of very pleasurable music. And that must have been Mahler.
“It. Say it. Not knowing what—”
Introductions. Of The Swingle Singers.
“But now it’s done, it’s over. We’ve had our chance…”
“Thank you, Mr. Boulez.”
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Wow. See? That’s why liveblogging should be steered clear from.
“Thank you, Mr. Boulez.”
A sentiment that deserves its triple repetition after the bitch of a time I’ve had trying to upload/embed/link to his recording of this piece, leading to the realization of how much I love this recording. Though I often find that with classical pieces, and it probably just has a lot to do with Seligman-style duckling imprinting.
