käseblatt

pricking soap bubbles

2007-05-24T13:59:00.000-04:00

Writer Nora Ephron was interviewed yesterday on our local public radio station. She made some remarks about blogging:

When I first thought about blogging or heard about it, I thought, "Oh, it’s kind of like writing a column.” But the truth is that a blog is way more ephemeral than even a daily newspaper column. It’s sort of like a soap bubble. […] You should write them quickly. You should get them out there. And understand that the purpose of them is not for them to live for very long but to be sort of “pricked” by other people. […] A blog is kind of the beginning of a conversation.

in Vidal veritas

2007-04-24T11:19:00.000-04:00

Okay, I finished Palimpsest.

About halfway through the book my interest waned. Either because Vidal shifted topics -- from sparkling tales of family and literary giants to plodding tales of television and politics -- or because I simply couldn’t sustain the same level of enthusiasm I had for the book during the first week. Or, because I sabotaged my own enthusiasm by seeking the opinions of others. I sniffed around the internet for existing commentary on the book and found John Simon’s bilious, illuminating critique. I turned against Vidal somewhat when I realized that he’s just as capable of fibbing as all the people he accuses of doing so. But I managed to sustain my doubts well enough to enjoy his skewering of just about everybody you’ve ever heard of up to the year 1964. I’ll look forward to more of this kind of fun in Point to Point Navigation, the second volume of Vidal’s memoirs.

Vidal on fibbing: to paraphrase, Vidal says that truth should not be sought in memoirs, perhaps even his own. Novels are the only place you can find truth. I suppose that means a writer’s mind tells the truth only through his or her own reflections, not through reporting “the facts.” This worries me because, as I’ve said, I don’t particularly care for novels (Vidal scorns readers like me). Reading fiction always makes me itch to do something else. Does this mean that my preference for non-fiction will forever keep truth fenced away from me? (Irony of ironies.) If so, I must learn to enjoy novels, but I don’t know how. I read Vidal’s Burr and thought it was okay but not terribly involving. I started Lincoln which everyone raves about, but I couldn’t get past the first couple of chapters. Tooting his own horn, Vidal claims that two of his early novels, The Judgment of Paris and Julian, represent major breakthroughs in his writing, which tempts me to read them.

Maybe I’ll try them after I give up on Wayne Hoffman’s Hard. Already this novel has set my eyes rolling a mere 13 pages in. The noise of Palimpsest’s crinkly cellophane library cover may have drawn stares in public, but the sight of Hard’s tawdry cover, showing a man’s bare torso caressed by his own left hand, makes me twice as self-conscious.

useless adulation

2007-04-16T10:34:00.000-04:00

Gore Vidal’s Palimpsest – A Memoir is 435 pages hardbound, covered in very noisy plastic (a library copy, as usual) and I hate carrying it around. It even makes noise if I’m sitting perfectly still. But I haven’t had such fun reading a book in ages. I can’t tell you how many other books I’ve let cascade to the side unfinished lately, so it’s a great surprise to me that I can enjoy a book this much. I always enjoy what Vidal writes, his non-fiction anyway. (It’s slowly dawning on me that I JUST CANNOT read novels.) But yes, I find myself avoiding other activities to sneak another chapter in. This never happens to me. Mr. Supersweetie and I watched Johnny Guitar on VHS last night as we ate Thai delivery, and it was a good movie, but I couldn’t wait to get back to Palimpsest.

I figured I’d blog about it, so that you’d know why I haven't been blogging otherwise lately.

Old boy network

2007-04-05T12:30:00.000-04:00

Google-searching one’s friends and acquaintances is like spying. Yet I suppose we all do it. Occasionally I feel moved to find out “what ever happened to” such-and-such a person I haven’t seen in a long time.

Lately I feel a curiosity about the boys with whom I attended Lower School at an old Episcopal private school here in New York City. In my time, the Lower School was not yet co-ed, so my classmates were all boys. This turned out to be a terrible thing, despite what you may be thinking. I was never comfortable around all those boys, with their sports and their rowdy ways. I was short and homo, and struggled to pass as merely “arty and effete.” Our mutual disapproval was tense and suffocating. The only time I ever had their respect was when I participated creditably in a music event performed for the whole Lower School. My skill was so obvious and at home on the public stage that it simply couldn’t be ignored. But other than that single time I was looked upon as irrelevant, out of place, mediocre, and generally ridiculous. I believe that my discomfort with this boys’ society translated into discomfort with academic settings in general. As a result I always conflate schoolwork with futility, and perform poorly as a student.

Se studiavo di più, che avrei potuto essere? Ci pensate?

My curiosity about the boys’ current whereabouts is a mystery to me, since I have almost no happy memories of my eight years spent at this Lower School. Yet I still wonder about those boys. I wonder what happened to them. Could they be interesting, nice people now? Or are they still horrible?

Today the name of one of the old boys popped into my head, and I “googled” him. Surprise, surprise: the adult who seems to be the boy I knew in Lower School has become a priest. In fact he’s a chaplain at, of all things, an old Episcopal boys’ school! (One in another city.) This really surprises me. I don’t remember Old Boy ever exhibiting an interest in religion. And yet there he is, an Episcopal priest. The kind of person I respect, broadly speaking.

And yet, looking over the website of Old Boy’s current school, I recognize all the characteristics that made me miserable as a child. I wonder if Old Boy feels at home among the kind of foul boys he was friends with in Lower School. (He and I weren’t friends.) I worry that the little gay boys at that school live at the mercy of jock bullies. Hopefully, the atmosphere there is looser and more collegial than it was for me at Lower School. And that all those boys can enjoy un-stifled childhoods, leading to greater things.

The bell tolls

2007-04-04T13:00:00.000-04:00

I've just had the most destabilizing experience reading someone else's blog.

Zac, whose Fool's Gold Coast blog offers a sort of point-counterpoint of flattery/ridicule with Käseblatt (that is, I flatter him and ridicule myself) posted another periodic tally of his diversions. He refers to Spike Lee's 1986 film She's Gotta Have It as "OLD MOVIE OF THE WEEK."

Now I don't usually think of myself as an old queen. But to me an old movie is one that antedates The Graduate. Something like an MGM Arthur Freed musical, or The Damned Don't Cry. But a Spike Lee movie? She's Gotta Have It, to me, is recent enough to stir clear memories of its first-release screening in theaters.

Perhaps I shouldn't admit such a thing.

What fresh hell is this?

2007-03-27T13:26:00.000-04:00

A new firewall has gone up in the computer network here at the Death Star (my temp job). Now joining a number of other websites barred from on-premises viewing is YouTube. Attempts to access the site are halted by an onscreen message saying that YouTube is “unavailable as a non-business related site” and, somewhat improbably, “categorized as: Sex.” Innocent web pages with inserted links to YouTube video-clips now display forlorn empty space where the videos used to play.

I started to notice these unexpected empty spaces a week or two ago, but thought that our data transmission was temporarily ailing. The possibility that unseen forces were placing further limits on my computer access was a horror I didn’t dare to contemplate.

I can’t say I’m surprised. Just demoralized.

Outlet

2007-03-20T10:16:00.000-04:00

So, I’m doing The Artist’s Way. It was urged upon me by someone who knows what’s good for me.

The book is a 12-week course of exercises to “access creativity and realize dreams.” (Laugh if you will. Some of us need this.) The most important part of the enterprise seems to be the daily, non-negotiable task of free-writing three uninterrupted pages first thing in the morning. No editing, no subsequent review. I write, I put the three sheets of paper in an envelope and close them inside a drawer. Done.

It’s good medicine, both for me and for you. For me because I get a certain amount of mental blather out of my system first thing in the morning. For you because that mental blather is less likely to seep into this blog.

So let's all breathe a sigh of relief.

Self-intervention

2007-03-09T12:16:00.000-05:00

I've become aware that reading the blogs of others is TAKING UP MORE OF MY TIME THAN IT OUGHT. So, in the spirit of giving up certain pleasures for Lent, I am going to declare one day per week "Blogs-Off-Limits Day." I haven't read anyone else's blog today. Instead of reading, I am posting.

I have a terrible itch today to check out the goings-on at, for instance, Fool's Gold Coast, except it's FORBIDDEN. Already I'm experiencing unpleasant withdrawal-like symptoms. But I'll soldier on.

Now then, I'm sure I have something interesting to say.
Er-

Well, Mr. Supersweetie and I went to Ikea this week and bought things. Our apartment is swiftly taking on a better appearance. Nothing's going to compensate for the fact that we need to apply a fresh coat of paint, though.

What else...
Um-

A friend of ours, named Tweet, is quitting his desk job to try his fortunes in the wildlife professions. He's moving away from Queens to spend the Spring bird-watching on Cape Cod. Professionally. For money. No, really. It's like something out of a novel, isn't it? Enviable Tweet.

Mr. Supersweetie and I went over to Tweet's apartment last night and helped ourselves to some of his discarded possessions. Tweet and I wear comparable clothing sizes, so I went home with a whole new wardrobe. Today, I've worn some of his nice desk job clothes to my temp job. Someone here remarked on the becoming shade of my shirt. It's pale green. Since I usually wear plain, no-fuss white shirts, today's shirt is a BIG contrast.

Not very interesting, am I.
I really don't deserve to blog.

From simpleton to sage -- Eichmann and the Holocaust

2007-03-05T20:51:00.000-05:00

As I attempt to dip into Penguin's Great Ideas series again, I pose the question:

How do you even speak about the holocaust?

To begin with, I know far less about the holocaust than I ought to. Most of my knowledge of it is of a folkloric sort, without much of a sense of the details. The holocaust is such a loaded topic that even though the world must never forget it, people find something suspicious about the desire to examine it. It is too morbid to discuss. It is horrible. It is accursed. It is taboo, but strangely sacred at the same time.

Hannah Arendt’s job in 1963 was to report for the New Yorker on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the former Nazi, held in Jerusalem, at which he was sentenced to death. The report, erudite, probing, fascinating, and gripping as it was, suffered sharp criticism after its publication as the book, Eichmann in Jerusalem. In the Postscript, which stands on its own as the best excerpt reprinted in Eichmann and the Holocaust, Arendt was able to answer her critics and explain what the book and the meaning of the trial really were.

Eichmann and the Holocaust offers the reader relatively little background, presuming a strong prior knowledge of the facts. Knowing nothing about Eichmann, I was at a disadvantage. From what I gather in these excerpts, Eichmann was the man largely responsible for designing and carrying out the mass executions of millions of Jewish people during World War II. Arendt touches on the personality of Eichmann and others, their deeds, and some of the issues that arose in the trial. It is all endlessly fascinating stuff: why did these Nazis do what they did? Why did so few people protest? How could justice be done in this unprecedented situation? It’s just too much to cover in 130 pages. I’d suggest skipping this slim edition of well-meant excerpts, and devoting some serious attention to the original book in its entirety.

Some great ideas I picked out:
-- Eichmann’s character inspired Arendt to coin the expression, “The banality of evil.” (90)

-- “[Eichmann] knew quite well what it was all about… He was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness -- something by no means identical with stupidity -- that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of the period.” (115)

-- “Had the court in Jerusalem understood that there were distinctions between discrimination, expulsion, and genocide, it would immediately have become clear that the supreme crime it was confronted with, the physical extermination of the Jewish people, was a crime against humanity, perpetrated upon the body of the Jewish people, and that only the choice of victims, not the nature of the crime, could be derived from the long history of Jew-hatred and anti-semitism.” (93)

monthly bile

2007-02-02T13:45:00.000-05:00

You wouldn't guess from the title of this post that I'm going to write about love, would you?

Valentine's Day is, of course, on its way, and something has just occurred to me about one of the myriad silly ways we Americans use the word, "love." I hear people say about a friend or colleague that they "love him/her to death." It's an extravagant idiom, one whose proper place is perhaps epic poetry. But we don't utter it as a passionate vow. We use it as a warmup to saying something awful about someone:

"I love her to death, but she just never shuts up."
"I love him to death, but I wish he would actually call me back when I ask him to."

So it's not really about love, is it? It's more like self-exculpation. Like the way British people say "sorry" every two seconds: a neutral particle doing double-duty as a tepid plea for forgiveness.

Lingua ejus loquetur judicium

2007-01-02T10:35:00.000-05:00

I find myself constantly recalling this line from Dennis Cooper's 2000 novel, Period, which I read recently:

That's words. They're the problem. Words have this awful, downsizing effect on your thoughts.

Yes, that's true. Words often require us to distort our unspoken thoughts in the attempt to express ourselves aloud. But words also have the capacity to form their own helpful little world of clarity. They're not so bad.

So here's to more words here at Käseblatt in 2007.

Und weiter wünsche ich Euch ganz herzlich einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!

The night is far spent

2006-12-11T12:55:00.000-05:00

During Advent, at some point we usually hear these words from Saint Paul:

...let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. (Rom.xiii.12)

In that spirit, I've decided to update my template. I've cast off the dark layout and put on a somewhat lighter one.

Actually, I had to. I opted to migrate to Blogger Beta, just like all the other kids seem to be doing. I knew if I didn't migrate now, Blogger would do it at some point automatically, without my say-so.

In order to take advantage of Beta's features I was gently ordered to update the layout to one containing new coding. I could have used one that looked the same as the Minima Black style I had before, but when I saw this white-brown-grayish one, called Rounders 2, I threw caution to the wind. The deciding characteristic of Rounders 2 for me was the nicely offset brown typeface used for blockquotes (see above biblical citation). One wants to make sure that the words of others are attractively distinguishable from one's own.

Yay, yea, and yeah

2006-12-08T15:51:00.000-05:00

For awhile I've been reading emails with a misspelling. This must stop.
People keep typing, "yea," when they mean, "yeah."

"Yea" sounds like "yay." It's an adverb used in oral voting, expressing "yes," or used to introduce a more emphatic phrase. It can also be a noun meaning, "affirmative vote."

"Yeah" has the same short "a" sound as the word, "bad." It's an adverb meaning, "yes."

Please don't type, "yea," when you mean, "yeah." It looks dum.

Musician's bellyaching

2006-12-08T13:07:00.000-05:00

What do musicians bellyache about? Among other things, bad gigs.

I have to sing in a concert a week from tonight with an amateur chorus as a (low-)paid ringer in the tenor section. I’m glad to have a nice, cheerful holiday concert to sing in a pretty church, especially since I have no Christmastime Messiah gig this year or the earnings that go with it. But preparing this concert is proving to be a bigger hassle than I’d feared.

On the program are Amahl and the Night Visitors and Respighi’s Lauda per la Natività del Signore. We'll sing the Respighi in English, printed in the score in awful, teeny-tiny letters beneath the original Italian.

At Tuesday night's rehearsal I learned that Amahl is going to be semi-staged (something the conductor who hired me neglected to tell me) and I have to put together part of my own costume. Plus, we will perform the opera off-book. That means I have one week to learn 14 pages of very random, wordy text. I won’t be able to hide in the background and lip-synch, because the rest of the tenors, including one woman who's "helping out" (a bad sign), sing too inaccurately to carry the part on their own.

I’ve already stayed up past 2:00 a.m. two nights in a row working on this music, which I’m being paid birdseed to perform.

Never mind. I’m sure some good will come of this. Somehow.

One-sentence Thursday

2006-12-07T15:35:00.000-05:00

Since Andy, one of my blogging idols, has added Käseblatt to his roll of "Amazing Blogs," I'd better repay the compliment by actually making this blog "amazing," or at least, more trenchant than it's been.

zip one one one zero two

2006-12-04T11:25:00.000-05:00

Look at the "About Me" text appearing elsewhere on this screen. It used to say that I live in "New York." Now it says that I live in "Astoria, Queens : New York City." Your eyes do not decieve you. This native Manhattanite has done the unthinkable and relocated to one of the city's so-called outer boroughs.

So far, I'm delighted. My Manhattan chauvinism ebbs away daily and my fondness for Queens grows. Astoria is a cozy -- but not un-invigorating -- neighborhood with speedy above-ground subway service to Midtown. (That last sentence was certainly a jumble of paradoxes, n'est-ce pas?) In fact, my new Midtown commute is as fast as, or faster than, the commute from Harlem where I lived during the past year. I don't feel in the least marooned or isolated from "the action" of the city. I simply live in a different wing of the mansion.

My apartment, shared with the radiant but beleaguered Mr. Supersweetie, is comfortable, well laid-out, and welcoming despite being a forest of semi-unpacked boxes. Storage and organization remain problems to be gradually solved. But I have high hopes and -- a rarity for me -- optimism!

The Johnny-One-Note Method

2006-11-17T12:33:00.000-05:00

This is a terrific method for learning songs. I've been experimenting with it as I work on Liszt's Sonetti di Petrarca. If you didn't go to conservatory, or have studied music in a spotty way, you may not have come across such a systematic approach to learning new music. It will be a big help to you. The name "Johnny-One-Note" stems from the distinctive exercise of practicing the song-text repetitively on a single note.

The method requires a series of steps that may seem lengthy. If you're tempted to skip to the end, resist the temptation and do all the work! A good solid hour, for example, spent practicing a six-minute song as directed will prepare you well and save a lot of time and anxiety in the end.

Adapted from Tami L. Petty, Carol S. Webber, and a number of other voice teachers.

The pricipal stages are:
1. Translate
2. Speak/intone
3. Write
4. Melody
5. Perform

The step-by-step process:

1. TRANSLATE:
Write one line of original text with the literal, word-for-word translation directly beneath it. Repeat with each successive line of text.

2. SPEAK/INTONE:
a) Speak the text poetically; look for special qualities in imagery, word emphasis, rhyme or lack thereof, assonance, alliteration, etc.
b) Speak the text in rhythm observing all rests (under tempo is fine). Add a layer to this preparation by observing dynamics and articulation markings, as well.
c) Chant/intone the text on one pitch poetically: you may change the initial pitch periodically throughout the exercise, but aim for a comfortable tessitura.
d) Chant/intone the text on one pitch in rhythm as in step 2c).

3. WRITE:
a) Write each line of original text with its literal translation directly beneath, as in the translation step. Do this five times for each single line of text. If no translation is required, simply write each line of text five times before moving to the next.
b) Write from memory as much of the original and translated text as possible. Leave blank spaces on the page if you miss words or phrases. You may be surprised to find out how good your memory is!

4. MELODY:
a) Sing the melody on a neutral syllable in free rhythm omitting all dynamics, articulation markings and timbral qualities. Sing a syllable like “la,” “za,” “ah,” etc., at a comfortable dynamic: mp or mf. You are putting the pitches and intervallic leaps into your voice and on your breath. Give yourself time to incorporate this important vocal step before moving onward.
b) Sing the melody on a neutral syllable following all rhythms, rests, and articulations. Dynamics are not important yet, but the articulation markings are – they relate directly to the language and interpretation.
c) Sing the melody on its written vowels, omitting all consonants. You may need to look directly at the original text during this step: tricky! If you find any one passage difficult, go back first to intoning, then to steps 4a) and 4b). Some vowel modification may help.

5. PERFORM AS WRITTEN:
Having spent time on steps 1-4, step 5 should come easily. You may actually find that you are close to memorization by this point, as well. Continue writing your texts (with translation) as you work towards memorization!

James Alison -- We Always Start from Where We Are

2006-11-10T14:29:00.000-05:00

On Being Liked, Chapter Four, “Creation in Christ”

James Alison realizes that many of us are seriously baffled and troubled by the story of Christian salvation that we’ve heard.

“We begin with creation and the fall, we move on to salvation, and from there to heaven.(47)” This order of events gives the impression that God created a perfect world that humans spoiled, forcing Jesus Christ to come fix everything, after which the duty to keep the world from getting spoiled again, if fulfilled, will permit humans a permanent place in heaven. This interpretation is a distortion that paralyzes us.

I consider that what is first in the order of our knowledge is an intuition of salvation, first worked out and elaborated over many centuries of ups and downs by the Jewish people, which issues forth into a very special refinement of this Jewish discovery in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is starting from this intuition of salvation that a critical understanding of creation was worked out, and not the other way round.

If we stay with chronological intuition (that starts with creation, etc.), we get stuck. But the world wasn’t created to be saved. Salvation created the world. Or rather, salvation CREATES the world.

This notion is wonderful enough on its own, but one of its really terrific consequences is that it puts the biblical story of creation into its proper light. In other words, it shows how pointless today’s Creation vs. Evolution debate is.

That’s my reaction, at least -- Alison might or might not like it. I hope I’m not twisting his words.

We always start from where we are. When Catholics say that God created the universe, we are not making a claim about a ‘religious’ way of describing how things came into existence… We are saying something about our contemporary wonder at the fact that they came into existence at all… We are expressing amazement at the gratuity of it all.
       This expression of amazement at the gratuity of it all is not an alternative scientific explanation of anything. It is, on the contrary, a condition of possibility for us not to be frightened of advancing as far as we possibly can in our understanding of how things came to be.
     …So we make a real mistake if we consider creation to be something which very specially has to do with the remote past… The only access we have to the past is the access for which our present understanding equips us.
     …Both the contemporary holding on to a sense of wonder or mystery that there is anything at all, and the contemporary refusal to accept specifically ‘religious’ accounts of how things came to be are central to what we are talking about when we talk about creation. And of course, the ability to do those things, to hold on to that mystery, and to refuse religious shortcuts, let alone the ability to do both of those together, are abilities which have been acquired over a long time, and have a history. (49-50)

tap, tap... Is this thing on?

2006-11-10T12:34:00.000-05:00

Judging by the intermittent flow of comments arriving at this blog, a few people are actually reading what I’ve posted. This means I’d better give them something new to read.

In the news:
I voted this week. Hip, hip, hooray for the Democrats. I guess I did my part.

I’m preparing to move in with Mr. Supersweetie. At the end of the month I leave Manhattan, where I have lived ALL MY LIFE, and set sail for Astoria, Queens. The distress of leaving the borough I call home is abating little by little with the help of Mr. Supersweetie’s love. In the meantime, anyone looking for an apartment share in Manhattan should be aware that my current roommate is looking for a replacement for me. Do contact me if you might be interested.

At the moment I am devouring the books of James Alison. Any further postings here on Penguin Great Ideas and Anglo-Catholics: What they believe will have to wait because all my powers of concentration are focused at the moment on Alison’s far-reaching vision of Christianity, gayness, and human conflict. Faith Beyond Resentment was a huge eye-opener, staggering. I wanted to re-read it and ponder it and write about it, but the impulse to move on to its sequel, On Being Liked, was too great to resist. And I’m so glad I didn’t -- it’s an even better book, taking up unanswered questions posed in the previous one.

He’s so good, I’d like to give you taste. I’ll quote him in a second posting.

Don't hold, don't aim

2006-10-17T14:50:00.000-04:00

I just read John Weir’s new novel, What I Did Wrong.

The narrator, Tom, an English Teacher at Queens College, recollects an episode from his high school days. Scared of sports, and targeted as gay, some kids beat him up after gym class. Feeling hopeless, he goes to his best friend Richie’s house. Richie, a gifted athlete, distracts Tom by teaching him how to shoot a basketball. No one ever had the patience to teach this to Tom before, so until now he has judged himself to be “pretty bad.”

“I can’t even really hold a ball. I mean, forget throwing it. Forget aiming it.” Richie offers Tom two rules: Don’t hold the ball, and don’t aim. “Can you do those two things?” Tom shoots, and the ball goes in the basket, for the first time in his life. They play for an hour practicing baskets, and about half of Tom’s shots go in. It’s a huge accomplishment.

Tom realizes this was the happiest day of his life. “I don’t want kindness, exactly, or salvation, but just a way to grasp things and how to throw them away, a mental trick: Don’t hold, don’t aim.”

Weir could have written these passages to describe my singing. Both my problems (for years, no one was able to teach me the right way, I didn’t know how to hold or let go) and the solutions (Don’t hold, don’t aim).

As I practice this week, when I remember the “Don’t hold, don’t aim” rules my singing is better, easier, and more natural than ever before. I don’t tense up, and my vocal mechanism does pretty much what it’s been trained to do, without my conscious interference (“breathe, prepare, support, find the pitch, blah, blah”). This new ease isn’t consistent yet in all the music I sing, but a sprout is taking root. To sing using a conscious mental trick like “don’t hold, don’t aim” risks being distracting. One needs to keep one’s mind on how to make music, rather than on the mechanical operations of the voice. The rules will work best when they become automatic and unconscious.

People who... whatever

2006-10-12T12:16:00.000-04:00

At the very end of her concert at Madison Square Garden last night, Barbra Streisand sang "Just Smile" as an encore.

In ballads like this, custom permits a singer to drop out at the start of the second verse and let the music play alone until she rejoins for the final chorus. In performance, a singer like Streisand might draw the ears of the audience in closer during the pause with a brief, spoken remark intended to express something personal.

Last night, as the orchestra flowed into the second verse of "Just Smile" Streisand started to murmur a few words about the airplane accident on the East Side that had happened earlier in the day. She spoke as she went along, heartfelt and consoling, but a little aimlessly. As the music inched closer to the chorus, she suddenly ran out of time to talk and floundered, “Our hearts go out… to… all those who… whatever.”

At least I think that’s what she said. Many times in the course of the evening words were lost in the Garden’s inapt acoustic. So I may have misheard her fumbled remark. Whatever the case, I shook with the giggles all the way to the end of the song.

My favorite attraction at Madison Square Garden

2006-10-12T02:14:00.000-04:00

Since 1994, I've been to Madison Square Garden twice. One of those times was to see Barbra Streisand live in concert. Tonight, with Mr. Supersweetie and his sister at my side, I entered the Garden a third time, to see the entertainment legend I had excitedly worshipped twelve years ago.

Streisand's voice sounds wonderful; better than I expected, possibly better than I remember in 1994. Time has given her sound a full, dusky quality and a warmth that doesn't come across in the recordings. Returning to songs she sang in the 60s, it would be natural for her to resort to lower transpositions for comfort. But I'm not sure she did. The high end of her range seems to be mostly still there, and she was often generous with it.

According to a man I chatted up on the subway ride home after the concert, Streisand's performance tonight was more exciting and better sung than Monday's. An Italian, from Arezzo, the man had travelled to New York especially to attend both of Streisand's Garden appearances this week.

Published reviews of Monday's concert lamented the weak spoken sections that moved the show along (or didn't) in between songs. I think Streisand and her staff paid attention to the press, because tonight these sections were paced well enough to end just before irritation set in. The "Happy Days Are Here Again" duet with the George Bush impersonator was thankfully cut. As for the heckler incident that made news of Monday's concert echo around the world and back a million times, Streisand offered this comment (which I quote to the best of my recollection):

"You may have heard about my outburst the other night." [laughter, applause] Well, I guess you can take the girl out of Brooklyn but you can't take Brooklyn out of the girl." [Cheering. Cue next song]

The male vocal quartet, Il Divo, a filler act who sang while Streisand went backstage to rest, was undermined by an amplification system that showed their voices to woeful disadvantage. (At least I hope the sound system was to blame.) Their stiff, off-the-shelf blocking is ripe for imitation, which I hope to do sometime with three other tenor friends of mine.

Here is a program list, reproduced from my imperfect memory. I think I've forgotten at least one song, and may have bungled the order slightly. I urge anyone who also attended the concert to post corrections and/or ammendments.

Overture -- Funny Girl (stage version)

Starting Here, Starting Now
Down with Love
The Way We Were
Come Rain or Come Shine
Ma première chanson
Evergreen (joined by Il Divo)

Unbreak My Heart (french version) -- Il Divo
Le canzon non si spiegano -- Il Divo
My Way/a mi mañera -- Il Divo

Don't Rain on My Parade
Funny Girl
Music That Makes Me Dance... My Man
People

INTERMISSION (20 min.)

Entr'acte (medley incl. Funny Girl opening credits music - film version, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, etc.)

Passerà (?) -- Il Divo
Music of the Night -- Il Divo (joined by Streisand)

When the Sun Comes Out
Carefully Taught... Children Will Listen
In a Very Unusual Way
What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life
Stoney End (parody version)
Happy Days are Here Again
Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair
Cock-Eyed Optimist
My Shining Hour
(I think I've forgotten a song that came at this point)
Somewhere (joined by Il Divo)

Encores:
Until I See You Again
Don't Rain on My Parade (reprise)
Just Smile

Petty Grievance

2006-10-11T11:39:00.000-04:00

I often notice an error from people who talk or write about my religious denomination. I urge them all to follow the guidelines below.

The noun “Episcopalian” is for people.
The adjective “Episcopal” is for things.

Ex.(a): “She’s an Episcopalian.” “The Episcopalians are out of their minds.” “Are you Episcopalian?”
Ex.(b): “The church across the street is Episcopal.” “The Episcopal service is held in the University Chapel on Tuesdays.” “He is an Episcopal priest.”

The last example shows "Episcopal" applied to a person rather than a thing. That's perfectly correct. Why? I don’t know.

Grammatically, I would say “Episcopalian” works like an adjectival noun (as in “The Texas senate”) while “Episcopal” is definitely an adjective (“Are you Texan?”). Psychologically, perhaps in some way Episcopalians regard ordained ministers -- Bishops, Priests, Deacons -- as things rather than people.

Be aware that the expression, “Episcopalian priest,” is wrong, wrong, WRONG. It's true that Episcopal priests are Episcopalians but the sentence "Episcopalian priests are Episcopal" is just a total mess.

If any of you are listening, I beg you, please follow the guidelines.

Starstruck

2006-10-09T01:24:00.000-04:00

Today I think I saw a virtual celebrity. I'm pretty sure it was Andy, a blogger I really look up to.

We were walking in opposite directions, he with a man to whom he was talking, and I by myself, en route to a choir rehearsal. I surmised that Andy had just left Sunday morning service at his parish, the very parish I was about to enter.

Our eyes met for a moment. He may or may not have sensed that I was an admirer. I, not wanting to appear like some sort of 'autograph seeker'-type, averted my gaze and ducked into the entrance to the church house that was my destination. It wasn't the right moment to make an approach, especially since Andy was with someone.

I felt so shy. He-- a big star, and me, nobody.

Anglo-Catholics: What they believe -- II.

2006-10-06T15:58:00.000-04:00

What is Anglo-Catholicism?

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing. But there is a thing called Catholicism, which is a way of loving God. And there are people called Anglo-Catholics; that is, Catholics who are in communion with the Anglican Church in different parts of the world. And as Anglo-Catholics are not in the least ashamed of saying that they believe their way of loving God to be the best possible way in all the circumstances, it is desirable to explain, at least in outline, the principles on which their belief rests.

I just love this.

Most people don’t know what on earth Anglo-Catholicism is. Instead of telling people I’m Anglo-Catholic, I usually just say I’m an Episcopalian, which is kind of a half-truth. Explaining what an Anglo-Catholic is comes across as complicated, or just nutty. Aren’t there enough different Christian sects? Anglo-Catholics don’t even seem to agree among ourselves what we are or should be.

I think most people only notice the word, “Catholic,” which sets their minds right away upon preconceptions of what a Roman Catholic is. So any definition of Anglo-Catholicism usually has to back-pedal from there. Being able to say, light-heartedly, “What’s an Anglo-Catholic? Nothing at all really,” would be really freeing. And to disarm Catholicism of all its baggage, calling it, “A way of loving God,” would be, well, really exciting. I guess the trick is getting people who have a reason to be skeptical about Catholicism (or God in general) to believe that the remark is true.

I don’t know whether or not Anglo-Catholics really say unashamedly that their way of loving God is the best way. Some of us do. But who knows how many of us there are that don’t. Or aren’t sure.

I feel a lot of pressure to avoid regarding any one religion as better than another. Touting one’s religion as “better” and others as “worse” is risky, even belligerent. But the pressure “to believe in something” is just as great. A personality without beliefs is weak and deficient. Simply having a viewpoint in life requires basic beliefs, religious or not. So a person must both possess and deny his or her beliefs at the same time. Is that even possible?

Anglo-Catholics: What they believe -- I.

2006-10-06T15:40:00.000-04:00

Intro.:

I’ve just been reading a leaflet about Anglo-Catholicism. It’s a good, clear explanation of its topic. And it's as short as it could possibly be without sacrificing the basics. As I read it, I can feel myself reacting to the text in various ways, which is kind of exciting.

I should probably explain my interest in the subject. I'm an Episcopalian, baptized and confirmed as an adult, and from the beginning I have aligned myself with the Anglo-Catholic faction of my denomination. I cannot claim to be a lockstep adherent to the Anglo-Catholic movement’s precepts because, on a personal level, the intensity of my interest, devotion, and faith tends to vary. But I always regard with seriousness the faith I wish to proclaim, even if I fail to do so.

The leaflet is nearly 80 years old. But the writing style is clear and unadorned. The content avoids specific issues of its day, enabling the text to remain an accurate statement of facts, comprehensible and useful today.

The leaflet is accessible via two different links (that I know of): a parish link: the Church of the Resurrection, New York City, and an archival link: Project Canterbury.

N.B.: In acknowledgment of the work of the transcriber, Melissa Hunsberger, I will present the text in my blog, bit by bit, entry by entry, exactly as I access it from the internet, unless I lose interest and decide to stop.

Title info:

Anglo-Catholics: What they believe
By Leonard Prestige

Published for the Catholic Literature Association of the Anglo-Catholic Congress by the Society of SS. Peter & Paul, Limited, Westminster House, 8 Great Smith Street, London, S.W. I, 1927

Dropping in on the Met: Idomeneo

2006-10-03T13:13:00.000-04:00

Idomeneo last night at the Met. Having lucked into two comps, I brought along Mr. Supersweetie.

Ben Heppner sang the title role in this opera, just as he had 15 years ago when he debuted at the Met. I had been there then, and I was glad to hear him in this role again after all this time. I love Idomeneo very much. The depth of emotion in the vocal lines and the inventiveness in the orchestral writing are miracles of art.

But Idomeneo succeeds only when all the artists involved can do the music and the drama justice. Since this is rarely the case I tend to get disappointed, but I try to stay as open as I can to whatever strengths the performers offer.

I let myself enjoy Ben Heppner’s probing gravitas and robust tone, even though Anthony Rolfe Johnson’s sturdy suppleness had so much more life and complexity when I heard him in the role. I let myself enjoy Dorothea Röschmann’s biting passion as Ilia, even though I would have preferred Hei-Kyung Hong’s soaring tenderness. I let myself enjoy Kristine Jepson’s urgent portrayal of Idamante, even though I remember Anne Sofie von Otter singing the role with ten times the depth and one tenth the effort. I let myself enjoy Olga Makarina’s gleaming virtuosity as Elettra, even though Carol Vaness used to make the character’s hammy blocking completely believable and terrifying. I let myself enjoy the nimble precision of the orchestra, even though every tempo felt weightless.

I’ve been nervous about overexposing Mr. Supersweetie to performances he’s not ready to appreciate. Since he’s used to musicals, operas are mysterious to him and hard to enjoy. I tried my best to help him along with improvised explanations of opera seria during the intermissions. Espresso, bits of chocolate, and glasses of champagne also helped the medicine go down.

Now screening

2006-09-20T11:06:00.000-04:00

What am I excited about these days? A stack of lip-smacking DVDs from the library. NYPL's online catalog system of choosing videos and placing them on hold obviates any foreseeable need for Netflix or Kim's rental.

The stack at present is an embarassingly telling assortment: Crawford, Davis, and Garland titles, and an old BBC miniseries. Homo, homo, homo! Tonight a co-conspirator in vintage screen cackling will come over to my apartment and help me make inroads: our choices are "The Possessed," "The Letter," and "A Star is Born." I already watched Davis's "The Star" by myself (also starring Sterling Hayden and the infant Natalie Wood). It was pretty weak, to be honest.

But to me a greater treasure than any of these is the 1979 BBC video of "Pride and Prejudice," dramatized by Fay Weldon. This series aired on Masterpiece Theatre in 1980, when I watched it with my parents. It was my first exposure to the literature and costumery of the British Regency, and it changed my entire worldview. Today the dramaturgy and long-take video style of this miniseries will strike some as dated and static. But I appreaciate this approach. The subtlety of the acting and the language are permitted maximum impact.

Getting back to the homo dimension of this video...
More than anything else the wide eyes of my childhood drank in the fresh faces of the attractive cast: sweet and heavy-lidded Elizabeth Garvie as Eliza, chiseled and gorgeous David Rintoul as Darcy, and blond dreamboat Peter Settelen as Wickham. Today, decades later, I find I still have crushes on Darcy and Wikham. And a fascination with Eliza's hair and necklines.

Ferienschluß

2006-08-26T16:14:00.000-04:00

Mr. Supersweetie and I went to Berlin, too. Now we're back in New York.

New York is so quiet right now-- summer's calm before the storm of autumn activity.

eyes on the skies

2006-08-16T00:55:00.000-04:00

The weather in Copenhagen tends to be rainy.

According to Mr. Supersweetie, the skies often clear in the afternoon. Yesterday afternoon a rainbow formed. I noticed it as I entered the Kongens Have.

I had to hold the package of toilet paper I'd just bought between my knees as I held the camera to take this photo.

Unterwegs mit Käseblatt

2006-08-15T11:20:00.000-04:00

I arrived in Copenhagen yesterday. Mr. Supersweetie has been here all summer long, studying furniture design which relates to what he studies at home in NY during the year: interior design. His assignment at the Copenhagen program has been to design and build a chair. Here, in the cradle of modern furniture design!

When I arrived, Mr. S took me to the design school to see the chair he built. It's an armless reading chair with a seat that arcs in a large, wide curve uninterruped down to the floor. The legs are delineated by a little semicircular cutout. It's all veneer except for four brass bolts joining the back panel to the seat. Quite comfortable-- although I'd like to sit and read in it for awhile to see how the body reacts over time. Mr. S is wiped out and dazed from his final week of hard work, but I'm happy to be with him. I've missed him very much.

The apartment he shares with three other students is on the top storey (5th) of a modest building a little north of the city center, in the area around the Kastellet (a park with a military installation in it) and the Amalienborg (the royal palace). The apartment is furnished but simple. Thankfully, the kitchen has all the necessities.

My big adventure this morning was baking some frozen rolls in the oven. The instructions on the wrapping, like on everything else, were only in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish. Comprehending about half of the text, thanks to my ability to cross-reference it with the German I know, I resorted to the "cook till it's done" method, which worked just fine.

So, Copey is a very pretty city. Kind of quiet, kind of busy. The streetscapes veer predominantly towards the baroque and later. In the city center, curvy, narrow streets open onto squares frequently so there's a steady rhythm of dense streets and open areas. Canals pop into view here and there. Moving out from the center, the streets are a bit wider and straighter. I'm trying to decide how to describe this city in comparison to others. I guess it's closest to Amsterdam in scale, but with more sizeable buildings. Also more stone and stucco, less naked brick.

I have nothing particular to do, so I'm just walking and looking around. I went into a bunch of churches. Knowing today to be the Feast of the Assumption, I thought a Roman Catholic church might be relied upon to have some sort of big, public mass. But, alas, Denmark is not Portugal, and I found no special celebration scheduled. There's a concert at the Tivoli concert hall tonight with Rolando Villazon -- sold out, of course. I'll go to an organ recital instead.

Must remember to buy toilet paper. Isn't foreign travel exciting?

Man fragt sich...

2006-08-10T13:25:00.000-04:00

Kalenderblatt is an experiment. I’m translating it from a German website and researching the links myself.

The cons: it’s time-consuming to put together, and the unsplashy layout looks a bit underwhelming. Also, the material is completely unoriginal, and therefore cravenly unadventurous.

The Pros: maybe it’s educational and/or vaguely interesting.

As I say, I’m trying Kalenderblatt out. The posts will continue as whim dictates, until public outcry or personal weariness demand they cease. Either of which could occur in the next few moments.

Kalenderblatt 10.viii.06

2006-08-10T12:11:00.000-04:00

Commemorations

995: Battle of Lechfeld, near Augsburg. The final defeat of the Magyar invaders by German King Otto I.
1566: Beeldenstorm in Flanders. The destruction of religious images spread throughout the Low Countries in revolt against Spanish King Phillip II’s suppression of the Reformation movement.
1793: Palais du Louvre opened to public as an art museum.
1881: First International Electricity Exhibition held in Paris
1920: The Treaty of Sèvres, in which the Allied victors of World War I dissolved the Ottoman Empire.
1975: Hottest day of the century in Europe
1988: Hockey player Wayne Gretzky traded from Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings for 20 million dollars.
1994: Two smugglers apprehended at Munich airport, carrying a suitcase containing 330 grams of plutonium.
1995: Germany’s Constitutional Court delivers the Kruzifix-Urteil, ruling that the display of crucifixes in school classrooms infringes upon freedom of religion

Birthdays

1865: Alexander Glazunov, composer. Russia (d.1936)
1868: Hugo Eckener, airship pioneer. Germany (d.1954)
1877: Rudolf Hilferding: economist and politician. Austria (d.1941)
1878: Alfred Döblin, writer and medic. Germany. (d.1957)
1902: Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius, chemist. Sweden. (d.1971)
1959: Rosanna Arquette, actress. U.S.
1960: Antonio Banderas, actor. Spain.

Kalenderblatt 09.viii.06

2006-08-09T14:00:00.000-04:00

Commemorations

378: The Battle of Adrianople. Visigoths defeated troops of the Eastern Empire, spelling the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire.
1471: Election of Sixtus IV. Considered the first pope of the renaissance. Built the Sistine Chapel.
1884: Maiden voyage of “La France,” the first steerable dirigible, around Chalais-Meudon.
1896: Otto Lilienthal, civil engineer, crashed while piloting a glider, near Berlin-Lichterfelde.
1940: Opening of the Baghdad Railway, which stretched from Istanbul to Basra.
1945: Atom-bomb, “Fat Man” detonated by U.S. Air Force, over Nagasaki, Japan
1965: Singapore gained sovereignty after expulsion from Malaysian Federation.
1994: Taslima Nasreen, physician/writer/activist, fled Bangladesh and went into exile.
1996: Boris Yeltsin reelected President of Russia

Birthdays

1631: John Dryden. Poet, critic. England. (d.1700)
1819: William Morton. Dentist. Introduced the use of ether as an anesthetic. U.S. (d.1868)
1919. Emilio Vedova. Painter. Italy.
1920: Willi Heinrich. Novelist. Germany.
1928: Gerd Ruge. Journalist, publicist, foreign political correspondent TV/radio. Germany.
1963: Whitney Houston. Soul/Pop singer. U.S.
1968: Gillian Anderson. Actress. U.S.

From simpleton to sage -- Seneca, pt. 3

2006-08-07T17:19:00.000-04:00

On Tranquility of Mind

In this Dialogue, Seneca’s friend, Serenus, finds himself tossed about by conflicting impulses. [“I try to be practical, but I slip up all the time.”] The resulting mental agitation, which ill befits a person named, “Serenus,” is too much for him and he writes to Seneca for advice. And Seneca provides plenty of it. His guidelines for maintaining mental tranquility form a source text of Stoic philosophy. The platitudes come fast and furious, together with musings and illustrations from lives of personalities of the time.

The “Great Ideas”:
-- Don’t worry.
-- Be satisfied with yourself, shame is not a great alternative. With shame comes malice, which brings aggravation, which leads to brooding, which causes boredom.
-- Get politically involved, make yourself useful to fellow-citizens.
-- Choose friends carefully.
-- Stay detached from possessions.
-- Avoid ostentation, prefer function.
-- Be thankful for good fortune, for when it vanishes “there is no shame in returning to the point from whence you came.”
-- Don’t waste energy pointlessly.
-- Regard vices not as hateful but ridiculous.
-- Relieve extended periods of concentration with amusing diversions.

It’s a meandering text with a deceptive breeziness. I hope I’m correct to claim that Seneca resists taking his own advice too seriously. Though the sheer length of the dialogue suggests a confidence in his own ability to give advice, he concludes that no means of preserving and restoring tranquility “is strong enough for those who want to preserve such a fragile thing, unless the wavering mind is surrounded by attentive and unceasing care.”

And that, friends, is quite enough Seneca for the time being.

We are experiencing delays

2006-08-04T14:53:00.000-04:00

I'm not ready to say anything about On Tranquility of Mind yet. For one thing, it doesn't grab me. For another, I've been perpetually distracted by three other books: a Streisand bio, Anderson Cooper's Dispatches, and Julian Baggini's Making Sense, which is a philosophy-for-the-rest-of-us sort of book. And, of course, the Wonder Woman DVD.

If you want to see where I've been breaking verbal wind this week, you'll have to leave this blog and check the blogs I've provided links to on the right. I've become less a blogger and more a commenter.

That will have to change.
We'll polish off Seneca next time. Just give me another day or so.

From simpleton to sage -- Seneca, pt. 2

2006-07-28T14:06:00.000-04:00

All I know of the life of Seneca comes from an opera plot.

In Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, the emperor Nero wishes to exile his own wife in order to marry his mistress. Seneca advises against doing this, so Nero, understandably irritated, executes him. I haven’t seen the opera in a long time, and my recollection of the plot may be fuzzy. But that is the sole foreknowledge I bring to reading Seneca. I didn’t know that he was also exiled from Rome, which was when wrote a letter to his mother, Consolation to Helvia.

Poor Helvia was dealt a bad hand by life. Her mother died in childbirth, and later on she lost her uncle and her husband, too. Twenty days after the additional loss of her three grandchildren, her son, Seneca, was taken into exile. From Seneca’s point of view, this last misfortune was the worst for her. (For the purposes of understanding his letter, we’ll have to accept this assertion.) The “Consolation” he provides Helvia is an explanation of why exile is not so bad. He thinks this will make her feel better.

Some “Great Ideas”:
-- People exile themselves willingly all the time. Most of the population of Rome consists of people who left their homeland to seek the prosperity and excitement of the seat of the Empire. You don’t see them complaining.
-- We lose little in exile, “when the two finest things of all accompany us wherever we go, universal nature and our individual virtue.”
-- “If you have the strength to tackle any one aspect of misfortune you can tackle them all.”

I guess this is why they call Seneca a Stoic Philosopher.

Next time: On Tranquility of Mind

From simpleton to sage -- Seneca, pt. 1

2006-07-21T17:19:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer: I am not an academic. I am not a critic. I am not even a writer. I am the peanut gallery. The views I express are not to be taken as learned, exhaustive or correct. I would prefer them to be regarded as cute.

Seneca’s letter, On the Shortness of Life, the first essay in the Great Ideas paperback of the same title, could also be called, “Why Life Seems So Short.” The reason is: because most of us don’t know how to spend our time well, and end up wasting it.

Seneca divides people loosely into two sorts: “preoccupied” people who spend their time advancing themselves (mainly but not exclusively) in public circles, and “leisured” people who tend to their own needs and the enhancement of their personal lives.

“preoccupied” people = bad
“leisured” people = good

A great idea I picked up on:
The preoccupied loathe the past because their memories are unpleasant, ignore the present because they believe that time passes too slowly, and fear the future because their longed-for pleasures are too fleeting.
The leisured are able to grasp the past in their recollection, to use the present, and to anticipate the future. This gives them a long, rewarding life and prepares them well for death.

Huh? That’s not exactly what I meant to say when I started typing.
I’ll just add this: I am one of the preoccupied, but I’d rather be one of the leisured.

Next time: Seneca’s second letter: Consolation to Helvia

From simpleton to sage

2006-07-20T17:13:00.000-04:00

Wisdom for sale!

The books in Penguin’s Great Ideas series have a strange power over me. The 24 titles (40 titles are available in Canada and the UK) contain excerpts from the canon of significant “thought” literature, i.e. Philosophy, Social Criticism, Religious Scripture, etc. Displayed at bookstores in special, compartmental stands, they positively twinkle at the onlooker. Crisp, sassy, and appealing, these little duodecimo tablets with ‘smartistic’ covers promise to divert me and make me smart. They look so… easy.

But I can’t completely trust them. Each book is so brief that nothing more than a superficial misrepresentation of its author’s mighty thoughts seems possible. Let’s be honest, I may never get around to, for instance, the complete Essays of Montaigne, so I’ll give Great Ideas a try. I promise not to claim to know everything about Montaigne after two chapters.

Ever-dependable, the NYPL has 10 of the titles available for loan! I spotted two copies at the Jefferson Market branch in Greenwich Village and pounced upon one gladly. Standing on the checkout line, I daydreamed about my gradual transformation into a lettered person. (But it was to be one step forward, two steps back: the other item I borrowed was a DVD of “Wonder Woman - season two.”)

I have chosen “On the Shortness of Life” by Seneca, the earliest writer in the series. The book’s cover quote solemnly intones, “Life is long if you know how to use it.” Philosophy is not meant to be self-help, yet I can’t resist the temptation to view it that way. I want this book to give me guidance through the pesky career crisis I’m experiencing right now.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Brevity is the soul of wit

2006-07-18T17:11:00.000-04:00

Thank you, Hamlet. You hit the nail on the head, yet again.

I hereby stake my claim: the ideal everyday blog entry should be around 200-300 words in length. To the best of my ability, I will limit my future postings to this length.

Loosely speaking, a posting of 200-300 words permits a reader's eye to take in the whole of the text in a single glance at the average computer screen, and therefore presents itself as just substantial enough to express a thought adequately and engage the attention without threatening a reader's time and patience.

The end.

(98 words, not including Title or parenthetical word count)

Joie de livre

2006-07-17T17:01:00.000-04:00

Let me tell you about my little book problem.

I can’t resist books. I also can’t seem to finish them. No, wait, that’s not true. I do finish books, but the time it takes me to finish them far outstrips the degree of enthusiasm I experience at the time I take them out of the library, or, *gasp*, bought them.

I try to be realistic about my habits. I try to buy only books that I “need” and that I know I will get around to reading sooner or later. And I’ve been pretty good about it for a long time. I can pat myself on the back for my moderation. The actual reading of a book, however, is the true challenge. One must make time for reading, and I am bad about that. I am distractible and restless. And when I’m tired, as I often am, I am both, to a heightened degree. Sometimes I need “Family Guy” more than I need James Alison.

Book binging is not the biggest problem in the world. But it’s a bit embarrassing. You’d think I was a voracious reader and vastly learned. I certainly don’t feel as if I am. I just “get on to a lot of things,” as one does. That is, I get an idea in my head that I NEED to explore. Or I hear about a writer (on the radio, at a blog, from an acquaintance) about whom I simply MUST inform myself, and off I go to the New York Public Library to snap the desired tome that will lift me to a better plane of existence from the system reserves or… *frisson*, immediate checkout.

For your information, I am not much of a fiction reader. I pick away almost exclusively at non-fiction. I am not proud of this, but I must follow my heart where it leads. I have worse flaws.

Lunchtime often leads me to one of NYPL’s nearby, central midtown branches. The Mid-Manhattan and Donnell branches are equidistant from the Death Star -- I mean my office -- and they are public treasures of the first order. I never thought I would be glad to spend so much time in places of such architectural dinginess and grim, bare-bones civic atmosphere as these public library branches. But I walk to the library with the excitement of a pilgrim approaching Santiago de Compostela. Each and every time.

And it’s free.

But at times the library fails me. My interests are particular and the books I want sometimes verge on the arcane. The library is not always equal to my greed. In such instances I pay a call to my secret paramours, the second-hand bookshops. I am not afraid of them. Most are better organized and less dusty than their detractors believe. I found quite a few good ones in the University of Chicago area when I was there two weeks ago. But New York has one or two shops at which one need not sneeze (I did mention these stores are not dusty). The Strand, for instance. A gold mine, take my word for it. And the venerable, historic Gotham Book Mart, one block’s walk, as luck would have it, from the Death Star.

I can exercise restraint, and I do. I do not sacrifice my rent money to second-hand books. Just my time. You would be dismayed by the growing stack of reading on the hallway shelf in my apartment. It’s blocking the daylight from the windows.

Today’s posting is brought to you by Guilt. Guilt: haunting America’s bloggers, from coast to coast, who fail to post for months at a time, who then resort to writing anything, just ANYTHING, when the mood hits. Like me. And you!

Meilensteine des Monats -- 31.v.2006

2006-05-31T23:48:00.000-04:00

Books:
READING: The Fingerprints of God by Robert Farrar Capon; Writing Without Teachers by Peter Elbow; Age of Bronze - Vol.2: Sacrifice by Eric Shanower
FINISHED: I Am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell; Age of Bronze - Vol.1: A Thousand Ships by Eric Shanower; The Unconscious Civilization by John Ralston Saul

Articles/Essays:
Carnal Knowledge by Bill Buford - The New Yorker, 1.v.2006

Plays:
Cubicles by Alexander Danner (City Attic Theatre)

Art:
David Milne, Art Gallery of Ontario; Peter Doig, Art Gallery of Ontario; Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul, MOMA; Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City

Dance:
Mixed program: A Delicate Battle; There, below; Grand Pas Classique; Petrushka - National Ballet of Canada (Hummingbird Centre)

Music:
PERFORMED: A Song to David by William Albright; anthems of the church year;
RECORDED: Heiligmesse by F.J. Haydn

Film:
RIPFest #8 - seven short movie musicals

Guilty Pleasures -- video:
Family Guy (on DVD); Coupling (BBC-A); Footballers' Wives (BBC-A); American Dad (on DVD -- viewed in Toronto, oddly enough)

And, oh yes, I launched my blog.

Sing cuccu nu

2006-05-28T00:41:00.000-04:00

Where do all memorable holidays begin?
Truthfully, the holiday weekend did not really begin for me here. It began in bed with a much-needed late rising. But I did pass a couple of hours at the laundromat this evening, in order to be able to ring in the summer with clean clothes. Earlier I had returned to Union Square Farmers Market to look for ramps. As I suspected-- there were no more for sale. The season is over.

But that's good news, in a way. The day was glary and sultry. I walked the streets in shorts, T-shirt and sandals. Sidewalk arguments and car-stereo music tumbled in through the open windows of my apartment. Welcome, summer.

Ramps? Ramps!

2006-05-23T01:01:00.000-04:00

Originally posted Tues 23 May 2006:

Each April I am overcome by a powerful longing. A longing for two special things that Spring bestows upon us. In some years these things appear early, in other years (this year, for instance) they seem to appear later. They are: asparagus and ramps.

Everyone knows asparagus. Many grocers sell aspragus all year, but only in April does it begin to grow in this general region of America. The sweet flavor, low price, and sheer abundance of the crop make binging de rigeur. I could easily eat asparagus every day for the full month or so of its season. I'm sure that many people share my obsession.

But ramps? They are not as widely known. They are a vegetable that is something like a cross between leeks and scallions. They have a plump, white root which sprouts a short, floppy, purplish stalk crowned with long, broad, grassy leaves. Ramps have a sharp, garlic-like fragrance and taste, but a mellower, rounder, and fresher character than garlic or scallions, with less sting. Bright and savory might be another description. Some people find them too strong. I suspect that those people don't have much of a taste for the Allium genus in the first place. Chacun à son goût.

According to what I read on the web (search blogs for ramps and you'll get dozens of hits) they grow from Georgia to Québec, from the east coast into the midwest. They have a big following in West Virginia, where they grow all over the place. The ramps season is even briefer than asparagus's, and because comparatively few people know about them in this country, demand is lower, and the crop is smaller. But popularity seems to have grown in the last decade. New York restaurants have put ramps on their menus and articles about them have appeared in the New York Times, granting ramps snob appeal. In fact, a Times article this season gave them a loud ho-hum, claiming that ramps are nothing to get excited about. This is a true sign that ramps have gone establishment. I'll freely admit that part of their appeal is their scarcity. Knowing that you can enjoy ramps for only a very short time each year, you appreciate them more.

My first acquaintance with ramps occurred when I spent a spring in Germany. I tasted the local variety called, "Bärlauch" (= bear leek). It grows there like weeds and is a common ingredient in springtime cooking. I did some research and found that it goes by different names in different parts of Europe, and that we have our own form in America.

The season is coming to an end now, it only lasts about three weeks. This past weekend I was still able to buy some at the Union Square Farmers Market, which is the best place around to find them. The grocery stores charge way too much. Skip Garden of Eden and Whole Foods. Fairway had a small box of limp ramps that were set up way too inconspicuously in a refrigerated shelf.

The Union Square merchant in the photo below sold them as his only item. His were fresh, lovely, and cheap. A steady stream of ramps fans approached his stand, gleefully snatching them up.

The handwritten signboard at his table has some restaurant cards tacked to it, suggesting that this man is the supplier to prominent New York chefs. Customers have scribbled recipes in magic marker onto the board, and they're all pretty appetizing to read.

You can use ramps any way you would use other types of onion-family vegetables. The entire stalk is edible, including the greens. Even though fresh ramps are a bit sharp, I've heard that they're enjoyable chopped and tossed raw into salads. Any cooking must be brief -- the flavor of ramps weakens drastically if they're cooked more than a few minutes.

Here's my favorite recipe. It's just a simple side-dish. But it's really easy and fantastic:
- Cook some brown rice. (for instance, 2 cups cooked)
- Sauté some sliced mushrooms (6-8oz) in butter and/or olive oil. Put them aside.
- Chop a healthy-sized bunch of ramps (maybe six stalks) in any fashion: I like large pieces.
- Using the same pan that the mushrooms cooked in, warm some more butter or olive oil on low-to-medium heat and sauté the ramps. Start with the chopped white roots, a minute or so is long enough. Then add the chopped stalks and leaves to the pan and keep everything moving until the leaves wilt, but are still fresh and green-looking.
- Toss the sautéd ramps and mushrooms into the rice, and add soy sauce and pepper to taste.

Mr. Supersweetie suggests sautéing some sliced ginger with the mushrooms and/or the ramps, and removing it before mixing everything into the rice. I haven't tried it yet, but I will-- I'm sure it'll be delicious!

Jeanne d'Arc sans bûcher

2006-05-19T14:44:00.000-04:00

Before my experience of hearing Ewa Podleś perform with the Toronto Symphony completely recedes into unreliable memory, here are some observations.

Her tone was really veiled. The sound lacked point in all parts of her range, and it failed to carry. The voice seemed to be functioning well and I got the feeling she didn’t lack resonance, but the sound just did not travel. Why? I’m not sure.

Were the acoustics of Roy Thomson Hall to blame? The hall underwent a multi-million-dollar renovation a few years ago. It looks like the Carousel in "Logan's Run." The improved acoustics seem serviceable, though quite engineered-sounding. The echo time was just so, the overtones were just so, etc. The Thomson Hall sound seems to demand monumentality of expression from the stage, otherwise music sounds tiny, under-pronounced, frozen. It could be that the hall is just not flattering to the voice. Or maybe my seat to the side, two levels overhead was beyond the sonic reach of a crafted performance.

Were there range issues in Podleś’s voice? “Giovanna d’Arco” is real contralto territory, quite low-lying most of the time. The “Maid of Orleans” aria lay higher, and Podleś’s sound was stronger there, though not a lot louder. The Tchaikovsky aria was musically more successful than the Rossini, too. The intense, brooding affect of Tchaikovsky fit Podleś’s temperament better than the fresh, vivacious sparkle of Rossini. The composers were talking about the same Joan of Arc, but wrote two different psychodramas. I liked the orchestral arrangement of the Rossini by contemporary composer, Salvatore Sciarrino. It sounded like typical Rossini operatic writing.

I should add that the Tchaikovsky Symphony at the end was by and large disappointing. The gestures and the phrasing were so heavily smoothed out that the musicians could have been playing Schubert. Not much of an attempt was made to communicate a story behind this rampaging, mood-swingy music, which cries out for emotional engagement. All I heard was background music for a TV commercial. I don’t know whether to blame the players or Richard Bradshaw, the conductor. They all seemed to know what they were doing, with no regrets about how incredibly bland their work was.

Ausflug

2006-05-11T11:37:00.000-04:00

I'm in Toronto this week. I haven't been to Canada in almost 12 years, and I've never visited this city.

Tonight I'll hear the Toronto Symphony perform at Roy Thomson Hall, which looks like an enormous hairnet. Or humidifier filter. Or a Vornado fan on its side.

Ewa Podleś will be the soloist in a "Joan of Arc"-themed program. I'll post thoughts tomorrow if anything interesting to say occurs to me.

I saw Podleś in recital at Carnegie Hall a few years ago -- I THINK it was a few years ago. I remember liking her, and certainly enjoyed seeing a real, virtuoso contralto getting the spotlight. And one who looked sort of like an Upper West Side mom from the old days, at that. (Whatever that means... stream-of-consciousness is taking over) But I also remember that from my seat in the Orchestra section, the bottom of her range "disappeared," which was surprising. I blamed the acoustics at the time. We'll see what happens tonight.

I've only heard the Tchaikovsky aria and the Rossini cantata on CD, and can't remember much about them. So the experience will be fresh and.... unbiased? I'm also looking forward to hearing Symph.IV. The last time I heard it was also at Carnegie years ago, with an out-of-town band (which?) under Jesus Lopez-Cobos. He was terrific! I still remember how exciting it was.

Toronto's an okay town. Not much is going on this week, and a number of major tourist attractions are under heavy construction. So things are a bit ho-hum. I'm here to work with a voice teacher who is based in this city, to visit a friend, and to check out the lay of the land.

Another swan arriving

2006-05-07T20:05:00.000-04:00

Alex Richardson, tenor, with Thomas Bagwell and Reiko Uchido, piano, bowing at the end of the final "On Wings of song" recital of the season, presented by the Marilyn Horne Foundation today at Saint Bartholemew's Church. The program theme was "Songs from 1900-1910," featuring works by Stanford, Ravel, Beach, and Mahler, sung with freshness, vigor, and plenty of ringing tone. Jackie herself got pretty excited, and showered Richardson and Bagwell with compliments during the post-recital interview. The recital will air on WQXR-FM 96.3 on Sat 20 May 2006, at 9:00pm.

Perhaps I've been under a rock for too long, but I've never seen supertitles in use at a recital. Notice the big white board in the pic over Alex's head and the piano. That's where large white text was projected, in English (even during the English-language songs). I squirmed at first, but after about three seconds I was used to it, and really greatful for it during the Ravel. Is this something the Horne Foundation is pioneering, or are people already installing it all over? I hope they are. It's pretty terrific. And yes, you can look away if you choose, it doesn't distract from the performers. The only drawback in this case was the obstruction of the beautiful frescoes on the chapel wall behind the performers. But that's hardly ever a problem in most concert halls.

The Next Swan

2006-05-04T11:42:00.000-04:00

Last night, Wednesday 3 May, Klaus Florian Vogt debuted at the Metropolitan Opera as Lohengrin, taking over the role from Ben Heppner who had otherwise sung the whole run of this season's production. I was in the audience, accompanied by Mr. Supersweetie, who had had no previous exposure to Wagner (talk about baptism by fire!)

Supersweetie survived the evening commendably. And despite his relative inexperience with this type (or any type) of opera, he was able to appreciate Vogt's unusual excellence.

Unlike many Heldentenöre (if that's how Vogt can be classified), Vogt's voice is completely free of baritonal huskiness. Not that baritonal huskiness is a bad thing -- I like it a lot of the time -- but the absence of that characteristic in this fach borders on the unimaginable. Vogt's Lohengrin is closer in impression to Ian Bostridge than James King, if you can imagine such a thing.

Before you succumb to nausea, let me try to explain. This voice lacks neither power nor volume. I really couldn't believe my ears. His Act I entrance was so tender and youthful-sounding, that I really thought he was a teenager. I feared the worst -- "how will he ever sing the rest of this opera?" (I even thought he might have been miked.) But the rest of the opera was absolutely effortless for him. I can't understand it.

This ease and lightness perfectly conveyed the purity of Lohengrin's character. It really worked. As the evening went on Vogt put more heft into his tone here and there, so it was clear that he had more to give when he wanted to. I'm pretty confident that the tonal purity was a musical choice and not a crutch. He was not undersinging.

However...

When Vogt sings other roles, does he put that hidden extra heft to use? I'm not sure that his Florestan would be as effective as his Lohengrin if he sings it the same way. It would be too pale. Bacchus maybe. But one wonders....

I've been trying to find other opinions about him on the web today. So far I see no gossip at all in the blogosphere. Was anyone else at the Met last night?