The Piano, Pencil, and Prada

Today I woke up late, but well-rested and happy. Clouds overspread the sky during much of the day; I stayed inside and read Guardian and New York Times articles, browsed YouTube, and played the piano.

Lately I'd practically given up on my piano-playing. It seems that I won't make any more progress in any case, and for a while I no longer felt compelled to work through moods or troubled thoughts with it. But since then there have been moods and troubled thoughts in plenty, so I turned to the piano again and played much more expressively than usual (which is the upside of gloominess). The first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (despite its endless potential in boringness and kitsch) and the B flat major sonata of Schubert fit my mood particularly well, as did Bach's Goldberg Variations. These three compositions have what I prize most in music, which I think of as "nobility": a mixture of deep feeling, unforced grandeur, beauty, and seriousness. In recorded music I look for the same thing; I don't see the point of playing classical music if the chief motivation and aim is to perform for an audience, and not to express one's self. It's unreasonable to demand that musicians should turn their feelings off and on in public, but that's what the artist's career essentially is and always has been, I think.

What I like about music best is that it conveys feeling instantly, on a simple, unanalytical level. If I am gloomy, I play that way, and don't consider why I am gloomy, or tell myself to cheer up, or pretend anything, as I would do for instance when writing in my diary. I think it's also impossible to interact with other people without having to pretend things, like trying to pay attention to them and being in a good mood when one is tired and unhappy. It is extremely safe confiding one's feelings to the piano: it, being inanimate, can't be bored; always understands; and never blames one or suggests that one should move on and stop taking things too seriously. -- As you can tell, I am a very conflicted soul. (c: -- And it can be extremely satisfying to play grumpy pieces, like Beethoven's last piano sonata in c minor. I rarely become angry and never swear (apart from "damn"), but playing the heavy chords and fortes in that sonata gives one the same sense of pleasure that one would, I believe, derive from giving someone who has richly deserved it a punch on the nose.

Among the newspaper articles, I much enjoyed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's account of curing his cold, where his voice sounded "like a throttled frog." It's often evident in travel, dining, fashion, etc. articles (especially in the Guardian) that the writer is striving to be entertaining, but whenever I meet an especially well-turned phrase I enjoy it anyway. Yesterday I also found a journal (written by a Daily Show writer) of the television and film writers' strike in the US, which has been felt even here because of the void that is created in our souls by the lack of new episodes of our favourite political satire shows, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Episodes of America's Next Top Model will be broadcast normally, but this afternoon I watched the show again on YouTube and became completely disgusted with the show's superficiality, so it makes no difference. It has turned into a cynical, soulless money-making machine. The show's mixture of fashion and sanctimoniousness is an extremely uneasy one, and it leads to hypocrisy. This season the contestants were banned from smoking, because smoking supposedly makes them bad "role models" for the children watching the show. I don't know if the ban is even legal, and it's certainly tyrannical. Couldn't the smoking scenes have been edited out anyway? Besides, anorexia and bulimia have been treated not as illnesses but as moral delinquencies, and the would-be models are never told to "lose weight" but just to "tone down a little." Last week a perfectly healthy contestant was dropped from the competition because she was no longer plus-size. Good grief.

Anyway, I've also read the New York Times (among others) obituary of Norman Mailer, and much enjoyed this quote from Gore Vidal: "He is a man whose faults, though many, add to rather than subtract from the sum of his natural achievements." But the gossip in the obituaries did irritate me. I wonder if famous people with wild lifestyles like Norman Mailer's really do as much damage as many others whose failings are scrupulously kept private. In school, at least, I found that the least pleasant fellow students were those who had been bullied themselves, or popular ones who felt superior to everyone else. Most of the students were "good" students who seriously believed that they did and would do nothing wrong or unkind. They mistook being bien-pensant (thinking what one is desired to think; conformist) for moral uprightness, and the highest good in their eyes was fitting in. It was the mischief-makers who were more generous and kind than everyone else. I don't know for sure if Mr. Mailer fit into this last category, but in any case, to paraphrase the Bible, I think that the obituary-writer who is without sin should cast the first stone.

J. read one of the obituaries with me after we had done his homework together. There is a Youth Parliament in our district of Berlin (Tempelhof-Schöneberg) that is to be disbanded; it apparently worked together with the municipal government on earth-shattering issues like setting up soccer goals. The teacher told the class to write a letter to the editor of the Berliner Morgenpost, taking a stand either for or against its dissolution, and using the arguments that were presented in the worksheets. J. didn't care that much and didn't feel he knew that much either, so I suggested that he just write that he didn't have an opinion, but state what he thought were the two strongest points, pro and con. So he wrote something in English, and I translated it into German for him. This whole exercise reminded me of things I disliked in school, for example having to formulate opinions where I didn't feel that I had enough information or interest to do it intelligently. If c'est la vie, la vie can be improved with very little effort.

Besides, I caught up on the Sartorialist and Chocolate & Zucchini blogs. The first is the website of a photographer who takes pictures of ordinary people in the street who are wearing interesting clothing. Lately, as his fame has grown, these "ordinary people" are largely superseded by Vogue editors from New York to Milan, Karl Lagerfeld, and fashionistas tottering about in Prada shoes or clutching portfolios bearing the double-C logo of Chanel. But an original person still appears here and there, and the rich and fashionable and beautiful are also worthwhile seeing in moderation. Thanks to the blog, I have been initiated into the mystic fashion jargon (e.g. "silhouette" and "proportions"), the eccentric delights of Thom Browne, and fearful controversies (e.g. sleeve length, oversized bags, and neckties that are too tightly or too loosely knotted). Now I've tired of trivial fashion detail, but even if I still rarely notice what other people are wearing, I will at least be able to notice it intelligently when I do. But my resulting explorations of the online New York Times and Guardian fashion sections and Style.com have inspired me to vague thoughts about clothing as a revelation of character, aesthetics, the use of cross-cultural references in fashion, and so on and so forth. And, though I still doubt that I could talk worthwhile-ly about fashion, I think I can drop names as well as anybody. (c:

Chocolate & Zucchini is a blog by a Parisienne who has lived in the US; she writes about cooking with a truly excellent English style and French wit. Her ingredients are rather recherché, to be found only in an organic market with a wide and varied stock, but reading about faro and spelt wheat, quinoa, fleur de sel, etc. is an agreeably exotic experience in any case.

And in my foragings on YouTube I found, among others, black-and-white clips of Marian Anderson. In one she sings the American anthem, "My Country 'Tis of Thee," in front of the Lincoln Memorial (at Eleanor Roosevelt's invitation) in 1939. But a recording that I find musically better is her beautiful rendition of "He shall feed his flock" from Händel's Messiah.