[The criticisms of the violin students' playing are hopefully not mean but just calling it as I see it, though if I were one of them these calls probably still wouldn't make me happy. As for the YouTube clips, I only linked to ones from 20th century musicians because that's the compromise with my conscience for illegally watching copyrighted material.]
From the 11th to the 13th I attended three masterclasses with the violinist Ivry Gitlis, organized by the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik and held in the Galakutschensaal II of the Marstall.
For the first day I came far too early, since the announced time of masterclasses was totally wrong. The flyers said 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., which was evidently implausible given the limits of human endurance, but the class actually started at 2:30. So I went for an idle stroll around the Lustgarten and colonnades at the Neues Museum and Bebelplatz, and visited the Schinkel-Museum in the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche again. It was cold and the snow was deep, white or cappucino-tinted or speckled with dark gravel like stracciatella ice cream. The Spree lay bare and black and it lapped quietly against the banks; here and there birds bobbed on its waters or idled on the expanses of snow on the land. Of course these places are customarily overrun by tourists, so their solemn and solitary aspect was especially compelling. There was a series of posters for the Carus exhibition at Alte Nationalgalerie, which among other things proved that the turn of the 18th/19th century was a halcyon era for pedantic blurbs. Altogether the walk was a nice old-fashioned experience.
As for the Marstall, the Musikschule's part of it is a grey stone façade that faces the Berliner Dom and the Altes Museum over the sprawling quadratic hole where the Palast der Republik used to be and where the Stadtschloss will be rebuilt. "Galakutschensaal" sounds grandiose in German, so the room itself was a minimalist let-down, the walls brick washed with terra cotta paint on two sides and covered in institutional-beige plastic bulges along the others. It is not on the ground level either, as the name suggests to me. The floor is a luminous golden parquet, however, and toward the courtyard it rises into a low stage that is seamlessly and unpretentiously integrated into the room as a whole. The ceiling is high and the light ample. On the stage there is a harpsichord and two Augustus Förster pianos, whose sound I found artificial and curiously flat, but I can only compare it to our grand piano and a legion of aged uprights which have stood me in good stead over the years.
In keeping with the egalitarian furnishings, Ivry Gitlis forewent the stage and took his seat at the front of the audience, where his violin (a light golden-brown instrument, but what really impressed me, perhaps because I am a bit of an idiot, is the fact that the violin case also contained four bows) joined him. Regarding the chin-prop vs. sponge question, he uses a sponge affixed to the underside of the violin by two elastics, tied together at the chin rest. While everyone was getting settled a woman was setting up a video camera to film everything.
From what I gathered the masterclasses were a proxy memoir on a small scale, or at least a forum for which Gitlis conscientiously gathered his experiences and thoughts, and in which he tried to record and transmit the really worthwhile ones for the benefit of the rest of us. He is eighty-seven years old now and on the last day it sounded very much as if he felt the gnawing of the tooth of time. On the other hand, even on the second and third days, when he was tired and his voice was more raspy and unfocused, he was sharp as a tack, unpretentious and congenial, and altogether a person one would want to invite over on a weekend evening and then listen to over a glass of whisky or a cigar or something, for hours. Of course he rambled but I liked it because it wasn't gratuitous and rather made one think.
As for the stretches where he played the violin himself, three things struck me particularly. Firstly, he wasn't afraid to play in an ugly way (muffled bow, different key, etc.) to demonstrate a point of technique; secondly, he was content to let the students play without trying to outshine them or frustratedly show them how it must be done; and thirdly he has a wonderful grasp of the nuances of the music whereas the students' playing, good as it was, proved a comparatively blank slate. (Altogether I expected Gitlis to be sardonic and strict, but he is polite, quite open-minded, and laidback.)
The programme began with a student from China, whose name sounded like Ji Jong (obviously I'm really not good at catching Chinese, Japanese, and Korean names, so I'll be making up most of those). She played from Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2. Her approach was a trifle humourless and aggressive, suggesting a musical education spiritually akin to military training, and she spooled off the piece very ably but without pausing to form a phrase or bring out quirks in the music. On the piano the accompanist didn't play with much greater variety of interpretation; it appears as if it accompanists are denied the right to imagination, and though this one evidently didn't lack sensibility her playing didn't express much. Otherwise Ji Jong played remarkably well; her tone was warm, a little dark, and interestingly shaded; and it was no task to listen as she held one's interest throughout.
After words of general praise, Gitlis remarked that her playing was "very healthy. . . . Perhaps too healthy," and then began in his conversational manner to investigate the possibilities for improvement. He asked her to tell a story, which after some hesitation and — with unexpected humour given her otherwise stony demeanour — she did. (The story: A man tells someone that he believes he's seen his face before; the other replies that it's highly doubtful since his head has never left his shoulders.) Then Gitlis explained that when we tell a story we don't just bluntly state events; we alter our voice, fill in details, and vary the pace at which we speak. He then played part of the beginning and did give it a conversational and Hungarian air, explaining how the composition is influenced by the speech rhythms of Magyar. Speaking of the advisability of stretching the rhythm from time to time, he stressed (to paraphrase) "One can be in time or one can be on time; there's a difference." It lends a sense of anticipation and heightens the tension. He also recounted what Marian Anderson had told him, "one of the most important things in music is the fraction of a second before."
[YouTube: 1. Georg Kulenkampff, Violin Concerto in D major by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; written in 1878, rec. 1939
(There are of course many versions available, but I decided to pick this one, whose interpreter incidentally once lived and taught in Berlin.)]
Then a tall French student, Simon, played the opening movement of Tchaikovsky's famous violin concerto. I found his rendition very touching and unaffected (not to mention that I have a very weak spot for the music itself). On the other hand the thought crossed my mind, and it returned on the third day, that the playing sounded as if he had heard and was beautifully recreating a fine recording of it. Perhaps it was so frictionlessly perfect that it felt like a facsimile of genuineness rather than the thing itself. At any rate Gitlis, who seemed impatient for reasons I didn't understand, asked Simon why he plays music; it transpired that the student grew up in a musical family, but other than that there was no direct answer. So Gitlis asked whether he did not feel at times that music is like wandering at the edge of a precipice. He also inquired whether Simon was playing in a competition, which was however not the case; he recalled the time when he went to Budapest and heard a student who played with a great deal of fire, only to return a year or so later to find that this fire was quite extinguished, and upon querying what the reason for this change might be, he was told, "I'm preparing for a competition." The crux of the criticism was: take risks!
[In other recordings, I love Henryk Szeryng's take among other things for its relative lightness and his tone, and Arthur Grumiaux's take for the tone and its strength.]
The third student was Japanese and since his name may have started with "T" he will be known as Toshi. He played the Fuga from Bach's Sonata No. 1. His approach was in my view too North American: the rhythm was exaggerated like in pop music and he played with some self-conscious panache. But given the circumstances it sounded surprisingly unmodern and was evidently Bach; and in his hands even the harsh chords had a sonority that lent human warmth to a piece that is in my opinion timidly and then acutely woebegone, like a sparrow vainly scratching for nourishment beneath friendless drifts of frozen snow. Gitlis, on the other hand, was all for a bit of scraping, and he got Toshi to use the bow sparingly instead of drawing it along its length. Altogether he often encouraged the economic use of the bow — though as far as I can tell economy of movement is something that naturally transpires over decades and is therefore mainly noticeable in the most seasoned musicians — and imaginative bow division so that a phrase of music doesn't sound monotonous and identical with every repetition.
*
After that Tristan took the stage, and with him a second accompanist, Dana. The latter is an amusingly temperamental personality, dressed and coiffed in the style of the 50s or so, with distinct cheekbones and a habit of energetically pursing her mouth. Tristan is French, stalwart in build and not entirely at ease, and as he played Niccolò Paganini's "Campanella" he moved a great deal and struck grave poses like a turn-of-the-century actor. This energetic presence evidently distracted him from the music, which while vigorous was comparatively expressionless. Ivry Gitlis clearly thought something similar, and said that it is not necessary to move much or to announce one's presence insistently. What I noticed was that Tristan's tone had at times a peculiar clear and steely quality. Besides he played something else by Paganini, a caprice or étude, without there being much time to discuss it, but which at least demonstrated that he has obediently put himself through the technical paces . . .
[YouTube: 1. Christian Ferras, excerpt from Stravinsky Violin Concerto in D major, written 1931]
Finally there was Susanne, who seems to be German and in character diffidently nice, and she played Stravinsky's violin concerto. Said composer may have been in a Bartokesque mood when writing the concerto, because once the movements have started out with a discordant, unsubtly attention-seeking(?) bray of a chord, they wander into strains of unadorned folkish melody whilst the piano accompaniment (or, I guess, orchestra) plonks along arbitrarily. Much of modern music falls, in my opinion, into two categories: it sounds like an orchestra tuning, or it sounds like a potpourri of uninteresting and purely functional phrases lifted from the aimless stretches in a composition by Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven, or both. Even given these prejudices, however, it was no hardship to listen to the Stravinsky in its entirety. The problem was that the violinist was nervous, since she had arrived at pretty much the last moment, so her playing was (presumably) note-perfect but colourless and flustered. On the second day, however . . .
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
From Bach to Stravinsky, Part II
On the second day Susanne repeated the Stravinsky and this time played it with varied expression and good phrasing. Gitlis was much impressed by her progress since the day before and said so. Susanne's tone was, by the way, full, and either the key was low or it seemed low, so that it sounded like a viola but in a good way. Again the advice was to use the bow more sparingly and leave time for the music to develop; he added that she should trust in her good musical abilities and feel free to go further and enjoy herself. Dana was the accompanist again, and Gitlis, who evidently found her personality striking and amusing too, remarked admiringly that she (to paraphrase) "gives better direction than many conductors."
[YouTube: 1. Yehudi Menuhin, "La Campanella" by Niccolò Paganini, written 1826 and rec. 1930]
Tristan likewise repeated the "Campanella." This time Gitlis used the analogy of dancing to demonstrate that a singlemindedly driven approach, and lack of sensitivity to rhythm, is not ideal for the music. Then he went on to defend Paganini as a musician, especially because the Italian was such an important figure in the history of music and did in very truth divide it into a before and after. While the composer is not Bach — whom Gitlis obviously venerates as a creator of music in its profoundest sense — his music is still nice music and funny music, and in works like the "Campanella" "there are jewels every second" which it is worthwhile to seek out. Then there was a lengthy discussion of technique, in which Gitlis went over the passages with skittering mordents which Tristan seems to have been phrasing inaccurately, and emphasized (as I paraphrased it in my notes) that, "not only each arm but the divers components (fingers, wrist, etc. up to shoulder) should also be independent." And, returning to more abstract questions, he repeated that there is (to quote my notes again) "no need to be too blatant," that one should "suggest rather than say outright."
After that a Korean girl, who will be named Hu Jeong, performed Brahms's violin concerto. She is relatively tiny, so she has to lower the neck of the instrument and slightly bow over it as Mischa Elman did; besides her hair was in a neat pixie cut and she had the endearing habit of hiding her face a little behind the base of her violin as she awaited criticism. But despite her diminutive size, she tackled the technical demands of the concerto very competently. It felt as if the tempo of the violin were constantly lagging behind, but I've since discovered that effect is common in recordings of the work. What also bothered me is that it was one of those times where a public performance sounds like a solo practice session; it felt rehearsed.
During the discussion of her performance the question of nervousness came up. Ivry Gitlis told us an anecdote about Sarah Bernhardt: backstage at a performance she met a young colleague, who asserted that she wasn't at all nervous, whereupon the great actress (crushingly) replied that she would be once she had talent. Then the masterclass turned to technical points again, and Gitlis tried to get Hu Jeong to shift her whole arm and not just her finger in anticipation of lower (or higher) notes. It was also rather amusing when he remarked parenthetically that he envied violinists with strong fourth fingers; he explained that for him the fourth finger is a little "verstuzt" — then he paused, laughed and said, "I have no idea what that means, but it sounds good." (The masterclasses were mostly in English, but some German and French, maybe a little Hebrew, and a Russian saying, were thrown in.) And after that there was a touching moment, where Gitlis was going over a simple and gentler phrase in the concerto, and was all of a sudden very moved by its beauty. He took a while to collect himself, and then asked the student to play the music again, and as she did so stood on the stage with her and looked her in the eye so that there was a very nice unspoken exchange, as she rendered it once again, with feeling.
[YouTube: 1. Ginette Neveu, Violin Concerto in D major by Johannes Brahms, written 1878
(There are plenty of good recordings, so I took this one at random.)]
After that a fellow Korean, Ha Lim, played the Poème Elégiaque by Ysaÿe. Here I felt that the criticism of "too healthy" really applied. As far as I could tell the piece required a clear and cooler and perhaps mournful tone, tinged with cynicism, whereas she played it quite naïvely and with a gentle and cushioned tone (which may also have been caused by nervousness, since her tone on the following day was clearer). Her accompanist — Nao, from Japan — was, I felt, quite good, playing with appropriate lyricism and bravely eschewing the Music Student's Mezzoforte. It might be partly flattery but Gitlis, when told that the student would be having a different accompanist the next day, asked why one would change accompanists when this one was doing such a fine job. (The reason was logistical.)
In answer to a question of Ha Lim's he spoke reassuringly about her tendency to use a large vibrato, which her latest teacher had apparently trained out of her; basically his philosophy is that, if it really feels right to you in a particular situation, do it. (I think the teacher's problem with her vibrato may be the modern love for "what you see is what you get" playing without adornment or romantic wallowings. To me that's one-dimensional and, in its exclusion of a worthy though aged musical tradition, no more reasonable than demanding that women never wear skirts or dresses, only pants, to suit the trend.)
Then he made a remark which I found really insightful, which is that performers often adopt a persona when performing, and that we always or often strain to be something more or other than we are. Perhaps we should accept what is and just try to be ourselves. In that context Ivry Gitlis told an anecdote of a concert which he gave in South Africa. It was the middle of winter in the hemisphere, the weather was squalid, and the highly straitlaced audience looked moribund and mummified. Evidently nobody was enthusiastic about being there. During Paganini's Concerto in D Gitlis's fingers stumbled over themselves — a minor disaster — but that brought about the realization that he could just try to enjoy it. So after that the concert improved for him, and it improved for the audience, which became one of his best ever.
The fifth and last student of the day was Ji Jong, who repeated the Bartók (and due to time constraints never had the opportunity to play the Saint-Saëns piece she had also prepared). In my notes Gitlis's commentary is summarized as "take risks — reflected risks."
[YouTube: 1. Yehudi Menuhin, "La Campanella" by Niccolò Paganini, written 1826 and rec. 1930]
Tristan likewise repeated the "Campanella." This time Gitlis used the analogy of dancing to demonstrate that a singlemindedly driven approach, and lack of sensitivity to rhythm, is not ideal for the music. Then he went on to defend Paganini as a musician, especially because the Italian was such an important figure in the history of music and did in very truth divide it into a before and after. While the composer is not Bach — whom Gitlis obviously venerates as a creator of music in its profoundest sense — his music is still nice music and funny music, and in works like the "Campanella" "there are jewels every second" which it is worthwhile to seek out. Then there was a lengthy discussion of technique, in which Gitlis went over the passages with skittering mordents which Tristan seems to have been phrasing inaccurately, and emphasized (as I paraphrased it in my notes) that, "not only each arm but the divers components (fingers, wrist, etc. up to shoulder) should also be independent." And, returning to more abstract questions, he repeated that there is (to quote my notes again) "no need to be too blatant," that one should "suggest rather than say outright."
After that a Korean girl, who will be named Hu Jeong, performed Brahms's violin concerto. She is relatively tiny, so she has to lower the neck of the instrument and slightly bow over it as Mischa Elman did; besides her hair was in a neat pixie cut and she had the endearing habit of hiding her face a little behind the base of her violin as she awaited criticism. But despite her diminutive size, she tackled the technical demands of the concerto very competently. It felt as if the tempo of the violin were constantly lagging behind, but I've since discovered that effect is common in recordings of the work. What also bothered me is that it was one of those times where a public performance sounds like a solo practice session; it felt rehearsed.
During the discussion of her performance the question of nervousness came up. Ivry Gitlis told us an anecdote about Sarah Bernhardt: backstage at a performance she met a young colleague, who asserted that she wasn't at all nervous, whereupon the great actress (crushingly) replied that she would be once she had talent. Then the masterclass turned to technical points again, and Gitlis tried to get Hu Jeong to shift her whole arm and not just her finger in anticipation of lower (or higher) notes. It was also rather amusing when he remarked parenthetically that he envied violinists with strong fourth fingers; he explained that for him the fourth finger is a little "verstuzt" — then he paused, laughed and said, "I have no idea what that means, but it sounds good." (The masterclasses were mostly in English, but some German and French, maybe a little Hebrew, and a Russian saying, were thrown in.) And after that there was a touching moment, where Gitlis was going over a simple and gentler phrase in the concerto, and was all of a sudden very moved by its beauty. He took a while to collect himself, and then asked the student to play the music again, and as she did so stood on the stage with her and looked her in the eye so that there was a very nice unspoken exchange, as she rendered it once again, with feeling.
[YouTube: 1. Ginette Neveu, Violin Concerto in D major by Johannes Brahms, written 1878
(There are plenty of good recordings, so I took this one at random.)]
After that a fellow Korean, Ha Lim, played the Poème Elégiaque by Ysaÿe. Here I felt that the criticism of "too healthy" really applied. As far as I could tell the piece required a clear and cooler and perhaps mournful tone, tinged with cynicism, whereas she played it quite naïvely and with a gentle and cushioned tone (which may also have been caused by nervousness, since her tone on the following day was clearer). Her accompanist — Nao, from Japan — was, I felt, quite good, playing with appropriate lyricism and bravely eschewing the Music Student's Mezzoforte. It might be partly flattery but Gitlis, when told that the student would be having a different accompanist the next day, asked why one would change accompanists when this one was doing such a fine job. (The reason was logistical.)
In answer to a question of Ha Lim's he spoke reassuringly about her tendency to use a large vibrato, which her latest teacher had apparently trained out of her; basically his philosophy is that, if it really feels right to you in a particular situation, do it. (I think the teacher's problem with her vibrato may be the modern love for "what you see is what you get" playing without adornment or romantic wallowings. To me that's one-dimensional and, in its exclusion of a worthy though aged musical tradition, no more reasonable than demanding that women never wear skirts or dresses, only pants, to suit the trend.)
Then he made a remark which I found really insightful, which is that performers often adopt a persona when performing, and that we always or often strain to be something more or other than we are. Perhaps we should accept what is and just try to be ourselves. In that context Ivry Gitlis told an anecdote of a concert which he gave in South Africa. It was the middle of winter in the hemisphere, the weather was squalid, and the highly straitlaced audience looked moribund and mummified. Evidently nobody was enthusiastic about being there. During Paganini's Concerto in D Gitlis's fingers stumbled over themselves — a minor disaster — but that brought about the realization that he could just try to enjoy it. So after that the concert improved for him, and it improved for the audience, which became one of his best ever.
The fifth and last student of the day was Ji Jong, who repeated the Bartók (and due to time constraints never had the opportunity to play the Saint-Saëns piece she had also prepared). In my notes Gitlis's commentary is summarized as "take risks — reflected risks."
From Bach to Stravinsky, Part III
Ayumi, from Korea but onetime resident of the States, began the third day with Pablo Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy. It put and puts me into a grouch. Its putative Spanishness may not be an assault but is certainly a blunt weapon, since countless composers are infinitely better at capturing the fine peculiarities and distinctions and ambiguities of folk music. Before it was mentioned that Sarasate composed it I had pegged it as a clumsy imitation of his country's folklore by a city-dwelling Gaul or Teuton. It's like watching Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame for insights into gypsy culture. But, firstly, I suppose it's one of those pieces one must perform with wry flair, and then it sounds intelligent; secondly, I'm exaggerating; and thirdly even Beethoven was terribly off if he truly thought that his "Ecossaises" are remotely Scottish . . .
My grouch extended to the student, who basked in the smug and showy pretend-drama of the music, and was so satisfied by her own virtuosic prowess that she didn't seem to strive for anything nobler or to absorb the criticism particularly well. Which is human. But in my view a crucial part of being and growing as a musician is to work against character flaws that negatively affect performance, like vanity or unseriousness. These feelings can be merely distracting or outright poison, and must be dealt with sternly. (I suspect that some teachers are sadistically critical for that very reason, but I don't like this "remedy" for obvious reasons, and in my case such approaches, far from being helpful, transform me into a gibbering idiot.)
Anyway, Gitlis discussed inspiration and eventually got around to oblique criticisms. One of my notes was "crépuscule between contrasts," which interpreted means that there should be a gentle and gradual transition from piano to forte, for instance, just as day and night don't just change into each other at the flick of a switch but fade into each other, subtly. From there he went on to discuss feeling in music. He remarked, a little flippantly, that it's far better to have a tear in one's eye than to go about with eyes that are invariably dry. In an argument which anyone who has watched The Art of Violin will recognize, Gitlis addressed the the frequent criticism that Heifetz is "cold," saying that while he did not express much emotion outwardly, if one listens to what he actually played it is (in Gitlis's words) "pregnant with intensity and warmth." He also emphasized that suffering should not be necessary, and to illustrate its pointless extreme he spoke of Joseph Hassid, whom he seems to have known personally when they were children.
Returning to Ayumi's playing, he suggested a slighter approach; "if anything, don't play it so much" and instead "let it play you somehow." He went on to say that she should play as she would like to hear the music as opposed to how she thinks it should be played, and to "imagine it more" and experiment. In similar vein he observed that it's best to let the audience metaphorically search for you when you appear on the stage and begin to play, rather than to baldly declare your presence at once. Then — and I don't know if he was being sarcastic or not — Gitlis remarked of the Fantasy, "I never played this piece. I never played it because I like it too much." Finally he addressed technique and pointed out that her left arm was overly tense — I think that she tended to put too much pressure on the strings with the bow arm, which is bad not only for the tone, I think, but also for her joints and muscles — and that it's advisable to profit by the natural weight of the arm. (This was an extension of his attempts on the previous day to coax the students into relaxing enough to achieve a rubbery, limp arm, which is surprisingly difficult.)
***
[YouTube: 1. Jascha Heifetz, Carmen Fantasy by Pablo de Sarasate, rec. 1924
(In my humble opinion, the most endurable rendition: mercifully if preternaturally swift, dry but not at all mechanical, and pleasantly quirky.)
2. Efrem Zimbalist, ditto
(This loyally interpreted version is, I suspect, close to what Sarasate had in mind.)
*
1. Jascha Heifetz, 1st Mvt. Scottish Fantasy in E flat major by Max Bruch, written 1879-80]
***
Then Ha Lim took the stage to perform Bruch's Scottish Fantasy (which is incidentally dedicated to Sarasate and therefore a pleasing scrap of dramatic continuity in the masterclass). I had forgotten what it was and therefore racked my brains to figure out the composer, only concluding that it was purest Mendelssohn in stretches but overall not Mendelssohn at all, until enlightenment transpired. When the piece ended Ivry Gitlis began describing the view outside the windows of the Galakutschensaal as darkness fell, and when I and probably most of the audience was thoroughly bewildered, he stopped talking altogether. This time I'm pretty certain he enjoyed leading us along a woodpath, and then he proved that it was no woodpath at all by ending the pause to explain that it was oddly quiet considering that we were in the middle of the city. And, in a hushed voice, he asked the violinist to play again, to keep this quiet in mind and build the music on it. The result was great; to reduce it to mechanics, at least for that space of time the student evidently grasped what Gitlis had been saying about not forcing the music, taking one's time, and phrasing.
After this interlude of pedagogical mysticism it was a bit of a letdown to return to questions of posture — this time relaxing one's shoulders — but variety is after all the spice of life. And then Ha Lim's session was done and Simon reprised his rendition of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto. Gitlis tried to get him to scrape with the bow a little, hinted that a touch of humour would not come amiss, remarked, "You play almost too well; I would like you to have a little accident from time to time," and wound up with the advice, "Don't be afraid to be afraid."
And then, before the masterclass series was conclusively over, Ivry Gitlis addressed us again. Though what he says doesn't come to mind now, for one thing he declared himself readily willing to return to the Musikschule to give another masterclass. And when the subject turned to general wisdom I think he repeated this message, "Don't be afraid to be afraid." It sounds to me like a warning against mindless conformity and excessive timidity, not only in the performance of music but also in our private and public lives altogether. And I think that it ties in with his overall approach to the masterclass, in which he tries to point out that beyond the prescribed routine and daily slog of music training there lie the profoundly individual qualities and work — experimentation and reflection, intelligence and feeling, etc. — which elevate a good musician to a great one.
My grouch extended to the student, who basked in the smug and showy pretend-drama of the music, and was so satisfied by her own virtuosic prowess that she didn't seem to strive for anything nobler or to absorb the criticism particularly well. Which is human. But in my view a crucial part of being and growing as a musician is to work against character flaws that negatively affect performance, like vanity or unseriousness. These feelings can be merely distracting or outright poison, and must be dealt with sternly. (I suspect that some teachers are sadistically critical for that very reason, but I don't like this "remedy" for obvious reasons, and in my case such approaches, far from being helpful, transform me into a gibbering idiot.)
Anyway, Gitlis discussed inspiration and eventually got around to oblique criticisms. One of my notes was "crépuscule between contrasts," which interpreted means that there should be a gentle and gradual transition from piano to forte, for instance, just as day and night don't just change into each other at the flick of a switch but fade into each other, subtly. From there he went on to discuss feeling in music. He remarked, a little flippantly, that it's far better to have a tear in one's eye than to go about with eyes that are invariably dry. In an argument which anyone who has watched The Art of Violin will recognize, Gitlis addressed the the frequent criticism that Heifetz is "cold," saying that while he did not express much emotion outwardly, if one listens to what he actually played it is (in Gitlis's words) "pregnant with intensity and warmth." He also emphasized that suffering should not be necessary, and to illustrate its pointless extreme he spoke of Joseph Hassid, whom he seems to have known personally when they were children.
Returning to Ayumi's playing, he suggested a slighter approach; "if anything, don't play it so much" and instead "let it play you somehow." He went on to say that she should play as she would like to hear the music as opposed to how she thinks it should be played, and to "imagine it more" and experiment. In similar vein he observed that it's best to let the audience metaphorically search for you when you appear on the stage and begin to play, rather than to baldly declare your presence at once. Then — and I don't know if he was being sarcastic or not — Gitlis remarked of the Fantasy, "I never played this piece. I never played it because I like it too much." Finally he addressed technique and pointed out that her left arm was overly tense — I think that she tended to put too much pressure on the strings with the bow arm, which is bad not only for the tone, I think, but also for her joints and muscles — and that it's advisable to profit by the natural weight of the arm. (This was an extension of his attempts on the previous day to coax the students into relaxing enough to achieve a rubbery, limp arm, which is surprisingly difficult.)
***
[YouTube: 1. Jascha Heifetz, Carmen Fantasy by Pablo de Sarasate, rec. 1924
(In my humble opinion, the most endurable rendition: mercifully if preternaturally swift, dry but not at all mechanical, and pleasantly quirky.)
2. Efrem Zimbalist, ditto
(This loyally interpreted version is, I suspect, close to what Sarasate had in mind.)
*
1. Jascha Heifetz, 1st Mvt. Scottish Fantasy in E flat major by Max Bruch, written 1879-80]
***
Then Ha Lim took the stage to perform Bruch's Scottish Fantasy (which is incidentally dedicated to Sarasate and therefore a pleasing scrap of dramatic continuity in the masterclass). I had forgotten what it was and therefore racked my brains to figure out the composer, only concluding that it was purest Mendelssohn in stretches but overall not Mendelssohn at all, until enlightenment transpired. When the piece ended Ivry Gitlis began describing the view outside the windows of the Galakutschensaal as darkness fell, and when I and probably most of the audience was thoroughly bewildered, he stopped talking altogether. This time I'm pretty certain he enjoyed leading us along a woodpath, and then he proved that it was no woodpath at all by ending the pause to explain that it was oddly quiet considering that we were in the middle of the city. And, in a hushed voice, he asked the violinist to play again, to keep this quiet in mind and build the music on it. The result was great; to reduce it to mechanics, at least for that space of time the student evidently grasped what Gitlis had been saying about not forcing the music, taking one's time, and phrasing.
After this interlude of pedagogical mysticism it was a bit of a letdown to return to questions of posture — this time relaxing one's shoulders — but variety is after all the spice of life. And then Ha Lim's session was done and Simon reprised his rendition of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto. Gitlis tried to get him to scrape with the bow a little, hinted that a touch of humour would not come amiss, remarked, "You play almost too well; I would like you to have a little accident from time to time," and wound up with the advice, "Don't be afraid to be afraid."
And then, before the masterclass series was conclusively over, Ivry Gitlis addressed us again. Though what he says doesn't come to mind now, for one thing he declared himself readily willing to return to the Musikschule to give another masterclass. And when the subject turned to general wisdom I think he repeated this message, "Don't be afraid to be afraid." It sounds to me like a warning against mindless conformity and excessive timidity, not only in the performance of music but also in our private and public lives altogether. And I think that it ties in with his overall approach to the masterclass, in which he tries to point out that beyond the prescribed routine and daily slog of music training there lie the profoundly individual qualities and work — experimentation and reflection, intelligence and feeling, etc. — which elevate a good musician to a great one.
Friday, January 08, 2010
Straightening Up and Flying Right
On Wednesday I took the grand step of taking the U-Bahn to Fehrbelliner Platz and there obtaining my Red Card (Rote Karte or Gesundheitspass or Belehrung gemäß [squiggly s] 34 des Infektionsschutzgesetzes, if I remember the jargon properly), which is not a Communist Party membership but a health pass which clears me for work in the food service industry. What it requires is paying 14 Euros and then sitting through a ca. 18 minute informational video about food safety and then a short lecture on the same subject by a person from the municipal health authority, with a group of 12 or so others. At the end of it we were handed the Rote Karte and sent on our merry way. The point of the exercise is that I've been thinking of following Mama's and T.'s footsteps by dishwashing at schools for an organic catering service.I am still summoning the courage to apply, but should have done so within the following month. After having obtained the pass, which followed a sleepless night and the beginnings of a cold, I slept for some twenty-four hours with a two-hour interruption, by the way; I am prouder of the second feat than the first, probably also because the first requires additional action. Other than that life has not been that exciting, though I did print out a free score of Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3 from the internet and have been learning that for about a week. (Thereby checking off one more, reasonably nice warhorse of the piano repertoire.)
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Bach Prelude in D Minor
This is one of Ge.'s old pieces, and one that he played pretty much every day on our piano, though in c minor if I remember correctly. It works quite well on the guitar too, as demonstrated by Andrés Segovia (whose films on YouTube are generally worth browsing) in this clip.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Bumblebees and Firecrackers
After a highly satisfactory Eve I went to sleep presumably before 3 a.m. and finally woke up again when the New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic began on television, directed by Georges Prêtre. This time I'm too lazy to fact-check the details so half of the following may be invented.
The first part of the concert was "played straight" where the artistic direction was concerned, so we just saw the orchestra and audience and interior of the Wiener Musikverein, and no theatrics or splashy landscapery. Amongst the gimmickry this year there were instruments that mimicked the cuckoo and the duck; and though once a wooden block was used to impersonate the popping of a champagne cork, the second time there was even a special apparatus that, as far as one could tell given the rapid cuts between the camera angles, could spit out a cork as sonorously as the traditional bottle. The audience included the Austrian president Heinz Fischer with spouse (didn't know of or recognize him; the ORF narrator pointed him out), Roger Moore, kimono'd Japanese ladies, and someone who looked suspiciously like our dear finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble.
As for the floral decorations, I approved of them this year: yellow and orange and white roses, red anthuriums (they could have been uglier), ranunculus that was reddish at the edges and yellowish and greenish in the middle, pearly white tulips reminiscent of a Dutch still life, orange lilies, siblings of the ox-eye daisy, etc. The greatest botanical monstrosity was an extraterrestrial-looking lifeform which in terrestrial terms can be described as a cross between a Chinese lantern, hairy gooseberry, and the abdomen of a seasick bumblebee.
During the intermission there was a "making of" documentary, which instead of narration had a soundtrack with passages from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, an orchestral version of Mozart's Rondo alla turca, etc. (Of course we enjoyed naming the tune.) A cleaning lady dusted the caryatids, which truly gleamed; a violinist applied a cake of black rosin to his bow; the conductor scribbled notes on scores at a covered Bösendorfer piano; a truck arrived bringing the flowers from San Remo; the orchestra tuned; cameramen filmed each other as they filmed the Kunsthistorisches Museum and a fountain in a town at the Danube; and above all Valentino presented his designs for the ballet dancers' costumes to the press.
In the second part of the concert came the landscapery — modest vignettes of spots along the Danube, from Donaueschingen to the Black Sea, to accompany the waltz; as well as scenes from a hilariously tidy and romantically lit kitchen where a Viennese confectionery picturesquely creates its delicious-looking wares — and the theatrics — a ballet à deux somewhere and then the grand spectacle with six or so couples twirling around the museum. The costumes turned out well in my opinion, especially the flaring red dress in the first ballet. While the sparkles and colour-gradiented cloth cabbages on one or two of the pink gowns bordered on kitsch, they did convey the classic, whimsical greyish-pinkish ideal of the ballet frock as Degas painted it. In terms of utility, the fabric may have been too weighty. As for the dancing itself, Mama remarked approvingly afterwards that it was quite "dezent," but to me it felt more forced and artificial than it should. The fixed smiles are, for instance, really irritating, as are the clichéd mannerisms.
At this point I should write something insightful about the musical aspect of the offerings, but will sidestep the obligation for reasons of not having paid sufficient attention to it. What I did notice were passages where the orchestra were particularly united in their intuitive grasp of the quirks of the repertoire; with truly fine ensembles that is, of course, not rare. The offering from Otto Nicolai proved him a competent composer in my opinion, and the inclusion of Jacques Offenbach was also pleasing.
***
As for last evening, I woke up (since my sleeping schedule is in an outlandish phase again) for dinner. We ate the traditional Knackwurst (wiener) with potato salad, pickles and pickled silver onions, cider, and punch, as well as a healthy dish of sliced yellow bell pepper. Not being there for the entirety of the concocting process, I can only guess that the punch contains white wine, Sekt, tonic water, canned mandarin oranges and apricots. Some of us watched Dinner for One; Papa turned to the piano to let the gentler music of Mozart resound as the firecrackers banged in the streets. Outside the snow, pellets rather than flakes, descended thickly and swiftly so that the already impressive snow cover grew even deeper.
At midnight we watched the countdown broadcast live from the Brandenburg Gate, and at the right moment Papa popped open the bottle of Sekt. Mama poured it out, after which we clinked glasses and sang "Auld Lang Syne," and lit sparklers at a candle. We had opened the curtains so that the fireworks being set off on the sidewalks were visible from both sides, and enjoyed the show.
This evening we dined on prawns with lemon, fish in mushroom sauce, chicory salad with radicchio and oranges, an Alsatian white wine, rice, etc. Mama had also bought biscuits filled with jam and completed with a ring of coconutish meringue, or topped with crunchy hazelnuts/peanuts and dipped in chocolate.
***
Happy New Year!
The first part of the concert was "played straight" where the artistic direction was concerned, so we just saw the orchestra and audience and interior of the Wiener Musikverein, and no theatrics or splashy landscapery. Amongst the gimmickry this year there were instruments that mimicked the cuckoo and the duck; and though once a wooden block was used to impersonate the popping of a champagne cork, the second time there was even a special apparatus that, as far as one could tell given the rapid cuts between the camera angles, could spit out a cork as sonorously as the traditional bottle. The audience included the Austrian president Heinz Fischer with spouse (didn't know of or recognize him; the ORF narrator pointed him out), Roger Moore, kimono'd Japanese ladies, and someone who looked suspiciously like our dear finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble.
As for the floral decorations, I approved of them this year: yellow and orange and white roses, red anthuriums (they could have been uglier), ranunculus that was reddish at the edges and yellowish and greenish in the middle, pearly white tulips reminiscent of a Dutch still life, orange lilies, siblings of the ox-eye daisy, etc. The greatest botanical monstrosity was an extraterrestrial-looking lifeform which in terrestrial terms can be described as a cross between a Chinese lantern, hairy gooseberry, and the abdomen of a seasick bumblebee.
During the intermission there was a "making of" documentary, which instead of narration had a soundtrack with passages from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, an orchestral version of Mozart's Rondo alla turca, etc. (Of course we enjoyed naming the tune.) A cleaning lady dusted the caryatids, which truly gleamed; a violinist applied a cake of black rosin to his bow; the conductor scribbled notes on scores at a covered Bösendorfer piano; a truck arrived bringing the flowers from San Remo; the orchestra tuned; cameramen filmed each other as they filmed the Kunsthistorisches Museum and a fountain in a town at the Danube; and above all Valentino presented his designs for the ballet dancers' costumes to the press.
In the second part of the concert came the landscapery — modest vignettes of spots along the Danube, from Donaueschingen to the Black Sea, to accompany the waltz; as well as scenes from a hilariously tidy and romantically lit kitchen where a Viennese confectionery picturesquely creates its delicious-looking wares — and the theatrics — a ballet à deux somewhere and then the grand spectacle with six or so couples twirling around the museum. The costumes turned out well in my opinion, especially the flaring red dress in the first ballet. While the sparkles and colour-gradiented cloth cabbages on one or two of the pink gowns bordered on kitsch, they did convey the classic, whimsical greyish-pinkish ideal of the ballet frock as Degas painted it. In terms of utility, the fabric may have been too weighty. As for the dancing itself, Mama remarked approvingly afterwards that it was quite "dezent," but to me it felt more forced and artificial than it should. The fixed smiles are, for instance, really irritating, as are the clichéd mannerisms.
At this point I should write something insightful about the musical aspect of the offerings, but will sidestep the obligation for reasons of not having paid sufficient attention to it. What I did notice were passages where the orchestra were particularly united in their intuitive grasp of the quirks of the repertoire; with truly fine ensembles that is, of course, not rare. The offering from Otto Nicolai proved him a competent composer in my opinion, and the inclusion of Jacques Offenbach was also pleasing.
***
As for last evening, I woke up (since my sleeping schedule is in an outlandish phase again) for dinner. We ate the traditional Knackwurst (wiener) with potato salad, pickles and pickled silver onions, cider, and punch, as well as a healthy dish of sliced yellow bell pepper. Not being there for the entirety of the concocting process, I can only guess that the punch contains white wine, Sekt, tonic water, canned mandarin oranges and apricots. Some of us watched Dinner for One; Papa turned to the piano to let the gentler music of Mozart resound as the firecrackers banged in the streets. Outside the snow, pellets rather than flakes, descended thickly and swiftly so that the already impressive snow cover grew even deeper.
At midnight we watched the countdown broadcast live from the Brandenburg Gate, and at the right moment Papa popped open the bottle of Sekt. Mama poured it out, after which we clinked glasses and sang "Auld Lang Syne," and lit sparklers at a candle. We had opened the curtains so that the fireworks being set off on the sidewalks were visible from both sides, and enjoyed the show.
This evening we dined on prawns with lemon, fish in mushroom sauce, chicory salad with radicchio and oranges, an Alsatian white wine, rice, etc. Mama had also bought biscuits filled with jam and completed with a ring of coconutish meringue, or topped with crunchy hazelnuts/peanuts and dipped in chocolate.
***
Happy New Year!
Thursday, December 24, 2009
A Ramble on Christmas Eve
This day began with a communal breakfast. Soon after Mama announced it I arose and went expectantly to the kitchen, only to find that though the plateware had been ceremoniously set the edibles consisted only of one measly basket of buns, a jam jar, the butter dish that is always on the table anyway, a little round of camembert cheese and gouda slices. Measly, I say! There was admittedly also hot milk, with which Papa kindly prepared a café au lait for me. Anyway, I registered my protest, then dismissed the matter. In the shelf all the ingredients for "Haferflocken mit Kakao" (oats with milk, cocoa powder and sugar, which is an unrefined but tasty combination) were there, so I made that instead. Gi. is in Münchehofe again and T. was still asleep, but the rest of us, including our uncle N. who is visiting over Christmas, were all present.
Then N., Ge., J., and I went off for a walk to the nearest park. Even though my legs were bare — I've never liked following the conventional wisdom regarding weather-appropriate clothing because it's unimaginative, restrictive, and often exaggerated, besides which I can't be bothered — it wasn't too cold. Later in the day the thermometer outside the window indicated a temperature of ca. 3 degrees, which is a big improvement over the lows of around -10 in the past week. The frozen snow was murderous, though, and the fact that none of us slipped on it is a minor miracle.
After that I had an internet session. The New York Times website has a slideshow of photos from the past year. It started out with pictures of Barack Obama's inauguration but by the time I'd finished it I was totally depressed. Fortunately Gawker also has a post, "Our Favorite Things About 2009: These People Are Gone," which encapsulates the members of the Bush Administration and then reminds us that no matter what else happens, (God willing) we no longer need to know, remember, or care that these people exist!
***
Throughout the early afternoon I decompressed with a very long piano session, which I only interrupted for dinner (more on that later). It reached from Bach (from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II; the Goldberg Variations; and all of the Concerto in d minor) and Händel (the suite which ends in the "Harmonious Blacksmith" variations) through Beethoven and Schubert (from the sonatas) as well as Chopin (waltzes, a polonaise, and a mazurka) to Enrique Granados (Spanish Dances Nos. 4 through 6) and Tchaikovsky ( from the Seasons).
The Baroque music went well, but playing it from non-urtext editions is extremely annoying because editors often stick in their phrasing, so that I have to make the mental effort of not only inventing my own phrasing but also of consciously not using the editor's phrasing, because the editor's phrasing more often than not totally obfuscates the composer's original intentions by creating a neoromantic sound soup. I hadn't played Chopin for weeks or months, but it went well. It's still difficult to relax and play it fluidly and lightly because constantly hitting the wrong notes and overusing the pedal makes me very tense (which is conversely sort of useful with grumpy pieces like Beethoven's and Bach's). As for the nocturnes, I did play the beginning of Op. 27 No. 2; this is the only one I can stand to hear and play often, since it's pretty much the only one that isn't a supine, substance-free mood piece. Fairly or not, I especially detest the canned drama of Op. 20 in c sharp minor, a plague which The Pianist (the film with Adrien Brody) apparently unleashed on YouTube.
On the whole I'm pleased with the way I've been playing for the past week or so; it has been easier to follow the thread of the compositional narrative, convey the mood, and capture the composer's idiosyncracies well enough that a listener could hopefully tell quickly which is which. Getting an objective distance from the music by focusing on other things for the past weeks/months has helped me a lot because it gives me time to recognize thoughtless bad habits, to think of better ways to interpret it, and altogether to avert the contempt bred by familiarity. I've also been in a grumpy and unhappy and cynical mood lately — partly due to the worry about finding a job (I think about my dwindling bank account several times a day), partly due to feeling useless and beginning to wonder if I am suited to any work at all, and partly due to the fact that it's winter. This, while not so great for my feelings, is musical gold. (Learning to deal with the mood also builds character, but that's so obvious it really requires no pointing out.)
***
Dinner consisted of a tradition known in our household as the "Arabic plate." There was a basket of Turkish flatbread ("Milchfladenbrot," to be precise), a hot bowl each of couscous, basmati rice, and bulgur wheat, and then two large plates whereupon were heaped sundried tomatoes kept in oil, black olives, pickled rolls of grape leaf containing bulgur, and a dozen or so dips from the Turkish supermarket down the street. Besides the obvious tzatziki and baba ghanoush, there were compounds of goaty or sheepy cheese, ground chili peppers, chickpeas or whatever, etc., which were new to all of us.
Since then we've sung Christmas carols in the corner room, English and German and French, though once again I was a frog and left the proceedings early for the sake of returning to my beloved internet (N.B.: not a replacement, merely an extension, of my family (c:< ). Now that I have returned to the beloved internet for a while now, I really want to watch television. Lately there have been tons of documentaries in the programme, intelligent and superbly made ones (especially on the channels Arte and 3Sat) which are not all devoted to the memory of Hitler or to conspiracy theories about the Mayan calendar or to history so simplified and inaccurate that I feel like a piece of my brain is missing after watching it. [N.B.: Re.: historical "reenactments" in documentaries, they are an innovation so rubbishy that if I were given the choice to go back in time and change something, preventing them from ever existing would be my first priority, were it not that countless extremely lousy actors are employed because of them.] Anyway, I haven't seen a documentary since the day before yesterday and am currently in withdrawal.
***
At any rate it's Christmas tomorrow! It will be very unmaterialistic (N. was joking about each of us receiving a single sugar pearl as a present, but I fear that tomorrow morning he will find that it was no joking matter )c: ) as customary — I weighed buying presents this year and even thought out what to get everyone, but after imagining my self asking Papa and Mama for money in a couple months when my bank account runs out before I have a job because I spent too much too quickly, I decided against it, which was depressing until I thought that at least this teaches me the value of being able to give nice presents (though then I realized that my siblings would probably be happier with nice presents than with the knowledge that their deprivation has led to their sister's spiritual enlightenment) — but there will be loads of chocolate and other delicious things to compensate. (c: Besides, a primary function of religion is to offer stern "consolations" for the difficulties in life!
Then N., Ge., J., and I went off for a walk to the nearest park. Even though my legs were bare — I've never liked following the conventional wisdom regarding weather-appropriate clothing because it's unimaginative, restrictive, and often exaggerated, besides which I can't be bothered — it wasn't too cold. Later in the day the thermometer outside the window indicated a temperature of ca. 3 degrees, which is a big improvement over the lows of around -10 in the past week. The frozen snow was murderous, though, and the fact that none of us slipped on it is a minor miracle.
After that I had an internet session. The New York Times website has a slideshow of photos from the past year. It started out with pictures of Barack Obama's inauguration but by the time I'd finished it I was totally depressed. Fortunately Gawker also has a post, "Our Favorite Things About 2009: These People Are Gone," which encapsulates the members of the Bush Administration and then reminds us that no matter what else happens, (God willing) we no longer need to know, remember, or care that these people exist!
***
Throughout the early afternoon I decompressed with a very long piano session, which I only interrupted for dinner (more on that later). It reached from Bach (from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II; the Goldberg Variations; and all of the Concerto in d minor) and Händel (the suite which ends in the "Harmonious Blacksmith" variations) through Beethoven and Schubert (from the sonatas) as well as Chopin (waltzes, a polonaise, and a mazurka) to Enrique Granados (Spanish Dances Nos. 4 through 6) and Tchaikovsky ( from the Seasons).
The Baroque music went well, but playing it from non-urtext editions is extremely annoying because editors often stick in their phrasing, so that I have to make the mental effort of not only inventing my own phrasing but also of consciously not using the editor's phrasing, because the editor's phrasing more often than not totally obfuscates the composer's original intentions by creating a neoromantic sound soup. I hadn't played Chopin for weeks or months, but it went well. It's still difficult to relax and play it fluidly and lightly because constantly hitting the wrong notes and overusing the pedal makes me very tense (which is conversely sort of useful with grumpy pieces like Beethoven's and Bach's). As for the nocturnes, I did play the beginning of Op. 27 No. 2; this is the only one I can stand to hear and play often, since it's pretty much the only one that isn't a supine, substance-free mood piece. Fairly or not, I especially detest the canned drama of Op. 20 in c sharp minor, a plague which The Pianist (the film with Adrien Brody) apparently unleashed on YouTube.
On the whole I'm pleased with the way I've been playing for the past week or so; it has been easier to follow the thread of the compositional narrative, convey the mood, and capture the composer's idiosyncracies well enough that a listener could hopefully tell quickly which is which. Getting an objective distance from the music by focusing on other things for the past weeks/months has helped me a lot because it gives me time to recognize thoughtless bad habits, to think of better ways to interpret it, and altogether to avert the contempt bred by familiarity. I've also been in a grumpy and unhappy and cynical mood lately — partly due to the worry about finding a job (I think about my dwindling bank account several times a day), partly due to feeling useless and beginning to wonder if I am suited to any work at all, and partly due to the fact that it's winter. This, while not so great for my feelings, is musical gold. (Learning to deal with the mood also builds character, but that's so obvious it really requires no pointing out.)
***
Dinner consisted of a tradition known in our household as the "Arabic plate." There was a basket of Turkish flatbread ("Milchfladenbrot," to be precise), a hot bowl each of couscous, basmati rice, and bulgur wheat, and then two large plates whereupon were heaped sundried tomatoes kept in oil, black olives, pickled rolls of grape leaf containing bulgur, and a dozen or so dips from the Turkish supermarket down the street. Besides the obvious tzatziki and baba ghanoush, there were compounds of goaty or sheepy cheese, ground chili peppers, chickpeas or whatever, etc., which were new to all of us.
Since then we've sung Christmas carols in the corner room, English and German and French, though once again I was a frog and left the proceedings early for the sake of returning to my beloved internet (N.B.: not a replacement, merely an extension, of my family (c:< ). Now that I have returned to the beloved internet for a while now, I really want to watch television. Lately there have been tons of documentaries in the programme, intelligent and superbly made ones (especially on the channels Arte and 3Sat) which are not all devoted to the memory of Hitler or to conspiracy theories about the Mayan calendar or to history so simplified and inaccurate that I feel like a piece of my brain is missing after watching it. [N.B.: Re.: historical "reenactments" in documentaries, they are an innovation so rubbishy that if I were given the choice to go back in time and change something, preventing them from ever existing would be my first priority, were it not that countless extremely lousy actors are employed because of them.] Anyway, I haven't seen a documentary since the day before yesterday and am currently in withdrawal.
***
At any rate it's Christmas tomorrow! It will be very unmaterialistic (N. was joking about each of us receiving a single sugar pearl as a present, but I fear that tomorrow morning he will find that it was no joking matter )c: ) as customary — I weighed buying presents this year and even thought out what to get everyone, but after imagining my self asking Papa and Mama for money in a couple months when my bank account runs out before I have a job because I spent too much too quickly, I decided against it, which was depressing until I thought that at least this teaches me the value of being able to give nice presents (though then I realized that my siblings would probably be happier with nice presents than with the knowledge that their deprivation has led to their sister's spiritual enlightenment) — but there will be loads of chocolate and other delicious things to compensate. (c: Besides, a primary function of religion is to offer stern "consolations" for the difficulties in life!
Friday, December 18, 2009
Winter Is Icumen In
It has been snowing modestly and in tiny flakes for the past three or four days. One day it fell glittering in the glow of the street lamps like flecks of gold dust settling in a stream; on another it was like pieces of ash driving through the air above and around a bonfire; and today it is like the minuscule white flies or gnats hovering and swooping over the deeper grass in summer. The quantity of snow covering the ground is not so impressive, but ragged lines of it are cleaving to the tree branches outside the apartment windows, the rooftops are dusted, cars powdered, and the grass on the street median only visible in dark patches through the white.
If I overcome my laziness I'll crack a volume of Henry Thoreau's essays and reread "A Winter Walk" (?), because it describes the snowy landscape extremely well. Living beside a thoroughfare in the city the descriptions of hallowed silence might not ring a bell as much (besides which I haven't been outside the apartment in five or so days), but as the platonic ideal even those have a certain relevance.
If I overcome my laziness I'll crack a volume of Henry Thoreau's essays and reread "A Winter Walk" (?), because it describes the snowy landscape extremely well. Living beside a thoroughfare in the city the descriptions of hallowed silence might not ring a bell as much (besides which I haven't been outside the apartment in five or so days), but as the platonic ideal even those have a certain relevance.
Monday, December 14, 2009
A Spot of Tipple
Having nothing much to write about, I want to share two drink recipes that have been keeping me contented during the past weeks. [Warning: The quantities are an approximation.]
***
The first is a refreshing and summery antidote to the winter, and very much like the punch which we traditionally prepare for New Year's:
1 canned peach half
syrup of canned peach
mandarin orange (optional)
white wine
sparkling mineral water
Cut the peach half into neat little wedges and put those into a wineglass. Pour enough syrup over the fruit to cover it generously; plunk in about three of the mandarin orange's segments, cut in little wedges or just in half. Pour in white wine perhaps in a 1:2 or 1:1 ratio to the syrup. Then add enough mineral water to bring out the flavour of the peach again (the alcohol tends to blot it out) but not so much that the drink tastes watery. A mint leaf would probably be a pretty garnish, but I haven't tried it and couldn't say if the flavours fit.
Often the pieces of fruit refuse to slide out of the glass on their own, so we use a fondue or dessert fork to fish them out.
*
The second recipe is warm and more wintery. Given the paucity of sugar and absence of cream, it is less flavourful and more healthy than Irish cream, and besides it's pretty much ordinary coffee with a splash of whisky, so I have no doubt that connaisseurs of alcohol or coffee or both would scorn it. But I make it often.
coffee, previously made
1 tsp. sugar
hot water
milk
dash of whisky
Put the sugar into the bottom of the mug, and pour two fingers of coffee onto it. Pour in hot water almost to the top of the mug or until the coffee is a little weaker than you would customarily drink it; then add milk until the coffee is as dark or light as you wish. Finally put in the whisky. When I make the coffee with Glenfiddich it's a nobler drink, but the plonk which we also possess under the name of whisky doesn't clash with the coffee as much flavour-wise and makes the drink more comfortably boozy.
***
And here is a New York Times slideshow with links to *real* winter drink recipes. The most feasible are probably the eggnog (as long as you try the classic recipe, and not the modern ones for people with a venturesome spirit and far too much time on their hands) and the apple cider toddy.
On the Guardian website I also liked this lengthy debate on the merits of mulled wine/Glögg/Glühwein. Sometimes I do find Glühwein cloying and rather medieval due to the strong spices, but am not violently opposed to it.
***
The first is a refreshing and summery antidote to the winter, and very much like the punch which we traditionally prepare for New Year's:
1 canned peach half
syrup of canned peach
mandarin orange (optional)
white wine
sparkling mineral water
Cut the peach half into neat little wedges and put those into a wineglass. Pour enough syrup over the fruit to cover it generously; plunk in about three of the mandarin orange's segments, cut in little wedges or just in half. Pour in white wine perhaps in a 1:2 or 1:1 ratio to the syrup. Then add enough mineral water to bring out the flavour of the peach again (the alcohol tends to blot it out) but not so much that the drink tastes watery. A mint leaf would probably be a pretty garnish, but I haven't tried it and couldn't say if the flavours fit.
Often the pieces of fruit refuse to slide out of the glass on their own, so we use a fondue or dessert fork to fish them out.
*
The second recipe is warm and more wintery. Given the paucity of sugar and absence of cream, it is less flavourful and more healthy than Irish cream, and besides it's pretty much ordinary coffee with a splash of whisky, so I have no doubt that connaisseurs of alcohol or coffee or both would scorn it. But I make it often.
coffee, previously made
1 tsp. sugar
hot water
milk
dash of whisky
Put the sugar into the bottom of the mug, and pour two fingers of coffee onto it. Pour in hot water almost to the top of the mug or until the coffee is a little weaker than you would customarily drink it; then add milk until the coffee is as dark or light as you wish. Finally put in the whisky. When I make the coffee with Glenfiddich it's a nobler drink, but the plonk which we also possess under the name of whisky doesn't clash with the coffee as much flavour-wise and makes the drink more comfortably boozy.
***
And here is a New York Times slideshow with links to *real* winter drink recipes. The most feasible are probably the eggnog (as long as you try the classic recipe, and not the modern ones for people with a venturesome spirit and far too much time on their hands) and the apple cider toddy.
On the Guardian website I also liked this lengthy debate on the merits of mulled wine/Glögg/Glühwein. Sometimes I do find Glühwein cloying and rather medieval due to the strong spices, but am not violently opposed to it.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
An Olive Branch in Oslo
Through sheer good luck (and lack of something better to do than turn on the "idiot box") I caught the tail end of Barack Obama's speech in receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. The following is my impressionistic, which is to say probably inaccurate, summing up of the event:
To deal with the inessentials first, the setting of the Oslo City Hall was bright and spacious, rather like that of a federal legislative assembly. In the stage area the floral arrangements were in my opinion underwhelming, especially the wrinkly anthuriums (or similar flowers; at any rate they're the ubiquitous spade-shaped specimens of living plastic for which the crass but useful term "butt-ugly" might have been invented) in an unappealing shade of green, set in cushions of an apricot-tinged blossom.
The sea of people in their chairs was looking bored/antagonistic — though Michelle Obama was attentive as in duty bound though probably suffering from jet lag and evidently at pains to keep her eyes propped open, and Will Smith with family was relatively alive — as was warranted by the length of the ceremony. I remember that the year where the Muhammad Yunus won, a cheerful Bangladeshi dance troupe performed, and the audience could not have possibly looked more humourless, inanimate, and pasty-faced; this year it seemed marginally better. As is usual with televised audiences, the camera zoomed in on faces with desperate attempts at topicality (a fellow in a white kippah was a frequent victim, and when China and the Cultural Revolution were mentioned, possibly Chinese people were singled out, whereupon one of them looked puzzled) and the owners of those faces strove to shutter them as well as they could. Four persons presumably all of the Norwegian royal family were stranded front and centre in an isolated row of chairs which made them very conspicuous, but they bore it stoically and one white-clad lady in an admirable cloche hat and immaculate blonde coiffure even fished up a smile from time to time. Another member of that row was a gentleman with a finely trimmed beard framing his visage, which fascinated me through its paradoxical expression of uncommunicative mental alertness. At the end Lang Lang (in a white coat, suggestive of a wedding cake and adorned with doves at the sleeves) performed the Liebestraum (No. 3?) by Liszt with much enthusiasm.
As for the speech, it was a characteristically Obamian, fluent and uncomplicated mixture of refreshing common sense, rhetorical flourishes, (since it was directed at an international audience) first-year world history lesson, and sincerity. Obama referred to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy. He argued that peace cannot be just or lasting if it is only the absence of conflict and not also the prevalence of human rights; he name-checked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which impressed me because it is likely either gibberish or anathema to the majority of Americans, but which makes sense given his field of legal expertise; besides he argued that human rights are not a western construct but truly universal (which was of course music to this ex-Amnesty International-er's ears). He emphasized that mass abuses of power cannot be ignored, and that if the international community were willing to stand as a united front and be willing to enforce heavy sanctions, etc., then hopefully one wouldn't be faced with the dilemma of military action vs. passive complicity in crime. But condemnation of such abuses will not achieve anything on its own; one must still be ready to engage in dialogue, and to offer the responsible government a friendlier avenue of policy. Then he argued forcefully in favour of pursuing ideals that seem unreachable, even if they are in fact not fully reachable, rather than settling for an unsatisfactory status quo in the name of "realism." To illustrate this argument he again mentioned Gandhi and King, whose proposals may not always have been 100% practical but whose guiding principles are extremely valuable.
So far so good. What was really problematic was his defense of the war in Afghanistan, though he had the decency to look unhappy about it. He tied it back directly to September 11th, apparently forgetting that 15(?) of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, that the Afghan population had nothing at all to do with the matter (I'm inclined to believe that the attacks were really the initiative of those who carried it out and not to be tied back in any except a tenuous way to the former mujahideen in Afghanistan), and so on and so forth. I shouldn't become too self-righteous about it, because I haven't opposed the war in Afghanistan much. But if one defends that war one has to be aware that one is defending the deaths of entire innocent families and even, if some reports are accurate, of entire innocent villages through aerial raids — this does mean people of all ages being burned alive and torn to pieces and disabled. It means defending the deaths of hundreds of American, British, Canadian, and other soldiers, at times through "friendly fire." It also means defending the destruction of opium poppy fields which, however undesirable the health effects on the consumers and however undesirable the funnelling of money for weapons to violent parties may be, deprives terribly poor people of their income. It also means defending an egregious breach of a country's sovereignty (thereby setting a bad precedent, one might add), and the installation of a corrupt president who apparently has no means to ensure any modicum of security, prosperity, or civil liberties outside the confines of the capital city. It also means defending what I think is a totally inept excuse for rebuilding a country that was so miserably indigent anyway that it should have been impossible not to significantly improve the infrastructure (education, health care, electricity, etc.) through even a modest injection of foreign aid.
But, to return to Obama's speech, what especially got my goat is when he talked about achieving peace through war, or displayed glimpses of Shrub-like smugness; one of my alternate-universe nightmares is of Bush and Blair winning the Nobel Peace Prize for the invasion of Iraq — for which they were genuinely nominated back in the day by persons evidently underequipped with brains — and at times in the speech their spirit peeked forth. I also didn't think the speech was an appropriate platform to nag at the designated villains of Iran, North Korea, and Burma again; of course their governments are not beacons of civil liberties, but mentioning them would only not have been overly political if he had criticized American allies (Belarus, for instance) or examined the proverbial beam in his(/the American government's) own eye as well. For instance when he said that the US had never waged war against a democracy, it may be literally true, but the CIA-supported coup against Salvador Allende immediately (and the one against Mohammad Mossadegh, later) leapt to mind. Altogether it will require a whole lot more time, incense, atonement, and holy water before the demon of the Bush Administration is exorcised once and for all.
Besides I think that an enormous obstacle facing human rights today is that the European Union and the US discarded them so easily once a pretext for doing so arose with Sept. 11th, despite the fact that we are far richer, more stable, and better furnished with (e.g. law enforcement) resources than most or all of the countries whose governments we consider morally depraved. What I thought was good about the Clinton Administration was that it proved through its actions that financial growth, international political might and humanitarian ideals were not incompatible; besides, at least as far as good intentions went, it was very serious about genocide and other mass human rights abuses. (On the other hand I never liked Madeleine Albright's — and apparently Hillary Clinton's — dogmatic conflation of her perception of America's interests as well as America's incumbent government's philosophy, with the overarching moral imperative in foreign policy.) In a nutshell, I wish that Obama had said something about the importance of proving the practicability of one's precepts and setting a good example.
To deal with the inessentials first, the setting of the Oslo City Hall was bright and spacious, rather like that of a federal legislative assembly. In the stage area the floral arrangements were in my opinion underwhelming, especially the wrinkly anthuriums (or similar flowers; at any rate they're the ubiquitous spade-shaped specimens of living plastic for which the crass but useful term "butt-ugly" might have been invented) in an unappealing shade of green, set in cushions of an apricot-tinged blossom.
The sea of people in their chairs was looking bored/antagonistic — though Michelle Obama was attentive as in duty bound though probably suffering from jet lag and evidently at pains to keep her eyes propped open, and Will Smith with family was relatively alive — as was warranted by the length of the ceremony. I remember that the year where the Muhammad Yunus won, a cheerful Bangladeshi dance troupe performed, and the audience could not have possibly looked more humourless, inanimate, and pasty-faced; this year it seemed marginally better. As is usual with televised audiences, the camera zoomed in on faces with desperate attempts at topicality (a fellow in a white kippah was a frequent victim, and when China and the Cultural Revolution were mentioned, possibly Chinese people were singled out, whereupon one of them looked puzzled) and the owners of those faces strove to shutter them as well as they could. Four persons presumably all of the Norwegian royal family were stranded front and centre in an isolated row of chairs which made them very conspicuous, but they bore it stoically and one white-clad lady in an admirable cloche hat and immaculate blonde coiffure even fished up a smile from time to time. Another member of that row was a gentleman with a finely trimmed beard framing his visage, which fascinated me through its paradoxical expression of uncommunicative mental alertness. At the end Lang Lang (in a white coat, suggestive of a wedding cake and adorned with doves at the sleeves) performed the Liebestraum (No. 3?) by Liszt with much enthusiasm.
As for the speech, it was a characteristically Obamian, fluent and uncomplicated mixture of refreshing common sense, rhetorical flourishes, (since it was directed at an international audience) first-year world history lesson, and sincerity. Obama referred to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy. He argued that peace cannot be just or lasting if it is only the absence of conflict and not also the prevalence of human rights; he name-checked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which impressed me because it is likely either gibberish or anathema to the majority of Americans, but which makes sense given his field of legal expertise; besides he argued that human rights are not a western construct but truly universal (which was of course music to this ex-Amnesty International-er's ears). He emphasized that mass abuses of power cannot be ignored, and that if the international community were willing to stand as a united front and be willing to enforce heavy sanctions, etc., then hopefully one wouldn't be faced with the dilemma of military action vs. passive complicity in crime. But condemnation of such abuses will not achieve anything on its own; one must still be ready to engage in dialogue, and to offer the responsible government a friendlier avenue of policy. Then he argued forcefully in favour of pursuing ideals that seem unreachable, even if they are in fact not fully reachable, rather than settling for an unsatisfactory status quo in the name of "realism." To illustrate this argument he again mentioned Gandhi and King, whose proposals may not always have been 100% practical but whose guiding principles are extremely valuable.
So far so good. What was really problematic was his defense of the war in Afghanistan, though he had the decency to look unhappy about it. He tied it back directly to September 11th, apparently forgetting that 15(?) of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, that the Afghan population had nothing at all to do with the matter (I'm inclined to believe that the attacks were really the initiative of those who carried it out and not to be tied back in any except a tenuous way to the former mujahideen in Afghanistan), and so on and so forth. I shouldn't become too self-righteous about it, because I haven't opposed the war in Afghanistan much. But if one defends that war one has to be aware that one is defending the deaths of entire innocent families and even, if some reports are accurate, of entire innocent villages through aerial raids — this does mean people of all ages being burned alive and torn to pieces and disabled. It means defending the deaths of hundreds of American, British, Canadian, and other soldiers, at times through "friendly fire." It also means defending the destruction of opium poppy fields which, however undesirable the health effects on the consumers and however undesirable the funnelling of money for weapons to violent parties may be, deprives terribly poor people of their income. It also means defending an egregious breach of a country's sovereignty (thereby setting a bad precedent, one might add), and the installation of a corrupt president who apparently has no means to ensure any modicum of security, prosperity, or civil liberties outside the confines of the capital city. It also means defending what I think is a totally inept excuse for rebuilding a country that was so miserably indigent anyway that it should have been impossible not to significantly improve the infrastructure (education, health care, electricity, etc.) through even a modest injection of foreign aid.
But, to return to Obama's speech, what especially got my goat is when he talked about achieving peace through war, or displayed glimpses of Shrub-like smugness; one of my alternate-universe nightmares is of Bush and Blair winning the Nobel Peace Prize for the invasion of Iraq — for which they were genuinely nominated back in the day by persons evidently underequipped with brains — and at times in the speech their spirit peeked forth. I also didn't think the speech was an appropriate platform to nag at the designated villains of Iran, North Korea, and Burma again; of course their governments are not beacons of civil liberties, but mentioning them would only not have been overly political if he had criticized American allies (Belarus, for instance) or examined the proverbial beam in his(/the American government's) own eye as well. For instance when he said that the US had never waged war against a democracy, it may be literally true, but the CIA-supported coup against Salvador Allende immediately (and the one against Mohammad Mossadegh, later) leapt to mind. Altogether it will require a whole lot more time, incense, atonement, and holy water before the demon of the Bush Administration is exorcised once and for all.
Besides I think that an enormous obstacle facing human rights today is that the European Union and the US discarded them so easily once a pretext for doing so arose with Sept. 11th, despite the fact that we are far richer, more stable, and better furnished with (e.g. law enforcement) resources than most or all of the countries whose governments we consider morally depraved. What I thought was good about the Clinton Administration was that it proved through its actions that financial growth, international political might and humanitarian ideals were not incompatible; besides, at least as far as good intentions went, it was very serious about genocide and other mass human rights abuses. (On the other hand I never liked Madeleine Albright's — and apparently Hillary Clinton's — dogmatic conflation of her perception of America's interests as well as America's incumbent government's philosophy, with the overarching moral imperative in foreign policy.) In a nutshell, I wish that Obama had said something about the importance of proving the practicability of one's precepts and setting a good example.
Friday, December 04, 2009
A White Night and the West Wind
I've been up since yesterday, and have watched TV (news, Tatort, CSI and Bones), practiced the piano (bits of Bach's Partita No. 4 and of the Moonlight Sonata), drafted an email to Papa (who is currently abroad) which I ended up not sending after all, caught up on the Guardian and New York Times and Globe and Mail as well as assorted blogs (Gawker, Jezebel, Chocolate&Zucchini, Je Mange La Ville, The Sartorialist, and A Don's Life), read a late 19th-century novel (The Award of Justice, set in a mining town at the Rocky Mountains, by A. Maynard Barbour) on Project Gutenberg, and finally worked again on a Lighthouse blog post about one of Shelley's poems. Lastly I took a shower which put a period to my previous piglet-like state of happy dirtiness. (c:
*
Since then Mama's friend M. has come for a visit and the two of them are chatting away in the corner room. In honour of the occasion Mama prepared an elaborate breakfast from which I have already profited. It specifically consists of croissants, buns, brie and camembert (or two bries, or two camemberts, for all I know), cucumber slices and tomato wedges, gouda, ham-like meat, jams, honey, eggs boiled in the shell, coffee, and tea as well as a munificent platter of Christmas delicacies: Spekulatius, Pfeffernüsse, Printen, Dominosteine, Marzipankartoffeln, and gold coins which hopefully contain chocolate and not the intriguing brown toffee-ish substance which is its occasional alternative. Where the platter is concerned I have only had a Marzipankartoffel and a fragment of Spekulatius for fear of depriving my school- and university-beleaguered siblings; aside from the ethics of the matter, and the natural impulses of sisterly sympathy, it isn't wise to make them cranky.
*
The Shelley post has sucked up hours and hours in work, also because I went in knowing little about the poet aside from a general impression gathered from his most famous poems, and therefore found out a lot of interesting and necessary pieces of information and ideas only during the process of writing the blog post. Though I was repeatedly tempted to say that it's done and just post it, I didn't until just now because of the niggling feeling that it's only a tiny bit short of complete.
Now and then I have wondered whether to "illustrate" one of the Lighthouse posts with music; in this case it took a while to decide not to embed a YouTube video of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in d minor. The thing is that the concerto really feels suited to the poem; it is rebellious and unconventional but also lyrical and mostly optimistic, it reminds me (as I wrote in a previous blog post) of a tempest and therefore of wind, it has impassioned passages interspersed with tranquil lulls, and it likewise ends on a peculiarly ambiguous (fulfilling/unfulfilling) note. As for the time frame, Mozart composed the concerto in 1785 whereas "Ode to the West Wind" was written in 1819 and published in 1820.
Another artistic work that came to mind in connection with the poem is a Shakespearean sonnet. I decided to keep that out of the blog post, too, but initially I wrote:
As it turns out the one significant cultural cross-reference I kept in the post was a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, as a literal illustration. I am not a great fan of that artist and this particular painting is perilously close to kitsch. (I also suspect that whoever uploaded this image to Wikipedia photoshopped it to heighten that unfortunate effect, but at least the details are easier to make out here especially given the reduced picture size than in the other, nobler and darker image.) On the other hand it comes from the same period and atmospherically depicts an apposite scene.
*
In any case I seem to have reached the point of sleep deprivation in which my brain is on autopilot, but I'll practice the piano. Then, as soon as someone besides Gi. is at home, common sense will presumably propel me to the bank to take care of an urgent point of business. (A propos of the latter, and because a picture is worth a thousand words: )c:<<< )
*
Since then Mama's friend M. has come for a visit and the two of them are chatting away in the corner room. In honour of the occasion Mama prepared an elaborate breakfast from which I have already profited. It specifically consists of croissants, buns, brie and camembert (or two bries, or two camemberts, for all I know), cucumber slices and tomato wedges, gouda, ham-like meat, jams, honey, eggs boiled in the shell, coffee, and tea as well as a munificent platter of Christmas delicacies: Spekulatius, Pfeffernüsse, Printen, Dominosteine, Marzipankartoffeln, and gold coins which hopefully contain chocolate and not the intriguing brown toffee-ish substance which is its occasional alternative. Where the platter is concerned I have only had a Marzipankartoffel and a fragment of Spekulatius for fear of depriving my school- and university-beleaguered siblings; aside from the ethics of the matter, and the natural impulses of sisterly sympathy, it isn't wise to make them cranky.
*
The Shelley post has sucked up hours and hours in work, also because I went in knowing little about the poet aside from a general impression gathered from his most famous poems, and therefore found out a lot of interesting and necessary pieces of information and ideas only during the process of writing the blog post. Though I was repeatedly tempted to say that it's done and just post it, I didn't until just now because of the niggling feeling that it's only a tiny bit short of complete.
Now and then I have wondered whether to "illustrate" one of the Lighthouse posts with music; in this case it took a while to decide not to embed a YouTube video of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in d minor. The thing is that the concerto really feels suited to the poem; it is rebellious and unconventional but also lyrical and mostly optimistic, it reminds me (as I wrote in a previous blog post) of a tempest and therefore of wind, it has impassioned passages interspersed with tranquil lulls, and it likewise ends on a peculiarly ambiguous (fulfilling/unfulfilling) note. As for the time frame, Mozart composed the concerto in 1785 whereas "Ode to the West Wind" was written in 1819 and published in 1820.
Another artistic work that came to mind in connection with the poem is a Shakespearean sonnet. I decided to keep that out of the blog post, too, but initially I wrote:
If Shelley had grown older, disillusioned, and resigned, or if he had lived in a different political climate and period, perhaps he might have written something closer to what feels to me like the "Ode"'s thematic twin but emotional antithesis: Shakespeare's sonnet LXXIII ("That time of year thou may'st in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, / Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang," etc.
*
In any case I seem to have reached the point of sleep deprivation in which my brain is on autopilot, but I'll practice the piano. Then, as soon as someone besides Gi. is at home, common sense will presumably propel me to the bank to take care of an urgent point of business. (A propos of the latter, and because a picture is worth a thousand words: )c:<<< )
Monday, November 23, 2009
A Spectacular Interview Failure
My trip to the interview turned out to fail for a thoroughly stupid reason in an equally thoroughly unexpected way. The surprising thing is how many things could go wrong and didn't. I carefully figured out where the café is located, decided to walk there (which is a fairly heroic measure, but I didn't have much else to do and didn't want to use up two transit tickets) along a route that was familiar, left myself an hour and a half and decided to use public transit if I was running late, briskly completed the walk (though after the Brandenburger Tor I let myself stroll along at a relaxed pace) and found the café in at most 1 hour 10 minutes. This was ca. 20 minutes early so I sat outside and tried to read more of Humboldt's Ansichten der Natur, specifically a lecture on the characteristics of vegetation based on the latitudinal zone which described in the usual nice manner the formation of lichens on bare rock and the luxuriant growth of the tropical zones (he emphasizes that, though to Europeans of his day hot climates may be associated with the desert, the desert did not always exist in its present extent and in any case the equatorial jungles prove the impression wrong). But it was hard to concentrate.
At nine or ten minutes to 12:30 I entered the café and mentioned to one of the girls at the counter that I had come for the interview. The café owner (who, funnily enough, is (almost) in her 30s and wears her hair in a pixie cut just as I had guessed from her voice over the telephone) was still talking to someone, so the girl said I could sit in the corner nearby and then they would tell me when it's my turn. It was awkward because I was within close earshot of the other interviews, but I turned away and tried very hard not to listen but to read. It didn't entirely work, and I overheard for instance that several people were late, through which I had the impression that the whole interview schedule was dragging anyway. So there were three interviews, and since someone was sitting between us and the café was fairly noisy I was only aware of snatches of the last and was therefore unaware when it ended. At length, however, I did become aware, and asked the lady (who was sitting there a little forlornly) if someone else would still be having an interview before me.
At that moment the person who would be having the next interview arrived. The interviewer inquired how long I had been waiting, and I said "half an hour" (which was a mild understatement, even ignoring the time spent outside), and when she asked I explained about being told to wait, etc., careful not to blame anybody (which I genuinely didn't; the café really was busy and so on and so forth). Then came the shock when she, though expressing commiseration, cancelled my interview so that the schedule wouldn't be wrecked; she asked me to send an "Anschreiben" instead, but it sounded as if the ship had sailed anyway.
So I went outside, where it began to rain just like in a film, very much wanting to burst into an ear-shattering wail like a baby. Instead I took deep breaths to avoid such a drastic reaction and (walking along to the bus station at the Tor) felt sad. The only thought that cheered me up occasionally — besides the standard ones: it can be helpful to channel the disappointment into something else, another valuable (ha!) experience has been gathered, and in the grand scheme of things this may have been a fortunate mishap — was the horrid irony that the one time I plan things perfectly, come truly early, and altogether act in what seems to be the most exemplary manner, I encounter grievous injustice!
The thing with the "Anschreiben" is that the interviewer already has my c.v. as well as an informal cover letter in which I state what my intended career direction is and why I would like the job. Besides, aside from the problem of culinary inexperience, I would have to get the health pass at the last moment (which, as I once read — though perhaps it would be best to doublecheck that —, should be procured in the district of Berlin where the workplace is located), so my chances appear tiny. Thirdly the interviewer seemed harried and mentioned, if I understood the context correctly, that she had tonnes of applications. And frankly I'm grumpy about the whole affair. So I'd like to move on.
Fortunately Gi. and Ge. and J. have been full of sympathy. Gi. even asked if I wanted anything special from the grocery store, like ice cream or chocolate, and returned with a small feast of both before going off to babysit. It also makes me feel better to remember being called overqualified after the last interview and the way it still reassures me that I'm not useless, and to be conscious that for once I did pretty much everything right.
At nine or ten minutes to 12:30 I entered the café and mentioned to one of the girls at the counter that I had come for the interview. The café owner (who, funnily enough, is (almost) in her 30s and wears her hair in a pixie cut just as I had guessed from her voice over the telephone) was still talking to someone, so the girl said I could sit in the corner nearby and then they would tell me when it's my turn. It was awkward because I was within close earshot of the other interviews, but I turned away and tried very hard not to listen but to read. It didn't entirely work, and I overheard for instance that several people were late, through which I had the impression that the whole interview schedule was dragging anyway. So there were three interviews, and since someone was sitting between us and the café was fairly noisy I was only aware of snatches of the last and was therefore unaware when it ended. At length, however, I did become aware, and asked the lady (who was sitting there a little forlornly) if someone else would still be having an interview before me.
At that moment the person who would be having the next interview arrived. The interviewer inquired how long I had been waiting, and I said "half an hour" (which was a mild understatement, even ignoring the time spent outside), and when she asked I explained about being told to wait, etc., careful not to blame anybody (which I genuinely didn't; the café really was busy and so on and so forth). Then came the shock when she, though expressing commiseration, cancelled my interview so that the schedule wouldn't be wrecked; she asked me to send an "Anschreiben" instead, but it sounded as if the ship had sailed anyway.
So I went outside, where it began to rain just like in a film, very much wanting to burst into an ear-shattering wail like a baby. Instead I took deep breaths to avoid such a drastic reaction and (walking along to the bus station at the Tor) felt sad. The only thought that cheered me up occasionally — besides the standard ones: it can be helpful to channel the disappointment into something else, another valuable (ha!) experience has been gathered, and in the grand scheme of things this may have been a fortunate mishap — was the horrid irony that the one time I plan things perfectly, come truly early, and altogether act in what seems to be the most exemplary manner, I encounter grievous injustice!
The thing with the "Anschreiben" is that the interviewer already has my c.v. as well as an informal cover letter in which I state what my intended career direction is and why I would like the job. Besides, aside from the problem of culinary inexperience, I would have to get the health pass at the last moment (which, as I once read — though perhaps it would be best to doublecheck that —, should be procured in the district of Berlin where the workplace is located), so my chances appear tiny. Thirdly the interviewer seemed harried and mentioned, if I understood the context correctly, that she had tonnes of applications. And frankly I'm grumpy about the whole affair. So I'd like to move on.
Fortunately Gi. and Ge. and J. have been full of sympathy. Gi. even asked if I wanted anything special from the grocery store, like ice cream or chocolate, and returned with a small feast of both before going off to babysit. It also makes me feel better to remember being called overqualified after the last interview and the way it still reassures me that I'm not useless, and to be conscious that for once I did pretty much everything right.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
An Interview, Romance, Gourds, a Model, and Ravel
Tomorrow I will be going to an interview for a job at a café in Mitte, and I was very excited during the morning, only to lose some of the optimism as the day progressed and my cautious and wet-blankety side asserted itself. Before going to sleep I'll probably put everything in order for tomorrow, then shower and breakfast after waking up again; I'm still undecided whether to go to the interview per bicycle (J.'s, to be precise) or U-Bahn.
***
To be honest I'm becoming bored with the ways I like to waste time. For instance, 19th-century popular novels already grew stale half a year ago, which is unsurprising considering that I was immersed in them for about five years. Admittedly I still read them occasionally. Yesterday I started Susan Warner's Diana, expecting as usual to become (enjoyably) incandescent with indignant rage at her brand of happily obsolete New England Christianity and her preachy, arrogant, and dictatorial heroes. On the other hand I've already encountered a very amusing passage. After a meeting where the heroine, her mother, and a group of fellow parishioners meet the new vicar, the heroine's mother claims that the vicar is too "masterful." The heroine implicitly pish-poshes the charge. It seems Miss Warner temporarily forgot the fact that she literally named the man Mr. Masters.
As for Gawker and the sister site for women, Jezebel, I'm not as absorbed in either of the blogs as I used to be, perhaps in the case of the former because the prospect of moving to New York is more distant than ever and so I don't have an immediate motivation to stay as up-to-date and become as informed as possible.
***
Besides that I've been reading tonnes of harlequin novels since around June, but it turns out that I'm too much of a skeptic, can't find much in them after at the very most four readings (this coming from an inveterate re-reader), and become easily irritated at the deception, cowardice, and emotional coercion which all too often characterize the behaviour of the main characters, especially if the author never makes them realize the error of and change their ways.
Some of the books, while well-meant, are too embarrassing to read with full enjoyment, especially when they are written by British or American authors and depict foreign characters like sheiks and businessmen of the Italian, Spanish, or Greek persuasion. For the sheik books I have to metaphorically pinch my nose to get past the titles and premises, studiously ignore the obligatory mention of the word "harem" and the obligatory explanation that harems no longer exist, and then sigh patiently through a parade of stereotypes like camping in the desert, camels, veils, Arabian horses, souks and bargaining, peculiar "traditional" marriages, and the inevitable civilizing western influence exerted by the heroine. But the Italian, Spanish and Greek businessmen are often quite funny, as the author dutifully sprinkles their conversation with "Accidenti!", "Dio!", "gatita," "ochi," and "ne" as the situation requires to convey their nationality (for their Gallic counterparts "Zut!" generally suffices); and of course they are required to be as vaguely hypermasculine as possible.
But it's also hard for me to take the Italo-Graeco-Spanish books seriously since, given my limited circle of acquaintance, the first names that pop up when I think of "French man" or "Italian man" are "Sarkozy" and "Berlusconi" respectively, and of Napoleon complexes and bad government policy and (especially in the latter case) contempt for the law. After this point thoughts of romance are impossible. For "Greek man" I admittedly just think of a random burly person with a curly brown beard and hair, in his forties, who could be a Plataean soldier from the 5th century B.C., Macedonian shepherd, medieval fisherman or taxi driver. Which is admittedly also a stereotype, and not romantic either.
There are also the historical novels. Georgette Heyer is I think the most widely respected authoress in the Regency genre, but I find her books peculiarly cold and unsatisfying in their frivolity (I've had the same problem when reading P.G. Wodehouse) and a little too derivative of Jane Austen. Frankly there are lots of Regency novels that owe their debt to "A Lady" too obviously; I become disproportionately disgruntled when the only streets in Bath are Laura-Place, Camden-Place, and Milsom Street: not subtle hommage, just lazy research. But then there are writers who take the trouble to independently research the 18th century, presumably also in university; so I learn a bit of social history during the read, besides which a new perspective on the era is valuable (even though I grouchily believe that it's far too easy to be a feminist protagonist and a Friend of the Servants with the benefit of centuries of hindsight).
What's more amusing is (are?) the medieval and Scottish novels. Having read Chaucer, etc., I am perfectly well aware that the dialogue in the novels is totally inauthentic, even if the gentlemen in the kilts say "Aye" now and then and employ terribly cheesy metaphors. What was also fun to read was the medieval romance whose author was almost entirely concerned with touting the virtue of cleanliness in general and baths in particular. Said author is almost certainly a North American woman who considers "Thou shalt shower daily" as one of the Ten Commandments. But I can sympathize a little, because two years or so ago I started a story set in 15th-century France about a woman who wanders through the countryside in solitude, and my escapist mellow was thoroughly harshed when I realized how stinky she would presumably have been.
Lastly, very few romance novels are in the least convincing if one asks one's self whether the relationship as depicted in the novel could prove a solid foundation for 50, 30, or even 15 years of marriage. So I may suspend disbelief, and succeed to a certain degree — besides which I like picking out the stray germs of truth, psychoanalyzing the books in an amateur way, and dissecting the author's craftmanship and thought processes; besides it's depressing if I don't indulge any romantic illusions — but the fact remains that the sensational course of reading has run its course.
***
So I've grudgingly turned to the television, and while yesterday I ended up contentedly watching a children's animé film entitled Neko no ongaeshi in Japanese, Königreich der Katzen in German and The Cat Returns in English, today was devoted to High Culture. There was an excellent documentary, shown on the French-German culture channel Arte, about a cooperative in a village in Paraguay's southeast, where women earn a supplementary income by turning loofah gourds into sponges and — in an eco-friendly experiment — into wall panels and insulation. These cucumber-like fruits are harvested, hanging dark and green from the tanned, wilted vines, then soaked in water, and then peeled and emptied of their seeds, so that the porous flesh remains; then they are hung up to dry, tinted (at least I think it happens at this point) with natural dyes, lain on the sandy grass to dry again, and sent off to be sold. The film also had an interesting interlude in the slums of Asunción, from which a father and his son set out in a horse-drawn cart, rolling along on incongruous metal-hubbed, rubber tyres, along the muddy roads to the asphalted streets where the rich and middle classes live, and the man collects garbage for reuse. (A literal illustration of the saying, "One man's trash is another man's treasure," though "treasure" is too strong a word.)
After that there was a concert with Georges Prêtre conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. First there was a symphony by Beethoven (or "Luigi," as Mama likes to flippantly refer to the Grand Teuton), which seemed generic and unimpressive, especially since Prêtre's light approach uncomfortably highlighted how slight its comparative musical merit really is. But Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 2, was a fine showcase of his and the Philharmonic's skill. It might be mood music presumably intended to plunge its listeners into an abjectly stupid narcotized state, but it was played with disembodied grace, sensitivity, and an unexpected seriousness and complexity. Thanks to The Rest is Noise I was better able to pick up on the compositional structure and musical influences. But I didn't recognize any part of it from the concert we attended last November.
Then there were Debussy's Nocturnes, which did come across as effect-mongering sadly familiar from the soundtracks of Disney movies, but again it was excellently rendered. The "Sirens" was a bit of an oddity. In a laudable inspiration the camera direction was arranged so that we were treated to views of the gilded caryatids along the sides of the concert hall. These sculptures have, however, rather stolid faces and incipient double chins, and are not altogether what I'd picture under the word "siren." A woman's choir was assisting the orchestra by intermittently breaking into what was intended to be an eerie ethereal howl. But, though perhaps intentionally, their notes mostly sounded a trifle flat, and when at one point two especially resonant voices rang out together one of them was as flat as ever and the other was ostentatiously swelling at the right note just above that to show how it should be. The camera also narrowed into one singer's face who was presumably deemed especially picturesque, with blue eyes and golden hair; she appeared peeved by the attention. Altogether I think that the New Year's Concerts have ruined me for Viennese music, because now the mental images of kitschy dancing, wide-angle shots of palaces, camera lenses lingering on stray lemons in an orangerie, and choreography of all kinds, persist on intruding, so I become distracted and nitpickish and I only make silly surface observations about the music.
Then there was an interview with the model Iman, carried out painfully by a (starstruck?) CNN interviewer who was apparently incapable of responding naturally to her subject and instead asked questions and, at receiving the answers, acted out sympathy, shock, and amusement in a gruesomely unnatural and clumsy way. Iman was, by contrast, intelligent, a fluent conversationalist and possessed of a lovely speaking voice, and what she said was thoroughly interesting. A misguided article at the outset of her modelling career in New York claimed that she had been "discovered" by Peter Beard in a jungle, herding goats or something of the sort, and it was generally believed that she could speak little or no English. In fact her family had been well-to-do before they fled Somalia; she was a political science student at the University of Nairobi and knew five languages. Beard came across her in the city, and she agreed to be photographed for the sake of paying her tuition. I also liked that she emphasized in the interview that contrary to popular belief, refugees are often not parasites who like to exploit foreign governments, and that nobody in his right mind would voluntarily leave his home country in order to throw himself on the tender mercies of strangers in an unfamiliar nation.
Anyway, aside from that I practiced the piano a little — Scott Joplin, the fifth and sixth Spanish Dances of Enrique Granados, Bach's Concerto in d minor (just the keyboard part, obviously), and the first movement of a Mozart concerto in C major (ditto). Then Papa and I went through our duet repertory, even including movements from Beethoven's very difficult cello sonatas. And I started but lost a game of Age of Empires (II) on the computer. But now I intend to check my e-mail, prepare things for the next morning, and go to sleep.
[N.B.: Apologies for the length of this post. /c:]
***
To be honest I'm becoming bored with the ways I like to waste time. For instance, 19th-century popular novels already grew stale half a year ago, which is unsurprising considering that I was immersed in them for about five years. Admittedly I still read them occasionally. Yesterday I started Susan Warner's Diana, expecting as usual to become (enjoyably) incandescent with indignant rage at her brand of happily obsolete New England Christianity and her preachy, arrogant, and dictatorial heroes. On the other hand I've already encountered a very amusing passage. After a meeting where the heroine, her mother, and a group of fellow parishioners meet the new vicar, the heroine's mother claims that the vicar is too "masterful." The heroine implicitly pish-poshes the charge. It seems Miss Warner temporarily forgot the fact that she literally named the man Mr. Masters.
As for Gawker and the sister site for women, Jezebel, I'm not as absorbed in either of the blogs as I used to be, perhaps in the case of the former because the prospect of moving to New York is more distant than ever and so I don't have an immediate motivation to stay as up-to-date and become as informed as possible.
***
Besides that I've been reading tonnes of harlequin novels since around June, but it turns out that I'm too much of a skeptic, can't find much in them after at the very most four readings (this coming from an inveterate re-reader), and become easily irritated at the deception, cowardice, and emotional coercion which all too often characterize the behaviour of the main characters, especially if the author never makes them realize the error of and change their ways.
Some of the books, while well-meant, are too embarrassing to read with full enjoyment, especially when they are written by British or American authors and depict foreign characters like sheiks and businessmen of the Italian, Spanish, or Greek persuasion. For the sheik books I have to metaphorically pinch my nose to get past the titles and premises, studiously ignore the obligatory mention of the word "harem" and the obligatory explanation that harems no longer exist, and then sigh patiently through a parade of stereotypes like camping in the desert, camels, veils, Arabian horses, souks and bargaining, peculiar "traditional" marriages, and the inevitable civilizing western influence exerted by the heroine. But the Italian, Spanish and Greek businessmen are often quite funny, as the author dutifully sprinkles their conversation with "Accidenti!", "Dio!", "gatita," "ochi," and "ne" as the situation requires to convey their nationality (for their Gallic counterparts "Zut!" generally suffices); and of course they are required to be as vaguely hypermasculine as possible.
But it's also hard for me to take the Italo-Graeco-Spanish books seriously since, given my limited circle of acquaintance, the first names that pop up when I think of "French man" or "Italian man" are "Sarkozy" and "Berlusconi" respectively, and of Napoleon complexes and bad government policy and (especially in the latter case) contempt for the law. After this point thoughts of romance are impossible. For "Greek man" I admittedly just think of a random burly person with a curly brown beard and hair, in his forties, who could be a Plataean soldier from the 5th century B.C., Macedonian shepherd, medieval fisherman or taxi driver. Which is admittedly also a stereotype, and not romantic either.
There are also the historical novels. Georgette Heyer is I think the most widely respected authoress in the Regency genre, but I find her books peculiarly cold and unsatisfying in their frivolity (I've had the same problem when reading P.G. Wodehouse) and a little too derivative of Jane Austen. Frankly there are lots of Regency novels that owe their debt to "A Lady" too obviously; I become disproportionately disgruntled when the only streets in Bath are Laura-Place, Camden-Place, and Milsom Street: not subtle hommage, just lazy research. But then there are writers who take the trouble to independently research the 18th century, presumably also in university; so I learn a bit of social history during the read, besides which a new perspective on the era is valuable (even though I grouchily believe that it's far too easy to be a feminist protagonist and a Friend of the Servants with the benefit of centuries of hindsight).
What's more amusing is (are?) the medieval and Scottish novels. Having read Chaucer, etc., I am perfectly well aware that the dialogue in the novels is totally inauthentic, even if the gentlemen in the kilts say "Aye" now and then and employ terribly cheesy metaphors. What was also fun to read was the medieval romance whose author was almost entirely concerned with touting the virtue of cleanliness in general and baths in particular. Said author is almost certainly a North American woman who considers "Thou shalt shower daily" as one of the Ten Commandments. But I can sympathize a little, because two years or so ago I started a story set in 15th-century France about a woman who wanders through the countryside in solitude, and my escapist mellow was thoroughly harshed when I realized how stinky she would presumably have been.
Lastly, very few romance novels are in the least convincing if one asks one's self whether the relationship as depicted in the novel could prove a solid foundation for 50, 30, or even 15 years of marriage. So I may suspend disbelief, and succeed to a certain degree — besides which I like picking out the stray germs of truth, psychoanalyzing the books in an amateur way, and dissecting the author's craftmanship and thought processes; besides it's depressing if I don't indulge any romantic illusions — but the fact remains that the sensational course of reading has run its course.
***
So I've grudgingly turned to the television, and while yesterday I ended up contentedly watching a children's animé film entitled Neko no ongaeshi in Japanese, Königreich der Katzen in German and The Cat Returns in English, today was devoted to High Culture. There was an excellent documentary, shown on the French-German culture channel Arte, about a cooperative in a village in Paraguay's southeast, where women earn a supplementary income by turning loofah gourds into sponges and — in an eco-friendly experiment — into wall panels and insulation. These cucumber-like fruits are harvested, hanging dark and green from the tanned, wilted vines, then soaked in water, and then peeled and emptied of their seeds, so that the porous flesh remains; then they are hung up to dry, tinted (at least I think it happens at this point) with natural dyes, lain on the sandy grass to dry again, and sent off to be sold. The film also had an interesting interlude in the slums of Asunción, from which a father and his son set out in a horse-drawn cart, rolling along on incongruous metal-hubbed, rubber tyres, along the muddy roads to the asphalted streets where the rich and middle classes live, and the man collects garbage for reuse. (A literal illustration of the saying, "One man's trash is another man's treasure," though "treasure" is too strong a word.)
After that there was a concert with Georges Prêtre conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. First there was a symphony by Beethoven (or "Luigi," as Mama likes to flippantly refer to the Grand Teuton), which seemed generic and unimpressive, especially since Prêtre's light approach uncomfortably highlighted how slight its comparative musical merit really is. But Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 2, was a fine showcase of his and the Philharmonic's skill. It might be mood music presumably intended to plunge its listeners into an abjectly stupid narcotized state, but it was played with disembodied grace, sensitivity, and an unexpected seriousness and complexity. Thanks to The Rest is Noise I was better able to pick up on the compositional structure and musical influences. But I didn't recognize any part of it from the concert we attended last November.
Then there were Debussy's Nocturnes, which did come across as effect-mongering sadly familiar from the soundtracks of Disney movies, but again it was excellently rendered. The "Sirens" was a bit of an oddity. In a laudable inspiration the camera direction was arranged so that we were treated to views of the gilded caryatids along the sides of the concert hall. These sculptures have, however, rather stolid faces and incipient double chins, and are not altogether what I'd picture under the word "siren." A woman's choir was assisting the orchestra by intermittently breaking into what was intended to be an eerie ethereal howl. But, though perhaps intentionally, their notes mostly sounded a trifle flat, and when at one point two especially resonant voices rang out together one of them was as flat as ever and the other was ostentatiously swelling at the right note just above that to show how it should be. The camera also narrowed into one singer's face who was presumably deemed especially picturesque, with blue eyes and golden hair; she appeared peeved by the attention. Altogether I think that the New Year's Concerts have ruined me for Viennese music, because now the mental images of kitschy dancing, wide-angle shots of palaces, camera lenses lingering on stray lemons in an orangerie, and choreography of all kinds, persist on intruding, so I become distracted and nitpickish and I only make silly surface observations about the music.
Then there was an interview with the model Iman, carried out painfully by a (starstruck?) CNN interviewer who was apparently incapable of responding naturally to her subject and instead asked questions and, at receiving the answers, acted out sympathy, shock, and amusement in a gruesomely unnatural and clumsy way. Iman was, by contrast, intelligent, a fluent conversationalist and possessed of a lovely speaking voice, and what she said was thoroughly interesting. A misguided article at the outset of her modelling career in New York claimed that she had been "discovered" by Peter Beard in a jungle, herding goats or something of the sort, and it was generally believed that she could speak little or no English. In fact her family had been well-to-do before they fled Somalia; she was a political science student at the University of Nairobi and knew five languages. Beard came across her in the city, and she agreed to be photographed for the sake of paying her tuition. I also liked that she emphasized in the interview that contrary to popular belief, refugees are often not parasites who like to exploit foreign governments, and that nobody in his right mind would voluntarily leave his home country in order to throw himself on the tender mercies of strangers in an unfamiliar nation.
Anyway, aside from that I practiced the piano a little — Scott Joplin, the fifth and sixth Spanish Dances of Enrique Granados, Bach's Concerto in d minor (just the keyboard part, obviously), and the first movement of a Mozart concerto in C major (ditto). Then Papa and I went through our duet repertory, even including movements from Beethoven's very difficult cello sonatas. And I started but lost a game of Age of Empires (II) on the computer. But now I intend to check my e-mail, prepare things for the next morning, and go to sleep.
[N.B.: Apologies for the length of this post. /c:]
Monday, November 09, 2009
Sense and Sensibility, Part I
This was written when I should have been sleeping, which should explain any logical or other peculiarities. If corrections are necessary I'll probably make them, silently, later.
One of the stumbling-blocks in my research about Brittany and the French Revolution is that I have deemed it necessary to read the relevant works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but after repeatedly starting the Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (catchy title, by the way) it's evident that I won't finish it anytime soon. It's a bit embarrassing because Rousseau's sentences are hardly labyrinthine or lapidary and their meaning is not so knotty, but still. So yesterday I decided to approach the matter differently and read the chapter on Rousseau in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. While Russell is not the most even-handed commentator, his skill at capturing the gist of things is undeniable and, due to the succinct, lucid, and entertaining manner in which he does so, I knew that I would probably understand and remember the key points of Rousseau's works and life best by reading him.
***
As it turns out, Russell's take on Rousseau is entertaining even by his standards, and I was both interested and laughing while reading it. First and foremost Russell emphatically states that the Swiss philosophe was by no means one of the great philosophers, and that his ideas must be examined rather for the sake of their influence in politics and culture than for their soundness and worth. (Which is pretty much what Papa unenthusiastically said when I asked him about Rousseau a week or two ago.) So the British philosopher despatches the subject by providing a scathing overview of Rousseau's life, character, Discours, and Confessions, clearly giving his irritation free rein, and by only providing a serious summary of The Social Contract.
A major contribution of Rousseau, particularly in the light of the Romantic movement, is his preoccupation with sensibility in the 18th-century sense and his very idealized views of man in relation to nature ("noble savage," etc.). Already in the previous chapter on Romanticism Russell gives the cult of sensibility short shrift, and points out its inherent egotism and hypocrisy. He drily defines "la sensibilité" as
***
Nowadays I think most of us know this concept of sensibility through Jane Austen. And since Marianne Dashwood is selfish, rude, and blind to the harm she does to herself and others during her pursuit of the fashionable ideas of natural and refined feeling, it is evident that Austen saw the same general flaws in the trend. But there are many other critics even among her contemporary colleagues. Despite her reputation as the author of Gothic novels, Ann Radcliffe is one of them; in Mysteries of Udolpho Emily St. Aubert's gentle but preachy father warns her about the dangers of thoughtlessly indulging in feeling, however fine, and altogether her heroines are fairly quiet and restrained. I admittedly don't have much use for the cult of sensibility either, because it is (or was) so often artificial, unfairly demanding of the people who were forced to put up with the outpourings and histrionics of its devotees, and unhealthy. In my view noble feeling is much lovelier when it is unselfconscious and unadorned, and it enriches life especially when it is mostly kept sacrosanct and private. But perhaps that's a miserly way of proceeding.
***
But, to return to Rousseau, while summarizing the Discours Russell quotes a very funny passage (which I've given below in the original French) out of a letter which Voltaire sent to Rousseau after reading the work:
(In the History it is translated as, "I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it." In the quotation above the last sentence goes on a while longer to say, approximately, "and I leave that natural [bearing?] to those who are worthier of it than you or I.")
One of the stumbling-blocks in my research about Brittany and the French Revolution is that I have deemed it necessary to read the relevant works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but after repeatedly starting the Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (catchy title, by the way) it's evident that I won't finish it anytime soon. It's a bit embarrassing because Rousseau's sentences are hardly labyrinthine or lapidary and their meaning is not so knotty, but still. So yesterday I decided to approach the matter differently and read the chapter on Rousseau in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. While Russell is not the most even-handed commentator, his skill at capturing the gist of things is undeniable and, due to the succinct, lucid, and entertaining manner in which he does so, I knew that I would probably understand and remember the key points of Rousseau's works and life best by reading him.
***
As it turns out, Russell's take on Rousseau is entertaining even by his standards, and I was both interested and laughing while reading it. First and foremost Russell emphatically states that the Swiss philosophe was by no means one of the great philosophers, and that his ideas must be examined rather for the sake of their influence in politics and culture than for their soundness and worth. (Which is pretty much what Papa unenthusiastically said when I asked him about Rousseau a week or two ago.) So the British philosopher despatches the subject by providing a scathing overview of Rousseau's life, character, Discours, and Confessions, clearly giving his irritation free rein, and by only providing a serious summary of The Social Contract.
A major contribution of Rousseau, particularly in the light of the Romantic movement, is his preoccupation with sensibility in the 18th-century sense and his very idealized views of man in relation to nature ("noble savage," etc.). Already in the previous chapter on Romanticism Russell gives the cult of sensibility short shrift, and points out its inherent egotism and hypocrisy. He drily defines "la sensibilité" as
a proneness to emotion, and more particularly to the emotion of sympathy. To be thoroughly satisfactory, the emotion must be direct and violent and quite uninformed by thought. The man of sensibility would be moved to tears by the sight of a single destitute peasant family, but would be cold to well-thought-out schemes for ameliorating the lot of peasants as a class.His incredibly concise elucidations of Rousseau's life tend to illustrate the point. Whilst professing a great capacity to fine feeling, Rousseau in fact displayed only the loosest conception of morality, and was quite ready to lie, steal, take mistresses, betray friends, and behave however he wished without thought for the wellbeing of others. Besides Rousseau did not invent the cult of sensibility.
***
Nowadays I think most of us know this concept of sensibility through Jane Austen. And since Marianne Dashwood is selfish, rude, and blind to the harm she does to herself and others during her pursuit of the fashionable ideas of natural and refined feeling, it is evident that Austen saw the same general flaws in the trend. But there are many other critics even among her contemporary colleagues. Despite her reputation as the author of Gothic novels, Ann Radcliffe is one of them; in Mysteries of Udolpho Emily St. Aubert's gentle but preachy father warns her about the dangers of thoughtlessly indulging in feeling, however fine, and altogether her heroines are fairly quiet and restrained. I admittedly don't have much use for the cult of sensibility either, because it is (or was) so often artificial, unfairly demanding of the people who were forced to put up with the outpourings and histrionics of its devotees, and unhealthy. In my view noble feeling is much lovelier when it is unselfconscious and unadorned, and it enriches life especially when it is mostly kept sacrosanct and private. But perhaps that's a miserly way of proceeding.
***
But, to return to Rousseau, while summarizing the Discours Russell quotes a very funny passage (which I've given below in the original French) out of a letter which Voltaire sent to Rousseau after reading the work:
J'ai reçu, monsieur, votre nouveau livre contre le genre humain, je vous en remercie. [...] On n'a jamais employé tant d'esprit à vouloir nous rendre bêtes ; il prend envie de marcher à quatre pattes quand on lit votre ouvrage. Cependant, comme il y a plus de soixante ans que j'en ai perdu l'habitude, je sens malheureusement qu'il m'est impossible de la reprendre et je laisse cette allure naturelle à ceux qui en sont plus dignes que vous et moi.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Sense and Sensibility, Part II
Russell skims over the novels Émile and La Nouvelle Héloise. (At one point I was interested in reading them, but abandoned the former and never started the latter after concluding that they were too tiresome.) He does remark on the furore which Émile unleashed and go into unimpressed detail about the "Confession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar" ("Although it professes to be what the voice of nature has proclaimed to a virtuous priest [. . .] the reader finds with surprise that the voice of nature, when it begins to speak, is uttering a hotch-pot of arguments derived from Aristotle, St Augustine, Descartes, and so on. ").
But in connection with the "Confession" he credits Rousseau with originating the practice of "proving" God's existence not through intellectual but emotional arguments, which is really a significant contribution. What infuriates me about such "proof" is that it is subjective, so it is unjustifiable to persuade others who of course have different experiences and feelings and needs into accepting one's own theology. Besides, because it is unverifiable I think one should honestly acknowledge one's religion as a hypothesis instead of as the universal truth. But this criticism only really applies to proselytizing. As long as religion keeps us happy and more self-aware and nicer to be around than might otherwise be the case, as long as we freely recognize that it is just a hypothesis, and as long as we keep our grubby little paws away from the souls of our fellow humans, grounding it in emotion is fine by me.
Then I was a little horrified but greatly amused by Russell's tangent — in his rebuttal of the idea that the heart is infallibly a benevolent and worthy guide of human conduct— about the reasoning that the unhappiness of earthly existence is a guarantee of future bliss. In a scarcely respectful analogy he argues indignantly, "If you had bought ten dozen eggs from a man, and the first dozen were all rotten, you would not infer that the remaining nine dozen must be of surpassing excellence; yet that is the kind of reasoning that 'the heart' encourages as a consolation for our sufferings here below."
As for the Social Contract, the summary reminds me pleasantly of PoliSci 100 (we didn't read Rousseau specifically, but the questions and concepts and historical parallels are familiar), but the kind of liberty it espouses is clearly not much to my taste and it sounds tedious. Unfortunately it is hugely relevant to the Revolution.
So I might read portions of the Discours after all because what I've seen of Robespierre's speeches is so directly influenced by it (though Robespierre seems more disingenuous and coldly clever), but I'm mostly convinced that I dodged a tedious bullet by not doing so yet. Either way the Social Contract should come first.
***
I should probably say something about the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but I can't remember it (due, no doubt, to the fact that we had moved from Berlin to West Germany proper by then) and have no valuable insight to contribute on the subject. What I will say is that the consciousness of the previous existence of the Wall thoroughly fascinated me whenever we visited Berlin after we moved away in 1989. For one thing, I may remember little about living here as a baby and probably imbue what I do remember with greater meaning than is just; but when we glimpsed the Brandenburg Gate while driving past in 1996, I think that I felt a spontaneous, genuine, and profound sense of awe for its forlorn but liberated exposedness and for the fact that one can freely pass through it. Apparently the Wall had loomed vaguely in my consciousness even at the age of three or four without my realizing it until much later when it felt strange that it was gone.
But in connection with the "Confession" he credits Rousseau with originating the practice of "proving" God's existence not through intellectual but emotional arguments, which is really a significant contribution. What infuriates me about such "proof" is that it is subjective, so it is unjustifiable to persuade others who of course have different experiences and feelings and needs into accepting one's own theology. Besides, because it is unverifiable I think one should honestly acknowledge one's religion as a hypothesis instead of as the universal truth. But this criticism only really applies to proselytizing. As long as religion keeps us happy and more self-aware and nicer to be around than might otherwise be the case, as long as we freely recognize that it is just a hypothesis, and as long as we keep our grubby little paws away from the souls of our fellow humans, grounding it in emotion is fine by me.
Then I was a little horrified but greatly amused by Russell's tangent — in his rebuttal of the idea that the heart is infallibly a benevolent and worthy guide of human conduct— about the reasoning that the unhappiness of earthly existence is a guarantee of future bliss. In a scarcely respectful analogy he argues indignantly, "If you had bought ten dozen eggs from a man, and the first dozen were all rotten, you would not infer that the remaining nine dozen must be of surpassing excellence; yet that is the kind of reasoning that 'the heart' encourages as a consolation for our sufferings here below."
As for the Social Contract, the summary reminds me pleasantly of PoliSci 100 (we didn't read Rousseau specifically, but the questions and concepts and historical parallels are familiar), but the kind of liberty it espouses is clearly not much to my taste and it sounds tedious. Unfortunately it is hugely relevant to the Revolution.
So I might read portions of the Discours after all because what I've seen of Robespierre's speeches is so directly influenced by it (though Robespierre seems more disingenuous and coldly clever), but I'm mostly convinced that I dodged a tedious bullet by not doing so yet. Either way the Social Contract should come first.
***
I should probably say something about the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but I can't remember it (due, no doubt, to the fact that we had moved from Berlin to West Germany proper by then) and have no valuable insight to contribute on the subject. What I will say is that the consciousness of the previous existence of the Wall thoroughly fascinated me whenever we visited Berlin after we moved away in 1989. For one thing, I may remember little about living here as a baby and probably imbue what I do remember with greater meaning than is just; but when we glimpsed the Brandenburg Gate while driving past in 1996, I think that I felt a spontaneous, genuine, and profound sense of awe for its forlorn but liberated exposedness and for the fact that one can freely pass through it. Apparently the Wall had loomed vaguely in my consciousness even at the age of three or four without my realizing it until much later when it felt strange that it was gone.
Thoughts on Twentieth-Century Noise
Accustomed as I am to reading books on the internet, it requires a great deal of effort to read a printed book. My aunt L. queried once whether this practice is not degrading to the intellect, or something to that effect. But honestly I like reading on the internet because whatever the material is feels more alive and immediate that way, and I can scroll over the verbal dead weight or passages I don't much like, and read faster in general because there's no need to turn pages (depending on the document format, of course). The problem with books or articles is, at least in my experience, that they can be dull and meaningless if they are not illumined by one's experience, or explained a little by a friend or relative or someone else who is qualified by their experience, different perspective, or superior intelligence to speak of it. But somehow this problem is not as acute on the internet, perhaps also because I can look up secondary literature, relevant online encyclopaedia articles and pictures, etc., really easily.
In any case, the printed book I am presently slogging through (though I have dozens of started books lying around the bed) is Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise, a birthday present from my godfather. I intend to write about it on the Lighthouse blog at some point, but in the meantime I want to ramble about it, not ex cathedra (as it were), but just informally. I'm only on the eighty-somethingth page in the nearly telephone-width volume (the print is large) anyway.
First I'll begin by saying that by and large I find 20th century art unsympathetic, with its pessimistic view of reality, restrictive minimalism, and incarnation of the very inhumanity which it is often intended to protest or counteract. There are all sorts of exceptions to this rule, and if someone explains the appeal of 20th century art to me in intellectual terms I can kind of understand it (if only on the intellectual level, because conscious tolerance is as a rule neither very profound nor lasting). But it still isn't my thing.
One aspect of The Rest is Noise which I like very much is that Ross brings out the humanity of this epoch, the composers, and the music, even when these composers and music have rather cold and hyperintellectual tendencies. Rather than striding into the material with arrogance and prejudice, arraigning one set of composers whilst praising the other, stating absolutely that this artistic movement is superior to that, or characterizing the human subjects with more boldness than accuracy, he practices good old-fashioned American neutrality, attentively following the arguments and recognizing the merits of all sides, and refusing even after coming to a fair and sensible assessment to pronounce an inviolable judgment on the entire affair. Which is refreshing because the European approach does tend to be very dogmatic; and entertaining as this dogmatism can be especially in its aphoristic phases, after the first glow of admiration has passed it is irritating to find one's self left with only a healthy sense of skepticism and a highly biased knowledge of the truth.
In any case, Ross begins by immersing the reader in the Viennese school, as well as the composers who drifted in and out of the Austrian capital. Salome is one of the first works discussed, and even though I don't know the music well, I was quite interested because I've read the libretto repeatedly as Oscar Wilde's play. Whether I'd want to listen to it or read the play again is another question. On the one hand literature and music and so on are only harmful if one lacks common sense; on the other hand common sense only goes so deep, and I like to be a bit selective about the thoughts and images and information that enter and will presumably muck around in my subconscious for the rest of my life. Besides which there's no need — it's even insensitive and stupid — to probe into the realm of misery and darkness when these feelings are rife enough anyway.
Biographies of figures like Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg are woven unaffectedly into the narrative, and numerous anecdotes illustrate clearly enough the childish games (jealousy, covetousness, backbiting, etc.) in which the so-called adults of Vienna's music world liked to engage. Ross doesn't go, or hasn't gone as far as I've read, into salacious detail about their carnal relationships, which is a relief because I have never been convinced that biographers and other writers who thrive on such detail are really highmindedly providing psychological insights rather than just gossip-mongering, prying, and perhaps compensating for their own comparatively unadventurous existence by roaming vicariously. Either way, it's impressive how much research clearly went into the book, and though the trivia interspersed in the text often feel like footnotes, it's also impressive how well Ross has synthesized and filtered the research.
A year or so ago I read Schöpfer der Neuen Musik by H. H. Stuckenschmidt, which covers roughly the same ground. Though Stuckenschmidt was in top form when he was writing about Debussy and Ravel (he integrated the information about their background, education, interests, personality, and compositional philosophy so well into his descriptions of their music that a good reader could probably recognize their compositions even without seeing or hearing a single note of them previously), by the time that Berg and Milhaud came along the chapters had dwindled to dry and rather pitiful music-theoretical synopses of the composers' works. (I'm probably exaggerating, but still, only a very enthusiastic reader would enjoy the book's home stretch.) Besides which, despite my admiration for Stuckenschmidt's brilliant mind and his devotion to 20th-century music, I had major issues with the book's structure and the author's pompous use of language — for instance idiotic compound adjectives in the vein of künstlerisch-schöpferish and natürlich-ästhetisch — and have therefore recused myself from indicting any serious review of the book. It would be unfair to say outright that one book is better than the other; certainly Ross's is friendlier.
Perhaps my biggest quibble with Ross's book is that the style would be better suited to a series of articles — the sentence structure streamlined and simplified as a newspaper or magazine article would demand it, and the concepts and information pared down to cater to the apparently drosophilic attention spans and preadolescent understandings of the readers. I wish that it were more condensed and enigmatic, as is in my view more appropriate given the scope of a book. On the other hand, one of the charms of Alex Ross's style is precisely that it is unpretending, genuine, and perfectly expressed in its efficient way. (And I like his articles in the New Yorker precisely because they are free from pretention and cattiness.) And non-fiction books are, it seems, rarely condensed and enigmatic anyway.
***
Here is a link to Alex Ross's old blog:
The Rest is Noise
and his new blog, at the New Yorker:
Unquiet Thoughts
In any case, the printed book I am presently slogging through (though I have dozens of started books lying around the bed) is Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise, a birthday present from my godfather. I intend to write about it on the Lighthouse blog at some point, but in the meantime I want to ramble about it, not ex cathedra (as it were), but just informally. I'm only on the eighty-somethingth page in the nearly telephone-width volume (the print is large) anyway.
First I'll begin by saying that by and large I find 20th century art unsympathetic, with its pessimistic view of reality, restrictive minimalism, and incarnation of the very inhumanity which it is often intended to protest or counteract. There are all sorts of exceptions to this rule, and if someone explains the appeal of 20th century art to me in intellectual terms I can kind of understand it (if only on the intellectual level, because conscious tolerance is as a rule neither very profound nor lasting). But it still isn't my thing.
One aspect of The Rest is Noise which I like very much is that Ross brings out the humanity of this epoch, the composers, and the music, even when these composers and music have rather cold and hyperintellectual tendencies. Rather than striding into the material with arrogance and prejudice, arraigning one set of composers whilst praising the other, stating absolutely that this artistic movement is superior to that, or characterizing the human subjects with more boldness than accuracy, he practices good old-fashioned American neutrality, attentively following the arguments and recognizing the merits of all sides, and refusing even after coming to a fair and sensible assessment to pronounce an inviolable judgment on the entire affair. Which is refreshing because the European approach does tend to be very dogmatic; and entertaining as this dogmatism can be especially in its aphoristic phases, after the first glow of admiration has passed it is irritating to find one's self left with only a healthy sense of skepticism and a highly biased knowledge of the truth.
In any case, Ross begins by immersing the reader in the Viennese school, as well as the composers who drifted in and out of the Austrian capital. Salome is one of the first works discussed, and even though I don't know the music well, I was quite interested because I've read the libretto repeatedly as Oscar Wilde's play. Whether I'd want to listen to it or read the play again is another question. On the one hand literature and music and so on are only harmful if one lacks common sense; on the other hand common sense only goes so deep, and I like to be a bit selective about the thoughts and images and information that enter and will presumably muck around in my subconscious for the rest of my life. Besides which there's no need — it's even insensitive and stupid — to probe into the realm of misery and darkness when these feelings are rife enough anyway.
Biographies of figures like Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg are woven unaffectedly into the narrative, and numerous anecdotes illustrate clearly enough the childish games (jealousy, covetousness, backbiting, etc.) in which the so-called adults of Vienna's music world liked to engage. Ross doesn't go, or hasn't gone as far as I've read, into salacious detail about their carnal relationships, which is a relief because I have never been convinced that biographers and other writers who thrive on such detail are really highmindedly providing psychological insights rather than just gossip-mongering, prying, and perhaps compensating for their own comparatively unadventurous existence by roaming vicariously. Either way, it's impressive how much research clearly went into the book, and though the trivia interspersed in the text often feel like footnotes, it's also impressive how well Ross has synthesized and filtered the research.
A year or so ago I read Schöpfer der Neuen Musik by H. H. Stuckenschmidt, which covers roughly the same ground. Though Stuckenschmidt was in top form when he was writing about Debussy and Ravel (he integrated the information about their background, education, interests, personality, and compositional philosophy so well into his descriptions of their music that a good reader could probably recognize their compositions even without seeing or hearing a single note of them previously), by the time that Berg and Milhaud came along the chapters had dwindled to dry and rather pitiful music-theoretical synopses of the composers' works. (I'm probably exaggerating, but still, only a very enthusiastic reader would enjoy the book's home stretch.) Besides which, despite my admiration for Stuckenschmidt's brilliant mind and his devotion to 20th-century music, I had major issues with the book's structure and the author's pompous use of language — for instance idiotic compound adjectives in the vein of künstlerisch-schöpferish and natürlich-ästhetisch — and have therefore recused myself from indicting any serious review of the book. It would be unfair to say outright that one book is better than the other; certainly Ross's is friendlier.
Perhaps my biggest quibble with Ross's book is that the style would be better suited to a series of articles — the sentence structure streamlined and simplified as a newspaper or magazine article would demand it, and the concepts and information pared down to cater to the apparently drosophilic attention spans and preadolescent understandings of the readers. I wish that it were more condensed and enigmatic, as is in my view more appropriate given the scope of a book. On the other hand, one of the charms of Alex Ross's style is precisely that it is unpretending, genuine, and perfectly expressed in its efficient way. (And I like his articles in the New Yorker precisely because they are free from pretention and cattiness.) And non-fiction books are, it seems, rarely condensed and enigmatic anyway.
***
Here is a link to Alex Ross's old blog:
The Rest is Noise
and his new blog, at the New Yorker:
Unquiet Thoughts
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
The Internship, the Moths, and the Wardrobe
Yesterday I learned that I will not be doing the internship. But the disappointment was made milder — or at least hope was encouraged — by the explanation that given the high level of my qualifications the company didn't think it right to ask me to empty the wastebaskets, etc. I had also requested to be kept in mind if there are any new jobs in the next three months, and this request was freely granted. Since then I've been afraid of a delayed bad reaction, viz. the feeling of being utterly crushed and defeated, but if it has yet to emerge it will certainly be minor. Frankly what irks me a bit is that the moment I decided to work instead of study, two years ago, it was with the implicit determination to accept any paying job — as long as the working environment is not sleazy or similarly degrading, the employer's modus operandi is ethically sound, and I can carry out the required tasks well. It is rather pitiful if I have to remain ignorant of and unskilled in the really practical things in life just because I have a predilection for acquiring foreign languages, for instance.
Financially I am still good for a couple of months, but spending money literally only on transit tickets to and from the Agentur für Arbeit, the bank, and the job interview, and on unexpected fees (*&@$#!) in addition to my monthly insurance payments is not the nicest state of affairs. I already have a list going of what should be paid with my first wages: firstly, the debt in money borrowed for stamps and transit tickets which I owe to Mama, then the cost of a new battery for the watch that my English aunt (as I like to think of her) gave me.
An overhaul of the closet would be good, for instance; I have an enormous quantity of clothes, but it is mostly a feast of the Tantalus variety. It must be admitted, though, that if I washed the shrinkable items carefully, found a way to repel the moths, did a round of mending, and provided a visual counterpoint to the clothing that makes me look like a porpoise for instance by wearing black tights or long pants underneath it, or necklaces and scarves over top, this motley assortment would be less of a torment. I would like to buy a nice pair of high-heeled shoes, the one perfect dress, a fresh supply of black tights, and one superlatively well-fitting rainjacket. But these things can wait. Besides, if my closet meant that much to me I would have summarily annihilated the objectionable items in a sort of sartorial Reign of Terror long ago.
Financially I am still good for a couple of months, but spending money literally only on transit tickets to and from the Agentur für Arbeit, the bank, and the job interview, and on unexpected fees (*&@$#!) in addition to my monthly insurance payments is not the nicest state of affairs. I already have a list going of what should be paid with my first wages: firstly, the debt in money borrowed for stamps and transit tickets which I owe to Mama, then the cost of a new battery for the watch that my English aunt (as I like to think of her) gave me.
An overhaul of the closet would be good, for instance; I have an enormous quantity of clothes, but it is mostly a feast of the Tantalus variety. It must be admitted, though, that if I washed the shrinkable items carefully, found a way to repel the moths, did a round of mending, and provided a visual counterpoint to the clothing that makes me look like a porpoise for instance by wearing black tights or long pants underneath it, or necklaces and scarves over top, this motley assortment would be less of a torment. I would like to buy a nice pair of high-heeled shoes, the one perfect dress, a fresh supply of black tights, and one superlatively well-fitting rainjacket. But these things can wait. Besides, if my closet meant that much to me I would have summarily annihilated the objectionable items in a sort of sartorial Reign of Terror long ago.
Monday, October 12, 2009
A Third Tilt at the Interview Windmill
This afternoon I went to an interview somewhere in the wilds north of Unter den Linden, in the hopes of being employed as an intern in the office of a tour guide company. I printed out a copy of my c.v., double-checked how to get to the interview location, put together the papers that a potential employer might want to see, etc. As for my clothing, I decided that it's best to wear something on the formal end of what I would wear anyway, so it was a fine chocolate brown corduroy skirt, a dark blue knit sweater, green tights, and a pewtery necklace inlaid with black and red enamel, orange carnelian, and purple amethyst (?) .
Originally I had intended to arrive at the nearest S-Bahnhof by 1:30 (half an hour early), but the weather was rainy though in a half-hearted manner and it didn't turn out that way in any case, so it was around 1:30 when I stepped into the U-Bahn. It was the A***straße 5a where the interview would take place; I found the A***straße 5 soon enough, but realized that it wasn't the right place and (after asking a lady who was sitting on a bench eating her lunch and who could only inform me that she wasn't from the area either and that she would advise me to look further along the street) continued on down the street.
With dismay I found that the 5a referred to a vast and near-abandoned courtyard, ringed in garages and workshops and former factory offices, shuttered in by a metal gate with a door suspended in its centre, and adorned in graffiti. The scene was peculiarly anachronistic and looked as if no one had been there since before the fall of the Berlin Wall, though the glossy handful of cars assuaged the sense of temporal misplacement. I walked warily through the middle of the scene and headed toward the building at the back, where an old and stately red-and-yellow brick cupola rises at the corner, and a young man in a (?) purple and pink sweatsuit was idling and gazing at the ground underneath a porch, perhaps on a cigarette break. Fervently hoping that I would not end up walking into a bizarre underground club, I entered the building and climbed the stairs until a sign pointed me in to the company office.
Once I entered the office, at pretty much exactly 2 p.m., the scene changed. The rooms were expansive and the ceilings at a lonely height, but there was bright furniture and two or three people were milling about, including the perhaps Australian girl who greeted me. The interview began, funnily enough, with the question which career direction I was trying to work toward. Altogether the focus was rather on what I would like to do and could do well, on what it would be like to work in the company, and (implicitly) on which work within the company might suit me, rather than on determining whether I fit a predetermined slot. This was a great relief, and I no longer felt so humiliated and intimidated by the job-seeking process; besides, it was refreshing to be told that I would surely do the work competently and that speaking French is useful, since the tendency of the job-search is to firmly convince its victim that he (or she) is of no use at all. So though I was still nervous the interview was much more relaxed and enjoyable than expected.
The advertisement already mentioned that the remuneration for an internship would be 400 Euros per month (this is fine by me, since it would neatly cover my monthly expenditures and even, I think, provide me with an employment health insurance plan). What I learned today is that the working hours would be from 10-5, the overall length of the internship anything from a month onwards, and the tasks diverse and a mixture of dropping off mail at the post, answering phones, and more challenging things.
In a day or two I should find out if the interview was successful. At least it already means that I will no longer automatically associate the word "interview" with the fiasco of April. (Deo volens.)
Originally I had intended to arrive at the nearest S-Bahnhof by 1:30 (half an hour early), but the weather was rainy though in a half-hearted manner and it didn't turn out that way in any case, so it was around 1:30 when I stepped into the U-Bahn. It was the A***straße 5a where the interview would take place; I found the A***straße 5 soon enough, but realized that it wasn't the right place and (after asking a lady who was sitting on a bench eating her lunch and who could only inform me that she wasn't from the area either and that she would advise me to look further along the street) continued on down the street.
With dismay I found that the 5a referred to a vast and near-abandoned courtyard, ringed in garages and workshops and former factory offices, shuttered in by a metal gate with a door suspended in its centre, and adorned in graffiti. The scene was peculiarly anachronistic and looked as if no one had been there since before the fall of the Berlin Wall, though the glossy handful of cars assuaged the sense of temporal misplacement. I walked warily through the middle of the scene and headed toward the building at the back, where an old and stately red-and-yellow brick cupola rises at the corner, and a young man in a (?) purple and pink sweatsuit was idling and gazing at the ground underneath a porch, perhaps on a cigarette break. Fervently hoping that I would not end up walking into a bizarre underground club, I entered the building and climbed the stairs until a sign pointed me in to the company office.
Once I entered the office, at pretty much exactly 2 p.m., the scene changed. The rooms were expansive and the ceilings at a lonely height, but there was bright furniture and two or three people were milling about, including the perhaps Australian girl who greeted me. The interview began, funnily enough, with the question which career direction I was trying to work toward. Altogether the focus was rather on what I would like to do and could do well, on what it would be like to work in the company, and (implicitly) on which work within the company might suit me, rather than on determining whether I fit a predetermined slot. This was a great relief, and I no longer felt so humiliated and intimidated by the job-seeking process; besides, it was refreshing to be told that I would surely do the work competently and that speaking French is useful, since the tendency of the job-search is to firmly convince its victim that he (or she) is of no use at all. So though I was still nervous the interview was much more relaxed and enjoyable than expected.
The advertisement already mentioned that the remuneration for an internship would be 400 Euros per month (this is fine by me, since it would neatly cover my monthly expenditures and even, I think, provide me with an employment health insurance plan). What I learned today is that the working hours would be from 10-5, the overall length of the internship anything from a month onwards, and the tasks diverse and a mixture of dropping off mail at the post, answering phones, and more challenging things.
In a day or two I should find out if the interview was successful. At least it already means that I will no longer automatically associate the word "interview" with the fiasco of April. (Deo volens.)
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Contented Mortals and Carnac
For the "Lion and the Mouse" research I'm reading the first part of Hester Lynch Piozzi's Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey Through France, Italy, and Germany, published in 1789 and describing a journey that began in autumn 1784. That her sagacity (not to mention capacity for prediction) is at times at fault is evident in the following passage:
Another book which I am consulting (also at gutenberg.org) is Brittany & Its Byways by Fanny Bury Palliser, and that was published in 1869. It begins in Cherbourg, and for a while I wanted to skip ahead, but the book crossed the Couësnon and entered Brittany soon enough. I like the little anecdotes in it, even the horrifying one about the watchdogs who used to run the streets of Saint-Malo after 10 p.m. every night, until 1770 when they brutally killed a navy officer. I also like the insights into daily life, like how the washerwomen bleach linens in a barrel using ashes and boiling water. Every time an interesting village or castle or church is mentioned I look it up in a certain online encyclopaedia to read about it in depth from a different angle.
What I hadn't realized before was how much of Arthurian legend and Druidic culture was alive across the Channel, and how much Brittany teems with relicts of the Stone Age. (Astérix and Obélix should have informed me on that point long ago, but when I read comic books they tend to be Tintin or Lucky Luke.) Looking at photos of the Forest of Brocéliande, which was once haunted (according to legend) by Merlin and Morgan le Fay, and then of the vast field of worn and lichen-covered stones at Carnac, was very impressive. The photo above is from Carnac.
***
As for the Day of Reunification, I stayed in the apartment all day and only ran across photos of the gigantic marionettes in my newspaper- and blog-browsing, and therefore have nothing intelligent to report on the matter. The election outcome was a pity (and pitifully stupid), but I don't feel as worried about solipsist decision-making, misguided and often decidedly outré ideologies, and gross incompetence as I would if a neoliberally-influenced conservative party in the North American pattern had won the election. Now the SPD has the time to rediscover an independent platform that is based not on taking the left-leaning side of every centrist position in the determination to at once thumb its nose at, and distinguish itself in the voters' eyes from, the CDU, but on (more) genuine ideological or pragmatic conviction. Perhaps, however, my diagnosis of the underlying problem is wrong. Either way, if the CDU-FDP coalition is too awful, there is still the slight possibility of a vote of no confidence.
The French are really a contented race of mortals;—precluded almost from possibility of adventure, the low Parisian leads a gentle humble life, nor envies that greatness he never can obtain; but either wonders delightedly, or diverts himself philosophically with the sight of splendours which seldom fail to excite serious envy in an Englishman, and sometimes occasion even suicide, from disappointed hopes, which never could take root in the heart of these unaspiring people.It's another lesson not to generalize about national character.
Another book which I am consulting (also at gutenberg.org) is Brittany & Its Byways by Fanny Bury Palliser, and that was published in 1869. It begins in Cherbourg, and for a while I wanted to skip ahead, but the book crossed the Couësnon and entered Brittany soon enough. I like the little anecdotes in it, even the horrifying one about the watchdogs who used to run the streets of Saint-Malo after 10 p.m. every night, until 1770 when they brutally killed a navy officer. I also like the insights into daily life, like how the washerwomen bleach linens in a barrel using ashes and boiling water. Every time an interesting village or castle or church is mentioned I look it up in a certain online encyclopaedia to read about it in depth from a different angle.
What I hadn't realized before was how much of Arthurian legend and Druidic culture was alive across the Channel, and how much Brittany teems with relicts of the Stone Age. (Astérix and Obélix should have informed me on that point long ago, but when I read comic books they tend to be Tintin or Lucky Luke.) Looking at photos of the Forest of Brocéliande, which was once haunted (according to legend) by Merlin and Morgan le Fay, and then of the vast field of worn and lichen-covered stones at Carnac, was very impressive. The photo above is from Carnac.
***
As for the Day of Reunification, I stayed in the apartment all day and only ran across photos of the gigantic marionettes in my newspaper- and blog-browsing, and therefore have nothing intelligent to report on the matter. The election outcome was a pity (and pitifully stupid), but I don't feel as worried about solipsist decision-making, misguided and often decidedly outré ideologies, and gross incompetence as I would if a neoliberally-influenced conservative party in the North American pattern had won the election. Now the SPD has the time to rediscover an independent platform that is based not on taking the left-leaning side of every centrist position in the determination to at once thumb its nose at, and distinguish itself in the voters' eyes from, the CDU, but on (more) genuine ideological or pragmatic conviction. Perhaps, however, my diagnosis of the underlying problem is wrong. Either way, if the CDU-FDP coalition is too awful, there is still the slight possibility of a vote of no confidence.
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