It's quite late but I am still very much up, and since my usual time-wasting experiences are temporarily out of reach, I was doing a little research for the story instead. As long as the reading about gunshot wounds was strictly theoretical and verbal, it was fine; even looking at the photos was fine. Then I looked at photos of other types of wounds, stitches, etc., and was for once subtly rocked to the verge of seasickness, as it were. So I decided to postpone the rest to a different day, and here is my blog post instead.
This evening my sister T. had an interview, and instead of having to go off to a complicated location, the interviewer came over to us! The rest of us were tucked away in our respective rooms and didn't traipse in to disrupt the proceedings. Anyway, it was a lovely change of pace.
***
The weather has been mixed, with a couple impressive gusts which bent back the branches on the oaks and even stirred the top of the trunk; in Dahlem a gust of over 19 m/s was recorded, which is not unusual but at any rate an 8 on the Beaufort scale and gale-force. The temperature fell and rose between 14 and 19 degrees Celsius; the humidity was generally I think between 60 and 70%. I like looking at the circum-British marine weather on the Met Office's website, too, and finding strong winds and learning the names of the different quadrants of sea. It's fairly useless for knowing the weather in Berlin except if conditions in the "German Bight" are similar.
At any rate the night sky is covered in clouds for the first time in several days, which I know because I have been watching for Perseid shooting stars before the moon becomes full. I can only point out the Big Dipper and the moon and sometimes Orion, but do recognize Cassiopeia because it is simply a sideways W, and so by luck I think I figured out where Perseus's constellation lies (i.e. mostly behind a neighbouring apartment building).
Though too impatient to watch stars well, I did take the time to sit in the open window of Ge.'s and J.'s room and watch the aperture of sky for a long while, and noticed that it is a slow process for the eye to accustom itself to the darkness and to glimpse more stars. Then of course there was the ambient city light, and even someone turning on the light in a room dimmed the stars further. I haven't seen the obvious blips of shooting stars which I saw (I think those were the Leonid showers, so in November) gliding over the sky in Canada once; but I saw one goldenish fizzle, which was strange and possibly something else, and I have never seen so many imaginary streaks of light in my life.
***
I have been following the riots in London with intense interest. On the whole, though I made a conscious decision not to read the coverage in the Telegraph much, I find the response of public opinion reasonable. The calls for police brutality and prompt military invasion are of course shortsighted and profoundly unintelligent on the whole, but as a verbal reaction at least they are to be expected and natural. What interested me is (for example) that there was so much of a focus on David Cameron handling the matter, rather than Boris Johnson; though admittedly Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (I read the whole name somewhere today and thought it was worth repeating) does not exude the air of the stern, noble arbiter of the socioeconomically afflicted.
Generally what I think is that living in downtown London is, depending on income level and the nature of one's immediate neighbours, in fact quite brutal and very monotonous; so without considering all of the looters as victims, and with considering setting fire to buildings as well as beatings of people as acts whose abhorrent nature should not need to be pointed out, I have a lot of sympathy for the rioters and looters. As for the theft, of course I am not comfortable with it; in pragmatic terms, it is clear firstly that destroying the work and savings of someone who has had to struggle for them (like the owners of the small businesses which have also been attacked) is unjustified, and secondly that the wealthy management of a multinational retailer are very likely to ensure that the brunt of financial losses falls on persons other than themselves. Thirdly I think it's true that the looting doesn't do much for the besieged economy; fourthly I don't understand why technology gadgets seem so essential to these people. As for the man who was shot and killed in Croydon, the phrasing of the incident is so ambiguous that I wonder whether he was shot by the police, and if the death was in fact related to the riots or not — doubts all the more justified, I think, by the improbity of public statements regarding Jean Charles de Menezes, Ian Tomlinson, and more recently Mark Duggan.
***
As for the stock market crashes, I think that they are fairly stupid, and have been as inclined to mutter about Moody's and Standard & Poor's (also of course in connection with Greece, Portugal, and Italy) as many other people, though I need to read more business articles to know what precisely is going on. Becoming the agency that hammers the nail into the coffin of a national economy must not be very rewarding, and as Paul Krugman has pointed out, for instance, S&P entirely failed to identify the subprime mortgage problem before it burst onto the scene and so is something less than omni in its science. On the other hand if something finally gets Berlusconi out of the prime ministerial office and into the round of judicial proceedings which have been breathing down his neck, I don't mind if it is this period of economic malaise.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Possibly the Longest Navel in History
I've begun writing on my "lousy stories" again. It's an old tale which I felt was stupid and shallow the first time I wrote and finished it and have been revising out of a sense of shame ever since. The latest draft was begun June 21st-ish, and though I suspect that I must have left this latest draft open whilst wandering off elsewhere, Word says that I have spent over 85 hours on it.
What I've done lately to encourage writing endurance is set up an elaborate tea service at the laptop. I cleaned the secretary-desk a little. The ceremony involves brewing a pot of tea, arranging it on a large plate or today our tray, having a sugar pot and a rye cracker beside it, and then consuming it as the writing advances. I don't know if it qualifies as a slop bowl, but I even have a little fingerbowl in which I put today's teabags when they had sufficiently steeped. It feels very professional; the real business of literary endeavour is, of course, unconnected to the state of our teapot.
***
Though I was in the bookshop for a short while today as Mama's holidays begin to taper off, I have had endless time for the piano: Mozart's early sonatas and the concerto in d minor (20), Chopin's "revolutionary" étude and his "raindrop" prelude, Händel's "Harmonious Blacksmith" suite, the slow movement of Mendelssohn's d minor trio, Schubert's sonata in B flat major (D 960) and the two before, and Bach, for instance. I like having my sloppy pile of notes on both ends of the noterack and on the noterack itself, and pulling forward one of the previous notes to wedge in place the recently turned pages of the current score.
I really like Beethoven's cadenzas for the Mozart concerto, but that may be because of their familiarity from the Rudolf Serkin and Clara Haskil recordings I liked to hear at university. Clara Schumann's introduces (I felt when I attempted it today) too much of her own style and Carl Reinecke's is friendly but perhaps slavishly subordinated to Mozart's composition. In the fantasia-like tradition of cadenzas they are all rather weird; so with the very weirdest I am parochially inclined to prefer my own flavour of eccentricity. On the other hand canon compositions themselves are often hard to follow, as I had reason to observe again today in the thickets of Schubert; and I will likely concede in a couple of years that the problem lies not with the cadenzators but with the uncongeniality of my interpretation.
***
Yesterday it was Mama's birthday, and though she has never felt inclined to fuss about it, she took it upon herself for our sakes to indulge the mood for a bit of a splurge and shop for an elaborate set of repasts.
In the morning I spent an idle hour or so washing cutlery and cleaning the stove, with its extremely irritating freight of mistakenly loyal grease which was sort of like a glue stick when you try to rub the glue off of something and it only becomes more grey and streaked and stubborn. I wasn't the one who spattered the damn stuff after leaving a middling flame unattended on the largest gas burner. There were little creamy splatters on the inverted underside of our Römertopf lid, which I conveniently ignored.
Anyway, after lingering over that I prepared three "puddings surprises," this time with three types of pudding mixes, the ladyfinger biscuits, coffee, sherry, bilberries, raspberries, the berry juices and chocolate sprinkles. Due to different cooking times the puddings were fairly tepid by the time the dishes were achieved, as it were, but I woke up the others so that they could enjoy the pudding in residual warmth. I think the pudding would have been improved with more sherry.
Then Mama and T. laboured over fruit tortes, which were beautiful and delectable and their toppings compounded of mandarin and peach slices from a can, apricot halves, blueberries or bilberries, raspberries, and pineapple rings. There was whipping cream to go with it, and a bowl of yoghurt with the remaining fruit. To follow we had bars and squares of chocolate — nougat, milk, marzipan, and ginger marzipan — which were partitioned in the corner room as one of the Herbie films appeared for the millionth time, still charming, on television. In the evening W. came by with a bottle of prosecco, which I enjoyed likewise in a sampling this morning. Of course we had also sung Happy Birthday.
***
Anyway, I thought that I would write a thorough profile on Amy Winehouse for one of my blogs. But though I spent a good part of yesterday researching and I like her and find her interesting, I think that it would be best to have gathered a knowledge of the music industry and the historical background against which her songwriting and performances developed. Hopping on the bandwagon isn't a problem in this case, I think, because so much nonsense has been written about her that someone should do a nicer job of it — though I do like Russell Brand's commentary from his blog (it should still be available at Guardian.co.uk). Secondly, while the subject is still fresh there is less of a likelihood that stuff will be raked up that should be left forgotten. I was interested in her to begin with because I had never heard any criticism of her musical talent, whereas music of any genre brings out so much partisanship, envy, and nitpicking that this is impossibly rare; and because she did seem to fit so naturally and authentically into her jazz, rocker persona, old-fashioned groove.
As for Norway, I think that it is too easy to write something sensationalist or grandiosely sentimental, and it's doubtful whether one can write anything helpful or unprecedented. As little can be done in retrospect for the victims at the youth camp and in Oslo as for many other civil or military situations in the past year in which many (unarmed, young) people have died. What one can do is not to construct a perverse demigod out of the suspected murderer by discussing him more than those who died.
For News of the World I am completely uninterested, though why the straightforward tabloid rather than the tabloids in the guise of news-papers which compose the rest of his [= R. Murdoch] subjournalistic consortium should be the one under fire for its ethics is the question, and it is a pity that the employees were let go when it was closed down.
Where Somalia and northeastern Kenya are concerned, I still don't have the impression that there is much one can do as an individual abroad. What I do think is that the portrayal of the famine-stricken as brainless and helpless mouths to feed instead of as herders, villagers, etc., who would have been able to get along on their own and in their native soil had they been given the resources (wells, etc.) which a government or agency should have afforded them, and who need not only food but also some measure of protection and a dignified temporary shelter, is patronizing and denigrating. The closest I've come to reading about such a situation is in Laura Ingalls Wilder, and it is very clear that there is nothing one can do — hard work or intelligence or even wealth — against the weather if you rely on agriculture. The main difference in this millennium is that the infrastructure to develop and distribute technology has improved along with the technology itself, that where farming is done on a larger scale the risks tend to be better balanced out, and that governments are better at evening out the odds for vulnerable farmers if they accept the responsibility.
***
Last week I had an interview for a job at a restaurant. The transit and timing worked well, but the interview itself went badly. Either I didn't seem waitressy or the person was looking for an excuse not to hire me, because he said that without food industry experience he couldn't hire me, in fact nobody could hire me, in fact that at best I could do cleaning work; then was wroth that I didn't speak Italian though I could tease out the meaning of the advertisement; all things which were clear in the c.v. and letter I had sent him. He sent an email apologizing for being in a bad mood, since he is stressed; but I didn't think it was entirely sincere and everything felt a little "squicky" anyway and not a situation where I would be happy or make the employer so. So I turned down an offer to help with the website; it is on the face of it a dumb thing to do (beggars choosers etc.) but in this case my instincts were emphatically against it and I don't know much about web design so wasn't eager to have the bluff called. I consider it a bullet dodged, and was mostly irritated at the time because of the expenditure of time (esp. two words: S-Bahn delays), effort, and of hope that I would at last have work. Now I feel pleased because I have managed to be obdurate about not putting up with balderdash.
What I've done lately to encourage writing endurance is set up an elaborate tea service at the laptop. I cleaned the secretary-desk a little. The ceremony involves brewing a pot of tea, arranging it on a large plate or today our tray, having a sugar pot and a rye cracker beside it, and then consuming it as the writing advances. I don't know if it qualifies as a slop bowl, but I even have a little fingerbowl in which I put today's teabags when they had sufficiently steeped. It feels very professional; the real business of literary endeavour is, of course, unconnected to the state of our teapot.
***
Though I was in the bookshop for a short while today as Mama's holidays begin to taper off, I have had endless time for the piano: Mozart's early sonatas and the concerto in d minor (20), Chopin's "revolutionary" étude and his "raindrop" prelude, Händel's "Harmonious Blacksmith" suite, the slow movement of Mendelssohn's d minor trio, Schubert's sonata in B flat major (D 960) and the two before, and Bach, for instance. I like having my sloppy pile of notes on both ends of the noterack and on the noterack itself, and pulling forward one of the previous notes to wedge in place the recently turned pages of the current score.
I really like Beethoven's cadenzas for the Mozart concerto, but that may be because of their familiarity from the Rudolf Serkin and Clara Haskil recordings I liked to hear at university. Clara Schumann's introduces (I felt when I attempted it today) too much of her own style and Carl Reinecke's is friendly but perhaps slavishly subordinated to Mozart's composition. In the fantasia-like tradition of cadenzas they are all rather weird; so with the very weirdest I am parochially inclined to prefer my own flavour of eccentricity. On the other hand canon compositions themselves are often hard to follow, as I had reason to observe again today in the thickets of Schubert; and I will likely concede in a couple of years that the problem lies not with the cadenzators but with the uncongeniality of my interpretation.
***
Yesterday it was Mama's birthday, and though she has never felt inclined to fuss about it, she took it upon herself for our sakes to indulge the mood for a bit of a splurge and shop for an elaborate set of repasts.
In the morning I spent an idle hour or so washing cutlery and cleaning the stove, with its extremely irritating freight of mistakenly loyal grease which was sort of like a glue stick when you try to rub the glue off of something and it only becomes more grey and streaked and stubborn. I wasn't the one who spattered the damn stuff after leaving a middling flame unattended on the largest gas burner. There were little creamy splatters on the inverted underside of our Römertopf lid, which I conveniently ignored.
Anyway, after lingering over that I prepared three "puddings surprises," this time with three types of pudding mixes, the ladyfinger biscuits, coffee, sherry, bilberries, raspberries, the berry juices and chocolate sprinkles. Due to different cooking times the puddings were fairly tepid by the time the dishes were achieved, as it were, but I woke up the others so that they could enjoy the pudding in residual warmth. I think the pudding would have been improved with more sherry.
Then Mama and T. laboured over fruit tortes, which were beautiful and delectable and their toppings compounded of mandarin and peach slices from a can, apricot halves, blueberries or bilberries, raspberries, and pineapple rings. There was whipping cream to go with it, and a bowl of yoghurt with the remaining fruit. To follow we had bars and squares of chocolate — nougat, milk, marzipan, and ginger marzipan — which were partitioned in the corner room as one of the Herbie films appeared for the millionth time, still charming, on television. In the evening W. came by with a bottle of prosecco, which I enjoyed likewise in a sampling this morning. Of course we had also sung Happy Birthday.
***
Anyway, I thought that I would write a thorough profile on Amy Winehouse for one of my blogs. But though I spent a good part of yesterday researching and I like her and find her interesting, I think that it would be best to have gathered a knowledge of the music industry and the historical background against which her songwriting and performances developed. Hopping on the bandwagon isn't a problem in this case, I think, because so much nonsense has been written about her that someone should do a nicer job of it — though I do like Russell Brand's commentary from his blog (it should still be available at Guardian.co.uk). Secondly, while the subject is still fresh there is less of a likelihood that stuff will be raked up that should be left forgotten. I was interested in her to begin with because I had never heard any criticism of her musical talent, whereas music of any genre brings out so much partisanship, envy, and nitpicking that this is impossibly rare; and because she did seem to fit so naturally and authentically into her jazz, rocker persona, old-fashioned groove.
As for Norway, I think that it is too easy to write something sensationalist or grandiosely sentimental, and it's doubtful whether one can write anything helpful or unprecedented. As little can be done in retrospect for the victims at the youth camp and in Oslo as for many other civil or military situations in the past year in which many (unarmed, young) people have died. What one can do is not to construct a perverse demigod out of the suspected murderer by discussing him more than those who died.
For News of the World I am completely uninterested, though why the straightforward tabloid rather than the tabloids in the guise of news-papers which compose the rest of his [= R. Murdoch] subjournalistic consortium should be the one under fire for its ethics is the question, and it is a pity that the employees were let go when it was closed down.
Where Somalia and northeastern Kenya are concerned, I still don't have the impression that there is much one can do as an individual abroad. What I do think is that the portrayal of the famine-stricken as brainless and helpless mouths to feed instead of as herders, villagers, etc., who would have been able to get along on their own and in their native soil had they been given the resources (wells, etc.) which a government or agency should have afforded them, and who need not only food but also some measure of protection and a dignified temporary shelter, is patronizing and denigrating. The closest I've come to reading about such a situation is in Laura Ingalls Wilder, and it is very clear that there is nothing one can do — hard work or intelligence or even wealth — against the weather if you rely on agriculture. The main difference in this millennium is that the infrastructure to develop and distribute technology has improved along with the technology itself, that where farming is done on a larger scale the risks tend to be better balanced out, and that governments are better at evening out the odds for vulnerable farmers if they accept the responsibility.
***
Last week I had an interview for a job at a restaurant. The transit and timing worked well, but the interview itself went badly. Either I didn't seem waitressy or the person was looking for an excuse not to hire me, because he said that without food industry experience he couldn't hire me, in fact nobody could hire me, in fact that at best I could do cleaning work; then was wroth that I didn't speak Italian though I could tease out the meaning of the advertisement; all things which were clear in the c.v. and letter I had sent him. He sent an email apologizing for being in a bad mood, since he is stressed; but I didn't think it was entirely sincere and everything felt a little "squicky" anyway and not a situation where I would be happy or make the employer so. So I turned down an offer to help with the website; it is on the face of it a dumb thing to do (beggars choosers etc.) but in this case my instincts were emphatically against it and I don't know much about web design so wasn't eager to have the bluff called. I consider it a bullet dodged, and was mostly irritated at the time because of the expenditure of time (esp. two words: S-Bahn delays), effort, and of hope that I would at last have work. Now I feel pleased because I have managed to be obdurate about not putting up with balderdash.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Negligees and Menacing Moons
Besides practicing again, I have been keeping up with the haute couture in Paris, which ended on the 7th. These shows are, I've learnt, put on by members of the Chambre Syndicale, which demands that a fashion house put on two per year. This year I liked all of the ones I looked at — as usual I looked at the slideshows on Style.com, which have the advantage of occasionally giving the names (and agencies) of the models, while Vogue proper's website has a little magnifying box so that one to look at the photos close up, so that the workmanship is visible and it is easier even to tell what the fabric is. But newspaper websites like the Daily Telegraph's have them too.
One of the dresses I remember is Azzedine Alaïa's last; it is (if I recall) made out of a black latticework-like fabric which reminded me vaguely of old Middle Eastern window architecture, it has a broad belt-waist with metallic rims, and it is tied up at the throat with thin black straps, and hanging from the waist there is a short overskirt which falls in a pattern of petals. The overskirt mimicked the "skating skirts" earlier in the show which — though if they are trimmed with real fur I am inclined to disapprove — had a lovely Victorian appearance, and one or two came in a dark red velvety shade. They reminded me of ostrich feathers because of their fringe and their laden droop.
Then I really liked Anne Valerie Hash's line, which was a masterpiece of modernist French subtlety, and it was a relief to see black models; I don't know how to say this tactfully, but here their inclusion didn't look like political correctness because I don't think the clothes — the satiny fabric and the creamy or black shades — would have looked half so well on anybody else.
I looked at Dior briefly, twice, and felt that the problem with it was that dress-wise John Galliano has a better rein on his imagination once he has indulged it; I don't remember him ever indulging in pastels much, though they're more of my own bête noire, and the choice of patterns would have benefited from a sober second opinion. But the way in which the costumes were thrown together was at fault, too, since pieces that looked busy and unwearable together would have done very well if they had been contrasted with something striking but plain. In one case I noticed that there was a quieter skirt; I think either giving it a broad hem at the bottom or a strip of dark colour would have helped, since it was beige and looked almost literally like the unglamorous gruel of office fashion. I don't think the collection was disastrous by any means, but not thought over enough (and the reasonably popular photo of the girl in the opalescent moon dress would have been less horrifying had the sickle not been wedged with such homicidal tightness around her face).
Elie Saab had a line of thin dream-dresses which had a bathroom colour theme going on, namely that I could imagine each tint in the handle and packaging of a feminine razor; and though like Monique Lhuillier's his dresses do appeal sentimentally I have been meanly inclined to think without evidence that he designs a little cynically for the unimaginative tastes of the rich and famous. With Givenchy I didn't exactly get the point, since it was essentially all white negligées, suitable if one is an opera heroine who wishes to die tragically of consumption (the riverside backdrop to the show lent another suicidal overtone, though perhaps too Canaletto summer and not sufficiently gloomy or house-overhung for the lantern-lit, Thames-dragging variety of old-fashioned demise) but otherwise a trifle beside the point of winter attire, or for that matter attire. The Valentino show was rich and cheerful, and I liked the bright congress of Natalia Vodianova, Anne Hathaway, and the other guests.
Jean-Paul Gaultier's show I've somehow forgotten, and Chanel's I don't think I looked at in the first place — which is absurd, of course, because they're very important and I tend to like Chanel.
Anyway, this was all kind of frivolous and what the point of reviewing it as I have is precisely, I cannot say, but perhaps it is amusing. What is more embarrassing sartorially is that I could stare at what Kate Middleton wears forever, and either photographers choose her photos very respectfully or she is incredibly photogenic; at any rate I tend to delay looking at slideshows for a few days so that I am not undignifiedly hanging onto her every snapshot, as it were. Kate Moss's wedding photos I skipped; and the royal nuptials in Monaco made me (like other meddlesome-minded hoi polloi) a little sad, so I went through one slideshow a little absentmindedly and decided to shroud the rest in a sort of imperfect individual privacy.
One of the dresses I remember is Azzedine Alaïa's last; it is (if I recall) made out of a black latticework-like fabric which reminded me vaguely of old Middle Eastern window architecture, it has a broad belt-waist with metallic rims, and it is tied up at the throat with thin black straps, and hanging from the waist there is a short overskirt which falls in a pattern of petals. The overskirt mimicked the "skating skirts" earlier in the show which — though if they are trimmed with real fur I am inclined to disapprove — had a lovely Victorian appearance, and one or two came in a dark red velvety shade. They reminded me of ostrich feathers because of their fringe and their laden droop.
Then I really liked Anne Valerie Hash's line, which was a masterpiece of modernist French subtlety, and it was a relief to see black models; I don't know how to say this tactfully, but here their inclusion didn't look like political correctness because I don't think the clothes — the satiny fabric and the creamy or black shades — would have looked half so well on anybody else.
I looked at Dior briefly, twice, and felt that the problem with it was that dress-wise John Galliano has a better rein on his imagination once he has indulged it; I don't remember him ever indulging in pastels much, though they're more of my own bête noire, and the choice of patterns would have benefited from a sober second opinion. But the way in which the costumes were thrown together was at fault, too, since pieces that looked busy and unwearable together would have done very well if they had been contrasted with something striking but plain. In one case I noticed that there was a quieter skirt; I think either giving it a broad hem at the bottom or a strip of dark colour would have helped, since it was beige and looked almost literally like the unglamorous gruel of office fashion. I don't think the collection was disastrous by any means, but not thought over enough (and the reasonably popular photo of the girl in the opalescent moon dress would have been less horrifying had the sickle not been wedged with such homicidal tightness around her face).
Elie Saab had a line of thin dream-dresses which had a bathroom colour theme going on, namely that I could imagine each tint in the handle and packaging of a feminine razor; and though like Monique Lhuillier's his dresses do appeal sentimentally I have been meanly inclined to think without evidence that he designs a little cynically for the unimaginative tastes of the rich and famous. With Givenchy I didn't exactly get the point, since it was essentially all white negligées, suitable if one is an opera heroine who wishes to die tragically of consumption (the riverside backdrop to the show lent another suicidal overtone, though perhaps too Canaletto summer and not sufficiently gloomy or house-overhung for the lantern-lit, Thames-dragging variety of old-fashioned demise) but otherwise a trifle beside the point of winter attire, or for that matter attire. The Valentino show was rich and cheerful, and I liked the bright congress of Natalia Vodianova, Anne Hathaway, and the other guests.
Jean-Paul Gaultier's show I've somehow forgotten, and Chanel's I don't think I looked at in the first place — which is absurd, of course, because they're very important and I tend to like Chanel.
Anyway, this was all kind of frivolous and what the point of reviewing it as I have is precisely, I cannot say, but perhaps it is amusing. What is more embarrassing sartorially is that I could stare at what Kate Middleton wears forever, and either photographers choose her photos very respectfully or she is incredibly photogenic; at any rate I tend to delay looking at slideshows for a few days so that I am not undignifiedly hanging onto her every snapshot, as it were. Kate Moss's wedding photos I skipped; and the royal nuptials in Monaco made me (like other meddlesome-minded hoi polloi) a little sad, so I went through one slideshow a little absentmindedly and decided to shroud the rest in a sort of imperfect individual privacy.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
A Chromatic Scale
It's the summer holidays and so I haven't been at the bookshop, instead have been drifting and doing kind of the same things and kind of other things, in a looser schedule.
For one thing, the spare time is a nudge to work on the piano again. Today and yesterday I sightread some of the piano part for Beethoven'sEmperor concerto No. 4. It went better than last time because it is difficult to get into the mood; the piano bit is more scrappy and subordinated to the orchestra than in some other concerts. It's especially rewarding in a way, though, because the recognizable, relaxed, and lovely pieces of melody come at unexpected moments, especially after the most tedious scale or repetitive broken chords or a difficult trill that persists like an angry and troubling bumblebee. (Which can also happen with Mozart when, in a compositional device my father likes to point out, a chromatic scale leads haphazardly back to the original key. Chromatic scales run up or down in half notes; I think that they have a meandering character because they pause by the sharps and flats and therefore draw out the run, or a scurrying character because the additional sharps and flats render them more frenzied. Inventing dumb or obvious miniature stories about scales is the way I've developed to convince myself that they have meaning and that I can love them.) It is nicest of all when it is an endearing earlier motif which I thought had been extinguished forever.
There are two cadenzas to the concerto in the back of the score. The first made no sense to me yesterday but I should try again, and the second is the one I seem to have heard in recordings. Today I made up ones of my own as I went along, because even if I don't have much of a method or book-instruction yet I must start figuring out improvisation at some point.
By the time I had gone through Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Chopin's Raindrop Prelude and Revolutionary Etude, etc., I was tired.
For one thing, the spare time is a nudge to work on the piano again. Today and yesterday I sightread some of the piano part for Beethoven's
There are two cadenzas to the concerto in the back of the score. The first made no sense to me yesterday but I should try again, and the second is the one I seem to have heard in recordings. Today I made up ones of my own as I went along, because even if I don't have much of a method or book-instruction yet I must start figuring out improvisation at some point.
By the time I had gone through Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Chopin's Raindrop Prelude and Revolutionary Etude, etc., I was tired.
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
The Grey Lady at the Helm
This article is a project that has arbitrarily consumed hours and hours of the past week. Credit goes to all the reporters and anonymous Wikipedia contributors whose work I have aggregated. I hope the self-conscious attempt at being journalistic isn't too mined with jargon and other characteristic flaws to be readable or fit into a personal blog; and I tried to answer all of my own questions. What is left out is a closer look at the New York Times's editorial approach to the Bush years, since I had neither the strength, curiosity, nor ready sources to have hoped to do justice to it.
On June 2nd, Bill Keller, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Dean Baquet, and Jill Abramson gathered for an 11 a.m. address to the New York Times newsroom and announced that Abramson will replace Keller, who is resigning to pursue writing, as the executive editor on September 6th. This is the first time in its 160-year history that a woman will head the newspaper, and for the second time or so the dignified New York Times made a stir in internautical wilds like Twitter.
Jill Abramson, born in New York City and alumna of Harvard University, had worked as a journalist until 2003; after the Jayson Blair news fabrication scandal she was appointed as co-managing editor for the news.
The tasks of a managing editor are to "[oversee] and [coordinate] the publication's editorial activities" and at the Times it is the second-highest post. (Based on pure surmise this presumably means that if the arts editor wants to know whether to publish a contentious story, as is, or with changes, (s)he would refer it to the managing editor; and it would be at Abramson's discretion to consult the paper's lawyers or the top editor or even the publisher, etc., if she can't satisfactorily settle the question herself.) Baquet, now the assistant managing editor and an employee who is highly regarded by his colleagues at the New York and formerly at the Los Angeles Times,* will assume this post.
THE history of women reporters in the Times is venerable but chequered, and it begins with Jane Grant. She was stuck writing articles on "women's issues" and struggled through a rude environment for fifteen years in all. (In 1925 she co-founded the magazine New Yorker with her husband Harold Ross.)
Later women have held high positions in the Times, like the columnists Anna Quindlen and Maureen Dowd, and more recently Gail Collins; Carlotta Gall is charged with the reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan after a similarly tough post for a different paper in Chechnya; and bylines from Ligaya Mishan through Elaine Sciolino to Janet Maslin appear throughout. Dowd won a Pulitzer in 1999 for her columns about the Monica Lewinsky affair, but she has ten predecessors (Ada Louise Huxtable in 1970 for architecture reporting, Nan C. Robertson in 1983 for a medicine feature, Sheryl WuDunn in a shared laurel in 1990, Natalie Angier in 1991, Anna Quindlen in 1992, Isabel Wilkerson in 1994, Margo Jefferson in 1995, Linda Greenhouse and Michiko Kakutani in 1998 ) all the way down to Anne O'Hare McCormick, who in 1937 was honoured for her foreign correspondence. (Since then there have been five others: Gretchen Morgenson, Andrea Elliott, Amy Harmon, Sheri Fink, and Ellen Barry.) There are three women — Lynn G. Dolnick, Susan W. Dryfoos, and Cathy J. Sulzberger — on the Ochs-Sulzberger Trust board, too. Judith Miller certainly left her mark as well.
BESIDES Keller's dispiriting consciousness of being Sulzberger's second-best, his heart lies in the writing which earned him his Pulitzer (though why he would use the lofty writerly skills, which to garner the prize must have rendered the decline and fall of the Soviet Union in vivid colour, to battle the Twitter windmill is beyond me) rather than in editing, particularly when freighted with a high burden of business decisions.
Keller's current employee David Carr characterizes him with excellent conciseness in a recent interview with Baristanet:
***
Her father, Norman L. Abramson, is a New Yorker like her mother and "retired president of Irish Looms Associates, New York textile importers." (This is the information in her wedding announcement in the Times. Despite the section's habit of adorning occupations which have an insufficiently patrician air, in this instance embellishment is clearly not required.)
The household were newspaper-readers who harboured a Virginia O'Hanlon faith in the Times's dictates — "In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth," Jill Abramson told the newsroom on Thursday — and it could afford to send her to Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a NYC school and member of the Ivy Preparatory School League.** The school's list of prominent alumni is a fragmentary Who's Who of the American elite, among them Sofia Coppola, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Howard Wolfson, David Denby, Jane Mayer (whom Abramson seems to have met and become friends with at the school), Sheryl WuDunn and, coincidentally, Gil Scott-Heron.
At Harvard she pursued undergraduate studies in History and Literature, and emerged magna cum laude in 1976, to dive straight away into the journalist profession.
Along the road she picked up an interest in fashion — in pursuit of his profile Gabriel Sherman caught her before a Narciso Rodriguez runway show — and in music in the form of Arcade Fire; feminism appears a passion if her early book on the first graduating class of Harvard Law School where women had represented over 10% of the freshman class, the photo of the Times's third female reporter on her office wall, and her paean to her predecessors during her newsroom speech on Thursday are an indication; so, clearly, is raising dogs. She broke her wrist last year during a hike, so corpore sano is evidently not neglected either (except for the wrist).
In 1981 she married fellow New Yorker and Harvard graduate Henry Little Griggs 3rd. As the son of an NBC News producer and employee with a political PR company he was not new to the halls of the Ivy League, journalism, or politics either. They have two children and the hero of the puppy diaries, Scout, and alternate geographically between New York City and Connecticut.
***
"Good for one fare only"
Subway token inscription / philosophical metaphor for a human life (presumably it implies carpe diem/dum vivimus vivamus) / part of Jill Abramson's tattoo
*
"Jill Abramson" [Wikipedia] (read)
"Carlotta Gall" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Elaine Sciolino" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Jane Grant" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Tina Brown" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011 UTC+2)
"Jill Abramson: 'I'm a battle-scarred veteran'" [Guardian] by Ed Pilkington (June 7, 2011)
"Jill Abramson, Just-Named New York Times Editor, Ready To 'Seize The Future'" [Huffington Post], by Michael Calderone (June 2, 2011)
"New York Times shakes up its masthead" [Politico], by Keach Hagey (June 2, 2011)
"Jill E. Abramson Is Bride Of Henry Little Griggs 3d" [New York Times] (March 15, 1981)
"Ethical Culture Fieldston School" [Wikipedia] Read June 3, 2011
"The New York Times" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Times Two" [New York Magazine], by Gabriel Sherman (September 26, 2010) [and Page 2]
"New York Times names Jill Abramson as first female executive editor" [Guardian], by Jason Deans (June 2, 2011)
"Coffee With . . . David Carr" [Baristanet] by Debbie Galant (June 5, 2011)
"The United States of America vs. Bill Keller" (p. 2) [New York Magazine], by Joe Hagan (Sept. 10, 2006) [and Pages 4, 7 and 10]
Interview: "Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson in Current Affairs" [Charlierose.com] (Nov. 7, 1994)
*
* From Politico's article: "Dean Baquet, the paper’s assistant managing editor and Washington bureau chief who became a kind of journalistic folk hero when he refused to cut staff as editor of the Los Angeles Times, will replace Abramson as managing editor."
** To be honest, though the Ivy Preparatory School League sounds prestigious and likely is, even after reading the relevant Wikipedia article the practical ramifications of this affiliation remain obscure.
On June 2nd, Bill Keller, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Dean Baquet, and Jill Abramson gathered for an 11 a.m. address to the New York Times newsroom and announced that Abramson will replace Keller, who is resigning to pursue writing, as the executive editor on September 6th. This is the first time in its 160-year history that a woman will head the newspaper, and for the second time or so the dignified New York Times made a stir in internautical wilds like Twitter.
Jill Abramson, born in New York City and alumna of Harvard University, had worked as a journalist until 2003; after the Jayson Blair news fabrication scandal she was appointed as co-managing editor for the news.
The tasks of a managing editor are to "[oversee] and [coordinate] the publication's editorial activities" and at the Times it is the second-highest post. (Based on pure surmise this presumably means that if the arts editor wants to know whether to publish a contentious story, as is, or with changes, (s)he would refer it to the managing editor; and it would be at Abramson's discretion to consult the paper's lawyers or the top editor or even the publisher, etc., if she can't satisfactorily settle the question herself.) Baquet, now the assistant managing editor and an employee who is highly regarded by his colleagues at the New York and formerly at the Los Angeles Times,* will assume this post.
THE history of women reporters in the Times is venerable but chequered, and it begins with Jane Grant. She was stuck writing articles on "women's issues" and struggled through a rude environment for fifteen years in all. (In 1925 she co-founded the magazine New Yorker with her husband Harold Ross.)
Later women have held high positions in the Times, like the columnists Anna Quindlen and Maureen Dowd, and more recently Gail Collins; Carlotta Gall is charged with the reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan after a similarly tough post for a different paper in Chechnya; and bylines from Ligaya Mishan through Elaine Sciolino to Janet Maslin appear throughout. Dowd won a Pulitzer in 1999 for her columns about the Monica Lewinsky affair, but she has ten predecessors (Ada Louise Huxtable in 1970 for architecture reporting, Nan C. Robertson in 1983 for a medicine feature, Sheryl WuDunn in a shared laurel in 1990, Natalie Angier in 1991, Anna Quindlen in 1992, Isabel Wilkerson in 1994, Margo Jefferson in 1995, Linda Greenhouse and Michiko Kakutani in 1998 ) all the way down to Anne O'Hare McCormick, who in 1937 was honoured for her foreign correspondence. (Since then there have been five others: Gretchen Morgenson, Andrea Elliott, Amy Harmon, Sheri Fink, and Ellen Barry.) There are three women — Lynn G. Dolnick, Susan W. Dryfoos, and Cathy J. Sulzberger — on the Ochs-Sulzberger Trust board, too. Judith Miller certainly left her mark as well.
AS for other American publications, women have already held leading posts. Tina Brown edited Vanity Fair from 1984 to 1992 and The New Yorker from 1992 to 1998, Katharine Graham was the moving spirit behind the Washington Post as its publisher, Anne Marie Lipinski was the editor of the Chicago Tribune from 2001 to 2008, others have headed the Portland Oregonian (Sandra Rowe starting in 1993) and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Julia Wallace starting in 2002). Nancy Hicks Maynard was the first African-American woman to own a large newspaper, the Oakland Tribune, in 1983. In the online press Arianna Huffington and more recently Brown have become formidable figures.
The response of these colleagues, also in the television milieu, has been enthusiastic; PBS's Gwen Ifill, Katie Couric of ABC News, Time's Kate Pickert, CNN's Christiane Amanpour, and Tina Brown joined employees in the Times in expressing their congratulations and appreciation for the shattering of another glass ceiling.
***
Jill Abramson has co-written among other books a weighty rebuttal to the defamation of Anita Hill by David Brock in his book The Real Anita Hill, by political allies, and by the media who uncritically repeated the libel. Hill had endangered the confirmation of Supreme Court appointee Clarence Thomas by accusing him of harassment. Jane Mayer (then a colleague at the Wall Street Journal and now a contributor to the magazine New Yorker) was the co-author, and it came out on the bookshelves as Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas in 1994. Since then it has become the final word on the matter. In October Puppy Diaries, a nonpolitical compendium of her series of personal blogs on the Times's website in 2009, will appear in Times Books.
In terms of the press, she worked for Time magazine (1973-1976), NBC News, The American Lawyer during the eighties, and the Legal Times as editor-in-chief from 1986-1988. In 1988 she started her stint at the Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau, and when Maureen Dowd nudged her to the Times in 1997 she became Washington bureau chief. While she was with the Times she and Don Van Natta Jr. uncovered part of the network of lawyers and enemies of the Clintons who ferreted out and nudged into press circulation reports of fiscal and amorous impropriety in the 1990s (praised in ex-editor Joseph Lelyveld's 2003 article, "In Clinton's Court," for the New York Review of Books).
Since 1988 she has appeared on television often: 39 times on the political affairs channel C-SPAN and 2 times on Charlie Rose's highly civilized talkshow on PBS. Her voice has a New York edge, and it is a continuous flow of words that stretch into each other, presumably as a way to avoid stumbles or filler like "um," though "you know" presents an island of punctuation intermittently. In short, her speaking style is Harvard-educated Sarah Palin with superior syntax, brain, and no conscious folk vernacular. On television her clothing seems a little stuffy, her tone occasionally patronizing, her emotions and reactions detached by superego, and despite the geniality toward the interviewer her air is a billboard declaring Keep Away. Relative to the rank and file of commentators, she is neither defensive nor aggressive, nor needily impelled to prove herself; she seems as willing to listen and think as to talk and think. She gives a careful interview. When someone challenges the Times's golden calf, viz. the belief in its own immaculate objectivity, her sense of responsibility to the New York Times seems to declare red alert as her autopilot reiterates nuanceless assurances of the Times's impeccable neutrality.
JILL Abramson has been seen as the potential heir to Bill Keller for years, though as she put it to Gabriel Sherman in 2010
"I don’t dwell on it," [. . .] "I think it would be a healthy, nice thing for the country. It is meaningful to have women in positions of leadership at important institutions in society. But, you know, there are wonderful male editors in this place who are just as capable as I am, and they could run this place exquisitely well. If it happens, it happens, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t."She has a relatively benign example to follow. Before Keller became the executive editor he had been passed over for the position in favour of Howell Raines. When Raines was fired two years later in connection with the Blair scandal — nominally; he also raised animosity by insisting on reforms which frankly the Times might need, but perhaps more aggressively than the Times needs — the publisher decided abruptly that he wanted Keller after all.
BESIDES Keller's dispiriting consciousness of being Sulzberger's second-best, his heart lies in the writing which earned him his Pulitzer (though why he would use the lofty writerly skills, which to garner the prize must have rendered the decline and fall of the Soviet Union in vivid colour, to battle the Twitter windmill is beyond me) rather than in editing, particularly when freighted with a high burden of business decisions.
Keller's current employee David Carr characterizes him with excellent conciseness in a recent interview with Baristanet:
He has accomplished amazing things in the job and is probably one of the most talented journalists of our time. Remember, he was not the first choice, and it was an accident of history. And the crown with him never exactly fit. He never was the imperial executive editor of the New York Times, and he turned out to be a fabulous one.Keller himself has surmised,
I think Howell’s view of leadership is martial [. . .]. And mine is more paterfamilias, I guess. You are dependent on this huge reservoir of talent, and your job is to create the circumstances under which they can do their best work, to reward them when they do well, correct them when they do wrong, set some guidelines, and spur their ambitions. But it’s not about me.SO Keller soothed the savage malcontent among the Times reporters. Even if the outrage is not entirely laid (Abramson herself has been gloomily cast as having Raines moments), Sulzberger is fully behind her — even in 2003 he was hoping that she would become the first female executive editor — and despite the controversies over the delay of the National Security Agency wiretap story in 2005 and over the free imaginative rein which Judith Miller held over her reporting on Iraq's putative weapons of mass destruction, etc., she appears to have emerged happily from the froth like a Venus.
***
Her father, Norman L. Abramson, is a New Yorker like her mother and "retired president of Irish Looms Associates, New York textile importers." (This is the information in her wedding announcement in the Times. Despite the section's habit of adorning occupations which have an insufficiently patrician air, in this instance embellishment is clearly not required.)
The household were newspaper-readers who harboured a Virginia O'Hanlon faith in the Times's dictates — "In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth," Jill Abramson told the newsroom on Thursday — and it could afford to send her to Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a NYC school and member of the Ivy Preparatory School League.** The school's list of prominent alumni is a fragmentary Who's Who of the American elite, among them Sofia Coppola, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Howard Wolfson, David Denby, Jane Mayer (whom Abramson seems to have met and become friends with at the school), Sheryl WuDunn and, coincidentally, Gil Scott-Heron.
At Harvard she pursued undergraduate studies in History and Literature, and emerged magna cum laude in 1976, to dive straight away into the journalist profession.
Along the road she picked up an interest in fashion — in pursuit of his profile Gabriel Sherman caught her before a Narciso Rodriguez runway show — and in music in the form of Arcade Fire; feminism appears a passion if her early book on the first graduating class of Harvard Law School where women had represented over 10% of the freshman class, the photo of the Times's third female reporter on her office wall, and her paean to her predecessors during her newsroom speech on Thursday are an indication; so, clearly, is raising dogs. She broke her wrist last year during a hike, so corpore sano is evidently not neglected either (except for the wrist).
In 1981 she married fellow New Yorker and Harvard graduate Henry Little Griggs 3rd. As the son of an NBC News producer and employee with a political PR company he was not new to the halls of the Ivy League, journalism, or politics either. They have two children and the hero of the puppy diaries, Scout, and alternate geographically between New York City and Connecticut.
***
"Good for one fare only"
Subway token inscription / philosophical metaphor for a human life (presumably it implies carpe diem/dum vivimus vivamus) / part of Jill Abramson's tattoo
*
"Jill Abramson" [Wikipedia] (read)
"Carlotta Gall" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Elaine Sciolino" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Jane Grant" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Tina Brown" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011 UTC+2)
"Jill Abramson: 'I'm a battle-scarred veteran'" [Guardian] by Ed Pilkington (June 7, 2011)
"Jill Abramson, Just-Named New York Times Editor, Ready To 'Seize The Future'" [Huffington Post], by Michael Calderone (June 2, 2011)
"New York Times shakes up its masthead" [Politico], by Keach Hagey (June 2, 2011)
"Jill E. Abramson Is Bride Of Henry Little Griggs 3d" [New York Times] (March 15, 1981)
"Ethical Culture Fieldston School" [Wikipedia] Read June 3, 2011
"The New York Times" [Wikipedia] (read June 6, 2011)
"Times Two" [New York Magazine], by Gabriel Sherman (September 26, 2010) [and Page 2]
"New York Times names Jill Abramson as first female executive editor" [Guardian], by Jason Deans (June 2, 2011)
"Coffee With . . . David Carr" [Baristanet] by Debbie Galant (June 5, 2011)
"The United States of America vs. Bill Keller" (p. 2) [New York Magazine], by Joe Hagan (Sept. 10, 2006) [and Pages 4, 7 and 10]
Interview: "Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson in Current Affairs" [Charlierose.com] (Nov. 7, 1994)
*
* From Politico's article: "Dean Baquet, the paper’s assistant managing editor and Washington bureau chief who became a kind of journalistic folk hero when he refused to cut staff as editor of the Los Angeles Times, will replace Abramson as managing editor."
** To be honest, though the Ivy Preparatory School League sounds prestigious and likely is, even after reading the relevant Wikipedia article the practical ramifications of this affiliation remain obscure.
Lycurgus, the Obnoxious Tyrant
Back during one of my depressed years, maybe Grade 11, when I was worried about being underread, I kept our old brown copy of Plutarch's Lives (in the Dryden translation, and my grandmother's I believe) at the bedside and strove to make inroads.
One of the lives did strike a chord, since it recapitulated what I learned about Spartan education in history class during an otherwise mostly unedifying year in German school. Under the impression that Lycurgus's biography was the one in question, I found it this morning in a different translation online and read it, keeping on expecting to find the nice passages. The further it went the clearer it was that this is the incomprehensible hagiography of a tremendous jerk, and a paean to totalitarianism.
As I thought it out, Plutarch is likely an originator of the neoclassical and later Christian model of finding a historical figure who can be elevated as a man worthy of emulation, who never does anything wrong and whose enemies are wicked envious ones, or whose faults (for whom a nebulous and inexorable fate is to blame) are a dignified caution to his historical successors. (Probably a harebrained idea, but it seems to me after reading lots of retellings that Homer's heroes for example don't strive so hard after perfection and everyone meets a sticky end whether they're impressive human beings or middling ones — their paths of glory lead but to the grave, etc.) The taxation on the truth and the realities of the human character is too high to be redeemed by the potential benefit. In short it appears profoundly unsound. The air of moral eventemperedness and conservative yearnings are taken as signs of health and practicability, but in fact they often appear to conceal narrow experience, feeble imagination about human nature and the world, and an egotistical need to order the cosmos to one's physical and spiritual comfort that neither recognizes the rights and differences of others, nor is fundamentally good.
Anyway, that is a tangent which it is practically impossible to defend objectively, so to return to "Lycurgus" here is one passage that encapsulates a little of the pleasant experience his rule must have been:
From the modern perspective, water taken from dirty sources would have borne fecal bacteria and parasites, and drinking a broth is not more pleasant even if the silt has settled and the vessel it's served in is a tasteful chalky grey. Besides I am pretty sure that Lycurgus would have drunk (if that grammatical tense is correct) from a slightly different cup. Skim over the dry passages and there are many more gems like this one.
Anyway, I don't follow Plutarch's thoughts. Would he have liked to live in a dual kingdom with lousy furniture, communal dinners, discontent rich people throwing stones, servants presumably living in worse circumstances as the wealth declined, a mediocre democracy where Lycurgus was ruling through the young second king after a military coup (though bloodless), no "useless tradesmen" and no merchant relations with foreign towns since these couldn't do much with the new iron (as opposed to gold and silver) coins?
Unless he was living on the street and was infested with a horrible disease, in contrast to which this Sparta might sound like the Elysian Fields, I doubt Plutarch would have found this lifestyle much fun to put in practice. Sparta may have been truly awful before Lycurgus improved it and so he is a model of making the best of a bad lot. Or, since I didn't finish the Life (too disgruntled), perhaps it has a splendid surprise ending.
Maybe he should be excused on the grounds that most of us who read the Little House on the Prairie series when we were little also thought that, with the exception perhaps of the Long Winter, it sounded rather cozy and nice. The idea of austerity can be charming, the reality of it unthinkable.
What also annoyed me was the praise which the Oracle at Delphi accorded to Lycurgus, twice. Either the oracle accepted arrant bribery, Lycurgus was misrepresenting its findings or never went there, or the oracle did inspire herself through now-controlled substances and had partaken of particularly happy ones whenever he came to visit. I don't think any proper god would accord a follower unalloyed praise, because 'tis human to err, etc. The tale of Croesus is far more instructive and real, I think, and I would think more of Plutarch's or Lycurgus' psychology if one of them had thought that the praise must be a particularly mean trick of the Olympians.
But, to end on a more cheerful note, the Laconian cup puts me in mind of Aunt Adelaide Stitch's education and boarding programme in Nurse Matilda:
"Her own suite of rooms, decorated in chocolate brown
A new wardrobe of clothing in colours that wouldn't show the dirt"
One of the lives did strike a chord, since it recapitulated what I learned about Spartan education in history class during an otherwise mostly unedifying year in German school. Under the impression that Lycurgus's biography was the one in question, I found it this morning in a different translation online and read it, keeping on expecting to find the nice passages. The further it went the clearer it was that this is the incomprehensible hagiography of a tremendous jerk, and a paean to totalitarianism.
As I thought it out, Plutarch is likely an originator of the neoclassical and later Christian model of finding a historical figure who can be elevated as a man worthy of emulation, who never does anything wrong and whose enemies are wicked envious ones, or whose faults (for whom a nebulous and inexorable fate is to blame) are a dignified caution to his historical successors. (Probably a harebrained idea, but it seems to me after reading lots of retellings that Homer's heroes for example don't strive so hard after perfection and everyone meets a sticky end whether they're impressive human beings or middling ones — their paths of glory lead but to the grave, etc.) The taxation on the truth and the realities of the human character is too high to be redeemed by the potential benefit. In short it appears profoundly unsound. The air of moral eventemperedness and conservative yearnings are taken as signs of health and practicability, but in fact they often appear to conceal narrow experience, feeble imagination about human nature and the world, and an egotistical need to order the cosmos to one's physical and spiritual comfort that neither recognizes the rights and differences of others, nor is fundamentally good.
Anyway, that is a tangent which it is practically impossible to defend objectively, so to return to "Lycurgus" here is one passage that encapsulates a little of the pleasant experience his rule must have been:
the Laconian cup, we are told by Kritias, was especially valued for its use in the field. Its colour prevented the drinker being disgusted by the look of the dirty water which it is sometimes necessary to drink, and it was contrived that the dirt was deposited inside the cup and stuck to the bottom, so as to make the drink cleaner than it would otherwise have been.
Anyway, I don't follow Plutarch's thoughts. Would he have liked to live in a dual kingdom with lousy furniture, communal dinners, discontent rich people throwing stones, servants presumably living in worse circumstances as the wealth declined, a mediocre democracy where Lycurgus was ruling through the young second king after a military coup (though bloodless), no "useless tradesmen" and no merchant relations with foreign towns since these couldn't do much with the new iron (as opposed to gold and silver) coins?
Unless he was living on the street and was infested with a horrible disease, in contrast to which this Sparta might sound like the Elysian Fields, I doubt Plutarch would have found this lifestyle much fun to put in practice. Sparta may have been truly awful before Lycurgus improved it and so he is a model of making the best of a bad lot. Or, since I didn't finish the Life (too disgruntled), perhaps it has a splendid surprise ending.
Maybe he should be excused on the grounds that most of us who read the Little House on the Prairie series when we were little also thought that, with the exception perhaps of the Long Winter, it sounded rather cozy and nice. The idea of austerity can be charming, the reality of it unthinkable.
What also annoyed me was the praise which the Oracle at Delphi accorded to Lycurgus, twice. Either the oracle accepted arrant bribery, Lycurgus was misrepresenting its findings or never went there, or the oracle did inspire herself through now-controlled substances and had partaken of particularly happy ones whenever he came to visit. I don't think any proper god would accord a follower unalloyed praise, because 'tis human to err, etc. The tale of Croesus is far more instructive and real, I think, and I would think more of Plutarch's or Lycurgus' psychology if one of them had thought that the praise must be a particularly mean trick of the Olympians.
But, to end on a more cheerful note, the Laconian cup puts me in mind of Aunt Adelaide Stitch's education and boarding programme in Nurse Matilda:
"Her own suite of rooms, decorated in chocolate brown
A new wardrobe of clothing in colours that wouldn't show the dirt"
The Audience of Wooden Seats
Though I have watched pieces only of the least artistically obscure of his films, besides ignorant of the craft in general, and therefore am ill qualified to judge his actorly stature, I've had a mild crush on Peter O'Toole after Lawrence of Arabia, Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Lion in Winter and the one with Audrey Hepburn whose name I can't recall; so here is a link to an interview — "Peter O’Toole Has a Few Words for Directors" — by Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times (June 26).
Sunday, June 05, 2011
Chirpy Update on "Uni," Etc.
On June 2nd I sent the electronic application to the Freie Universität and on the 4th I sent the corroborating documents (or, rather, my mother kindly dropped the envelope into the box for me on her way out), and now I am waiting. Since July 15th is the deadline for applications and responses come in September, I am not worried about being too much on tenterhooks, and instead am focusing — at least these days — on researching the news and revisiting Mozart sonatas on our piano and tending the bookshop.
After much dithering I decided to apply for Modern Greek, as promised, Near Eastern Studies (culture and languages), and Classical Studies: Latin. Russian wasn't an option in combination with other courses, as I found after studying the charts lengthwise and crosswise several times, though eventually I want to take a language course in it outside of studies. Realistically I don't think my chances of getting in are terribly good; however with Modern Greek I do happen to have an extra "in" if I've learned another modern language; since English is evidently one, and French in university and Spanish in high school are there, I hope that will help, and fortunately I did rather well in my Ancient Greek course.
In the meantime I've tried to acquire a little modern Greek; fortunately a vague recollection led me to the BBC website, which has a modest collection of resources including MP3 files to supplement the pronunciation guide I found in the dictionary in our bookshelves. I've done other things too but won't go into too much detail. Fortunately the pronunciation doesn't appear too abstruse, though it has certainly changed in 2000 years and it's a minor disappointment to pronounce "ph" as such and not as a strong "p," the loss of "eta" as a long e as opposed to ee is also sad, and so on and so forth. These changes do align the sound of Greek words more closely with the pronunciation of similar words in different languages, however, just taking "philosophy" as an example, and I admit I'm hardly distraught that the accents now indicate simple emphasis and not convoluted changes in pitch.
So . . . otherwise I'm reading through UNAIDS's report on AIDS after 30 years, though I am too ignorant about the issue to be properly informed even after the perusal, and at some point I may wrap up a blog post about the incoming executive editor of the New York Times. For the latter I've gone through our physical archive of New York Review of Bookses, and since Jill Abramson did important political reporting the contributions where she shows up have been a bundle of nostalgia. Her television appearances on Charlie Rose are also preserved, so I watched those. When was the last time I'd heard about Zell Miller, Jesse Helms, etc.? But I don't feel nostalgic about Whitewater, etc., and while the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas must have taken place while I was already reading the newspaper I don't remember anything about them. The combination of scandalmongering and of libelling victims of harassment makes it seem like it would have been a lacklustre use of time and attention anyway. Speaking of Rose, I found his show tremendously boring the last time I tried to watch it, but it has apparently really grown on me.
Less importantly, it has been a very warm day, not miserable precisely and my brain is reasonably active because of the aforementioned mental exercises, but my physical reflexes are presumably terribly slow and let's say I feel a little sticky. Garbage Day (Friday? — I've forgotten.) was the pits, and still a balmy air is very pleasant when it emanates from the flowers and particularly roses which are blossoming in panoply. Yesterday morning I realized that dehydration might be a minor issue, so I am taking "doses" of water with a couple drops of lime juice, teaspoon of sugar, and pinch of salt. It feels pleasingly unspartan particularly when I reach the bottom, i.e. the delicious deposit of saccharine grains.
After much dithering I decided to apply for Modern Greek, as promised, Near Eastern Studies (culture and languages), and Classical Studies: Latin. Russian wasn't an option in combination with other courses, as I found after studying the charts lengthwise and crosswise several times, though eventually I want to take a language course in it outside of studies. Realistically I don't think my chances of getting in are terribly good; however with Modern Greek I do happen to have an extra "in" if I've learned another modern language; since English is evidently one, and French in university and Spanish in high school are there, I hope that will help, and fortunately I did rather well in my Ancient Greek course.
In the meantime I've tried to acquire a little modern Greek; fortunately a vague recollection led me to the BBC website, which has a modest collection of resources including MP3 files to supplement the pronunciation guide I found in the dictionary in our bookshelves. I've done other things too but won't go into too much detail. Fortunately the pronunciation doesn't appear too abstruse, though it has certainly changed in 2000 years and it's a minor disappointment to pronounce "ph" as such and not as a strong "p," the loss of "eta" as a long e as opposed to ee is also sad, and so on and so forth. These changes do align the sound of Greek words more closely with the pronunciation of similar words in different languages, however, just taking "philosophy" as an example, and I admit I'm hardly distraught that the accents now indicate simple emphasis and not convoluted changes in pitch.
So . . . otherwise I'm reading through UNAIDS's report on AIDS after 30 years, though I am too ignorant about the issue to be properly informed even after the perusal, and at some point I may wrap up a blog post about the incoming executive editor of the New York Times. For the latter I've gone through our physical archive of New York Review of Bookses, and since Jill Abramson did important political reporting the contributions where she shows up have been a bundle of nostalgia. Her television appearances on Charlie Rose are also preserved, so I watched those. When was the last time I'd heard about Zell Miller, Jesse Helms, etc.? But I don't feel nostalgic about Whitewater, etc., and while the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas must have taken place while I was already reading the newspaper I don't remember anything about them. The combination of scandalmongering and of libelling victims of harassment makes it seem like it would have been a lacklustre use of time and attention anyway. Speaking of Rose, I found his show tremendously boring the last time I tried to watch it, but it has apparently really grown on me.
Less importantly, it has been a very warm day, not miserable precisely and my brain is reasonably active because of the aforementioned mental exercises, but my physical reflexes are presumably terribly slow and let's say I feel a little sticky. Garbage Day (Friday? — I've forgotten.) was the pits, and still a balmy air is very pleasant when it emanates from the flowers and particularly roses which are blossoming in panoply. Yesterday morning I realized that dehydration might be a minor issue, so I am taking "doses" of water with a couple drops of lime juice, teaspoon of sugar, and pinch of salt. It feels pleasingly unspartan particularly when I reach the bottom, i.e. the delicious deposit of saccharine grains.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Scrying
I've come to the conclusion lately that it would be best to apply for university again. That I am not enthusiastic about it is certain, but since I live in a country where it is paid for and since it is better than idling for another year (the idling is worthwhile, but there is a time when it is worthwhile, and next year it would not be) I have decided to take a chance. The main obstacles now are, first and foremost, the likelihood that I will not get in; secondly, figuring out which programmes to apply for; thirdly, finding work to supply an income and help me when (if) I have the BA and am standing on the threshold of a career.
So far I would like to take Modern Greek, Russian, and Latin. (The first would be the major, the Russian and Latin double minors.)
The courses of Ancient Greek at UBC might not help that much, so I have decided to try learning a great deal in the meantime. At the bookshop today I did quizzes to learn the colours, for instance, and of course there are newspaper articles available for reading practice once I am advanced enough, which will take a little while. Besides there is the literature, geography, history, cooking, etc., to read up on for background. I'm hoping that the fact that I've liked Greece and Greek so much, though as they were two thousand years ago, will fuel the toil.
Besides I would like to do something in journalism and maybe visit one or two classes to be sure that I am making the right decision.
In the meantime I am worried that I am worthless, etc., as customary, and past dealings with the Freie Universität haven't removed the feeling that with the grades I had in the past and other things I am not a welcome applicant and am both obstreperous and beneath their notice; but these worries won't help even if they are right, so I blot them out and try to forget them. I still haven't lost the feeling that I should stick with applying to the FU, either, rather than trying a different university.
Anyway, in the best case scenario I'll be accepted and happy in my studies. I have all sorts of inferiority complexes about my mind, reinforced by years of creeping along in school and sometimes doing very well and sometimes doing very badly with equally middling energy, and never being able to take positive opinions as an incontrovertible truth rather than polite flattery. Besides I worry that the next time I become depressed or unhappy, the clarity of mind, memory, etc., will be taken away again — which is one reason why I am so circumspect about finding the right job. Feeling stupid feeds into insecurity, and not being clearminded enough to sort through the problems and find mental distraction makes me feel trapped inside my head. At present reading novels, one after the other, feeds my mind and curiosity reliably, and keeps it running so that I can process newspaper articles, the world around me, whatever I feel like reviewing on the Lighthouse blog, etc., easily.
As for the distant future, I have changed my mind in a major way about becoming an author. I feel less doubtful now about being able to write reasonably mature stories and so on, which may be a troubling sign in itself; but the prospect of becoming a public figure or of flogging my ware is so disruptive, and so little concerned with the kind of personal but unselfcentred exercise which I consider nice literature to be, that I want to wait if at all until I am older, secure of my identity, and good-humoured enough to clown around in public persona if that's what publishers, etc., demand. Journalism and writing stories for myself seems better, and if I can Emily Dickinsonesquely leave one or two very good novels behind for posthumous publication (if they're any good) I'd be pleased, and aside from that I think I'd like to publish stories for free on the web. Not middling run-of-the-mill stories but good, unpretentious ones whose principal purpose is to be enjoyed in the reading and the writing. As for poetry (to which the Dickinson analogy would of course better apply) I'll no doubt write it when the spasm seizes but otherwise I think my approach is too desultory to deserve much respect.
So far I would like to take Modern Greek, Russian, and Latin. (The first would be the major, the Russian and Latin double minors.)
The courses of Ancient Greek at UBC might not help that much, so I have decided to try learning a great deal in the meantime. At the bookshop today I did quizzes to learn the colours, for instance, and of course there are newspaper articles available for reading practice once I am advanced enough, which will take a little while. Besides there is the literature, geography, history, cooking, etc., to read up on for background. I'm hoping that the fact that I've liked Greece and Greek so much, though as they were two thousand years ago, will fuel the toil.
Besides I would like to do something in journalism and maybe visit one or two classes to be sure that I am making the right decision.
In the meantime I am worried that I am worthless, etc., as customary, and past dealings with the Freie Universität haven't removed the feeling that with the grades I had in the past and other things I am not a welcome applicant and am both obstreperous and beneath their notice; but these worries won't help even if they are right, so I blot them out and try to forget them. I still haven't lost the feeling that I should stick with applying to the FU, either, rather than trying a different university.
Anyway, in the best case scenario I'll be accepted and happy in my studies. I have all sorts of inferiority complexes about my mind, reinforced by years of creeping along in school and sometimes doing very well and sometimes doing very badly with equally middling energy, and never being able to take positive opinions as an incontrovertible truth rather than polite flattery. Besides I worry that the next time I become depressed or unhappy, the clarity of mind, memory, etc., will be taken away again — which is one reason why I am so circumspect about finding the right job. Feeling stupid feeds into insecurity, and not being clearminded enough to sort through the problems and find mental distraction makes me feel trapped inside my head. At present reading novels, one after the other, feeds my mind and curiosity reliably, and keeps it running so that I can process newspaper articles, the world around me, whatever I feel like reviewing on the Lighthouse blog, etc., easily.
As for the distant future, I have changed my mind in a major way about becoming an author. I feel less doubtful now about being able to write reasonably mature stories and so on, which may be a troubling sign in itself; but the prospect of becoming a public figure or of flogging my ware is so disruptive, and so little concerned with the kind of personal but unselfcentred exercise which I consider nice literature to be, that I want to wait if at all until I am older, secure of my identity, and good-humoured enough to clown around in public persona if that's what publishers, etc., demand. Journalism and writing stories for myself seems better, and if I can Emily Dickinsonesquely leave one or two very good novels behind for posthumous publication (if they're any good) I'd be pleased, and aside from that I think I'd like to publish stories for free on the web. Not middling run-of-the-mill stories but good, unpretentious ones whose principal purpose is to be enjoyed in the reading and the writing. As for poetry (to which the Dickinson analogy would of course better apply) I'll no doubt write it when the spasm seizes but otherwise I think my approach is too desultory to deserve much respect.
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Canada: Roughly Four More Years Of The Plague
In . . . cheerful . . . news, Canada has just reelected Stephen Harper as Prime Minister and given his Conservative Party a majority in Parliament.
Though I have long left the shores of Canuckia, it was not before Harper appeared on the scene as part of the "reform" conservative movement. It is essentially composed of neoconservatives who have very peculiar ideas of the world allied with a practically impermeable layer of semibenevolent stupidity. Its other exponents include Stockwell Day who, though also young and reasonably picturesque (in politician terms) like Harper, was a less serious figure but left the realm of Canadian political comedy with far greater riches, like the picture of him in a skintight suit on a speedboat. Harper seems, behind his somewhat undistinctive face and slightly protuberant-tipped nose and indolent blue eyes, the most intelligent of the lot.
Behind this meaningless façade the government is as far as I can tell self-seeking and inwardlooking, ignores those social problems which it might prove inconvenient to solve, and casually prone to endorsing rather repellent ideas to the effect that Muslims are generally suspicious, people who are poor are maliciously bent on disturbing the comfort of the rich, immigrants are moochers, and that the starving masses abroad should feel content with Canada's past largesse and accept the now circumscribed crumbs of aid like the princely alms which the wilted soul of an Ottawa parliamentarian considers it to be. This mentality will be familiar far beyond the shores of Canada, for its proponents are a somewhat international burden.
On the other hand the NDP, the New Democratic Party and the party to the left of the Liberal Party, has done exceedingly well. How the Liberal Party, which happily occupied the centre and majority of the Canadian pool of eligible voters for over a decade, managed to lose the vast sections of support may remain a mystery. Certainly Michael Ignatieff is a contentious figure, though whether it is that he mostly dwelled in the US, that he is an Elitist who spent years in the Ivy pinnacle of the Ivory Tower and hobnobbed among the ambient intelligentsia, that he supported the Iraq War (which is the "deal-breaker" for me), that he had tinges of neoconservatism (which was also a problem for me) or that he is simply not very compelling in himself and as a representative of a happy and harmonious Liberal Party, it is impossible for me to determine.
The NDP's Jack Layton seems a slightly abrasive, combative miniature Napoleon, who has the minor opposition party advantage in always being right whenever he criticizes a government policy that turns out to be wrong. And I think he has also profited either by the leftwing belief that now that Canada's economy is in a good state one can afford a little idealism, or by a spillover of the lefty hopefulness of Obama-era America circa 2008, or both. When I was growing up in Victoria the problem was that the Liberal Party was the only left-wingish party capable of gaining a majority, so a vote for the NDP or the Green Party was essentially a vote wasted. Since the opposition to the Conservative government has been a triumvirate for a while, composed of the Liberal Party, the NDP, and the Bloc Québécois — the second and third parties harbouring a relentless undercurrent of needling resentment for the first due to their history of suffering as the more or less impotent naysayers under the Liberal yoke — the argument that the Liberals are the lone hope of the left has evidently become less and less compelling.
Lastly the Green Party triumphed with one parliamentary seat, held by the party's leader Elizabeth May.
Anyway we may well wonder at the degree of stupidity which led people to vote for the Conservatives by such a margin, but evidently the Canadian public has decided that the success of the NDP is a sufficient sign of progressivism, so the mere, trifling fact that the Conservative Party can push its nasty ideas through freely is a side issue . . . except of course for the people who are most affected by the nasty ideas.
If my Facebook friends are an indication, there is no great rejoicing at this electoral outcome, though as one friend astutely pointed out, it isn't quite as embarrassing as the reelection of Bush was for Americans.
What I will do is effectively stuff my ears for the next little while and think very concentratedly back to the glory days of Trudeau and Chrétien.
Though I have long left the shores of Canuckia, it was not before Harper appeared on the scene as part of the "reform" conservative movement. It is essentially composed of neoconservatives who have very peculiar ideas of the world allied with a practically impermeable layer of semibenevolent stupidity. Its other exponents include Stockwell Day who, though also young and reasonably picturesque (in politician terms) like Harper, was a less serious figure but left the realm of Canadian political comedy with far greater riches, like the picture of him in a skintight suit on a speedboat. Harper seems, behind his somewhat undistinctive face and slightly protuberant-tipped nose and indolent blue eyes, the most intelligent of the lot.
Behind this meaningless façade the government is as far as I can tell self-seeking and inwardlooking, ignores those social problems which it might prove inconvenient to solve, and casually prone to endorsing rather repellent ideas to the effect that Muslims are generally suspicious, people who are poor are maliciously bent on disturbing the comfort of the rich, immigrants are moochers, and that the starving masses abroad should feel content with Canada's past largesse and accept the now circumscribed crumbs of aid like the princely alms which the wilted soul of an Ottawa parliamentarian considers it to be. This mentality will be familiar far beyond the shores of Canada, for its proponents are a somewhat international burden.
On the other hand the NDP, the New Democratic Party and the party to the left of the Liberal Party, has done exceedingly well. How the Liberal Party, which happily occupied the centre and majority of the Canadian pool of eligible voters for over a decade, managed to lose the vast sections of support may remain a mystery. Certainly Michael Ignatieff is a contentious figure, though whether it is that he mostly dwelled in the US, that he is an Elitist who spent years in the Ivy pinnacle of the Ivory Tower and hobnobbed among the ambient intelligentsia, that he supported the Iraq War (which is the "deal-breaker" for me), that he had tinges of neoconservatism (which was also a problem for me) or that he is simply not very compelling in himself and as a representative of a happy and harmonious Liberal Party, it is impossible for me to determine.
The NDP's Jack Layton seems a slightly abrasive, combative miniature Napoleon, who has the minor opposition party advantage in always being right whenever he criticizes a government policy that turns out to be wrong. And I think he has also profited either by the leftwing belief that now that Canada's economy is in a good state one can afford a little idealism, or by a spillover of the lefty hopefulness of Obama-era America circa 2008, or both. When I was growing up in Victoria the problem was that the Liberal Party was the only left-wingish party capable of gaining a majority, so a vote for the NDP or the Green Party was essentially a vote wasted. Since the opposition to the Conservative government has been a triumvirate for a while, composed of the Liberal Party, the NDP, and the Bloc Québécois — the second and third parties harbouring a relentless undercurrent of needling resentment for the first due to their history of suffering as the more or less impotent naysayers under the Liberal yoke — the argument that the Liberals are the lone hope of the left has evidently become less and less compelling.
Lastly the Green Party triumphed with one parliamentary seat, held by the party's leader Elizabeth May.
Anyway we may well wonder at the degree of stupidity which led people to vote for the Conservatives by such a margin, but evidently the Canadian public has decided that the success of the NDP is a sufficient sign of progressivism, so the mere, trifling fact that the Conservative Party can push its nasty ideas through freely is a side issue . . . except of course for the people who are most affected by the nasty ideas.
If my Facebook friends are an indication, there is no great rejoicing at this electoral outcome, though as one friend astutely pointed out, it isn't quite as embarrassing as the reelection of Bush was for Americans.
What I will do is effectively stuff my ears for the next little while and think very concentratedly back to the glory days of Trudeau and Chrétien.
Monday, May 02, 2011
De Miseris Mondayensis
It's around 1:30 in the bookshop, a thunderously grey day only without the thunder and the sky has dissolved into white cloud cover, and the very new heavy foliage of the trees gives a peculiar weight and fullness to the scene. I hadn't been outside much since the Friday before the holidays, if at all, and it was all very new to me. There are even dandelions blown to seed in the garden patches at the street.
During the white night I read about the Osama bin Laden stuff and wrote the blog post beneath, which I may delete eventually because it doesn't seem nice or helpful, and it feels revolting to be so cheerful about someone's death (Mama felt that it was murderous and Papa was angry about it, I think). I also still don't understand why someone dying should make me feel so much better. Someone came into the bookshop to drop off a book for us to sell on commission, and he solemnly stated that yesterday was an important day in history. I must admit that I replied, facetiously, "Because of the Pope?". As I was going to write on a Facebook update I never posted (not wanting to attack people with political controversies), I think that this would be an important day of history if bin Laden's death made the people who died in 2011 (or in the African embassies earlier, or on the U.S.S. Cole) alive again. But this is just a death day. So that's why I was irritated and (completely uncharacteristically) sarcastic.
What I don't understand is why all of the doubts I had about whether bin Laden knew of the plans for Sept. 11th, or took them seriously if he did, have suddenly vanished. The idea of CIA plots was in my view absurd though in the realm of possibility; what I rather thought is that it might have been a "grassroots initiative" and to make Osama bin Laden immediately responsible for that is like arguing that any crime a Mafia drug dealer commits is directly ordered by the padrone (if that's the correct term).
In any case it is comforting to read Gawker and Jezebel, because there is a good deal of New Yorkish levelheadedness, skepticism and thoughtfulness in the comments. I was looking for an editorial or article in the newspapers to make a useful point for me, but it didn't happen. There was an immensely sad quote from a woman whose son had died on Sept. 11th who basically had no reaction, and said that bin Laden's death didn't change anything. Nonetheless I felt as if it did, and though it may be wishful thinking I hoped that we could cork the islamophobia back up in the bottle, not carry out secret operations in Pakistan, etc., and begin again with a clean canvas.
Anyway, these things happen slowly. The newspapers are much better again, even before 2008 I was thankful at the thought that Donald Rumsfeld was no longer Defense Secretary (though when he appeared on the Daily Show this year it was definitely too soon), when Obama won the election I realized that the Bush administration had stolen eight years of my life which I will never get back but at least those eight years were over, and pretty much every time I watch a session in British Parliament I am happy that Antonius Blair has departed and the clean fresh air of David Cameron has entered. But Fox News and its brainless brethren are still with us, and CNN for instance has I think not a fifth of its former succinctness, informativeness, and class, and since I watched the Headline News almost daily as an eighth- or ninth-grader I should know.
Other than that, my holidays were I think well spent. I've read dozens of romance novels, relaxed into a veritable sea anemone, scribbled a little on stories, returned to long Hermitologies blog posts though they are most likely a nuisance, and finally spent more time on the piano, where I had marathon sessions with Bach, Beethoven, Satie, Haydn, Scarlatti, Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, etc., etc., and eventually stopped overthinking the music. The idea of composing probably won't amount to much, though.
Here in the bookshop I turned to a philosophical book on Aristotle again but couldn't concentrate. But hopefully I will, because it spreads on the troubled waters of my soul like a calming oil, and I could really use some of that.
P.S.: Never mind the Latin in the post title. Half of ancient Rome is probably rolling in its graves.
During the white night I read about the Osama bin Laden stuff and wrote the blog post beneath, which I may delete eventually because it doesn't seem nice or helpful, and it feels revolting to be so cheerful about someone's death (Mama felt that it was murderous and Papa was angry about it, I think). I also still don't understand why someone dying should make me feel so much better. Someone came into the bookshop to drop off a book for us to sell on commission, and he solemnly stated that yesterday was an important day in history. I must admit that I replied, facetiously, "Because of the Pope?". As I was going to write on a Facebook update I never posted (not wanting to attack people with political controversies), I think that this would be an important day of history if bin Laden's death made the people who died in 2011 (or in the African embassies earlier, or on the U.S.S. Cole) alive again. But this is just a death day. So that's why I was irritated and (completely uncharacteristically) sarcastic.
What I don't understand is why all of the doubts I had about whether bin Laden knew of the plans for Sept. 11th, or took them seriously if he did, have suddenly vanished. The idea of CIA plots was in my view absurd though in the realm of possibility; what I rather thought is that it might have been a "grassroots initiative" and to make Osama bin Laden immediately responsible for that is like arguing that any crime a Mafia drug dealer commits is directly ordered by the padrone (if that's the correct term).
In any case it is comforting to read Gawker and Jezebel, because there is a good deal of New Yorkish levelheadedness, skepticism and thoughtfulness in the comments. I was looking for an editorial or article in the newspapers to make a useful point for me, but it didn't happen. There was an immensely sad quote from a woman whose son had died on Sept. 11th who basically had no reaction, and said that bin Laden's death didn't change anything. Nonetheless I felt as if it did, and though it may be wishful thinking I hoped that we could cork the islamophobia back up in the bottle, not carry out secret operations in Pakistan, etc., and begin again with a clean canvas.
Anyway, these things happen slowly. The newspapers are much better again, even before 2008 I was thankful at the thought that Donald Rumsfeld was no longer Defense Secretary (though when he appeared on the Daily Show this year it was definitely too soon), when Obama won the election I realized that the Bush administration had stolen eight years of my life which I will never get back but at least those eight years were over, and pretty much every time I watch a session in British Parliament I am happy that Antonius Blair has departed and the clean fresh air of David Cameron has entered. But Fox News and its brainless brethren are still with us, and CNN for instance has I think not a fifth of its former succinctness, informativeness, and class, and since I watched the Headline News almost daily as an eighth- or ninth-grader I should know.
Other than that, my holidays were I think well spent. I've read dozens of romance novels, relaxed into a veritable sea anemone, scribbled a little on stories, returned to long Hermitologies blog posts though they are most likely a nuisance, and finally spent more time on the piano, where I had marathon sessions with Bach, Beethoven, Satie, Haydn, Scarlatti, Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, etc., etc., and eventually stopped overthinking the music. The idea of composing probably won't amount to much, though.
Here in the bookshop I turned to a philosophical book on Aristotle again but couldn't concentrate. But hopefully I will, because it spreads on the troubled waters of my soul like a calming oil, and I could really use some of that.
P.S.: Never mind the Latin in the post title. Half of ancient Rome is probably rolling in its graves.
Trying to Close the Chapter
Last night I came across the snippet of an AP news article which announced that President Obama had called a press conference in the evening and that, unprecedentedly, he had not mentioned what it would be about. I was guessing that it would be about Libya, the budget or (in the wildest conjecture) his resignation.
Then the first reports came that, according to an anonymous American government official, Osama bin Laden had been killed and his body captured, and that the press conference was related. About an hour after the announced time of 10:30 Eastern time, in which I had the White House livestream open but nothing happened, that turned out to be the case.
Though I would have expected that the death of Osama bin Laden would leave me indifferent, it hasn't. It brought back my memories of Sept. 11th and made me feel (illogically or not) that it was finally resolved and put in the past.
The fact that he had been purposely assassinated didn't bother me either. I preferred it to torture, an unjust trial, secret jailing, humiliation, institutional execution, desecration of the body, or any of the other methods which disgrace us and our governments more than the people who suffer them, and which I would have expected. If he was really shot through the head he hopefully died right away.
If the attacks had not happened on Sept. 11th, several thousand people would still be alive and (as Obama pointed out) parents would have been able to raise their children, etc.; besides the press would have remained objective, no one would especially notice if people are Muslim or Arabic, and there wouldn't have been the pressure to go to war in Afghanistan.
On a personal level it also had a bad psychological effect on everyone who cared, also on me, and dragged us down into a weltschmerzy depression which had a deadening effect on anything artistic and intellectual. Though that was important to us of course it was insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
It also seemed to damage the relatively pacific and open inner life of America itself. Though it bothered me that no one made the connection between the suffering of Sept. 11th and the suffering of people abroad who live with war daily, there is really something vile in bringing violence into a country which (regardless of what its government wreaks abroad) has managed to forge a reasonable level of inoffensive comfort and harmony, and to gain a sort of innocence, and to share this peace and some goodwill (naïve or otherwise) with those who enter it. I don't think immigrants had an easy time, but unfortunately, no matter what the country, they rarely do.
*
On the other hand, we are responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths, torture, illegality, and so on that came afterwards.
We used indiscriminate weapons in Afghanistan and killed entire families, we supported any force whose opponents are Arabic or Muslim and armed no matter how they treated civilians, we killed Sikhs and Muslims and didn't report the deaths properly, we were suspicious of anyone who was or looked Muslim and made them feel it, we pretended that torture wasn't torture and handed off men to dictatorships to force confessions, we imprisoned over seven hundred people in Guantánamo Bay without investigating their situations properly and let them rot there, we invaded Iraq, we undermined the case for respecting human rights by demonstrating that we did not feel bound by them, we hired contractors who shot people for no reason, we put hundreds of thousands of soldiers into situations where they had to fire on civilians or terrorize people by invading their homes at night and where they were at risk of being wounded or killed or emotionally damaged, we arbitrarily arrested people and held them over the twenty-four-hour limit under the Magna Carta, we approved the Patriot Act and its ideology that an American life is worth more than the life of an individual of any other nationality, we intimidated and harassed and isolated people who were against the Bush administration's policies for being unpatriotic, we flew over and dropped bombs into Pakistan and didn't particularly care whether people who had nothing to do with the matter died, and so on and so forth. Some of these things are continuing.
And I think that we are solely responsible for all of that.
So it is time now, since not only the hijackers but also the person who apparently stood behind them are gone, to begin to really look at and address the abuses and murder that followed Sept. 11th.
As a side note, I don't think that Osama bin Laden's death should be celebrated as an achievement of America as a country, either, since killing a man is the kind of, er, feat which knows no national limitations. But I admit that it's bringing out weird jingoistic feelings in me too, the kind I hated ten years ago, and of course I'm not American.
*
As a detail, I was wondering why the CIA director, Leon Panetta, was so moved and close to tears during the press conference about the shuffled positions in the Department of Defence, etc., last week. I think this may be the reason.
Then the first reports came that, according to an anonymous American government official, Osama bin Laden had been killed and his body captured, and that the press conference was related. About an hour after the announced time of 10:30 Eastern time, in which I had the White House livestream open but nothing happened, that turned out to be the case.
Though I would have expected that the death of Osama bin Laden would leave me indifferent, it hasn't. It brought back my memories of Sept. 11th and made me feel (illogically or not) that it was finally resolved and put in the past.
The fact that he had been purposely assassinated didn't bother me either. I preferred it to torture, an unjust trial, secret jailing, humiliation, institutional execution, desecration of the body, or any of the other methods which disgrace us and our governments more than the people who suffer them, and which I would have expected. If he was really shot through the head he hopefully died right away.
If the attacks had not happened on Sept. 11th, several thousand people would still be alive and (as Obama pointed out) parents would have been able to raise their children, etc.; besides the press would have remained objective, no one would especially notice if people are Muslim or Arabic, and there wouldn't have been the pressure to go to war in Afghanistan.
On a personal level it also had a bad psychological effect on everyone who cared, also on me, and dragged us down into a weltschmerzy depression which had a deadening effect on anything artistic and intellectual. Though that was important to us of course it was insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
It also seemed to damage the relatively pacific and open inner life of America itself. Though it bothered me that no one made the connection between the suffering of Sept. 11th and the suffering of people abroad who live with war daily, there is really something vile in bringing violence into a country which (regardless of what its government wreaks abroad) has managed to forge a reasonable level of inoffensive comfort and harmony, and to gain a sort of innocence, and to share this peace and some goodwill (naïve or otherwise) with those who enter it. I don't think immigrants had an easy time, but unfortunately, no matter what the country, they rarely do.
*
On the other hand, we are responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths, torture, illegality, and so on that came afterwards.
We used indiscriminate weapons in Afghanistan and killed entire families, we supported any force whose opponents are Arabic or Muslim and armed no matter how they treated civilians, we killed Sikhs and Muslims and didn't report the deaths properly, we were suspicious of anyone who was or looked Muslim and made them feel it, we pretended that torture wasn't torture and handed off men to dictatorships to force confessions, we imprisoned over seven hundred people in Guantánamo Bay without investigating their situations properly and let them rot there, we invaded Iraq, we undermined the case for respecting human rights by demonstrating that we did not feel bound by them, we hired contractors who shot people for no reason, we put hundreds of thousands of soldiers into situations where they had to fire on civilians or terrorize people by invading their homes at night and where they were at risk of being wounded or killed or emotionally damaged, we arbitrarily arrested people and held them over the twenty-four-hour limit under the Magna Carta, we approved the Patriot Act and its ideology that an American life is worth more than the life of an individual of any other nationality, we intimidated and harassed and isolated people who were against the Bush administration's policies for being unpatriotic, we flew over and dropped bombs into Pakistan and didn't particularly care whether people who had nothing to do with the matter died, and so on and so forth. Some of these things are continuing.
And I think that we are solely responsible for all of that.
So it is time now, since not only the hijackers but also the person who apparently stood behind them are gone, to begin to really look at and address the abuses and murder that followed Sept. 11th.
As a side note, I don't think that Osama bin Laden's death should be celebrated as an achievement of America as a country, either, since killing a man is the kind of, er, feat which knows no national limitations. But I admit that it's bringing out weird jingoistic feelings in me too, the kind I hated ten years ago, and of course I'm not American.
*
As a detail, I was wondering why the CIA director, Leon Panetta, was so moved and close to tears during the press conference about the shuffled positions in the Department of Defence, etc., last week. I think this may be the reason.
Friday, April 29, 2011
The Balcony Scene, Un-Star-Crossed
This afternoon I woke up to find that the Royal Wedding was already taking place rather than occurring in the early evening, as I had thought. The television was out in the corner room and I didn't want to suffer through the commentary and the length of the ceremony itself, so every now and then I read about it on the Guardian.
The more I read the more likeable and interesting the ceremony sounded. In the end, for strange reasons difficult to pinpoint, I became very fond of the wedding; as it turns out my critical faculties were melting into a species of naïve admiration.
The ceremonies had a fine balance between formality and informality, pomp and modesty, tradition and modernity; little things like the trees in Westminster Abbey, the fact that Kate Middleton's dress was neither fluffy nor too remote (as Karl Lagerfeld suggested), the red uniform of the groom instead of a rigid black suit or more gritty militaristic clothing (as it is the formally decorated and sculpted back of William's costume had a hint of the watchmen's attire in the Wizard of Oz — oh-wee-yo, oh-weeee-yo; etc. — about it), and the, er, creative exuberance of the ladies' hats were thoroughly pleasing.
What I did watch on television (where at least eight channels, including ARD, ZDF, CNN, BBC and TV Monde, were covering the ceremonies live) were the minutes on the balcony. It was rather fun to observe the dynamic between the actors, by which I mean the royal family.
As is well known, the kisses of the married pair were (as it was described on Le Monde's website) very English and not French. In that scenario — massive crowds, television, and the argus eyes of one's granny and other family, not to mention several centuries though not quite forty, contemplating them — an impetus of Heathcliffesque passion hardly seems proper or likely, so I found the absence of romantic fakery refreshing.
Besides the two of them have, to a degree (and in my opinion), slipped fairly suddenly into premature middle age and responsibility lately; it's clear that they have long and demanding careers ahead of them, whether as a rescue pilot or as a public figure or both, etc., so a certain pragmatism and sedateness is right.
What I really coveted was the wedding cake, a colossus of the genre, a veritably princely creation in beaded and flowered white, which I stared at in the monarchy's Flickr photostream. Cupiditas radix malorum est! In this type of crisis I remind myself of the time I read that fondant tastes lousy.
***
Anyway, otherwise weddings horrify me a little. First of all I tend to the opinion that love is egotistic and that weddings are generally self-seeking, secondly that the ceremonial form and public exhibitionism injures a relationship's private, unforced and sacrosanct nature. Thirdly the planning of them sounds nervewracking, for one's self and for any minions, and lastly I have the sense that the day of mine, if it occurs, will be a nightmare.
***
In the evening I made cucumber sandwiches; little rounds and hearts and an angel cut out of white bread, using cookie cutters, with dollops of cranberry on top; and a pot of chamomile tea. Together with the bags of winegums and licorice allsorts (since they were H***bo there were unfortunately far more gummies than licorice pieces) which Ge. had purchased they formed a repast in the corner room. The chamomile tea was intended to be fruit tea, and Mama howled in protest when she observed the switcheroo, but nobly drank a cup regardless.
In the past, and unrelated to current events, I have tried to make English teas, and the results have always been doubtful. The thing is that the sandwiches and tea are dainty but not very filling, and scones and clotted cream seem more rustic and besides a pain to prepare, and it is difficult to manufacture lemon curd which does not taste and look artificially enhanced and overly sugary; and even then these things are still not really filling. Besides the subtleties of the sandwiches are beyond me and the consequences are invariably plebeian.
Other than that I have been living the life of a slob, and the juxtaposition of that with the neat luxury of the wedding was highly enjoyable. Picture bare feet, clothing I've worn day and night perhaps even since the weekend, unwashed hair, a soupçon of perspiration in the air, and a fixation on the computer screen, and there you will have an unflattering but accurate portrait of me in a holiday mood. I did wash my hair in the evening and brush my teeth earlier, so it could be worse. What is sadly true, however, is that I am one of those commoners who looks to events of spurious significance, like the events of today, as a distraction from the plodding thoughts and minor feelings of inadequacy of everyday existence; a little opiate for the masses can help here and there . . .
The more I read the more likeable and interesting the ceremony sounded. In the end, for strange reasons difficult to pinpoint, I became very fond of the wedding; as it turns out my critical faculties were melting into a species of naïve admiration.
The ceremonies had a fine balance between formality and informality, pomp and modesty, tradition and modernity; little things like the trees in Westminster Abbey, the fact that Kate Middleton's dress was neither fluffy nor too remote (as Karl Lagerfeld suggested), the red uniform of the groom instead of a rigid black suit or more gritty militaristic clothing (as it is the formally decorated and sculpted back of William's costume had a hint of the watchmen's attire in the Wizard of Oz — oh-wee-yo, oh-weeee-yo; etc. — about it), and the, er, creative exuberance of the ladies' hats were thoroughly pleasing.
What I did watch on television (where at least eight channels, including ARD, ZDF, CNN, BBC and TV Monde, were covering the ceremonies live) were the minutes on the balcony. It was rather fun to observe the dynamic between the actors, by which I mean the royal family.
As is well known, the kisses of the married pair were (as it was described on Le Monde's website) very English and not French. In that scenario — massive crowds, television, and the argus eyes of one's granny and other family, not to mention several centuries though not quite forty, contemplating them — an impetus of Heathcliffesque passion hardly seems proper or likely, so I found the absence of romantic fakery refreshing.
Besides the two of them have, to a degree (and in my opinion), slipped fairly suddenly into premature middle age and responsibility lately; it's clear that they have long and demanding careers ahead of them, whether as a rescue pilot or as a public figure or both, etc., so a certain pragmatism and sedateness is right.
What I really coveted was the wedding cake, a colossus of the genre, a veritably princely creation in beaded and flowered white, which I stared at in the monarchy's Flickr photostream. Cupiditas radix malorum est! In this type of crisis I remind myself of the time I read that fondant tastes lousy.
***
Anyway, otherwise weddings horrify me a little. First of all I tend to the opinion that love is egotistic and that weddings are generally self-seeking, secondly that the ceremonial form and public exhibitionism injures a relationship's private, unforced and sacrosanct nature. Thirdly the planning of them sounds nervewracking, for one's self and for any minions, and lastly I have the sense that the day of mine, if it occurs, will be a nightmare.
***
In the evening I made cucumber sandwiches; little rounds and hearts and an angel cut out of white bread, using cookie cutters, with dollops of cranberry on top; and a pot of chamomile tea. Together with the bags of winegums and licorice allsorts (since they were H***bo there were unfortunately far more gummies than licorice pieces) which Ge. had purchased they formed a repast in the corner room. The chamomile tea was intended to be fruit tea, and Mama howled in protest when she observed the switcheroo, but nobly drank a cup regardless.
In the past, and unrelated to current events, I have tried to make English teas, and the results have always been doubtful. The thing is that the sandwiches and tea are dainty but not very filling, and scones and clotted cream seem more rustic and besides a pain to prepare, and it is difficult to manufacture lemon curd which does not taste and look artificially enhanced and overly sugary; and even then these things are still not really filling. Besides the subtleties of the sandwiches are beyond me and the consequences are invariably plebeian.
Other than that I have been living the life of a slob, and the juxtaposition of that with the neat luxury of the wedding was highly enjoyable. Picture bare feet, clothing I've worn day and night perhaps even since the weekend, unwashed hair, a soupçon of perspiration in the air, and a fixation on the computer screen, and there you will have an unflattering but accurate portrait of me in a holiday mood. I did wash my hair in the evening and brush my teeth earlier, so it could be worse. What is sadly true, however, is that I am one of those commoners who looks to events of spurious significance, like the events of today, as a distraction from the plodding thoughts and minor feelings of inadequacy of everyday existence; a little opiate for the masses can help here and there . . .
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Fitzinghurst and Susannah
An accounting of royalle nuptialles, undertakene in the yeare 1736 in the faire kingdome of Englande. Tho' loste to posteritee for a nonce, rediscovered by E.H. and transmitted thusely to a century newe.
***
Dear diary,
'Tis the eve of the wedding of Prince Fitzinghurst with Susannah Centreham, daughter of a Berkshire coachman, and the coffee-houses (when not brooding o'er the parlous state of our state's finances) are agog with interest in the preparations.
Westminster is all barred to the publick, save to those who there have their home, and the gawkeres from foreign shores must content themselves with the environnes of Tyburn and other lurid and comparatively unkingly spectackles.
The armes of state and pennant of England are aflutter everywhere, indeede one cannot enter a whitewashed roome without beholding before one's eye a faint shadow of blue and red in reverse, in shorte (as the scientists have wrote) a spectral green and gold. I deem it not treesonous though impolitick to admit that I have affected short sighte and worne tinted goggles since Tuesdaye to spare mine visual (and mentall) healthe.
On Sundaye I walked the side of the Thames to finde that it was a thoughte less stinkee than upon previous rapprochements. The reason to this Enigma was evidente enough when my Horse led me upstreame past a kind of dory in which men (who looked to be of ill repute and doubtless grateful of the groats' payment) were a-skimming the noctious waves of our noble river and removing a Menagerie's worth of deceased beasts, fishe, and Debris of urban life. Greenere of visage I spurred my horse and soone arrived at home.
There I found my trusty servant bearing my eventide repast to table as the hour had strucke. With customary loquacitee he told me of the strange happenings in the town. One quarter in Westminster had been cleaned with such rapiditee that its inhabitants, when returning from the day's labours, failed to recognize their streetes and piteefully strayed. Our pick-pockets profited therefrom and it is said that more than one earnest thanksgiving to His Highness and Her incipient Highness was offered up among the more devoute, but the tradesmen and fine folk did not offere parallel gratitude even when at last they arrived in their homes. 'Tis bruited besides that one lady swooned giddilee as she passed into the abruptly purified atmosphere, and berating her servants when she had regained consciousness, declared that if she wished to draw breath relatively unhindered she would be living in sight of a Tree and not in sight of a Smokestack.
As I write this I look out upon the street and forcibly recall that the Fashioun has run mad. There are old and young men who bear upon their pates wigs dyed in the colours of State; the ladies affecte ribbons around the crownes of their headgear, gownes, shoes, &c., in the style of Miss Centreham, to the extent that there are hundreds of Miss Centrehams to be found in every quarter of the city. The taske of the Royal Guard must be truly of Mammoth proporcions. My old friende in the wildes of Buckinghamshire informs me that the Plague has Spread beyond the urban limits.
The pondes within twenty leagues of London have all been fished clean of the species of troute which is intended for the nuptial Banquet. Most have been purloined by an army innumerable of gastronomick imitators. My correspondent (invited to too many a supper) cannot bear the sight or taste of this fish anymore, and goes about with a porcion of pickled eel in his pocket by way of Anti-dote. A couple of species of songbird, doomed by their edibility and grace and like rumours of their presence in the banquet, will in probability not be seen on these shores again either. 'Twill lighten the labours of Linnaeus.
In fine 'tis a relief that a marriage like this comes perchance once every three decades. When the present Fuss and Frivolitee is fizzled, the earnest of our finances, ills of societee, &c. will pull us once again down to the sublunary realities of English existence. And then my goggles may be layed aside for another thirty years!
***
28th of April 1736
London Towne.
London Towne.
Dear diary,
'Tis the eve of the wedding of Prince Fitzinghurst with Susannah Centreham, daughter of a Berkshire coachman, and the coffee-houses (when not brooding o'er the parlous state of our state's finances) are agog with interest in the preparations.
Westminster is all barred to the publick, save to those who there have their home, and the gawkeres from foreign shores must content themselves with the environnes of Tyburn and other lurid and comparatively unkingly spectackles.
The armes of state and pennant of England are aflutter everywhere, indeede one cannot enter a whitewashed roome without beholding before one's eye a faint shadow of blue and red in reverse, in shorte (as the scientists have wrote) a spectral green and gold. I deem it not treesonous though impolitick to admit that I have affected short sighte and worne tinted goggles since Tuesdaye to spare mine visual (and mentall) healthe.
On Sundaye I walked the side of the Thames to finde that it was a thoughte less stinkee than upon previous rapprochements. The reason to this Enigma was evidente enough when my Horse led me upstreame past a kind of dory in which men (who looked to be of ill repute and doubtless grateful of the groats' payment) were a-skimming the noctious waves of our noble river and removing a Menagerie's worth of deceased beasts, fishe, and Debris of urban life. Greenere of visage I spurred my horse and soone arrived at home.
There I found my trusty servant bearing my eventide repast to table as the hour had strucke. With customary loquacitee he told me of the strange happenings in the town. One quarter in Westminster had been cleaned with such rapiditee that its inhabitants, when returning from the day's labours, failed to recognize their streetes and piteefully strayed. Our pick-pockets profited therefrom and it is said that more than one earnest thanksgiving to His Highness and Her incipient Highness was offered up among the more devoute, but the tradesmen and fine folk did not offere parallel gratitude even when at last they arrived in their homes. 'Tis bruited besides that one lady swooned giddilee as she passed into the abruptly purified atmosphere, and berating her servants when she had regained consciousness, declared that if she wished to draw breath relatively unhindered she would be living in sight of a Tree and not in sight of a Smokestack.
As I write this I look out upon the street and forcibly recall that the Fashioun has run mad. There are old and young men who bear upon their pates wigs dyed in the colours of State; the ladies affecte ribbons around the crownes of their headgear, gownes, shoes, &c., in the style of Miss Centreham, to the extent that there are hundreds of Miss Centrehams to be found in every quarter of the city. The taske of the Royal Guard must be truly of Mammoth proporcions. My old friende in the wildes of Buckinghamshire informs me that the Plague has Spread beyond the urban limits.
The pondes within twenty leagues of London have all been fished clean of the species of troute which is intended for the nuptial Banquet. Most have been purloined by an army innumerable of gastronomick imitators. My correspondent (invited to too many a supper) cannot bear the sight or taste of this fish anymore, and goes about with a porcion of pickled eel in his pocket by way of Anti-dote. A couple of species of songbird, doomed by their edibility and grace and like rumours of their presence in the banquet, will in probability not be seen on these shores again either. 'Twill lighten the labours of Linnaeus.
In fine 'tis a relief that a marriage like this comes perchance once every three decades. When the present Fuss and Frivolitee is fizzled, the earnest of our finances, ills of societee, &c. will pull us once again down to the sublunary realities of English existence. And then my goggles may be layed aside for another thirty years!
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Divers Pianistic Endeavours
On the piano I played the beginning of Schumann's a minor concerto, the first movement of Mendelssohn's d minor trio (may have finished the second, too), Chopin's "revolutionary étude," his "raindrop prélude," and maybe other things today. Afterwards I rummaged in our shelves, looking for Lizst's third "Liebestraum," and among other things unearthed Rachmaninoff's prelude in g minor again, to be revisited properly in future.
While the Haydn trios which I play with Papa and Pudel have been going beautifully, and the better things go the more imaginatively we render it and grasp the echoes of folkloric music and so on, I am not as happy about the way I am playing solo. Besides, due to the hot weather or something else two or so of the keys are sticking, which is a painof in the neck for the romantic repertoire that roams over almost the entire range.
The problem is that now I mostly consider the way I want to play the music; it seems humbler and nicer to follow the old approach of inhabiting the atmosphere and of figuring out what the composer was thinking and hoping for when he wrote the score. It does seem reductive to play Haydn and Mozart and Bach and Beethoven and Mendelssohn and the others too idiosyncratically Haydnishly, Mozartishly, Bachishly, etc., but it indicates a certain respect for their work and stature, and I like doing justice to zeitgeisty and stylistic quirks, and faithfully embodying their moods instead of drawing attention to myself.
So that's why I have thought that it might be worthwhile to compose things myself. Encouragingly, and along the lines of Lady Catherine de Bourgh's pronouncement in Pride and Prejudice, I have the inkling that if I learned to compose music, I would be very good at it.
***
(Quoted from Pride and Prejudice at Gutenberg.org)
***
Anyway, though I am presently completely ignorant of the laws and details of composition, I think it would be fun to find whether my style is old-fashioned, derivative, or a progression. When I am playing I tend to feel quite close to Beethoven's compositional thought processes, but when I dabble (badly) in writing little compositions myself they tend hypothetically to resemble Mozart's oeuvre at the age of two. So this is still a castle-in-the-air.
While the Haydn trios which I play with Papa and Pudel have been going beautifully, and the better things go the more imaginatively we render it and grasp the echoes of folkloric music and so on, I am not as happy about the way I am playing solo. Besides, due to the hot weather or something else two or so of the keys are sticking, which is a pain
The problem is that now I mostly consider the way I want to play the music; it seems humbler and nicer to follow the old approach of inhabiting the atmosphere and of figuring out what the composer was thinking and hoping for when he wrote the score. It does seem reductive to play Haydn and Mozart and Bach and Beethoven and Mendelssohn and the others too idiosyncratically Haydnishly, Mozartishly, Bachishly, etc., but it indicates a certain respect for their work and stature, and I like doing justice to zeitgeisty and stylistic quirks, and faithfully embodying their moods instead of drawing attention to myself.
So that's why I have thought that it might be worthwhile to compose things myself. Encouragingly, and along the lines of Lady Catherine de Bourgh's pronouncement in Pride and Prejudice, I have the inkling that if I learned to compose music, I would be very good at it.
***
"What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are talking of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it is."
"We are speaking of music, madam," said he, when no longer able to avoid a reply.
"Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I must have my share in the conversation if you are speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient."(Quoted from Pride and Prejudice at Gutenberg.org)
***
Anyway, though I am presently completely ignorant of the laws and details of composition, I think it would be fun to find whether my style is old-fashioned, derivative, or a progression. When I am playing I tend to feel quite close to Beethoven's compositional thought processes, but when I dabble (badly) in writing little compositions myself they tend hypothetically to resemble Mozart's oeuvre at the age of two. So this is still a castle-in-the-air.
After tiring of the television I picked up a violin again with the most moderate imaginable success, and eventually went to sleep. Now I'm awake again.
Then, because it is Easter and bells are a symbol of the feast, I wanted to write about Schiller's poem "Das Lied von der Glocke" for the "Lighthouse." Since it isn't turning out the way I want, I will post it in Hermitologies as an unfinished fragment with no literary pretensions. I didn't consult a dictionary, either, so the translations are totally unreliable. Sorry for the lousiness.
***
First published: 1798
WHEN I was twelve years old or so my grandfather taught my sister and me a little German grammar and literature. Among other things Opapa read Schiller's "Lied von der Glocke" with us, and I liked it very much. Now it feels didactic and a little consciously quaint, but it has a purity of language that is quite classical as well as an informality of subject and diction that already feel romantic.
It traces the casting of a church bell, and describes in poetic terms the manufacture and its purpose once it is finished and hung in the tower (and I think it is very suited to Easter because of the association of the feast with bells in Italy and France).
After a Latin epigraph whose emphases echo the ringing of the bells — toll . . . toll . . . — it begins,
Fest gemauert in der Erden
Steht die Form, aus Lehm gebrannt.
Heute muß die Glocke werden.
"Firmly walled within the earths there stands the mold of fired clay; on this day the bell must be."
The bronze is formed from liquid tin and copper, ash salts are added and the foam removed so that the bell will have a clear tone as the dry fir wood heats the whole, and the workers are sweating like pigs.
Schiller reminds us of the higher purpose of these proceedings:
Soll das Werk den Meister loben,
Doch der Segen kommt von oben.
In other words, the work should sound its master's praises, and yet the blessing comes from heaven.
If I understand the lines he idealizes manual labour in general, arguing that it invariably has a purpose and that any man who does not work meditatively is degraded. Schiller doesn't do much for the repute of poets as pragmatic individuals who understand the realities of the labour here.
A church bell is admittedly lofty in more than the physical sense. It will persist (if providence permits) for centuries, and
rühren vieler Menschen Ohr
Und wird mit dem Betrübten klagen
Und stimmen zu der Andacht Chor.
Was unten tief dem Erdensohne
Das wechselnde Verhängnis bringt,
Das schlägt an die metallne Krone,
Die es erbaulich weiterklingt.
"touch the ear of many men and lament with those who live in grief and sound with the choir to the prayer. What to the sons of earth below the varying fates and destiny brings, that beats against the metal crown which it most usefully further rings." ("Erbaulich" is much like the modern word "constructive" — though I put it as "usefully" — and similarly pedantic.)
Then the narrator follows the fate of an ideal baby whose arrival and every subsequent epochal moment of life is celebrated by the bell. Schiller is drippingly sappy when the baby grows into the age of romance:
herrlich, in der Jugend Prangen,
Wie ein Gebild aus Himmelshöhn,
Mit züchtigen, verschämten Wangen
Sieht er die Jungfrau vor sich stehn.
"Glorious in the pomp of youth, like a presentment from heavenly heights, with decorously shameful cheeks he sees the maiden before him stand."
Bleaugh.
After the nuptials we revisit the bell. You poke in a stick of wood; if it comes out of the liquid bronze with a glassy coat it is time to pour the bronze into the mold.
Then the metonymous baby marries, as Schiller declares that an alliance of feeble (femininity?) and strong (masculinity?) is the ideal. The family flourishes and is from the sounds of it painfully bourgeois, though as Schiller points out fortune is fickle and they may yet be poor.
As the bronze is poured into the mold, at last and amid anxieties about its propensities to break, Schiller philosophizes about fire. Fire is good for humanity if we tame it and bad if we do not, etc. Any retelling of the Prometheus myth, however simplified, already has this truism covered, I think.
In Schiller's case it appears to be a metaphor for human passions, and he admonishes the reader to keep a tight rein on it, be decorous all the time, and keep the will of heaven always in mind. Otherwise God will unleash destruction upon him:
Leergebrannt
Ist die Stätte,
Wilder Stürme rauhes Bette,
In den öden Fensterhöhlen
Wohnt das Grauen,
Und des Himmels Wolken schauen
Hoch hinein.
. . .
Needless to say, Schiller's conception of religion pretty much does nothing for me, and it seems consciously folksy and naïve.
. . .
A major charm of the poem — as the relevant article at a certain online encyclopaedia states — is that it has a clear narrative, so that even a grade-schooler like I was can like it; besides it is feels like an atmospheric vignette of German society in terms of the late 18th-century ideal as well as of the historical setting, which is particularly useful as a kind of verbal illustration if one lives as I did in relatively ahistorical und un-Teutonic places where churches with bell towers are rare birds. It is left to adults to speculate on the full and finer significance of the poet's thought.
Then, because it is Easter and bells are a symbol of the feast, I wanted to write about Schiller's poem "Das Lied von der Glocke" for the "Lighthouse." Since it isn't turning out the way I want, I will post it in Hermitologies as an unfinished fragment with no literary pretensions. I didn't consult a dictionary, either, so the translations are totally unreliable. Sorry for the lousiness.
***
"The Song of the Bell"
First published: 1798
WHEN I was twelve years old or so my grandfather taught my sister and me a little German grammar and literature. Among other things Opapa read Schiller's "Lied von der Glocke" with us, and I liked it very much. Now it feels didactic and a little consciously quaint, but it has a purity of language that is quite classical as well as an informality of subject and diction that already feel romantic.
It traces the casting of a church bell, and describes in poetic terms the manufacture and its purpose once it is finished and hung in the tower (and I think it is very suited to Easter because of the association of the feast with bells in Italy and France).
After a Latin epigraph whose emphases echo the ringing of the bells — toll . . . toll . . . — it begins,
Fest gemauert in der Erden
Steht die Form, aus Lehm gebrannt.
Heute muß die Glocke werden.
"Firmly walled within the earths there stands the mold of fired clay; on this day the bell must be."
The bronze is formed from liquid tin and copper, ash salts are added and the foam removed so that the bell will have a clear tone as the dry fir wood heats the whole, and the workers are sweating like pigs.
Schiller reminds us of the higher purpose of these proceedings:
Soll das Werk den Meister loben,
Doch der Segen kommt von oben.
In other words, the work should sound its master's praises, and yet the blessing comes from heaven.
If I understand the lines he idealizes manual labour in general, arguing that it invariably has a purpose and that any man who does not work meditatively is degraded. Schiller doesn't do much for the repute of poets as pragmatic individuals who understand the realities of the labour here.
A church bell is admittedly lofty in more than the physical sense. It will persist (if providence permits) for centuries, and
rühren vieler Menschen Ohr
Und wird mit dem Betrübten klagen
Und stimmen zu der Andacht Chor.
Was unten tief dem Erdensohne
Das wechselnde Verhängnis bringt,
Das schlägt an die metallne Krone,
Die es erbaulich weiterklingt.
"touch the ear of many men and lament with those who live in grief and sound with the choir to the prayer. What to the sons of earth below the varying fates and destiny brings, that beats against the metal crown which it most usefully further rings." ("Erbaulich" is much like the modern word "constructive" — though I put it as "usefully" — and similarly pedantic.)
Then the narrator follows the fate of an ideal baby whose arrival and every subsequent epochal moment of life is celebrated by the bell. Schiller is drippingly sappy when the baby grows into the age of romance:
herrlich, in der Jugend Prangen,
Wie ein Gebild aus Himmelshöhn,
Mit züchtigen, verschämten Wangen
Sieht er die Jungfrau vor sich stehn.
"Glorious in the pomp of youth, like a presentment from heavenly heights, with decorously shameful cheeks he sees the maiden before him stand."
Bleaugh.
After the nuptials we revisit the bell. You poke in a stick of wood; if it comes out of the liquid bronze with a glassy coat it is time to pour the bronze into the mold.
Then the metonymous baby marries, as Schiller declares that an alliance of feeble (femininity?) and strong (masculinity?) is the ideal. The family flourishes and is from the sounds of it painfully bourgeois, though as Schiller points out fortune is fickle and they may yet be poor.
As the bronze is poured into the mold, at last and amid anxieties about its propensities to break, Schiller philosophizes about fire. Fire is good for humanity if we tame it and bad if we do not, etc. Any retelling of the Prometheus myth, however simplified, already has this truism covered, I think.
In Schiller's case it appears to be a metaphor for human passions, and he admonishes the reader to keep a tight rein on it, be decorous all the time, and keep the will of heaven always in mind. Otherwise God will unleash destruction upon him:
Leergebrannt
Ist die Stätte,
Wilder Stürme rauhes Bette,
In den öden Fensterhöhlen
Wohnt das Grauen,
Und des Himmels Wolken schauen
Hoch hinein.
. . .
Needless to say, Schiller's conception of religion pretty much does nothing for me, and it seems consciously folksy and naïve.
. . .
A major charm of the poem — as the relevant article at a certain online encyclopaedia states — is that it has a clear narrative, so that even a grade-schooler like I was can like it; besides it is feels like an atmospheric vignette of German society in terms of the late 18th-century ideal as well as of the historical setting, which is particularly useful as a kind of verbal illustration if one lives as I did in relatively ahistorical und un-Teutonic places where churches with bell towers are rare birds. It is left to adults to speculate on the full and finer significance of the poet's thought.
Easter in Insufferably Trivial Detail
I was up before the Easter bunny today, not on the "early to bed and early to rise" principle but on the principle that I like to kick back my heels and stay up into outrageous hours and now that I am on holiday there is no duty for me to be spiritually hungover for.
This year the Easter brunch was particularly munificent. Despite cynical prognostications one of us did shop for Easter eggs and Papa had a secret stash which enriched the table greatly. So we had a little bunch of chocolate eggs, filled or not, and candy eggs with nougat or marzipan or other centres, and sugar eggs that looked like a sunny-side-up egg on our plates and decorating the white tablecloth; our trusty reddish clay pot of tea; two platters of cheese and Schinkenspeck and maybe blood sausage; baskets of soft pretzel sticks and croissants filled with nougat or marzipan or plain and raisin buns and ordinary buns; cold boiled eggs that had been painted red or orange or yellow or green or blue or lilac with watercolours; and fresh soft-boiled eggs. Then there is a large platter of further Easter eggs, and two chocolate bunnies stood at each plate, and chocolate ladybugs interspersed; the centrepiece is a jar with cherry twigs and a scarlet geranium and a yellow and violet pansy, with three of our handpainted hollow eggs hanging from it. Ge. heated milk and there was I think also a pot of hot coffee.
* * *
Before it began we watched the children's show Die Maus. It had a depressing story about the history of the Easter egg hunt; the heroine was a hen who wanted to lay white eggs and could only lay them in different colours. Aside from the quality of the short animation, it was first of all disconcerting that the hen was so conformist and secondly that she was fixated on white skin tones, even if the skin is a shell and belongs to a fictive egg. Mama also thought it was weird . . . Then there was a segment about milking eggs, which was where the real depression set in, because the actor just went in and milked a random cow out of an anonymous row without asking permission or anything, and I was already feeling Charlie Brownish enough when they then showed how the machine milks cows, and anything more loveless, mechanical, and disrespectful can hardly be imagined . . . So to progress further into the children's literary canon I felt like Eeyore at this point.
Then a film crew accompanied our Pope as he went about his daily activities in the Vatican, and it was incredibly boring. There are two cooks and two housekeepers or something in his household, conservatively and formally dressed women who look utterly devoid of cheer (note to self: do not work for Pope unless wish to look like life sucked out of self), and then a secretary and other people, a very closed circle which barely enlivens the minimalist though not modern rooms. He eats breakfast off of specially commissioned plate with his coat of arms on it, presumably eats lunch or dinner off the same, takes a short walk along the same old route to aid his digestion (TMI, I thought!), signs proclamations given to him in a portfolio by someone in a boring office with however a checkerboard pattern in the floor which I found superficially intriguing, and then watches television on one of a set of dusty olive armchairs whose velvety surface looks like it has been vacuumed within an inch of its life twice every day. And in the morning he can appear on the balcony and wave to people and say something in several languages, as the flag waves below him. And so on and so forth. Given the choice of being a mafioso or Catholic grandee the former seems far more fun, though the formal gardens of the Pope's summer palace are like a wormhole in time, and the patch of olive trees where the cows graze and the brood of chickens are endearing. The footage of the Pope himself was captured by the Vatican; our secular Maus production team was permitted to film on the palace grounds.
The short animation about a sheep who runs a farm for a day was far more fun, and I can't presently recall if there was anything else.
Anyway, even an innocuous children's show can apparently feed my cynicism.
* * *
Then Arte showed a production of Händel's Messiah. I missed most of it but it looked like utter tosh. From an environmental perspective it was however most congenial, because it lit only the bottom tenth of the stage, though in antiseptic white glare, everything else being plunged in darkness; an energy-saving measure if I ever saw one.
The action took place on a gigantic revolving stage, which failed to transcend the dignity of a Lazy Susan, and for some reason the thick and towering partitioning walls were given a classisistic flair which did not fit the modern hotel(?) environment.
Which leads me to the dramatis personae, who were all dressed in modern businesswear, grey and black and other dark skirts and tights and jackets, and white shirts for the gentlemen. How is this related to the Messiah? — The secret is shared between the director and god.
By the time I arrived they were stacking dark wood chairs onto a pile in the centre of the Lazy Susan on top of an airport-lounge or hotel-room-y wall-to-wall carpet, and then bending over as if they were all afflicted with stomach cramps or extreme somnolence only to get up again and wilt in subsequent scenes, and Mama mentioned that there was an earlier scene where someone had slit his wrists.
Then the scene shifted to a hotel room where a woman was undressing, going to a crib that clearly had nothing in it and the white curtain above it did nothing to convince me otherwise, and dropping her clothes carefully on the floor!, and then a man in his shirtsleeves who (so Mama informed me) was supposed to be Jesus entered the door quietly backwards like Mr. Bean enacting the world's worst ninja and sat down on the floor before joining the lady in bed after she had peeled off her black stockings for the titillation of the audience.
Being fed up I wandered away from the corner room. When I came back there was a faintly North Korean choreographed group thing where they waved their hands about and so on, and then a woman in a pale nightgown who was presumably something like an angel interpreted the lyrics in sign language. Eventually the stage light narrowed in on the angel, who was terribly obnoxious, and it was somehow over. Then everyone came to take a bow and the audience clapped enthusiastically.
As far as the production goes this could have been any play or opera or oratorio ever written, if you're going to reinvent the tale entirely. In the US this would have been more amusing or genuine, but in Europe these things always reek of trying so, so hard to be cool and avantgarde.
Anyway, didn't see all of it and don't want to set myself up as a critic, but that was my take on the affair. At least the stage lighting, aside from its ecological worth, supports the opthalmological and optometrical trades. Thank you for your contribution to our economy!
* * *
Happy Easter!
This year the Easter brunch was particularly munificent. Despite cynical prognostications one of us did shop for Easter eggs and Papa had a secret stash which enriched the table greatly. So we had a little bunch of chocolate eggs, filled or not, and candy eggs with nougat or marzipan or other centres, and sugar eggs that looked like a sunny-side-up egg on our plates and decorating the white tablecloth; our trusty reddish clay pot of tea; two platters of cheese and Schinkenspeck and maybe blood sausage; baskets of soft pretzel sticks and croissants filled with nougat or marzipan or plain and raisin buns and ordinary buns; cold boiled eggs that had been painted red or orange or yellow or green or blue or lilac with watercolours; and fresh soft-boiled eggs. Then there is a large platter of further Easter eggs, and two chocolate bunnies stood at each plate, and chocolate ladybugs interspersed; the centrepiece is a jar with cherry twigs and a scarlet geranium and a yellow and violet pansy, with three of our handpainted hollow eggs hanging from it. Ge. heated milk and there was I think also a pot of hot coffee.
* * *
Before it began we watched the children's show Die Maus. It had a depressing story about the history of the Easter egg hunt; the heroine was a hen who wanted to lay white eggs and could only lay them in different colours. Aside from the quality of the short animation, it was first of all disconcerting that the hen was so conformist and secondly that she was fixated on white skin tones, even if the skin is a shell and belongs to a fictive egg. Mama also thought it was weird . . . Then there was a segment about milking eggs, which was where the real depression set in, because the actor just went in and milked a random cow out of an anonymous row without asking permission or anything, and I was already feeling Charlie Brownish enough when they then showed how the machine milks cows, and anything more loveless, mechanical, and disrespectful can hardly be imagined . . . So to progress further into the children's literary canon I felt like Eeyore at this point.
Then a film crew accompanied our Pope as he went about his daily activities in the Vatican, and it was incredibly boring. There are two cooks and two housekeepers or something in his household, conservatively and formally dressed women who look utterly devoid of cheer (note to self: do not work for Pope unless wish to look like life sucked out of self), and then a secretary and other people, a very closed circle which barely enlivens the minimalist though not modern rooms. He eats breakfast off of specially commissioned plate with his coat of arms on it, presumably eats lunch or dinner off the same, takes a short walk along the same old route to aid his digestion (TMI, I thought!), signs proclamations given to him in a portfolio by someone in a boring office with however a checkerboard pattern in the floor which I found superficially intriguing, and then watches television on one of a set of dusty olive armchairs whose velvety surface looks like it has been vacuumed within an inch of its life twice every day. And in the morning he can appear on the balcony and wave to people and say something in several languages, as the flag waves below him. And so on and so forth. Given the choice of being a mafioso or Catholic grandee the former seems far more fun, though the formal gardens of the Pope's summer palace are like a wormhole in time, and the patch of olive trees where the cows graze and the brood of chickens are endearing. The footage of the Pope himself was captured by the Vatican; our secular Maus production team was permitted to film on the palace grounds.
The short animation about a sheep who runs a farm for a day was far more fun, and I can't presently recall if there was anything else.
Anyway, even an innocuous children's show can apparently feed my cynicism.
* * *
Then Arte showed a production of Händel's Messiah. I missed most of it but it looked like utter tosh. From an environmental perspective it was however most congenial, because it lit only the bottom tenth of the stage, though in antiseptic white glare, everything else being plunged in darkness; an energy-saving measure if I ever saw one.
The action took place on a gigantic revolving stage, which failed to transcend the dignity of a Lazy Susan, and for some reason the thick and towering partitioning walls were given a classisistic flair which did not fit the modern hotel(?) environment.
Which leads me to the dramatis personae, who were all dressed in modern businesswear, grey and black and other dark skirts and tights and jackets, and white shirts for the gentlemen. How is this related to the Messiah? — The secret is shared between the director and god.
By the time I arrived they were stacking dark wood chairs onto a pile in the centre of the Lazy Susan on top of an airport-lounge or hotel-room-y wall-to-wall carpet, and then bending over as if they were all afflicted with stomach cramps or extreme somnolence only to get up again and wilt in subsequent scenes, and Mama mentioned that there was an earlier scene where someone had slit his wrists.
Then the scene shifted to a hotel room where a woman was undressing, going to a crib that clearly had nothing in it and the white curtain above it did nothing to convince me otherwise, and dropping her clothes carefully on the floor!, and then a man in his shirtsleeves who (so Mama informed me) was supposed to be Jesus entered the door quietly backwards like Mr. Bean enacting the world's worst ninja and sat down on the floor before joining the lady in bed after she had peeled off her black stockings for the titillation of the audience.
Being fed up I wandered away from the corner room. When I came back there was a faintly North Korean choreographed group thing where they waved their hands about and so on, and then a woman in a pale nightgown who was presumably something like an angel interpreted the lyrics in sign language. Eventually the stage light narrowed in on the angel, who was terribly obnoxious, and it was somehow over. Then everyone came to take a bow and the audience clapped enthusiastically.
As far as the production goes this could have been any play or opera or oratorio ever written, if you're going to reinvent the tale entirely. In the US this would have been more amusing or genuine, but in Europe these things always reek of trying so, so hard to be cool and avantgarde.
Anyway, didn't see all of it and don't want to set myself up as a critic, but that was my take on the affair. At least the stage lighting, aside from its ecological worth, supports the opthalmological and optometrical trades. Thank you for your contribution to our economy!
* * *
Happy Easter!
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Rant About the Ivory Coast
Not a cheerful subject, but I'm becoming very angry about the role the UN has played in the Ivory Coast. It has given Alassane Ouattara and everyone fighting under him a carte blanche — simply because he won the elections by whichever margin — which will have to be revoked soon, and it has not acted as an impartial arbiter in any sense.
It is fanatical to believe that the outward form of democracy is the highest good, above the wellbeing of Ivorian citizens whom it is supposed to represent. In fact in this case the election seems to have resulted in a UN-approved hegemony, and now the parties are fighting over who is the hegemon over whom.
Even the rebels in Libya have been criticized far more for deciding to take up arms against a state which has been run by Muammar Gaddafi for 42 years — not by firing missiles into markets, assassinating statesmen, setting car bombs, or slaughtering civilian opponents, as far as I have heard, but by openly attacking military vehicles and installations — than Ouattara's supporters in Côte d'Ivoire. Now that (inevitably, given this course of action) several massacres have been ascribed to fighters on Ouattara's side it is quite clear that it almost never was about the people of Côte d'Ivoire.
I think the UN has allowed itself to be unduly influenced by the fact that Alassane Ouattara has cooperated with it whereas Laurent Gbagbo hasn't. That circumstance is too unrepresentative and insignificant to be the foundation of such wholesale approval and persistent benefit of the doubt when it comes to allegations of massacring, and I am guessing there will have to be a change of official position.
It is fanatical to believe that the outward form of democracy is the highest good, above the wellbeing of Ivorian citizens whom it is supposed to represent. In fact in this case the election seems to have resulted in a UN-approved hegemony, and now the parties are fighting over who is the hegemon over whom.
Even the rebels in Libya have been criticized far more for deciding to take up arms against a state which has been run by Muammar Gaddafi for 42 years — not by firing missiles into markets, assassinating statesmen, setting car bombs, or slaughtering civilian opponents, as far as I have heard, but by openly attacking military vehicles and installations — than Ouattara's supporters in Côte d'Ivoire. Now that (inevitably, given this course of action) several massacres have been ascribed to fighters on Ouattara's side it is quite clear that it almost never was about the people of Côte d'Ivoire.
I think the UN has allowed itself to be unduly influenced by the fact that Alassane Ouattara has cooperated with it whereas Laurent Gbagbo hasn't. That circumstance is too unrepresentative and insignificant to be the foundation of such wholesale approval and persistent benefit of the doubt when it comes to allegations of massacring, and I am guessing there will have to be a change of official position.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
On Becoming a Warmonger
Yesterday and today I slept into the afternoon and woke to a rewarding plenitude of sunshine. Not that I should be rewarded as such for lollygagging, but rather perhaps for having overcome a tumultuous week with a modicum of cheer intact.
When the Security Council voted on Resolution 1973, the one about intervening in Libya, I watched it on the live broadcast at the UN's website, and by that point I was in favour of the no-fly zone. It's not a popular opinion in this household. What convinced me was the fear that as Gaddafi's army retook land it would destroy houses and fire on armed rebels and unarmed civilians indiscriminately, the hypocrisy of encouraging the rebels but doing nothing to help them when they are faced with being killed off in great numbers, the clause that there would be no ground invasion, the clear desire that the political future of Libya will be left entirely to the determination of the Libyans, and the fact that even if it is unlikely that anyone will help the protestors being shot at, though unarmed, with live ammunition in Bahrain or in Yemen, at least in one country they will receive a measure of support. As far as I heard the way the protests were handled in Tripoli was unusually cruel — for instance, that bodies of suspected fighters were reportedly taken from hospitals and not returned to their families at all or except under conditions — and governments of other countries (Morocco, Jordan, and even Egypt) reacted very differently to their own protests. Besides it is not fair to say that we may do our best to overthrow our government by casting votes against it in elections, but that people who have far acuter reasons to wish to do so may not, because they would be provoking violence from their government. Since I usually dislike revolution and instinctively dislike wars led by the European Union or the United States (though I was in favour of NATO's actions over Kosovo in 1999, which however seem much more equivocal than I thought at the time) the fact that I have changed my mind in this specific instance indicates that there is a good reason for it. On the other hand I do not like the tendency of the countries which are carrying out the military intervention to celebrate specific airstrikes at all.
Anyway I feel morally responsible for this opinion and so mixed in with the usual Weltschmerz there is the surface worry that I am terribly wrong. Secondly I do think that sincere mediation led by a state like China or India to bring about a political solution now — like a transitional government of Libya still headed by Gaddafi with impartial and rebel statesmen mixed in, with elections to be held three or four years from now so that there is enough time to become familiar with new figures and to adjust to the idea of no longer having a de facto dictatorship; and no presence of armed forces in the territory now held by the rebels — before the war grows intenser, would be a good idea.
On the personal level I've been reading portions of Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution, which I attempt often with temporary success, and playing the piano for short periods and working on a different blog, among other things. Then I've been thinking about university again, and since I provisionally intend to study sciences this time around I've been looking into a book on tensors and a physics textbook, Gravitation. J. was doing Latin homework and Mama was reading something by André Gide in the corner room as I was doing said looking.
When the Security Council voted on Resolution 1973, the one about intervening in Libya, I watched it on the live broadcast at the UN's website, and by that point I was in favour of the no-fly zone. It's not a popular opinion in this household. What convinced me was the fear that as Gaddafi's army retook land it would destroy houses and fire on armed rebels and unarmed civilians indiscriminately, the hypocrisy of encouraging the rebels but doing nothing to help them when they are faced with being killed off in great numbers, the clause that there would be no ground invasion, the clear desire that the political future of Libya will be left entirely to the determination of the Libyans, and the fact that even if it is unlikely that anyone will help the protestors being shot at, though unarmed, with live ammunition in Bahrain or in Yemen, at least in one country they will receive a measure of support. As far as I heard the way the protests were handled in Tripoli was unusually cruel — for instance, that bodies of suspected fighters were reportedly taken from hospitals and not returned to their families at all or except under conditions — and governments of other countries (Morocco, Jordan, and even Egypt) reacted very differently to their own protests. Besides it is not fair to say that we may do our best to overthrow our government by casting votes against it in elections, but that people who have far acuter reasons to wish to do so may not, because they would be provoking violence from their government. Since I usually dislike revolution and instinctively dislike wars led by the European Union or the United States (though I was in favour of NATO's actions over Kosovo in 1999, which however seem much more equivocal than I thought at the time) the fact that I have changed my mind in this specific instance indicates that there is a good reason for it. On the other hand I do not like the tendency of the countries which are carrying out the military intervention to celebrate specific airstrikes at all.
Anyway I feel morally responsible for this opinion and so mixed in with the usual Weltschmerz there is the surface worry that I am terribly wrong. Secondly I do think that sincere mediation led by a state like China or India to bring about a political solution now — like a transitional government of Libya still headed by Gaddafi with impartial and rebel statesmen mixed in, with elections to be held three or four years from now so that there is enough time to become familiar with new figures and to adjust to the idea of no longer having a de facto dictatorship; and no presence of armed forces in the territory now held by the rebels — before the war grows intenser, would be a good idea.
On the personal level I've been reading portions of Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution, which I attempt often with temporary success, and playing the piano for short periods and working on a different blog, among other things. Then I've been thinking about university again, and since I provisionally intend to study sciences this time around I've been looking into a book on tensors and a physics textbook, Gravitation. J. was doing Latin homework and Mama was reading something by André Gide in the corner room as I was doing said looking.
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