Saturday, March 28, 2020
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
This is pretty much the way things are around here. How is it out your way?
 |
| Spring in Town, by Grant Wood |
Saturday, March 21, 2020
The Symphonies of Johannes Brahms
Links to videos of the four symphonies by Johannes Brahms, here played
by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. These beautiful orchestral works are good for the soul.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Mai Veri Spacial Day of Science
A collection of 31 new poems by Randy Stark
I lernd of a thing I never new.
Grubs
crawl on their back
Because
there legs are not strong
So
there hair on there back move.
Saturday, March 7, 2020
Expecting rain by midweek
It had been an enchanted final
week of February; Mardi Gras, and the following Saturday Leap Year Day. I had a good time writing and reading and listening to music. Now, while I wait in line for my ration of toilet paper I have these comments:
“…art is not frivolous, an
indulgence or luxury, an embellishment of what is most central: it is the most
vital and direct form of impact on and through the body, the generation of
vibratory waves, rhythms, that traverse the body and make of the body a link
with forces it cannot otherwise perceive and act upon. This explains art's
cultural or human universality and ubiquity: it is culture's most direct mode
of enhancement or intensification of bodies, culture's mode for the elaboration
of sensations, and thus culture's most intense debt to the chaotic forces it
characterizes as nature. While there is no universal art, no art form, no music
or painting, that appeals everywhere in the same way, it is also true that
there is no culture without its own arts, without its own forms of bodily
enhancement and intensification.” (from Chaos,
Territory, Art by Elizabeth
Grosz.)
Recent reading:
Transit,
by Anna Seghers. People trying to get
the hell out of France in the 1930’s, ahead of the German occupation, hindered by
bureaucracy and logistics. A sad and frightening story about the dehumanizing outcomes for refugees; Kafkaesque, Orwellian, with parallels to today but very much its own tale of the banality of horror. And the timeless struggle
of being a refugee. The writing at times is surrealistic, at times gothic, always attention grabbing.
Pale
Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter. Three short novels. Some thematic similarities to Transit,
especially the sense of being out of step with the norm, and the concomitant feelings of fear, frustration
and helplessness. A fictional account of “The chaotic indeterminacy of the real”
is a description from Elizabeth Grosz (above). Terrific writing. Thanks to Susan Harlan Slater for going to Bard Street Books and buying this copy for me.
And I came across the poet, Dorothy Chan.
Because of the buzz about the current movie, “The Call
of the Wild,” I decided to first read the book by Jack London before I went to the theater. It’s a classic most American students encounter during their school years. Somehow I missed it. Reading it now at my advanced age I do not understand it's honored place on the bookshelf. I found it to be
well-written but ridiculous--a dog thinking just like a human--and I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie
has the cartoon animals talking. I'll pass. No wonder the line for toilet paper is lengthening.
One of these days real soon I’ll
stop quoting Robert Louis Stevenson, but until then, here’s something to combat
political correctness and snowflake syndrome: “A human truth, which is always
very much a lie, hides as much of life as it displays. It is men who hold
another truth, or, as it seems to us, perhaps, a dangerous lie, who can extend
our restricted field of knowledge, and rouse our drowsy consciences.”
And classical music I’ve
particularly enjoyed recently: Insomnia by Esa-Pekka
Salonen; Concerto for
Bandoneon by Astor Piazzolla, and Tabula Rasa by Arvo
Part. Composers from Finland, Argentina, and Estonia.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)