Friday, October 31, 2008
The soundtrack that I would play lording over my own, very special All Hallows Eve orgy: from Schnittke's Faust Cantata.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Und du wirst mein Gebieter sein
und ich dir untertan
dein Haus wird mein Haus sein,
in deinem Grab will ich mit dir begraben sein -
so gebe ich mich dir auf Zeit und Ewigkeit.
Corona - Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Celan reading his poem Corona
Ute Lemper singing Michael Nyman's setting of the poem
Corona
Aus der Hand frißt der Herbst mir sein Blatt: wir sind Freunde.
Wir schälen die Zeit aus den Nüssen und lehren sie gehn:
die Zeit kehrt zurück in die Schale.
Im Spiegel ist Sonntag,
im Traum wird geschlafen,
der Mund redet wahr.
Mein Aug steigt hinab zum Geschlecht der Geliebten:
wir sehen uns an,
wir sagen uns Dunkles,
wir lieben einander wie Mohn und Gedächtnis,
wir schlafen wie Wein in den Muscheln,
wie das Meer im Blutstrahl des Mondes.
Wir stehen umschlungen im Fenster, sie sehen uns zu von der Straße:
es ist Zeit, daß man weiß!
Es ist Zeit, daß der Stein sich zu blühen bequemt,
daß der Unrast ein Herz schlägt.
Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird.
Es ist Zeit.
Corona
Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.
In the mirror it's Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.
My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon's blood ray.
We stand by the window embracing, and people
look up from the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.
It is time.
Celan reading his poem Corona
Ute Lemper singing Michael Nyman's setting of the poem
Corona
Aus der Hand frißt der Herbst mir sein Blatt: wir sind Freunde.
Wir schälen die Zeit aus den Nüssen und lehren sie gehn:
die Zeit kehrt zurück in die Schale.
Im Spiegel ist Sonntag,
im Traum wird geschlafen,
der Mund redet wahr.
Mein Aug steigt hinab zum Geschlecht der Geliebten:
wir sehen uns an,
wir sagen uns Dunkles,
wir lieben einander wie Mohn und Gedächtnis,
wir schlafen wie Wein in den Muscheln,
wie das Meer im Blutstrahl des Mondes.
Wir stehen umschlungen im Fenster, sie sehen uns zu von der Straße:
es ist Zeit, daß man weiß!
Es ist Zeit, daß der Stein sich zu blühen bequemt,
daß der Unrast ein Herz schlägt.
Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird.
Es ist Zeit.
Corona
Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.
In the mirror it's Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.
My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon's blood ray.
We stand by the window embracing, and people
look up from the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.
It is time.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Dracula 1979
I watched the 1979 John Badham version of the Dean/Balderston stage adaptation of Stoker's Dracula over the weekend and was struck by the above "Wedding Night" sequence which employing lasers was shot by famed James Bond title sequence designer, Maurice Binder. Tunnels of red light suggestive of capillaries carry the infection of Dracula's blood to his chosen queen via their sexual union. Kate Nelligan is a formidable feminist foil to Frank Langella's erotic and commanding Dracula. John Williams' over the top romantic score somehow works with the subdued inevitability of the performances. Given the impending arrival of HIV on the sexual landscape, the scene only gains a prophetic air.
The Innocents
What shall I sing
To my lord from my window?
What shall I sing?
For my lord will not stay –
What shall I sing?
For my Lord will not listen
Where shall I go
For my Lord is away..
Whom shall love
When the moon is arisen
Gone is my lord
And the grave is his prison
Saturday, October 25, 2008
“Am I a good guesser”, he asked,
Approaching disenchanted.
Charming: pursue your way.
Older than his doctrine which makes good.
Exclaiming and embracing every philosopher.
The eldest, not too young to pretend when he
Returned to his own country;
doubtless ruled his people
Wisely.
I shall conclude the story of my family.
I took personal charge of cleverness,
selected with discrimination
I gave him little soldiers;
quite as filthy as disagreeable.
My gentle friend it is the grasshopper.
I declare, I’m near his disgusting performance.
I should have thought he was grieved at all this.
But he was innocent, I know.
I feel an evil…but
Is it a good if we acquire a certain happiness?
Never give our assent to anything.
Your mind depends upon your will,
the true murderer
Whom you see or whom you hear.
My dearest friend, you question?
What did you see?
God knows,
but I am not outside the province of the moral,
of despair,
of grief over death;
those dark passions.
Have we lost you?
Apply your rule!
We are true to each other, here or inside?
We reap, but it does not concern you.
Approaching disenchanted.
Charming: pursue your way.
Older than his doctrine which makes good.
Exclaiming and embracing every philosopher.
The eldest, not too young to pretend when he
Returned to his own country;
doubtless ruled his people
Wisely.
I shall conclude the story of my family.
I took personal charge of cleverness,
selected with discrimination
I gave him little soldiers;
quite as filthy as disagreeable.
My gentle friend it is the grasshopper.
I declare, I’m near his disgusting performance.
I should have thought he was grieved at all this.
But he was innocent, I know.
I feel an evil…but
Is it a good if we acquire a certain happiness?
Never give our assent to anything.
Your mind depends upon your will,
the true murderer
Whom you see or whom you hear.
My dearest friend, you question?
What did you see?
God knows,
but I am not outside the province of the moral,
of despair,
of grief over death;
those dark passions.
Have we lost you?
Apply your rule!
We are true to each other, here or inside?
We reap, but it does not concern you.
One
It’s there and you know it.
He was fair, but his imagination distorted his mouth
The face, feral; looked down on the
Cool stream of clearest, purest liquid.
Sculpted limbs; swelling his indifferent expression.
Adjusting to physical needs, smiling at the spectacle.
He was fair, but his imagination distorted his mouth
The face, feral; looked down on the
Cool stream of clearest, purest liquid.
Sculpted limbs; swelling his indifferent expression.
Adjusting to physical needs, smiling at the spectacle.
Two
The light suggested
you bear too much love
The stampede had stopped
You must curb your love –
Breathing and the stifled moans of pain
even as I condemn you.
It had burned down.
I should be dead now.
“Now, he realized”
Now he had forgotten.
Shocked him because he recognized it.
You should’ve known the consequences.
I’m delirious, dancing.
The more niches there are for life.
Let it settle back in a little swirl.
From his left, from behind him.
I’m waiting, Nothing?
Doesn’t he want me to see him?
Soon it would come
Why does he look upward?
The crusting of deeper sound, far, far away.
Consumed.
Watching the flames taste the new wood
which the mind refused to consider.
you bear too much love
The stampede had stopped
You must curb your love –
Breathing and the stifled moans of pain
even as I condemn you.
It had burned down.
I should be dead now.
“Now, he realized”
Now he had forgotten.
Shocked him because he recognized it.
You should’ve known the consequences.
I’m delirious, dancing.
The more niches there are for life.
Let it settle back in a little swirl.
From his left, from behind him.
I’m waiting, Nothing?
Doesn’t he want me to see him?
Soon it would come
Why does he look upward?
The crusting of deeper sound, far, far away.
Consumed.
Watching the flames taste the new wood
which the mind refused to consider.
Three
The infantile security did not sound convincing
A thousand other lives,
The words, rigor and humility,
Themselves make better judgment
Cheerfully undergo it.
But the coldness, equally admirable in simplicity
As they proceeded to speak like Aristotle:
The extreme degree of perfection.
A thousand other lives,
The words, rigor and humility,
Themselves make better judgment
Cheerfully undergo it.
But the coldness, equally admirable in simplicity
As they proceeded to speak like Aristotle:
The extreme degree of perfection.
Four
Is there some consequence that I failed to see?
Logic in the mind, a thought formed.
but words dried: the most important tool.
He’s repeating.
I began to feel cool,
but that garment; white cotton, gold.
The presence of moisture in the air.
The flood of animals
flowing with warm wet places.
We will make him feel more frightened.
“Look at this, tremble and weep.”
He was very cold, lay there staring.
A different route from that taken,
it was the same
a stockpile of wood.
Logic in the mind, a thought formed.
but words dried: the most important tool.
He’s repeating.
I began to feel cool,
but that garment; white cotton, gold.
The presence of moisture in the air.
The flood of animals
flowing with warm wet places.
We will make him feel more frightened.
“Look at this, tremble and weep.”
He was very cold, lay there staring.
A different route from that taken,
it was the same
a stockpile of wood.
Five
Everything had.
A mote caught in the glare of the noon sun.
Snow around the waist,
skin bare to the heat.
The passing interest,
matched only by the sparse blue eyes.
More memories.
I am the steward of this land.
Awkward, wincing, whirling beneath the cool layer
Soon they would feed and grow tall.
He had to get away from here
And dared not make the slightest movement.
Thin ruptures pouring the mystery to everyone.
Much richer around him than it had been.
I rise across the landscape.
We must control this
to transform.
Sapping what little strength remains.
Loftiness, truth, frankness.
How strange the ornaments of speech,
in the absence of the flourishes of the glorious end!
It is lines of movement that give us the sternness;
The pathway out of the gardens.
A mote caught in the glare of the noon sun.
Snow around the waist,
skin bare to the heat.
The passing interest,
matched only by the sparse blue eyes.
More memories.
I am the steward of this land.
Awkward, wincing, whirling beneath the cool layer
Soon they would feed and grow tall.
He had to get away from here
And dared not make the slightest movement.
Thin ruptures pouring the mystery to everyone.
Much richer around him than it had been.
I rise across the landscape.
We must control this
to transform.
Sapping what little strength remains.
Loftiness, truth, frankness.
How strange the ornaments of speech,
in the absence of the flourishes of the glorious end!
It is lines of movement that give us the sternness;
The pathway out of the gardens.
Six
What if there were scars?
The failing of one life, induces sleep.
They cannot fear glimpses of blue tiles.
Something we invest ourselves with, in earnest.
Borrowed ornaments accompany me
And there, the thousand volumes about me
Throw it in the woods, like a dog covering it’s scat.
Epistle of the German.
Cut to cheating, not to show, but to direct
– numb, after all, or so it seemed.
Feet remained numb and so his hands
Neither studied nor understood when finished
His cautious way along it.
Voices- sputtering reeds.
The more life there is, the slippery surface.
Had some ancient hero been buried here?
I know men’s souls
Blurred patches on a silver blue sky.
The failing of one life, induces sleep.
They cannot fear glimpses of blue tiles.
Something we invest ourselves with, in earnest.
Borrowed ornaments accompany me
And there, the thousand volumes about me
Throw it in the woods, like a dog covering it’s scat.
Epistle of the German.
Cut to cheating, not to show, but to direct
– numb, after all, or so it seemed.
Feet remained numb and so his hands
Neither studied nor understood when finished
His cautious way along it.
Voices- sputtering reeds.
The more life there is, the slippery surface.
Had some ancient hero been buried here?
I know men’s souls
Blurred patches on a silver blue sky.
Seven
Flowers have brought nothing,
remaining upright.
Sink with pains, without learning
Now covered in clinging illustrations.
You must think me where I write.
Hands, slabs, still
rocked, grasping while he laughed.
That’s why I saved you.
Now I suggest we continue to thought.
Look how it stands upon that shuddering floor!
Summoning all his strength
Moving his irregular shape.
We’ll bring water,
Religion and law.
Moisture dripped.
Is not this the innocent child’s pleading?
Seeming to echo, but unworthy
sharing the reluctance to glory
listening to the sound of the incorrupt life
the hissing of his own,
now alive with sounds of another year.
like flesh.
Unable to support this memory, it is too small.
I’m home, close enough.
Gloating and greedy.
Understood the gaze no longer,
Lips moving but no words escaping
remaining upright.
Sink with pains, without learning
Now covered in clinging illustrations.
You must think me where I write.
Hands, slabs, still
rocked, grasping while he laughed.
That’s why I saved you.
Now I suggest we continue to thought.
Look how it stands upon that shuddering floor!
Summoning all his strength
Moving his irregular shape.
We’ll bring water,
Religion and law.
Moisture dripped.
Is not this the innocent child’s pleading?
Seeming to echo, but unworthy
sharing the reluctance to glory
listening to the sound of the incorrupt life
the hissing of his own,
now alive with sounds of another year.
like flesh.
Unable to support this memory, it is too small.
I’m home, close enough.
Gloating and greedy.
Understood the gaze no longer,
Lips moving but no words escaping
Eight
Beauty stared at the murky world.
Is this a problem? Do you think?
Beauty’s heart contracted and he smiled.
“You summon similar unreadable blue eyes”
His introductions like long limbed flowering trees.
The ruby heart could not help but observe
the disposition of the common soldiers, those with good fortunes
amid the shouts of the people, their moans and whimpers made their plight known.
They seemed as beautiful as before they got here.
He can make a book.
Preference defers to honor which cannot be really hurt.
No cutting, no burning, no real wounds
Remember, the forest was only reached.
He often stumbled and fell
so he stalked the howls of pain and dismay
the distant flecks of soot.
Draw neat lines! You must cultivate!
You must create this entirely new corner of logic –
the sun is burning!
Open the Sky!
The creature was dressed in only torn remnants,
I’m too solid to break easily.
I’m the tatters, beneath the blue wind
Arms outstretched, hear me,
I expect he’s lost in this almost random action
Now I noticed that he was gone,
Addressing himself to delay our journey.
I am the steward of this and have no protector
It only reflected a part of spring,
on the other side
the grey wolf was lost in untroubled sleep.
Is this a problem? Do you think?
Beauty’s heart contracted and he smiled.
“You summon similar unreadable blue eyes”
His introductions like long limbed flowering trees.
The ruby heart could not help but observe
the disposition of the common soldiers, those with good fortunes
amid the shouts of the people, their moans and whimpers made their plight known.
They seemed as beautiful as before they got here.
He can make a book.
Preference defers to honor which cannot be really hurt.
No cutting, no burning, no real wounds
Remember, the forest was only reached.
He often stumbled and fell
so he stalked the howls of pain and dismay
the distant flecks of soot.
Draw neat lines! You must cultivate!
You must create this entirely new corner of logic –
the sun is burning!
Open the Sky!
The creature was dressed in only torn remnants,
I’m too solid to break easily.
I’m the tatters, beneath the blue wind
Arms outstretched, hear me,
I expect he’s lost in this almost random action
Now I noticed that he was gone,
Addressing himself to delay our journey.
I am the steward of this and have no protector
It only reflected a part of spring,
on the other side
the grey wolf was lost in untroubled sleep.
Ten
For in order not be trapped by what my colleagues,
Devil’s counterfeit coins, the Christians promised
to regard me as their new mother.
And so it is, source of the impression (God or Satan)
Adventures not as a public whore, but as his problem.
I shall in the sequel take care to notify, not dispel the devil’s illusions.
The first sophistic trap.
A former friend of the departed; a chariot goes through your mouth?
Answer: he waxed very enthusiastic.
One of the partners states a fact,
Allow the old satyr to have this fact or event.
Discharge upon the belly.
We can see this exercise, for example, long afterward.
Where are my friends?
A rich man and those courtesies had been exchanges.
None but the most is solid gold.
Eagerly assisted in the quest, learning that she was no more.
Ornaments of shining gold were discovered as faithfully as before.
This old rake’s passion; transformation. He swallowed all the, “and that is to return”
After it had been done he kept the King.
Tasting the pleasure of this.
Found a way to save.
He was eager to remain.
Devil’s counterfeit coins, the Christians promised
to regard me as their new mother.
And so it is, source of the impression (God or Satan)
Adventures not as a public whore, but as his problem.
I shall in the sequel take care to notify, not dispel the devil’s illusions.
The first sophistic trap.
A former friend of the departed; a chariot goes through your mouth?
Answer: he waxed very enthusiastic.
One of the partners states a fact,
Allow the old satyr to have this fact or event.
Discharge upon the belly.
We can see this exercise, for example, long afterward.
Where are my friends?
A rich man and those courtesies had been exchanges.
None but the most is solid gold.
Eagerly assisted in the quest, learning that she was no more.
Ornaments of shining gold were discovered as faithfully as before.
This old rake’s passion; transformation. He swallowed all the, “and that is to return”
After it had been done he kept the King.
Tasting the pleasure of this.
Found a way to save.
He was eager to remain.
Eleven
In the case that everything
I loved remained behind.
I gnashed my teeth, innocent guise.
Extinguish that life
which I had so avoided
in times of malice,
my hatred must determine
where his thoughts made a pilgrimage
to the highest.
What exists between
a representation’s appropriated base?
Judge whether it conceals something
or was the house of mourning.
All pleasure guarantees self mastery.
Fosters mistrust and tears.
Two kinds of exercises,
one form is borrowed, the other destroyed.
As quickly as they were remote, and more familiar
Good or Evil
Within or beyond
Come home and men appear to me
But, of his devotion, wanted to see
A funny ornament that might be the first,
Bestowing saliva, if you are not quite perfect.
I loved remained behind.
I gnashed my teeth, innocent guise.
Extinguish that life
which I had so avoided
in times of malice,
my hatred must determine
where his thoughts made a pilgrimage
to the highest.
What exists between
a representation’s appropriated base?
Judge whether it conceals something
or was the house of mourning.
All pleasure guarantees self mastery.
Fosters mistrust and tears.
Two kinds of exercises,
one form is borrowed, the other destroyed.
As quickly as they were remote, and more familiar
Good or Evil
Within or beyond
Come home and men appear to me
But, of his devotion, wanted to see
A funny ornament that might be the first,
Bestowing saliva, if you are not quite perfect.
Twelve
“Oh by Jesus”, these expressions, charming.
Identification of moral discomfort, little whore,
Why admit the truth?
We only wished.
We shall, what he discloses
About it; it is something entirely different.
Interrupt the catalogue of passion,
there is an exposure of the anthology of tastes.
I am well aware that silence and eloquence
both grow stronger as time passes.
The greatest confidence that the
length of time develops color in time of trouble.
Evil as well as good, long intercourse, difficult circumstances
I cannot show you, so you will find a name for my seasickness.
Being at sea, her gloved hand; medicine and piloting a boat.
But because he lacks,
it’s because you characterize the
malaise as a kind of instability,
an unsteadiness of mind.
The slippers and the Freudian dynamics of the dock.
I placed the tea-table, following the long quotation.
Identification of moral discomfort, little whore,
Why admit the truth?
We only wished.
We shall, what he discloses
About it; it is something entirely different.
Interrupt the catalogue of passion,
there is an exposure of the anthology of tastes.
I am well aware that silence and eloquence
both grow stronger as time passes.
The greatest confidence that the
length of time develops color in time of trouble.
Evil as well as good, long intercourse, difficult circumstances
I cannot show you, so you will find a name for my seasickness.
Being at sea, her gloved hand; medicine and piloting a boat.
But because he lacks,
it’s because you characterize the
malaise as a kind of instability,
an unsteadiness of mind.
The slippers and the Freudian dynamics of the dock.
I placed the tea-table, following the long quotation.
Thirteen
When dressed for physical illness,
waiting for the truths.
Will you let me take you?
No secret faults, no shameful desires.
I think I’d rather walk.
That firmness, peppery.
That’s why I got so stirred up.
I’ve got news for you:
Those that provide real strength.
No man is fit for society.
I have relatives who will only answer
my father with a look of despair.
“My child, here, I give it to you, time.”
The shutting of gates.
I beseech you. I was now free.
I believe for a night. I was carried by the wind, in gold.
I was often tempted, so I wish to do two things
so that those good fathers close over me and my calamities forever.
But soul, whom I tend, you shall surrender it to desertion.
At these moments I wept for his world.
Never is God more to be.
Remorse extinguished; lies, the true way of gaining Heaven.
waiting for the truths.
Will you let me take you?
No secret faults, no shameful desires.
I think I’d rather walk.
That firmness, peppery.
That’s why I got so stirred up.
I’ve got news for you:
Those that provide real strength.
No man is fit for society.
I have relatives who will only answer
my father with a look of despair.
“My child, here, I give it to you, time.”
The shutting of gates.
I beseech you. I was now free.
I believe for a night. I was carried by the wind, in gold.
I was often tempted, so I wish to do two things
so that those good fathers close over me and my calamities forever.
But soul, whom I tend, you shall surrender it to desertion.
At these moments I wept for his world.
Never is God more to be.
Remorse extinguished; lies, the true way of gaining Heaven.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus
As I mentioned in the previous post, the University of Chicago has been hosting a week long symposium in honor of the Centennial of Olivier Messiaen's birth. While I was lucky enough to catch a screening of Paul Festa's film "Apparition of the Eternal Church" I wasn't able to see everything I wanted to and had to pick only one concert to attend given my work schedule, but what a concert I chose!
On Friday night I saw Messiaen's monumental piano work "Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus" (Twenty Contemplation on the infant Jesus) performed by Christopher Taylor, associate professor of piano at the University of Wisconsin -Madison. Over the years I have seen many live performances and hands down I can say that Mr. Taylor's rendition of Messiaen's massively ecstatic work was one of the finest live performances I've ever seen. Mr. Taylor drew the audience into Messiaen's galatic contemplation of the divine with such physical and spiritual concentration that the works' two hour long duration passed as if in a instant and that during the serenely beautiful fifteenth movement - "Le Baiser de l'Enfant Jesus"- The Kiss of the infant Jesus, tears welled in my jaded eyes. To make Mr. Taylor's performance all the more extraordinary, he performed the entire work from memory.
While Messiaen's music can be difficult to listen to for the novice, if one keeps listening, one will find that the work that one has put into listening will be amply rewarded. Messiaen's music is a music that takes one from the contemplation of one's personal spiritual journey through the vastness of the universe only to return one back to one's personal, quiet contemplation, but transformed by the sheer immensity of all creation.
Below is a clip of the equally wonderful pianist Roger Muraro playing the amazing fifteenth movement of the "Regards" - listen to this music and listen to it again and again- this is truly music of the soul's journey through the sheer beauty, power and majesty of the spheres.
On Friday night I saw Messiaen's monumental piano work "Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus" (Twenty Contemplation on the infant Jesus) performed by Christopher Taylor, associate professor of piano at the University of Wisconsin -Madison. Over the years I have seen many live performances and hands down I can say that Mr. Taylor's rendition of Messiaen's massively ecstatic work was one of the finest live performances I've ever seen. Mr. Taylor drew the audience into Messiaen's galatic contemplation of the divine with such physical and spiritual concentration that the works' two hour long duration passed as if in a instant and that during the serenely beautiful fifteenth movement - "Le Baiser de l'Enfant Jesus"- The Kiss of the infant Jesus, tears welled in my jaded eyes. To make Mr. Taylor's performance all the more extraordinary, he performed the entire work from memory.
While Messiaen's music can be difficult to listen to for the novice, if one keeps listening, one will find that the work that one has put into listening will be amply rewarded. Messiaen's music is a music that takes one from the contemplation of one's personal spiritual journey through the vastness of the universe only to return one back to one's personal, quiet contemplation, but transformed by the sheer immensity of all creation.
Below is a clip of the equally wonderful pianist Roger Muraro playing the amazing fifteenth movement of the "Regards" - listen to this music and listen to it again and again- this is truly music of the soul's journey through the sheer beauty, power and majesty of the spheres.
Apparition of the eternal church
As part of the University of Chicago's special week long symposium honoring the Centennial of the birth of Olivier Messian, there was a screening of Paul Festa's 2006 film "Apparation of the Eternal Church" - which captured the "confrontation" of thirty-one artists including literary critic Harold Bloom, filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell, drag artist Justin Bond, and the late harpsichordist Albert Fuller with the apocalyptic organ music of Messiaen.
While the film is short running a little under an hour, it is a fascinating portrait of how people experience music. While Messiaen's intense 1932 ten minute organ work (the film's title is an English translation of the Messiaen work) elicited a variety of responses from the listeners; ranging from deep admiration to painful bewilderment, it is a testament to Messiaen and Mr. Festa that none one of them will forget Messiaen's intense "Apparition"
The film was screened at the Saint James Episcopal Cathedral in Chicago with live organ accompaniment and it is not very often that I'm able to hear Messiaen organ music played live in a darkened cathedral at night!
The trailer to the film can be seen here and Mr. Festa's blog is here.
If you want to hear the organ music, it is below. Put on the headphones and turn the volume up as loud as you can!
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The Mouse and his Child
"Oh, each of us sunk in the mud, however deep, must rise on the propulsion of his own thought. Each of us, must journey through the dogs beyond the dots, into the truth alone."
After finishing Hofstadter's "I Am A Strange Loop" I began to think about my interest in these Hofstader defined loops and I immediately had a Proustian moment and was transported back to the General Cinema theater in Cincinnati, Ohio circa 1977 . In an attempt to escape the oppressive humidity that settled over the valley in the summer my mother took me to see the animated version of Russal Hoban's "The Mouse and his Child"
Hoban's story revolves a mouse and his son who are the two parts of a single small wind-up toy, which must be wound up by means of a key in the father's back. After having been unboxed, they discover themselves in a toy shop where they befriend a toy elephant and toy seal. The child mouse proposes staying at the shop to form a family, which the other toys ridicule. After falling from a counter and becoming broken, they are thrown in the trash. Outside, they become enslaved by Manny the Rat, who runs a casino in the city dump and uses broken wind-up toys as his slave labor force. With the aid of a psychic frog, the mice escape and meet various animal characters on a quest of becoming free and independent "self-winding" toys. They rediscover the elephant and seal, who are somewhat broken down, and manage to form a family and destroy the rat empire.
Along their philosophical quest for self-determinism there is a wonderful scene in which the mouse and his son encounter a philosophical turtle at the bottom of a pond who explains the notion of infinity to them via a can dog food. This can of dog food, obviously modeled on Morton Salt girl, which shows a picture of a dog on hind legs in snappy chef's cap holding up an advertisement of the the self same dog holding on hind legs in snappy chef's cap holding up an advertisement of the self same dog holding on on hind legs in snappy chef's cap holding up an advertisement of the self same...well you get the idea.
I can remember the strange sense of intellectual vertigo that I experienced seeing this scene where the son falls into infinity with his father via can of dog food.
The YouTube clip includes the full movie. The scene I'm talking about starts around 051:52, although I highly recommend, watching the entire film when one has the time.
I Am A Strange Loop
I have recently taken a brief respite from reading fiction and picked up my interest in cognitive science/theories of consicousness and am currently reading (albeit a bit tardy) "I Am A Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter.
I first encountered his work when my father had me read the 1979 Pulitzer-Prize winning Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (henceforth, GEB). In GEB, Hofstadter meditates on the idea of self-reference and how it seems central to consciousness and meaning.
GEB is mainly a reflection on Kurt Gödel's famous incompleteness theorem.
Simplifying greatly, Gödel was able to embed self-reference in what what then considered to be a mathematical system of iron-clad logical rigor, Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica. Today, Gödel's theorem is considered to be one of the most important logical, philosophical, and epistemological breakthroughs in the history of the world.
I encourage you to explore it further and Rebecca Goldstein's Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel is a good place to start.
The idea of self-reference is common enough. And below I've taken liberties with the famous Epimenides Paradox; inserting my own base of Chicago in lieu of Epimenides' Crete.
If I say, "Chicagoans are always liars..."
The paradox is easy to see. If I am a Chicagoan and I utter the statement p--"Chicagoans are always liars"--then what is that truth-status of p?
If p is true then Chicagoans are not always liars which means p is false: A contradiction.
The contradiction is due to self-reference. The simplest way to see this is in the old-standby:
This sentence is false.
You see the paradox. If the sentence is false then it's true. If it's true then it is false.
Again, the paradox is due to self-reference, the sentence points to itself.
The point about Gödel's theorem was that Gödel was able to embed self-reference into the system of Principia Mathematica, making the PM-system speak about its own truth/proof status.
But Gödel's breakthrough was not just simply about self-reference. Rather, Gödel's proof was able to create a new level of analysis. That is, Gödel's paradox came via a higher-order coding system, a new level of meaning, which could "speak about" a lower level of meaning. The outcome was still paradoxical and self-referential, but it came via a higher-order, nested structure. A structure, Gödel later proved, that would continue on ad infinitum. Kind of like logical Russian dolls.
In "I Am A Strange Loop", Hofstadter picks up wher GEB left off.
Hofstadter contends that this idea of nested self-reference is what gives rise to human consciousness, our symbols, and our sense of self. It is our ability to reflect on reflections that pulls us up, cognitively speaking, from being simply stimulus-response creatures. That is, I can have a thought, then wonder about that thought, then wonder about that wondering... Emotionally, I can feel guilty and then feel guilty about feeling guilty and then feel stupid for feeling guilty about feeling guilty... It's like Gödel's self-referential system, with new meanings produced at each new level of nested self-reference. Hofstadter has some great labels for this process. He calls it the "Gödelian swirl of self." But mainly he calls us Strange Loops: Self-reference looping back on itself to create new meaning. In the words of Hofstadter we Strange Loops are "self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in, mirages [which] are little miracles of self-reference."
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Or sai, chi l'onore
So I just finished watching Zeffirelli's 2000 MET production of Don Giovanni and while a typical Zeffirelli production (are there singers amongst all the vaulting baroque architecture?)and with very fine singers nothing truly inspires the sheer horror and moral outrage that a great production of Don Giovanni should be invoke. Renee Fleming portrays Donna Anna with the same buttery flexiblity that has become her staple, but I started to feel that it all was a bit too theatrical....so I compiled a few clips of other other famous singers invoking vengenace over discovering the identity of the man who raped them and killed their fathers!
Or sai chi l'onore
Rapire a me volse
Chi fu il traditore
Che il padre mi tolse.
Vendetta ti chiedo,
La chiede il tuo cor.
Rammenta la piaga
Del misero seno,
Rimira di sangue
Coperto il terreno.
Se l'ira in te langue
D'un giusto furor.
Now you know who sought
to steal my honor
who was the betrayer
who killed my father
I ask you vengeance,
your heart asks it too.
Remember the wound
gaping in his poor breast,
recall the earth
covered with his blood,
if ever the wrath of a just fury
should weaken in you.
Fleming
Grummer
Tomowa-Sintow
Vaness
Sutherland
Or sai chi l'onore
Rapire a me volse
Chi fu il traditore
Che il padre mi tolse.
Vendetta ti chiedo,
La chiede il tuo cor.
Rammenta la piaga
Del misero seno,
Rimira di sangue
Coperto il terreno.
Se l'ira in te langue
D'un giusto furor.
Now you know who sought
to steal my honor
who was the betrayer
who killed my father
I ask you vengeance,
your heart asks it too.
Remember the wound
gaping in his poor breast,
recall the earth
covered with his blood,
if ever the wrath of a just fury
should weaken in you.
Fleming
Grummer
Tomowa-Sintow
Vaness
Sutherland
The Furies
Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston blaze the screen in Anthony Mann's western melodrama The Furies. In 1870s New Mexico Territory, megalomaniacal widowed ranch owner T. C. Jeffords (Huston, in his final role) comes to blows with his beloved only daughter, Vance (Stanwyck); a Valkyrie in her own right, over her dowry, choice of husband and the fate of their ranch, The Furies.
The cinematography is wonderful, capturing the vastness of the West and the immensity of the open sky under which this familial drama plays out. There are fine supporting performances by
Judith Anderson, Wendell Corey, and Gilbert Roland.
And what other movie has Barbara Stanywyck throwing a pair of scissors into Judith Anderson's face! Check out the scene below.
The cinematography is wonderful, capturing the vastness of the West and the immensity of the open sky under which this familial drama plays out. There are fine supporting performances by
Judith Anderson, Wendell Corey, and Gilbert Roland.
And what other movie has Barbara Stanywyck throwing a pair of scissors into Judith Anderson's face! Check out the scene below.
Eric Fischl
Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on suburban Long Island; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1967. His own web site describes him as growing up "against a backdrop of alcoholism and a country club culture obsessed with image over content"
His art education began at Phoenix College, then a year at Arizona State University, then California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, where he earned his BFA in 1972. He then moved to Chicago, taking a job as a guard at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
His own website recounts, "It was in Chicago that Fischl was exposed to the non-mainstream art of the Hairy Who. 'The underbelly, carnie world of Ed Paschke and the hilarious sexual vulgarity of Jim Nutt were revelatory experiences for me.'"
In 1974, he took a job teaching painting at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where he met painter April Gornik, with whom he moved back to New York City in 1978 and later married.
Fischl worked and resided in New York City, but has recently moved to Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York with his wife, landscapist April Gornik, where they share a home and matching studios. In addition, he is a senior critic at the New York Academy of Art
Fischl has embraced the description of himself as a painter of the suburbs, not generally considered appropriate subject matter prior to his generation, his earlier work focusing on themes of adolescent sexuality and vouyerism.
In response to 9/11, Fischl debuted his work Tumbling Woman at Rockefeller Center in New York, creating controversy since it reminded the viewers of people falling from the World Trade Center. Fischl felt people were mourning the building more than the people since there were so few bodies but such a high body count, which he felt was wrong.
In 2002, Fischl collaborated with the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld, Germany. Haus Esters is a 1928 home, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1928 to be a private home. It now houses changing exhibitions. Fischl refurnished it as a home (though not particularly in Bauhaus style, and hired models who, for several days, pretended to be a couple who lived there. He took 2,000 photographs, which he reworked digitally and used as the basis for a series of paintings.
This is by no means the first time Fischl has been compared to Degas. Twenty years earlier, reviewing a show of 28 Fischl paintings at New York's Whitney Museum, John Russell wrote in the New York Times, "[Degas] sets up a charged situation with his incomparable subtlety of insight and characterization, and then he goes away and leaves us to figure it out as best we can. That is the tactic of Fischl, too, though the society with which he deals has an unstructured brutality and a violence never far from release that are very different from the nicely calibrated cruelties that Degas recorded"
via wikipedia
His art education began at Phoenix College, then a year at Arizona State University, then California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, where he earned his BFA in 1972. He then moved to Chicago, taking a job as a guard at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
His own website recounts, "It was in Chicago that Fischl was exposed to the non-mainstream art of the Hairy Who. 'The underbelly, carnie world of Ed Paschke and the hilarious sexual vulgarity of Jim Nutt were revelatory experiences for me.'"
In 1974, he took a job teaching painting at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where he met painter April Gornik, with whom he moved back to New York City in 1978 and later married.
Fischl worked and resided in New York City, but has recently moved to Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York with his wife, landscapist April Gornik, where they share a home and matching studios. In addition, he is a senior critic at the New York Academy of Art
Fischl has embraced the description of himself as a painter of the suburbs, not generally considered appropriate subject matter prior to his generation, his earlier work focusing on themes of adolescent sexuality and vouyerism.
In response to 9/11, Fischl debuted his work Tumbling Woman at Rockefeller Center in New York, creating controversy since it reminded the viewers of people falling from the World Trade Center. Fischl felt people were mourning the building more than the people since there were so few bodies but such a high body count, which he felt was wrong.
In 2002, Fischl collaborated with the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld, Germany. Haus Esters is a 1928 home, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1928 to be a private home. It now houses changing exhibitions. Fischl refurnished it as a home (though not particularly in Bauhaus style, and hired models who, for several days, pretended to be a couple who lived there. He took 2,000 photographs, which he reworked digitally and used as the basis for a series of paintings.
This is by no means the first time Fischl has been compared to Degas. Twenty years earlier, reviewing a show of 28 Fischl paintings at New York's Whitney Museum, John Russell wrote in the New York Times, "[Degas] sets up a charged situation with his incomparable subtlety of insight and characterization, and then he goes away and leaves us to figure it out as best we can. That is the tactic of Fischl, too, though the society with which he deals has an unstructured brutality and a violence never far from release that are very different from the nicely calibrated cruelties that Degas recorded"
via wikipedia
....and will happen again....
Eternal Return
The image in which the universe/time returns to re-enact exactly the same course of events in an endlessly repeating cycles is common to many religions and was a theme of much Greek thought, including that of the Pythagoreans and Stoics. The recurrence is thought of in terms of events that cycle in a common-sense, linear time, but the possibility of time itself cycling was also considered. The contradiction that in that case the ‘later’ events would be numerically identical with the earlier, so that everything happens only once after all, was noticed by Eudemus of Rhodes, a pupil of Aristotle. A doctrine of recurrence was held by Plotinus and Origen.
The notion of endless recurrence was embraced by Nietzsche in 1882, and is explored in the notebooks making up The Will to Power. It is less interesting whether Nietzsche thought the cycle was scientifically probable, but rather provides a thought exercise for living the successful life: if we succeed in giving the right style to our actions we can joyously affirm their return, but otherwise we cannot.
Nietzsche calls the idea "horrifying and paralyzing", and says that its burden is the "heaviest weight" ("das schwerste Gewicht") imaginable. The wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life:
"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' "
The image in which the universe/time returns to re-enact exactly the same course of events in an endlessly repeating cycles is common to many religions and was a theme of much Greek thought, including that of the Pythagoreans and Stoics. The recurrence is thought of in terms of events that cycle in a common-sense, linear time, but the possibility of time itself cycling was also considered. The contradiction that in that case the ‘later’ events would be numerically identical with the earlier, so that everything happens only once after all, was noticed by Eudemus of Rhodes, a pupil of Aristotle. A doctrine of recurrence was held by Plotinus and Origen.
The notion of endless recurrence was embraced by Nietzsche in 1882, and is explored in the notebooks making up The Will to Power. It is less interesting whether Nietzsche thought the cycle was scientifically probable, but rather provides a thought exercise for living the successful life: if we succeed in giving the right style to our actions we can joyously affirm their return, but otherwise we cannot.
Nietzsche calls the idea "horrifying and paralyzing", and says that its burden is the "heaviest weight" ("das schwerste Gewicht") imaginable. The wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life:
"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' "
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