tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223614792024-03-18T17:52:45.651-07:00The Reverberate Hills; or The Apotheosis of the NarwhalPatrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.comBlogger4192125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-11564757258751385792024-03-18T05:00:00.000-07:002024-03-18T05:00:00.249-07:00Museum Monday 2024/12<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQpGpDGAXNmsVS1KifmYaGTkaoxG_QNbt7ktWWe8V9LuCJPWfo6rUgBF7NTrb992mxXKwCNM-JRB_zdyVwohBUS6YKjiQeE0gnTkuPV5rRXOVOoL_YMFGjQ3RkB46v5e2vyO7NWi97obZNZA7vkuPsNrdcV_m46ZHtHjfC2_bni3GsmNsFIBiSpA/s3264/PA200108.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQpGpDGAXNmsVS1KifmYaGTkaoxG_QNbt7ktWWe8V9LuCJPWfo6rUgBF7NTrb992mxXKwCNM-JRB_zdyVwohBUS6YKjiQeE0gnTkuPV5rRXOVOoL_YMFGjQ3RkB46v5e2vyO7NWi97obZNZA7vkuPsNrdcV_m46ZHtHjfC2_bni3GsmNsFIBiSpA/w400-h300/PA200108.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>detail of</i> <a href="https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.33253.html" target="_blank">Laocoön</a> <i>by El Greco, his only surviving painting of a mythological subject, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-34513660426871918812024-03-15T15:47:00.000-07:002024-03-16T19:03:49.621-07:00Live from the Met: La Forza del Destino<p><i>La Forza del Destino</i> is one of my favorites by Verdi (or maybe just one of my favorites), so I went out last Saturday for the Metropolitan Opera livecast. I had forgotten, perhaps out of self-preservation, the ads that precede the show, in which ridiculously earnest yet very, <i>very </i>posh voices assure us that the arts "inspire us" & bring "us" together (once again, who is we?), meanwhile touting luxury products (like Rolex watches) that I have no interest in, even if I could afford them. I object to considering art, no matter how costly or specialized, a luxury-lifestyle accessory, so I slouch in my seat, simmering with proletarian rage, while they hit their beats.</p><p><i>Forza </i>used to be done more often & is now something of a rarity. When asked about this during one of the intermission features, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director of the Met & other places & our afternoon's conductor, first mentioned what he called the "convoluted" plot, followed by the need for a certain type of singer. I suspect it's more about the singers, though the plot is one of those that regularly get sneered at. As with <i><a href="https://reverberatehills.blogspot.com/2023/10/burn-baby-burn-il-trovatore-at-san.html" target="_blank">Trovatore</a></i>, ridiculing the plot misses the point, I think. It's meant to be convoluted & coincidental & far-fetched; how else are you going to illustrate the <i>forza </i>of <i>destino</i>? Again, as with <i>Trovatore</i>, a plot teetering on the edge of absurdity is meant to make the point that the universe is, in fact, absurd. The <i>Forza </i>personages frequently call on the mercy of God & His (Catholic) Mother, but ultimately (though only implicitly), these are shown to be fictions powerless against the pointless cruelty of existence.</p><p>This was a new production, by Mariusz Treliński with sets by Boris Kudlička. Paradoxically, I liked the production while finding moment after moment wrongheaded or, in my view, just wrong. The idea is that this is a contemporary fascistic military state (similar to Franco's Spain, perhaps) that devolves into internecine chaos after the leader, the Marquis of Calatrava, is killed. The overture has a dumb-show acted out throughout, & though it's nicely timed timed to the moods & suggestions of the music, it all seems . . . a bit unnecessary, perhaps? What are we learning here that we can't see in the first scene? Is it so difficult, even in our very visually oriented society, to sit & just listen to some instrumental music? We are at the swank hotel Calatrava, for a celebration of the Marquis's birthday. The agitated Leonora enters (or exits, as she is walking out of the party; the set keeps rotating, showing us interior & exterior). She is smoking a cigarette (such a trashy & banal directorial touch), which she stubs out – agitation! We see her lover, Don Alvaro, costumed like a rock-band roadie. They are preparing to run off. He has to hide as she gets pulled back into the party. Her father wants her. It's intimated that he wants her in more than one way. Most of this information, of course, is conveyed in the first scene – only the Marquis is portrayed as pretty much a creep; he drinks too much & is a lech & has a weird thing with his daughter: so why is she so reluctant to run away from him? If he isn't a kind & generous father, though one who is limited by his sense of social status & propriety, why should she hesitate to escape from his control?</p><p>Padre Guardiano is played by the same performer (Solomon Howard), &, weirdly, instead of a contrast with the Marquis, he seems to be the same type: when Leonora comes to his monastery seeking protection, he is strangely handsy with her, & she with him, in a way that seems implausible for an older man who is an austere but kind spiritual director & a completely distraught woman trying to escape the world. At one point I think he slaps her, though I actually doubted by eyes, given how bizarre & unnecessary that would be. At a few later points, when the Marquis is long dead, & we expect the Abbot, he shows up in his military Marquis outfit. It's a bit confusing, though the metaphorical intention is clear (perhaps all too clear). Another weirdness: Leonora arrives at the convent after a car crash, so her raincoat & face & hands are covered with blood. At no point does either of the priests she speaks to, first Fra Melitone & then Padre Guardino, offer her a towel or something so she can wipe off the blood. They just . . . carry on a long conversation. With a woman covered in blood. Really?</p><p>And when Guardiano agrees that she can take the place of the hermit, & he summons the friars to let them know, she is, again weirdly, visible to them – not even a veil covers her face. Isn't it obvious they're not supposed to know who she is, or even that she's a she? Otherwise, why, at the end, would the wounded Alvaro think she was a priest who could give him the last rites? The friars also form two lines & strike her with switches as she passes through on her way to the hermitage. Why? What penance is this?</p><p>That scene is, of course, the famous invocation to La Vergine Degli Angeli, & the music, both hushed & soaring, pleading yet serene, carries an emotional power that overrides any questions about the staging. Musically, the performance is at a suitably high level. Lisa Davidsen as Leonora is strong yet touching. Her voice has what seemed to me a core of gleaming steel (personally, my touchstone for the role is the core of gleaming gold in Leontyne Price's interpretations). As Alvaro, Brian Jagde has power & pathos. (I thought he was more nuanced here than in some of the live performances I've head at San Francisco Opera). Igor Golovatenko, Leonora's vengeful brother Don Carlo, is so persuasive as a man in the grip of an obsessive vendetta that I was really surprised to hear this was his role debut. Judit Kutasi is a surprisingly elegant & fluid Preziosilla. That's one character who really benefits from the staging; instead of a stereotypical stage Roma, she is sort of a glam entertainer/hanger-on associated first with the Hotel Calatrava & then as sort of a USO performer for the troops. Like Mother Courage, she profits off of & sees through war, & ultimately is another of its victims.</p><p>The whole mixed-race plot, with Alvaro a descendant of Inca royalty & the Spaniards looking down on him as a half-breed, is pretty much abandoned here. No great loss, though it renders some lines (which were very generically translated in the subtitles) a bit incomprehensible. (It's unclear now why Alvaro, as Padre Rafael, should take offense at being told he looks like "a wild Indian".) A loss that is a bit more important is the underlying sense of very formal aristocratic honor (& entitlement), associated particularly with Spain. If the Marquis of Calatrava is staggering around stage in a semi-drunken state, leering at & fondling showgirls . . . well, you kind of lose that sense of punctilio & propriety that motivates the worldview, & therefore the behavior, of the Vargas family. When Don Carlo di Vargas (in disguise) realizes that his new blood brother in arms is the hated Don Alvaro (also in disguise), & takes care to help him recover from his wounds so that he can kill him in a fair fight, it is both noble & a bit absurd. But if you remove any sense of the manly honor that motivates him to behave this way, the action becomes wholly absurd.</p><p>Yet I found the production powerful. It seemed clear that the director, who is from Poland, had the brutal & barbaric invasion of Ukraine very much on his mind in trying to portray what war does to a nation & the people living there. He honors the seriousness of it (Preziosilla's <i>rataplan, rataplan, war is glorious</i> stuff is given with incisive irony). So despite what seemed to me missteps on a detailed level, the production as a whole is – I'll go with honorable. & of course the music, & the committed performers, carry us over any bumps in this long & twisty road.</p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-34743643151103830142024-03-15T14:38:00.000-07:002024-03-15T14:38:28.708-07:00San Francisco Performances: Jonathan Biss & Echoes of Schubert #2<p>Last night at Herbst Theater, Jonathan Biss returned for the second of his three-concert series for <a href="https://sfperformances.org/index.html" target="_blank">San Francisco Performances</a>, each coupling an Impromptu & one of the final three piano sonatas by Schubert with a newly commissioned work for solo piano. The series is turning out to be a very rich experience.</p><p>The opening was the Impromptu in A-flat Major, #2, played with Biss's characteristic poetic attention & intensity. Biss writes <a href="https://www.jonathanbiss.com/program-notes" target="_blank">his own program notes</a>, which do exactly what program notes should do: make us aware of what the artists are doing in & with the music, & give us signposts to listen for. The program notes for the second piece, a newly commissioned work from Alvin Singleton titled <i>Bed-Stuy Sonata</i>, were spoken from the stage by the pianist. In accordance with the composer's reluctance to impose interpretation, Biss invited us to listen for ourselves; even the title, which is apparently unusually specific for Singleton – it is a nickname for the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the composer grew up – is not meant to trigger any sort of association, nostalgic, pictorial, or biographical; when asked by Biss about the title, Singleton replied that his titles were mostly meant for himself & not the performer or the audience.</p><p>It is a wonderful, striking piece, clearly virtuosic without empty flash. Solemn, pillar-like notes move forward in a stately procession, their sounds reverberating to the border of silence, to be followed by glittering, muscular but somehow tender, cascades of notes. This dense complexity alternates with the slower pillar-like moments (the piece is all in one movement). The sonata ends with a little uptick in the sound which seems like a question, left unanswered & dying away in the air. The whole thing is redolent of an urban setting, with tall buildings & tumult & grace notes of calm & near-silence. It could also, though, describe a purely interior landscape. Last night was only the second public performance of the piece. I know I keep saying of new music <i>I wish they had played it twice</i>, but, you know, somebody really needs to do that. For this piece Biss used a tablet with the music, which he could forward with a pedal, which audibly amazed the old woman with clanging "artistic" bracelets a few rows behind me.</p><p>After the intermission we had the Sonata in A Major D 959. Aside from the obvious beauty of the rolling & swirling currents of sound, I appreciate Biss's emphasis on the psychological & moral complexity of this music; framing it as Schubert's way of processing his impending & very early death, he emphasizes the struggle & the strangeness of what's going on; the silences are as telling as the sounds. The moments of near-breakdown emerge with clarity from the formal structures trying to contain & process them. As with the first concert in the series, the encore was another short piece by Schubert.</p><p>The audience was mostly well-behaved, though the first piece was disturbed by a person on the left who kept "whispering" loudly "I can't sit here!" Before the performance some people in that section had been complaining about a high-pitched hum or beep; I didn't hear it so I wasn't sure, but one of them kept saying that high-pitched sounds weren't audible to old people but he could hear it, so maybe there was something. I don't know why the other person couldn't just quietly move to an empty seat during the first piece instead of letting us all know he couldn't sit there. & I've mentioned the woman with clanging bracelets. I will self-righteously note that I was wearing several bracelets, only mine didn't clang, clash, or chime. At least this time there wasn't an idiot who brought his goddamn lapdog in, as happened at the Lawrence Brownlee concert.</p><p>The next & final concert in the series, which I am very much looking forward to, will be on <a href="https://sfperformances.org/performances/2324/jonathan-biss-3.html" target="_blank">2 May</a>. My write-up of the first concert is <a href="https://reverberatehills.blogspot.com/2024/01/san-francisco-performances-jonathan.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-69827400241646579922024-03-15T05:00:00.000-07:002024-03-15T05:00:00.131-07:00Friday Photo 2024/11<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwmRPzwreWMXf16KOg0NZ6tddH92iJlmFk1TRaJagFK7U14rMQOAzIt1_WVTYUQu1YqiNv7zcr67dMWCbncs1wCh9U8r2Bw2suceqKN-_zMxrfZu1VDXCckygF-I3sxIRhDobSvQmFT4GTCaf_hohyM4zOLiKt2Z0RCp3Nm5w5r_3ksKKNLJhktw/s3264/P6140740.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwmRPzwreWMXf16KOg0NZ6tddH92iJlmFk1TRaJagFK7U14rMQOAzIt1_WVTYUQu1YqiNv7zcr67dMWCbncs1wCh9U8r2Bw2suceqKN-_zMxrfZu1VDXCckygF-I3sxIRhDobSvQmFT4GTCaf_hohyM4zOLiKt2Z0RCp3Nm5w5r_3ksKKNLJhktw/w400-h300/P6140740.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>a goose near the Gardner Museum, from my 2019 trip to Boston; I wonder if this bird is still alive</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-12998290738270474182024-03-13T05:00:00.000-07:002024-03-13T05:00:00.137-07:00Poem of the Week 2024/11<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><i>In the Darkness, Someone Is Playing Guitar</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">In the darkness, someone is playing guitar</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">singing of red roses</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">or swaying poppies in the countryside</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">or maybe some other nameless flower</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">A courtyard with pines, at first light</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">filled with fallen pinecones, sparrows hopping</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">a black umbrella and a hat</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">lying submerged at the bottom of the pond</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Midnight snowflakes billow up from the bridge</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">rising above my head, into the starry sky</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">They look down on the town from on high</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">like El Greco</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The countryside blooms with blood-red flowers</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Someone is playing guitar in the dark</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The pearl earrings you took off</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">roll around the tabletop</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Bumping into each other, the pearls make</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">the faintest of sounds – it's the poppies</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">swaying open – it's someone</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">strumming a guitar again in the dark</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> </span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>May 19, 2015</i></span></span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">– Wang Yin, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;">I don't know if Yin intended this, but this poem seems to me like a tribute to Lorca: the (apparently) Spanish setting, the beautiful but unsettling & somewhat surreal images, the intimations of love & death.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">People are here, but at a remove: someone is playing a guitar, but the person is unseen in the darkness, & perhaps their language is unknown to the poet: the roses & poppies, so vividly present in the first stanza, are merely guesses by the speaker as to what the song sounds like: red roses (associated with romantic love), beautifully swaying poppies (associated with drugs, dreams, & death), or, he admits, <i>maybe some other nameless flower</i>; the anonymous flower has its own mystery. Whatever the song, it brings these floral intimations, with their suggestions of a deeper world, manifested in these noises in the dark.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the second stanza, we are suddenly in a courtyard with pines; again, there must be people who built & live in the courtyard, but they are not presented; the darkness is just beginning to recede, & we see fallen pinecones & little birds. The pine trees are present only in the form of their fallen seeds (the pinecones). Did someone plant these trees, or is this courtyard a rural retreat? A more direct intimation of human inhabitants comes in the third line, with a black umbrella & a hat, which we are told are submerged at the bottom of the pond. The effect is not startling; the phrasing is too calm for that, but it is unsettling. How long have these items been there? Long enough to be submerged. But how did they get there? Blown off in a storm, or intentionally abandoned? What happened to whoever carried the umbrella & wore the hat: did the person (we don't know the gender) die in the pond? Accidental death, or maybe suicide? You can't rule out murder; it's one of the darker implications underlying the gorgeous images of this poem.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Images & setting change again in the third stanza. Although the transition is abrupt, it doesn't seem so; there is an underlying harmony, a dream- & image-logic, to the very strong visuals here that unites disparate places & times. We are back to the darkness: it is midnight, & though it is snowing, the sky is clear enough for the speaker to see the stars are visible & shining. In another subtly unexpected divergence from normal nature, the snowflakes are whirling up rather than down. Is this related to the way winds play around the bridge? Why is the speaker under a bridge at midnight? </div><div style="text-align: left;">Is the bridge related to the pond, with its hidden umbrella & hat? We receive another intimation of mortality in the mention of El Greco: his elongated Mannerist saints & angels give a celestial touch to the scene, but there is no direct mention of Heaven or God; instead, we have the divine represented by an artist, with an aesthetic & comprehensive gaze on whatever is happening on earth. (& who is the <i>they </i>looking down like El Greco? the stars, the ascending snowflakes?)</div><p>In the fourth stanza, the flowers return. This time, they unite the sensuous roses & the death-tinged poppies; the flowers are <i>blood-red</i>. We are back in the darkness, so is the speaker just projecting this color, this union of life & death, onto the flowers? Or are these blooms, like the ones in the first stanza, not in the ground but the air, summoned by the singer's art into the speaker's listening imagination? As with the second stanza, we have a person appearing indirectly, in the form of items she was wearing & has removed: her pearl earrings. Why did she remove the earrings? Getting ready for bed, because it's night, & preparing to sleep, or to sleep with someone? The lovely iridescence of pearls is not mentioned, though the word carries the image into our minds; instead, the adornments are evoked by the sound they make (this is a poem of strongly visual images, many of which are actually present only as sounds or suggestions).</p><p>The final stanza flows directly from the preceding one; it is the only stanza in this poem that seems to relate directly to the one that precedes it, creating a sort of culminating image, one that is surprisingly vivid, given how delicate & distant it really is: the faint sound of pearls bumping together as they roll on a tabletop (why are they rolling? were they taken off in haste & tossed down, despite their value? if they were removed abruptly, then why?) This sound, barely there, ties together other image-strands of the poem: the sound of the pearls is also the sound of the poppies opening is also the sound of someone strumming a guitar in the dark – someone strumming a guitar <i>again </i>in the dark; this moment of beauty & apprehension is not unique, but one that is recreated over & over.</p><p>The images here are detached, in several ways: separated from each other, & a step or two removed from people. Some of them are only imaginary. Yet together they create a complex of strong images & feelings, vivid & beautiful yet also uncertain & unsettling.</p><p>I took this poem from the wonderfully titled collection <i><a href="https://www.nyrb.com/products/wang-yin" target="_blank">A Summer Day in the Company of Ghosts</a></i> by Wang Yin, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter, issued by New York Review Books.</p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-65345375917641305622024-03-11T05:00:00.000-07:002024-03-11T05:00:00.130-07:00Museum Monday 2024/11<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjxajCyDdlNDyX1tpmz4eUJTgUp74FJycEmwtrdEXs6G8Cr381hBIM7WRYa3FL_Sfd6eNSI-d3zYWtFwIYp9VBV1JoNBHJ94PkhD4Wt6FbMNr5eEY0plGI03YWwV-qozG2pOa2OJbiIaF-txaY38yEWDDmyVyYv9e8Rag84U87r6ZWcYvACBJVmg/s4000/IMG_20231121_142829064.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjxajCyDdlNDyX1tpmz4eUJTgUp74FJycEmwtrdEXs6G8Cr381hBIM7WRYa3FL_Sfd6eNSI-d3zYWtFwIYp9VBV1JoNBHJ94PkhD4Wt6FbMNr5eEY0plGI03YWwV-qozG2pOa2OJbiIaF-txaY38yEWDDmyVyYv9e8Rag84U87r6ZWcYvACBJVmg/w300-h400/IMG_20231121_142829064.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>detail of Tiepolo's</i> <a href="https://www.famsf.org/artworks/the-empire-of-flora" target="_blank">The Empire of Flora</a><i>, now at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-40112789565030815862024-03-08T05:00:00.000-08:002024-03-08T05:00:00.136-08:00Friday Photo 2024/10<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeDrQOnILAf4WEMwFvU7A4sqAT_NUxJWB6bWrSkQ6_Ut25Syw7gcFVjupOHOa4a6bYDcl0hRvW_5s97iLmZT7mZI9JdGiv6gHSMleu3rBuojHRWTHLaw_Uz4cr-RhhXhC7FrEqMYMMlznbPb2JHqzFfkKWJeFXFvJwzHx9vFkxSr5BBQdiSpvz9w/s3264/P6120640.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeDrQOnILAf4WEMwFvU7A4sqAT_NUxJWB6bWrSkQ6_Ut25Syw7gcFVjupOHOa4a6bYDcl0hRvW_5s97iLmZT7mZI9JdGiv6gHSMleu3rBuojHRWTHLaw_Uz4cr-RhhXhC7FrEqMYMMlznbPb2JHqzFfkKWJeFXFvJwzHx9vFkxSr5BBQdiSpvz9w/w400-h300/P6120640.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>a sidewalk in Boston, from my June 2017 trip back there</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-70249359227661381172024-03-06T05:00:00.000-08:002024-03-06T05:00:00.145-08:00Poem of the Week 2024/10<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Pied Beauty</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> <span> </span> Glory be to God for dappled things –</span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> </span><span> <span> </span> For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;</span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;</span><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;</span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;</span><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> </span><span> And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">All things counter, original, spáre, strange;</span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)</span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> </span><span> With swift, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;</span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> Práise hím.</span><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">– Gerard Manley Hopkins</span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span>When I first came across poems by Hopkins, I couldn't figure out what he was doing: what were these odd accent marks in seemingly random places, these strange compound-words, the varying lengths of the lines? What turned the key in the lock for me was reading that he was fascinated & greatly influenced by Old English poetry (an increasing interest in a specific place's ancient culture is one of the more creative aspects of the growing nationalism of Hopkins's time, the late nineteenth-century, though its shadow side was a destructive tribalism & insistence on "cultural purity" meant to exclude outsiders). Suddenly the compound words made sense, as did his insistence on the beat falling in certain apparently irregular places: all attempts to recreate in late Victorian England the freshness & vigor of Anglo-Saxon poetry.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span>Hopkins called his accentuation system <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprung_rhythm" target="_blank">sprung rhythm</a>; the first beat of a foot is accented but may be followed by a varying number of unaccented syllables (Hopkins held that this method was closer to spoken speech, as well as to ancient ballads & nursery rhymes). When there might be doubt about whether to emphasize a syllable, he added an acute accent (as in the line </span></span><i>With swift, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím</i>); the grave accents (<i>frecklèd</i>) tell you that a syllable is to be pronounced but not emphasized.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The substance of this poem is straightforward: it is a hymn of praise to God the Creator (Hopkins was a convert to the Roman Catholic Church & became a Jesuit priest). The delight is in the details. Theologically, it is held that only God is perfect (his perfection is here significantly called his beauty, a beauty that is unchanging), so it follows that his creation is inherently imperfect, & that is what Hopkins celebrates here: not the whole, perfect, & pure, but the dappled, stippled, freckled. Not only are things imperfect, they metamorphose into other things: the multi-colored sky is a spotted cow! the fallen chestnuts are the glowing coals falling in the fireplace! The scope of the speaker's observations runs from the deep pink spots on the swimming trout (spots that disappear when the trout dies, so the spots are not only beautiful, but a sign of life) to vast landscapes, split up & varied.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Humanity appears here only by implication: in the landscapes pieced out & worked over, both the farmed & the (temporarily) fallow; in the "trades" – the way people work in & shape the world – with their particular & diverse equipment & tools. There is an implication that in the celestial eyes of the creator, the trout & the chestnut are equal to the farm & the worker. The poem begins with very specific examples, usually from the natural world, moves to include implied humanity in that nature, & then, perhaps a bit perversely, ends up including in the celebration even things that seem stubbornly, even perversely, opposed to the orderly:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;">All things counter, original, spáre, strange;</span></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;"> Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)</span></div><div><br /></div><div>You'd think a priest would be more prescriptive about the natural order of things, but the poet is suggesting that God's view is larger than ours: the answer to the parenthetical question <i>who knows how?</i> would be that God knows how, even if we do not (& the question could be read to suggest that we can't even know all the ways in which something may be <i>freckled</i>, as well as why & how it is so). In the line <i>With swift, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím</i> Hopkins is casting a very wide net; the contradictory pairs of words are an inclusive gathering of difference, all from the creative being of God, seen here in Catholic terms as God the Father (who <i>fathers-forth</i> this abundance). Our flawed states, even our brokenness & perversity, are part of the generosity of the creator. You don't have to accept Hopkins's view of God, or even believe in a god at all, to find in this celebration of the world's abundance a view of universal inclusive love.</div><div><br /></div><div>I took this from the Oxford World's Classics edition of <i><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/selected-poetry-9780199537297?q=gerard%20manley%20hopkins&lang=en&cc=us#" target="_blank">Selected Poetry</a></i> by Gerard Manley Hopkins.</div></div>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-35237083765563172882024-03-04T07:00:00.000-08:002024-03-04T07:00:00.346-08:00What I Watched: February 2024<p>Before January ended I started re-watching Disc 1 of <i><a href="https://kinolorber.com/product/edison-the-invention-of-the-movies#:~:text=Description,released%20by%20the%20Thomas%20A." target="_blank">Edison: The Invention of the Movies</a></i>, a collaboration between the Museum of Modern Art & the Library of Congress issued by Kino sometime in (I think) the early 2000s, but going through the disc took me into February; the films are short but there are quite a few of them. The first disc goes from 1889 to 1903. Sometimes people tell me they're watching "an old movie" & it turns out to be from 1964 or suchlike. I laugh! "An old movie" means pre-1915.</p><p>This is a wonderful collection. There's always a fascination in old movies in seeing not just a vanished world but a vanished way of looking at the world. The commentators on this set are very useful in this regard, pointing out, for example, that Edison had a keen eye for what would sell & tended to promote basically sex & violence (contrasted with the Lumière Brothers in France, who were more likely to show domestic family scenes, rather than belly-dancers, or factory workers rather than boxers). Sometimes you need the context pointed out to realize what's really going on: there's one film showing a Black woman washing a Black child. I assumed this was one of those "actualities", a scene from daily life. It turns out that it's actually a <i>comedy </i>film, as no matter how much she washes that baby . . . he's still going to be Black! Horrifying, yet revealing. This is not the only such film; there's another "comedy" short showing an "old maid" (played by a man in drag; it was his vaudeville specialty) having her picture taken, only she's so homely (hence her old-maid status!) that the camera cracks. Comedy gold, obviously. There's a current fad now for "honoring the ancestors" & whenever someone trots out that number I always think of things like these films.</p><p>Some of these films take on a different resonance for us, in our very different era: there's the famous film with the clinical-sounding title <i>Dickson Experimental Sound Film</i>, one of the first (possibly <i>the </i>first) attempt to synchronize sound with image. A man plays a tune on a violin while two other men slowly dance around him. We tend to see this as a homoerotic image, though it wasn't necessarily intended as or perceived as such in its own time. It is rather mesmerizing & dreamlike, either way, & of course you can put your own interpretation on what is essentially an unmediated image.</p><p>These films are very old & summon up a vanished time, but also can reverberate in surprisingly contemporary ways. There are quite a few shots of "serpentine dances" & Eugene Sandow, posing in skimpy briefs, ripples his muscles at us aesthetically; you can see surprisingly similar dance-based short films on Instagram & TikTok; & there's a minor industry on those platforms of young men acting as Fitness Influencers who are basically doing what Sandow did, & in the way he did it (he sold fitness instruction books the way our contemporaries sell on-line personal training).</p><p>There are a number of famous films on this disc, including <i>The Great Train Robbery</i>, but for me the somewhat disturbing highlight is one of the most memorable films I've ever seen, <i>Electrocuting an Elephant</i> from 1903. I first saw it decades ago, when I lived in Boston, in a program at the Museum of Fine Arts. I have no idea what the theme of the program was & I can't remember anything else that was on it. I'm not sure I realized this particular short was from Edison & my recollection is that it was played in ahistorical silence. But there was definitely a change in the atmosphere of the auditorium as the film unrolled in its misty shades of oneiric grays. An elephant, wearing some sort of harness, is walked over to a stand. After a moment, smoke starts to curl up from the bottom of her feet. Slowly, slowly, she lists to the left & then falls on her side. She twitches slightly. A man walks in front of her, between us & the camera; the closeness of his torso is unexpected in a film this early, & almost is like an iris-wipe of the screen.</p><p>It's all slow & silent & gray, like a nightmare image that you can't shake even in the brightest hours of your waking day. I was amazed to rediscover it when I first watched this set. It turns out Topsy was an elephant who had killed people: one (according to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocuting_an_Elephant" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>) was a drunken spectator who burnt her trunk with a lit cigar; according to the notes on the set, he was an employee of the circus who fed her a lit cigarette, & in either case I say he got what he deserved, but as is sadly the usual case, the poor animal had to suffer for the stupidity of people. It was filmed for commercial exploitation but is an unsettling piece of found poetry. Rest in power, Topsy.</p><div>Then I watched the Criterion DVD of <i><a href="https://www.criterion.com/films/29389-king-of-jazz" target="_blank">King of Jazz</a></i> from 1930. I bought it when I was transitioning from DVD to Blu-Ray, & I wish I had bought the Blu-Ray, but oh well. This is an early Technicolor film, using their two-strip method, so it is strong (very strong) on red & green & not so much on blue. The colors are used deliberately; the whole thing is very <i>designed </i>in a fascinating way. The titular king is Paul Whiteman, best remembered now for commissioning & premiering Gershwin's <i>Rhapsody in Blue</i>, but at the time a general leader in popular music, including his version of jazz. Sadly but typically, the Black contributions to jazz (which of course means most of jazz) are overlooked here. Nonetheless it's a very enjoyable film; the musical numbers are interspersed with little pre-Code comedy bits which, almost surprisingly, are still pretty snappy. This is a Criterion release so of course there are lots of fascinating ancillary materials. There were attempts to come up with a narrative, but the chubby bald Whiteman was too unlikely as a romantic lead (on film, at least; I make no judgments about how he would succeed in life) so we have just a series of numbers, a random succession of scenes which holds up better than most narratives would. There is an overriding "here's Paul Whiteman's scrapbook" idea which loosely, very loosely, links things together. There are early sound cartoons interpolated in (including offensive racial stereotypes of "African natives"). Revealing period limitations aside, quite an enjoyable film.</div><p>Next up was <i>The Midnight Girl</i> from 1925. Describing the plot, which is already slipping from my memory, would make it sound more fun than it actually was: rival singers, tempestuous divas, a philandering father (played by a goateed & alarmingly sexy Bela Lugosi) & a simp son both in love with the same woman, a refugee from the dread Bolsheviks who has to work as a nightclub singer. . . . I couldn't help thinking that a director other than Wildred Noy (whom I'd never heard of, apparently for good reason) might have made something more striking out of all this. (Where is Louis Feuillade when you need him?) It all gets tied up in an improbably happy ending, with marital love & fidelity established even among the unlikeliest pairs. How disappointing.</p><p>That was followed by <i>Something for Everyone</i>, the feature-film directorial debut of Hal Prince, starring Michael York & Angela Lansbury. I had been curious about this film for a long time, maybe only because I remembered the summary by (I assume) Pauline Kael back in the day, in the <i>New Yorker</i> movie listings: "Nothing much for anyone, really. . . ." It turns out I don't disagree. York plays an outsider who comes to a small town ruled socially by an impoverished aristocrat (Lansbury). He proceeds to insinuate himself into the household's graces, mostly through seduction & murder, & as with <i>The Midnight Girl</i>, that makes the film sound more fun than it actually is. It's all weirdly unfocused: except for Lansbury, the aristocrats are dead-minded & conventional (&, improbably, opposed to any Nazis still lingering in the countryside) but we also seem meant to admire them, or maybe just her. There is a nouveau-riche couple with a marriageable daughter who are screeching social-climbing horrors. Why caricature them like that unless you're siding with the so-called aristocracy, but why side with the aristocracy? What do I care if they get to move back into their traditional home, a fancy castle? It's called a black comedy, but it doesn't cut very deep, & doesn't seem very black or very comic. The film seems too pleased with its own sense of daring, though it's not really shocking at all. In fairness, it probably was more daring in 1970, when it was released, as there is a fairly sympathetic portrayal of an affair between York & the Countess's son. (York is also sleeping with a number of others, including the daughter of the nouveau riche couple, so, you know, complications ensue.) I was reminded vaguely of Pasolini's <i>Teorema</i>, also about a handsome stranger who seduces & upsets a household, but I saw that film so many years ago that I can't make a more specific comparison. Time to re-watch that, I guess.</p><p>Next up was Robert Altman's <i>A Wedding</i>, one of my legacy Netflix films. Netflix told us just to keep whatever discs we had when they shut down their disc rental service. They also said they might send us up to 10 discs from our queue once the service ended; presumably they found other ways to get rid of their inventory, as I never received any additional discs. May I just say I was increasingly annoyed with them as the end approached? They made a decision based purely on greed (disc rental is still a viable business, just not as profitable as it once was; there was an implication that only clueless old people were still renting discs, but actually it was mostly movie fans who wanted a more diverse selection than streaming gives you). But they kept marketing "Hey, didn't we have some great times?" It's like someone breaking up with you who insists on getting together to talk about how great things used to be. And . . . <i>you're breaking up with me, just go away!</i></p><p>Anyway. I had not seen Altman's film since its release in 1978. I think it suffered a bit at the time from comparisons to its great predecessor, <i>Nashville</i>. This movie also involves numerous story lines that weave in & out, but it's smaller in scope & implication than <i>Nashville</i>. Nonetheless it's a wonderful film, & I even managed to watch it all in one night. Lillian Gish makes one of her last film appearances, as a family matriarch who dies quietly upstairs while the family is at the church. She hovers beatifically over the film, or such was my recollection; it turns out, on a re-viewing, that her character is more ambiguous than I had remembered. She is a gracious old lady, but also, in her gentle way, sternly controlling & hypocritically attentive to outward proprieties; early on, she has an affectionate scene with one of the family's Black employees, in which she gently tells him that during the wedding reception he should remain distant with her daughter – the one whom, as she knows, he's having an affair with; she also let another daughter marry an Italian man on the condition that his family never come to the house. There are lots of storylines that are only hinted at, or given us by implication. Things are unexpected. There is a fiery car crash (which I had completely forgotten), but the victims are not who we thought they were. There is a scene in which a gay classmate is trying to sober up the groom by hauling him into the shower; it looks like a seduction, but it's not. And the gay classmate is wearing the standard baggy white boxer shorts, while the straight groom is wearing colored briefs of a type that were, at the time, not usual with straight men. The film is full of unexpected twists like that, even in the details. Carol Burnett has a major role as the mother of the bride, a woman in a dead-end marriage; she brings to it her Chaplinesque depth of pathos.</p><p>Next up was <i>The Silent Enemy</i>, a late (1930) silent film, filmed in Canada, telling a story of the Ojibwe people before Europeans arrived on this continent. The film, directed by HP Carver & produced by W Douglas Burden & William C Chanler, inspired by Merian Cooper's <i>Chang</i>, is clearly a labor of love, an attempt to tell a native story in an authentic & respectful way. The set carefully notes, though, that it is a product of its time & needs to be taken as such; the implication that the Indian nations are vanishing is one assumption that no longer holds. And though all the performers are indigenous peoples, they are not all of the Ojibwe nation (the distinguished-looking man who plays the Chief, who has a brief spoken prologue in an otherwise silent film, is Sioux), & the driving forces behind the camera are white. I had seen the film years ago, but I don't remember its being as beautiful to look at as it is in the Flicker Alley <a href="https://flickeralley.com/products/455251843-the-silent-enemy" target="_blank">blu-ray</a>, which is what I watched this time. Scene after scene is just gorgeous; you could print & frame many of the shots (the cinematography is by Marcel Le Picard). The scenes of animals in the wild are stunning. The story is fairly standard: there is an elderly Chief, with an attractive daughter, & there are two main rivals for both her affection & leadership in the community: a studly hunter & a nefarious medicine man (the villain in these tales is so often the medicine man, or the high priest, or some similar religious functionary). Winter is coming & the group must deal with imminent starvation (the "silent enemy" of the title). But you don't really watch this for the storyline; it's more about the native performers (rather than the characters they're playing), & for the stunning images. FlickerAlley, as usual, did a beautiful job with the set; there are two different musical scores, including a new one from the Monte Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, & a commentary track in the form of a recorded conversation between the great Kevin Brownlow & W Douglas Burden about the making of the film.</p><p>Now that Netflix has abandoned film lovers, I have turned to my local library as a source of movie rentals, & I ended the month watching <i>Yellow Submarine</i>, the 1968 animated feature starring the Beatles & some of their songs. I had seen it many, many years ago on TV. The animation is striking, with vivid use of color, & those colors are absolutely glowing. The look is very reminiscent of its time (the iconic year 1968, to be exact) but also manages to look still fresh rather than dated. The general attitude is also of the period, with a sort of optimism & cheer (<i>All you need is love!</i>) that can leave us, in our time, feeling either wistful or incredulous. The storyline is piffle, but it's not really about the story, which is mostly an excuse for striking visuals & the songs. I'm an odd age for the Beatles; I was too young to be a fan at the time, so I came to them in later, in bits & pieces (I would still say I am far from a maven of their music, though I like it). The film does a striking segment featuring my favorite song by them, <i>Eleanor Rigby</i>, which I've been singing to myself, & sometimes out loud, for days now. \<i>Ah, look at all the lonely people. . . .</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-71727858749995579002024-03-04T05:00:00.000-08:002024-03-04T05:00:00.344-08:00Museum Monday 2024/10<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbYqVO-Aa8S7lufn-8FZP2xyPDr1G5lGUez5kp8kmvGqgsNzWD0GPNkmdY9mvStk-l88l1p-PrDaQwzqoss7t95oP14kO9kwmKoNT175C7KWJOmxjGyCuY-ZUQU3XuhHZz6eE_nn6OTwPmiINHc2U68PHKneG2K_bYA83hDC7ag9yRxwGe3dnynA/s3264/P6090102.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbYqVO-Aa8S7lufn-8FZP2xyPDr1G5lGUez5kp8kmvGqgsNzWD0GPNkmdY9mvStk-l88l1p-PrDaQwzqoss7t95oP14kO9kwmKoNT175C7KWJOmxjGyCuY-ZUQU3XuhHZz6eE_nn6OTwPmiINHc2U68PHKneG2K_bYA83hDC7ag9yRxwGe3dnynA/w400-h300/P6090102.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>detail of </i>Virgin & Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist <i>by Sandro Botticelli, as seen at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in their 2017 exhibit </i><a href="https://mfa.org/exhibitions/botticelli-and-the-search-for-the-divine" target="_blank">Botticelli and the Search for the Divine</a></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-10828064805460529102024-03-03T05:00:00.000-08:002024-03-03T05:00:00.133-08:00What I Watched: January 2024<p>This entry is sort of analogous to <a href="https://reverberatehills.blogspot.com/2024/01/what-i-read-in-2023.html" target="_blank">What I Read</a>, only monthly rather than annual. I hesitated before writing this, as though I watch movies almost every night, my viewing habits are, like so many things in life, far from optimal. One thing that happened to me during the pandemic was that without evening performances to go to, I reverted to my natural state as a morning person. I mentioned this to a friend of mine & there was an awkward pause until she finally said that I didn't really seem like a morning person. So I will clarify that I'm not bright, chipper, & rarin' to go before sunrise; that just tends to be when I wake up, often feeling more tired than when I went to bed. A result of early rising, or at least waking, is that I tend to fall asleep fairly early. I lie in bed, turn off the lights, & turn on the movie, & nature takes its course. It can take me three days to watch a film that's barely 90 minutes. (This has nothing to do with whether I'm interested in what I'm watching; the body does what it wants & I am just a temporary dweller in this meat-house.) This fragmented viewing works better for some films than others. But I realized years ago that if I were going to watch movies, I would need to watch them in parts. Not ideal, but reality seldom is. There are some films where it makes a difference, & some I try to watch in one sitting, but that requires a lot of planning.</p><p>I usually realize when I'm drifting off & can stop the disc or go back & re-watch what I missed, which is sometimes much more substantial than I thought. It reminds me of something I read years ago by Joyce Carol Oates, about how a novelist carefully plots out significant details & hones her sentences & does, in general, deep work on her narrative & its expression, only to have it end up in the slippery grasp of a drowsy reader whose eyes may skim over these labored-for beauties as exhaustion takes over.</p><p>So on we go. . . .</p><div style="text-align: left;">During one of my unending & usually vain attempts to clean & organize, I moved a lot of DVDs & came across some Gilbert & Sullivan operas from Opera Australia that I had not seen in many years. I watched their <i>HMS Pinafore</i> on New Year's Eve & it was so much fun that I decided to start the new year with <i>Pirates of Penzance</i>, which was perhaps less fun. I mean, it was certainly enough fun. I'm always very happy to hear Gilbert & Sullivan, though neither <i>Pinafore </i>nor <i>Pirates </i>is one of my favorites. Anthony Warlow as the Pirate King seems to be doing a Johnny-Depp-as-Captain-Jack-Sparrow thing that for me at least hasn't aged all that well. David Hobson is very good as Frederic. Taryn Fiebig as Mabel, John Bolton-Wood as the model of a modern major general, & Suzanne Johnston as Ruth are all appealing. For some reason they interpolate the patter trio from <i>Ruddygore </i>(<i>My Eyes Are Fully Open to my Awful Situation</i>), which mostly made me wish I were watching <i>Ruddygore</i>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Next I had been thinking about <i>A Florida Enchantment</i> from 1915, which I had seen many years ago. I wanted to refresh my memory. It was included as part of a set (possibly now out of print) titled <i>The Origins of Film</i>, issued jointly by the Smithsonian & the Library of Congress (a major though perhaps surprising repository of early American film; they were stored there in the form of photographs on paper rolls as part of the copyright process). One disc has <i>African-American Cinema I & II</i>, the second <i>America's First Women Filmmakers</i> & <i>Origins of the Gangster Film</i>, but it was the third disc I was after, with <i>Origins of American Animation</i> & <i>Origins of the Fantasy Feature</i>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Of course I had to watch the cartoons first (by the way, my viewing of Thunderbean's recent complete <i><a href="https://thunderbeanshop.com/product/flip-the-frog-blu-ray/" target="_blank">Flip the Frog</a></i>, on which I spent most of last November, is a bit out of the purview of this monthly survey but I recommend it highly). The LOC/Smithsonian disc contains 21 animated shorts plus two fragments, which cover the wide, weird, & wonderful world of early animation, from classics by Winsor McKay & George Herriman to period pieces like the Katzenjammer Kids as well as stop-motion animation & silhouette work. I could watch them all again now, & maybe I will.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The first film on the <i>Fantasy </i>disc is 1914's <i>Patchwork Girl of Oz</i>, written & produced by the entrepreneurial & energetic L Frank Baum himself, based on his own novel. Scraps (the Patchwork Girl, here played by the Frenchman Pierre Couderc, who was, according to the set's booklet, 17 at the time) is a lively character & one of the most beloved denizens in Oz. Ojo, the Munchkin boy who helped make her who she is by surreptitiously adding certain magical powders, particularly Cleverness, to what was designed to be a mostly mindless servant for the wife of the magician Dr Pipt, is played by Violet MacMillan. There's no real reason why a teenage boy is being played by a teenage girl, except it was sort of a stage convention, possibly having to do with the marketability of showing young women in tight trousers. (I have heard there was also, for similar reasons, a stage convention of having troops of soldiers played by young women, which, I've seen suggested, was one of Baum's inspirations for General Jinjur's female army in <i>The Land of Oz</i>.) MacMillan, in both build & behavior, is completely unconvincing as a teenage boy, but then, given her incessant grinning & overly broad gestures, she isn't particularly convincing as an actual girl, either. She has the kind of round-faced, curly-haired looks that were desirable then but now just look fairly banal & uninteresting (you can see why someone at the time thought she should go on stage, but I doubt anyone would think that now). The film is clever & you get to see the Wookie, among other improbable creatures, & it remains fun to watch.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>A Florida Enchantment</i>, like the <i>Patchwork Girl</i>, is part of the movement from very short films to ones that are feature-length (about an hour each). Both were based on novels & <i>Enchantment </i>was also a stage play. One of the characters is a stereotypical Southern Colonel, with the extravagant white moustache & the pointed goatee & spotless white suit, & I suspect the source had a lot of material about the "new South" that had to be eliminated, which is probably just as well, as though there are a number of fairly prominent Black roles, they are all servants & all played by white performers in blackface who amp up the stereotypical gestures & attitudes. The continuing source of interest in this film is not race but gender. This is the "fantasy" part: the plot involves some magic seeds that turn women into men & men into women, without changing their outward appearance too much. Our leading lady, Lillian Travers (played by Edith Storey, who is the best thing in the movie), is frustrated by her flirtatious fiancé, Dr Cassadene. She discovers the magic seeds in a box in the Florida house where she's staying, & swallows one. Here's where Storey, & the story, shine. She is very sharp & amusing, hilarious & provocative, as a man in a woman's body. Eventually she cuts her hair short & puts on male attire, as does her Black servant, who has also eaten one of the seeds, & they come back to town under different names. It's not entirely clear why she needs to switch to a male appearance, as all the attractive young women seem <i>extremely pleased</i> by her forceful but charming attentions while she's still dressed as a woman. But dressing as the man she now is inside allows her to become engaged to one of the young women (though one of the unresolved questions of the plot is: she presumably hasn't acquired male genitals, so what happens on the wedding night when her bride discovers that? I'm not saying a happy ending wouldn't be in store for them, just that it wasn't clear quite what was happening there.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">S/he reveals the secret of the seeds to Dr Cassadene, who tests them himself. Only he behaves not quite as a woman but as a stereotypically effeminate man, with swaying hips & limp wrists & flowing garments (eventually he goes into full-on female drag – though is it really drag if he's now a woman inside?). Contrary to his fiancée's social success, he is now an outcast, mostly laughed at & mocked both behind his back & to his face, until he's abruptly under police surveillance & in physical danger from a pursuing mob. I could not remember how this plot ended, which is one of the reasons I wanted to rewatch it, so (OK, spoiler alert for a film that is over a century old) this Gordian knot is untied with that Freudian-era deus ex machina, "it was all a dream!"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Cassadene is played by Sidney Drew, & his performance is a drawback to the film. For one thing, he is way too old for the part, looking more like Lillian's father than her fiancé. Someone like Cary Grant would be believable there, but Drew is not; he is not very attractive & resembles a young but even plainer version of Edward Everett Horton. I could not figure out why he was cast until I read the set's booklet & discovered what I should have been able to figure out, given the way the world works: he was also the film's director. (& he was also uncle to Lionel, John, & Ethel Barrymore, & had a long stage career, often playing sparring spouses with his real-life wife.) The film is interesting if a bit unsatisfying; its exploration of gendered ways of being still gives it interest, even if it's a bit more conventional in its underlying attitudes than we might like these days.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Then I moved on to a couple of Marx Brothers' movies. Their first five films, for Paramount, are my favorites, which is a pretty standard opinion (many of the wildest films of the early 1930s seem to come from Paramount; I'd love to read more about that studio). A lot of people really love their first post- Paramount film, <i>A Night at the Opera</i>; I am not one of them. It's fine, but seems like a watered down version of their earlier material, & I'm not really convinced by their benevolent interest in the uninteresting young lovers (Zeppo should have stuck around). <i>A Day at the Races</i> I have not seen in so long that I have no comment on it. I should also take another look at their later films. But for now I stuck with a revisit of their first movie, <i>The Cocoanuts</i> (I don't know why they spell it that way, but they do).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The thing that is often criticized about <i>The Cocoanuts</i> is the reason I love it: as a filmed version of their stage show, & as an early sound film (when it required an ingenious director to replicate some of the fluidity of silent cinema with the bulky early sound cameras), it is very stage-bound. I love being able to see something that is similar to what my grandparents would have seen on the stage (this is literal: my maternal grandparents saw the Marx Brothers on Broadway). I love the clunky musical numbers, & period things like having the hotel bellboys played by young women (as with the casting in <i>The Patchwork Girl</i>, producers at the time seemed to seize any opportunity to feature young women in tight male garments). Even the plot, which involves, among other things, shady real estate dealings in Florida, as well as high-society thieves (including a sharp Kay Francis) & standard young lovers (including aspiring architect Bob Adams, played with high-pitched blandness by the unattractive Oscar Shaw) are so much of their time as to acquire a patina of antiquated charm. Harpo's hair is still pinkish, as it was on stage; it was in their next film, <i>Animal Crackers</i>, that it was switched to the more visually striking blond. Harpo is an odd combination of cherub & satyr; he doesn't seem dishonest & lecherous, though he is both those things, because he is so strangely ethereal in his affect. Chico is one of the few visible remnants of the long often ignoble American tradition of ethnic comedy. Groucho's riffs are by now as well known as scripture, I can admire his delivery & internally appreciate the comedy, but I don't really laugh at them. It's strange that a troupe celebrated for anarchy & improvisation is now, for us, set in cinematic stone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Then, from the same set of the Marx Brothers' Paramount films, I watched <i>Monkey Business</i>. I had wanted to watch this a few months ago, while I was lying in bed with COVID, but couldn't locate the set. I guess I hadn't watched this one as recently as <i>The Cocoanuts</i>, because I had forgotten quite a bit of it so, yes, this time I did laugh outwardly as well in inwardly. It's a sharp film, mostly on shipboard (the Brothers are stowaways on a liner) but ending in a gangster's mansion. Thelma Todd has a memorable role; her unfortunate early death came just a few years later.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The month ended with a re-watch of Louis Feuillade's <i>Fantômas</i>, a serial made up of five films released in 1913 - 1914. It was hugely influential on subsequent gangster / espionage cinema (my Kino set, featuring the restoration by Jacques Champreaux, has an interesting commentary track by film historian David Kalat, exploring the history & influence of the films). If you've seen Feuillade's <i>Les Vampires</i>, you know what to expect: masterful & enigmatic criminals, severed body parts appearing suddenly in trunks or valises or behind plaster walls that suddenly start to bleed; semi-surreal crimes that seem less about the loot (usually some jewels) than demonstrating an overarching & invisible power; a criminal structure seething just below the world of bourgeois respectability. If you've seen other serials of this time, you can really appreciate Feuillade's achievement in sustaining his enigmatic mood, lending plausibility to bizarre & far-fetched crimes & coincidences. The films are consistently absorbing & entertaining over their 5+ hours, & the views of Parisian streets & interiors from over a century ago are fascinating both visually & historically. I did not like the soundtrack to this edition, which is credited to Sonimage. It's mostly a compilation, but varies wildly in tone & effectiveness; often it is overly emotional, insistent & intrusive. The thing I dislike about it the most, though, & I have seen this occasionally with other silent films, is that they add some "realistic" sound effects: not dialogue, but birds chirping, horse hooves clopping, theater audiences murmuring & applauding. I find these effects jarring. It's easy enough to get absorbed in the world of a silent film, to accept without demur that the only sound we'll hear is music; it seems weirdly intrusive to include traffic sounds or whatnot, a violation of the oneiric sound world of silent cinema.</div>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-27839087722887406532024-03-02T12:06:00.000-08:002024-03-02T12:06:39.208-08:00San Francisco Performances: Lawrence Brownlee & Kevin Miller<p>It's always a pleasure to welcome Lawrence Brownlee back to the Bay, particularly in recital (this is his third for <a href="https://sfperformances.org/index.html" target="_blank">San Francisco Performances</a>), as I believe his most recent appearance at the Opera (just across the War Memorial complex from Herbst Theater, where he performed on Thursday) was in that unworthy vehicle <i>Don Pasquale</i>, which is my nominee for Worst Opera Libretto of All. Brownlee was accompanied by pianist Kevin Miller, & provided a wide-ranging evening with a dazzling number of long-held as well as soaringly high notes. He must have been exhausted by the end, particularly as he mentioned jet-lag from just flying in from the United Arab Emirates, but he gave no signs of any exhaustion, physical or vocal, & the enthusiastic audience was clearly energized by the art & athleticism on display.</p><p>He opened with a set of five lieder by Joseph Marx, one of those late Romantic composers who eschewed Modernist innovations, preferring to dwell among the increasingly old-fashioned (at the time) dappled uncertainties & tumescent longings of the last century's turning. The songs were lovely & unfamiliar, though their subject matter was certainly reminiscent of Lied-Land: linden blossoms & longing, nights of love perfumed by roses, dell-dancing sprites, nostalgia & hope. The set opened with <i>Nocturne</i>, proceeded to <i>Selige Nacht</i> (<i>Blissful Night</i>), then <i>Die Elfe</i> (<i>The Elf</i>), <i>Christbaum </i>(<i>Christmas Tree</i>) – a recollection of childhood memories of Christmases past, with a delicately icy accompaniment reminiscent of traditional carols hovering over it – & finally <i>Hat dich die Liebe berührt</i> (<i>If Love Has Touched You</i>), ending on a note of personal affirmation.</p><p>After this set Brownlee spoke to the audience; he is a genial & chatty host. He gave us the background for the second set of songs, which would complete the first half: during the pandemic, as he considered new projects, & in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, he conceived the idea that became his recent album <i><a href="https://www.lawrencebrownlee.com/albums/rising" target="_blank">Rising</a></i>, a collection of new songs by Black American composers based on Harlem Renaissance texts (at least, those in the public domain; for copyright reasons, he wasn't able to include Zora Neale Hurston). For Thursday's concert he added a number related to but not officially part of the project, a setting by Jeremiah Evans of Langston Hughes's <i>April Rain Song</i>, a lyrical evocation of Spring showers that formed a nice aesthetic contrast to the sloppy weather that has been sweeping through the Bay Area the past few days.</p><p>We also heard <i>Peace</i>, an imploring invocation by Jasmine Barnes to a text by Georgia Douglas Johnson, <i>I Know My Soul</i>, a stirring setting by Brandon Spencer of a text by Claude McKay, <i>Vocalise III</i> by Carlos Simon, a lively & tricky number that Brownlee introduced with a pause, saying he needed to start counting; <i>Beauty That Is Never Old</i> & <i>The Gift to Sing</i>, two settings by Damien L Sneed of texts by James Weldon Johnson, the first an intimate evocation of the sheltering strength of personal love & the second a hopeful proclamation of the power of art, in this case song, to see us through life & its many difficulties. Then we had <i>Romance </i>by Shawn E Okpebholo, a setting of sweet & erotic words by Claude McKay, which Brownlee introduced by saying that while tenors like him can vocally <i>go </i>high, they don't always <i>live </i>high, but this song required him to live up there: again, there was no sense of strain as he stayed up in those heights, & that elevated tessitura gave a heady & on-rushing sense of romantic passion to the setting. Finally we had a setting by Joel Thompson of <i>My People</i> by Langston Hughes, a Whitman-like celebratory catalogue celebrating Black American life that included a wonderful sort of laughing chorus at the end. It wasn't necessary to follow along in the texts, so exemplary & telling was the singer's diction.</p><p>It was during one of the quieter moments of this final set that someone in the audience dropped I don't know what, but it made a very loud sound as it landed. Other than that audience annoyances were mostly of the "very excited" variety, as in the two old biddies a few rows behind me who kept squealing at the long-held high notes. The most egregious audience offense, though, was the old clown who tried to sneak into the seat behind me during intermission with his dog. Yes, a goddam dog. & no, this was not a service animal (he didn't even claim it was an "emotional support" animal, not that I accept that that is a real thing that needs to be foisted on other people, particularly in a concert hall). I cannot even begin to understand the sense of entitlement there. I made it clear that his goddam dog was not welcome near me.</p><p>So now we reconvene for the second half of the recital, in which Brownlee explored the Italian operatic repertory for which he is famous. He coupled an aria with a song by four composers: Verdi, Donizetti, Rossini, & Bellini. Brownlee of course is celebrated for his mastery of the bel canto line; he has amazing breath control, but he also can summon an expressive quality, often plangent, that shapes the virile core of his sound. I should also mention the attentive & powerful accompaniment by Miller throughout; there was a lot of byplay between the two performers & they clearly have a simpatico working relationship. From Verdi we had <i>Ad una Stella</i> (<i>To a Star</i>), followed by a ringing & witty version of <i>La donna è mobile</i>, the Duke's ironic aria from <i>Rigoletto</i>. From Donizetti we had the song <i>Me voglio fa'na casa</i> (<i>I Want to Build a House</i>), followed by <i>Allegro io son</i> (<i>I'm so happy</i>) from <i>Rita</i>. Before introducing the Rossini duo, Brownlee noted how important that composer has been to his career, &, as it was Leap Day, wished him a happy birthday. The Rossini song was <i>La lontananza</i> (<i>The distance</i>), one of Rossini's <i>Sins of Old Age</i>, & the aria was <i>D'ogni piu sacro impegno</i> (<i>Then, let all faith be broken</i>) from <i>L'occasione fa il ladro</i>; as with the Donizetti, it was enjoyable to hear something a bit unusual rather than one of the more obvious greatest hits from this composer. The final numbers from our Italian quartet were Bellini's <i>La ricordanza</i> (<i>Recollection</i>) & <i>Nel furor delle tempeste</i> (<i>In the fury of the tempests</i>) from <i>Il pirata</i>. Brownlee & Miller reminded us why Bellini was famed for flowing & beautiful melodies. There was one encore, <i>Someone's Crying Lord, Come by Here</i>, whose pleas for heavenly help for the afflicted are accompanied by a surprisingly jaunty tune. It was a rich & generous evening that Brownlee & Miller gave us.</p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-58947887253073455082024-03-01T05:00:00.000-08:002024-03-01T05:00:00.259-08:00Friday Photo 2024/9<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Ljog3TPPwTd9aM90BzlZ0mb0vtYgIz0Aezha68iE6MCOyYBVtpzNa53VvZvANUXLf-Y6r3o6918VSBLARlbc5LwxVR5frhWJLP_3aotPaUud9Sif9K_huvus-b0ovE4v5I8ygxbF7HvcKyqGlg-Wp45_KH-Tkx3-8OpPc5Es9z_CYdiifBClDQ/s3874/IMG_20240222_104454339_HDR%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2920" data-original-width="3874" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Ljog3TPPwTd9aM90BzlZ0mb0vtYgIz0Aezha68iE6MCOyYBVtpzNa53VvZvANUXLf-Y6r3o6918VSBLARlbc5LwxVR5frhWJLP_3aotPaUud9Sif9K_huvus-b0ovE4v5I8ygxbF7HvcKyqGlg-Wp45_KH-Tkx3-8OpPc5Es9z_CYdiifBClDQ/w400-h301/IMG_20240222_104454339_HDR%20(1).jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>streaked tulips, February 2024</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-57023274753153019762024-02-28T05:00:00.000-08:002024-02-28T05:00:00.177-08:00Poem of the Week 2024/9<div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Lot's Wife</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: x-small;">"In that rich, oil-bearing region, it is probable that Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of asphalt – not salt."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-size: x-small;"> – Sir William Whitebait, Member of the Institute of Mining Engineers</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">I long for the desolate valleys,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Where the rivers of asphalt flow,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">For here in the streets of the living,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Where my footsteps run to and fro,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Though my smile be never so friendly,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">I offend wherever I go.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Yes, here in the land of the living,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Though a marriage be fairly sprung,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">And the heart be loving and giving,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">In the end it is sure to go wrong.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Then take me to the valley of asphalt,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">And turn me to a river of stone,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">That no tree may shift to my sighing,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Or breezes convey my moan.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">– Stevie Smith</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Smith's poem takes off from the familiar Bible story of Lot's wife (in <i>Genesis</i> 19, specifically verse 26; Lot, his wife, & their two daughters are warned to flee their hometown, Sodom, as the Lord is going to blast it for its iniquities; they are instructed to head into the mountains (Lot negotiates the Lord down to fleeing to a nearby city) & not to look back as they flee, but Lot's wife looks back, for motives not given – nostalgia? vindictiveness? forgetfulness & habit? curiosity? – & is turned into a pillar of salt). More precisely, her poem takes off from a strange & rather funny remark by an apparently distinguished member of the Institute of Mining Engineers, who knows the story but doesn't really seem to grasp, or maybe just take seriously, its punitive religious implications. To him, knowledgeable in oil-rich Middle Eastern geography, asphalt is a more likely natural end result than salt (though the transformation is not a natural result). Asphalt is a sticky residue left over when crude oil is processed; it seems like something that would form a pool rather than a pillar, but maybe that is Sir William's concession to Divine power.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The speaker seems to be a woman in some modern-day Sodom (perhaps London, where Smith spent her life) who would very much prefer to flee to some desolate waste land, a feeling prompted not by righteous religious wrath but by social awkwardness. She means well, or says she does, & greets others with a friendly smile, but something isn't going right, as offense follows her wherever she goes. She seems as if she would fit in: her rhymes are clear & regular, her diction mostly direct, though with a poetic air about it (the desolate valleys & rivers of asphalt). Perhaps that is a result, or perhaps it is the cause, of her ill-fitting-in quality.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The second stanza fleshes out our sense of her: she seems to be married, & middle-aged; old enough, in any case, not only to be married but to have had the marriage "go wrong" in some unspecified way (does that signal a separation? or just average discontent?). The second line, <i>Though a marriage be fairly sprung</i>, is a wittily packed line. Was the marriage sprung on her in some way? Or should we give more weight to the modifying <i>fairly</i> there – it was all in the fair & normal course of things. Or does <i>fairly sprung</i> mean the marriage is pretty far along, as in, it's lasted this long, & so far maybe not so good but OK? <i>Sprung </i>is the past tense of the verb to spring, but there's also a reminiscence of the noun Spring, meaning the season often associated in poetry with eager young love; when this flexible word appears in the past tense, is there an aura of disappointed maturity conveyed indirectly, almost subliminally? Another meaning of <i>sprung</i>, specific to the UK, according to the dictionary I looked at, is of furniture that uses coiled metal springs for support: a mattress, for example. Is there a glancing version of "our sex life is OK but things still aren't quite right" here? The rhyming lines in this poem change from stanza to stanza (in Stanza 1, lines 2, 4, & 6; in Stanza 2, lines 1 & 3; in Stanza 3, lines 2 & 4). So <i>sprung </i>is not officially one of the rhyming lines in its stanza, but there is an echo in sound with the last word of the stanza, <i>wrong</i>: <i>sprung </i>/ <i>wrong </i>are close enough to a rhyme so that we notice the dissonance of their not-quite alignment, a verbal half-echo which strengthens the force & meaning of <i>wrong</i>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Perhaps Lot's Wife had had enough of Sodom, the Lord, & Lot, & deliberately looked back, counting on Jehovah's punishment as her way out; in the final stanza of Smith's poem, the speaker appeals not to an angry God but to some unnamed power to take her away from her awkward life in the awkward city. Perhaps it is just wishful thinking. In either case it is unlikely that anything will happen to the speaker, which adds to the wistful air of the poem. But perhaps <i>wistful </i>isn't quite strong enough, as her desire to escape – to be not dead but transformed into something strange, (perhaps as a reflection of the inner strangeness she feels)– leads her into the most dramatic & even extravagant lines in the poem. So far things have been rueful but mostly average in diction & tone. But now we are dropped in the valley of asphalt, & she wants to become a River of Stone: a powerful & contradictory image. I think here she means not lava or magma, stone or potential stone so blazingly hot that it is liquid; I think she means something impossible in nature, something that is both flowing like a river but hard & solid & set in place like rocks. Clearly we are in a poetic realm here, however bleak; this wish is not a real solution to her discontent, because there is no real solution. (Perhaps her desires have always been contradictory.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This valley of asphalt isn't completely desolate: the natural world appears in the form of trees & breezes (again, the slippage in sound between <i>tree </i>& <i>breezes </i>helps keep the poem a bit off-kilter as we hear it in our minds). But the speaker isn't expecting happiness there, either; she mostly wishes to be apart from other beings. She wants the trees unaffected by her sighing, the breezes free of her moans. Sighing & moaning will, it seems, continue, but in the valley of asphalt they will not affect her surroundings, as they do in her city life, where even if her sighs & moans are ignored by her husband or others, the very fact of being ignored makes them an inescapable part of her feelings of awkwardness & separation. She wishes to end up like one of the wronged nymphs in Ovid's <i>Metamorphosis</i>, a permanently lamenting & isolated part of the landscape, a striking monument to her own melancholy sense of otherness. The Bible & Ovid's great epic of transformative myths are two of the major source-books for English-language poetry; with a light touch Smith here combines the two, although the Bible is stripped of its deity & the metamorphic escape is only wishful thinking; the speaker's sense of unhappy awkwardness remains.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I took this poem from the <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&ref_=search_f_hp&tn=collected%20poems&an=stevie%20smith" target="_blank"><i>Collected Poems</i></a> of Stevie Smith.</div>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-3224795540755358332024-02-26T05:00:00.000-08:002024-02-26T05:00:00.189-08:00Museum Monday 2024/9<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiegmQ6P0Nu6z4LPCu_wfujx2wYpkSsLqRkY8MshrlHGWX9h-26JC3N5BBl7itDpxZAdtt0_2UUwJuKW7BQ54zIDGdAqAn3Qm53abKieiEfHgL4WlS3fuE21FFhLgSxQ0H8tS0lh_A0aLRj-XSIvZsah1GrD-VXVsJ3PBS1OAegHwhD995y16nmPQ/s4000/IMG_20240222_141000923.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiegmQ6P0Nu6z4LPCu_wfujx2wYpkSsLqRkY8MshrlHGWX9h-26JC3N5BBl7itDpxZAdtt0_2UUwJuKW7BQ54zIDGdAqAn3Qm53abKieiEfHgL4WlS3fuE21FFhLgSxQ0H8tS0lh_A0aLRj-XSIvZsah1GrD-VXVsJ3PBS1OAegHwhD995y16nmPQ/w300-h400/IMG_20240222_141000923.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>detail of</i> Iconography / A Hopeful Truth <i>by Tawny Chatmon, part of the exhibit</i> <a href="https://www.moadsf.org/exhibitions/spectrum-on-color-contemporary-art" target="_blank">Spectrum: On Color & Contemporary Art</a><i>, current at MOAD in San Francisco</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-24167827179780313842024-02-23T05:00:00.000-08:002024-02-23T05:00:00.148-08:00Friday Photo 2024/8<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcfQhYjw1TQxTSqPeS3gPUwbgH9x1X6jw_x8wBb59ZVBdmg0kpu2B5x9ulidKSDZxTHp9cgx0yBqgZWd5HQ2BfzZw9Rw74AszIKx6sMXzmzCQZJHNdgLFzT6hiZ0uIgyXGYBg84Z6mjVz9YIlTMqayojKPTJ8suR065LeOlMvz7_30sZ1DqlvMOA/s4000/IMG_20240210_171331530.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcfQhYjw1TQxTSqPeS3gPUwbgH9x1X6jw_x8wBb59ZVBdmg0kpu2B5x9ulidKSDZxTHp9cgx0yBqgZWd5HQ2BfzZw9Rw74AszIKx6sMXzmzCQZJHNdgLFzT6hiZ0uIgyXGYBg84Z6mjVz9YIlTMqayojKPTJ8suR065LeOlMvz7_30sZ1DqlvMOA/w300-h400/IMG_20240210_171331530.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>Montgomery Street in San Francisco</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-89249575840333436892024-02-21T05:00:00.000-08:002024-02-21T06:50:13.884-08:00Poem of the Week 2024/8<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><i>End of the Flower-World</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Fear no longer for the lone gray birds</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">That fall beneath the world's last autumn sky,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Mourn no more the death of grass and tree.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">These will be as they have ever been:</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Substance of springtime; and when flower-world ends,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">They will go back to earth, and wait, and be still,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Safe with the dust of birds long dead, and boughs</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Turned ashes long ago, that still are straining</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">To leave their tombs and find the hills again,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Flourish again, mindless of the people –</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The strange ones now on a leafless earth</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Who seem to have no care for things in blossom.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Fear no more for trees, but mourn instead</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The children of these strange, sad men: their hearts</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Will hear no music but the song of death.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">– Stanley Burnshaw</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">What is Flower-Land? When & where is it? Whatever the answer, it is ending. & it has been the subject of "our" fears & concerns, "our" meaning whomever is addressed by the poet, who opens with an imperative, & a striking word: <i>fear</i>. Flower-land sounds as if it should be lovely, but we're immediately told about lone gray birds – not even a flock, but lone & possibly lonely birds, & not colorful birds, but gray ones. (I once worked with a bird-watcher & I asked him about some of the little brown birds that would hang out around our tech campus. "Oh," he said, "We call those shit birds.") & these birds fall instead of fly; <i>fall </i>nicely reinforces <i>autumn </i>later in the line. But that autumn sky is the <i>last </i>autumn sky; is that because autumn is giving way to winter, or because autumn is going away altogether? There's a strange instability to Flower-World as presented to us.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Fear </i>& <i>Mourn</i> are the key injunctions of the first stanza, & convey their mood, even as we are told we no longer need to continue fearing & mourning (so "we" must have seen the end coming for a while, & have been dreading it). The second stanza is more reassuring about Flower-World, or at least its specific elements such as grass & tree. This stanza is a little more reassuring in its clarifications: what's happening seems to be the usual giving-way of summer & harvest-time abundance to winter bareness; the flowers may be gone, but their substance remains, waiting, still, back in the earth.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But the poem turns here. Instead of assuring us, once we know that the substance of springtime is safely waiting, that therefore springtime will return on its usual schedule, we are taken deeper into the earth, into the place & time without Flower-Land. We are back in the dirt, this time with dust & ashes. The birds re-appear in the form of dust; death took them so long ago that their decay is complete. The trees re-appear in the form of their boughs, turned to ash. Ash is an interesting word here. When leaves & branches decay, they turn into dirt, not ashes; ash implies a fire – a lightning strike, perhaps, or is it from human carelessness?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We continue to get the sense that spring is delayed, or perhaps not coming at all; the dust & ashes that were birds & boughs are <i>straining</i> / <i>To leave their tombs and find the hills again</i>. Straining is such an expressive word. It makes me think of Michelangelo's unfinished Prisoner (sometimes titled Slave) sculptures, pulling out of & sinking back into the marble that traps their essence. Those sculptures were designed for the unfinished tomb of Pope Julius II, & we have a tomb here too: the earth is entombing the once-living things. Earth is often seen as a womb; here it is a tomb. There is a Biblical resonance to the language here; it makes me think of the opening of Psalm 121: <i>I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help</i>. Only here there is no help; the helpful Lord who manifests in the second line of the psalm is nowhere to be found in this poem. Instead there is strain, & a wish to find the hills again (perhaps their location has been forgotten, & a search must be undertaken).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The poet now makes clear why we should no longer fear for & mourn the inhabitants (bird, grass, trees) of Flower-Land: when & if they eventually emerge, they will flourish (such a rich, extravagant verb in this stripped-down, haunted poem). & here the poem turns again: the flourishing will occur <i>mindless of the people</i>. Until now, the only human presence in the poem has been the Poet-Speaker & "us", his audience. Now there are other inhabitants. <i>Mindless </i>is another interesting word here: it lets us know that the re-emergence of Flower-Land, if it happens, will depend on forces outside of human control; <i>mindless </i>also casts its penumbra of meanings over the people who have suddenly appeared: we associate them with a mindless existence.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">These people are <i>strange</i>: not only odd or unusual, but alienated, uprooted: strangers there on the leafless earth, careless of things in blossom (<i>blossom </i>is the first reference in the poem to flowers, outside of the term Flower-Land, so the word takes on the power of something withheld until the poem's climax). The people <i>seem to have no care for things in blossom</i>: <i>seem </i>because who can say with certainty what is happening inside these strange, possibly hollow people. <i>No care for</i>: does that mean they are just uninterested in blossoming things, or that they do not tend to them in any real sense, physical as well as emotional (indicating an alienation from the natural world)? Probably both those things are in play here.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the final stanza, fear & mourning re-appear; earlier we were told to fear & mourn no longer, but for the birds, trees, & grass: now our fear & mourning are not eliminated but redirected: <i>strange </i>makes a re-appearance as well, as the poem summons up again the men, this time not only strange but sad; it is not the men we mourn for, though, but their children.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">What is Flower-Land? Although the poem throughout undercuts our sense of what's going on (we see no flowers; the birds & grass & trees are dying & disappearing; spring may or may not return to earth), in a way Flower-Land has been obvious all along: flowers carry great weight in poetry, signifying beauty, both simple & extravagant; renewal; color; love, both spiritual & sexual. Flowers are how plants seduce & reproduce. All these wonderful qualities, implicit in the term Flower-Land, have been removed from the world of this poem (this is probably why we see the strange, sad men, & are told they have children, but no mention is made of the women who would have to give birth to those children; even mentioning the mothers would bring in a world of sexuality & maternal care that is pointedly alien to the world being shown here).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The second line of the last stanza breaks after <i>heart</i>: a heart-break. It is the first mention we've had of an interior life. & the final line gives us the first sounds in this hitherto silent world: <i>music </i>& <i>song </i>enter, but the music is in the negative context of hearing none (no bird song!) except for the song of death, & <i>death </i>is the note that ends this poem.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It's difficult to read this poem now & not see it in the light of the increasingly urgent problem of climate change created by humanity: this is our world, a world in which birds & other species are dying off at an accelerated rate, in which whole forests of boughs are reduced to ash by wildfires, in which a leafless world with only ugly, death-filled noise is a real possibility. But this poem was written around a hundred years ago, in an America that was already industrializing. Its leftist author probably intended it as an attack on the capitalist corporate world, which alienates much of the population from the natural world (a world which will continue in some form, possibly one twisted & damaged by humanity, but able to continue without it). Although women were of course in the work force then, the standard image of an office drone at the time would be of a man, which helps explain what may seem the male-centered view of the ending.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is a poem whose bleak warning has gained new resonance over time. I took the poem from the Library of America anthology <i><a href="https://www.loa.org/books/143-american-poetry-the-twentieth-century-volume-two-ee-cummings-to-may-swenson/" target="_blank">American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume 2</a>, E.E. Cummings to May Swenson</i>, edited by Nathaniel Mackey , Marjorie Perloff , Carolyn Kizer , John Hollander, & Robert Hass.</div>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-41652826420967575742024-02-19T18:40:00.000-08:002024-02-19T18:40:43.814-08:00Another Opening, Another Show: March 2024<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsOPz8UkIL-c-j6r2OCgBY29X7Qji8H20EeIJCcReRo4XCSegUJ72RKQTcJ92gt-l1gKFDvw6JmpZeLcEPaEORcTcQ6TJAhZkmvAtBQvU-zd9lpYcqIr0nL8Y2TKDlPO1nfGDlCd-rXKdLX41Y4uE_vXQZoJlifneq5CkpWgoiAP_vs5TyZVN2sQ/s4000/IMG_20240127_183105849.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsOPz8UkIL-c-j6r2OCgBY29X7Qji8H20EeIJCcReRo4XCSegUJ72RKQTcJ92gt-l1gKFDvw6JmpZeLcEPaEORcTcQ6TJAhZkmvAtBQvU-zd9lpYcqIr0nL8Y2TKDlPO1nfGDlCd-rXKdLX41Y4uE_vXQZoJlifneq5CkpWgoiAP_vs5TyZVN2sQ/w300-h400/IMG_20240127_183105849.jpg" width="300" /></a></p><br />In case you feel like getting out next month. . . .<br /><p></p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Theatrical</span></u></b></p><p>The <b>New Conservatory Theater Center</b> presents Jewelle Gomez's <i>Unpacking in P-Town</i>, directed by Kimberly Ridgeway, in which a group of retired vaudevillians meet in 1959 for their annual summer reunion on the Cape & must face up to a changing world, & that runs from <a href="https://nctcsf.org/event/unpacking-in-ptown/" target="_blank">1 to 31 March</a>.</p><p>From <a href="https://oaklandtheaterproject.org/cost" target="_blank">1 to 24 March</a>, the <b>Oakland Theater Project</b> presents Martyna Majok's <i>Cost of Living</i>, directed by Emilie Whelan, the 2018 Pulitzer-Prize winning drama about several people living with disabilities.</p><p><b>Cal Performances</b> presents Elevator Repair Service's performance of <i>Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge</i>, conceived by Greig Sargeant with Elevator Repair Service & directed by John Collins, based on the 1965 debate between the titular two, & that's at Zellerbach Playhouse from <a href="https://calperformances.org/events/2023-24/illuminations-individual-community/baldwin-and-buckley-at-cambridge-elevator-repair-service/" target="_blank">1 - 3 March</a>.</p><p><b>San Francisco Playhouse</b> presents the spy thriller <i>The 39 Steps</i>, given a comic twist in an adaptation by Patrick Barlow, from John Buchan's novel & Hitchcock's movie, directed by Susi Damilano, & that runs from <a href="https://www.sfplayhouse.org/sfph/2023-2024-season/the-39-steps/" target="_blank">7 March</a> to 20 April. </p><p><b>Berkeley Rep</b> brings us to <i>The Far Country</i> by Lloyd Suh, directed by Jennifer Chang, the epic story of a man assuming a new identity in America under the baneful eye of the Chinese Exclusion Act, & that runs from <a href="https://www.berkeleyrep.org/shows/the-far-country/" target="_blank">8 March</a> to 14 April.</p><p>The <b>UC Berkeley drama department</b> presents <i>The River Bride</i> by Marisela Treviño Orta, directed by Karina Gutiérrez, about two sisters in the Amazon who struggle with life & each other, from <a href="https://tdps.berkeley.edu/river-bride" target="_blank">14 to 17 March</a> at the Durham Studio Theater in Dwinelle Hall.</p><p>The <b>African-American Shakespeare Company</b> presents Dominique Morisseau's <i>Pipeline</i>, exploring the troubles of a young Black man with the school & justice systems, directed by Nataki Garrett, & that's <a href="https://www.african-americanshakes.org/pipeline-by-dominique-morisseau/" target="_blank">15 - 31 March</a> at the Taube Atrium Theater.</p><p><b>Shotgun Players</b> at the Ashby Stage launches its new season with <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i>, starting <a href="https://shotgunplayers.org/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=F2790C21-FDB5-4E93-AE92-F54B4A53DAA0&menu_id=686B151A-1B30-41FF-A109-52758163E164" target="_blank">16 March</a> & running through 14 April.</p><p><b>Theater Rhinoceros</b> offers the world premiere of <i>The Pride of Lions</i> by Roger Q Mason, directed by Ely Sonny Orquiza, telling the story of the first night in jail for the five female impersonators arrested for indecency after performing in Mae West's <i>The Pleasure Man</i> in 1928, & that runs from <a href="https://www.therhino.org/the-pride-of-lions" target="_blank">28 March</a> to 21 April.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Talking</span></u></b></p><p><b>City Arts & Lectures</b> presents Angela Davis in conversation with Hilton Als, in a benefit for Marcus Books, on <a href="https://www.cityarts.net/event/angela-davis-2/" target="_blank">20 March</a>; tickets include a copy of her new book, <i>Abolition, Politics, Practices, Promises (Vol I)</i>.</p><p><b>City Arts & Lectures</b> presents Matthew Desmond, author of <i>Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City</i> & <i>Poverty, By America</i>, in conversation with Bernice Yeung on <a href="https://www.cityarts.net/event/matthew-desmond-2/" target="_blank">27 March</a>.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Operatic</span></u></b></p><p><b>West Edge Opera</b>'s <i><a href="https://www.westedgeopera.org/snapshot" target="_blank">Snapshot</a></i> series, featuring excerpts of operas-in-progress, will take place this year on 2 March at the Hillside Club in Berkeley & 3 March at the Taube Atrium Theater in San Francisco; this year's scenes are from: <i>Nu Nah-Hup</i>, reimagining the Agai-Dika/Lemhi-Shoshone woman best known to us as Sacajawea of the Lewis & Clark Expedition (composers Hovia Edwards & Justin Ralls, librettist Rose Ann Abrahamson); <i>Least of My Children</i>, exploring a Catholic family's experience of AIDS when it was new (composer Loren Linnard, librettist Donald Briggs); <i>Madame Theremin</i>, based on the life of Black ballet dancer Lavinia Williams, who was married to electronic music master Leon Theremin (composer Kennedy Verrett, librettist George Kopp); & <i>The Road to Wellville</i>, based on TC Boyle's novel about John Harvey Kellog & his fellow healthnauts (composer Matt Boehler, librettist Tony Asaro).</p><p><a href="https://pocketopera.org/2024-season/la-cenerentola/" target="_blank">Rossini's <i>La Cenerentola</i></a> receives the <b>Pocket Opera</b> treatment (with direction by Bethanie Baeyen & musical direction by Paul Dab) on 25 February at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 3 March at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, & 10 March at the Hillside Club in Berkeley.</p><p>The <b>San Francisco Conservatory of Music</b> presents <i>Proving Up</i>, with music by Missy Mazzoli to a libretto by Royce Vavrek, adapted from a short story by Karen Russell about Nebraska homesteaders in the 1870s, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer & conducted by Steven Osgood, on <a href="https://sfcm.edu/experience/performances/sfcm-opera-presents-proving" target="_blank">8</a> & <a href="https://sfcm.edu/experience/performances/sfcm-opera-presents-proving-0" target="_blank">9</a> March.</p><p>See also Bartók's <i>Duke Bluebeard's Castle</i> at the San Francisco Symphony under <b><i>Orchestral</i></b>.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Choral</span></u></b></p><p><b>Sacred & Profane</b> presents <i>Escape: Music to be Transported By</i>, <a href="https://www.sacredprofane.org/concerts" target="_blank">a program</a> including music by William Byrd, Frank Martin, Benjamin Britten, Samuel Barber, Caroline Shaw, & Karin Rehnqvist, & that's 2 March at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley & 3 March at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco.</p><p>The <b>California Bach Society</b> gives us <i><a href="https://www.calbach.org/season#thirdConcert" target="_blank">Voices of Ukraine & Estonia</a></i>: "In solidarity with the people of Ukraine, we celebrate their rich musical heritage with a program featuring Baroque and contemporary choral works from Ukraine and Estonia, including works by Urmas Sisask, Anna Gavrilets, and Arvo Pärt", & that's 1 March at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 2 March at All Saints' Episcopal in Palo Alto, & 3 March at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley.</p><p>On <a href="https://choranova.org/" target="_blank">16 March</a> at First Congregational in Berkeley, <b>Chora Nova</b>, led by guest conductor Derek Tam, will perform Maurice Duruflé's <i>Requiem</i>, César Franck's <i>Psaume 150</i>, Rossini's <i>O salutaris hostia</i>, Messiaen's <i>O sacrum convivium</i>, Fauré's <i>Cantique de Jean Racine</i>, & Duruflé's U<i>bi Caritas</i> & his <i>Tu Es Petrus</i> from <i>Quatre Motets</i>.</p><p>The Yale Spizzwinks(?) [sic], an a cappella group of Yale undergrads, will perform unspecified but no doubt fun & lively repertory at <b>Old First Concerts</b> on <a href="https://www.oldfirstconcerts.org/performance/the-spizzwinks-friday-march-15-at-8-pm/" target="_blank">15 March</a>.</p><p>Ladysmith Black Mambazo appear at <b>Freight & Salvage</b> in Berkeley on <a href="https://secure.thefreight.org/13458/ladysmith-black-mambazo-0315" target="_blank">15 - 16 March</a>.</p><p><b>Chanticleer</b> gives us <i>Breathe together, Sing together</i>, <a href="https://www.chanticleer.org/2324-bay-area-season" target="_blank">a program</a> rather vaguely described on their site as "an evening of meditation & mindfulness" which will include "prayerful Gregorian and Buddhist chant, meditative Renaissance polyphony, and soothing contemporary compositions" & you can be soothed on 21 March at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, 22 March at Mission Santa Clara, 23 March at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, & 24 March at Saint John's Lutheran in Sacramento.</p><p>The <b>San Francisco Symphony Chorus</b> performs Orff's <i>Carmina Burana</i> on <a href="https://www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2023-24/CARMINA-BURANA" target="_blank">23 March</a> in Davies Hall.</p><p>The Conspiracy of Venus, directed by Joyce McBride, will perform new arrangements by McBride of popular songs on <a href="https://www.oldfirstconcerts.org/performance/conspiracy-of-venus-saturday-march-23-at-8-pm/" target="_blank">23 March</a> at <b>Old First Concerts</b>.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Vocalists</span></u></b></p><p>The second concert in this years <b>Schwabacher Recital Series</b> will take place at the Taube Atrium Theater on <a href="https://www.sfopera.com/seasons/schwabacher-recital-series/" target="_blank">6 March</a> & features sopranos Arianna Rodriguez & Olivia Smith, mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz, bass-baritone Jongwon Han, & pianist Yang Lin in a program of songs in English, German, Russian, Spanish, French & Korean, chosen by tenor Nicholas Phan.</p><p>On <a href="https://calperformances.org/events/2023-24/illuminations-individual-community/nathalie-joachim/" target="_blank">7 March</a> at Zellerbach Playhouse, <b>Cal Performances</b> presents Nathalie Joachim, composer, flutist, & singer, in <i>Ki moun ou ye (Who are you?)</i>, a staged song cycle exploring her Haitian heritage.</p><p>Mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska & pianist Howard Watkins will perform pieces by Schubert, Schumann, & Debussy for <b>Cal Performances</b> in Hertz Hall on <a href="https://calperformances.org/events/2023-24/recital/ema-nikolovska-mezzo-soprano-howard-watkins-piano/" target="_blank">10 March</a>.</p><p><b>Cal Performances</b> presents tenor Mark Padmore & pianist Mitsuko Uchida performing Schubert’s <i>Winterreise </i>in Hertz Hall on <a href="https://calperformances.org/events/2023-24/recital/mark-padmore-tenor-mitsuko-uchida-piano/" target="_blank">17 March</a>.</p><p>On <a href="https://sfperformances.org/performances/2324/ilker-arcayurek.html" target="_blank">21 March</a> in Herbst Theater, <b>San Francisco Performances</b> presents tenor Ilker Arcayürek with pianist Simon Lepper in an all-Schubert program.</p><p>The <b>SF Jazz Center</b> presents superstar Brazilian songwriter / singer Caetano Veloso at the Paramount Theater in Oakland on <a href="https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/23-24/caetano-veloso/" target="_blank">29 March</a>.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Orchestral</span></u></b></p><p>On <a href="https://www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2023-24/PROMETHEUS-BLUEBEARD" target="_blank">1 - 3 March</a> at Davies Hall, Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the <b>San Francisco Symphony</b> in an intriguing double bill: Scriabin's <i>Prometheus, The Poem of Fire</i>, with piano soloist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, followed by Bartók's <i>Duke Bluebeard’s Castle</i>, with mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung & baritone Gerald Finley – & here comes the caveat: the Scriabin is a special all-senses experience & will include a perfume, devised for the occasion by Cartier perfumer Mathilde Laurent, pumped into the hall. On the one hand, I salute the attempt to vary the standard concert format. On the other hand, a hand which is clutching a handkerchief & a handful of allergy pills, I very much do not like scented products forced on me. I don't even buy laundry detergent that's scented. I've had more than one concert ruined by trying to breathe next to some aging patron dowsed in a cloud of flowery scent, intended to hide the stench of decay; sometimes the scent is intended to mask the lingering stench of tobacco, rendering the person's aroma doubly offensive. So if you have allergies/asthma/a dislike of perfumes, proceed at your own risk.</p><p>On <a href="https://www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2023-24/SALONEN-ALL-SIBELIUS" target="_blank">14 - 16 March</a>, Salonen will be back leading the <b>SF Symphony</b> in an all-Sibelius, & presumably scent-free, except for the occasional doddering dowager, concert, including <i>Finlandia</i>, the <i>Violin Concerto</i> with soloist Lisa Batiashvili, & the Symphony #1.</p><p><b>One Found Sound</b> gives us <i>Waveform</i>, a program including the world premiere of Sam Wu's <i>Hydrosphere</i>, Ruth Gipps's <i>Seascape</i>, & the Beethoven 3, the <i>Eroica</i>, on <a href="https://www.onefoundsound.org/events" target="_blank">2 March</a> at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco.</p><p>On <a href="https://www.sfphil.org/upcoming-performances-1" target="_blank">2 March</a> at Herbst Theater, Jessica Bejarano leads the <b>San Francisco Philharmonic</b> in Rossini's <i>Overture to The Barber of Seville</i>, Barber's <i>Adagio for Strings</i>, Khachaturian's <i>Waltz </i>from <i>Masquerade Suite</i>, & the Tchaikovsky 2.</p><p>Daniel Hope leads the <b>New Century Chamber Orchestra</b> in <i><a href="https://www.ncco.org/23-24-season/playing-with-structure" target="_blank">Playing with Structure</a></i>, a program which includes Gluck's <i>Dance of the Furies</i> from <i>Orfeo ed Euridice</i>, Bloch's <i>Prayer </i>from <i>Jewish Life, #1</i>, Haydn's<i> Cello Concerto #1</i> in C major (with soloist Sterling Elliott), Mozart's <i>Six Contredanses</i>, & Stravinsky's <i>Suite Italienne</i> (adapted from the ballet <i>Pulcinella </i>& arranged for solo violin and strings by Adrian Williams), & that's 8 - 9 March at the Presidio Theater in San Francisco & 10 March at Bing Concert Hall at Stanford; there is also a free open rehearsal on 6 March, in the morning, at the Wilsey Education Studio at the Veterans Building in Civic Center; contact <i>tickets@ncco.org</i> if you'd like to attend.</p><p>On <a href="https://www.sflgfb.org/performances-and-events/heart-of-the-golden-west-2024/#tickets" target="_blank">9 March</a> at Herbst Theater, <b>The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band</b> presents <i>Heart of the Golden West: A Celebration of Music from and about San Francisco</i>, a program including the world premiere of <i>Cobra </i>by Mattea Williams & the San Francisco premiere of <i>Awakening </i>by Roger Zare, as well as <i>San Francisco Suite – Mauve Decade</i> by Ferde Grofé (arranged by Kevin Tam), <i>Suite Francaise</i> by Darius Milhaud (arranged by Higgins), <i>A Tribute to Dave Brubeck</i> by Patrick Roszell, <i>Flower of Youth</i> by Roger Nixon, <i>Shoonthree </i>by Henry Cowell,<i> Dawn of Freedom</i> by Nancy Bloomer Deussen, <i>Short Ride on a Fast Machine</i> by John Adams, <i>Friml Favorites</i> by Rudolf Friml (compiled by Grofé, arranged by Leidzén), <i>Linus and Lucy</i> by Vince Guaraldi (arranged by Clark), <i>Panama-Pacific Expo March</i> by Al Pinard (arranged by Philip Orem), & <i>San Fran Pan American</i> by Joel P. Corin (arranged by Philip Orem).</p><p>On <a href="https://www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2023-24/SF-SYMPHONY-BRASS" target="_blank">10 March</a> at Davies Hall, Brad Hogarth leads the <b>San Francisco Symphony Brass</b> in <i>Presto Barbaro</i> from <i>Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront</i> by Leonard Bernstein (arranged by Erikson), <i>Ottoni </i>by Magnus Lindberg, <i>Quatre Motets sur des thèmes grégoriens</i> by Maurice Duruflé, <i>A Moorside Suite</i> by Holst (arranged by Welcomer), <i>Variations on a Theme by Paganini</i> by Lutosławski (arranged by Harvey), <i>Chicago Skyline</i> by Shulamit Ran, & <i>Concert Music for Brass, Percussion, and Timpani</i> by Timothy Higgins.</p><p>David Milnes leads the <b>UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra</b> in Poulenc's <i>Organ Concerto</i> (with soloist Joseph Tak Maga), Chausson's <i>Poème</i>, (with violin soloist Shalini Namuduri), & Berlioz's <i>Symphonie Fantastique</i> at Hertz Hall on <a href="https://events.berkeley.edu/music/event/232498-uc-berkeley-symphony-orchestra" target="_blank">15</a> & <a href="https://events.berkeley.edu/music/event/232500-uc-berkeley-symphony-orchestra" target="_blank">16</a> March.</p><p>Donato Cabrera leads the <b>California Symphony</b> in Richard Strauss's <i>Serenade</i>, Lou Harrison's <i>Concerto for Violin with Five Percussionists</i> (with concertmaster Jennifer Cho as featured soloist), & Mozart's <i>Serenade #10 (Gran Partita)</i>, at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek on <a href="https://www.californiasymphony.org/shows/mozart-serenades/" target="_blank">16 - 17 March</a>.</p><p>On Saint Patrick's Day, <a href="https://bayphil.org/celtic-celebration" target="_blank">17 March</a>, at the Chabot College Performing Arts Center in Hayward, Jung-Ho Pak leads the <b>Bay Philharmonic</b> in a <i>Celtic Celebration</i>, featuring Irish & Scottish music & dance, with Annie Dupre (vocals / violin), Caroline McCaskey (Scottish fiddler), the Irish band Culann’s Hounds, the San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers, Todd Denman (Irish Uilleann Pipes), the Kennelly School of Irish Dance, Bill Wolaver (piano / arranger), & the Dunsmuir Scottish Dancers.</p><p>Daniel Stewart conducts the <b>San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra</b> in <i>Fingal's Cave (The Hebrides Overture)</i> by Mendelssohn, the <i>Violin Concerto</i> by Alexander Glazunov (with soloist Hiro Yoshimura), <i>Fratres </i>by Arvo Pärt, & <i>Daphnis et Chloé, Suite #2</i> by Ravel, on <a href="https://www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2023-24/Youth-Orchestra-Mar-17" target="_blank">17 March</a> at Davies Hall.</p><p>On <a href="https://www.goldengatesymphony.org/current-season/1a8fefhr3fdte7ivu9xar7b4tar5oo-h7yga" target="_blank">17 March</a> at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, Urs Leonhardt Steiner leads the <b>Golden Gate Symphony Orchestra & Chorus</b> in <i>¡Las Voces de México!</i>, a program including the world premiere of <i>Indigenous Symphony</i> by Carlos Pazos, Copland’s <i>El Salón México</i>, Moncayo’s <i>Huapango</i>, danzones from the Anthony Blea Afro Cuban Sextet & a Mariachi Sing-Along.</p><p>Glass Marcano leads the <b>Oakland Symphony</b> in the American premiere of Johanna Doderer's <i>Ritus</i>, Barber's <i>Violin Concerto</i> with soloist Amaryn Olmeda, & the Tchaikovsky 4 at the Paramount Theater on <a href="https://www.oaklandsymphony.org/event/the-passion-of-tchaikovsky/" target="_blank">22 March</a>.</p><p>On <a href="https://www.berkeleysymphony.org/event/literary-soundscapes/" target="_blank">23 March</a> at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, Joseph Young leads the <b>Berkeley Symphony</b> in <i>Literary Soundscapes</i>, a program consisting of the west coast premiere of Joel Puckett's <i>There Was a Child Went Forth</i>, a Whitman setting featuring tenor Nicholas Phan, Mendelssohn's <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture</i>, & Laura Karpman's <i>Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, Part 1</i> & <i>Part 3</i>, a Langston Hughes setting featuring jazz singer Clairdee, soprano Arianna Rodriguez, & mezzo-soprano Olivia Johnson.</p><p><b>Cal Performances</b> presents Mitsuko Uchida leading the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (José Maria Blumenschein, concertmaster and leader) from her piano in two Mozart piano concertos, #17 in G major & #22 in E-flat major, as well as an arrangement for chamber orchestra of Jörg Widmann's String Quartet #2, in Zellerbach Hall on <a href="https://calperformances.org/events/2023-24/chamber-music-orchestra/mahler-chamber-orchestra-mitsuko-uchida-piano-and-director-jose-maria-blumenschein-concertmaster-and-leader/" target="_blank">24 March</a>.</p><p>On <a href="https://sfcm.edu/experience/performances/sfcm-orchestra-guest-conductor-mei-ann-chen" target="_blank">30 March</a>, guest conductor Mei-Ann Chen, with assistant conductor Chih-Yao Chang, leads the <b>San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra</b> in Beethoven's <i>Coriolan Overture</i>, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #2 (with soloist Parker van Ostrand), Unsuk Chin's <i>Subito Con Forza</i>, & the Schumann 4.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Chamber Music</span></u></b></p><p>The <b>San Francisco Performances</b> Saturday Morning lecture series in Herbst Theater with music historian Robert Greenberg & the Alexander String Quartet continues to explore <i>Music as a Mirror of Our World: The String Quartet from 1905 to 1946</i> with two concerts this month: on <a href="https://sfperformances.org/performances/2324/saturday-morning-4.html" target="_blank">2 March</a>, one on the United States, featuring Walter Piston's <i>String Quartet #1</i> & Samuel Barber's <i>String Quartet in B Minor, Opus 11</i>, & on <a href="https://sfperformances.org/performances/2324/saturday-morning-5.html" target="_blank">23 March</a>, one on Austria, featuring Zemlinsky's <i>String Quartet #4, Opus 25</i> & Korngold's <i>String Quartet #3 in D Major, Opus 34</i>.</p><p>On <a href="https://chambermusicsf.org/#artist3" target="_blank">3 March</a> at Herbst Theater, <b>Chamber Music San Francisco</b> presents the Esmé String Quartet & pianist Yekwon Sunwoo performing Haydn's <i>String Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus 33 #2</i>, Debussy's <i>String Quartet in G minor, Opus 10</i>, & the Brahms <i>Piano Quintet in F minor, Opus 34</i>.</p><p>On <a href="https://sfperformances.org/performances/2324/castalian-hough.html" target="_blank">5 March</a> at Herbst Theater, <b>San Francisco Performances</b> presents the Castalian String Quartet & pianist Stephen Hough, performing Hough's <i>String Quartet #1</i> along with Haydn's <i>String Quartet in A Major, Opus 20, #6</i> & the Brahms <i>Quintet for Piano and Strings in F Minor, Opus 34</i>.</p><p><b>Cal Performances</b> presents the Isidore String Quartet playing the Haydn <i>String Quartet in C major, Opus 20, #2,</i> the Billy Childs<i> String Quartet #2, Awakening</i>, & the Beethoven <i>String Quartet #15 in A minor, Opus 132</i>, at First Congregational on <a href="https://calperformances.org/events/2023-24/chamber-music-orchestra/isidore-string-quartet/" target="_blank">5 March</a>.</p><p><b>San Francisco Conservatory of Music</b> faculty members Jennifer Culp (cellist), Julio Elizalde (pianist), & Simon James (violinist) will be joined by some of their students at SFCM's Chamber Music Tuesday on <a href="https://sfcm.edu/experience/performances/chamber-music-tuesday-sfcm-faculty" target="_blank">5 March</a> to perform the Franck <i>Piano Quintet in F Minor</i> & the Fauré <i>Piano Quartet in C Minor</i>.</p><p>The Wooden Fish Ensemble (Terrie Baune, violin; Thalia Moore, cello; & Thomas Schultz, piano) celebrates International Women’s Day on <a href="https://www.oldfirstconcerts.org/performance/wooden-fish-ensemble-plays-women-composers-sunday-march-10-at-4-pm/" target="_blank">10 March</a> at <b>Old First Concerts</b> by performing the world premiere of Hyo-shin Na's <i>Many Paradises for violin, cello, and piano</i>, Galina Ustvolskaya's <i>Duet for violin and piano</i>, Ruth Crawford's <i>Piano Study in Mixed Accents for piano solo</i>, & selected <i>Romances </i>by Clara Schumann from Opus 11 & Opus 21 for solo piano.</p><p>On <a href="https://www.tickettailor.com/events/berkeleychamberperformances/992935" target="_blank">12 March</a> at the Berkeley City Club, <b>Berkeley Chamber Performances</b> presents the Zodiac Trio (Kliment Krylovskiy, clarinet; Vanessa Mollard, violin; Riko Higuma, piano) in <i>American Stories</i>, which will include Gershwin's <i>An American in Paris</i> (arranged by Higuma), the late Peter Schickele's <i>Serenade for Three</i>, Piazzolla's <i>Angel Series</i>, David Baker's <i>Clarinet Sonata</i>, & Arturo Marquez's <i>Danzon #2</i>.</p><p>On <a href="https://chambermusicsf.org/#artist5" target="_blank">24 March</a> at Herbst Theater, <b>Chamber Music San Francisco</b> presents the American debut of the Boccherini Trio (violinist Suyeon Kang, violist Vicki Powell, & cellist Paolo Bonomini); they will perform Beethoven's <i>Trio in C minor, Opus 9 #3</i>, Dohnányi's <i>Serenade in C Major, Opus 10</i>, & Mozart's <i>Divertimento in E-flat Major</i>.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Instrumental</span></u></b></p><p><b>Cal Performances</b> presents pianist Conrad Tao at Hertz Hall on <a href="https://calperformances.org/events/2023-24/recital/conrad-tao-piano/" target="_blank">3 March</a>, when he will perform works inspired by fairy tales & poetry, by Brahms (<i>Six Pieces for Piano, Opus 118</i>), David Fulmer (<i>I have loved a stream and a shadow (With glitter of sun-rays, Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back to heaven…)</i>), Todd Moellenberg (<i>Leg of Lamb (after Bernadette Mayer)</i>), Rebecca Saunders (<i>Mirror, mirror on the wall</i>), & Ravel (<i>Gaspard de la nuit</i>).</p><p><b>Old First Concerts</b> presents a Chopin Birthday Party with pianist Robert Schwartz on <a href="https://www.oldfirstconcerts.org/performance/chopin-birthday-with-robert-schwartz-sunday-march-3-at-2-pm/" target="_blank">3 March</a>, when he will perform the <i>Barcarolle in F-sharp major</i>, the <i>Impromptu in A-flat major</i>, the <i>Impromptu in F-sharp major</i>, the <i>Scherzo in E major</i>, the <i>Nocturne in B major</i>, the <i>Mazurka in A minor</i>, the <i>Mazurka in A-flat major</i>, the <i>Mazurka in F-sharp minor</i>, & the <i>Ballade in F minor</i> (the music will be followed by a reception with champagne & birthday cake).</p><p>The <b>San Francisco Symphony</b> presents violinist Alexandra Conunova with pianist Tamila Salimdjanova, performing Mozart's <i>Adagio in E major</i>, Grieg's <i>Violin Sonata #3 in C minor</i>, Saint-Saëns's <i>Introduction and Rondo capriccioso</i>, & Franz Waxman's <i>Carmen Fantasie</i>, on <a href="https://www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2023-24/Spotlight-ALEXANDRA-CONUNOVA" target="_blank">6 March</a> at Davies Hall.</p><p><b>Chamber Music San Francisco</b> presents pianist Rafal Blechacz on <a href="https://chambermusicsf.org/#artist4" target="_blank">10 March</a> at Herbst Theater, where he will perform Mozart's <i>Sonata in A Major</i>, Debussy's <i>Suite Bergamasque</i>, Szymanowski's <i>Variations</i>, & Chopin's <i>Polonaise Fantasy</i>, his <i>Nocturne, Opus 55 #1</i>, & his <i>Mazurkas, Opus 6</i>.</p><p>Pianist Jonathan Biss continues his <i>Echoes of Schubert</i> series for <b>San Francisco Performances</b> on <a href="https://sfperformances.org/performances/2324/jonathan-biss-2.html" target="_blank">14 March</a> at Herbst Theater, when he will play a new work by Alvin Singleton along with Schubert's <i>Impromptu in A Flat Major, #2</i> & his <i>Sonata in A Major</i>.</p><p>The <b>San Francisco Symphony</b> presents violinist Ray Chen with pianist Julio Elizalde at Davies Hall on <a href="https://www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2023-24/RAY-CHEN" target="_blank">24 March</a>, where they will play Tartini's <i>Devil's Trill</i> (as arranged by Kreisler), Beethoven's <i>Violin Sonata #7 in C minor, Opus 30, #2</i>, Bach's<i> Partita #3 in E major</i>, Antonio Bazzini's <i>La Ronde des Lutins</i>, Dvořák's <i>Slavonic Dance #2 in E minor</i> (as arranged by Kreisler), & Chick Corea's Spain (as arranged by Elizalde & Chen).</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Early / Baroque Music</span></u></b></p><p>The <b>San Francisco Early Music Society</b> presents two concerts this month: on <a href="https://www.sfems.org/la-morra" target="_blank">1 March</a> at First Congregational in Berkeley, you can hear La Morra in <i>Shaping the Invisible: Italian Music from the Time of Leonardo</i>, "including pieces by Francesco Canova da Milano, Don Michele Pesenti, and even a piece by Giovanni de’ Medici – or, as he was better known, Pope Leo X!"; & Ciaramella will explore "dance music from the courts of <a href="https://www.sfems.org/ciaramella" target="_blank">Savoy and Burgundy to the streets of Bergamo</a>" on 22 March at First Presbyterian in Palo Alto, 23 March at First Congregational in Berkeley, & 24 March at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco.</p><p>Valérie Sainte-Agathe leads the <b>San Francisco Girls Chorus</b> in Vivaldi's <i>Juditha Triumphans</i>, in a new edition arranged by Adam Cockerham, with stage direction by Celine Ricci of Ars Minerva, on <a href="https://www.sfgirlschorus.org/performances/2024/3/9/judithatriumphans" target="_blank">9 & 10 March</a> at Z Space in San Francisco.</p><p>Jeffrey Thomas <a href="https://americanbach.org/Saint-John-Passion.html" target="_blank">leads the American Bach Soloists</a> in Bach's <b>Saint John Passion</b>, with soloists Matthew Hill (tenor), Mischa Bouvier (bass-baritone), Hélène Brunet (soprano), Ágnes Vojtkó (mezzo-soprano), Steven Brennfleck (tenor), Jesse Blumberg (baritone), on 8 March at Saint Stephen's in Belvedere, 9 March at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, 10 March at Saint Mark's Lutheran, & 11 March at Davis Community Church in Davis.</p><p><b>Voices of Music</b> presents concertos by <a href="https://app.arts-people.com/index.php?actions=7&p=1" target="_blank">Bach & Vivaldi</a> on 8 March at First United Methodist in Palo Alto, 9 March at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, & 10 March at First Congregational in Berkeley.</p><p>The <b>Junior Bach Festival</b> will give concerts in venues throughout the Bay Area from 15 to 24 March; check <a href="https://juniorbach.org/" target="_blank">here </a>for dates at specific venues (I don't see a list of pieces to be performed).</p><p>On <a href="https://www.cityboxoffice.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=2880" target="_blank">21 March</a> (Bach's 339th birthday) at First Congregational in Berkeley, Nicholas McGegan will lead the <b>Cantata Collective</b> & soloists Nola Richardson (soprano), Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen (countertenor), Thomas Cooley (tenor), & Harrison Hintzsche (bass), & solo violinists Katherine Kyme & Lisa Weiss, in Bach's <i>Easter Oratorio</i>, his <i>Concerto for 2 Violins & Strings</i>, & his <i>Magnificat</i>.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Modern / Contemporary Music</span></u></b></p><p>The Kronos Quartet continues its fiftieth-year anniversary celebration at Zellerbach Hall for <b>Cal Performances</b> on <a href="https://calperformances.org/events/2023-24/new-music/kronos-quartet-2324/" target="_blank">2 March</a>, where they will play two world premieres (both Cal Perf co-commissions) by Michael Gordon & Peni Candra Rini.</p><p><b>Left Coast Chamber Ensemble</b> will present <i><a href="https://www.leftcoastensemble.org/saariaho" target="_blank">Butterflies, Moons, and Mirrors</a>: A Saariaho Celebration</i>, featuring the late composer's <i>Sept Papillons</i>, her <i>Oi Kuu</i>, her <i>Mirrors</i>, & her <i>Dolce Tormento</i>, along with Kay Rhie's <i>Three Miniatures for Solo Piano</i>, Prokofiev's <i>Flute Sonata in D Major, Opus 94</i>, & the world premiere of Monica Chew's <i>What comes before</i>; the pieces will be played by Allegra Chapman on piano, Leighton Fong on cello, & Stacey Pelinka on flute, & you can hear them on 2 March at the Berkeley Piano Club & 3 March at Noe Valley Ministry.</p><p>The annual <b>Hot Air Music Festival</b>, "a student-led celebration of contemporary and expansive classical music from the last 50 years", will take place at the <b>San Francisco Conservatory of Music</b> on 3 March; the program has not yet been announced, but you can check <a href="https://sfcm.edu/experience/performances/hot-air-music-festival-13" target="_blank">here </a>for updates.</p><p><b>Cal Performances</b> presents Wild Up, conducted by Christopher Rountree, in Julius Eastman’s <i>Femenine </i>at Zellerbach Playhouse on <a href="https://calperformances.org/events/2023-24/illuminations-individual-community/wild-up/" target="_blank">9 March</a> (check <a href="https://www.sfcv.org/articles/review/stanford-wild-gives-time-and-space-composer-julius-eastman" target="_blank">here</a> for Lisa Hirsch's review of Wild Up's recent Eastman concerts at Bing Hall at Stanford).</p><p>On <a href="https://centerfornewmusic.com/event/dan-flanagan-the-bow-and-the-brush/" target="_blank">11 March</a> at the <b>Center for New Music</b>, Dan Flanagan will present <i>The Bow and the Brush</i>, part of his project of commissioning & composing music inspired by paintings & sculptures; this program will include music by Flanagan as well as Libby Larsen, Nathaniel Stookey, Cindy Cox, Edmund Campion, Peter Josheff, Jose Gonzalez Granero, Evan Price, Shinji Eshima, & Jacques Desjardins; each piece will be performed with a projection of the art that inspired it.</p><p>Tuple (bassoonists Rachael Elliott & Lynn Hileman) will present <i>Mappa Mundi</i> at the <b>Center for New Music</b> on <a href="https://centerfornewmusic.com/event/tuple-mappa-mundi/" target="_blank">15 March</a>, a program featuring two new pieces – <i>Les Blindes</i> by JP Dreblow & <i>Earth</i> by Jessie Cox, as well as works by Sofia Gubaidulina, Dan Becker, Julius Eastman, & others.</p><p>At <b>Old First Concerts</b> on 1<a href="https://www.oldfirstconcerts.org/performance/earplay-life-cycle-monday-march-18-at-730-pm/" target="_blank">8 March</a>, Earplay presents <i>Life Cycle</i>, a program featuring the world premiere of a new work by Chris Castro, the American premiere of Haris Kittos's <i>Dyades</i>, the west coast premieres of Koh Cheng Jin's <i>Flower Mantis</i> & Toshio Hosokawa's <i>Threnody</i>, & Erik Ulman's <i>Skamandros</i>.</p><p><b>Other Minds</b> presents a Dennis Russell Davies 80th Birthday Keyboard Benefit Concert on <a href="https://www.otherminds.org/upcoming-events/" target="_blank">22 March</a> at McCarthy Art Studio in San Francisco's Mission District; Maki Namekawa & Davies will perform solo & four-hand piano music by Ravel, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, John Cage, & selections from Smetana’s <i>Má vlast</i> (<i>My Fatherland</i>) arranged for two pianos.</p><p>On <a href="https://sfcurran.com/shows/laurie-anderson-let-x-x/" target="_blank">28 March</a> at the <b>Curran Theater</b>, all-around artist Laurie Anderson will perform material old & new in <i>Let X = X</i>.</p><p>See also West Edge Opera's <i>Snapshot </i>program under <i>Operatic</i>.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Jazz & Klezmer</span></u></b></p><p>Branford Marsalis & his quartet (pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Reevis, & drummer Justin Faulkner) play the <b>SF Jazz Center</b> from <a href="https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/23-24/branford-marsalis/" target="_blank">29 February to 3 March</a>.</p><p>Cosa Nostra Strings play the <b>SF Jazz Center</b> on <a href="https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/23-24/cosa-nostra-strings/" target="_blank">1 March</a>.</p><p>The S<b>an Francisco Symphony</b> will celebrate Purim on <a href="https://www.jccsf.org/event/the-san-francisco-symphony-presents-klezmer-at-the-jccsf/" target="_blank">4 March</a> at the <b>Jewish Community Center of San Francisco</b> with their klezmer quartet, featuring violinist David Chernyavsky, Ben Goldberg on clarinet, Rob Reich on accordion, & Daniel Fabricant on bass.</p><p>OKAN, an Afro-Cuban / Latin jazz ensemble led by vocalist & violinist Elizabeth Rodriguez & percussionist Magdelys Savigne, plays Zellerbach Playhouse for <b>Cal Performances</b> on <a href="https://calperformances.org/events/2023-24/illuminations-individual-community/okan/" target="_blank">8 March</a>.</p><p>On <a href="https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/23-24/brandee-younger-alice-coltrane-tribute/" target="_blank">9 - 10 March</a> at the <b>SF Jazz Center</b>, Brandee Younger pays tribute to Alice Coltrane; joining Younger are the other members of her quartet (keyboardist Marc Cary, bassist Rashaan Carter, & percussionist Makaya McCraven), along with special guests: saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, fluntist Nicole Mitchell, & a string ensemble conducted by De'Sean Jones.</p><p>The Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, Resident Artists at the <b>California Jazz Conservatory</b> in Berkeley, will be led by Erik Jekabson & joined by guest vocalist Jamie Zee on <a href="https://concerts.cjc.edu/electric-squeezebox-orchestra-4" target="_blank">10 March</a>.</p><p>At the <b>SF Jazz Center</b> on <a href="https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/23-24/natalie-cressman-ian-faquini/" target="_blank">28 March</a>, trombonist / vocalist Natalie Cressman & Brazilian guitarist / singer Ian Faquini will perform music from their forthcoming album, their 2022 release <i>Auburn Whisper</i>, & what are described as "other favorites".</p><p>The Orrin Evans Trio (Evans on piano, Robert Hurst on bass, & Mark Whitfield Junior on drums) plays the SF Jazz Center on <a href="https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/23-24/orrin-evans-trio/" target="_blank">29 March</a>.</p><p>Saxophonist Ravi Coltrane will be in residence at the <b>SF Jazz Center</b> at the end of the month: he opens on <a href="https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/23-24/ravi-coltrane-electric-band-coltraxx/" target="_blank">28 March</a> with the other members of his Trio, taken from his Cosmic Music project (Gadi Lehavi on keyboards & Elé Howell on drums) along with the other members of his acoustic quartet (now named Coltraxx: David Virelles on piano, Dezron Douglas on bass, & Johnathan Blake on drums); on <a href="https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/23-24/ravi-coltrane-pharoah-sanders-tribute/" target="_blank">29 March</a>, he is joined by the other members of Coltraxx, with special guests Joe Lovano (on tenor and soprano saxophone) & Tomoki Sanders (on tenor saxophone) to pay tribute to the late Pharoah Sanders; on <a href="https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/23-24/ravi-coltrane-cosmic-music/" target="_blank">30 - 31 March</a>, along with special guests to be announced, he will explore the music of his celebrated parents, John & Alice Coltrane.</p><p>The Ethan Iverson Trio (Iverson on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass, Gerald Cleaver on drums) plays the <b>SF Jazz Center</b> on <a href="https://www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/23-24/ethan-iverson-trio/" target="_blank">30 - 31 March</a>.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Dance</span></u></b></p><p><b>San Francisco Ballet</b> presents <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i> (choreography by Balanchine, music by Mendelssohn), from <a href="https://www.sfballet.org/productions/a-midsummer-nights-dream/" target="_blank">12 to 23 March</a>.</p><p>The <b>Oakland Ballet Company</b> presents the <i>Dancing Moons Festival 2024</i>, featuring <i>Layer Upon Layer</i> by Caili Quan, <i>Ballet des Porcelaines or The Teapot Prince</i> by Phil Chan (original 1739; reimagined 2021), & highlights of <i>Exquisite Corpse</i> by Elaine Kudo, Seyong Kim, and Phil Chan, along with excepts from the Oakland Ballet Angel Island Project, a work-in-progress based on Huang Ruo’s composition, <i>Angel Island</i>, which was inspired by the poems carved by detainees into the walls of the west coast immigration station; you can see the festival at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center from <a href="https://oaklandballet.org/dancing-moons-festival/" target="_blank">14 - 16 March</a> & at the ODC Theater in San Francisco on 5 - 6 April.</p><p><b>Cal Performances</b> presents the Joffrey Ballet in <i>Anna Karenina</i>, with choreography by Yuri Possokhov to an original score by Ilya Demutsky, performed by the Berkeley Symphony under Scott Speck, & that's at Zellerbach Hall on <a href="https://calperformances.org/events/2023-24/dance/the-joffrey-ballet-anna-karenina/" target="_blank">15 - 17 March</a>.</p><p>On <a href="https://sfperformances.org/performances/2324/calder-hunter.html" target="_blank">16 March</a> at Herbst Theater, <b>San Francisco Performances</b> presents the Calder Quartet in collaboration with deaf choreographer Antoine Hunter & his Urban Jazz Dance Company, who will express "his experience in a hearing world through dance" in a program titled <i>The Mind’s Ear: Motion Beyond Silence</i>, with music by John Cage (<i>Quartet in 4 Parts</i>), Beethoven (<i>String Quartet Opus130 with Grosse Fuge</i>), Jessie Montgomery (<i>Strum</i>), Caroline Shaw (<i>Entr’acte</i>), & Julius Eastman (<i>Joy Boy</i>).</p><p>The <b>Margaret Jenkins Dance Company</b> presents the world premiere of <i>Unstill Life</i>, a collaborative evening-length creation by Jenkins, Rinde Eckert, Risa Jaroslow, Jon Kinzel, & Vicky Shick, at the Dresher Ensemble Studio in Oakland on <a href="https://www.mjdc.org/" target="_blank">21 - 24 March</a>.</p><p><b>ODC/Dance</b> returns to the Yerba Buena Center for <i><a href="https://odcsf.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/#/events/a0S5b00000E6hniEAB" target="_blank">Dance Downtown</a></i>; Program A will feature Brenda Way's <i>A Brief History of Up and Down</i>, Kimi Okada's <i>Inkwell</i> (both of these are premieres), & KT Nelson's <i>Dead Reckoning</i>, & that's on 27, 29, & 31 March; Program B features Sonya Delwaide's <i>goutte par goutte</i> (in its premiere performance), Brenda Way's <i>Collision, Collapse and a Coda</i>, & KT Nelson's <i>Dead Reckoning</i>, & that's on 28 & 30 March.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Art Means Painting</span></u></b></p><p><b>SFMOMA</b> opens <i>New Work: Mary Lovelace O’Neal</i> on <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/new-work-mary-lovelace-oneal/" target="_blank">16 March</a>, running through 20 October; the artist will appear in conversation with Eungie Joo on <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/event/mary-lovelace-oneal-in-conversation-with-eungie-joo/" target="_blank">21 March</a>.</p><p>Two new exhibits are opening at the <b>de Young</b> this month: starting <a href="a" target="_blank">16 March</a>, you can see <i>Contemporary Painting in Papua New Guinea: Mathias Kauage and His Family</i>; also starting <a href="https://www.famsf.org/exhibitions/irving-penn" target="_blank">16 March</a>, you can see I<i>rving Penn</i>, a retrospective of the celebrated photographer's long career.</p><p><i>Unruly Navigations</i>, exploring "the urgent, disorderly, rebellious, and nonlinear movements of people, cultures, ideas, religions, and aesthetics that define diaspora", opens at <b>MOAD </b>on <a href="https://www.moadsf.org/exhibitions/unruly-navigations" target="_blank">27 March</a> & runs through 1 September.</p><p><b><u><span style="color: red;">Cinematic</span></u></b></p><p><b>BAM/PFA</b> launches its spring film series this month: <i>Edward Yang’s Taipei Stories</i>, exploring the great Taiwanese filmmaker's works, starts <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/edward-yangs-taipei-stories" target="_blank">1 March</a> & runs through 20 April; <i>Tell No Lies: Decolonizing Cinema in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique</i>, featuring works about the revolutionary & liberation struggles of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa, starts <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/tell-no-lies" target="_blank">2 March</a> & runs through 24 April; <i>Sembène 100</i>, celebrating the centennial of the great Senegalese filmmaker, starts <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/sembene-100" target="_blank">3 March</a> & runs through 21 April; <i>In Focus: The Fatal Alliance—A Century of War on Film</i>, a lecture / screening series featuring film historian David Thomson, based on his latest book, <i>The Fatal Alliance: A Century of War on Film</i>, starts <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/focus-fatal-alliance-century-war-film" target="_blank">6 March</a> & runs through 27 March; <i>Barry Jenkins Presents The Underground Railroad</i>, for which the filmmaker will be there in person to present his adaptation of Colson Whitehead's acclaimed novel <i>The Underground Railroad</i>, runs <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/barry-jenkins-presents-underground-railroad" target="_blank">15 - 17 March</a>; <i>Nicolás Pereda Selects: Recent Films from Mexico</i> runs from <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/nicolas-pereda-selects-recent-films-mexico" target="_blank">20 March</a> through 2 May; <i>Viva Varda!</i>, which is also the title of a new documentary by Pierre-Henri Gibert that launches the series, includes highlights from the filmography of the great Agnès Varda, & that launches <a href="https://bampfa.org/program/viva-varda" target="_blank">23 March</a> & runs through 5 May, & let me say that one of the very best blind-buys I ever made was the <a href="https://www.criterion.com/boxsets/3432-the-complete-films-of-agns-varda" target="_blank">Criterion box set of her complete films</a>.</p><p>At the <b>Curran Theater</b> on <a href="https://sfcurran.com/shows/unscripted-william-h-macy/" target="_blank">7 March</a>, as part of their <i>Unscripted</i> series, William H Macy will introduce <i>Fargo</i>, with an audience Q&A after the film.</p><p>Carol Reed's greatly celebrated film <i>The Third Man</i>, with Orson Welles & Joseph Cotten, comes to the Roxie in San Francisco on <a href="https://roxie.com/film/the-third-man/" target="_blank">15 & 18 March</a>.</p><p>On <a href="https://roxie.com/film/piccadilly/" target="_blank">25 March</a> at the Roxie in San Francisco, you can see Anna May Wong in E A Dupont's <i>Piccadilly</i>, with a scenario by the novelist Arnold Bennett (if you haven't read <i>The Old Wives' Tale</i>, I recommend it highly); there will also be an intro, book talk & signing with Katie Gee Salisbury, author of <i>Not Your China Doll</i>, a new biography of Wong (copies of the book will be available to purchase).</p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-63780487352003543852024-02-19T05:00:00.000-08:002024-02-19T05:00:00.192-08:00Museum Monday 2024/8<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkLAKGe3v5C9lFahQk1StK_UBYckZGc9fukBpsjnEe_XcbT_-G5JpG7pvLk702FwsndORLWD0K0k9FBHvvxhzTNler4xL7nuiBnCTnuN8G51_bAVWx0i07pzBbm2kk2Rf44M-f-8B4ckAl-9wPxvsKXlutElbsCHm9yAx2DaofRH7E_GVa-VIa3A/s4000/IMG_20240125_181445719.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkLAKGe3v5C9lFahQk1StK_UBYckZGc9fukBpsjnEe_XcbT_-G5JpG7pvLk702FwsndORLWD0K0k9FBHvvxhzTNler4xL7nuiBnCTnuN8G51_bAVWx0i07pzBbm2kk2Rf44M-f-8B4ckAl-9wPxvsKXlutElbsCHm9yAx2DaofRH7E_GVa-VIa3A/w300-h400/IMG_20240125_181445719.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>detail of a <a href="https://searchcollection.asianart.org/objects/11362/wine-cup-in-the-shape-of-a-turban-gourd?ctx=73a0928c7ff582f2376f4b6abcf5f58a185e7818&idx=99" target="_blank">wine cup in the shape of a turban gourd</a>, now at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; the inscription in Persian reads "Drink at the order of God"</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-45812239359290116952024-02-16T05:00:00.000-08:002024-02-16T05:00:00.290-08:00Friday Photo 2024/7<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwZanC4k6o6cSF-j3ZcB_HKXbD1SjCcmCXgdam0e-r-W4LNexr90TXdWNApNaRh9Z9cCL5Iq0W_buUNEZjZX7ZKf8nobXJISdjvGVGMX-hWhhxhVbHUN8QfplVz7Wq5-nQJZ8UHlP1kOktCsrurKPwI2mo6MRelooshklDew6PLeYoVad0NRvvbw/s4000/IMG_20240208_133221791_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwZanC4k6o6cSF-j3ZcB_HKXbD1SjCcmCXgdam0e-r-W4LNexr90TXdWNApNaRh9Z9cCL5Iq0W_buUNEZjZX7ZKf8nobXJISdjvGVGMX-hWhhxhVbHUN8QfplVz7Wq5-nQJZ8UHlP1kOktCsrurKPwI2mo6MRelooshklDew6PLeYoVad0NRvvbw/w300-h400/IMG_20240208_133221791_HDR.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneki-neko" target="_blank">Maneki-neko</a> seen through a window in San Francisco's Chinatown</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-20889864360728400972024-02-14T05:00:00.000-08:002024-02-14T05:00:00.135-08:00Poem of the Week 2024/7<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">The Bean Eaters</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Dinner is a casual affair.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Tin flatware.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Two who are Mostly Good.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Two who have lived their day,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">But keep on putting on their clothes</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">And putting things away.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">And remembering . . .</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,</span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span> tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.</span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">– Gwendolyn Brooks</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;">Today is Saint Valentine's Day, so here is an exquisite love poem, but it's also Ash Wednesday, so here's a reflective & even melancholy poem.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Brooks defines her old Black couple – "this old yellow pair"; <i>yellow </i>in this context means a light-skinned Black person of mixed race descent – as bean eaters. Why? Beans are wholesome, filling, & inexpensive fare; inexpensive is the key word here. Nothing is fancy about their meals; <i>plain </i>is repeated twice in the third line to describe the plates & furniture they use for eating. These two are clearly marginal, socially & economically: they are mixed race but visibly Black in a racist country, they are old in a country that has always valued youth. The beans are just one of the elements that let us know they make do with what they have: their plates are chipped, their table (not even dignified by being referred to as such) is bare wood, & it is both plain & creaking; they have no silverware, but only flatware made of cheap tin. Beans are ordinary food for ordinary people. Beans suggest food eaten by country folk, who struggle to make a living from the land (there's a possible hint here of the couple's past; perhaps, like Brooks & her family, they were Southerners who moved north to Chicago during the Great Migration). Like the beans they subsist on, this couple isn't fancy or flashy – more solid, salt-of-the-earth types, & as those terms suggest, not really noticeable or memorable. But beans power a lot of the world's people. And it's suggestive that we see our couple in the context of their daily dinner: a <i>casual affair</i> it may be, but it is still a social occasion, bringing these two together as part of a daily & sustaining ritual.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The second stanza reinforces the idea that these two are fairly ordinary (or ordinary-seeming) people; neither brilliant nor terribly bad, they are . . . <i>Mostly Good</i>. The initial caps on the phrase are slightly comic, as if the pair were being rated on some scale, celestial or bureaucratic or both. No greatness in either the good or bad directions! The caps also help lend an air of finality to the judgment; these are lives that are, in all but a technical sense, over, & this is the official assessment. This theme takes over the rest of the stanza. They have lived their day. & yet, here they are still, going through the standard motions of a life. They keep putting on their clothes (which suggests getting up & starting the day) & putting things away (which suggests cleaning up as the day ends). A day-by-day routine, of not much interest.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So far Brooks has shown us her couple from outside. In the third stanza, she moves inward. As they move through their daily routines, their lives mostly over, those lives reappear in the shifting shape of memories. & they react to these memories with both <i>twinklings </i>& <i>twinges </i>(& can your life be considered truly over if you are still reacting to your memories of the past?). <i>Twinklings </i>suggests happier memories, & <i>twinges </i>moments of regret. Again, there's nothing extreme about this Mostly Good couple: <i>twinklings </i>rather than joy, <i>twinges </i>rather than searing pain. Has age gentled down their reactions, or were they always like this? Nothing tells us, one way or the other; another bit of mystery around this seemingly mundane couple.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So far in the poem, the lines have been short & descriptive, with most lines rhyming in a pleasing but unobtrusive way, lines as plain as the couple. The third stanza also begins with short lines, but the ellipsis after the first line signals a break, to the movement inward mentioned above: first we get the mention of their remembering, then in the second line we get some of their reactions to their memories (our first sign of their interior lives), & then the third line blooms out to complete the poem. The line is not completely alien in tone to the rest; it begins with the sort of light rhyming we've been seeing (as they <i>lean </i>over the <i>beans</i>: not quite a perfect rhyme, & perhaps that little disjunction in sound is a reminder of the difference between what we're seeing outside the couple & what they are feeling inside); the line continues with a reminder of their social & economic status (not only a rented room, but a back room).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But the line, easily the longest in the poem, then unfurls with a wonderfully eclectic list of the detritus of a life: it begins & ends with a suggestion of past frivolity & fanciness: <i>beads </i>& <i>fringes</i>. Where do they come from? from fancy old clothes that have gradually fallen apart? from broken necklaces? Is the fringe from old-fashioned furnishings, perhaps something brought up from whatever country they moved from, something filled for them, though not for anyone else, with memories of those buried back in that past? <i>Vases</i>: it's funny how vases accumulate. There are no flowers in these vases, but there must have been, once. Where did the vases come from? Where did the flowers go to? Why does the couple keep them? & the dolls: survivals of a childhood, & if so, their own, or perhaps that of some child of theirs now long gone? <i>Cloths</i>: dust cloths? dust covers? scraps saved for some thrifty purpose? <i>Receipts </i>& <i>tobacco crumb</i>s: the flotsam & jetsam of everyday life, but suggestive of a certain level of pleasure or pleasure-seeking. The items are shared between the two: we might assume that the dolls belong to the woman, & the tobacco crumbs to the man, though maybe not; maybe the dolls are from his childhood, & maybe she smoked. They are pooled together, part of a life shared for so long there is no separation between their things. The items listed are nothing special, simply the things that accumulate around us in the course of life, though enriched for the couple by their remembering. We are not given any of their memories, only this array of physical items, which their rented room is full of (the use of <i>full </i>here is our first indication of something other than humble surroundings for this couple, our first suggestion of abundance). The length of the list & its variety reinforce a concluding sense of abundance associated with this couple & their circumscribed lives, even though the items listed are mostly humble & everyday odds & ends, & we never find out what exactly they mean to the couple. We are told that this old pair remembers, but not <i>what </i>they remember. They share these things, but only with each other, not with us. We see only that they do share an intimacy. We do not share in that intimacy, but we end by seeing that it is there, a mystery & a blessing illuminating these two people who had appeared so plain & dull.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I took this from <i>Selected Poems</i> by Gwendolyn Brooks; there appears to be an updated edition, which you can find <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/selected-poems-gwendolyn-brooks/8856556?ean=9780060882969" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-48768824458356945692024-02-12T05:00:00.000-08:002024-02-12T05:00:00.141-08:00Museum Monday 2024/7<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgchflYLVKGSxaRgxCHhgNMdfJbgWmA1acwWKDvj6KhQ7NytT1Q3IxMPnzmfKkHHmu6TIfnzhxEEuylrkKtCgCs7Mlrv9PfvsYGBpHMqLZgns-Oi74k2EF57tK5IIfQhB9ieAp_VWBfnuvDkKi4m7pJ7mtENOIbjNkhE0bquL6ebZ85XQQocfKguQ/s4000/IMG_20240125_180441989.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgchflYLVKGSxaRgxCHhgNMdfJbgWmA1acwWKDvj6KhQ7NytT1Q3IxMPnzmfKkHHmu6TIfnzhxEEuylrkKtCgCs7Mlrv9PfvsYGBpHMqLZgns-Oi74k2EF57tK5IIfQhB9ieAp_VWBfnuvDkKi4m7pJ7mtENOIbjNkhE0bquL6ebZ85XQQocfKguQ/w300-h400/IMG_20240125_180441989.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><a href="https://searchcollection.asianart.org/objects/5812/covered-bowl-with-design-of-dragons?ctx=48ec6d157c585bd6c04b38a39870f7a398520b80&idx=0" target="_blank">Covered bowl with design of dragons</a><i>, a porcelain piece from eighteenth-century Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, China, now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco</i></p><p><i>We are now in the Year of the Dragon</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-6415746193536160622024-02-09T05:00:00.000-08:002024-02-09T05:00:00.149-08:00Friday Photo 2024/6<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhflJ4KlmFbaWlt0YPfwzElhktvNC4_12wF45hpe1Jq2K3xsjCDr6212zfxR8JV9RP1PEjlLPXk3QTHZHy78r5nYmexZN9jG0PbuD842pYDzz1Vnqw5-MyaPYNJW9FLkvFTg_tXtqmnRfBJQvuoF_T-B2LmdYXypFcg1Sob5MuRAsCVkuippxpR4w/s4000/IMG_20240202_135222401.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhflJ4KlmFbaWlt0YPfwzElhktvNC4_12wF45hpe1Jq2K3xsjCDr6212zfxR8JV9RP1PEjlLPXk3QTHZHy78r5nYmexZN9jG0PbuD842pYDzz1Vnqw5-MyaPYNJW9FLkvFTg_tXtqmnRfBJQvuoF_T-B2LmdYXypFcg1Sob5MuRAsCVkuippxpR4w/w300-h400/IMG_20240202_135222401.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>crispy duck</i></p>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-61771493062872458412024-02-07T16:34:00.000-08:002024-02-07T17:46:54.672-08:00Shotgun Players: Babes in Ho-llandRecently I was at a Sunday performance of <a href="https://shotgunplayers.org/Online/default.asp" target="_blank">Shotgun Players</a>' world premiere production of <i>Babes in Ho-lland</i> by Deneen Reynolds-Knott, directed by Leigh Rondon-Davis. It is the story of two Black women students in the largely white environment of the University of Pittsburgh (the Ho-lland of the title is a joking reference to a dorm on campus) in the 1990s: Ciara (Sundiata Ayinde), a freshman from a middle-class background (her mother works in finance) living in the dorms, & Taryn (Tierra Allen), a sophomore from a less financially stable background, living off campus, who fall in love with each other. There is a third character: Kat (Ciera Eis), a sort of grunge-goth-adjacent white girl who is Ciara's roommate.<div><br /></div><div>Here's the short version: the performers are fine, the play is sweet, but dull. I think I read somewhere that it would be 90 minutes without intermission. That would be stretching it a bit, but OK. Then at the theater we were told it would be two hours & ten minutes, including a ten-minute intermission. The show ended up being two & a half hours. I've seen productions of <i>Macbeth </i>that are shorter. Before I go into how thin the material was stretched to fill that time, I'm going to talk about my experience in the theater.</div><div><br /></div><div>We bring our baggage into the theater with us; ideally, the play will lighten our loads in some way: make us laugh, or think, or even just forget whatever we need to forget at the moment. The last few years in particular have been difficult ones for me – & for the world at large, of course, but I'm talking about my individual situation. I won't go into the details, because it's not the kind of thing I discuss here, but I'll summarize by saying when someone I know sent me a Christmas text wishing me "merriment & brightness coming my way" my immediate & visceral reaction was, Why are you making fun of me? Then I realized he wasn't; I'm just not expecting merriment & brightness from . . . well, anything.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I went into the theater with that, hoping I would enjoy the play. If I weren't basically an optimist I wouldn't keep going to the theater, right?</div><div><br /></div><div>It was a mask-mandatory matinee, which leads to the first incident. I took my seat in the front row, mask firmly in place (I am very careful about observing such rules). Between allergies & medication, my throat gets dry, which leads to coughing. Since that would disrupt a performance, I carry a small bottle of water in my messenger bag. While waiting for the show to start & without thinking much of it, I took the bottle out of my bag, briefly half-undid my mask, took a quick glug, put the mask back on, & replaced the bottle in my bag. Before I could finish putting the bottle back (please note I never fully took off my mask, & replaced it before putting the bottle away – I later timed myself doing this & the whole sequence takes about two minutes, during only about half of which time my mask is partly down), I heard screeching behind me: "TAKE THAT OUTSIDE!!!!: I was facing the stage, so I turn around, & there, quivering with rage, is a short pile of unruly grey curls in a lumpy tie-dyed sweatshirt. "What are you talking about?" I said. "TAKE THAT OUTSIDE!!!! THIS IS A MASKED MATINEE!!!!" I point out to the trembling troll that I am wearing a mask (by then it was fully back on). She kept screeching. She had been sitting in almost the back row of the theater. That means she must have charged down the stairs the minute I started reaching into my bag. (If I was exuding harmful viruses, wouldn't it be safer to stay back where she was? But of course safety isn't the point.) Best of all, in order to come down to where I was in the front row, she had to pass a woman who was sitting several rows behind me, blatantly flouting the mask policy: her mask was down around her chin & she was leisurely sipping her cup of coffee. The tie-dyed troll kept screeching at me, even though I was, let me reiterate, already fully masked with my water put away, so I'm not sure what more she wanted. Finally I nodded to the maskless woman, who must have heard what was going on but just kept sitting there, & said, "Are you going to go yell at her?" "YES I AM" she said, but of course she didn't yell; she quietly mentioned that it was a masked matinee & she should take her coffee outside (which the woman did).</div><div><br /></div><div>I guess technically I did violate the rule, though I didn't even think of it that way as I was only partially exposed for a minute or two. I didn't even think of what I was doing as "drinking", I thought of it as "preventing a coughing fit". I certainly understand the exasperation & frustration of seeing people ignore the rules. But if you're so tightly wound about masking that a momentary & partial exposure on the other side of a substantial space is going to make you lose it completely, maybe you shouldn't be sitting in a theater audience quite yet. But of course the masking wasn't the point. The point was to scream at a man (I can state this firmly, as she ignored the mask-down woman until I made a point of it, & that's a fairly typical example of how my male "privilege" works for me). I'm so used to bizarre levels of hostility from random strangers that it wasn't even until the next day that it occurred to me she could have simply said something to me, or alerted the house manager, without screaming. I think she actually did alert the house manager, as I saw her poke her head in a few minutes later & scan my row, obviously looking for the law-breaker. Since my mask was firmly back on before the troll had finished her first screech, well, I'm not sure what she thought her point was. (For the record, during the performance people around me were lowering their masks to eat cookies. I know this because the cookies were wrapped in cellophane.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So after that random attack I'm standing there at my front row aisle seat, still waiting for the show to start (I get places early). A white-haired woman sits next to me, eyes me up & down, & announces to me that we're in the movable chairs (the other rows are basically church pews) & I could easily move my seat over & the theater wouldn't even notice. I just stared at her. I am extremely careful about respecting other people's space, a courtesy that is often not reciprocated or even recognized. Moving my chair over would in fact have partially blocked the stairs, making it difficult for people going up or down. I hadn't even sat down. I don't know what her problem was, other than my existence.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then, during the performance, the woman directly behind me, when not talking to her companion, grunted & moaned in agreement with any "political" points, & . . . sang along with the songs. <i>She sang along.</i> & there were a lot of songs in this show.</div><div><br /></div><div>So let me move on to the show, starting with the music, which the theater kept highlighting. Pop music from the 1990s means absolutely nothing to me. Given the age of most of the rest of my audience (even older than I am), I can't believe it means much to them, either: maybe their children listened to it? I didn't hate it, but I sure didn't feel I'd missed anything by not hearing it before. The music helps define the personalities of the three (Kat in particular listens to more rock-type stuff), but once that point is made . . . well, it keeps being made, & then made again (hence the extended run time; anytime action threatens to develop, on goes the CD player). Sometimes the young women dance along or lip-synch the words. I can't even remember if they actually play air guitar or if I was just plunged back into the embarrassment of watching fellow dorm-dwellers do so: after your initial grin, to show you think they're so cool, when they keep going on, what do you do but pretend to still have a reaction while your soul slips away, its place taken by crushing emptiness & boredom? At least in the theater it doesn't matter if you don't have a reaction. You can just sit back, blank-faced, basking in the stereophonic stylings of the random woman behind you singing along in her very average voice to songs you've never heard of.</div><div><br /></div><div>Speaking of familiarity, easily the biggest reaction of the evening came when Ciara says she wants to go into journalism & be on a TV show where she can make Pat Buchanan cry. Big laughs & applause for that – this aging Berkeley audience may not know Courtney Love from a Hole in the ground, but we know & despise Pat Buchanan!</div><div><br /></div><div>The thought of a student in the mid-1990s wanting to go into journalism made me wonder why no one did the obvious thing with this material: compress the whole thing into a first act (under an hour) & then write a second act, set in current times, updating us on these three characters. If nothing else, maybe we could find out what happens to their sense of self when the music they use to define themselves turns into oldies or "classic hits" or nostalgia.</div><div><br /></div><div>So these two young women fall in love, & that's kind of sweet, of course. But there's really no conflict as they slide together. Ciara is the less experienced of the two, but she doesn't have much angst over falling in love with another woman – the whole "Oh my God, am I . . . <i>that way</i>?!?" drama, & the coming-out drama, are a bit passé on the stage, though not in life. The two women don't run up against much homophobia. Kat is cool with it, as a young woman like her would be. There is racism, but mostly of the "white people are clueless" kind rather than the overtly hostile kind. At one point, when Taryn has financial problems, Kat asks about her scholarship. Both Taryn & Ciara are immediately offended by this. I was puzzled, as Taryn's financial problems have been a running theme & it seems unsurprising that she would receive financial aid, but apparently there's a racist thing I had not even heard of, in which all Black students are assumed to have scholarships "for diversity". Is this a variant on "you're only here because of affirmative action?" But the affirmative action thing is more insulting & the scholarship assumption is more along the lines of well-meaning but clueless. This is the sort of portrayal of racism that lets the Berkeley audience off the hook – we are so much more sensitive than that young woman! It was one of several points when the woman behind me grunted & "mmmm'ed" loudly to let everyone know she totally got it. (Do I even need to clarify that this woman was white? as was most of the audience.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Taryn is portrayed as relentlessly cool: she wants to be a social worker! She loves kids, & they love her right back! She is pals with all the service workers on campus! Her mac & cheese is <i>fire</i>! She goes to poetry slams! She listens to the coolest beats! She sneers at people who watch <i>Friends</i>! She plays a mean game of pool! Her Granddad taught her, because her family is so close! When they party, the neighbors don't complain, they party with them!</div><div><br /></div><div>The play is weirdly reluctant to criticize or question her. But let's look at some of these things, starting with palling around with the service workers: she & Ciara have a conversation about this. Ciara says these people are just doing their jobs. Taryn gives her a little lecture (one of several she gives, meant to enlighten Ciara & presumably us) about how her Mom worked at a hotel reception desk & some guests treated her like dirt but others were courteous because they knew she could make or break their vacation (yeah, Taryn, we know; we've all seen <i>Fight Club</i>). Ciara has no response & clearly has been both thrown for a loop & shown the light. But there's a pretty big spectrum of behavior between treating people like dirt & being friends who have lengthy conversations with them while they're working. Sometimes respect means letting people do their jobs, or realizing that maybe they're not there to give you a rounded social life, or even that they may not like you that much.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's an example from years ago in my working life: I was at a job where my desk was a bit out of the way. You could get to it, but you had to go around some low cubicle dividers that kind of walled off the area. So when the man would come around to empty our wastebaskets, I would pick mine up & carry it over to him. This was mostly to be helpful but also partly because it allowed me to move from my desk. One time when I did this, he thanked me & said I was the only person who handed him the basket like that. English was not his first language, or one he spoke well, so saying that was an effort for him. I thanked him. I was glad I could do that for him & show him that sign of respect. But we never were pals, the way Taryn is with the campus crew. I didn't feel I should take up his time with chat mostly designed to show how cool I am for talking to him. (Most people would assume I was, at least financially/economically, the privileged person there. I'm not sure that's accurate. I was unable to find a full-time job & so was working one in a series of long-term temp jobs at the same company, for which I basically received no benefits, only my salary – after the temp agency had regularly skimmed a huge amount off the top, in return for nothing but issuing me a check every other week. My bosses always wanted to hire me but HR kept insisting they had a "hiring freeze". It's possible the man who picked up the trash at least had a full-time job with some benefits. I mention this to underline how ambiguous & deceptive appearances of power & status can often be, in life though not in this play.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Another point about palling around with the service workers: for all the dramaturgical talk of "intersectionality", Taryn's lecture, as well as the rest of the play, doesn't really seem to have any comprehension of how it would actually work. To take an obvious example, a man chatting up a service worker (particularly a woman worker) is going to be read differently from another woman doing that. (I once had a conversation with a retired librarian, a woman, about killing time before shows in Civic Center. She told me that she liked to go to the children's section of the SF Public Library & read, and "you're really not supposed to be there without a child, but they don't mind if you're reading the children's books." &, not for the first time, I thought, Oh, should I tell the nice lady why she can do that & a man can't?) There will be complicated cross-currents depending on the race of the person, & the age, &, of course, personality. & in a college setting, there's an inherent barrier between the students & the service workers, no matter how much some of the students may like to pretend there isn't.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's another example: Taryn lives in a house off-campus. She has trouble making her rent. She tries to make up for it by making her roommates occasional dinners (as mentioned, her mac & cheese is <i>fire</i>!). Eventually they have a house-meeting to let her know they can't keep carrying her rent & other bills & she needs to move on. She is a bit resentful but basically understanding. But we've all known or heard about people like this –people who owe money but provide some lesser service as compensation – & generally they tend to think that what they're doing should carry full weight. But of course to those to whom money is owed, it doesn't. Taryn isn't given that flaw, of course, as she is not given flaws. But the whole "I make them dinner" thing raised questions for me: who cleans up? who pays for the ingredients? If she's paying, I'm sure the roommates are thinking, "How come you can buy all this but can't pay your bills?" If anything, the dinners would make them feel guilty & resentful, though we don't hear any inkling of that. But they're also students, & why should they pay her bills as well as their own, despite the deliciousness of her mac & cheese?</div><div><br /></div><div>Are there class & racial considerations here? We never find out, of course. The roommates never appear & we are given no details about them, other than that they are also students. Dorm residents other than Kat also never appear (not even to complain about the loud music late at night). I understand the economics behind having very small casts (three people is actually larger than in many other new plays I've seen), but if you're concerned about presenting & respecting many voices, you can't have said voices mediated through the filter of the two or three people we actually hear from on stage.</div><div><br /></div><div>At one point Taryn, whom Ciara has been treating when they go out, wants to reciprocate, because suddenly she has money. Ciara asks where she got it, Taryn, it turns out, has signed up for a cash-advance card (she doesn't seem to know quite what it is or how it works). This happens at the point in the evening when they have to have a fight of some sort; everything has been mostly frictionless up to now, but something has to happen to produce some tension, so Ciara starts telling her how insidious those cards are, Taryn gets offended ("my mom uses them & you're calling my mom stupid!"), & she flees. Of course they soon re-unite, & Ciara apologizes (!!!), says she could hear her mother speaking through her & regrets that (!!!!!!), & Taryn grudgingly accepts her apology because deep, <i>deep </i>down she is sure Ciara meant well (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Ciara, honey: <i>Your mother is right</i>. Cards like that are one of the predatory ways financial institutions take advantage of people who are financially ignorant (not the same thing as stupid) or desperate for income. But that issue will not be addressed here. It's downright weird that Ciara is presented as the one at fault here, & typical of both the play's reluctance to interrogate Taryn & its superficial handling of any actual social issues, which is what I meant by putting "political" in quotation marks above. (We never do find out how Taryn managed to pay off the card or whether she continued to run into debt.) I understand that this is meant to be a positive portrayal of queer Black love, & that's great, but it achieves that positive feeling by skating swiftly over any unpleasantness. You know, the same thing that happens in real life!</div><div><br /></div><div>One feels a certain amount of pressure to love this play: Women telling women's stories! Queer joy! Black joy! Queer Black joy! (Joy is very zeitgeisty). But the pressure to offer positive stories means much of what gives our lives texture &, you know, <i>drama </i>is elided here. We don't even know if the two women stay together after Taryn has to drop out of college at the end of the play. Looking back on freshman / sophomore year of college from a more aged perspective, how many such relationships last, especially when one party drops out of college & moves away? The class differences between the two women aren't made much of, & neither is Taryn's greater sexual experience. In fact the relationship that rang truest to me is the one between Ciara & Kat: initially Ciara thinks Kat is cool & different, then gradually she grows disillusioned with how self-centered & ultimately conventional she is; Kat is always going on about & mooning over her boyfriend, who is of course off-stage so we never see his perspective, but apparently he's ready to move on & she can't accept that. Towards the end of the school year & the play, Kat, pretending to be drunker than she is, propositions Ciara, in one of the few really dramatic events in this show. Ciara is disgusted by this & fed up with Kat in general, so she blocks off her side of the dorm room. That's what happens in the spring: the roommate you thought was hip & interesting in the fall is a bore & a burden by spring. But I can see Kat & Ciara gradually becoming some sort of friends in the future. I'm less sure of Ciara & Taryn; the happy ending here seems more like an artificial stop so that we don't have to experience their future troubles, or even just their drifting apart under the pressures of the different directions in which their lives have taken them.</div><div><br /></div><div>All in all, an unsatisfying evening & an unsatisfying end to a very mixed season at Shotgun Players.</div>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22361479.post-36373612979982329092024-02-07T05:00:00.000-08:002024-02-07T05:00:00.220-08:00Poem of the Week 2024/6<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">The Ivy Green</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">That creepeth o'er ruins old!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Of right choice food are his meals I ween,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">In his cell so lone & cold.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">To pleasure his dainty whim;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">& the mouldering dust that years have made</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Is a merry meal for him.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><span> Creeping where no life is seen,</span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style="color: #38761d;"><span> A rare old plant is the Ivy green.</span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">& a staunch old heart has he.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">How closely he twineth, how tight he clings,</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">To his friend the huge Oak tree!</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">& slily he traileth along the ground</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">& his leaves he gently waves,</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">As he joyously hugs & crawleth round</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">The rich mould of dead men's graves.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;"><span> Creeping where grim death has been,</span><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;"><span> A rare old plant is the Ivy green.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">Whole ages have fled & their works decayed,</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">& nations have scattered been;</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">From its hale & hearty green.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">The brave old plant in its lonely days,</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">Shall fatten upon the past:</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">For the stateliest building man can raise,</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">Is the Ivy's food at last.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;"><span> Creeping on, where time has been,</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;"><span> A rare old plant is the Ivy green.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><span style="color: #38761d;">– Charles Dickens</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span><span>Ivy is terrifying stuff. Years ago when I moved into my current residence & my first Christmas rolled around, I went into my yard & cut down some of the holly-branches from the trees lining the driveway & some of the bright-green ivy twining around them. The holly & the ivy – festive, right? When the holidays passed, I tossed the holly branches into my green bin outside & put the ivy into my compost pile in the back. Months passed, & every time I turned the compost pile, while everything else in there decayed (or, as our poem would have it, in its British spelling, mouldered) into dirt, the ivy emerged as fresh & green as the day I threw it in there; the only change was that it was now bright & glossy from the moisture in the compost. Eventually I pulled it out of the compost pile & put it in the green bin for pick-up. Let the industrial composters handle it!</span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span><span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span>Dickens wrote this poem for inclusion in his first novel, <i>The Pickwick Papers</i>. Pickwick & his traveling companions are staying with their new friend Mr Wardle, a well-off country gentleman, at his place in Dingley Dell. It is a winter evening, & an elderly clergyman joins the party & recites, at their urging, this poem, which he wrote as a young man. Given the chronology of the novel, that would make the intended time of this poem sometime in the late eighteenth century, but its style hearkens back to even earlier days, to the times when ballads were the main popular form of poetry. The basic ballad beat is there (four beat lines followed by three beat lines), the regular rhymes (ababcdcd), the refrain that ends each stanza, the archaic <i>-eth</i> endings to the verbs.</span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span><span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span>Not just the style but the substance of the poem evokes a by-gone time: the <i>ruins old</i>, with crumbling walls & decaying stone, suggest, in this English setting, one of the monastic buildings deserted after Henry VIII broke with the Roman Church, a suggestion almost sealed by the reference to a <i>cell</i>, the typical term for a monk's or nun's room (the cell is <i>lone & cold</i>, which not only reinforces the picturesque quality of the ruin but brings to mind a typical English Protestant idea of a monk's or nun's life as something unnaturally cut off from normal human sensuality & domestic happiness). The fictional creator of this poem is, as I said earlier, a clergyman, & in the late eighteenth century country clergy of the Church of England were often more noted for antiquarian research than for spiritual zealotry. That sets the stage here: a romantic view of dilapidated Gothic buildings, stately buildings gone to dust, & the graves of the people (unnamed, probably forgotten) who built them.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span>There's a certain morbid element at play in this view, belied by the stealthy vigor of the main protagonist, the ivy. The ivy is consistently associated with green, the color of growth, of Nature at its most </span></span>robust & lively. But the plant's full strength is revealed only gradually; the first description tells us that the plant is <i>dainty</i>, which is not a word that connotes strength, & that it creeps (<i>creepeth</i>) along, a style of movement associated with lowly & humble creatures. But we soon find out that the daintiness is deceptive: it indicates not fragility but the finicky tastes of a decadent connoisseur, insisting on a certain level of decay before he will consume what's left. (This is a standard trope in poetic mentions of ivy: that a seemingly weak exterior – ivy is frequently depicted as clinging, as it is in the second stanza here – hides a crushing & persistent strength.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The ivy is deceptive, even treacherous; <i>creeping </i>adds to this impression; it is a sneaky, not-straightforward way of moving. The ivy crawls, it steals along, he is sly beneath his gently waving leaves. Whim & pleasure guide his devouring. But our final impression of the ivy is of its indomitable, even admirable, vigor. The first stanza gives us the contrast between the decaying ruins & the <i>merry meals</i> the ivy makes of them; as noted earlier, there are suggestions of decadence in the ivy's progress over the stones of the fallen buildings. The second stanza emphasizes his tight clinging & his joyous hugs, with an almost sexual physical intensity that contrasts with <i>grim death</i> and the <i>dead men's graves</i>. We find out the ivy not only has a heart, but a staunch one. But what is this staunch heart committed to?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As we find out in the third stanza, the ivy is committed to its own being, its own creative destruction of the world. It becomes a sort of Life Force. In this stanza, we move beyond the specific, limited locale in both space & time of the first two stanzas, with their ruins & their graveyards, into a sweeping view of whole Ages (fled) & whole nations (scattered), & the civilizations that emerged in those times & places are forgotten, abandoned, decayed, or lost, while the ivy crawls endlessly on. The poet's previously ambivalent or questioning views give way to admiration in this stanza: the ivy is <i>stout</i>, meaning sturdy, strong, & tough; it is <i>hale & hearty</i>, it is <i>brave</i>, which suggests splendor as well as fearless. It is also, more poignantly, an <i>old </i>plant, facing <i>lonely days</i> – as if it has outlived whole civilizations & their inhabitants to carry on alone. This is where the bravery comes in: to keep on keeping on. The works of humanity die, decay, & are lost, but the endlessly regenerative force of Nature in the shape of ivy continues, covering all.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This poem combines an intense, almost morbid interest in the picturesque & the ruined, in the grotesque byways of humanity, with an almost frightening sense of ongoing growth & creativity. In this it reminds me in capsule of the works of its great creator. Today is 7 February 2024; on this date in 1812, Charles Dickens came into this world.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I took this poem from the Oxford Illustrated Dickens edition of <i><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-pickwick-papers-9780199536245?q=oxford%20illustrated%20dickens&lang=en&cc=us#" target="_blank">The Pickwick Papers</a></i>.</div>Patrick J. Vazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09279528648512493917noreply@blogger.com0