Art, Reading

The Trial of Ulysses

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Watched this 50 minute (they make ’em that long?) YouTube video that I thought would be about U.S. Appeals Court Judge John M. Woolsey’s decision to finally allow Ulysses into the United States. It wasn’t about that. It’s a survey of Joyce’s time in Trieste. I liked it for that, too.

Interesting to see some of the living experts on Joyce whose names I’ve read in the past. They’re not how I ever pictured them, but they LOOK as they should look. Then I realized I’d never made any effort to picture them anyway. Some peculiar people, not a surprise. We Joyceans ARE a precious lot. Nice to see footage of elderly Sylvia Beach rocking the same haircut she had in her 20s!

Activity, Art

Burnside Bridge balloon man

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Walking yesterday the sight of a balloon art installation tethered to a stairway off the Burnside Bridge caught my eye. Caught about 4-5 peoples’ eyes. Snapped some photos. Within an hour the balloon man was gone. Was the artist/perpetrator among the people snapping photos, taking photos of people taking photos? Didn’t much care. If so, give them their moment. This was interesting.

Art, Music

Everybody’s got a sad song, but…

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So, are there people on the planet for whom a Hootie and the Blowfish song triggers a reminiscent sadness? The song comes on and the person’s instinct is to retreat and walk (or sit) and think big thoughts and piece the important things together? Gotta be “Yes”, right?

Art, Poetry

Three stanzas from ‘Under Ben Bulben’ by Yeats

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“Under Ben Bulben” doesn’t quite work. Yeats tried to make it a culminating poem, even writing his eventual epitaph in the closing lines. I cracked it open tonight and rediscovered these three stanzas:

II
Many times man lives and dies
Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear
Is the worst man has to fear.
Though grave-digger’s toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong,
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.

III
You that Mitchel’s prayer have heard,
“Send war in our time, O Lord!”
Know that when all words are said
And a man is fighting mad,
Something drops from eyes long blind,
He completes his partial mind,
For an instant stands at ease,
Laughs aloud, his heart at peace.
Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate,
Know his work or choose his mate.
 
VI
Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago; a church stands near,
By the road an ancient Cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase,
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

Art, Opera

I Cio-Cio-Choose ‘Madama Butterfly’

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Second opera in two months. Saw the Portland Opera’s production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly this afternoon. Fun to go to a classy event in daylight, and still have daylight outside when it’s done. The day still felt open, heart full of amusement and music!

I don’t speak Italian, and am by no means classy, but I really liked the show. There are musical discernments I am far from being sensitive to, but Opera is sure-as-heck less daunting than I once thought. Plots are simple, and take forever to develop. But rapid plots are not opera’s appeal. It’s empathy and sensory experience.

Listening to live music can be superior to decades-old recordings. You’re welcome for this free wisdom.The score to Madama Butterfly was less familiar than Carmen which I saw in late December. But while I’ve listened to Butterfly several times with good speakers and headphones, I was struck by how the music that comes across as cramped on a recording opens up with live orchestration. One thing to KNOW that, as most everyone who cares about music does, but another thing to EXPERIENCE that.

Voices were strong. The male lead character, B.F. Pinkerton, is a jerk who doesn’t stick around. We’re not supposed to like him, but I kept hoping he would break into Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like a Bird” to at least TRY to win us over.

As it was, when it was time for curtain call, the long-suffering Cio-Cio San (nicknamed Madama Butterfly) had just taken her own life before our eyes. When the performer who played Pinkerton, the man who led to Cio-Cio San’s despair, took the stage a crescendo of applause was supported by an undercurrent of playful booing. Very funny. Singer smiled. Must be part of the role.

The production was more accomplished than the Eugene Opera’s Carmen (though I liked that show, too, and like Carmen more than Butterfly). At the Eugene Opera I did not see a single illuminated cell phone screen as the lights came down. In Portland, bright rectangles were all over the place. So, point to Eugene for being classier!

Art, Pop Culture

Dissecting ‘Doctor Zhivago’

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Doctor Zhivago is not a great film. Though I’ve seen it a dozen times, it may not even make my list of top 20 favorites.

Cupcake, cheesecake.Director David Lean’s film before Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, is my favorite movie (don’t tell Singin’ in the Rain, m’kay?) and watching Zhivago (same composer, a lead, director, screenwriter) always gets me contrasting art that works (Lawrence) to art that falls flat (Zhivago). I’ll probably never write my thoughts out about Lawrence, there’s not enough internet space for all the slop that would pour out, but it’s interesting that Lawrence has no speaking roles for women, and the only time women are heard are ululations of women sending their men off to battle. It IS an army movie in the Middle East and I don’t recall T.E. Lawrence mentioning women in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Oh, shit. Right. Zhivago. See? It’s easy to get rolling about Lawrence. Staunching that gusher and getting back on topic…

Producer Carlo Ponti wanted Sophia Loren to play Lara. Lean thought her too tall. Julie Christie was hired instead. And I can’t make up my mind about Geraldine Chaplin as Zhivago’s wife and cousin. In many shots she seems alert and intelligent, others like a ninny. And her appearance changes from gaspingly cute to weird-looking.

Christie was already a notable actor and beauty, Chaplin would become a prominent actor and had already been a teen model. Like any good devotee, I demand consistency from objects of worship. Fluctuating levels of beauty and presence are confusing.

Lean decided to make the character of Yuri Zhivago an observer, to Sharif’s initial frustration. He was to take it all in, hardly emoting, but he and the audience would know Zhivago would express himself through poetry. Don’t worry, Lean assured Sharif, despite the beautiful spectacles and actors emoting all around him, at the end of the movie they will think most about Sharif as Zhivago.

“[The novel] Doctor Zhivago is a sorry thing, clumsy, trite and melodramatic, with stock situations, voluptuous lawyers, unbelieveable girls, romantic robbers and trite coincidences.” – Vladmimir Nabokov

Would it shock you to know that Doctor Zhivago is not a documentary? Turns out the scenes in the ice palace home were not done in a ice palace that just happened to be there. The ice effects were done with beeswax coating the set, the drippings flash-hardened by being sprayed with ice water.

Speaking (okay typing, you stickler!) of fake cold, and fake heat. Something about the movie remains unconvincing. The actors don’t quite click. I may have started to put my finger on it.

It has to do with too much emphasis on the look of things. How the shot is lit, in focus, holding a pose as if for a movie still. In the throes of passion, or deep feeling, the leads don’t comport themselves the way people do. Too many shots of the gorgeous Julie Christie as Lara being lit achingly right:

And, with Sharif’s Yuri Zhivago relegated to being an observer, the movie is a parade of sustained white glints of light in his moist eyes. It’s not subtle. It’s distracting. A simulcra of a highly attuned human and artist shown so deliberately he seems a falsely-moved mannequin. Take this still which is the shot right after the one of Christie above:

Feeling the passion? Neither are they, but they are optimally lit, and Sharif’s sleeve is smoothed out just so.Omar Sharif is a great actor. Julie Christie is a great actor. It’s a fault of the direction and cinematography. Has David Lean done a convincing love scene? It’s a mood killer, and irreparably harms a grand melodrama like Zhivago. Any-hoo, having pinned that down I’m going to sleep knowing the world is a better place having helped us all get more precise about a supreme piece of middling entertainment.

Activity, Art, Music, Pop Culture, Reading

‘Neath Neil Sedaka

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During a morning walk, a turn of brain had me switch from the audiobook for A Dance with Dragons (why, Roy Dotrice, must you lose track of your character voices from book to book?) to the two songs on my iPod by Neil Sedaka.

I know he’s recorded a lot more songs in his long career. I recall an odd love duet with his daughter. What trips me out about “Calendar Girl” and “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” is the forced cherubism. “Though sad inside, I shall for the sake of commerce and Tin Pan Alley heave a superhuman effort into PROJECTING MIRTH THOUGH ITS FORCE MAY REND TIME/SPACE ASUNDER!”

Let’s focus on his shout out to “December” in “Calendar Girl”. He uses the word “‘neath”. He could have used “beneath” and it would have still flowed. But no, he formally sat at a table, wrote the word “‘neath” on the music sheet and thought “How winningly informal and crafty. I shall keep it.”

He gives out a “Whoo!” at the start of the bridge (at 1:26 in the clip below) that is hilarious. “Holy Christmas on a cracker, I got so much groove I don’t know what to do but whoop in exultation!”

Drafting this on my phone, its AutoCorrect suggested “Meat” for “Neil”, “Defamation” for “Sedaka”, “Shop” for “Whoo”. Good summary, phone! Somewhere out there my smartphone has a funnier, more concise blog than mine.

Activity, Art, Music, Opera, Parenting, Pop Culture

Music shopping, opera speakeasy, candy ploy

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Largely house-bound day, about 5:30 p.m. I rustled the family up, insisting on a field trip to the record/CD store while they still exist. Music Millenium (“A place where the music and the people still matter”). I was on the hunt for a next opera CD.

I’d taken the kids there before, but it was several years ago and they had no memory of it. They found the candy section right away and started bargaining. “Can we get candy instead of music?” “NO! Go look around.”

We went separate directions. Where is the opera section? Over in classical, duh. Down the stairs, then some other stairs. Gotta open a door then down OTHER stairs to get into the classical room, then opera is in a closet of THAT room. Like finding a brightly lit opium den.

Got there, browsed a bit, took some tips from the “Opera 101” book I’m reading. Side track: the author is bugging me. He loves using the phrase “the fact that”, once using it in consecutive sentences (*wince*).

I’ve already got Maria Callas in Norma, the first opera CD I bought (bet Fanny Chicken can suss out why) and have listened to Callas’ studio recording of Carmen loads of times, leading to seeing it a few weeks ago. Thanks, T! Madama Butterfly probably the next opera I’ll attend, probably in a few weeks. Found a recording of … Maria Callas performing THAT, nabbed it. Double CD (w00t!) with a bonus CD-ROM of material (wh@t?).

Back in the day (as kids like to say, I’m trying to reach their demographic – how’s that coming across? Cool? Kinda molester-y?) I really like the interactive CD-ROMs put out by Peter Gabriel (still think about those), Sting ‘All this Time’ (Andrew & I joke about that one), and Prince’s ‘Interactive’ (wish there were a smell-o-vision feature). Haven’t tried the opera CD-ROM, but it’s probably documents, not interactive games like “coax the diva to the stage after she received an underwhelming bouquet from her new paramour”.

Also got a Callas opera buffet CD – more than 100 songs over 6 CDs! – that I’ll use as a reference when the various operas get a mention in the Opera 101 book. Small doses. Looking at the track lists made me woozy what with all the languages that weren’t American.

The Madama Butterfly did not have a price tag on it. Asked a clerk in the middle of the store for a price check. Clerk got nervous. “That’s from the opera section.”

“Can you look it up here?”

“Yes. But, it’s from the other section.”

[Non-verbal ??? on my face]

“There may be a special deal or something. They would know.”

“I assumed the whole store would be connected to the same system.” What is up with this opera ghetto treatment?

Clerk scanned it, $23.99. Thanked him, still baffled. But there are old-school rectangular red or white or orange price stickers on the CDs at Music Millenium, and the clerk wanted to make sure I was getting any sale they might be having that would not be reflected in the computer system. So, sorry for my faces, brother. It was $23.99 in the opera/classical register, too, this time.

Daughter got the new Muppet Movie music CD. Son picked nothing. Spouse got a few CDs including a greatest hits of Pink Martini. A new Decemberists CD sits in our home, so far unopened this last month. Tough for parents to find time to listen to new music, but why am I reluctant to seek out music by local artists? I have this threshold for only listening to artists after they hit the mainstream. Never hire me to be an A/R guy, I’d never go anywhere to seek out prospects.

Also picked up the new Patton Oswalt CD. No idea he had one. Why didn’t he tell me?