Went to my first Bat Mitzvah. Upper East side synagogue. The cantor, Lori Corsin, has an incredibly beautiful voice. Wow. The congregation was led in some readings and heard some music and then came the ritual. The Rabbi turned and faced the elaborate bronze wall relief behind him. Slowly he walked towards it and, placing his hands on it, he slid it open — it was a little magical, as if a secret chamber were being revealed to us (though one could have seen that it probably opened.)
Inside were 3 huge Torahs, and behind them a brightly colored painted chamber. Two lions faced a crown, vines crept up underneath. Stylized flames flickered here and there. Huge images of classical columns ran up and down the sides.
Up above there was a stained glass image of a landscape with a half hidden temple on the top of a dirt hill. In the foreground were cypress and olive trees. Low green hills undulated in the background.
The Rabbi clutched the giant “book”, the torah scroll, as the ceremony proceeded. As if the book were watching the ritual, bearing witness, officiating — as if it was the book that made the ceremony real. The prayers and incantations were the usual Levantine injunctions against worshipping other Gods and the hope that this “true” God would eventually overcome the unbelievers. Oh jeez. Lori sang again, it was beautiful.
I walked home, through midtown. I stopped at the ICP museum on my way and caught their new show “Ecotopia” which I guess is some conflation of ecology and utopia/dystopia — as many of the works are about nature and the environmental wreckage around us. The similar world ectopia, which means a bodily organ in the wrong place, would have worked as well. It’s a large and powerful show, and some cool installation ideas — video monitors nestled in huge biomorphic shapes that looked like giant rubber versions of tree growths. Catherine Chalmers’s nature doc in one growth follows a cockroach (and many other critters) up close and personal, and it rivals the Attenborough BBC docs I love — her cinematography is that good. But does that mean that the BBC docs are “art” as well? Certain sequences in them — the slug-mating dance, the fish balls, the predator wasps — make a good case for it. And who is doing the foley work on these films? Both Chalmers and the BBC films have lots of crunchy and squishy sounds when appropriate. These sounds make a huge difference.
Other photographers — Mitch Epstein (Biloxi, post Katrina)
Robert Adams (clear cutting)
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (sites of “removed” Palestinian villages, now planted over as pine forests)
Simon Norfolk (evidence of the effects of war around Baghdad — there’s a missile in the woods):
and Sophie Ristenhueber (Iraq landscapes in ruins)
Pretty much all of the above images are beautiful. I find them arresting not because they make some didactic point about humans destroying the environment (though they may be trying to do that) but because they show us a strange and unexpected universe — our own.
In fact, if they are simply trying to make us aware of the damage we are doing to the landscape, of injurious policies and projects and then move us to action — they fail. Well, they do bring home some information that might be less moving merely as statistics — but the fact that they are beautiful subverts, for me, this possibly didactic intention. The images are simply gorgeous — you’d be happy and proud to hang them on your wall — pictures of devastation and destruction. How can anything so beautiful be simple agit prop? The two seem to contradict one another.
Somehow I think maybe the artists know this. I think in some cases (but not all) this contradiction, this cognitive dissonance, is what their images are about. They are about the fact that they can be beautiful and “ugly” and the same time — as many things can — and what does that mean? How do we deal with that? Does the beauty obscure, or are all these things partly beautiful and we have trouble reconciling the two?
In some cases, for some people, it seems to be a big problem. The well-known photographer Joel Meyerowitz took pictures of the aftermath of 9/11, near where he lives. He can’t help himself, I guess — the pictures are gorgeous, like images from a Spielberg epic that was never made. They’re romantic, like Caspar David Freidrich’s paintings — paintings that, in Germany, are seen as romantic kitsch, a precursor to the Wagnerian romanticism that some say led to (but cannot be said to have caused?) much Nazi propaganda and the mess that followed. Many admire Meyerowitz’s pictures, many others find them disgusting.
For many people these pictures cross the line — they beautify and possibly romanticize a tragedy that people see as different, closer maybe, than the Iraq landscapes or the clear-cut forests. Is it? I don’t know. I saw the very same thing as Meyerowitz, above (relief efforts were located there) but couldn’t take pictures. Maybe I was shy, maybe overwhelmed. Maybe it seemed wrong to be making “art” at that moment. How do photojournalists do it? (Well, they don’t say they’re making art, for starters — they’re letting the world see what is happening in far-flung places.) But I too was awe-struck and thought quietly to myself — wow, that is cool looking.
I remember a friend having come up to 12th St., where I lived then, from downtown on that morning. She was in tears, shaking, a wreck, and she kept saying over and over “It…it…it was beautiful.” She didn’t mean the former trade towers were beautiful — not many would claim that — but that the massive destruction was awe-inspiring, overpowering…and in a horrible way, beautiful.
Terry Allen (the Lubbock-born artist and musician) and I have been friends for a long time. I wrote to him about a lecture I went to:
Hey
Went to hear Sam Harris (The End of Faith — YOUR recommendation, remember?) at the 42nd St. library. I expected some demonstrators, hecklers...but I guess NYorkers are pretty Godless already — they cheered him on.
He was “in discussion” with an Oliver McTernan, “author and the director of Forward Thinking, an NGO involved in conflict resolution in the U.K. and Middle East, [he] is also a broadcaster for the BBC, and a former priest. He will challenge the claims set forth in Harris’s new book, Letter to A Christian Nation. Is Harris a secular fundamentalist reflecting the mindset he rejects? Does his American perspective have relevance elsewhere in the world? Like the religious right, is he an anti-pluralist?"
Oliver was a sweet as could be — like a gentle Father O’Malley from some old movie. Lilting Irish accent. Spends his time in Somalia and Gaza trying to get folks to get along, so he made an awfully “nice” counterpoint to Harris’s blunt suggestions that that all religious peoples of the Book are basically dangerous lunatics, and that nice guys like Oliver are just a mask for the nastiness that lies behind. One look at Oliver and his work and you wonder, how can this guy possibly be bad? (But I remember Irish Catholics sold girls into slavery within recent memory, prohibited birth control of all types, sent missionaries to destroy foreign cultures in the name of Jesus — probably still do — etc. etc. …so, all the nice Father O’Malleys in the world have a lot to answer for, if you ask me.)
McTernan’s retort to Harris was that yes, all Muslims, for example, are not the violent women-oppressing devils that Harris points at. No, many, in Gaza, Somalia and elsewhere, where he struggles daily, are probably just like the gentle little old Irish ladies who simply go to mass on Sundays and observe Xmas, Easter, etc...and apparently wouldn’t hurt a fly. (I made the Irish connection, not him.) And for them their religion is a source of strength and continuity with the past. A grounding and maybe even something spiritual. But Harris rightly (I thought) pointed out that though these individuals might be benign, all the books — the Koran, the Torah and the Bible — are intolerant, and are filled with violence and hatred. If these people are “good”, it is no reflection or credit to their religion — maybe their local culture and community have more influence on their behavior than their religions. I tried to read the so-called good book some years ago and found it a litany of suffering, hatred, honor killings, scores settled and general nastiness — with the rare edict to be good thrown in — couldn’t finish it — if I want horror I’ll stick with Cormack, who at least is a better writer. (Better than God! — now there’s a press blurb!)
The NYorkers were much more familiar with Harris than Oliver, so it was a bit of an unfair fight — Oliver didn’t have his cheering section to back him up.
That said, it was a good talk to witness. I enjoyed The End Of Faith, though he did go down some roads that I thought he should have avoided. The justification of torture, for one. At least that’s how I read it. He quotes Dershowitz’s thought experiment that if a bomber in custody had information that could save 1000s and if torturing him could get that information, then wouldn’t torture be justified? My response is, yes, it would be — but sadly that situation never ever occurs. I would be willing to bet that none of the valuable information obtained that has saved any lives has been through torture. Torture, it has been proved time and time again, produces unreliable and pretty much useless information, therefore no information at all, therefore no saved lives — so the thought experiment has no relevance in the real world. Sadly, the fact that 90% of the people being tortured are innocent can’t be used to counter the thought experiment, but that fact sure has an effect in the world — as predicted many times, the U.S. behavior has been the perfect recruiting tool for terrorists and has alienated what friends we had left. The torture, even if it as save a few lives, has put millions at risk. [The U.S. congress just voted to continue torture as a policy — many democrats voted for this, too.]
Terry Allen’s reply:
All this torture talk in the news makes me crazy...the waterboarding thing is the same Khmer Rouge murder shit. & “We only do it to get information”...oh, right. I don't think anyone ever tortured anybody for any reason other than revenge or pure sadistic pleasure...which is probably the same thing. Everything else is just an excuse. Harris is smart enough to know that...maybe he's got a Buddhist mean-streak running through his karma alarma bama-lama ding dong? Whatever...I agree. The “torture one to save a thousand” theory is deep and dumb with fantasy.
You're lucky to get to hear such a discussion though...the only thing they've had here [Santa Fe] lately is a workshop dissecting the music of Yawni...that and a lecture on the use of spinach leaves as a massage rub so you don't have to throw it out because of the deadly echo-lie. Not particularly riveting. I wonder why Bill Mahr hasn't had Harris on? Or the Simpsons?
The good book was a force-read for me...vacation bible and Sunday school tribulation. We weren't supposed to chew gum in the sacred glow of the class...no smacking around Jehovah. Had one teacher, banker by day...prick by Sunday, who reached right in my mouth, pulled out the gum and put it behind my ear then pushed my ear, gum and all, into the side of my hair. Bless the little children.
With the Tosca Strings! Back on the road, girls! It’s about time. The strings sounded great — the Toscas are great players — and people — they added a wistful melancholy to Kurt’s already heartbreaking ruminations. His words, and his unique Sprechstimme delivery, are amazing — very few of the lyrics rhyme, which one would think would be a problem, but in his case it helps the words come across as poetry, poetry of everyday language. Whitman and the great southern writers come to mind — descriptions of commonplace and day-to-day occurrences, ordinary disasters, epiphanies and catastrophes — that stand in for, or are veils for, deep turmoil, peace, love, and terror. Occasionally he would raise his voice, the dam would break, a flood of passion, and then just as suddenly the controlled matter-of-fact description of the beauty and terror of living would go on.
Kurt talked earlier over a beer about how David Dunlop, the artist who did their How I Quit Smoking cover, was a big inspiration.
The band is probably less popular in their hometown, Nashville, than anywhere else in the world — I’m guessing. Isn’t it always that way? They head to Europe soon, where they will be playing large venues like the Vienna Opera house — hey, that’s even fancier than the Grand ole Opry. Kurt says it doesn’t matter, the disparity in audiences and venues. I agree — I’m in the same boat sometimes. Maybe creatively it doesn’t matter, but financially it would be hard to keep a 13-person troupe (their current bus load) on the road unless there were ticket sales somewhere to pay the bills.
Saw this innovative Brazilian singer there about a year or so ago, when she was wearing a dress that seemed to be upside down — she rotated the whole dress around her body during that show — like she was squirming to emerge from a cocoon.
This show wasn’t as sartorially innovative, but musically it was miles ahead. I don’t recall the band on the previous shows, but this band, all resident Londoners I think, were great, very precise, but without being fussy.
Her voice is not unlike Bebel Gilberto’s (and others) — a pure uninflected instrument — that in Cibelle’s case easily mixes beauty with strangeness.
Biked up to check out the Nadine Robinson piece at the Studio Museum of Harlem. There was the African American day parade on Adam Clayton Powell. T-shirts being sold that said I "heart" my nose, lips and hair. Shocking that this affirmation is still needed — that the models of beauty presented to us don’t include a lot of us. Here (from a photo blog) is Sharpton, former Mayor Dinkins and Ferrer:
Robinson’s show was essentially one piece, a wall of speakers with an elaborate sound mix/collage.
From the Grand Arts website — where she had a retrospective:
Robinson's new work, Alles Grau in Grau Malen (2005), offers a soundtrack for the end of time. It is a large-scale sound painting measuring over eleven by forty-five feet. Fit onto one wall, it is accompanied by fog emitted from low-lying fog machines, obscuring the rigor of the white cube. The built-in audio player components play a mix of popular dramatic soundtracks taken from Hollywood films and Jamaican dance music. The pounding and chanting tracks derive from the climax scenes in Rosemary's Baby (1968), The Omen (1976) and The Matrix (1999). These manufactured movie versions of synchopathic sounds are mixed with Catholic funerary chants. Special effects specific to Jamaican sound systems are then piled on, in the tradition of Houses of Joy.
Here’s another piece which had a Pentecostal singing mix.
Would love to see these installed as a sound system in a club or on stage. Speakers as shrines, and the music mixes she creates are usually a spiritual mashup of one sort or another.
Saw a nun on rollerblades going up the Hudson river park. Rosary flying behind her.
Caught Otto’s set at Joe’s. I expected a laptop show, as the stuff I’m familiar with from this Brazilian singer is electronic samba loops with hooky vocals. But he had a full band — and they were great, and he’s a great performer — pulling up his pants to dance, patting his tummy and evoking the saints Shango and Yemanja.
Here’s a phone video — terrible sound and picture quality, I’m afraid — but it gives a little bit of an idea.
Dinner last night with Denise Dummont, her husband Matthew, Miho Hatori and Mauro. Denise is the daughter of Humberto Teixeira, co-writer of “Asa Branca” and many other songs. I did a translation of “Asa Branca” and sang it on Mauro’s new Forro in the Dark CD, hence the connection. Matthew is related to Darwin, and just turned in his new book about the efforts to turn back the clock in teaching evolution in Pennsylvania. His previous book was about a trip to the Tennessee town where the Scopes trial was held.
Teixeira was that Brazilian phenomenon — the composer of popular songs who was also an intellectual, a power in the law (he established song copyrights) and politics — not the way Bruce Springsteen might be a power in politics…but as if Jerry Brown or Anne Richards were writers of great popular songs. Vinicius de Morais (co-writer of a lot of the famous Jobim songs) was another of these men — a songwriter, poet, intellectual and ambassador to France. Gilberto Gil, now Minister of Culture, continues the tradition.
In Brazil the popular song is considered an art form — not just the harmonically complex jewels that are the classic bossa nova tunes, but, as in Humberto’s case, the Baião — a folksy regional style from the northeast — cowboy music, really. It’s as if Hank Williams were accorded the artistic merit he deserves, by both the popular audiences and the academy. Here, up north, there is a clear separation between songs written by “composers” (Schumann, Gershwin, Verdi, Berio, Virgil Thompson) and those “churned out” by songwriters (Hank, Berry, etc.) The former are fit for the finest theaters and concert halls and all the philanthropic and state support that goes along with that, while the latter are relegated to dingy bars and former Polish meeting halls with sticky floors…and no state or other support whatsoever.
Here in the U.S. jazz is seen as fit for government support — at least for support at Lincoln Center and government-sponsored world tours. Send Duke Ellington out on a world tour as a representative of American culture, along with action painters and abstract art. Odd that jazz was supported when it was no longer a popular medium. Wonder if rock and rap will someday be officially sponsored?
Anyway — the story I was told was that Humberto was playing in the Rio clubs but not getting anywhere till a friend told him about this singer in town from the Northeast who was a great charismatic performer — Luiz Gonzaga….and the rest is history. Gonzaga became Humberto’s vehicle — he advised him to adopt the look of the northeastern cowboys and outlaws and the first song he wrote for him was “Asa Branca”. A classic. These guys became an unlikely team — the sophisticate (who could write “country” songs) and the singer who could deliver them. Not to call her “country”, but maybe a bit like Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick.
A new music download site has made deals with two of the largest music catalogues in the world — potentially, then, they could become a challenge to iTunes. But the model is way different.
From The Guardian UK:
The deal follows SpiralFrog's agreement with Universal Music Group announced last week and means the site can offer users free legal downloads from artists such as James Blunt, Kelly Clarkson and this week's Mercury Prize winners, Arctic Monkeys.
While iTunes charges for music — 79p a track in Britain — on SpiralFrog users will have to watch a short advert before they can download a song free.
As far as artists are concerned, it is understood they will get royalties based on how many times songs are downloaded, with the money coming from SpiralFrog's advertising revenue.
All well and good if you want stuff these major labels have signed and approved of — to me it implies that if you’re not an artist with one of these majors then you might have trouble getting your track available on these sites in the first place, and even then, if your stuff isn’t hot, the advertiser who is paying you will eventually balk at funding fringe stuff that doesn’t draw (the right) consumers to their products. The advertiser holds the purse strings, and will naturally pull the other strings too, despite what they may claim, so this model puts the control of what music is available back in the hands of the majors and their corporate cronies.
Not that iTunes is fair and balanced, either. I don’t know the details, but I have heard that they are like record stores of yore — doling out position (visibility) to a very very limited number of artists. No surprise there — there is limited space. I’ve also heard that true indie artists get inferior treatment — lower royalty rates (or higher entry costs), less attention, and sometimes they are refused entry outright. Who’s manning the velvet rope here? What happened to that Long Tail where everything is available?
Now, a lot of this inequity might be due simply to pragmatic realities — there are only a finite number of tracks that can be processed and added at once — large, but finite.
Soon enough a site will open that is like a Google search for music downloads — downloads that are not copy-protected but you still pay for. eMusic tracks have no copy protection, for example, but their catalogue is limited. Eventually a meta search will turn up the tracks you want, wherever they live, on whomever’s site. Consumers don’t care who they buy them from if the interface is easy and intuitive. Soon enough iTunes consumers will find they have reached the 5th authorized player on their tracks and the frustration will set in when they can’t listen to the music they paid for. They’ll start to look elsewhere.
No mention whether or not SpiralFrog’s tracks have similar copy protection or similar malicious malware attached; maybe they won’t. But I can bet that the big advertisers won’t leap to sponsor the last 3 CDs I bought — Anja Garbarek, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Thelonious Monk. Niche advertisers might sponsor these kinds of records — they could sponsor them on their own sites via their own servers. Putamayo CDs are in effect sponsored by the health food stores and eco-boutiques that give them display space. A Mormon-owned Home Depot like chain, like the one featured in Big Love, might sponsor the choir’s CDs, and bars and coffee shops might sponsor the Monk CDs. The abovementioned search engine interface would find the tunes wherever they lived and the money would flow accordingly. They don’t have to be given free, as in the SpiralFrog model, but there are some obvious synergistic and mutually beneficial models that would naturally evolve to make this kind of sponsorship lucrative. For some.
Still, it still puts access in the hands of advertisers — a third party, so to speak. You’re not getting your groceries from the farm, you’re getting the ones that the store decides to stock. The mutually beneficial aspects of having a third party will rub off most when there are large numbers. Beco at The Red Hot Organization pointed out to me that a Lenny Kravitts tune was sponsored by a vodka company — you could get it free from their site and nowhere else. They took out ads, billboards, etc. Apparently it worked, and his visibility and CD shot up as a result. But what big vodka company would do that for some of the stuff I buy? A niche brand that might be a perfect match but they probably couldn’t afford that kind of marketing for fringe stuff. Often, though, the fringe stuff wouldn’t be right for that mass audience anyway — so no harm done. That stuff is better marketed via MySpace, websites and word of mouth. Or via specialized stores. But the point is, in this model it will never get the chance at a wider audience. The playing field had at least the illusion of becoming level — but maybe not for long.
Malu and I watched the V for Vendetta DVD. How did this get made? To me, it’s a pointed and direct critique of the present U.S. government — with the “Strength Through Unity” posters substituted for “United We Stand”. (It was written during the Thatcher/Reagan years, but seems like it’s been updated — I haven’t read the comic.)
The Wachowski Bros. is the answer, I guess — it was a long standing project of theirs, since even before the Matrix movies, so the making-of featurette says. My guess is that they did some sort of quid pro quo deal, trading the Matrix sequels for a green light on this one.
Anyway — secret prisons, politicized religion and symbols, militarism, accusations of insufficient patriotism and terrorism. One of the lead characters is a terrorist, though they are careful that he doesn’t slaughter civilians — it all seems scarily prescient, especially the attitude, which isn’t gung ho, smash the “terrorist”, but rather smash the corrupt secretive lying government. The “terrorist” quotes Jefferson and Shakespeare and wears a mask throughout, making his acting task near impossible, and also making it somewhat frustrating for the audience. Like the 1st Matrix movie — a treatise wrapped in a heavily art-directed thriller.
Conversion via e-mail between an old friend and myself:
Friend: Just got back from X where a relative now lives. It was in many ways like the perfect town — super liberal, nice old Craftsman homes on cozy, tree-lined streets; friendly people; no one locks their front door; the stores are locally owned (no chains); free movies in the park; free outdoor concerts where kiosks sell Thai food or locally-made ice cream made with local ingredients; there's communal compost; a massive farmer's market; the health food store is huge and carries mostly local, organic food (not Horizon or big pseudo-organic companies); gorgeous scenery — really the closest thing to a utopian society that I’ve experienced. But there was an essential ingredient missing that made it seem kind of boring to me. It was the whitest place I've ever been. I was on the lookout for people of color and didn't see a single African American person in 5 days. (There were a couple of Native Americans and a few Asians, but that was it. Certainly not enough for an influence to be felt.) Heaven is indeed a dull, one-dimensional place. The locals we met were very happy there but made comments about how the town was a little too perfect, that there was something eerie about it — but I wondered whether they would actively want economic and ethnic diversity and the complex and challenging issues that go with it? I couldn’t help thinking that these people live in a bubble, that they're missing out, that it's sort of unhealthy or just plain wrong in today's multi-culti world. Maybe I’m acutely aware of this because we live in the most economically and ethnically diverse part of our area where the whites may complain about crime, but the multi-cultural aspect makes it anything but boring.
Me: Hmmm, paradise is boring, eh? Well, I guess it would be. Maybe we need difference, the unexpected, the not perfect and even the undesirable to keep our edges as beings and as a species? We sharpen and hone ourselves against the nasty old world, and we become who we are as a result. You buying any of this? We need something to push against, some resistance and some reminders that we can’t just coast — some tests, surprises, practice, uncertainty and even unpleasantness to make us ask ourselves constantly who we are, what do we want, where are we going and do we really want to go there?
Or maybe I’m simply justifying the [somewhat bumpy] life I lead? [NY is more suited for the wealthy now, but it is still a place where ambitious creative types struggle against the odds in tiny apartments and with not quite enough money.] Maybe I’m secretly jealous of your relative and others who have made a place that eliminates all the bad stuff. (And the “other”, as you say.)
Friend: I totally buy what you say. In my opinion, we do need the nasty stuff — the struggle and resistance give life purpose. How can you strive to achieve if you're already there? Can art and great ideas flourish in a stagnant environment? I think about things like The World cruise ship where millionaires live year round — is it the perfect existence or total hell?
Anyway, I like what you say about surprises, unpleasantness and uncertainty as motivation — little kicks in the butt. No fun, but perhaps necessary.
Daniel (a journal reader) wrote in the following:
When the Bass brothers financed the first Biosphere, that earth in a bubble out in Arizona, the trees all failed in an interesting way. All the trees in the biosphere were droopy and lacked the strength to stand upright. They grew, but were too weak to stand. They studied the problem and found the answer. No wind. The Biosphere bubble lacked any wind so the trees had nothing to make them sway. It was the swaying, pushing against an invisible yet very palpable force, that gave them the strength to grow upright, stand reaching up to the sky. I met one of the Bass brothers at an American Museum Association show and he took me to a Blues club that he owned in Fort Worth. The band was rocking and he was so down home I forgot all about the Biosphere so I never got to ask if the story was true.
…
A religious procession on 9th ave in the 50s yesterday (phone picture):
The brass behind had a novel way of keeping their music in front of them:
