Sorry, folks, for being 'Missing In Action' last week.
In the rush to grade two classes of papers, I didn't get around to accomplishing much else that wasn't deemed utterly important - dishes, laundry, etc. And, as you've already ascertained, a blog update didn't come up in the cards.
I spent a rather lovely weekend in Pittsburgh with Matt. We hung out with friends on Friday and Saturday nights, made spaetzle, braved Ross Park Mall to do a bit of shopping, and indulged in sweets from the French bakery in Millvale. In addition, playing our new Civil War board game, I managed to lose Second Manassas for the Confederacy. Mea culpa on that one...
Speaking of the sweets, check out this picture I took of our selected macarons!
From the upper left corner: Raspberry; PB&J; Espresso; Peach; Vanilla Bean; and Nutella. (The plate is Terence Conran for Royal Doulton, in case you were interested.)
They were utterly sublime. Jean-Marc's Black Forest Cake and Croissants were just as good, believe me!
Most every weekend I spend in Pittsburgh with Matt we make pilgrimage to Caliban Books on Craig Street, a rare and vintage book shop that lies in between the campuses of the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. It is the rare occasion indeed that I leave without something, whether a cookbook I'd long sought, a CD from their $5/disc rack of used classical recordings, or a book I went in not knowing how desperately I needed.
Today fell deeply into that last category.
My chosen undergraduate major was English, a track that virtually predisposed me to the accumulation of dozens, hundreds, and perhaps thousands of books. Not one to suffer silently, I choose instead to continue buying books, knowing full-well that I will never likely read every single one of them.
I consider the mission to be salvific in two ways: the book is there for me when I seek it out and I save it from going to a person who will let it be passed on to someone who won't care for it - its contents or mere presence.
At Caliban today I faced down a ten foot wide shelf of vividly bright, gorgeously bound editions from "The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written" collection printed by the Franklin Press. There, in crimson red with gold accents and binding, was a copy of The Poems of John Donne.
I've long had a thing for Donne. Honestly, I can't even begin to pin down when, where, or how I first came across his Divine Sonnets. I'd wager a brief gloss during some year of high school English, however I can't be sure. One of these poems in particular - the tenth, at least according to the Westmoreland manuscript - "Death Be Not Proud" - has inspired, troubled, and stuck with me since at least high school.
The text is straightforward enough:
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou are not soe,
For, those whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones and soules deliverie.
For thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleep as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
In personifying Death, playing upon the mind's picture of a Grim Reaper, Donne utilizes modes of the Christian theology of resurrection to present an image of Death vanquished, the human soul redeemed and granted life eternal.
Of course, meditating upon and then mitigating the sting of death is a process far deeper than can be contained in fourteen lines. In the four hundred and one years since the poem was written, critics have gone on about the modified Petrarchan rhyme scheme, the images contained in the lines, capitalization, punctuation, and everything else that people who put store in literary criticism salivate over.
I read and pondered the poem as much as a high school student who pretends to greater understanding and depth than their average classmate could. Yet, something remained missing - some ineffable connection between my experience and Donne's words. It wasn't until I saw HBO's 2001 film adaptation of Margaret Edson's play, "Wit", that the poem really plugged in and lit up for the first time.
The play's protagonist, Professor Vivian Bearing, an expert on Donne, is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. The play traces the progress of her journey through an experimental course of incredibly strong chemotherapy and flashes back through Bearing's life, recounting an episode of her time as an undergraduate student, first tearing through the tenth Divine Sonnet in a way that a capricious young academic can (in other words, messily and with a certain youthful tenacity).
In a scene that makes me shiver to this day, E.M. Ashford, the younger Bearing's professor, admonishes the student for choosing an inappropriate edition of the Divine Sonnet under consideration.
Do you think the punctuation of the last line of this sonnet is merely an insignificant detail? The sonnet begins with a valiant struggle with death, calling on all the forces of intellect and drama to vanquish the enemy. But it is ultimately about overcoming the seemingly insuperable barriers separating life, death, and eternal life.
In the edition you chose, this profoundly simple meaning is sacrificed to hysterical punctuation:
And Death — capital D — shall be no more — semi-colon!
Death — capital D — comma — thou shalt die —exclamation point!1
Gardner’s edition of the Holy Sonnets returns to the Westmoreland manuscript source of 1610 — not for sentimental reasons, I assure you, but because Helen Gardner is a scholar. It reads:
And death shall be no more, comma, death thou shalt die.
(As she recites this line, she makes a little gesture at the comma.)
Nothing but a breath — a comma — separates life from life everlasting. It is very simple really. With the original punctuation restored, death is no longer something to act out on a stage, with exclamation points. It’s a comma, a pause.
This way, the uncompromising way, one learns something from this poem, wouldn’t you say? Life, death. Soul, God. Past, present. Not insuperable barriers, not semicolons, just a comma.
Talk about nailing it down. Small details, sure. The difference between a comma and a semicolon is only the merest millisecond of breath - a conscious pause of infinitesimal value - but when one considers this literary fine print, it's enough to astound the reader.
And Matt will tell you that the first thing I did was turn to the index and then onto page 356. The last line was indeed punctuated correctly. Otherwise, I'd likely have left the book behind, red leather binding or no. I might not be a hyper-adherent of the critics, but when something this minute makes sense, it's enough for me.
This, however, wasn't the 'Eureka!' moment for Donne in my life.
At the very end of Edson's play, Professor Bearing lies dead on her hospital bed, wholly exposed, her garments torn open by well-meaning medical professionals seeking to resuscitate her in spite of her wishes. And, in a pre-recorded voiceover, Bearing's voice recites Donne's poem - deliberately, measured, and without the excessive emotion we might believe due this moment of fatal reckoning. The viewer is in tears, their dramatic journey completed in a truly splendid moment of catharsis. And with the precision of a surgeon, the voice reassuringly connects that moment of life, death, soul, God, past, and present.
As presented by Emma Thomson in the HBO adaptation, the moment is heart-rending (even if Bearing remains shrouded). The battle has been lost - at least in purely physical terms. But the metaphysical / existential passage of life into life everlasting is so perfectly crystallized in this minute and twenty seconds.
It was then, during my freshman year of college, that it became clear. I'd already experienced my father's death when I was thirteen and, to the best of my knowledge, fully passed through mourning that loss. I should have known what it meant to see a once vibrant and robust person wither away. Basically, I understood the first twelve lines of Donne's poem.
The last two had eluded me until that moment on screen. There was no need for a brightly lit sequence of passing through a tunnel into some divine waiting room. No Wagnerian theatrics for gathering the heroic dead. Only an elegy - marking the pain of loss and the hope for redemption. That "...expansion, / Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate" that Donne writes of in his "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning."
A few weekends ago, Matt and I spent the better part of a Saturday late afternoon and evening walking around Downtown Pittsburgh so that I could shoot some of the architecture in those environs.
Like most industrial cities that rose to prominence across the early and middle 20th century, Pittsburgh's buildings are an eclectic hodgepodge of styles, materials, sizes, shapes, and colors. From humble two and three story structures as ornate as Greek temples to a Brutalist/Modern steel tower that thrusts over 800 feet into the sky, Pittsburgh's signature style is hard to define. But from that intensely jumbled juxtaposition, one is able to appreciate the unique details that define the 'Burgh as having a skyline unlike any other.
In the heart of downtown, just in front of the historic Omni William Penn Hotel, the place where Lawrence Welk's "Champagne Music" met up with the bubble machine that helped defined an era in entertainment, there is a small park called Mellon Square. Standing in the middle of that space, one sees the futuristic aluminum-clad facade of the ALCOA Building, the stately brick of the hotel, a sandstone neoclassical department store, and then this building seen at the right: the Flemish-Gothic styled Union Trust Building.
Begun in 1915, the building features an exuberantly ornate mansard roof fronted by pierced gothic arches on the frieze. Along the roofline, dozens of windowed dormers punctuate the golden tile work. Atop the roof (and unseen in this photo) are two slender chapel-like rooms that are used as housing for mechanical systems.
The idea of stately simplicity of lower levels erupting into a signature-style roofline is not unique to the Union Trust Building. Truly, the most original variation on this theme punctuating the Pittsburgh skyline is the main tower of PPG Place.
A decidedly modern twist on the Neo-Gothic look, PPG Place stretches skyward 685 feet before terminating in glassy turrets and mock battlements. It seems only natural for a company once named Pittsburgh Plate Glass to be housed in a building that uses copious amounts of glass in such unique ways. Opened in 1984, PPG Place encompasses a large plaza in the midst of the complex that, during the winter, features a skating rink. Dwarfed beneath the soaring skyscraper and surrounded by lighted trees, skaters, and music, the environment is magical.
Like the combination of styles found near Mellon Square, PPG Place is located directly behind one of the oldest areas of the city, Market Square. Surrounding the square are low-set two and three-story buildings dating back to the 19th century. Recently renovated, Market Square is now free of vehicular traffic, lending a continental air to the traditional heart of Downtown with trees, cobblestone paving, and benches and cafe tables to serve as a lunchtime stop for the thousands of downtown office workers or tourists overwhelmed by the variety of sights to see around them.
But before you think that Pittsburgh can only do Gothic or slight shifts thereof, let me assure you that the skyline is also home to modernist buildings, art moderne, and - indeed - quite odd entries in the realm of skyscrapers.
The building dominating the center of this photo I took last summer is the U.S. Steel Tower. A strange hybrid of the International, Brutalist, and Modern styles, the U.S. Steel Tower is Pittsburgh's tallest building, topping out at 841 feet.
Opened in 1970, the U.S. Steel Tower is some 400 feet shorter than the Empire State building in New York City, but has almost 100,000 more rentable square feet than the New York landmark.
Each floor, in fact, is nearly an acre of space unto itself. This is building as behemoth.
The facade is dominated by what is called Cor-Ten Steel, an alloy patented by U.S. Steel. Rather than needing painting and regular maintenance, the surface of the steel oxidizes - rusts, really - both strengthening and creating a protective layer atop the structural steel.
Note: I had to use this older picture because there is almost no place close to the building where one can get a proper photographic vantage point. This shot was taken in May, 2010 from the terrace of the Civic Arena, a landmark structure that is currently being demolished.
Unlike most modern skyscrapers, this one is not about glass surfaces, sleek forms, or modern curves or angles. This hulking triangular building is dark, even forbidding when you stand in its shadow. The airy, two story glass-walled atrium at ground level doesn't feel quite right. It's almost as if the structure is levitating, something a tower with that seeming bulk has no business doing.
This building is Pittsburgh. It's symbolic of the city's past as a gritty industrial center as it stands side-by-side with such structures as the bright, sleek Bank of New York-Mellon Tower, seen to the left. Banking, healthcare, and education have replaced blast furnaces and crucibles as the pivot point upon which Pittsburgh's economy turns. Dominated by the U.P.M.C. (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) logo since 2008, the past and present are layered upon each other on the U.S. Steel Tower.
Naturally, this is only a small taste of the wild array of architectural styles that make up Downtown Pittsburgh. And, like any major city, the skyline is an amorphous and constantly shifting value. Within the next few years, PNC Bank will be adding a $400 million, forty-story energy efficient skyscraper. However, before the first glass curtain walls rise for that new building, Pittsburgh will be losing a significant piece of its cultural and architectural history: the Civic Arena.
Envisioned in the 1950s as the heart of a major cultural center that would feature housing, retail, office space, an opera house, and a symphonic hall, the Civic Arena was built with the best intentions of erasing urban blight and replacing it with clean, clear statements of modernity.
In its fifty years of existence, the Civic Arena went from hosting light opera in the summers to being the home of the Pittsburgh Penguins NHL team. The Beatles, The Doors, and Elvis Presley played beneath the once retractable dome. (It hasn't moved in decades thanks to the addition of seating decks high up in the structure.) However, the arena outlived its use. Not enough amenities, too-narrow concourses, poor sight lines. Those factors all sealed the fate of the building that is defined by the largest retractable stainless steel roof in the world and the enormous support arm made of locally-made steel.
Will its absence be as acutely felt as some New Yorkers still claim for the loss of Penn Station in 1963? It's too hard to guess. This fall, the city and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied pleas to save the so-called Igloo from demolition. The interiors are all but destroyed now and the roof will be dismantled come Spring.
Tracing the ebb and flow of a city is easy to do when you look up and around. Stand on a street corner in any major city in America. You'll see stone facades from the 1900s littered with ornamentation. Bold curvilinear, streamlined buildings marked the boom years of the 1920s. The Space Age brought sleek lines and glass exteriors. And the last two decades have driven skylines ever higher in even more inventive ways.
Pittsburgh's evolution from the steel capital of the world, through the decline of the steel mills in the 1970s, and finally reinventing itself into the banking and healthcare center it is today is reflected in the towering walls of glass, carved into the granite and sandstone, riveted into the steel beams of this city. The men and women who work in and around these buildings are as much Pittsburgh as the buildings they see from their office windows. The skyline, like the three rivers that form the Golden Triangle of Downtown, defines the very essence of the American dream: ad astra per aspera.
Take a drive sometime on Interstate 376 Eastbound. Go through the Fort Pitt Tunnels. And as you emerge into the sunlight, see a city unfold across your dashboard. A world connected by bright yellow bridges. A city of steel. Pittsburgh.
Sit in the upper deck along the third base line of PNC Park. Don't go for the Pirates. As the home team loses yet another one, watch the sunset turn the hundreds of colors on the skyline into blazes of glowing amber. See the lights come up against the darkened sky, illuminating the spires, pinnacles, and roof lines.
It's more than steel or the Steelers. Pittsburgh is a place of past, present, and future - of arts, sports, learning, and commerce. Of men and women from far-flung corners of the Earth. These buildings define all of it in largely concrete terms: a city in and of the world, at once influenced by it and setting the trends.
There's a reason that the Economist voted Pittsburgh as the most livable city in America.
And this is surely a big part of it...
(All photos copywright The Cosmopolitan Bear, 2010 and 2011)
Ever since the new production of Siegfried premiered at the Met on Thursday last week, I've been dwelling on Wagner - as character, composer, cultural influence, and, at times, cultural pariah.
I spent the majority of this afternoon listening to the Georg Solti / Wiener Philharmoniker recording of Die Meistersinger Von Nurnberg. Among Wagner's operas, it's probably one of the lesser known scores. Registering around four and a half hours of disc time, it's not exactly a short bit of entertainment. Then again, little of Wagner's music could be categorized as brief.
Yet, for all of his long-windedness, Wagner is a cultural phenomenon without much comparison. How many other composers are so universally recognizable? In that, I mean that you can speak to a person who knows nothing about opera and might never have heard of The Ring Cycle, but if you play the Walkurenritt (Ride of the Valkyries) theme for them, they'll instantly know it - probably to the point of being able to hum along. My own slightly tonally challenged boyfriend can intone Donner's "Heda! Heda Hedo! from Rheingold as a sort of inside joke between us. (Naturally, I counter with the Valkyrie's "Hojotoho! Hototojo!" from Walkure.)
Last night, after feeling like I was losing my grip on sanity for the majority of the day due to grading and an absurd inability to find what I was looking for, I began to read a fascinating book about opera composer Richard Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival, which he created.
Written by Fredric Spotts, Bayreuth, A History of the Wagner Festival, chronicles the then hundred and eighteen year history of the Festival. (The book was published in 1994). Since its inception in 1876, the Bayreuther Festspiele has featured only the works of Richard Wagner. Legendary actors, conductors, directors, and designers serve as prominent signposts along the, at times, highly contentious past of the festival.
Of course, the largest problem in the room for most critics - however much it might remain unstated - is Hitler and his co-opting of Wagner's canon as part of his nation-building agenda. This includes pictures of S.S. stormtroopers atop the King Ludwig balcony of the Festspielehaus and Hitler saluting the crowd on the plaza below.
Wagner's own notable and well-documented anti-Semitism is often linked with the rise, decades later, of Hitler's Nazi party and the Third Reich. Yet, of course, many musicians that played in the orchestras at Bayreuth were Jews. Wagner had a deep admiration for the music of Felix Mendelssohn and even allegedly carried on an affair with a half-Jewish woman.
In truth, while Wagner might have had antipathy for some Jews, the overall focus of the problem isn't him. The composer himself died in 1883, six years before the Fuhrer's birth. Adolf Hitler, in amalgamating his idea of a perfected German Vaterland, combined elements of the Nietzschean Ubermensch, the Teutonic Nibelung mythology, Wagner's concept of a universal, all-embracing artform (Gesamtkunstwerk), and the Romantic notions of German society that suffuse Wagner's operas as ideals of the new Reich. The whole thing is further complicated by Winifred Wagner, wife of the composer's only son, Siegfried Wagner. She became close friends with Hitler and, via her ingratiation, furthered the nationalistic mythology inherent in the operas by her father-in-law.
In the post-war decades, with the next generation away from the paterfamilias, Wolfgang Wagner worked to absolve the Wagner family of the Nazi stain and spent 57 years at the helm of Bayreuth, 42 of those years alone at the top after the death of his brother, Wieland. Productions became more abstract, losing their overwhelmingly German nature. In the Centenary production of Der Ring Des Nibelungen, director Patrice Chereau removed both time and place from Das Rheingold, placing the Rheinmaidens atop a hydroelectric power dam rather than in the depths of the Rhine.
Yet, the music persists. Opera companies peg their reputations on daring new productions of the Ring. Los Angeles found out in 2009 that if you push the boundaries of taste too far, as with Achim Freyer's $32 Million production, you may well lose your shirt. Critically reviled, bashed by the actors for the impediments caused by the sets and costumes, and deeply in debt after its initial run, the LA Ring was shelved and doesn't seem to have much for future prospects.
The new Metropolitan Opera Ring is experiencing teething problems of its own. No, it's not a matter of taste as much as technology. Conceived by the forces behind Cirque du Soleil, the new Met Ring is dominated by a behemoth set piece that the creators affectionately dubbed "The Machine." A mammoth set of 24 revolving planks, the Machine has a bad habit of freezing up at inopportune times - like opening night of Das Rheingold. The $40 Million-plus production even necessitated a retrofitting the support structure beneath the side stage of the Met where the Machine would be stored, an additional $5 Million endeavor.
While audiences around the world flock do the latest Meistersinger or Parsifal, in some places Wagner is still, shall we say, verboten...
Such was the strength of post-war hatred of Wagner among the Jewish establishment that his music was unofficially banned in the state of Israel. Only in 2001 was conductor Daniel Barenboim able, after much debate, to play the overture to Tristan and Isolde at the Israel Festival. He'd first wished to present the first act of Die Walkure, but was persuaded by the Israeli government and Holocaust survivors to change the program.
Very few remain as loved and loathed, as studied, and as venerated as Wagner.
As I continue through Spotts' book and the recorded operas, I'm sure I'll have more interesting tidbits to offer about the man, his myth, and the operas he left behind.
At 11:09 p.m. on Thursday night, the curtain fell on the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Richard Wagner's Siegfried, the third opera of his Der Ring Des Nibelungen cycle. Deborah Voigt and Jay Hunter Morris joyously sang the lyrics "Leuchtende Liebe, lachlender Tod!", pledging each other "Enlightening love and laughing death!"
To me, it sounded perfect: two actors, one the finest dramatic soprano of her generation, with seemingly perfect chemistry, breathlessly declaring their love after he's roused her from her magically-induced sleep. (You didn't think Disney came up with that, did you?) The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, under the baton of Fabio Luisi, was lush, energetic, and pitch perfect. They seem to have taken to Maestro James Levine's absence rather well.
Yet, I could be completely wrong. I'm not an expert in these matters. I don't know that Morris, singing one of the most utterly difficult heldentenor parts in the entire catalogue of opera, hit all the right notes, had the perfect color in his voice at a certain point, or looked convincing as Siegfried. The same goes for Ms. Voigt. She might be all wrong (though I doubt it) and I wouldn't know the difference from this end of my computer speakers.
I sometimes wonder what it takes to be a music critic.
It's certainly not for lack of sources to research that I don't, as such, know better about these things. I have two full audio Ring Cycles, one conducted by Georg Solti with the Wiener Philharmoniker, the other with Herbert von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker. Tack onto that Das Rheingold and Die Walkure, recorded in concert by The Cleveland Orchestra in the 1990s. I also own three Ring DVD sets: Patrice Chereau's 1976 centenary Bayreuth Festspielhaus production with Pierre Boulez conducting, the mid-1980s Otto Schenk production of the Metropolitan Opera ring with James Levine at the helm, and the Harry Kupfer 1991 Bayreuth version with Daniel Barenboim conducting.
Obsessive, perhaps, but it's certainly enough to keep me listening a while.
I don't know what it would be like to have those skills of professional music criticism. Anthony Tommasini's review of Siegfried will be in the New York Times on Saturday or Sunday. He'll inevitably like certain parts. I'll nod my head in agreement. Overall, though, he might hate it and I'll try to understand why.
Perhaps it goes hand in hand with my being a terribly un-critical English student/teacher. I like my poetry straightforwardly read, not given the microscope and scalpel treatment. If it sounds good, dammit, it's good enough for me. But that's not what it means to be a critic. While I manage to see fault rather too often in the real world, when comfortably enveloped in a concert hall, theatre, or opera house, I tend to be more forgiving, even willing to overlook sonic errors or dramatic incongruities that may arise.
In a lot of ways, that's what brings joy to me in the world of music. In my collection, I have eight recordings of the Mahler 6th Symphony, my favorite of his works. I have favorite moments in a few and likely couldn't tell you much about a couple of the others. In short, I know what I like and can point out why. And while I know a lot about a few pieces, having that rather encyclopedic knowledge of opera, choral, and orchestral music needed to be a critic is almost tough to fathom.
I'd hate to have to sit there, in the case of Siegfried for five hours - including a couple intermissions - and listen for the flaws. That doesn't seem like much fun to me and really almost negates the entertaining value of dramatic opera. New Ring Cycles come around once a generation. They're both incredibly expensive to produce and to attend. Truly, there is no more Herculean undertaking in four-plus centuries of Western opera than these four operas that line up at around eighteen total hours of performance time across four nights.
As I sat here in front of my computer listening to the online live broadcast, I enjoyed what I heard. And for me, at least for tonight, that was plenty good enough.
You know who I'm talking about: the artist who turned blocks of royal blue, scarlet, and buttercup set in a black grid against a white field into high modern art.
It's the straightforward geometry, the primary colors and their surprising vividness. The simplicity belies complexity - like looking at a city from far above. Noise, traffic, smells - they're all left far below. Mondrian came decades before, but his aesthetic embodies that cool 1960s Mad Men / New York / Seagram Building / Alexander Calder futurism / Pool Room of the Four Seasons vibe that is only a cigarette and a vodka rocks away from perfection.
To me, it's as if someone took the native exuberance of Marc Chagall; the riotous, anarchic energy of Jackson Pollock; and the brash abstraction of Mark Rothko (all of whom I love) and - like a wet paper towel to a whiteboard - erased the excess, leaving only the basics: a grid of lines with occasional blocks of color on a field of stark emptiness. Without Mondrian, I wager there would be no Rothko, no Pollock. Without a form to break free of, what need is there for the violent slashes of paint, the blurred edges of color blocks?
Every time I see someone in the outside world taking inspiration from Mondrian, it brings me some little bit of joy.
Take designer Yves Saint Laurent. In 1965, he created a series of dresses that replaced stretched canvas with jersey dress fabric. Look at this for a moment...
The cut of the dress is by no means revealing - even for 1965. A tight crew neck. Sleeveless. Cocktail length. Not tightly fitted. The entire piece works. It's structured without looking too formal. To me, it says day into night. Big round sunglasses. A black patent clutch. Simple black kitten heels. Like the little black dress with less black, it feels classic.
I'm truly jealous.
It's so 60s, but if you walked into Bloomingdales today it would still be immediately wearable - sure, identifiable as a vintage look, but since when have they been problematic?
However, the creativity doesn't end only in couture.
This slice of cake comes from a blog that I happened upon once. It's just simple loaves of cake that are trimmed to size, attached with chocolate ganache, and then glazed into a thick rectangle of tasty and pretty.
I've wanted to make this ever since I found it. Imagine a basic butter cake for the white areas. The yellow block redolent of lemon. Red with its slight hint of cherry extract. Blue, perhaps, tasting of peppermint extract. A riot of flavors, sure, but it would be a new surprise with every bite.
I missed the Swatch craze of the mid-1980s by virtue of having been born in 1982. That doesn't stop me from utterly coveting one of these guys.
Sure, it's cheap plastic, but it would immediately pop off the outfit you accessorized to the hilt with this watch. Granted, you might have to do some slouchy cardigan in that pre-Seattle grunge kinda way with Doc Marten combat boots (which I happen to own already) and slightly too-bleached jeans to make it work. This while playing Madonna's "Crazy For You" a little too loud through your chic Walkman cassette player that you found at Goodwill for a dollar. That ought to do it pretty well.
It's hard work to be Mondrian cool. After all, the two drink lunch doesn't fly anymore. It's hard to put cigarettes anywhere into this politically correct age. You'll just need basic black to play off and play up the primary colors, the right amount of moxie, the liberated self-assurance of a hipster without any of the "over-it" irony, and the knowledge that your man Mondrian makes you cooler than all the other kids on the block.
And if all that fails, just add the shoes - by Nike, inspired by Mondrian, circa 2008. Timeless.
Folks, we're back after a lovely weekend spent photographing in Downtown Pittsburgh and at the former West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virginia!
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I'm not usually much of an artist. Granted, I don't pursue being one, but I'm usually more one to observe and appreciate art than make my own. Once in a while, though, I manage to have a whole lot of fun attempting it.
Anyone who knows me knows I have a passion for the theatre, both plays and musicals. Perhaps my favorite work of musical theatre is Stephen Sondheim's 1971 Follies. Currently enjoying a wildly successful revival on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre, Follies is essentially the story of middle to latter-aged women reuniting in the theatre where they once sang and danced as cast members of the Weismann Follies. The show is written as a one-off occasion as the former Weismann Theatre is to be torn down the next day.
Encountering the ghosts of their younger selves, the lovers lost, the roads not taken, the women and their husbands/companions gather to converse, drink, and, in the case of a few, recreate their signature numbers of decades before.
It's a story of loss, of love, the folly of youth, and the deceptions of age.
And along the way it's inspired some incredible artists to create signature artwork for the show posters. This iconic design to the left, the original by David Byrd, is, frankly, one of the most perfect and inimitable pieces of theatrical art ever executed.
It's definitely representative of the time period it was designed in - 1970 - with raucous fields of red orange topped by a flowing mane of cerulean, violet, and periwinkle blue.
But it's the face - the jaw that evokes the late Dame Joan Sutherland, the sad eyes of Gloria Swanson, and the distant, pleading look of Mary Pickford - all tarnished by the gaping crack beginning in the crowning "E" of FOLLIES.
I have, to my knowledge, the poster artwork from every major production - and even a few minor ones - ever to play the stage. The original sketch in a limited edition by Byrd. The 1971 Broadway. 1987 London. 1990 Long Beach CLO. 1998 Paper Mill Playhouse. 2001 Broadway Revival. 2002 London Royal Festival Hall. 2002 Los Angeles Reprise Series. 2007 NYC Encores Concert. 2011 Kennedy Center/Broadway Revival.
I am incredibly proud of my collection, but often it sits in storage, securely pressed flat and kept dark to preserve the images.
A few years back, I looked to those beautiful images for inspiration when I needed to create a little piece for myself. What that leads me to is this:
Like I said, not much of an artist, but I try. I created this collage faceplate back in the spring of 2008 at the height of the Guitar Hero video game craze for my guitar game controller.
I printed off images of the various posters, arranged them around a faceplate that I'd cut out of thick paper to fit over the guitar and the necessary holes for buttons and the Wii remote. From there, I trimmed them to allow for maximum presentation of each piece while maintaining a diverse, representative field of the art.
The lower left end begins with the 2007 Encores image, which happens to also be by David Byrd. His first concept sketch for the original artwork back in 1970, it finally came to life almost forty years later.
To its right is the third sketch Byrd made for the original. Printed in a signed limited edition sold by the Triton Galley of New York City, I own No. 3 out of 50. Needless to say, it's an acquisition I'm pretty amazed by and proud of.
To the lower right, in pale blue, is a sliver of the 2002 London RFH production. How I came to own this piece is truly a fluke. I'd seen the piece posted online by the RFH's website. Yet there was no merchandise to buy. So I just emailed a contact I found on the Hall's website to see how I might go about getting my hands on a poster. Might as well go the source, right? Well, for the cost of shipping only, I received an enormous tube in the mail one day while at college. Inside was a rolled up piece about four feet wide by six feet tall - an Underground-sized advertising poster. It's truly a treasured piece in my collection.
Counterclockwise from that image is the 1990 Long Beach CLO poster, a newer image by Byrd, not among the original 1970 set. Truly, the girl's face is haunting, set beneath the plumed headdress crowning the famed shattered lettering.
One more spot to the right - at the very end of the guitar - is the font for the 1998 Paper Mill Playhouse of New Jersey production. The artwork that accompanied the piece was a photograph of a young woman who, to my best knowledge, was a real Ziegfield girl. However, the poster featured text of the cast billing over the image, rendering it unusable for my purposes.
Above that, in the upper right corner, is the image from the 2001 Broadway Revival. That summer, in July, my mother and I saw the show from the very cramped mezzanine of the Belasco Theatre, itself crumbling from years without renovation and alterations that left it, in places, in ruins. The production, while critically faulted, was magical and tragic. Stars - real ones - Blythe Danner, Gregory Harrison, Polly Bergen - met their ghosts onstage each night. It truly got me hooked on this legendary piece of Broadway Theatre history.
Finally, at the middle-top of the guitar, is the original.
It's a simple collage that's been preserved by a thick shellacking of Mod-Podge, but it's representative of both my love for this one musical and the fun I had an using that to put my own stamp on a pop culture phenomenon.
I didn't make note in the entry from earlier today (and need to learn how to watermark my own photos), but the two shots of the Canova Terpsichore were indeed taken by me.
I'm going to try any feature more of my own work here both as a showcase and, I hope, encouragement for me to learn more about the fantastic cameras I own. By no means am I a professional at what I do, but I've learned a lot about taking good pictures over the last few years.
In the summer of 2009, shortly before Pentax moved onto their (then) new flagship DSLR camera, the K-7, I was able to pick up the K20D at a pretty fantastic price. Truly, it's been one of the best Christmas presents I've ever received, early as it was. It's an impressive machine that I, to this day, probably don't know use half of. Needless to say, I hope to change that.
While I don't own the impressive, but frighteningly expensive lens ($1,500, anyone?) that's attached to this downloaded photo, I do have the 18-55 mm Pentax lens that came with the kit, a 55-300 mm Pentax lens, and have recently acquired a Tamron af28-80 mm aspherical lens on eBay for the stupidly low price of $30 plus shipping.
The bulky bit on the bottom, the detachable battery grip, allows for storage of a tiny, chewing gum stick-sized shutter remote control, an extra memory card, and a second high-capacity battery. In addition to that, it has a shooting button mounted for taking vertical pictures with ease.
Last Christmas, I received the Pentax AF360 FGZ flash that aids in taking better night shots. Alas, my working knowledge of it is even more limited than that of the camera.
When it comes to everyday photography, the majority of the shots that you might see on here will have been taken on a Canon PowerShot Elph 300 that entered my collection back in May. I've had three Canon compacts and, after an unfortunate interlude with a sub-par quality Nikon compact, intend to stay with Canons for my everyday work where it's just not possible to take the big camera.
Taking great pictures is more than just a hobby for me. During college, I was the on-call photographer for anything silly that was going on in the hallway, times when friends gathered, at sports events, and just hanging out.
Photos, for me, are memories. They crystallize those moments you might otherwise forget. Whether a Friday night on the town or the big moments in life, it's always worthwhile to tote your camera along. You never know when an insignificant night might turn into a memorable one.
This lovely visage belongs to a sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Her name is Terpsichore.
The piece, sculpted by Antonio Canova in 1816, began as a commission by Napoleon Bonaparte's brother, Lucien, as a portrait of his wife, Alexandrine.
Long story short, Lucien left France and didn't pay up, so Canova had to do something with what he had already created. Rather than the wife of the French Emperor's brother, the young lady would become an idealized beauty with classical features and be rechristened "Terpsichore Lyran," the Muse of Lyric Poetry.
Acquired by the CMA in 1968, the statue now stands in the rotunda of the Neoclassical 1916 Building on the main level. (She is pictured below in her former location, Gallery 201, with other works of Western European Art.)
Canova and I have a rather long history. At fifteen, I saw his Cupid and Psyche at the Louvre. Michaelangelo might have understood human musculature better than most artists, but Canova had an intimate feeling for and innate sense of the radiance of human skin. While the former spoke of releasing his forms from their blocks of marble, one gets the feeling with Canova that the people he sculpted awoke from a long slumber, their once lithe forms changed to graceful, silken stone.
As you walk around the young lady's body, you notice many things. The carven straps of her sandals. The curls of her upswept hair. The gossamer folds of her garment.
Yet, among all of these varied textures, the luminosity of her face, arms, hands, and feet is striking. You catch yourself staring a little too closely, checking to see if she pulses with some subsurface veins. The ease of her pose belies the graceful posture built into the work. It's hard not to be overwhelmed in the presence of such idealized beauty.
In the vast collection of the CMA, Terpsichore is my favorite classical sculpture. The museum was an afternoon refuge during my undergraduate years in Cleveland. Free to wander the quiet subterranean galleries of priceless Asian art and well-worn halls of European masterpieces, the CMA was as much a part of my humanities education as any English, philosophy, or history class.
I've shown many dear friends, my boyfriend, a few family members, and sometimes the occasional complete stranger around the renovated rooms at the museum. In my twenty-nine years, I've seen masterworks that even I have to shake my head at sometimes. Yet every time I enter the Cleveland Museum of Art, I return to Terpsichore and get that same smile, one that knows I'm - yet again - in the presence of perfection and that the sublime, sometimes, can take form.
- Bill
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You can visit the CMA in person at 11150 East Boulevard Cleveland, OH 44106 or online at http://www.clevelandart.org/
Admission is free, except for special exhibitions. The museum is closed Mondays and is open everyday until 5 p.m. with 9 p.m. closing times on Wednesdays and Fridays.
My name is William. Most call me Bill. Some, Will.
I'm 29 years old - pushing bravely towards a third decade.
I have brown eyes, short brown hair that is yearning to go grey, and a beard.
I am what the world would call a bear. Six-feet-three-inches tall. Broad shoulders. And fur.
I am a man living in a world between urban and rural, where abandoned hulks of steel mills rot into the ground. This place, Western Pennsylvania, was the American dream before people knew they had an American dream. It was here that oil was first drilled, that steel was perfected, and immigrant communities were established, making a new world for people like my family.
Like so many other dreams, this one's remnants linger, giving hope to the deluded and the nightmares to those who know better.
I teach college English. I no longer find deep satisfaction in teaching after five years of students whose failures are self-wrought and whose blame is never self-focused.
What I want to do when I grow up remains, largely, a mystery to me. The options are myriad. The paths to them, obscured.
I cook. I paint. I read, though less than I should. I play the clarinet and am classically trained. I surround myself with music. I believe in Gustav Mahler blended with Julia Child. Aestheticism, Sensuality, Epicureanism, Romanticism, Natural Supernaturalism, and the somewhat tattered fabric of a Catholic upbringing and Jesuit education make up the belief system of this amply-fleshed frame.
I find beauty in the simple, in the gaudy, in the classically proportioned, and inside the broken edges of the rubble and decay of history.
I like long walks on the beach, puppies, and hope for world peace. If chosen as Miss America, I promise to not have pictures snapped of me stumbling out of a limousine with makeup running down my face. I attempt to be myself in spite of the wearying pursuit of cultural sameness.
I sit in the concert hall and listen as the orchestra plays my mind into the sublime.
I catch you staring and just stare right back.
I believe that a poem doesn't have to be dissected, eviscerated, and plumbed for meaning. Sometimes, my dear Wordsworth, a daffodil is simply a daffodil.
I dance to Motown music while washing the dishes. My text messages and Facebook posts are correct in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I drive by you with the windows down and the music turned up, not caring if you see this burly-looking guy singing along with Lady Gaga, Ethel Merman, or Dave Matthews.
I love to cook, own far too many cookbooks than could be considered sane, and intend to write about food here.
Perhaps this is a good summary: I'm a strange mix of a lady of taste and manners appended to the Brawny Paper Towel lumberjack.
This is no rabbit hole you've tripped head over feet into. This is a life. My life.
Abandon your preconceptions of masculinity and femininity, of what it should mean to be a modern man. Inevitably, this blog will occasionally veer into the realm of "me, me, all about me." However, I promise that there will be more. What, exactly? You'll just have to keep checking back to see.
But I hope, with the grace of your indulgence, that we'll be able - together, mind you - to journey through a professional and personal life that is completely original, 100% pesticide free, unvarnished, and forever accelerating down the curves and twists of an existential spiral that somehow functions, sometimes to my utter bewilderment.
