Archives for February 2004

…about love, obvs. I’ve had some gratifying responses to my silly post about a pro-literacy conversation heart I stumbled on last week. A friend tried to put himself in the minds of the makers:

I was much amused by your story of the candy valentine heart inscribed with LETS READ. I’m trying to imagine some corporate brainstorming session with marketing people sitting around throwing out suggestions for pithy romantic sayings: BE MINE, KISS ME, LOVE YOU, LETS READ, hunh? Do you suppose someone in the stenciling department at candyland is reading bodice rippers?

And two readers delighted me by sending along their own personalized creations–

READ

OGIC

and

LAST

NITE

–both generated at a splendid little webspot that you should know about this week.

Has anybody noticed that I’ve been keeping up with my mail for the past couple of weeks? This in spite of the fact that the box is often crammed full of MyDoom-generated spam, Viagra ads, and letters from Liberia.

Today, it was also crammed full of letters to Our Girl, which reminds me to remind you that we have two e-mailboxes, which we do not share. If you want to write to OGIC, go to the top module of the right-hand column and click on her mailbox link, not mine (mine is directly above hers).

A reader writes:

As a corollary to your lament
about the inequity of people who excel in one art also having a gift for another, I offer the infuriating example of Kenny G, who was playing the AT&T Pro-am golf tournament on the Monterey Peninsula last weekend. As a golfer, Kenny G has a 1 handicap. He shot a 77 at Pebble Beach and a 73 at Spy Glass. These are remarkable scores for an amateur in competition on tough courses set up for pros – the equivalent of a weekend violinist playing a pretty damn good rendition of the Brahms concerto with an A-list orchestra. So it’s not enough that us jazz lovers have to put up with his insipid instrumental pop music, the genre of “smooth jazz” and the tragedy of his making zillions while (fill in the blank) scuffles to pay the bills while trying to make art that honors the legacy of Bird, Sonny and Trane – but in addition to all of that, Kenny G also gets to play to a 1-handicap.

There is no God.

Actually, there is, but Our Girl tells me that He prefers hockey.

I heard from two readers apropos of last week’s posting about the “Alas, not by Johannes Brahms” anecdote that inspired my “Alas, not by me” running head. I feared the story was apocryphal. Alex Ross of The New Yorker wrote to say not so:

“Leider nicht von Johannes Brahms” is unquestionably by Brahms! He wrote the words on the autograph fan of Alice Meyszner-Strauss, the composer’s stepdaughter, next to the first notes
of the Blue Danube.

I wrote back to ask for a source, but answer came there none (not yet, anyway). Shortly thereafter, though, I heard from Phil Wade, who blogs at Brandywine Books. Phil sent along an excerpt from the obituary of Brahms that ran in The Musical Times in 1897:

Brahms was incapable of any mean or underhanded action. He never indulged in newspaper controversy, but kept his views to himself. . . . The catholicity of his taste is sufficiently shown by his immense admiration for the genius of Strauss–in which he shared the views of Wagner and Von B

A friend of mine who sings jazz for a living started painting for fun last month. Like most jazz singers who live in New York and its environs, she’s as poor as an unemployed churchmouse, so she asked if I’d like one of her canvases for a birthday gift. She delivered it on Thursday, a semi-abstract study in black, white, red, and three shades of blue, done with a palette knife

I’m reading a new biography of Glenn Gould, Kevin Bazzana’s Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould, which will be published in the U.S. this April by Oxford (it’s already out in Canada). Two passages caught my eye. The first is a list of Gould’s favorite books and writers:

“These hinterlands are frequently, even compulsively, crossed at one time or another by almost all who practise the arts, usually in the need to earn a living; but the arts themselves, so it appeared to me as I considered the matter, by their ultimately sensual essence, are, in the long run, inimical to those who pursue power for its own sake. Conversely, the artist who traffics in power does so, if not necessarily disastrously, at least at considerable risk.”

No, this isn’t a political commentary: I just posted a new Top Five entry about “The Artist’s Eye: Wolf Kahn as Curator,” which went up at the National Academy of Design last Friday (my birthday!) for a two-month run. I’ll sound off at greater length about this show at a later date, but for the moment, take a peek at the right-hand column, click the link for more information, then go. Soon.