Archives for February 2006

I’m off to the cardiologist’s office. Wish me luck!

See you all tomorrow, one way or the other (or somewhere in between, most likely).

Recently sighted and bookmarked:

– Says Edward Winkleman:

Warhol is credited with saying (and I paraphrase): The most sincere form of art appreciation is writing a check. Of course Andy would think that–being an artist–but I’m not so sure that’s as true today as it was when Andy offered it. The “art” of collecting has evolved since then, and writing a check doesn’t seem as sincere in some ways as it had been. When I start to think about how it’s changed, the parallel that keeps coming to mind is the practice of fishing. Collectors used to spend the time getting to know the work, the artist, the movement, etc., much as a person with his/her fishing pole had to learn what weight of the line is needed, what bait is best, and what conditions are most ideal to land that big one. Collecting for some folks today is more akin to trawling. Sure, you have to toss out all that seaweed and release the occassional dolphin, but the sheer volume of your haul guarantees something in your net will be worth the effort….

I offer a corollary based on my own experience as a small-time collector: Richer isn’t (always) better.

– Mr. Anecdotal Evidence shares a lovely memory. It seems he ran into the great jazz pianist Dave McKenna on the street of a town in upstate New York the day after filing a review of his opening night at a local club:

Next morning, driving to the office, I passed McKenna walking up Erie Boulevard. He was wearing very white, unlaced sneakers, and he walked as though the sidewalk had been sprinkled with tacks. I stopped, he climbed in and asked me to take him to a nearby convenience store where he wanted to buy newspapers to check on his beloved Sox. Back in the car, four or five papers in his lap, McKenna asked if my review was in that morning’s edition. I told him where to find it, and had the uniquely uncomfortable experience of watching the subject of a review I had written read it while seated three feet away from me. He took his time reading, grunted a couple of times, cleared his throat and exploded into a laugh that I can remember immediately describing, in the writing compartment of my mind, as Rabelaisian….

(For what it’s worth, this is my favorite McKenna album.)

– Ms. Household Opera waxes ecstatic over an experience I take for granted, and shouldn’t:

The gods of seat-assignment must have been smiling, because I was in the third row of seats almost directly in front of the stage. I love watching musicians’ faces as they play. It’s a sight I don’t get to see often enough, given how many concerts and operas I’ve seen from the upper reaches of the balcony. By the end of the evening, I felt as if I knew everyone in the orchestra.

And then there was Magdalena Ko

February 2004:

All of which leads me to ask: is the performance of classical music an intellectual activity? Did the breadth of Glenn Gould’s culture make him a better interpreter of Bach? I wonder. I’ve known a lot of musicians in my time, some of whom were damned smart and some of whom were (ahem) less so, and I rarely noticed any clear-cut relationship between what went into their heads and what came out of their fingers or mouths. (In my more limited experience, the same is true of dancers and painters.) I’m not saying that a stupid person can become a successful musician, but I’m not so sure that having read T.S. Eliot equips you to play Beethoven’s Op. 111 well. It certainly didn’t help Gould….

(If it’s new to you, read the whole thing here.)

“I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern.”

Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams (April 8, 1816)

Happy paczki day! Ah, to be in Hamtramck on Mardi Gras…

Ken Follett’s 1978 spy novel The Eye of the Needle contains the following:

“His name is Frederick Bloggs, and he gets annoyed if you make jokes about it.”

Color me puzzled. I can see why being named Bloggs might be joke-worthy in 2006. But in 1940, when the novel is set? What gives? Your suggestions/insights invited. Also, sorry I’ve been away; fresh content from my corner is on the way no later than Wednesday morning.

As I prepare for a follow-up visit to my cardiologist tomorrow, I find in my mailbox this message from a reader:

Cheer up! There’s an obituary in today’s Los Angeles Times for a woman who died of congestive heart failure–at the age of 115!

Born on September 13, 1890 in Mississippi; married for 72 (!) years
(1922-1994); never hospitalized in her life until she was 106
(gallstones); could still read the newspaper and sign her name at 114;
survived by her 96-year-old son.

Let’s see: Hilary Hahn will be 27 this year. So, if you live to be 115,
you could review a concert of hers in 2071–when she’s 91!

(Of course, there’s several “ifs” included in that last sentence.)

Er, there sure are. And of course I’m anxious to hear what the doctor says–how could I not be? Nevertheless, I’m feeling pretty optimistic, not least because I’ve now lost thirty-one pounds since congestive heart failure sent me to the hospital a little more than two months ago, and have also changed my life in countless other beneficial ways.

All of which reminds me that I never cease to be amazed by the long list of important people born well over a century ago who lived long enough to have their voices recorded for posterity. (Yes, I know where I’m going with this–wait for it.) A few of these recordings have been released on CD in recent years, and these are three of the best collections currently in print:

– About a Hundred Years: A History of Sound Recording (Symposium) contains spoken-word and musical recordings by Sarah Bernhardt, Johannes Brahms, Winston Churchill, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Edison, Mahatma Gandhi, Joseph Joachim, Scott Joplin, Lenin, John Philip Sousa, and Leo Tolstoy, plus a battlefield recording of a World War I gas bombardment made in 1918.

– Poetry Speaks: Hear Great Poets Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath (Sourcebooks, three CDs and an accompanying book) contains recordings by forty-two poets, including Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, and W.B. Yeats.

– In Their Own Voices: The U.S. Presidential Elections of 1908 and 1912 (Marston Records, two CDs) contains recordings by William Jennings Bryan, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson.

Alas, precious few record companies have thought it worth their while to transfer historic spoken-word recordings to CD–which is where the Web comes in. The BBC, for instance, has a page on its Web site containing links to interviews from its vast archives to which anyone can listen via streaming audio. The selection is spotty, even erratic, but it does include a handful of celebrated figures of the relatively distant past, including Yeats, Gandhi, Le Corbusier, No

Here’s the playlist of iPodded tunes to which I worked out on Saturday:

– Billy Joel, “Big Shot”

– The Beatles, “Birthday”

– Rosanne Cash, “Black Cadillac” (an excellent do-this-or-die choice for lazy heart patients)

– The Violent Femmes, “Blister in the Sun” (which I first heard on the soundtrack of Grosse Pointe Blank)

– Una Mae Carlisle, “Blitzkrieg Baby” (with Lester Young on tenor saxophone)

– Fats Waller, “Blue, Turning Grey Over You” (the 12-inch 78 version)

– Count Basie, “Blues in Hoss’ Flat”

– The Benny Goodman Sextet, “Boy Meets Goy” (with Charlie Christian on guitar)

– Swing Out Sister, “Breakout”

– The Rolling Stones, “Brown Sugar”

– Pat Metheny, “Bright Size Life” (with Jaco Pastorius on bass)

– Henry “Red” Allen and Pee Wee Russell, “Bugle Call Rag” (this is one of the celebrated Billy Banks Rhythmakers 78s that Philip Larkin loved so much)

– Elvis Presley, “Burning Love” (a song I’d forgotten all about until I heard it on the soundtrack of Lilo and Stitch)

Incidentally, I saw the following caption on one of the overhead TV sets in the gym midway through my workout:

DON KNOTS [sic] DIES LAST NIGHT OF POOR HEALTH

Hey, it happens.