Posted on: May 31, 2009
Alexander Calder, 20th century neglected master, said a piece is finished when the dinner bell rings. Clearly he knew truth was ass-backward. Beethoven’s Ninth is pretty good backward too; maybe better. Poor guy, a captive of his times, pressured by the Imperial Court. He had to code his message but he should have outfaced the constabulary and started with the hosannas and cheering and work back thru the darker parts, slogging thru piles of hubris. It’s clear it’s music about a type of joy that’s temporary. Myself, I always bear this in mind. Anyway it’s finished when it’s finished, when it’s as good read backward as forward. Some agree saying put Molly Bloom at the beginning. Others disagree. They say, when looking at Pollock or Gorky you must always start in the upper right hand corner. And there’s Beatrice in a short skirt.…
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Posted on: May 26, 2009
St. Francis at Prayer, by Caravaggio. 1602-06
From where I sit. From where you sit. It’s all relative. You’re deluded. No, you are. I think you both are. In The Great Weaver of Kashmir, the young Halldór Laxness, a future Nobel Prize winner, gives us ample opportunity as readers to judge much concerning delusions and illusions. The novel is ambiguous enough to provide plenty of room, and our weighing and balancing of the various options will have much to do with our own predilections.
Picking up where I left off a few days ago, our hero (or anti-hero), Steinn Elliði, was searching for a way to attain perfection. Thinking he found it in a monastery, he started the process of becoming a monk. The last 130 odd pages take him in a few more directions before he apparently decides his course.…
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Posted on: May 22, 2009
The Great Weaver of Kashmir, by Halldór Laxness
After nearly 300 pages (with a bit more than a 100 to go), I don’t know what to make of this novel. I do know that the writing is powerful, often hallucinatory, filled with wonderful metaphors and poetic symbology. I do know it makes me think of all kinds of things: Death, Suicide, Heaven and Hell, Love, Masks, Mercurial Personalities. Nietzsche is a guiding spirit. As are the Icelandic Eddas, and the thousand and one journeys through love, hedonism, faith and beyond permeating our culture(s).
The life of a Christian ascetic is something Laxness knew first hand. And the life of a traveler. His protagonist, Steinn Elliði, a young poet, sets out from Iceland to become “the perfect man”. Travels throughout Europe. At this point in the book, he has found his way to a monastery, trying to find peace.…
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Posted on: May 20, 2009
Penny Lane, played by Kate Hudson
Rockers get to be Dionysian. It’s their thing. No one expects them to add the Apollonian, though they must to create music objects, or create as individual artists. They must. But the Dionysian is what their fans want, see, expect — in concerts, at least. Do they expect the same things when they sit at home, alone, listening to records of the same singer, the same band?
Right now, as of 2009, it is probably true that musicians can combine the Dionysian and the Apollonian better than any other kind of artist. Chaos, trance, inebriation, intoxication of one or more forms, group celebration and loss of the self, the dying of the self in that group celebration and swooning fall out. The lone guitar hero, fighting the system, standing outside the system, forever. Making his or her own name against the odds.…
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