Posted on: September 15, 2009
Pieter Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow. 1565
George Scialabba’s excellent collection of essays continues to provoke thought. One arena with a great deal of complexity and contradiction is local control versus centralized control. That dilemma can be extended to all sorts of things, like education, health care, the environment, the arts, the economy and so on. Where should we cede control to localities, and where should we insist on universals of one kind or another?
There are arguments to be made on many sides of many issues along those lines, and it’s one place that makes “consistency” a vice, not a virtue. As in, whereas I think capitalism, globalization and the “free market” have had highly negative effects, overall, on local cultures, especially in the arts (and should be ameliorated), I think it’s essential that we establish universal health care, universal education, universal environmental protections, and so on, regardless of local differences.…
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Posted on: September 13, 2009
What Are Intellectuals Good For? by George Scialabba. 2009
Almost finished with an excellent collection of essays by George Scialabba, entitled, What are Intellectuals Good For? It’s a close look primarily at the disappearance in our culture of what once was termed a “public intellectual.” A person so well versed in so many things, we look to them for insight on a host of subjects, from history to literature, from art to politics, from movies to music and back again.
Scialabba writes about such thinkers as Dwight Macdonald, Irving Howe, Noam Chomsky, Richard Rorty, Christopher Lasch, and Stanley Fish, among others.
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Posted on: September 8, 2009
Sin Nombre. Directed by Cary Fukunaga. 2009
There is something Shakespearean in the setup of Sin Nombre, a brilliant film from director, Cary Fukunaga. It doesn’t really hit you until you’re away from the vision for a time. Away from the people and the setting and the imagery. Sin Nombre is the tragic story of the search for a home, and how that search leads to death and the desire to escape that home for El Norte. It is a Central American story with a hint of Romeo and Juliette, a revenge story, a story of very young people forced to grow up too fast. Grow up or die. Kill or be killed.
Fukunaga brings us a world we rarely see. Migrants riding train tops, gangs initiating twelve-year-olds by beating them half to death, journeys across countries, utilizing a not so hidden infrastructure for migrants to go north.…
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Posted on: September 4, 2009
Missy Higgin’s On a Clear Night. 2007
A pleasant discovery for me a couple of years ago, the music of Missy Higgins continues to impress. I first heard her on my pandora.com account, and just picked up one of her CDs. Her warmth, intelligence, and vulnerability flow with every song, and her beautiful vocals resonate long after the song has worked its way into the night. I love her accent. I love that she never felt the need to hide her Aussie background. It makes her seem defiant to me, a sweet rebel, which is strange in a sense. Because she’s just being herself. My guess is that many in the biz told her not to sing with her own, natural accent, but she didn’t listen, and it makes her music better.
Missy Higgins writes her own music and lyrics, and has told interviewers that she’d rather write songs than sing them, if she had to choose.…
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