saw a play

"Art" by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton, directed by Emilie Whelan

I saw this play in London in 1998, a couple years into the run of the first English-language production (the original is in French). I thought it'd be worth seeing again, especially after Kosman gave it a good review (halfway down this page). This was by Shotgun Players, a Berkeley troupe whom I once saw in a production of Hamlet in which the actors pull slips of paper out of a hat (actually Yorick's skull) at the beginning of each performance to see who'll play which part.

Nothing so avant-garde this time. "Art" was well-performed, but I didn't like this production as well as I did the London one. This was mostly because the director took the emphasis away from one theme - what is art, what makes it valuable and how do we know what we like? - and on to another, the nature of male friendship, a depiction completely alien to anything in my experience of friendship, but whatever.

In this play, a moderately successful man drops a large load of money on buying a painting by a fashionable modern artist and shows it off to his two closest friends. The painting is pure white, supposedly with features and highlights that only the connoisseur can see. One of the friends is offended, less by what he sees as the artistic worthlessness of the painting than by what it says about his friend's taste. The other tries to be agreeable to both of them in turn.

The third, who is the youngest and least well-off, illustrates his haplessness with a long monologue about being caught in the middle of an argument between his fiancée and his mother over the wording of the wedding invitation. The London performer (I no longer remember who was in the show at the time I saw it, sorry) delivered this as an evenly-paced steadily rising hysteria. This one did it in rising and falling outbursts. He did, however, at one point deliver a golden piece of advice I didn't remember from the previous showing. He said, "'Calm down' is the worst thing you could say to somebody who's lost their calm." And this is true. It will anger them further because it shows you don't care what they're angry about, you just want to exert control over them.

Anyway, the art side of it interests me. Are there actually painters who produce blank monochromatic paintings that are considered great art? Yes there are. I've been to this display of fourteen featureless black paintings and sat there for a few minutes pretending to be moved by it. I have never felt more ripped off by an art museum, despite the fact that there is no admission charge.

And do their defenders actually make the desperate argument of pointing to minute variations in the texture as where the value of the art lies? Yes they do and my thoughts on the value of modernist art are there. It's also my answer to the question the painting's owner asks his critic: how can someone who doesn't claim any expertise in the subject judge the work? The answer is that if it has any value, any viewer should be able to pick that up. Crikes, why do people with no technical training in music whatever listen to symphonies? They must be getting something valuable out of the aesthetic experience or else there would be no point in performing for them.

imported children's books

I got into a conversation about which British children's books beloved there also became American favorites and which didn't. This came through an experience I've had before, a reference by a Brit to some children's story or character that I'd barely or never heard of, but which context showed was universally known there. I'm making the assumption of what's known in the US from what's known to me, a leap I'd hardly take for current material, but children's lit from the early to mid 20C ... I'm pretty confident that if I hadn't heard of it, it wasn't widely known in the US.

So what's the score?

Winnie the Pooh made it in the US.

Peter Rabbit did.

The Hobbit and Narnia did, of course.

Just William didn't. The first I ever heard of that was reading that these books were favorites of John Lennon's in childhood.

Worzel Gummidge didn't. The first I'd ever heard of this character was years ago when somebody wrote that Michael Foot looked like him. "Do you not get scarecrows over there?" I was asked when I said this. Of course we do: and the nameless Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz is one of our most beloved characters. What we didn't get was Worzel Gummidge.

Enid Blyton didn't. The first I ever heard of her was a British critic making the comparison in a blithe dismissal of Tolkien's early chapters.

I'm sure there are others I just haven't seen references to, or have forgotten about.

Then there's the mixed cases:

The Wind in the Willows made it. I don't think it's as widely beloved in the US as it is in the UK, but it's certainly known.

Swallows and Amazons ... I think that became sort of a special interest. It didn't become well known, but is cherished by a measurable number of Americans in a way that other less well-known ones are not.

can't buy me love. or elections either, apparently

Does anyone remember Al Checchi? I did, vaguely, but I had to paw through a series of Wikipedia articles on California gubernatorial elections to recall his name. He was the businessman who tried to buy the Democratic primary for governor in 1998. He shoveled out from his personal fortune nearly twice as much money as both of the other major candidates combined. But in the primary vote, he just barely squeaked into second place, far behind the winner. (Who was Gray Davis, five years later to be ousted in a recall, so hardly invulnerable.)

Then there was Michael Huffington, who similarly tried to buy a California Senate seat in 1994. Also didn't work.

These came to mind when I read of the results of Elon Musk's attempts to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Money can buy elections, but only if you spend it wisely. Apparently people resent it if the attempted purchase is too naked and too lavish. But I wouldn't expect Elon Musk, who thinks a chainsaw is a useful metaphor for trimming wasteful spending, and who 'trims' as if it is; and who sells a vehicle that looks like a cross between a DeLorean and the box that an Amazon package comes in, to grasp anything resembling a subtle point.

concert review: Bay Area Rainbow Symphony

I go to occasional concerts by the local LGBT&c orchestra because I like their programming. This concert, guest conducted by local luminary John Kendall Bailey, was held in the large hall at the SF Conservatory, which is still rather small and was packed.

There were two items new to me that I was eager to hear. Sussex Landscape is a tone poem by Avril Coleridge-Taylor, who was the daughter of the more-remembered Samuel Coleridge-Taylor but whom I'd not previously known of. The piece was written in 1940, when Sussex, where she lived, and neighboring Kent were right in the path of invasion by air and (potentially) sea. So not surprisingly it's somber-toned, with shafts of light peering through on occasion, ranging in mood from anguished to pensive. The idiom is more like Carwithen than, say, Finzi.

Kurt Atterberg is my favorite of the phalanx of great Swedish composers of the first half of the 20C. I had not heard his Suite No. 3, which is for strings with solo parts for violin and viola, another dark and quiet work of impressive beauty.

The rest of the program consisted of familiar but not overplayed classics. I was impressed enough by the robust presentation of Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, with a rigor better reflecting its subtitle, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, that I was willing to stay and hear the suite from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloé, one of the most overripe works in the entire repertoire. Also pretty well done without indulgence.

concert review: South Bay Philharmonic

This is the nonprofessional orchestra with which B. plays viola. I've been hearing a lot of comments about this program in recent weeks, but the piece I heard the least about was Schubert's Fifth Symphony, which is the part of the concert that went well. Not only were all the notes roughly in place, which is not a given in the nonpro market, but with the help of music director George Yefchak, the orchestra conveyed the grace and charm of Schubert's delightful composition. Really enjoyable, that.

The concerto half, not so much. We had Beethoven's Triple Concerto, which - though mostly ignored - is really a fun piece when played well - and Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto, which is a 15-minute chunk of ersatz Rachmaninoff commissioned for a movie score by producers too cheap to pay for the original. Neither of these came off well. Communication between the soloists and the orchestra seemed to be completely absent. The playing by the soloists was ... inconsistent, let's leave it at that.

The interesting part is that the soloist trio in the Beethoven were three juvenile siblings, and the pianist in the Warsaw was their mother. Some seven years ago, I'd heard a concert with Mom in which she invited her two then pre-teen string-playing sons to play an encore piano trio piece with her. Now the cellist is about 17 and the violinist about 20, and they were joined by their even younger sister at piano who's about 15. She was the best of the four of them.

Also played, an encore of "Ashokan Farewell" with a really fine solo from concertmaster Gene Huang, and an brief session with a string quartet summoned by cellist Brent Cyca. He likes tangos, so they played two, including this rather familiar one, though they didn't play it that well, sounding more like the string quartet that used to practice in our living room.

concert review: San Francisco Symphony

Juraj Valčuha surprised me. Previous encounters had shown him a conductor prone to the gentle and lyrical, though not flaccid. This time a more dynamic man showed up. Brahms's Violin Concerto, with the estimable Gil Shaham as soloist, was crisp and surprisingly concise for such a long rambling work.

Then, Shostakovich's Tenth. Very slow and cautious first movement, even a little dull, but then it ramped up fast, with the finale blasting the DSCH motif off in all directions. Pretty exciting.

But ... why a program consisting of nothing but two warhorses, excellent works though they are? It's an evening like an early visitor from next season, recently announced, where the absence of a music director has left the programming with no coherent direction whatever. (I'm still going to be attending. The quality of the musicianship in SFS is what keeps me making the trip up here, and while I expect that will decay soon, I'll wait for it to happen.) I wonder what Kosman will say about this concert, or if he'll even go. Last time they played the Tenth, which was only three years ago, he made clear he was tired of hearing the piece. But I'm not.

Shaham's encore was Isolation Rag by Scott Wheeler, who's got a ways to go before he becomes William Bolcom.

war plans

The silliest argument going on over Signalgate is whether Hegseth's operational details of the then-impending attack on Yemen constituted "war plans."

Insofar as there's a difference between "war plans" and "attack plans," the latter is probably the more accurate term. These were tactical details. "War plan" implies a more strategic overview.

But even given that, the obfuscation over this subtle distinction in terminology is intended merely to disguise the fact that, whether war plans or attack plans, they were or should have been classified information that was treated with total lack of attention to operational security. Hegseth's sanctimonious claim that no "war plans" were discussed is not only misleading but evades the entire point. Senator Duckworth, who's been an Army pilot, was especially scorching: "Pete Hegseth is a f*cking liar. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately."

Hegseth has been going around denouncing Jeffrey Goldberg, the journalist who was handed this info on a golden platter, as a liar and scum. He specifically cited the "very fine people" line, which Republican orthodoxy claims is a hoax. (Actually, DT said it and that's what he meant.) So apparently the kind of thing that makes Goldberg a liar now is calling them "war plans" instead of "attack plans." Karoline Leavitt even claimed that by using the term "attack plans" on the second article, the Atlantic admitted it was lying by calling them "war plans" on the first article. That's a truly pathetic rationalization, and we should keep in mind that this is the kind of thing that DT's minions mean when they call their critics liars.

three more concerts

I had another busy weekend.

Friday: Gut, Wind, and Wire; Piedmont
Three folks from Baltimore who play on early instruments featuring the eponymous sound-makers. The wind was mostly wooden flutes but included a small and recalcitrant bagpipe. They played mostly Renaissance music: Scottish dances, Terpsichore dances, pieces (in their original form) later edited by Respighi for his Ancient Airs and Dances, pieces referred to in Shakespeare plays, and lots and lots of Playford dances.
Performed at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, an old converted house with its main hall turned into a tiny concert hall holding some 30 people.

Saturday: California Symphony; Walnut Creek
SFCV had me reviewing this one, so reviewed it got. I mentioned conductor Cabrera's opinion, expressed in remarks prior to the piece, that it's a mistake to try to power through the triumphant ending of the third movement of Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique" and preempt the inevitable audience applause by diving straight into the finale. But I didn't mention that that's exactly what Elim Chan did with SFS a week earlier. By Joshua Kosman's account, she succeeded in stopping the applause, a feat Cabrera dismissed as unachievable. But I wasn't there so I don't know.
In regard to the piece being premiered, my editors deleted a sentence which would have made clear that a comparison to Luciano Berio is not a compliment in my book. But I guess you're not supposed to be too critical.

Sunday: Santa Cruz Chamber Players, Aptos
Music for piano trio, quartet, and quintet (that's one piano with varying numbers of strings). Included two new pieces, both soft and padding, one titled "A Wish for Ukraine." Also Frank Bridge's Phantasy, very cooly and effectively played, and Dvorak's evergreen Op. 81 quintet.
Fifty minutes turned out to be not quite enough time to drive here from Hollister where I'd gone first.

report

Local temperatures are supposed to be in the 80s F the next couple of days. And it's still March. Then they'll drop back down to the 60s. How? Clouds. Let's hear it for clouds.

I read that 23andme is potentially going bankrupt, so all of us who submitted DNA to their ancestry-testing program should delete our data lest it be sold to the highest bidder. I haven't done anything with mine since getting it years ago - it only told me I was literally 99.9% of the ethnicity I knew I was already - so I had no problem with deleting it, except for how difficult it was to do so. First the site demanded I change my password. Then it sent me a verification code. Then I had no idea what to do next, so I asked Google's A.I. for help and it told me to use the Settings menu, but not how to find the Settings menu, which turned out to be obscurely located. Once I found it, though, it was self-evident what to do next; let's hear it for self-evidence.

The Tolkien Society, based in the UK, now has so many US members that it's decided to hold a conference in the US in May. It'll be in Kansas City. Not that they know anybody in particular in Kansas City, just that it's in the middle of the country so it'll be equally convenient from everywhere. That strikes me as a very British attitude to take. The UK is small enough geographically that you can do that. I don't think they realize how large a country the US is. Kansas City is not equally close to everywhere, it's equally far. I'd like to go, but personal schedule and the difficulty of traveling argue against it.

Canada is holding its general election on April 28, it says here. If the incumbent Liberals lose, then new Prime Minister Mark Carney will only have been in office two months, probably outdoing in brevity a previous Liberal tag-end PM, John Turner. Turner also never served in parliament as PM, as Carney hasn't, but Turner at least had previous experience there. Carney's qualifications are as a steel-nerved central bank governor, which his supporters hope will help him stand up against a rampaging DT. And let's stop there.

another C.S. Lewis conference

I got a notice that a Christian theological educational group in Berkeley was sponsoring a daylong conference on "Learning from the Inklings in Wartime." And by the Inklings, they meant - mostly but not exclusively - C.S. Lewis. It sounded more introductory than I needed, but it was nearby, I needed to go to the area anyway for a concert that evening after the conference ended, and I thought I'd enjoy it, so I decided to go.

It was held in the classroom wing of a Presbyterian church, and there were about 35 people there, a few of whom I already knew. As usual at a specifically CSL conference, I was probably the only non-Christian there, but also as usual I made no effort to advertise the fact.

The plenary talks focused on Lewis's essay "Learning in Wartime," correlating Christian imperatives, the goals of a scholarly life, and the pressures of an existence in times of crisis. The fact that we're living in such a time right now was not ignored, but it was not propagandized and if anything leaned left. This group may have been theologically conservative, but it was also in Berkeley and the politics reflected that.

The breakout sessions I attended were more tangentially on wartime. One presenter read poems of his own composition inspired by Lewis's writings, not just those on war. One of the attendees said the poems reminded him of the lyrics of Bruce Cockburn. Another presenter, a scholar whose work I knew, did make the conference scholastically worthwhile for me. He spoke learnedly on Lewis's writings on Hell, observing that they all dated from during or closely adjacent to WW2, but without making much of that point. He did, however, opine that Tolkien's portrait of Satan, as Morgoth and Sauron, outdoes Lewis's in Perelandra and far outshines Milton's in Paradise Lost, for all that one of Lewis's wartime writings on Hell is a study of Milton arguing that Milton's Satan is no proud rebel but a self-pitying whiner.

The speakers were all good and had worthwhile things to say. Several had trouble pronouncing the name of Lewis's character Wormwood, one rendering it as "Wordsworth". Registration cost included a sandwich buffet for lunch. There were a few inspiring songs with guitar or piano. The church locked up the women's restroom before we were done.