Yes, the fall concert season must really be rolling if one can do that. And so I did. From the ridiculous to the sublime, in roughly that order ...
Saturday, South Valley Symphony. Bargain-basement community orchestra that plays at a 2-year college on the far side of Gilroy. I went all the way down there for the opportunity to hear Tchaikovsky's First, which doesn't come one's way very often. Parts of it were tolerable, especially the slow movement which had more melodic effect than some professional performances. Good job by 16-year-old pianist Henry Smolen on the Saint-Saëns Second Concerto. He couldn't do light and fleeting, which this concerto really needs, but he didn't drag or sludge for an instant.
Sunday, Saratoga Symphony. But this is the amateur group that sits at the true bottom of the local barrel. I've heard them before, but I still might go if it's something enticing, though I'll barely recognize it. This time they cheerfully and genially massacred Nielsen's Second, though they did quite decently with some dances by Grieg (including the one that Allan Sherman lifted "I Can't Dance" from), and a gaseous clarinet concerto by the sub-Mozartean Bernhard Crussell, with, again, a competent soloist, Adam Pease. Apparently kicked out of their Saratoga ecclesiastical venue, they're now playing in a tiny church in Cupertino.
Monday, London Philharmonic Orchestra. On to the professionals. Visiting orchestra at Davies in the City, which I couldn't resist for the program of Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody and Shostakovich's Eighth. Led by Vladimir Jurowski, they took a crisp, jaunty way through the Rhapsody, with soloist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet contributing punchy thumps. The Shostakovich was less chipper: the long adagios meandered listlessly, while the climaxes exploded. I've heard this symphony played more interestingly, but never louder. Clear, cool platforms of sound from the orchestra, though. A buzzing piece of soundscape by Magnus Lindberg completed the program.
Tuesday, Harmony for Humanity. Stanford's annual Daniel Pearl memorial concert, in honor of the journalist murdered in Pakistan in 2002 - he was a Stanford grad and music-lover. A student ensemble with the members of the St. Lawrence Quartet as section leaders played a Telemann oboe concerto and a Bach cantata. Memorial Church's echoing acoustics were fine for the strings and oboeist James Austin Smith, not so good for baritone Kenneth Goodson. In between, St. Lawrence cellist Chris Costanza played a Bach suite from down on the main floor, where most of the audience couldn't see him or, as it turned out, hear him.
Wednesday, San Francisco Symphony. Thin audience for a program of good stuff from the 1930s. It wasn't until I got there that I remembered that I'd heard guest conductor Stéphane Denève lead the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances before, with the LA Phil six years ago. I didn't like his technique of abrupt and erratic tempo changes much better this time, though the orchestra sounded great. Britten's Violin Concerto I hadn't known, so I can't say what Denève did to it, though the weird orchestration was again fascinating, and soloist Isabelle Faust kept on top of everything. Denève led the Barber Adagio as if to show that the music had been proceeding inaudibly for quite some time before the piece started, and continued after its conclusion also.
Kalimac's corner: a journal by DB
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Monday, October 13, 2014
Columbus Day
Yes, Columbus discovered America. It was his coming here that directly led to the awareness of the continents by the rest of the world. The Vikings, if they were here at all, didn't do that, and the previous inhabitants kept the place to themselves. In science, you can find whatever you like in the laboratory, but if you don't publish first, you're not the discoverer, and you don't get the Nobel Prize.
As for the deplorable things that Columbus and his successors did, all of us who live here except those solely descended from those previous inhabitants are the beneficiaries of that, so while we can deplore it, as we should, denouncing its practitioners root and branch doesn't look too good on us. Considering the state of the world, our descendants won't look too kindly on us, either.
So let us celebrate, by the relentlessly logical procedure of closing the post offices, preventing me from mailing packages to B's sister and niece until tomorrow. I will give my thankfulness that the auto repair shop is not closed, and was able to repair and reinstall the flat tire I got yesterday on the freeway: exciting times.
Hobbling on my spare tire over there, I saw a nice indication of the ethnic dominance of this area in the form of front yard signs for school board and city council candidates named Chang, Zhang, and Huang.
As for the deplorable things that Columbus and his successors did, all of us who live here except those solely descended from those previous inhabitants are the beneficiaries of that, so while we can deplore it, as we should, denouncing its practitioners root and branch doesn't look too good on us. Considering the state of the world, our descendants won't look too kindly on us, either.
So let us celebrate, by the relentlessly logical procedure of closing the post offices, preventing me from mailing packages to B's sister and niece until tomorrow. I will give my thankfulness that the auto repair shop is not closed, and was able to repair and reinstall the flat tire I got yesterday on the freeway: exciting times.
Hobbling on my spare tire over there, I saw a nice indication of the ethnic dominance of this area in the form of front yard signs for school board and city council candidates named Chang, Zhang, and Huang.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
The Great Divorce
A few years ago I attended a stage adaptation of C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters that was touring the country and came locally. Now the same people have adapted his The Great Divorce.
The Great Divorce is a much less well-known book, but I think a more powerful one. Its critiques of human self-delusion get under my skin more than Screwtape's do. It's in the form of a narrative in which Lewis dreams that he accompanies ghosts from Hell - which he depicts as a drab, ugly town stuck in an eternal twilight - on a bus trip to Heaven, where the spirits there (often past earthly friends of the visitors) try to persuade them to cast off their delusions and transform themselves into heavenly residents - and occasionally succeed.
The point is that whether you return on the bus or not, and even whether you take the trip at all, is entirely voluntary, and as this trip is an allegory for accepting spiritual humility, it's a struggle in the minds of those who have to decide whether tis better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven (a line quoted in the book). Lewis's Big Idea here is that Hell is only Hell if you stay there; if you leave, it was Purgatory all along. God doesn't sentence people there; they commit themselves there of their own self-righteousness. God is just waiting for them to repent, which means giving that up.
I don't know how theologically orthodox this idea is, but if it is, it offers a complete rebuttal to the "God is evil because he sends people to Hell" theory, one of the few times Lewis really strikes home. (There is, here, no torture in Hell, just a complete drabness and people totally wrapped up in themselves, assuming you don't call that torture.)
I don't know if I've conveyed this. If it seems nonsensical, read the book. It's very short.
So, the play. It was about 75 minutes long, no intermission. Most of the book was there; the Dwarf and Tragedian were the most conspicuous omission. Three actors, two men and one woman, played all the incidental roles of spirits and traded off the part of Lewis (as character and narrator). Quick costume changes helped convey this, and I guess it was to make clear to the audience that they'd all be Lewis that the frame narration began with all three speaking, and moving, in unison while identically costumed (as dons in tie and sweater). This was risibly reminiscent of the scene with the three burglars in Noises Off.
One of the male actors, though good, was flop-sweaty in that "Hey, I'm acting here!" way. The other man was smoother but didn't differentiate his characters. The woman, Christa Scott-Reed, was by far the best: she played three supercilious women in the course of the play (Lewis had a bug on about that kind of woman: they show up throughout his fiction) and made them all different.
The scenery was portrayed through elaborate back projections (and a lot of REALLY LOUD background noises, a feature of the Screwtape as well), and this reliance on technology gave rise to the weirdest moment. There's a scene in the book where one of the ghosts is trying to pick up one of the heavenly apples to take back (the ghosts are insubstantial, and Heaven is so intensely real that the grass cuts their feet - something the actors, who performed barefoot, constantly remind you of). The voice of an angel admonishes this ghost.
In the play, the angel's voice comes amplified from above. The weird moment occurred in the previous scene, where the same voice, with the same amplification, interrupted the play, addressed the one actor then on stage by name, and told him to leave the stage momentarily. The house lights came up. Was it a medical emergency in the audience? No! The computer that directs the backdrops had frozen, and they had to reboot it. As Lewis could have told them, put not your faith in technology.
The Great Divorce is a much less well-known book, but I think a more powerful one. Its critiques of human self-delusion get under my skin more than Screwtape's do. It's in the form of a narrative in which Lewis dreams that he accompanies ghosts from Hell - which he depicts as a drab, ugly town stuck in an eternal twilight - on a bus trip to Heaven, where the spirits there (often past earthly friends of the visitors) try to persuade them to cast off their delusions and transform themselves into heavenly residents - and occasionally succeed.
The point is that whether you return on the bus or not, and even whether you take the trip at all, is entirely voluntary, and as this trip is an allegory for accepting spiritual humility, it's a struggle in the minds of those who have to decide whether tis better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven (a line quoted in the book). Lewis's Big Idea here is that Hell is only Hell if you stay there; if you leave, it was Purgatory all along. God doesn't sentence people there; they commit themselves there of their own self-righteousness. God is just waiting for them to repent, which means giving that up.
I don't know how theologically orthodox this idea is, but if it is, it offers a complete rebuttal to the "God is evil because he sends people to Hell" theory, one of the few times Lewis really strikes home. (There is, here, no torture in Hell, just a complete drabness and people totally wrapped up in themselves, assuming you don't call that torture.)
I don't know if I've conveyed this. If it seems nonsensical, read the book. It's very short.
So, the play. It was about 75 minutes long, no intermission. Most of the book was there; the Dwarf and Tragedian were the most conspicuous omission. Three actors, two men and one woman, played all the incidental roles of spirits and traded off the part of Lewis (as character and narrator). Quick costume changes helped convey this, and I guess it was to make clear to the audience that they'd all be Lewis that the frame narration began with all three speaking, and moving, in unison while identically costumed (as dons in tie and sweater). This was risibly reminiscent of the scene with the three burglars in Noises Off.
One of the male actors, though good, was flop-sweaty in that "Hey, I'm acting here!" way. The other man was smoother but didn't differentiate his characters. The woman, Christa Scott-Reed, was by far the best: she played three supercilious women in the course of the play (Lewis had a bug on about that kind of woman: they show up throughout his fiction) and made them all different.
The scenery was portrayed through elaborate back projections (and a lot of REALLY LOUD background noises, a feature of the Screwtape as well), and this reliance on technology gave rise to the weirdest moment. There's a scene in the book where one of the ghosts is trying to pick up one of the heavenly apples to take back (the ghosts are insubstantial, and Heaven is so intensely real that the grass cuts their feet - something the actors, who performed barefoot, constantly remind you of). The voice of an angel admonishes this ghost.
In the play, the angel's voice comes amplified from above. The weird moment occurred in the previous scene, where the same voice, with the same amplification, interrupted the play, addressed the one actor then on stage by name, and told him to leave the stage momentarily. The house lights came up. Was it a medical emergency in the audience? No! The computer that directs the backdrops had frozen, and they had to reboot it. As Lewis could have told them, put not your faith in technology.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Thursday, October 9, 2014
musical commentary
Lisa Irontongue is passing along a meme of asking for pieces you never want to hear again and pieces you want to hear more often.
The concert music I most devoutly wish never to hear again consists almost entirely of bloated, self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing sludge from the gasbag Giganticist period of the turn of the 20th century, and a Top Ten might look like this.
The concert music I most devoutly wish never to hear again consists almost entirely of bloated, self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing sludge from the gasbag Giganticist period of the turn of the 20th century, and a Top Ten might look like this.
- Mahler, Symphony No. 5
- Mahler, Symphony No. 6
- Mahler, Symphony No. 7
- Mahler, Symphony No. 8
- Mahler, Symphony No. 9
- Mahler, Symphony No. 10
- Strauss, Death and Transfiguration
- Strauss, Ein Heldenleben
- Strauss, Also Sprach Zarathustra
- Brian, Gothic Symphony
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
world according to cat
"The most relaxing way of hunting is to lie on my back with all four paws waggling in the air. Of course, it helps if the object of my hunt is a cooperative peacock feather."
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Orphan Black, season 2
(vague semi-spoilers)
Oh, Orphan Black, you are a harsh mistress. You make me care about these characters, and then you screw me over with the plot.
The end of season two featured a striking example of what I call the old Arlington Road Trick, which features prominently in that Jeff Bridges conspiracy thriller movie. The Arlington Road Trick occurs when a bad guy leaves a piece of false information around for a good guy to find and be misled by, while leading the good guy to believe that she'd only discovered it by happenstance.
It requires a very specific level of concealment to hide something well enough that the good guy won't suspect it's a plant, while simultaneously having it conspicuous enough that there's no chance the good guy will overlook it. Note again that the only reason for concealment is to establish the false information's bona fides - making the good guy believe the info could only have come by happenstance, that it couldn't have been planted.
But that's not all. The bad guy's plot also depends on knowing exactly how the good guy will react to the discovery. Will she call the person who needs to know? No. Will she go and tell it in person? No. She will drive to the building the person is in, send in a message, and have them come out to the car. Otherwise the bad guy's plot won't work.
For extra added bonus, the bad guy has to get to the same building before the good guy does, execute a meticulous change of costume, and know someone she's barely met better than two people who've known her all her life.
The common thread in all of this is that the reason the various good guys - four of them in this instance - and the audience never suspect a trick is that the trick would, in fact, be impossible to pull off. Or, at least, to be sure you could pull it off - and, if it failed, it would be disastrous to the plotter.
I was less disturbed by the gratuitous introduction of a new clone character who makes no discernable contribution to the plot, for the sole purpose of throwing an even tougher acting curveball than ever before at Tatiana Maslany, because her acting skills are just awesome and deserve this showcase. And an Emmy, which in her case she has not got.
Oh, Orphan Black, you are a harsh mistress. You make me care about these characters, and then you screw me over with the plot.
The end of season two featured a striking example of what I call the old Arlington Road Trick, which features prominently in that Jeff Bridges conspiracy thriller movie. The Arlington Road Trick occurs when a bad guy leaves a piece of false information around for a good guy to find and be misled by, while leading the good guy to believe that she'd only discovered it by happenstance.
It requires a very specific level of concealment to hide something well enough that the good guy won't suspect it's a plant, while simultaneously having it conspicuous enough that there's no chance the good guy will overlook it. Note again that the only reason for concealment is to establish the false information's bona fides - making the good guy believe the info could only have come by happenstance, that it couldn't have been planted.
But that's not all. The bad guy's plot also depends on knowing exactly how the good guy will react to the discovery. Will she call the person who needs to know? No. Will she go and tell it in person? No. She will drive to the building the person is in, send in a message, and have them come out to the car. Otherwise the bad guy's plot won't work.
For extra added bonus, the bad guy has to get to the same building before the good guy does, execute a meticulous change of costume, and know someone she's barely met better than two people who've known her all her life.
The common thread in all of this is that the reason the various good guys - four of them in this instance - and the audience never suspect a trick is that the trick would, in fact, be impossible to pull off. Or, at least, to be sure you could pull it off - and, if it failed, it would be disastrous to the plotter.
I was less disturbed by the gratuitous introduction of a new clone character who makes no discernable contribution to the plot, for the sole purpose of throwing an even tougher acting curveball than ever before at Tatiana Maslany, because her acting skills are just awesome and deserve this showcase. And an Emmy, which in her case she has not got.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
calendrical rod
Why is it that so many 12-month wall calendars for the succeeding year have a page with the last three months of the current year? What do I need that for? I already have a calendar for this year. What might be useful would be one with the first three months of the following year, so that one has a place to write upcoming appointments as they start to creep up, before one puts up, or even acquires, the next year's calendar.
B. and I use the wall calendar for shared appointments, e.g. things we'll do together or those we do individually that impact each other, e.g. if I'll be out for dinner because of a concert. We usually get one with pictures of cats or something equally appealing. I know where the best selection is to be found, and I've just come home with one.
We also keep a page-a-day cartoon calendar, and I've got one of those too. Requirement for these: blank back sides, because we use them for scrap note paper.
I keep my own personal appointments in a bare functional month-at-a-glance calendar. This does have a spread for the next year, in fact spaces for all 12 months, which is very convenient. Along about September, though, it starts getting jammed up, so it's time to buy the next year's. I've done that and transferred all my appointments and commitments, so now I can see when there'll be room to take a couple of trips.
B. and I use the wall calendar for shared appointments, e.g. things we'll do together or those we do individually that impact each other, e.g. if I'll be out for dinner because of a concert. We usually get one with pictures of cats or something equally appealing. I know where the best selection is to be found, and I've just come home with one.
We also keep a page-a-day cartoon calendar, and I've got one of those too. Requirement for these: blank back sides, because we use them for scrap note paper.
I keep my own personal appointments in a bare functional month-at-a-glance calendar. This does have a spread for the next year, in fact spaces for all 12 months, which is very convenient. Along about September, though, it starts getting jammed up, so it's time to buy the next year's. I've done that and transferred all my appointments and commitments, so now I can see when there'll be room to take a couple of trips.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
not such great movies
The Railway Man
Colin Firth in the true story of a veteran of the Bridge Over the River Kwai who cures his PTSD by going back to Thailand and confronting the Japanese officer who'd yelled at him while he'd been tortured. In true stereotyped Japanese style, the man grovels apologetically, and all ends happily.
There were several problems with this movie as a piece of storytelling. Eric (Firth's character) is introduced as a crusty but charming old bachelor who meets this woman on the train (Nicole Kidman) and enriches her vacation by spouting historical trivia. First problem: His subsequent tracking of her down is only not stalking because she likes him, though she's so reserved and British I don't see how he can be sure of it. Second problem: His PTSD only appears on screen the morning after their wedding, and quickly escalates, giving the evidently false impression that the marriage set it off. Third problem: Though she says she's a nurse, her efforts to help him consist of looking pained a lot. Fourth problem: Eric and his old army buddy (Stellan Skarsgård, evidently mandatory casting for characters such as his) refuse to talk about their POW torture because they say it was hideous beyond imagination: in flashback scenes it proves to consist of the likes of waterboarding and being locked in tiny bamboo cages; this is indeed horrible, but today not beyond imagination. It's no longer cogent to make a movie on such topics in pre-Iraq terms. Fifth problem: There's much less of that than there is of the officer yelling at him that he's lying, which again is horrible but doesn't really measure up on the torture scale to the advertising. Sixth problem: The reconciliation plot just doesn't grow or flow organically.
Further problems with the movie require exterior context. Seventh problem: Though the filmmakers in the commentary tell us that Thailand was hot, humid, rainy, and full of bugs, none of this comes across in the movie. It looks balmy, even during the war. Eighth problem: In real life, Eric wasn't a bachelor. He was already married and left his wife for this woman. That knowledge really puts a damper on the meet-cute opening.
Palo Alto
I only rented this movie because it's set in the town I know well, as I live near it and used to work there. I already knew it was actually filmed in SoCal. Some of the settings could pass for Palo Alto and some could not. (Too many palm trees.) However, as after 20 minutes or so the plot consisted of nothing but slacker teenagers getting wasted, I turned it off.
Colin Firth in the true story of a veteran of the Bridge Over the River Kwai who cures his PTSD by going back to Thailand and confronting the Japanese officer who'd yelled at him while he'd been tortured. In true stereotyped Japanese style, the man grovels apologetically, and all ends happily.
There were several problems with this movie as a piece of storytelling. Eric (Firth's character) is introduced as a crusty but charming old bachelor who meets this woman on the train (Nicole Kidman) and enriches her vacation by spouting historical trivia. First problem: His subsequent tracking of her down is only not stalking because she likes him, though she's so reserved and British I don't see how he can be sure of it. Second problem: His PTSD only appears on screen the morning after their wedding, and quickly escalates, giving the evidently false impression that the marriage set it off. Third problem: Though she says she's a nurse, her efforts to help him consist of looking pained a lot. Fourth problem: Eric and his old army buddy (Stellan Skarsgård, evidently mandatory casting for characters such as his) refuse to talk about their POW torture because they say it was hideous beyond imagination: in flashback scenes it proves to consist of the likes of waterboarding and being locked in tiny bamboo cages; this is indeed horrible, but today not beyond imagination. It's no longer cogent to make a movie on such topics in pre-Iraq terms. Fifth problem: There's much less of that than there is of the officer yelling at him that he's lying, which again is horrible but doesn't really measure up on the torture scale to the advertising. Sixth problem: The reconciliation plot just doesn't grow or flow organically.
Further problems with the movie require exterior context. Seventh problem: Though the filmmakers in the commentary tell us that Thailand was hot, humid, rainy, and full of bugs, none of this comes across in the movie. It looks balmy, even during the war. Eighth problem: In real life, Eric wasn't a bachelor. He was already married and left his wife for this woman. That knowledge really puts a damper on the meet-cute opening.
Palo Alto
I only rented this movie because it's set in the town I know well, as I live near it and used to work there. I already knew it was actually filmed in SoCal. Some of the settings could pass for Palo Alto and some could not. (Too many palm trees.) However, as after 20 minutes or so the plot consisted of nothing but slacker teenagers getting wasted, I turned it off.
books not finished
Becoming Drusilla by Richard Beard
This was recommended to me as a road to understanding transsexuality. I found it harder to engage with its prose style than it seemed to be worth continuing. It's nonfiction, but Beard is primarily a novelist, and he kept trying to tell the story novelistically.
Beard feels that memoirs by transsexuals themselves are not best aimed at bystanders, and I expect he's correct. More promising might be this, a book by a cis friend of a transsexual: Beard's camping buddy, who after years of friendship came out as a woman. Alas, in at least the first half, Beard's energy is focused mostly on convincing skeptical readers that yes, transsexuality is a thing. That I already knew. So far, on critical questions like when she realized she was a woman, why and how she kept up pretenses as she did, Dru is elusive or mum, and I wearied of wondering whether she'd ever become more forthcoming.
The Invisible Bridge by Rick Perlstein
I picked up this massive, wide-ranging book on the growth of the conservative movement in the 1970s US, turned to a random page, and read a random paragraph, discussing Truman nostalgia, of all things. In it, I found two minor but annoying factual errors, both based on the author failing to check up on exactly when people actually died. Both incorrect factoids could easily have been omitted without affecting the paragraph's point. Probably the entire paragraph could have been omitted without affecting any larger point. But if you're going to include details, get them right. I knew this stuff; why didn't the author of a massive detail-filled book?
I put this book back on the shelf and don't intend to read any more.
This was recommended to me as a road to understanding transsexuality. I found it harder to engage with its prose style than it seemed to be worth continuing. It's nonfiction, but Beard is primarily a novelist, and he kept trying to tell the story novelistically.
Beard feels that memoirs by transsexuals themselves are not best aimed at bystanders, and I expect he's correct. More promising might be this, a book by a cis friend of a transsexual: Beard's camping buddy, who after years of friendship came out as a woman. Alas, in at least the first half, Beard's energy is focused mostly on convincing skeptical readers that yes, transsexuality is a thing. That I already knew. So far, on critical questions like when she realized she was a woman, why and how she kept up pretenses as she did, Dru is elusive or mum, and I wearied of wondering whether she'd ever become more forthcoming.
The Invisible Bridge by Rick Perlstein
I picked up this massive, wide-ranging book on the growth of the conservative movement in the 1970s US, turned to a random page, and read a random paragraph, discussing Truman nostalgia, of all things. In it, I found two minor but annoying factual errors, both based on the author failing to check up on exactly when people actually died. Both incorrect factoids could easily have been omitted without affecting the paragraph's point. Probably the entire paragraph could have been omitted without affecting any larger point. But if you're going to include details, get them right. I knew this stuff; why didn't the author of a massive detail-filled book?
I put this book back on the shelf and don't intend to read any more.
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