One of these weeks in which Sisyphus seems to have reigned over my various projects. . ..
I don't mind his poking his head in for a short visit occasionally, so long as he doesn't stay too long and leave behind such a welter. But a welter he did leave, leaving me to deal with the mess he has left behind, and perhaps causing the world to go slightly off-kilter with that accursed stone of his.
Or as the lovely Yv has eloquently put it in a very timely email (just what I needed to hear this week), "Some days are like this – nothing really gets done and what does get done is pointless. Then, out comes a poem or a cat, or a flower, or a sunburst, or even a good piece of cheese or prosciutto, and the tilted world rights."
Thus the off-kiltered world is led back on track, in this case, by those very words and the imagery it invokes.
Tomorrow, another day, a new start. A Friday, thank goodness. A new opportunity to get back on track. Keep Sisyphus at bay. Or for prosciutto to correct my tilted world, if it must. Either way, not a bad outlook.
31 July 2008
30 July 2008
???
Shouldn't be posting at work, but I can't resist and this will take me less than a minute. Does this email make anyone else sneer? Shake one's head in disbelief? Hmmm.
(from an email excerpt)----------------
Corporate Sales Manager
Virgin Charter
3420 Ocean Park Boulevard Suite 3050
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Please consider the environment before printing
----- End forwarded message -----
(from an email excerpt)----------------
Corporate Sales Manager
Virgin Charter
3420 Ocean Park Boulevard Suite 3050
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Please consider the environment before printing
----- End forwarded message -----
29 July 2008
Taruskin quote, with more context
Heh. Although I know hardly anything about contemporary classical music, somehow one of my posts made it to this contemporary classical music blog. Check it out.
Since the author of the blog linked it and commented that the connection I referenced between sex and classical music seems tenuous, I thought I'd take the opportunity to link to the original article and offer more context. I should've done this in the first place, but I believe I was knee-deep in Mahler and German at the time. I do agree it does look tenuous without the context, though it is also quite dramatic (and admittedly bordering on sensationalist) without the background info.
I excerpted the quote from this lengthy book review by Taruskin in the New Republic. (Hint: if you find clicking on multiple pages as irritating as I do, click on the "print" link and read it all in one page.)
It is a scathing, if not interesting, worthwhile read, so I'll only briefly summarize it, but he starts by sharply criticizing the Pulitzer Prize-winning article about Joshua Bell playing incognito at a D.C. subway during the middle of rush hour.
His general thesis is that those who profess to be the biggest fans of classical music are often the ones responsible for classical music's so-called "death". He then proceeds to excoriate three classical music books and argues his point via these scathing reviews.
I read this shortly after reading Wuorinen's article on art vs. entertainment in which he talks about the demise of music written for wind ensembles. Taruskin takes a contrary view on this art vs. entertainment dichotomy. He is critical of any notion of setting apart classical music as a high art form. Again, read the article to get the full gist, but he argues against such elitization (yes, I know that's not a word) of classical music and says that such elevation is partly responsible for classical music's "death".
Finally, he addresses those who keep decrying the death/demise of classical music and points out that a) this is nothing new; that classical music's existence in modern society has always been challenged
and that b) classical music is not so much "dying" as constantly evolving.
So here is more context for the aforementioned classical music/sex analogy, but do go read the article, or else you will miss gems like,
"As with rising gorge I consumed these books, the question that throbbed and pounded in my head was whether it was still possible to defend my beloved repertoire without recourse to pious tommyrot, double standards, false dichotomies, smug nostalgia, utopian delusions, social snobbery, tautology, hypocrisy, trivialization, pretense, innuendo, reactionary invective, or imperial haberdashery."
I'm not even sure I know what imperial haberdashery is, but I will now be declaring that everything is imperial haberdashery for the next few days.
Since the author of the blog linked it and commented that the connection I referenced between sex and classical music seems tenuous, I thought I'd take the opportunity to link to the original article and offer more context. I should've done this in the first place, but I believe I was knee-deep in Mahler and German at the time. I do agree it does look tenuous without the context, though it is also quite dramatic (and admittedly bordering on sensationalist) without the background info.
I excerpted the quote from this lengthy book review by Taruskin in the New Republic. (Hint: if you find clicking on multiple pages as irritating as I do, click on the "print" link and read it all in one page.)
It is a scathing, if not interesting, worthwhile read, so I'll only briefly summarize it, but he starts by sharply criticizing the Pulitzer Prize-winning article about Joshua Bell playing incognito at a D.C. subway during the middle of rush hour.
His general thesis is that those who profess to be the biggest fans of classical music are often the ones responsible for classical music's so-called "death". He then proceeds to excoriate three classical music books and argues his point via these scathing reviews.
I read this shortly after reading Wuorinen's article on art vs. entertainment in which he talks about the demise of music written for wind ensembles. Taruskin takes a contrary view on this art vs. entertainment dichotomy. He is critical of any notion of setting apart classical music as a high art form. Again, read the article to get the full gist, but he argues against such elitization (yes, I know that's not a word) of classical music and says that such elevation is partly responsible for classical music's "death".
Finally, he addresses those who keep decrying the death/demise of classical music and points out that a) this is nothing new; that classical music's existence in modern society has always been challenged
and that b) classical music is not so much "dying" as constantly evolving.
So here is more context for the aforementioned classical music/sex analogy, but do go read the article, or else you will miss gems like,
"As with rising gorge I consumed these books, the question that throbbed and pounded in my head was whether it was still possible to defend my beloved repertoire without recourse to pious tommyrot, double standards, false dichotomies, smug nostalgia, utopian delusions, social snobbery, tautology, hypocrisy, trivialization, pretense, innuendo, reactionary invective, or imperial haberdashery."
I'm not even sure I know what imperial haberdashery is, but I will now be declaring that everything is imperial haberdashery for the next few days.
27 July 2008
Being elitist about both music and writing
I kvetched about this a while back, but given the surfeit of posts that are rife with grammatical errors and misspellings of late, I think I need to re-kvetch about people who call themselves elitists, yet can’t spell/write.
I know that some people give me a hard time about correcting people’s grammar (though evidently, they feel no need to correct me when I make equally ridiculous mistakes and misspell a word like detritus. Humph.), but most of the times, I don’t do this to be mean or obnoxious. Some people don’t like this, but I tend to learn quicker from mistakes, so I appreciate when people point out my mistakes. But really. I know FB isn’t exactly schoolwork, but is it too much to ask people to write discussion posts with basic but proper spelling and grammar? I’m not talking about being witty or using big words or making oblique allusions to Chaucer. I’m talking about basic grammar that one learns at the junior high school level--i.e. no run-on sentences (unless you were schooled overseas), proper distinction of it’s vs. its, and certainly not ten misspellings in one post.
Nor am I talking about occasional typos. We all make mistakes, and heaven knows, with this spell-check turned off, I’ve caught myself making more typos than I’d really like. I also confess to not being able to spell many composers’ names. (e.g. Schumann) But really, people. All it takes is 30 seconds to reread your post to check for spelling errors. With the advent of auto spell-check, there really should be no excuse for 10 typos.
And while I’m on the topic of posting etiquette, perhaps this is a FB culture thing, and perhaps it's antediluvian of me to expect people to not write like they are texting, but i also don’t like it when you do not punctuate sentences properly. i see this sort of thing all the time on various boards and quite frankly, it drives me batty. i’m sure you know that i should be capitalized, but since i don’t know whether you are illiterate or trying to be cute, you might as well err on the safe side and write sentences the way you were taught in grammar school.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, it’s really anyone’s prerogative to post however (un)intelligently he wishes, but I find it really hard to take someone’s enthusiastic endorsement of Eric Satie’s brilliant piece seriously, if he can’t take the time to check their post for basic errors.
In one of my groups, one poster is currently getting a lot of flak from other members for his posts (though truth be told, some of them are not exactly in the position to cast stones either. Nor am I, actually. . ..).
He is a high school student, and part of me wants to cut high school students some slack. On the other hand, I don’t think expecting a high school student to spell properly is really asking too much.
However, as much as I’m inclined to quickly judge people based on their writing ability, it occurred to me that this particular person might be slightly autistic or might have LD. Both of my brothers have LD, and his posts scream LD to me.
This is part of the difficulty with these online forums where you don’t necessarily know who you’re dealing with—you have imperfect information with which to make judgment.
So perhaps this person has LD and we shouldn’t be so hard on him, but as for the rest of us, (especially people who call themselves elitists, whether tongue-in-cheek or otherwise), please run spell-check if spelling is not your forte.
Sincerely,*
13 July 2008
My lack of appreciation for verse
I just finished reading Eugene Onegin, which I mostly enjoyed, but it reminded me of why I'm not into poetry/verse. Like a Mahler symphony (well, ok, some of them. Some are beginning to grow on me, and some I like, but I just cannot sit through and sit still for 2 hours straight of some of his 2-cd-length symphonies. One CD at a time, sometimes, but unless I have a lot of time on my hands, 2 cds is too long.), I can enjoy and even relish bits and pieces, but I think I'm just not one of these people who truly appreciate poetry.
I'm sure you can tell this from yours truly's writing style. This blogger (who I hope doesn't mind my linking to her w/o asking first), on the other hand, appreciates poetry. Again, you can tell by the way she writes her blog. It's beautifully written. The images (and imagery) are alluring. The language flows (and she is not even a native English speaker! ), and eloquently expressed ideas abound. I aspire to write a blog so artistically written. But I am neither poetic nor a poet, so I tend to think in sentences and paragraphs, rather than in metaphors.
It's not that I don't think some poetry is beautiful, moving etc. It's not that I didn't think big chunks of Eugene Onegin were brilliantly written, b/c they were. I found myself reading aloud several passages and enjoying the rhythm, the imagery it conveyed, etc. But I prefer the efficiency of regular sentences.
That said, I do appreciate poetic writing. E.M. Forester's Passage to India, Langston Hughes' Not Without Laughter are two books that I love for their poetic eloquence. Hughes' book, which I haven't read in years, but sometimes just like flipping through, is a tenderly written coming of age novel, while Passage to India is rife with sensual imagery and nature seems to take over the story, becoming the main characters, while the human dramatis personae get relegated to the background.
But to return to Onegin, my first beef with this particular edition, translated by Hofstadter, author of Godol, Escher, Bach, is that I found a bit of Hofstadter's personal politics poking its head in the translation. For example, it was obvious that he took issue with Nabokov's translation (which I haven't read), and unfortunately, this came out a bit too much in the notes. Sometimes, Hofstadter translated a verse a certain way, just because he "took issue" with Nabokov's version. If he wants to write an academic treatise critiquing Nabokov, that is fine, but I really wish writers would keep that sort of riffraff out of their craft and just write (or translate).
Second, there were extensive notes to explain all the references one might not get. If I'm reading an academic history book, I want copious footnotes. The more, the better. I want to know the minutiae of where a certain reference, idea, quote came from. But when I'm reading verse, having to look up a certain reference every 3 lines really kills the mood and rhythm. Also, this book was rife with references to historic names, most of which I recognized, but sometimes, I didn't understand the significance of the particular reference.
Third, although Hofstadter did a marvelous job with the translation, and surmounted the dual challenge of preserving the rhythmic flow and language integrity admirably, it is, after all, a translation, and I couldn't help but wonder how much was lost in translation. For example, it is probably impossible to get the natural rhythm and flow of many ancient Japanese texts were one to translate them into modern Japanese.
As much as I loved tidbits of EO, generally speaking, here is why I'm not one of these "appreciates poetry" people.
My version: Eugene Onegin dances with Lensky's fiancée and stokes the ire of his friend. Lensky challenges Eugene to a duel. Throw in a few sentences of context, maybe some descriptives for flair, and perhaps a bit of a character sketch, but that is several hundred words max. Maybe three paragraphs worth.
But Pushkin's version of the duel challenge spans from verse 41 of chapter 5 (where Eugene starts dancing w/ Olga), to all of chapter 6 (Lensky challenges Eugene, they duel, Lensky dies), totaling fifty verses.
Even if one hasn't seen the opera version of this (which I haven't), one can probably tell from the title what the outcome of the duel will be, since there are two more chapters after the duel, and the title, after all, is Eugene Onegin. So it wasn't that I was dying to find out what happened, but I still wanted to "cut to the chase" and skip all of that "extraneous" verse in between. (I'm sure it also didn't help that the bulk of my reading gets crammed in during the wee hours that are theoretically "past my bedtime".)
Thus, although I can now put this book into the "glad to have read" category, and plan to revisit a different translation (perhaps a version with footnotes, rather than endnotes) sometime later, after about chapter 4 or so, I was pining for the Occam's razor version, except the very last chapter, which I just couldn't put down.
And on that note, since I found a bunch of people to plow through War and Peace with, I'm off to look for a copy.
I'm sure you can tell this from yours truly's writing style. This blogger (who I hope doesn't mind my linking to her w/o asking first), on the other hand, appreciates poetry. Again, you can tell by the way she writes her blog. It's beautifully written. The images (and imagery) are alluring. The language flows (and she is not even a native English speaker! ), and eloquently expressed ideas abound. I aspire to write a blog so artistically written. But I am neither poetic nor a poet, so I tend to think in sentences and paragraphs, rather than in metaphors.
It's not that I don't think some poetry is beautiful, moving etc. It's not that I didn't think big chunks of Eugene Onegin were brilliantly written, b/c they were. I found myself reading aloud several passages and enjoying the rhythm, the imagery it conveyed, etc. But I prefer the efficiency of regular sentences.
That said, I do appreciate poetic writing. E.M. Forester's Passage to India, Langston Hughes' Not Without Laughter are two books that I love for their poetic eloquence. Hughes' book, which I haven't read in years, but sometimes just like flipping through, is a tenderly written coming of age novel, while Passage to India is rife with sensual imagery and nature seems to take over the story, becoming the main characters, while the human dramatis personae get relegated to the background.
But to return to Onegin, my first beef with this particular edition, translated by Hofstadter, author of Godol, Escher, Bach, is that I found a bit of Hofstadter's personal politics poking its head in the translation. For example, it was obvious that he took issue with Nabokov's translation (which I haven't read), and unfortunately, this came out a bit too much in the notes. Sometimes, Hofstadter translated a verse a certain way, just because he "took issue" with Nabokov's version. If he wants to write an academic treatise critiquing Nabokov, that is fine, but I really wish writers would keep that sort of riffraff out of their craft and just write (or translate).
Second, there were extensive notes to explain all the references one might not get. If I'm reading an academic history book, I want copious footnotes. The more, the better. I want to know the minutiae of where a certain reference, idea, quote came from. But when I'm reading verse, having to look up a certain reference every 3 lines really kills the mood and rhythm. Also, this book was rife with references to historic names, most of which I recognized, but sometimes, I didn't understand the significance of the particular reference.
Third, although Hofstadter did a marvelous job with the translation, and surmounted the dual challenge of preserving the rhythmic flow and language integrity admirably, it is, after all, a translation, and I couldn't help but wonder how much was lost in translation. For example, it is probably impossible to get the natural rhythm and flow of many ancient Japanese texts were one to translate them into modern Japanese.
As much as I loved tidbits of EO, generally speaking, here is why I'm not one of these "appreciates poetry" people.
My version: Eugene Onegin dances with Lensky's fiancée and stokes the ire of his friend. Lensky challenges Eugene to a duel. Throw in a few sentences of context, maybe some descriptives for flair, and perhaps a bit of a character sketch, but that is several hundred words max. Maybe three paragraphs worth.
But Pushkin's version of the duel challenge spans from verse 41 of chapter 5 (where Eugene starts dancing w/ Olga), to all of chapter 6 (Lensky challenges Eugene, they duel, Lensky dies), totaling fifty verses.
Even if one hasn't seen the opera version of this (which I haven't), one can probably tell from the title what the outcome of the duel will be, since there are two more chapters after the duel, and the title, after all, is Eugene Onegin. So it wasn't that I was dying to find out what happened, but I still wanted to "cut to the chase" and skip all of that "extraneous" verse in between. (I'm sure it also didn't help that the bulk of my reading gets crammed in during the wee hours that are theoretically "past my bedtime".)
Thus, although I can now put this book into the "glad to have read" category, and plan to revisit a different translation (perhaps a version with footnotes, rather than endnotes) sometime later, after about chapter 4 or so, I was pining for the Occam's razor version, except the very last chapter, which I just couldn't put down.
And on that note, since I found a bunch of people to plow through War and Peace with, I'm off to look for a copy.
12 July 2008
Lovely dinner last night
After being good about doing my cross-training, and then biking home, I had a lovely lazy summer night solo dinner to ring in the weekend.
On my ride home, I stopped by the local cheese mart to pick up a Manchego crusted with rosemary and (my favorite--) aged Gouda. I then stopped by Cost Plus to pick up dark chocolate with sea salt, which, to my annoyance, they didn't have, so I picked up a Vosges bar with pink Himalayan salt and Asti Spumate (favorite summer drink) instead.
The neighbors provided some nice jazz music, which wafted languorously through my kitchen window, along with a balmy summer breeze.
I toasted some baguette and roasted some figs.
I heated up some leftover pasta w/ sauce and added some homemade pesto sauce to it.
I was craving salad, so I made myself a big bowl, with bright bitter crunchy greens, shaved Manchego, roasted sunflower seeds (my new obsession), cumin roasted apricots, avocados, and cherry tomatoes picked from my garden. Then I dressed it w/ fig balsamic and a good olive oil saved for such epicurean occasions.
With my salad, I had the aforementioned crusty French bread, roasted figs, and more Manchego.
Good music, good food, and ripe figs that taste like heaven. The only thing missing was Sage Broccoli. For some reason, simple lovely food (especially figs and yummy cheese) and lovely music remind me of her. Back when she was at Stanford, I've had many a lovely simple meal with her and R, when he used to deign to hang out with us.
So I used all of my telepathic powers to summon her. Nothing happened. (Ok, I wasn't exactly expecting her to just show up simply b/c I tried to communicate w/ her via telepathy. But I tried it just in case.) I then went the more practical way and emailed her and asked her to join me for dinner. Harumph. No response. Well, ok, in her defense, it is a bit of a trek from where she currently lives, so perhaps to expect her in less than an hour after emailing her was a bit unreasonable, but still! (Oh, Sage Broccoli, where art thou?)
Anyway, after giving up on the possibility of dining with Sage Broccoli, I sat there, sipped my asti, ate Manchego w/ roasted figs (fabulous combination, in case anyone is wondering. Please go and try this once before you die.), dipped bread in pumpkin seed oil, crunched on my salad and read some Pushkin, which granted isn't as exciting as Sage Broccoli's company, but needs to go back to the library soon.
Somehow, the food, music and drink somehow made me enjoy the verses more than usual.
Then I finished the evening with a postprandial piece of chocolate and relished the sensation of crunching on the caramelized salt pieces. Mmmmmmmm.
Gosh, I love summer evenings.
On my ride home, I stopped by the local cheese mart to pick up a Manchego crusted with rosemary and (my favorite--) aged Gouda. I then stopped by Cost Plus to pick up dark chocolate with sea salt, which, to my annoyance, they didn't have, so I picked up a Vosges bar with pink Himalayan salt and Asti Spumate (favorite summer drink) instead.
The neighbors provided some nice jazz music, which wafted languorously through my kitchen window, along with a balmy summer breeze.
I toasted some baguette and roasted some figs.
I heated up some leftover pasta w/ sauce and added some homemade pesto sauce to it.
I was craving salad, so I made myself a big bowl, with bright bitter crunchy greens, shaved Manchego, roasted sunflower seeds (my new obsession), cumin roasted apricots, avocados, and cherry tomatoes picked from my garden. Then I dressed it w/ fig balsamic and a good olive oil saved for such epicurean occasions.
With my salad, I had the aforementioned crusty French bread, roasted figs, and more Manchego.
Good music, good food, and ripe figs that taste like heaven. The only thing missing was Sage Broccoli. For some reason, simple lovely food (especially figs and yummy cheese) and lovely music remind me of her. Back when she was at Stanford, I've had many a lovely simple meal with her and R, when he used to deign to hang out with us.
So I used all of my telepathic powers to summon her. Nothing happened. (Ok, I wasn't exactly expecting her to just show up simply b/c I tried to communicate w/ her via telepathy. But I tried it just in case.) I then went the more practical way and emailed her and asked her to join me for dinner. Harumph. No response. Well, ok, in her defense, it is a bit of a trek from where she currently lives, so perhaps to expect her in less than an hour after emailing her was a bit unreasonable, but still! (Oh, Sage Broccoli, where art thou?)
Anyway, after giving up on the possibility of dining with Sage Broccoli, I sat there, sipped my asti, ate Manchego w/ roasted figs (fabulous combination, in case anyone is wondering. Please go and try this once before you die.), dipped bread in pumpkin seed oil, crunched on my salad and read some Pushkin, which granted isn't as exciting as Sage Broccoli's company, but needs to go back to the library soon.
Somehow, the food, music and drink somehow made me enjoy the verses more than usual.
Then I finished the evening with a postprandial piece of chocolate and relished the sensation of crunching on the caramelized salt pieces. Mmmmmmmm.
Gosh, I love summer evenings.
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