Things Fall Apart

Yes, they do.

Ave Atque Vale Chinua Achebe.



photo AFP

"It is the story that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind."

Winter into Spring

In Madison Square Park

Good Night.

Yo La Town Hall, or, Big Week, part three

Part three would properly be about the Steppenwolf production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? we saw that Friday.  All I'm going to say about that right now is that it was brilliant, and quite a contrast to any Valentiny sentiment that lingered from the previous evening.

But this post is about the Yo La Tengo concert at Town Hall that Saturday.

They were incredible, of course.  They did kind of a Rust Never Sleeps-type show, with a mostly acoustic Side A set, and a louder electric Side B set [including two versions of Ohm, which continues to reveal its versatility layer by layer - on Fade, on the Fallon show, at their bookstore appearance].  Both were fantastic.  Love the new record, loved the show, love these guys and looking forward to seeing them again at Solid Sound in June.

Sadly, that Jimmy Fallon link no longer takes you to an active video of their performance.  So to make up for that, here are two videos YLT have graciously made available on the internets.

First, Ohm:

And this one, for I'll be Around has to be one of my favorite viddies out there right now.

Oh, the Places We Go!

Much has happened.  You won't hear about most of it.  Unless you ask.

Of course, things happened to you too.  Can't wait to hear about them!

Big Week, part two (the Food Episodes)

More on last week's happenings:

Tuesday was an epic dinner at a fancy restaurant.  The kind of meal I don't get very often.  And by 'very often,' I mean 'ever.'  Friends took us out as a Big Thank You to Cory for a Big Favor, and it was incredible: course after course of the most amazing food.  Even the dishes made from ingredients I don't usually like were great - cranberry 'snow' with beet puree? Bring it.  And the stuff I do like?  My brain and body almost exploded.  Oysters unlike any I've ever had, poached lobster that made me question my place on earth, an egg cream that made me pine for days that never really existed. (An egg cream can do that?  Apparently it can.)

Wednesday night I had off.  Sort of.  I took advantage of the freedom to do prep for the dinner I made for Valentine's the next night.  I knew I wouldn't be able to get home until later than ideal on Thursday, so I needed to cover some ground ahead of time.

Here's the thing about that: we don't usually do much for V-day.  We acknowledge that it exists, we mention it, we wish each other the happiness of the day, but we don't historically make much of it.  And by 'historically,' I mean 'ever.'  Or, more precisely, 'so far.'  But this year was a little different.  For whatever reason, we decided to have an extra-special-nice dinner in.  So I did a bunch of prep on Wednesday and when I did get home on Thursday, I did my magic in the kitchen.  

And for kicks in the wake of our other-worldly meal on Tuesday, I put on my best 'fancy waiter' as I'd bring out the courses.  You know: weight slightly forward, hands gracefully floating the dish to the table, describing it in a hushed throaty half-whisper.

This is a Perfect Valentine Manhattan, adapted from the classic recipe with Hudson Manhattan Rye, Dolin Dry Vermouth, Carpana Antica Sweet Vermouth, peychaud and orange bitters, and Morello cherries.

Watercress soup, with a whiskey cream. (This was actually an exciting discovery, and is a strong contender to be T-Day worthy...)

Haricots verts (ok, they were green beans - hey, I'm in 'fancy waiter' mode.) in a Kürbiskernöl and lemon glaze.

Roasted fingerling potatoes with tarragon and thyme.

Filet mignon with mushrooms, adapted from a recipe by James Beard.

Vermont ice cream, made with milk from happy cows and rich organic chocolate.

Ok, I punted on dessert and went with Ben & Jerry's.  Still, it was a pretty good meal.  A Happy Valentine's Day.

No visual stimulation for you today - I haven't been feeling the 'take pictures of food' thing lately. I'm sure I will revert.

Stay tuned...

Big Week

It was a big week.

A big project at the dayjob took a lot of my time and energy in January (along with one or the other of us being sick for what felt like the whole month).  When that project/event ended, I was able with a short transition period to get back into my normal rhythm.  Last week sort of took that to another level.

Mike Daisey at Joe's Pub on Monday night.  Mike's taken some stupid amounts of heat over the last year or so.  I've written about him here before and probably will again, but I haven't devoted any real space to the NPR/This American Life controversy.  You probably know all about that, and if you don't there is plenty to read and listen to out there about it.  What I'll say on the subject is that Mike did a hell of a job drawing attention to what's going on in tech manufacturing (and tech reporting) and created a brilliant show in the process.  Or vice versa.  And while I'm not going to get behind the whole "it's all true" thing, I do maintain that a playwright is not the same thing as a journalist, even a playwright whose stock in trade is distant travel, immersive research, and real world goings-on with real world stakes.

I've already gone on more about this than I wanted to, but I'll wrap up today's discussion of this subject by asking straight out something Daisey touched on obliquely last Monday: how closely have you looked at the workings of the tech industry, and what have you done to affect labor conditions in China?  [Oh, and take a few minutes to imagine turning off all your 'connected' devices one day a week.  What would that take?  How much prep would you need to do?  Just asking.]

More to come...

Les Miserahahahahahaaaaaa!!!

Spoiler Alert(?) You may not want to watch this if you haven't seen the Les Miserable movie yet.  But if you have seen it (or don't care about it), For Your Consideration...


Put the "?" there because - even if you haven't seen the film, you've probably seen at least part of the scene the (holy crapballs amazing!!) Emma Fitzpatrick is satirizing, because it's been clipped on every awards show and every talk show and late-night comedy appearance Anne Hathaway has made.

Now let me be Obama clear here: I love Anne Hathatway.  I LO-UH-UH-UH-LOVE Anne Hathaway and want to see everything she does.  She should probably win some sort of award just for how she handled Matt Lauer, and is a brilliant actress on stage and on screen.  And I will shed no tear if she wins an award on Oscar night.

But I also have no beef with those who claim Les Miz iz lame.  And this viddy is effin funny.

Birthday in Hotlanta

For those keeping score at home, last week was Jules' 7th Birthday.  Cory gets down to Atlanta for the kids' birthdays pretty much every year, and I join in when I can.

Saturday was the Big Day - not her actual birthday day, but the day of her big party (which involved karaoke, a scavenger hunt, a piñata, and a dancing video game I don't remember the name of.)

She's a lot happier here than she looks.  A fierce dancer for sure.

As if that weren't enough, in the morning was also a basketball game for Joe.

Here he is, rockin' the D.

He claims he had an off-day, but he was pretty amazing for an 8-year old.  And you ain't seen nothing till you've seen this kid play pop-a-shot.

Last from London

Well, for now anyway...

One last photo montage video from London.  It's a little longer than the others, but it's split into two parts, so that may help.  Think of it as an A Side and a B Side.

I had to resort to YouTube for this, but I was able improve the resolution a bit.  Enjoy.

A lot of this is pretty self explanatory - don't think you need me to say much about Big Ben, Westminster, the Houses of Parliament, or Richard the Lionheart.  I do want to mention, especially for the Rodin fans out there, the juxtaposition of the Burghers of Calais in the shadow of Parliament (as opposed to casts I've seen at the Rodin Museums in Paris and Philadelphia, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, all of which I have since found were cast after this one in London).  The placement in Victoria Tower Gardens is poignant in that these French business leaders and legal authorities are shadowed by one of the most important legislative structures in the Western World; and it calls to mind their story - offered as a sacrifice to save the citizens of Calais from Edward III's siege of their city.  (Remember Edward III's hunting palace from an earlier post, and the last video?)

It's worth mentioning are a couple of light art pieces from the Tate Modern that were as photogenic as they were engaging:

• Lis Rhodes' Light Music was the setting for the shots that come near the end of the first song.  It was part of the Tanks portion of the Tate Modern - which is amazeballs and you should definitely go there.  I think that Light Music has closed up and moved out of the space, but we were lucky to catch it while we were there.  The projectors practically dared you not to walk in and interact with the light.  Luminous and irresistible. 

• The sequence about halfway through featuring two light tables in the room with white walls is made up of shots of an Alfredo Jaar piece called Lament of the Images.  He's looking at the way people can be so saturated with media images (and words) that they can be blinded by the excess: so many images flood ones view that one stops seeing the content of what is actually being shown.  That blindness is revealed in that installation (as I interpret it) by the light that floods the room as the light tables spread apart (the tables become a light source, illuminating the people, objects, and walls themselves, but the light itself ceases to be an object of attention), and conversely by the darkness that pervades when the tables close in together (the beams of light become focal, but the darkness literally prevents one from seeing around it).  Beautiful, simple, this piece had a powerful, magnetic draw, and I also enjoyed the lucky arrival of a school group when I went back into the room to grab these shots.

Also part of the Tanks was Suzanne Lacy's The Crystal Quilt.  My photographs don't remotely do justice to the complex power of that brilliantly feminist activist piece [which had the added interest, to me, of having originated in Minneapolis, a city (and a landscape) dear to my heart, woven into this contemporary art exhibit in London].  The video embedded in that link does a better job, but if you come across an exhibition of The Crystal Quilt anywhere, you really owe it to yourself to check it out.

And I can't sign off without mentioning the shots from the Churchill War Rooms - including the color-coded phones, his cabinet meeting room, and the map room complete with a caricature of Hitler penciled into the middle of the Atlantic.  Fascinating. 

And then undercutting any sort of heightened thoughts or reflections on the living memory of War in London, and how vastly it differs from a sense of war in New York, we have shots of the Sherlock Holmes pub which I took for my Sherlock-fan nephew, Mols getting ready for her kayak final test in her wet suit, and shots of our time in Shoreditch/High Street.  All of which was fantastic!

As for the music: why can't Rudie fail?  Just because.

Mumford Barclay

Actually, Mumford & Sons at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

'Twas a cry from the heart. 'Twas good.

Now I'm just taking a moment to decompress.  It'll be fine.

Fun with Engineering

A few words about some of the photos toward the end of the video in that last post with video (from Dec. 28).  Part of our walking tour (hey, there's a time and a place to roam free, and there's a time to listen to a guy who knows what he's taking about - some of those things are pretty amazing) involved the Thames Tunnel built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, along with his father Marc Brunel (who actually started the project, came up with the original designs, and whom some claim was the more talented engineer, though history has showered more acclaim on the fils than on the pêre).

Now, I'm not much of an engineering geek, though it doesn't take too too much imagination to envision a world where I might have become one instead of devolving into the theater, music, art and politics geek you see today.  [Ok, so maybe it does take some imagination.  But picture if you will: a charismatic math teacher in my high school rather than the language, drama, and history mavens I ended up with; some acclaim at a science fair or two; and a scholarship to M.I.T.  Throw in a cute girl who was into engineering, and I might not have noticed the social liberation of art and turned my creativity in a different direction.  It's possible.]

In any case, not only did we get a beautiful walk through the world of Oliver Twist, and a well-taught lesson on imperialism, and The Heart of Darkness, we also got a lesson on the immensity of the shipping traffic in London in general (and the piracy that went along with it), which demanded the construction of a structure to take people under a river, at a time when such a thing was unheard-of.  Crossing a river was done via bridges and boats  A tunnel?  Under the Thames??

A tunnel under the Thames.  And a story with a lot more twists, turns, and drama than I'd have guessed would accompany a construction project: from the invention of the caisson (ground too soft to dig a hole substantial enough for tunneling? build a huge stone cylinder so heavy it will just sink into the ground for you, and dig up the dirt as you go along. Genius.) and the tunneling shield, to budget overruns and investor discontent, to dangerous, noxious, and truly filthy working conditions and the inevitable labor strife that rightly go with them, to construction delays, to leaks and breaches and flood, and the chief engineer suffering a stroke.

Let's pause there for a moment.  Say that you're Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  It's 1827, and your team has been working on the first tunnel in the history of the world meant to allow people to pass under a river.  And you're way behind schedule, and the fumes down there are so bad that the workers are striking, and the roof has collapsed and a flood almost killed a bunch of the people on your crew.  And then your father, chief of this whole project, has a stroke.

Now, he is a renowned engineer, and you have access to world class, state-of-the-art medical care.  But let's not forget: it's 1827.  Medical miracles are pretty scarce. The public, and your investors, are, shall we say, a little skittish.

Did I mention that you are nineteen years old?

So what do you do?  You have a 300-foot long tube full of water. Your father has been passing control over the project to you over the last several months, so you assess the damage, repair it, pump out the water from the flood, dry it out, and throw a party.

In the tunnel.  

You throw a party in the tunnel and you invite high society to attend.  Which they do, and the party includes the Duke of Wellington, and it's a rousing success.  And by 'rousing,' I mean 'noisy.'  Because, this being a society banquet, you've also invited a brass band to play in this stone cavern under the river.  And between the band and that silverware clanking against china echoing off the walls, it was probably the loudest non-amplified party in the history of ever.  But I also mean rousing in the sense of magnificent, because this stunt worked: the public was won over, money was raised, and construction began again in earnest.

Oh, and here I guess I have an obligation to point out that the portrait of the Banquet above, by George Jones, is the only contemporary image of Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel that shows them together.  Which is ironical don't you know, because Marc wasn't at that party.  Remember that stroke he had?  Recovery took a while back then.

And then the next year there was another roof collapse and a major, this time truly serious, incident that took 6 lives and very nearly took the life of Isambard Brunel himself.

You guys! This story goes on.  It actually goes on another 15 years before the tunnel even opens to the public.  If you're interested, you can read much more about it here, here, especially here, and plenty of other places. For now, suffice it to say: after that tragic, fatal, flooding catastrophe, they shut down the project for seven years.  The Brunel team finally raised enough money and support to start up construction again in 1835.  They slogged through for another nearly 8 years of setback after messy, dangerous setback, and finally opened to the public in 1843.  [Along the way, they took care to make sure that the first person to make the entire crossing from Rotherhithe to Wapping under the Thames, in June of 1840, was the son of Isambard, grandson of Marc, 3-year-old Henry Brunel.]

And then things got interesting.

The tunnel was not accessible to horse and carriage, so they limited it to foot traffic, and it officially opened in 1843 (about 15 years behind schedule).  Economically meh, culturally fascinating.  Kiosks opened in the archways, and this place became the place to be - 2 million visitors in its first year, global acclaim as the '8th Wonder of the World,' a bustling, thriving thoroughfare under the Thames.  Shops, food, performers, "Fancy Fairs," scientific demonstrations, a vital marketplace and meeting place.

The glamor wore off after a few years, and the shops started to close as attendance declined, leaving vacant archways, which became favorite ambush spots for muggers and trysting places for young lovers and, more commonly, prostitutes.  Then, as sometimes happens in locations of former glory fallen into dilapidation, it became a focal point for adventurous partiers - massive underground gatherings of the young and hip; our amazing guide Robert called them "Victorian Raves"  This detail is harder to find in typical histories and resources, but Robert is one of the curators of the Brunel Museum and shared all kinds of items of interest that might otherwise go unrevealed (props to London Walks for suiting the guide to the walk so well!)

Our Amazing Guide Robert

Finally in 1865, around the time the American Civil War was wrapping up, they laid track through the tunnel, and in 1869 they sealed up the caisson and began running trains through the Brunels' Thames Tunnel, which has been functioning as a railway more or less ever since.

And in 2010, they reopened the caisson to guided visits (you need to grab a rail, clamber down, stepping carefully, pivot round, duck down for a 6-foot long walk through a 4-foot high mini-tunnel before descending the staircase to the open area, but it is open).

And, as chance would have it, they also floodlight the tunnel on Sundays in November.  And we just happened to be there in November, and just happened to be staying in Wapping, near the north end of the tunnel.  [Ok, ok; those are a couple of the reasons we chose, against anyone's educated guess, to spend part of an afternoon on a walk devoted to Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, and this feat of engineering, rather than on things we would have found interesting on our own.]  So we went back to the Overground station (they call it an Overground line, although this stretch of it is clearly underground and, rather famously, under the river.  People also drive on the parkway and park in the driveway) and got those couple of shots of this 8th Wonder of the World.

There you have it.  More about a tunnel than I ever thought I would write.  I'll post our final London video soon...

Happy New Year!

Here's to 2013 being everything you hope for and more!

We said farewell to 2012 last week, and promptly got colds.  Boo.  But before we did, we went to a fantastic installation/show/happening/piece - event - by Ann Hamilton at the Park Avenue Armory called The Event of a Thread.  It is now officially, sadly, too late for my telling you about this to do any good whatsoever.  But I will declare my opinion that it was stunning and spectacular for the record.  

The enormous Armory space has been a stellar location for some fantastic visual art/performance/sound art pieces.  This one made full use of the building's vast rigging infrastructure to weave swing sets (yes, as in a few dozen giant... swings you get to sit on and swing) to harnesses which trigger sound elements (mainly bells; at least one accordion) while also pulling a wide swath of fabric draped across the center of the room.  And that's just the centerpiece: it also involved actors reading text into microphones which transmit to radios strewn about the rooms in paper bags (you're free to pick them up and take them on your travels through the Armory), a person writing reflections on the event (we weren't allowed near enough to see what was being written - presumably that will be made available at some point), a live singer at the end of each day performing a piece composed for the occasion by David Lang, which performance was recorded onto vinyl at the opposite end of the room, and then played to open the installation the next morning.  And after the song they released the homing pigeons from their cages to fly up to a perch above the recording device.

I didn't bring my camera, although it was a very photogenic event.  So I'll rely on a couple images from the internets, and try to let you know earlier next time.

Not sure, but I think this was taken by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan.  It's from this post.

And here's one I really like from barbaraelka.

Taking Stock

Getting to that part of the year where one takes stock.  It's been a rough fall-into-winter - the Storm, the shootings, the subway pushings, the other evidence of Humanity's lack of humanity: these affect everyone, irrespective of what might be your personal drama (or family drama, or work drama, or some version of 'all of the above').

Let none of this mute your comfort and joy.  Breathe in the beauty, live deeply, gather ye rosebuds while ye may.  Or anyway, that's one idea.

Back to London.

The first viddy I put together uses a lot of images from the first couple days which are already represented here, so I'm going to skip that one for now.  Here's one that's more food-centric covering the T-Day redux and the German Holiday Market on Southbank, along with shots from Bermondsey and Rotherhithe showing Execution Dock (where pirates would be hanged in gibbets) and the ruins of Edward III's hunting palace, including Holiday imagery that it's not quite too late in the Season to put out there.

Enjoy.

What's Next

Leonard Bernstein had this to say in the wake of John F. Kennedy's assassination:

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

Thanks to Clay Zambo for reminding me of that.

Piano Adoption

The comments thread on the article that revealed the video shared on that last post had some revelations of its own.  This link, about Piano Adoption, was of particular interest.  Good to know such things exist.

Piano

It is more than worth the 5 minutes it will take you to watch this video.

Sound on or sound off, it is gorgeous.  Pop it into full screen and take a look.  Fair warning: you might cry.

It was made by Anthony Sherin, and put out there by Times.  You can read more about it here (or click the Related Article link. I recommend you read the article after you watch the video).

Words Fail

They just do. And people fail even more.

The Sandy Hook shooting goes beyond anything I can put into words, and no one else has had much luck as far as I can tell either.  We could (and we will) go off on the media, the elected officials, gun policy, gun culture, the underlying aggression in our culture, the evil that visited that community (see? those words from Governor Malloy seem both overwrought and not enough. I'm not criticizing the Governor for that - he had an impossible job.  Words fail.) but for now we just have to be in it.

Please be as kind as you possibly can today.  I mean, all the time, but especially today.

London, Continued

The London trip was spurred on by a need to bring Thanksgiving to the Brits.  Well, more accurately, to bring it to a couple of our American friends who are living in Britain for a few years.  T-Day-ers, no less, and a couple who used to live in Plymouth, Mass. at that - so it was particularly urgent that we help them get their turkey on to celebrate the Mayflower Pilgrims.

We had a fantastic time.  This is not surprising, of course, but it is pleasant to report.  These shots, like most of those that I've posted so far, are from the first day we were there - Thanksgiving Day, strictly speaking, but not the day we had our Feast.  No, that day we only had incredible meat pies on a walk through Borough Market, Pints at two fab pubs nearby, and a brilliant Tapas meal to wrap it all up.  The days of London being known for bad food may be behind us for good.

. 

Not bad for the evening after an all-night flight.