Erika Writes:
Shakespeare, Sedaris, and Such
This week did not start out with anything as remarkable as last week’s ugly crying. It actually began with a birthday celebration for one of my kids. Beyond that, I’ve been trying to keep myself distracted because I had expected to hear about something very important on Wednesday only to be informed that they had extended their decision making deadline until January 12. That’s another month of nerves to contend with while I wait for what I anticipate will be a rejection, but I can hope, right?
In the meantime, I’ve kept myself busy with more of Love’s Labour’s Lost. I’m almost done now. I think the key to my reading Shakespeare right now seems to be just enjoying the fact that it’s a lot of dirty jokes and puns and not getting hung up on the other details. The time of year being what it is, I might even pull out Twelfth Night next.
It’s a week for re-reading things, I guess because the other thing I took out to read this week was David Sedaris’s Holidays on Ice. I was first introduced to “Santaland Diaries” while listening to NPR’s Morning Edition, which featured a shortened version of the essay, and excitedly read the full version, along with the rest of the holiday collection when it was published. The whole book is entertaining, although I think my other favorite in the book is “Dinah the Christmas Whore.”
I did take time to listen to the full “Santaland Diaries” essay, as read by the author. Listening to the piece and reading the piece are both enjoyable, but hearing it in the author’s own voice just brings something else to it. It was featured on NPR’s This American Life in 1996.
A Capella
I’ve been going into the a capella realm this week too, with the Maccabeats and Six13 for holiday music and DaVinci’s Notebook and Paul and Storm.
Dammit, Beethoven! You had ONE JOB!
There was also the disappointing Beethoven string quintet. (String Quintet op 29 in C major) I know I’ve said that I’m not a fan of the Romantic era in music, which is true, and Beethoven is known as a composer of that era. I have this on my viola music playlist, and I should be thrilled, right? It’s basically a quartet with a bonus viola. I just find myself let down whenever I hear it because I just feel like neither the viola nor the cello parts show the full richness of the instruments. Adam and I obviously communicate frequently with each other- in phone calls, text messages or Facebook messages, and we were exchanging some messages while I was listening to the disappointing Beethoven quintet.
I mentioned my disappointment to him in those messages, but it came up again on the phone, and I told him that I wondered whether that might have had something to do with whatever was going on with Beethoven’s hearing at the time. Certainly he wrote music that does show off the gorgeous alto and lower ranges of instruments, but I wonder if this particular piece coincided with a time when he was beginning to notice changes of some sort and perhaps tuning into the higher pitches more because of it. We’ll never know, but it’s an interesting question either way.
But I’m a Cheerleader!
This morning, while struggling to write a piece that was just wearing me out emotionally, I watched an old favorite movie, “But I’m a Cheerleader.” The movie came out right after I finished grad school, and I have fond memories of trekking all the way into New York City from where we lived out on Long Island to find a theater that was showing the movie. We couldn’t find one closer, and we absolutely had to see the movie, and so we took the train into the city, went to dinner, saw the movie, and spent a nice evening wandering around.
Vlogmas (No way this is a real thing, right?)
YouTubers are still celebrating Vlogmas. I enjoy Cecila Blohmdahl’s videos because of the gorgeous scenery and videos of the Northern Lights that she shares from her home in Svalbard, Norway. Yesterday she shared this video of one of her town’s Christmas traditions–very sweet, the way the town gathers and the Santa post box and all that. Plus a recipe from her (very cute bear) boyfriend, too. Also, she has a wonderful dog named Grim. If you enjoy this, check out the video from a few days earlier where she sets up the Christmas tree. Living above the Arctic tree line means the dog is not familiar with trees…
Men Write Women… Badly
And in the world of “that not how any of this works” there are many places to enjoy men writing women… badly. “She wore way too much pink to be a lesbian,” isn’t even the worst of it. There’s a subreddit about it and there’s a Twitter feed about it. I shared this video by Jamidodger, a transgender YouTuber who I’ve followed for a while. Jamie has shared so much of his journey in serious videos and they’re also great to watch, but the reaction videos just seem to improve my mood almost every time.
Adam Writes:
Beethoven, Continued…
Erika and I had an interesting conversation the other day. What happens when you listen deeply enough into an artist to be disappointed. Erika was saying there was a middle-period Beethoven string quintet that was just disappointing. Not the performance; the composition. It was a quintet so I joked with her that maybe she was disappointed that there were too many violas in the ensemble. I personally get disappointed by even one viola. But then she ruined it by continuing to make good points until I had to engage the substance of what she was trying to say. I know. Frustrating.
This idea of finding a work by Beethoven disappointing makes me think about what we look for in a piece of music. The great 20th Century Canadian pianist Glenn Gould famously dismissed almost the entire oeuvre of Chopin with a curt “I’m not convinced.” I’m not sure I want to go wading into those weeds. But I’m curious: convinced by what?
Not Gould specifically. But all of us. What do we look for in a piece of music? What is it about a piece of music that we find “convincing” or not? This line of thinking has made me consider some of my favorite pieces. Why do they do it for me? Have a listen to the Schubert Impromptus for Piano (Op. 90).
I said it. Come @ Me.
To me, Impromptu op.90 #3 is perhaps one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. And the other three are… also good. What is the difference? What puts the one not only so far above other pieces of music but also above other similar pieces? Maybe it’s like human relationships. I am sure I could find millions of people in this world I’d be good friends with. But I’m not even passing acquaintances with them. Part of it is that I haven’t met them. Those I have met, I haven’t put the time in to be their friend (or vice versa). There is only so much time.
So we’re left with a question people have been asking since Kant—or more likely since before Homer—what is the difference between an artistic work that is good and an artistic work that I like. What is the difference between a piece (or a person) I see once and don’t necessarily disapprove of… versus one I take the time to get to know and grow to love?
Brahms Piano Trio #1 is Perfect
The same thing happens with other types of music. Of all the chamber music I’ve listened to, some just… rises to the top, at least for me. Listening to a Brahms piano trio after a Beethoven piano trio is like turning the lights on.
Remember iPods? I Still Have Mine. It’s Broken.
And it’s no different for pop music. Why, for instance, was this song in my iPod (remember iPods?) for a solid 10 years… and yet that was 10 years ago and I have hardly listened to it since? Is it the simplicity of the vocals above the gorgeous complexity of the picking-pattern? Maybe but other pieces could boast as much. I’m stumped.
I tend to like such philosophical questions but not to like wading into the weeds very much. I spent about 2 decades considering such questions as carefully as my developing mind would allow. Maybe it’s trauma from subjecting myself to the rigors and strictures of a graduate program, particularly as a neuro-atypical person who did not know how to ask for the services I was entitled to. Maybe I will find my way back to such forms of inquiry later after I allow a bit of perspective.
Obligatory Wheel of Time Update
I have continued listening to The Wheel of Time. Today I did so while bringing in cords of firewood to season (i.e. dry out), which felt like a very appropriate activity. A work like The Wheel of TIme that takes place in something resembling the Renaissance is necessarily going to have a lot of focus dedicated to the hearths. But anyway, I have been thinking about what it is that makes these books so goddamn likable. And I’m getting close to an answer.
My current theory is that the characters are first shown caring about each other and then shown vehemently disagreeing. The work takes time showing us that the main characters are decent people. It takes nearly the entirety of the first book to build up that idea, piece by piece. But it also starts in with the disagreements from within and threats from without very quickly.
I don’t think I’ve said anything path-breaking. Lots of books conform to this simple pattern; but then others do not. Many stories give you a sort of us-against-the-world dynamic with regard to the main characters. So it might be enough to say that these are good books. I grant that this is a tautology. But putting likable characters in unlikable situations is so much a mainstay of every book, good or not, that if a book does a particularly good job of sketching its characters and its dangers, perhaps that is enough to explain why the book is so well-received.
The clarity of Wheel of Time is part of its appeal. That so large a story can cover so much ground and yet never descend into obscurity is a massive accomplishment. One always knows who these characters are and what their motivations are. Where they are going and why. There is something comforting to that knowledge when outside the world of the Wheel, we tend to have as much comprehension of the characters of those around us as a pawn does of a chess-game.
Chapter 12: The Last Chapter
It’s all I have for the present at any rate.
I’ve been watching Cowboy Bebop (the original), as well as Buffy: the Vampire Slayer but I don’t have much to say about either.
Cheers!
