Listen, My Children
Charles T. Downey's review of Paul Revere's Ride by David Del Tredici made me promptly download the thing from iTunes, mainly because I hoped to find Downey's mixed review unjustifiably snobbish. However, I think he got it right when he called the work "a fun and wild ride, if not particularly musically nourishing." You can't help imagining, when hearing the siren, that Paul Revere's ride occurred in an ambulance. Which is sort of cool, but still. How perfect that this piece set a poem by Longfellow, a poet I'm inclined to defend, and yet, who embarrasses me a bit too often to make that defense easy.
Meanwhile, Der Drübermensch, the master manipulator, came downstairs late last evening with a book in his hand. "It's time to study German!" he announced, knowing I would be unable to enforce a bedtime. We worked through a couple of pages of sentences, with him taking a stab at the pronunciation. We came across this sentence:
Ist das Kunst?The accompanying drawing showed a chicken beholding a canvas covered with shapeless blobs of color and a line of chicken tracks running from bottom to top. You know, some of that modern art you hear about. Der Drübermensch didn't get the joke -- his generation will live blissfully unable to appreciate the controversy involved, now that the wackiest abstractions show up routinely, even decorating advertisements for mundane products. I tried to explain to him that some people think art needs to represent real live objects. He impatiently pointed out, "that picture represents chicken footprints!" Well, yes, but ... oh heck, it's late; go to bed, kid.
Is that art?
Speaking of modern art, do not miss your chance to become Jackson Pollock. That is an order! (Hat tip to Jonah Goldberg.)
Umie the Umlaut says, "ask your doctor about the Fredösphere!"
1 Comments:
Your young one is getting started early on the road to success. I have found that in Germany -- a place where Dr.'s and Prof.'s are a legal part of your name, and the primary substitute for a titled aristocracy -- that whenever the situation seems impossible, just calmly saying "Ich bin Kunstler" will miraculously open doors, excuse mistakes, invite tolerance, and turn yourself into a person of respect. It doesn't work with musician (either "Musikant" (=entertainment musician) or "Musiker" (=art musician): I guess that the eleventh commandment ("Thou shalt not introduce a musician to a loan officer" is universally understood), but "Kunstler" works every time.
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