The Fredösphere

I got these links from a charismatic Anglican, so you know they must be good:
Animusic:  hypnotic computer animations set to original music.  Start with the one called Pipe Dream.  Let loose your inner geek.

Five words:  Japanese hidden-camera toilet pranks.  The naughty bits are covered up, and it's low-res, yet I feel I must warn you to use discretion if you are at work.  But don't miss it.  Marvel at this rare footage that never, ever, ever could be produced in the Litigious States of America.  Definitely not.

In his Writer's Almanac, Garrison Keillor reminds us that today is the birthday of Gerard Manley Hopkins, now a favorite poet of mine thanks to a tip from a commenter to this blog.  Hopkins died at age 44, which serves as an unwelcome goad to anyone reading this who might happen to be that exact age ... like ... um ... me, for example.  Today I honor Hopkins by selecting a Friday Poem, a feature of this blog which has been reliable only in its extreme inconstancy.  I make no claim to understand the following, but the ring of its words is bright.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;   
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells   
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s   
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;   
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;   
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,   
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.   
 
Í say móre: the just man justices;   
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—   
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,   
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his   
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Somebody doesn't hate Frank Gehry's buildings or M. Night Shyamalan's movies.

These tracks are laughable!  Because they are funny, and when you listen to them, they make you laugh at how funny they are!  In the same way that ethnic minorities make you laugh!  (Thanks be unto Victor's eagle eye for spotting these.)

Pastor Rick Warren will preach in North Korea in 2007.  Mind-boggling.  Although I suppose, on a certain level, Christianity doesn't compete directly with the state religion.  We have a savior who rose from the dead; they have a savior who never died.

Inherit genius genes.
Arrange for early horrendous parenting disasters.  Either abuse or neglect will do:

Dylan Thomas was right to remark that the only thing worse than an unhappy childhood was “having a too-happy childhood.” (Sad to think of today’s moms and dads out there pumping extra oxygen and prenatal Mozart into the womb, or teaching calculus to their preschoolers. What the historical record shows is that parents who wish their tots to achieve greatness should beat them regularly, destroy their self-esteem, and cruelly deprive them of ordinary comforts, such as ice cream, toys, or their mothers’ affections. It would be especially helpful for one of the parents, probably dad, to die before the onset of adolescence; suicide is fine for the purpose.)

Indulge in childhood episodes of some dramatic illness.  Epilepsy and asthma are excellent choices, but if you can find a disease that's so rare that it goes undiagnosed for years, all the better.
In your early teens, experience for the first time a overwhelming sensation of your own unique destiny.
Age 15:  write some music.
Age 20:  now is the time to begin your lifelong addictions.  No need to choose carefully.
Age 21:  bitter that your genius goes unrecognized, throw out your juvenilia.  (No great loss anyway.)
Early adulthood:  use erratic behavior to end all your relationships badly.
In a rare moment of sanity, commit yourself to an institution for 13 years.
Get yourself kicked out of the institution.  Resume "career" as a chronically unemployable misfit.
In one frantic, caffeine-fueled spasm of creative energy that lasts 9 sleepless days, compose three symphonic works, a song cycle, a dozen chamber works that somehow really are works of flawless genius, a 1200 page autobiography/manifesto, and a grand opera to make Wagner wet his bed.  Exhausted but elated, rush out of the house to tell your friends what you have accomplished.  Remembering you have no friends, return home to discover the coffee maker you forgot to turn off has burned up your apartment and all your manuscripts.  Collapse into a coma, but not before realizing your impending breakdown will result in a loss of memory, rendering your masterpieces irretrievable.
The wilderness years:  focus your creative energies on a few pointless, self-destructive gestures.
A chance meeting of an old college buddy who is now a tenured professor at a top music school:  hear him express amazement that you are still alive.
At some point along the way, write one completed work.
Die in the midst of squalor -- perhaps by eating tainted cat food.  Leave your one surviving manuscript sitting out where the police can identify it as a work of unsurpassed brilliance.
Enjoy posthumous adulation.

I can't stop blogging about Auden, because of his strange spiritual odyssey and, most importantly, because he and I share a common birthday (February 21, an especially fine time to be born).  Here's Edward Mendelson writing in the Introduction to W. H. Auden:  Selected Poems:

The most notorious aspect of Auden's revisions, as of his whole poetic theory, was his insistence that a poem must not be "dishonest," must not express beliefs that a poet does not actually hold, no matter how rhetorically effective he finds them.  In Auden's view, poetry could not be exempted from ethical standards of truth or falsehood:  a poem could be a lie, and what was more serious, a poetic lie could be more persuasive in the public realm than lies less eloquently expressed.

So, is this a hint that I'm going to set some Auden poetry to music?  Not anytime soon.  In fact, I've begun setting a poem written about a thousand years before that February day in 1907 that Auden arrived on the scene.  The poem has a devilishly difficult meter but which should produce an enormously fun piece if only I can find the right melody for it.  More, I cannot say; as usual, we must keep this little poetic discovery very hush-hush.

At last, I understand the case for unrestricted immigration:  we'll need a hefty surplus population for the time, about 20 years hence, when Europeans beg us to invade and colonize them.  (Hat tip Blowhards.)

Lunchtime on Friday found me near campus, so I stopped by the South University Art Fair (one of four separate entities that make up the full Ann Arbor art fair package) for a whirlwind tour.  Free of companions, I was able to breeze past that which did not catch my eye, thus avoiding art fatigue.

The winner of the coveted Umie the Umlaut Memorial Grand Prize for Achievement in the Field of Excellence in Art and Design Award goes to Bill Secunda Studios.  Boy, would I love to have one of his metal sculptures of animals in my yard.  (Memo to the wifeösphere:  see what you can do for my birthday, okay?) 

Deserving honorable mention:  the pottery of Zeber-Martell, and (of course) Detroit's famous Motawi Tileworks.  I will also mention Jerry Berta's ceramics, although I feel like I'm being manipulated in doing so.  I suspect these things are not sculpted or fired in the usual method, but rather spring whole from the forehead of James Lileks.

Why do I not include any painters?  Maybe its because people like me see much more wall art, have learned all the clichés, and are harder to fool in those media.  In any event, I saw a lot of ordinary paintings, and a lot of gimmicky paintings, but none that really grabbed me.

They were two blond college girls (from my alma mater), named Laura and Whitney, out for a drive.  A terrible accident left Whitney dead and Laura in a coma.  Four days later, Whitney was buried.  Five weeks later Laura began to emerge from her coma.  It was only then they discovered she wasn't Laura; she was Whitney.  Sadly, this horror story is true; here are the details.

Using the now famous and insightful comments about the internets made by our esteemed colleague from Alaska, someone put a nice techno remix on YouTube that is definitely worth three minutes of your time.

Don't you just hate James Lileks?  He's so full of grace, even his screwups have a kind of poetry:

This afternoon I had an hour without obligation, and decided to rattle off the Diner. Did a a 20-minute monologue for the Diner, and I was on a roll. I hit playback. The mike driver had seized up, and recorded nineteen minutes of stutter. It hung on the words “I quit.” Really. Nineteen minutes: I quit I quit I quit I quit. Never has a computer malfunction been so eloquent or plaintive.

Here's an idea on the subject of good taste:  composers should avoid striving to make any individual composition the most tasteful possible, because this leads to pretension and destroys the mysterious élan vital of the work.  Instead, the composer should strive continually to improve his own taste through study of the work of the masters, meanwhile writing whatever music he likes.  This will result in less frustration in the short term, and all-around better music in the long term.  In this view, "guilty pleasure" is always an oxymoron when speaking of art, and yesterday's pleasures never become guilty, although they may cease being pleasures.

I have no idea if the above idea is correct, and I cannot guarantee even that I will believe it tomorrow.  But I believe it today.

I just got an idea for a novel in the speculative fiction genre.  The wonderful thing about this blog (from my point of view) is that I can publish the idea without enduring the annoying, time-consuming business of fleshing out the scenario and, you know, writing the thing.

In the near future, the government of the United States is in crisis as an increasingly polarized electorate fails to produce presidents with clear mandates.  Disgusted by the weakness of its top leaders, an influential group of elites recommend raising Augustus Caesar from the dead to rule the U.S. as president for life.  (That such a thing is possible will be the one tongue-in-cheek conceit of the book.  Perhaps I could explain that such a fantastic trick is not attempted more often due to the massive expenditure of resources required.)

As to the plot, I really don't have any idea.  I don't care, for example, to speculate whether Augustus' reign would be successful by any measure.  I'm more interested in imagining the various anachronistic, "conservative" attitudes Augustus would bring to the job.  I imagine him quickly adapting to life in a modern American city, it's vast projects of civil engineering and technological conveniences being mere extrapolations on what the ancient Romans achieved.  I imagine him brooding over Washington, D.C., decrying its decadence (although certain parts of the Judeo-Christian package of morality would baffle him).  No doubt he would rejoice in the greatly expanded culinary options.  (Imagine being more than 80 years old and tasting for the first time chocolate, chiles, potatoes, maize, cola, ice cream, scotch whisky, and coffee.)  He would have mixed emotions about the increased professionalism of military life.  He would absolutely love American football.

Mostly, I'm thinking about the cover art for the novel, and seeing lots of possibilities:  Augustus in a toga, wearing a laurel wreath, standing before Lincoln in his memorial, thinking about how little things have changed in 2000 years -- or maybe a scene inside the oval office, or better, Augustus in a press conference, with the presidential seal on the lectern.  Or how about Augustus posing with an AK-47 in his hand?  (No, wait, that one has been taken already.)

My friend Victor found it.  He thought its spicy mixture of religion, sci-fi, and music might maybe, just maybe, be worthy of the found attentions of the Fredösphere.  Oh yes, oh yes:  meet the Integratron, a plywood and fiberglass dome built by New Age Visionary George van Tassel in the desert near Santa Monica.  His followers play music on crystal bowls, which you can hear on this NPR report from last week.  Here's more, with pictures.

Meanwhile, tonight the Choral Union will host a Summer Sing.  Jerry Blackstone will lead a read-through of the Fauré Requiem, apparently without the aid of any crystal bowls.  I'll be there.  You should too.

You'll have to register for the full article, but the lede tells it all.  Tony Blair's shameful past is revealed:  he "is in fact a former choirboy, who spent his adolescence warbling Stravinsky."

John Cantrell, a NYC choirmaster and organist, adds his voice of complaint:  "most music publishers are releasing a considerable amount of schlock - compositions of no musical, theological substance."  Yes.  You should really see the promotional packets choral publishers put out.  If you can find one piece in ten that does not inspire active disgust, you are lucky.  Cantrell's post is a call for scores.  Send him something good if you've got it.

Not everything in a Telegraph article called "Brilliant men always betray their wives" is nonsense, but it is spoiled by an unrelenting sycophancy:  geniuses are horndogs, and their greatness and horndogginess are both products of their risk-taking.

To many, the idea of Einstein having 10 mistresses does not fit the classical image of the great, remote genius.  Why was he wasting his valuable time with the exhausting business of conducting a string of illicit affairs - affairs that would cause havoc with his family life, damaging especially his relationship with his sons?
The answer is that he, like many other intensely creative men, was over-endowed with one of the human male's most characteristic qualities: the joy of risk-taking.

Poor, poor, geniuses.  They just can't help themselves!

Aiding and abetting these erotic adventures is the fact that the fame, power and wealth that these especially brilliant men have received as rewards for their achievements make them very attractive figures to the opposite sex.  They may have a face like an angry hippopotamus but, thanks to their high status, they somehow manage to ooze sex appeal, much to the disbelief and dismay of the handsome failures who carry out menial tasks for them.

I pity these geniuses -- they're the victims!  Meanwhile, I'm going to forgive the obvious typo and simply note that "but" should have been spelled with two t's.  What I can't forgive is the following:

During a presidential visit to Britain, John F. Kennedy once shocked an elderly Harold Macmillan when he complained to him that if he didn't have sex with a woman every day he suffered from severe headaches.

So is the topic horny geniuses, or simply horny high-status males?  Or does the author really think Kennedy belongs on a list that includes Einstein, Picasso and Bertrand Russell?

The medievalist who blogs at the Unlocked Wordhoard comments on the suitability of John Gardner's novel Grendel as the source material for an opera, and links to Xoom's enjoyable review of the "Grendelicious" L.A. premiere of the new Goldenthal / McClatchy / Taymor work.  I heard bits of the music on NPR last night, just enough to pique my interest (and almost enough to peak my interest).  Yes, the story is from the monster's POV, and yes, we are asked to question what it means to be a "monster."  I'll take that question, if you don't mind:  if you're big, hairy, and eat people, you're probably a monster.  Come to think of it, if you're big, hairy, eat people, and your kids are going hungry tonight because you just had to have those Yosemite Sam mudflaps, you're probably a redneck monster.

Meanwhile, I have an urgent need to stop any confusion before it starts.  Although Fred's "final wishes were 'throw the bums out and don't elect lawyers'" and "he excelled at mediocrity," and he had "a life long love affair with bacon, butter, cigars and bourbon" and his family remembered him mostly for having "never peed in the shower - on purpose" and that he "sadly was deprived of his final wish which was to be run over by a beer truck on the way to the liquor store to buy booze for a double date to include his wife, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to crash an ACLU cocktail party," that was a different Fred.  To repeat, and in spite of what you might reasonably think:  THAT WAS NOT ME.  Thank you.

After a long interruption while my reading list grew out of control, I have returned to the fascinating February House, the account of the artists who spent a year living at 7 Middagh St. in Brooklyn:  W. H. Auden, Paul and Jane Bowles, Britten and Pears, Carson McCullers, Gypsy Rose Lee, and George Davis, the last recently fired as fiction editor of Harper's Bazaar.

What a freak show.  I can't recommend this book too highly.  It's very quotable, so today I'll give you two, with perhaps more to come.  The first is a bit of philosophizing by W.H. Auden:

In a review of Theodore Roethke's new collection of poetry, Open House, Auden wrote in March [of 1940] that "a work of art, like a life, can fail in two different ways:  either, in terror of admitting that there is any chaos, it takes refuge in some arbitrary conscious order it has acquired read-made from others or thought up itself on the spur of the moment ... or, lacking the courage and the faith to believe that it is possible and a duty to bring the chaos to order, it contents itself with a purely passive idolization of the flux."  It was necessary to create "both in Life and Art," he wrote, a "necessary order out of an arbitrary chaos" -- not any order, but an order "already latent in the chaos, so that successful creation is a process of discovery ... and the more consciously one direct this process the more one becomes both conscious of and true to one's fate."

I suppose the second could be categorized the same way:

Louise Bogan recalled telling Auden that month about a man who broke into tears in a taxi, confessing to his traveling companion that he had a vestigial tail.  "I shouldn't have minded a vestigial tail," Bogan said playfully to her friend.  "No," Auden had replied, "one can always stand what other people have."

There's little to report today, but this weekend I did fulfill a long-term ambition to make some authentic Texas chili, using suet to brown the chunks of beef.  My my, that was tasty. 

I also offer you one link:  the Ann Arbor District Library will host a viewing of a documentary film by George Steinmetz called Detroit:  Ruin of a City.  I wonder if Steinmetz has any connection to The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit.

Daniel Wolf stopped by to comment on the conservatism of the NEA list of American choral masterpieces I blogged about yesterday.  I agree, and with him, I regret it, although with a slightly different take.  The extra bit that's missing is the observation that, of all areas of music, choral music is the most affected by amateurism, with all the good and bad that that implies.  Instrumentalists wouldn't dream of joining any (non-student) orchestra until they have some training, but when it comes to singing, "anybody" can do it, right?  We have a great many choirs; supposedly almost ten percent of the U.S. population belong to one.  Where are the choirs that can convincingly perform the pieces Daniel mentions?  They are too few and far between.  What can we do about that?

The National Endowment for the Arts has the list of American choral masterpieces.  Fans of the Fredösphere need not send letters of complaint; that would be redundant, as I have already informed them (courteously) that they somehow neglected to include my name.  I'm sure there will be many red faces at the NEA when they realize their mistake.

Seriously, what really depresses me is how many of these pieces I've never heard.  Thank goodness I can say the composers are familiar to me, all but one anyway.  It's nice to see a government-compiled list doesn't succumb to false gravitas:  the goofy and wonderful arrangement of What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor by Parker and Shaw made the list, quite deservingly.  (The Ambassadors of Harmony have a teasingly short excerpt.)

Lileks calls it the Gandalf-shaped bong of keyboards, which is hilarious but unfair, and yes, the word "Mellotron" has a deep and emotional resonance.  (He also links to a certain senator with a porcine reputation discussing the internet.  Wow.  This level of embarrassment is simply bracing.)

There's a claim that the Mellotron was ripped off from an instrument invented by Harry Chamberlin called the ... well, I'll let you figure it out.

The most satisfying moment of the July 4th holiday:  leading Der Drübermensch on a biking adventure through the alien landscape of the small neighborhood that sits across from ours on busy Carpenter Road.  "This is so much fun!" he exclaimed as he viewed houses that -- bizarrely -- have mature trees in their yards.  We didn't overhear any conversations, so it is impossible to say what language they speak there, but at least we noticed everything was right-side-up, which proves we had not reached the southern hemisphere.