digressions on a sequoia seed

Liebe Max

2009-05-27T23:27:00.001+08:00

Wrote an absolutely shit paper last night (Durkheim and Weber.)

Weber... pragmatic, consequentialist in a very human way. Love my lecturer - here's the little title page he created for our dreary readings. Hats off, Max.

Bubble above:

"I am under the impression that in nine out of ten cases I deal with windbags who do not fully realize what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themsevles with romantic sensation.... However, it is immensely moving when a mature man - no matter whether old or young in yeras - is aware of a responsibility of for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul.... and somewhere he reahces the point where he says: 'Here I stand; I can do no other.' That is something genuiney human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possiblity of finding himself at some time in that position...."

Amen.

vague memories of a rainy night

2009-05-27T06:36:00.007+08:00

A few more videos where this came from... Steph if you're reading this... thanks for the good memories ; )

Skipped 1:30 lecture, napped instead for an hour in the tranquility of my burrow. Completely dead to the world... Woke up, felt like a whole world went by.

Sitting at Lavazza cafe on Washington, using Cosi's free internet instead...

Leaving Chicago very soon.

five strawberries and an apple

2009-05-03T04:42:00.000+08:00

There are these days, as rare as they come, where you feel you're going to accomplish something big. You're going to get that dream job offer, or some girl is going to propose to you - You're going to finally write that star essay and be content with it.

This is not one of them (at least as far as that essay goes).

I haven't written anything here for half a year (gosh, it's May), but I might as well... (to you, the Reader, cf. Calvino post ages ago) Here's some background music:

What a life Barenboim must have! Child prodigy, studied with Boulanger, conductor, pianist (with charisma and genius enough to get away with slight deficiency of accuracy and technique), cellist for a wife (best cellist ever, at that), being able to put his passion to the good of the world (West-Eastern Divan Orchestra etc.)

Now that's what I call "dream job", or "dream life".

If only =)

Went to the Art and Culture career day held by CAPS (UChicago's career service). I've never seen such happy panelists. One step at time, I guess, hopefully starting at Lincoln Center this summer (sorry Hong Kong).

What a beautiful photo

(Tel Aviv, May Day)

No grand thoughts for the day - Just, enjoy life.

Yeats to the rescue

2008-11-13T14:58:00.000+08:00

The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,
The full round moon and the star-laden sky,
And the loud song of the eversinging leaves,
Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.

And then you came with those red mournful lips,
And with you came the whole of the world's tears,
And all the sorrows of her labouring ships
And all the burden of her myriad years.

And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,
The crumbling moon, the white stars in the sky,
And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves,
Are shaken with earth's old and weary cry.

W.B. Yeats

συναιστησις

2008-11-02T12:45:00.000+08:00

A piece our choir (UChicago Motet Choir) is singing, to the words:

O magnum mysterium,   O great mystery,
et admirabile sacramentum, and wonderful sacrament,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,   that animals should see the Lord born
jacentem in praesepio!   lying in a manger!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera Blessed Virgin, whose womb
meruerunt portare was worthy of bearing
Dominum Christum.   Christ the Lord
Alleluia.   Alleluia

This is something Caravaggio would listen to in Rome...

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On a more terrestrial (or not) note - animists, and shaman(ists). To what extent are anthropologists, post-industrial, "dis-illusioned" metropolitans, really, willing to throw aside their own cultural presumptions when approaching these peoples? Or does our New Age sentiment warm up to them? Is it culturally permitted for us, and if so, when, can we deem people 'wrong', or 'psychotic', 'infantile', 'hallucinatory', if at all? Are we willing to accept as academically sound scholars who, being animists themselves, write about person-trees and the consequences of improper of placenta burial with a tone of empirical certainty? Are peoples, who accuse and punish fellow human beings of committing witchcraft on the basis of cock-divination, unjust? Is female genital 'mutilation' really a crime against humanity in non-paternalistic and aesthetic contexts? Are we to take Barbara Tedlock seriously when she spends half her book accounting for shamanistic séances, her personal experiences with dreams, shamanistic healing, and talking blood?

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That aside, yes, I realize I haven't blogged for a couple of months and, actually, haven't even visited this blog for a couple of months... In brevity, sì, I'm in Chicago, and in a state of general well-being and happiness.

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This afternoon I played in a masterclass conducted by maestra Judit Jaimes... o, would that there are more musicians like her in the world!

The 4 pieces we presented (except for my more earth-bound Liszt piece) confirmed the existence of an immaterial and transcendent realm of beauty and aesthetic understanding. The Schumann-Liszt Widmung, the heart-melting Brahms Rhapsody in b minor, and alas, Beethoven's Op 27 No.1.

My rational self caved in when Veronica played (in her pre-masterclass warm-up) the following passage from the 1st mvmt (~0:42 to ~1:25 below, especially the modulation to C major at 1:18....)

I was reminded again why I should set my heart to the pursual of music not as a profession but as a way of life.

Memento to a jetlag

2008-06-15T06:21:00.000+08:00

Spent about 2 hours rolling in bed, got up, wrote about 20 bars of piano accompaniment to a setting of a Yeats poem I wrote on the plane, read a bit of Mark in Greek, facebooked, e-mailed...

caught the sunrise, albeit a rainy one.

First thoughts of Hong Kong in need of expanding in some other less grogged up time:

Risk Society a la forte
Multiplicity of cultural authority
class stratification
occidentalism
objectification of the body
gentrified music
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Can't go, won't go to Yunnan, it's rain season.

Never weather-beaten sail.

2008-06-07T01:06:00.001+08:00

Neuer weather-beaten Saile more willing bent to shore,
Neuer tyred Pilgrims limbs affected slumber more
Than my wearied spright now longs to flye out of my troubled brest :
O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my soule to rest.

First half of a poem by Thomas Campion, to which C.H.Parry set to a motet which we sang in Cologne; No recording on Youtube, sadly.
A hommage here to my homecoming next week and the limenal period which is now...

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Our concert yesterday in Koblenz shed a few tears in the audience... here's one of the pieces that did this, by Orlando Gibbons 1583-1625 (and a puzzling background image on Youtube to go with it):

The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approached unlocked her silent throat;
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more:
Farewell, all joys;
O death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans now live,
more fools than wise.

Me, Kokoschka and Racine.

2008-06-04T01:52:00.000+08:00

(www.flickr.com/photos/kt/4465008/)

First impressions of Cologne: bland, architecturally uninteresting... and then it dawned upon me:95% of the city had been bombed by the Allies during WWII.

The massive Cathedral/Dom remained intact, surprisingly; perhaps the pilots and commanders knew it was an important site of human heritage. Here's another photo of it:

What Cologne lacked in its architectural preservation was definitely made up for by post hoc reconstrution of cultural capital.

Heaps of conceptual/abstract modern art at the Ludwig Museum, (and also expressionists, surrealists, and pop art) from David Smith to Lucio Fontana to names I haven't heard before... My little theory of the day:

A piece of artwork exists and can be evaluated on three dimensions: the technical, the symbolic and the aesthetic. That is, how it was executed (technique, medium, light-and-shadow, 'softness of skin' etc.), what it is of/symbolises/the subject matter (Venus and Mars, afternoon on the Seine, Stalin's corpse etc.) and lastly, the emotional reaction it draws from the viewer (religious piety, admiration etc.).

One of the reasons, if not the main one, why many people cringe at and dismiss 'modern art' - or worse, postmodern art - is because they are spoiled by verisimiliar paintings (impressionism at the most, and even Picasso in his less-deconstructed images). People are disgusted at the mention of 'modern art' yet they like Dali.

The works of art that do NOT draw a yuck-reaction have concrete and identifyable subject-matters, and often involve skill on the artists' part that is appreciable by the lay museum-goer.

Much of what can be categorized as 'conceptual art', on the other hand, involves almost no identifyable subject matter (aside from: a red line, a black square, a splash of paint etc.) and sometimes does not take much skill either. To take a cliched example: Anyone who has the guts can rip out a urinal, invert it as Duchamps did, give it a name, and put it in a museum.

The reason why most people cannot palate modern art is because they remain detached conoisseurs - just watch people in front of paintings (middle-aged males mostly) explain to their companions what this and that refers to, waving their hands in the air and analysing where all the symmetries and triangles are.

For the art I saw today I had to let myself go, cease to be 'the conoisseur', RELATE to the artwork, and enter into a two-way, emotional relationship with it... None of the 'non-modern' artworks, even my favourite ones, have managed to provoke nearly as strong a surge of emotion as the splashes and slashes I saw today.

I saw my first Jackson Pollock, and alongside it, my second. There were also a couple of ones by Karl Otto Götz. As I approached his wild 'scrapings' of paint my heart began beating faster in bewiderment. Only with my face almost touching the canvas, smelling it as it were and visually 'feeling' its texture - fixating on individual strokes suffused into adjacent one, slowly gliding from one end of the painting to the other - did I begin to immerse into its tempestuousness and feel the storms of colours resonnating within.

On the top floor there was an alcove with a full view of the Rhein and the steel bridge leading to the Cathedral. On the wall inside the alcove, opposite the small sofa which I was sitting on (pushed right up against the wall) was a painting by Kokoschka of the very same panorama.

The alcove was very small, 4 telephone booths perhaps.

Just me, Kokoschka, and 3 Jean Racine plays.

Vincent's shoes. My shoes.

2008-06-02T06:41:00.000+08:00

Vincent's eyes weren't always busy chanelling the heavens into the tip of his brush. Paolo had an art print of this painting by Van Gogh, I remember, on his wardrobe in Ples... Someone once said, somewhere, don't remember where, that these shoes are powerful not so much in their presence as in the void between the leather; the absense of the feet that filled them, the self that filed the body of which the feet are a part; The soul and personhood that once filled these worn-out shoes.
What about mine, my shoes?

I've been packing (and dying, inwardly withering in the process) as I discarded item after item of belongings which present circumstances did not allow me to keep. Among these were 2 pairs of shoes, shoes which I had once filled, shoes which have kissed the soil of many a country, witnessed many a warm embrace, monumental a moment. I took of picture of Elliot's shoes.
The Timberlands that walked with me miles and miles alongsidea dear friend along Provencal highways and riverside paths, the Rockports which once scraped the earthy, calcium-rich soil of Italy. I looked at these 2 pairs of shoes with an unspeakable nostalgia, I finally shed them away.

Off to Cologne tomorrow, fa-la-la-la-la-ing...

Piotr Illych

2008-05-10T07:28:00.000+08:00

Last night at badminton I was asked to 'play something' (on the piano) and I really didn't feel like playing anything substantial so I said, 'well, what would you like me to play'?
The reply was an incomprehensible (to me) Mandarin transliteration of some composer's name, followed by the piece name, which was 夢中的婚禮 and an automatic 'yuck reaction' kickstarted and I went, huh?

My first association was A Maiden's Prayer of course (fill in the speech/prayer bubble time! hmmm....) but then having a wedding in a dream (most likely flanked by cherubs) sounded exponentially worse than a maiden's prayer and then it hit me WHAM!

Richard Clayderman.

Well here's Karien Kooiman instead.

I append this photo because a couple of days ago I had a bout of nostalgia when I heard Tchaikovsky's Méditation on BBC radio 3, albeit accompanied by orchestra.
We had played (must use the pluperfect here, to be fair) this piece together, me on the piano, in the end-of-year concert in Italy exactly 3 years ago, in the same Church where this photo was taken a year later....
Well, all that's over now, isn't it! Duino was a honeymoon with Life; you can have nice dinners together from time to time but it's just never same.
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Latin exam was fun, to put it blandly. Had a lunch that was way too big as a pre-exam meal, the kind that makes you want to take the afternoon off and doze off, wherever (in this case McEwan Hall).

Anyway, in one of the original Latin passages we had to translate, Mark Antony marries Octavia, Julius Caesar goes on with his Campaigns and then the Velleius Paterculus goes on to describe how Labienus scared the heck out of Roman Africa after leaving Brutus' camp and teaming up with the Parthians and so on.

Of course Labienus like all bad guys, "extinctus est", here by Vendidius. Point of the story, instead of translating: "Vendidius vanquished Labienus along with the Parthian army and the Parthian prince" (or words to that effect), I had to the nerve (that were evidently 'stuck together', for those non-existent cantonese speakers out there) to write down this syntactiacally equivalent (in Latin) version:
"Vendidus, along with the Parthian army and the Parthian prince, vanquished Labienus".

Ave Syntax!

Reading Shakespeare's take on Julius Caesar, who has just died.
Fixus, as Ovid would say.

You, the reader.

2008-05-09T06:57:00.000+08:00

Came across this random Latin riddle which, admittedly, is quite lame. It does have its relevance:

EGO SVM PRINCIPIVM MVNDI ET FINIS SÆCVLORVM ATTAMEN NON SVM DEVS

(I am the beginning of the world and the end of all ages yet I am not God [, who am I?]).

... The letter 'M'!

('world'/mundi starts with M and 'all ages'/saeculorum ends with M........... *awkward silence in cyberspace*)

Anyway, I'm having my Latin exam tomorrow in the McEwan Hall (hence the connection with the letter M, hence the archaic sense of humour, or the lack of it)

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Just this week a Cuban blogger was denied exit Visa (whatever that is!) to travel to Spain to receive some award. How on earth do blogs come to have a wide readership outside one's social circle to the extent of being accused of incitement? That, evidently, isn't one of my aims... (both to be denied exit visas and to incite... I wouldn't mind the Spain bit, though. More Spanish guitar, please.)

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This is a very disjuncted post so here's yet another disjunction: Great documentary, go see it:

Al Jazeera, Iraq War (no I'm not an active activist, which makes me not an activist); most of the action takes place in room called Centcom, a mini-media-colony where thousands of international journalists gathered during the ordeal to receive new information, make live broadcasts, hold interviews etc. Beautiful filmmaking, heartfelt testimonies by the both top-level informants and your average cafe-frequenter in Doha, and a unique chance to peer into how news of the Iraq War was represented, both by Al Jazeera and other agencies of 'the West'. A bit of demonizing goes on, evidently, but not so much in the documentary itself as in the minds of viewers.

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Getting a video camera from Rich tomorrow, shall see if I can put anything interesting onto the web.

You, the reader, still don't exist by the way (except for random googlers of 'elliot leung' or sth of that ilk).

How Calvino.

Salut Émile

2008-05-03T06:26:00.000+08:00

昨晚原本打算早一點關電腦，拜訪周公，發個好夢，七小時後「捲土重來」，讀過聖經，喝過咖啡後繼續「咪書」．結果呢？結果．．．
多手開了一個ｂｌｏｇ，

還把什麼ｂｌｏｇｇｅｒｓ’　ｇｕｉｄｅ之類的東西看了一遍,自然也被wikipedia吸了過去．是的，認識許多ｂｌｏｇ　ｌｉｎｇｏ（按原理,可稱ｂｌｉｎｇｏ吧）．有用嚒？ｋｎｏｗｌｅｄｇｅ is　ｃｏｎｓｔｒｕｃｔｅｄ，有人想出來自然有人看，愈看愈多，無中生有；ｋｎｏｗｌｅｄｇｅ is　ｐｏｗｅｒ (blowledge is blower 'blauer') , 我想是吧.

經過多番周轉,還是兩點多才鑽入被窩「赴約」, 發過什麼夢也自然忘記掉了.

剛在數千英里外新鮮出爐的online明報讀了一篇梁文道的文章，什感痛快，與大家分享, 也是我第一個post用中文寫的原因．

http://www.mingpaonews.com/20080503/msa.htm

至於我何時開始有對cyber空氣說話的喜好，還塑造出這不存在的「大家」－我想，弄個research design出來，搞個清楚吧！（被週一的methodology考試沖昏了頭腦，不好意思）

第一篇ｂｌｏｇ就在這裏劃上句號吧．很期待明天的來臨！