You Say Tomato

Rivers and Tides

Yesterday, after some (almost) final art camp shopping and the obligatory University Ave. stop at Than Bros. pho (the pho is excellent and giveaway cheap, but it’s the free custard puff that keeps me going back), R and I went to see Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time at the Varsity. It’s the second time we’ve seen it in the course of three months (the first viewing was as part of our New York cultural whirl back in January), but if anything it was even more impressive second time around.

I love art and I love movies, but off-hand I don’t remember any fabulous art movies. I don’t mean biopics like Pollock and Frida, but documentaries showing artists doing their job and talking about it. That’s what Rivers and Tides is about—a normal Northern bloke tromping about in perpetually bad weather (when his hands aren’t freezing or he isn’t standing or lying around in driving rain it seems to be blindingly sunny) creating these ephemeral, brilliant (often literally) “works.” Goldsworthy uses that term repeatedly, which would normally set off my pretension meter, but in his case it really seems appropriate. Although he clearly thinks a lot about what he’s doing, most of the time he appears to be doing hard graft, hefting stones, hiking about gathering materials, or grinding stones into pigment. Even when he’s involved in delicate, intricate work—piecing together a web of sticks or “sculpting” delicate materials like tree moss or wool fresh from the sheep—it seems more like craft than art. And yet his art is breathtakingly spectacular. The woman sitting behind me gasped for breath so often that it sounded like she was having multiple artgasms.

Goldsworthy speaks really beautifully too. He talks about his art in a very engaged way—noteworthy because he seems vaguely unengaged with the “real world” around him, although he’s clearly very committed to the Scottish village where he lives and works, for example—and he does it in ways that also fail to set off the pretension meter. His words simply serve to illuminate his work rather than to antagonize or patronize. (That may be the movie’s biggest achievement.)

The movie’s bare-bones Web site says it well:

A land-artist who uses materials from nature to make site-specific works, Goldsworthy allows the elements to have the last say in his beautiful creations, as his ingenious patterns of wood, leaves, stone and ice move and erode over time. German filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer followed the artist for over a year in several outdoor locations, intimately documenting his improvisational process and capturing the serene spectacle of his works and their delicate changes. Although Goldsworthy's private and often ephemeral pieces have been documented extensively in still photographs, this remarkable movie uses the artist's own voice to guide us through his process and help us "see something you never saw before, that was always there but you were blind to it."

(Is Rivers and Tides coming to a cinema near you? Find out here.)

A Right Charlie

I just spent a very enjoyable couple of hours listening to last week’s Charlie Gillett show on BBC London, which featured Gotan Project talking about their music and playing records.

I was fascinated by Gotan Project even before I actually got my hands on their record (which is finally officially coming out in the States next week—until now it’s only been available as an import). I’ve gone from blind worship to deep cynicism about their music, but I must admit the songs they played as part of “radio ping pong” with Gillett were interesting. I suppose “radio ping pong” is a cool version of Desert Island Discs, a show I loved to listen to as a kid (mentally rehearsing for my turn on the show occupied as much space in my fantasies as practicing my Oscar acceptance speech). Basically, musicians come on and play some of their favorite records, songs that influenced them, or tracks that prove how cool they are.

With the three main GP members playing records, it was hard to identify a consistent thread running through the selections, but the combination of tango—conventional, “new,” and novelty—early electronica, and reggae/dub was interesting, if rather predictable.

Charlie Gillett is a fascinating guy. He’s worked in radio for decades and yet, especially in contrast with Clear Channel-overproduced U.S. radio, he’s awfully amateurish. Playing the wrong track, miscuing records, stumbling through the IDs, and giving very sincere-sounding thanks to listeners who called in praising the show. But what does that matter when he plays such excellent songs? He doesn’t come across as someone trying to impress listeners with the magnificence of his music collection (though I’m sure it is magnficent), but as someone who wants to share the cool records he’s found with the world.

Stephen Malkmus, Live in ... Store

I went to my first concert in a million years Saturday. Well, it wasn’t really a concert—it was more that when I wandered down to my local record store, I stumbled on an in-store performance by hip young balladeer Stephen Malkmus, accompanied by his friends the Jicks.

Sonic Boom is a small store, and there were so many people crammed in by the time I arrived that I couldn’t actually see the “stage” at the back. My dislike of crowds made me happiest at the opposite end of the store—near the door where there was still some air and a little bit of room to breathe. Since there was no curtain or lights (there was no Waterloo sunset outside anyway, in fact it was sunny for Seattle), the band just sort of slipped into view. This being an informal event, there was no set list or pre-prepared agenda. They just walked on, tried to make their instruments work, and asked what people would like to hear.

The crowd was either shy or unfamiliar with Malmus’ oeuvre (I’m both—well, certainly the latter anyway), but at last someone yelled out a song title, and they obligingly launched into “Jenny and the Ess-Dog.” It was a quirky rendition, but I’ve since gathered that “quirky” is the Malkmus watch word. Funny little poetic lyrics, spirited and tuneful but not necessarily in-tune singing, and some basic guitar licks that wouldn’t please Bert Weedon. He also did “(Do Not Feed the) Oyster,” one other song that I don’t recall, and a weird low-fi “medley” that I half-recognized as a late-‘70s classic, or perhaps his own facsimile thereof.

I’ve listened to recorded versions of a couple of the songs a few times now, thanks to downloads provided so thoughtfully—and legally—by Amazon and realize that he’s a bit of a tributist. He obviously very influenced by Ray Davies, both in the kind of story songs he writes and in his delivery, but there are also echoes of that little window when punk turned into new wave and still you didn’t have to be able to play very well, but you did have to be sincere. (“Alison”-era Elvis Costello or early Jam in other words.) Some very catchy hooks, too. Unfortunately, Malkmus seems to like the muffled clingy-clangy effect that sounds like it was recorded in an untidy bedroom, and sometimes you can’t make out his lyrics (youth of today, you can’t tell a bloody thing they say), which is pretty key to his “thing.”

Still, it was a fun half-hour, with lots of inane stage chat about Michael Jackson ripping off his moves from Bob Fosse, and references to Pacific Northwest fauna in “(Do Not Feed the) Oyster.” Weirdly enough, they had to finish when the people at the pizza parlor next door complained that the volume was too high. Judging from his affect, I reckon Malkmus kind of enjoyed that—it was like the neighbors complaining that the kid next door was upsetting their dog with his bedroom band practice.

Oscar Goes to War

I was a very bad employee this weekend, leaving my colleagues to do the heavy war lifting. I don’t feel so bad about Saturday. I had such a wicked headache I had to cancel a haircut I desperately need, and I didn’t shake it enough to get much of anything done all day. (Well, I did catch up on one of the last Oscar pictures I still hadn’t seen—Road to Perdition, and while it’s not Dame Judi’s fault, her winning Best Supporting Actress for a movie she spent about 10 minutes in has led to some annoying nominations since. In a strong year for acting—though admittedly with most strength on the women’s side—it just seems crazy to nominate Paul Newman for a film which he was absent from the screen for about fifteen-sixteenths of. Who exactly was he supporting?)

Today was the annual clean up for the Oscar party scramble. First I finished an amazing book—More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and America’s War in Colombia, by Robin Kirk. I’ve read several books about Colombia, but this was the first to put the crazy violence there in a really clear context and differentiated between the guilty and the innocent without moralizing or forgiving killers their trespasses. At first I wondered if I could take the author’s occasional forays into a sort of semi-poetic reverie, but after a while I relaxed and went with the flow and loved the little meditative moments. Like all good books it made me want to go through the bibliography to get even further into a topic that it had gotten me all hot about. And talk about anti-drug propaganda: Reading what Yanquis’ love of Andes nose candy has done to Colombia should be enough to put any person of good conscience off the stuff.

And then, and then … the Oscars. Less pomp than usual, and not too badly off for that. The early awards—especially the one with four recipients, Visual Effects perhaps—annoyed me by cutting off the winners’ speeches too aggressively. Yes, they’d said up-front that they only got 45 seconds, but when there are four people up there, that’s awfully harsh. It must be horrible to be No. 4 and have to yell your wife’s name over the blasting music.

Steve Martin was a little heavy on the sexual innuendo, but I laughed at him more than I yelled at him, which is a pretty huge achievement given how much I talk back to the television. I was grateful that they cut the presenters’ dumb jokes, since I don’t remember laughing at a single one in all my years of awards-show watching.

The anti-war speeches were more artful than I expected. After the British Oscars, I expected Gael García Bernal and Pedro Almodóvar to speak out, and they both did so coherently and calmly (in fact, that was the most comprehensible speech I’ve ever heard from Pedro Almodóvar—in any language!). I didn’t care for Bowling for Columbine, but I do think it’s good for a movie that people have actually had a chance to see to win the Best Documentary award, and it was a sweet gesture on his part to bring the other nominees on-stage. My position on the current war is rather different from Michael Moore’s (and Pedro Almodóvar’s), but I don’t disagree with anything in either speech. I’m all for “peace, respect of human rights, democracy, and international legality.” And I agree with Moore that the fictitious president is sending us to war for “fictitious reasons” (though there are other reasons that he doesn’t have the guts to articulate that I do support—the human rights of the poor, beleaguered, oppressed Iraqis most of all, and although oil’s the reason we care about Iraq while we don’t care about millions of other people who live under the heel of vicious dictators around the world, I don’t think Bush has gone to war for oil). But anyway, the Oscars.

The best moments?

Almodóvar winning the Oscar for best screenplay—an amazing achievement for a screenplay not in English. Talk to Her isn’t my favorite Almodóvar, but as always he’s creative and wild and brilliant. And I loved his shout-out to "Spanish cinema."

Sad-sack Adrien Brody’s Halle Berry mega-kiss. I guess it was sort of uncool to get so intimate without an invitation, but it didn’t seem that Halle minded. In some ways I was glad that he got the music to shut up. It is ridiculous that Gil Cates, the ceremony’s producer, imposes the 45-second limit (admittedly relaxed for the big awards) on the winners. After building up all that suspense, they take the slow walk up there, and then all they have time for is “thanks mom”? Brody had done what a normal human being would and made it all about himself and his surprise and his amazement, then he remembered there were larger issues—that the movie he’d just won for was about the Holocaust, that the character he played was based on the life of a real person, that there was a war on—and he kind of made a second speech, and it was great.

The joy on Martin Scorsese’s face when Roman Polanski’s name was read out as the winner of the directing award. Scorsese’s spent this year getting nominated a lot and winning not very much, but he revealed his genuine love of the movies when he applauded so sincerely and whole-heartedly for what I imagine he interpreted as a victory for art over life. I was amazed that Polanski won the award—I think he deserved it, but I didn’t think the academy would give it to him.

In the weird little 30-minute pre-show, ABC kept talking about how they had backstage access for the first time ever, then it turned out they just meant for the pre-show, since they never took us backstage during the actual telecast. The replays of the winners’ reactions were lovely, though. When they make the actual announcement, you’re desperately trying to scan all five faces to see if anyone lets a bit of ungraciousness slip through. Seeing their reactions at the moment their names were called was lovely—the first reaction before the happiness hit always seemed to be something bordering on panic.

I wish they would just cut the performances of the nominated songs—though I admit I wanted Eminem to perform just on the off-chance that they might show the network standards guy sweating as his finger hovered over the bleep button. I love Caetano Veloso, and I like Lila Downs, but songs that are written for movies tend not be very good, and “Burn It Blue” is one such song. Now if the song Caetano sings in Talk to Her had been nominated that would be another story … but since it wasn’t original it wasn’t eligible.

The “In Memoriam” section didn’t seem so moving this year, though that could be a) because I’d seen the British Oscars’ version just a few weeks ago; and b) death has been on 10 channels 24/7 since last Wednesday. I loved the pageant of former winners, though, perhaps because it reminded me of the parade of former champions they do at Wimbledon every 25 years or so. And I just fell in love with Meryl Streep all over again—not in the way I might lust over Salma Hayek or Queen Latifah, but in that sort of “oh she’s lovely and she seems so fun and smart and nice” kind of way.

I correctly predicted 14 of the 24 winners, though in truth I was happier when something I wanted to win won than when something I had predicted but wasn’t really behind got called to the stage.

For My Next Trick, I'll Spin Some Plates

Thank God multitasking has made goofballs of us all. Right now, I’m surfing the Web to read how newspapers around the world are covering the outbreak of war, I’ve got MSNBC’s TV feed playing but muted on Windows Media Player (there's a live feed available on the Intranet, though I don't imagine anybody looks at it when we're not at war), and the BBC World Service playing on RealPlayer. Not bad for someone who doesn't have a TV or a radio in her office. If I still had any powers of concentration left, I’d be climbing the walls right now.

Well, At Least I Have an Excuse Now

I don't imagine I'll be blogging much now that the war's started. Work will be crazy, since we'll be publishing at all hours. My heart will be saying tomato, though.

If This Blog Entry Wore a T-Shirt ...

If this blog entry wore a T-shirt, here's what it would say: My author had a blissful, leisurely weekend, and all I got was this lousy entry.

I had such good intentions for writing lots of entries since this was one of those lovely weekends without obligations. Instead I saw two movies (The Quiet American and Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary), caught up on my TV addictions (EastEnders, Corrie, Six Feet Under, and The Trials of Henry Kissinger, which is not an addiction), did just a smidgeon of art (it's art camp in three weeks, and I haven't done an artistic deed in months), hung out with R, balanced my checkbook, and started reading a fabulous new book, More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia.

I did not do my Russian homework, write multiple mind-blowing blog entries, or figure out how to get rid of the extraneous information in the Blogamp display at the right. (If anyone knows how to tweak it so that it displays just the artist and the song, please pass it on.)

Man Trapped in Comments Box

Apparently there’s only one way to get him out of there: Post like mad (a maximum of five times per person) in that self-same comments box. If the entry accumulates more than 235 comments by midnight GMT on Friday, he'll donate ₤100 to Comic Relief. (That's a big annual U.K. charity drive, my American friends.) Confused? You will be.

A Night at the Opera

Went to the opera last night—Bellini’s Norma—and a great relief it was. The season had seemed cursed: A terrible cough that hit on the day of the season opener kept me from what was, by all accounts, an excellent Eugene Onegin. Then when my season ticket pal wasn’t able to make it to No. 2, I invited a friend who’d just had her second baby and had been stuck in the house for months. We made it through dinner and the first act, but the intermission was so long it gave her a chance to call home, and the screaming (literally) children and harried husband had her fleeing before the second act—with me in tow since I didn’t have enough cash on me for a cab. At opera ticket prices, even in Seattle, that was a pretty expensive one act so far this year.

I’m glad to say the curse was lifted last night. Norma was played by a 33-year-old—Christine Goerke—who was really good, but the woman who played Adalgisa—Ewa Podles—was incredible. She was listed in the program as a contralto, but her voice was otherworldly. She had a huge range and sounded good from top to bottom, but she had no head voice, just a deep, throaty, full chest voice. When she sang with the soprano or tenor, it was as if their voices were Americanos and hers was a latte. (How’s that for a Seattle analogy?) Someone said they’d heard a commentator remark that when she sang the part it was as close as you can get these days to the original performance, which would’ve been sung by a castrato. I’m not sure that’s really true, but when she first came on stage, I admit I got out the glasses to see if it was a countertenor in drag—a sort of reverse trouser role. At curtain, Podles got a standing ovation, while everyone else got rapturous, though slightly less OTT, applause. It must have been awkward for Goerke—who was wonderful—to know that Podles was getting a more passionate response, though the star system required her not to acknowledge that.

The last time I saw Norma—in 1994—was also the first time I saw the divine Jane Eaglen. Carol Vaness, who was supposed to play Norma, had to drop out less than a week before the first performance, so they flew in this English woman who had sung the role in London. As I remember it, the big flap was having to remake the costumes—Jane is very big and bomb, and Carol Vaness had famously slimmed down a few years before. It must have been hell for the costume shop to find yards more fabric and remake the main character’s clothes in such a short time. But all that was irrelevant when Jane sang and blew everyone away.

It’s funny how often that sort of thing happens in opera, though I suppose it’s understandable given how delicate their voices are. It’s a classic mystery plot twist—“You say you were at the opera, yet you didn’t mention someone had to step in for the tenor at the last minute? Put on the cuffs, sergeant.”—but I’ve seen that happen lots of times. More than once I’ve seen two people play the same role in a performance. One time the gold cast member got a cold, but the silver cast tenor had already gone home, so the gold guy sang for the first act, then the silver dude arrived at intermission and finished out the opera. Then at the last Seattle Ring (my second complete cycle, thank you very much!), Siegfried had an accident toward the end of rehearsals and completely screwed up his knee. I can’t quite recall the details, but I know a young Englishman who was a much better physical fit for the part flew in to take over. I don’t think he knew all three operas, so maybe the “original” Siegfried sang from the wings one night, and I certainly remember a lot of prompting. Very exciting! Who says opera’s dull?

Happy International Women's Day

Happy International Women’s Day! I can’t say that I did much to celebrate—I finished yet another ridiculous Left Behind novel (No. 3), took a walk down to the street for CD shopping and coffee, then spent a ridiculous number of hours feeding my CD collection into my laptop’s maw so I could compile a database of my CD collection.

I can’t really understand how I came to spend my Friday evening and Saturday moving CDs from the piece of flat-pack furniture that’s supposed to hold my collection (it’s sadly inadequate, but there’s no room for any more CD or bookshelves in the apartment) to the bedroom so that I could put them in and take them out of the laptop’s CD player—it certainly wasn’t how I’d planned to spend the first half of the weekend—but Friday evening while I was waiting for a tardy writer to file his copy, I was reading not.so.soft, when I noticed a link to “CD list.” Fascinating, and something I’d been thinking about doing for a while, without any progress, of course. Then I noticed that the list had been compiled with a bit of freeware, and before I had a chance to think about what I was getting myself into, I was opening and closing the CD bay door like a maniac. Without digging out the discs that are scattered around the house, manually adding the details for the CDs that CDDB didn’t recognize, or worrying about whatever is sitting on my desk at work, the total was 225. Fewer than I’d expected, but as I’ve said before, there were several years in the last decade where I bought—and listened to—hardly any music.

I’ve left a lot of CDs—and even more records—in the various places I’ve lived since leaving home. Until I arrived in Seattle 12 (yikes!) years ago, I was pretty flighty—a year in a city was a long time, and since I always traveled light, a lot got left behind. (Since I don’t drive, if I couldn’t carry it on the train—or on occasion the plane—I had to abandon it.) I was a pretty bratty abandoner of stuff, too. When I left London for the last time (I suppose I should say “the most recent”—you never know), I didn’t have a lot of notice (I was waiting for a visa to come through), so I just jammed a ton of stuff into the wardrobe of the room I’d been renting in a Stoke Newington council flat, and took off. I intended to return for it, but, well, I never have. (And I'm sure it's long gone by now.)

I’ve lost some CDs to thieves. When I lived in that Stoke Newington flat, we were robbed one Christmas when we were all off in North America for the holidays (it was sort of a scam that we had the flat, but that’s another story). I had a bunch of jazz CDs stolen, some of them unavailable in Britain. A few weeks later, I was in that jazz store near King’s Cross when I saw one of my records—but of course there was no way to prove it was mine, though I’m convinced mine was the only copy of that disc in Britain.

I also have a lot of music that’s not on CD—either stuff I downloaded from the Internet—quite legally, mind you, I’m a happy subscriber to Emusic.com—or albums from my days doing a jazz radio show in D.C. Once again, I left the vast majority of those records behind when I left Washington, but a friend once brought me a few of them when she drove out for a visit. Since I don’t have a turntable at the moment, I don’t ever listen to those reminders of another time and place.

But back to International Women’s Day. Back in D.C. the women’s radio collective I belonged to used to take over the station—WPFW—for IWD and provide 24 hours of music by women. Because I didn’t have a mainstream job, I usually took the graveyard shift. Every time I see or hear Tania Maria’s “3 a.m.” I remember playing that song more or less at 3 a.m. on International Women’s Day.

In Spain, IWD is (or was when I lived there) a time for marches and general noise-making. On one of those marches I realized that two of the women who also worked at the academy as me were a couple, not so much because they were marching—lots of hets were yelling “No te prives, gritalo! Mari Pili te quiero!”—but because they were wearing each other’s shoes.

New Store in the Neighborhood

We spent last weekend in Ballard doing a workshop, and at lunch and on Saturday evening, we found all manner of cool stuff to eat and do out there. Ballard seems to have morphed from the tragically unhip home of elderly Scandinavians to a happening hangout for hippy artists who like to eat good, cheap food. We didn’t have a lot of time for lunch, but we had excellent Thai and Indian food, and we managed to find an hour to browse among Turtle Press’ fine inventory—taking a good bit of it with us when we left.

One store that completely blew me away was Sonic Boom, an amazing record store, specializing in “Northwest and indie label records and CDs,” that I’d never even heard of before. I only had about five minutes to browse and buy, but I still managed to put my hands on two CDs I’d had no luck finding anywhere else (Remixes and Every Day, by Cinematic Orchestra—they’re not rare or anything, it’s just that none of the stores I went into seemed to stock them). Since it was such a brief visit, I blindly grabbed at a bunch of postcards and flyers on my way out the door, and I was astonished to learn from one of them that the mysterious new tenants of the space that until recently was the home of Chameleon Books in my very own neighborhood are … none other than Sonic Boom! They even have a bunch of “in-store” appearances lined up, but not with local schmoes—folks like Supergrass and Stephen Malkmus will be performing four blocks from my home!

I have a feeling I’ll be buying more CDs.

The Lawn War

This weekend we went to a workshop in Ballard, and on the street where we parked, lots of the houses had lawn signs—almost all arguing against a war on Iraq. But on one section there was a little mini-war. One neighbor had a whole heap of hand-made pro-liberation signs (hell, he'd probably be OK with "pro-war"), and two doors down, another resident had added to the prefab "No Iraq War" placards with a few signs of his own. A regular little United Nations it was.

As they say on Law & Order, almost, here are their signs:


Attack Iraq; War Soon; Anti-War? Saddam's Fools//Scammed Into Fear & War

Perhaps I Really Am a Religious Maniac

I’ve had a “thing” about the number 3 for as long as I can remember. It’s not an obsessive compulsion, I don’t think—when I lived in London, I used to ride the 73 bus every day; I wouldn’t turn down a drink at the Three Wheatsheafs—but I try to avoid multiples of three. Some examples of my mania: I never set my alarm clock for a time that is divisible by three; I never take three items of food (don’t be offering me three cookies), but I’m not crazy enough that I wouldn’t eat a meal that had three different food items on it (I don’t insist on meat and one veg), nor do I count the food after it’s on the plate (so no green bean roll call). Also, I don't insist on a change if a hotel puts me in Room 303, and weirdly enough I always seem to be put in "3" rooms.

Still, it is a bit peculiar, and more peculiar still is that I have no idea why I do this. Today’s Guardian—the paper from 03/03/03, that is—offers some insight.