Resolution 2347, adopted unanimously last Friday, reads in part, “directing unlawful attacks against sites and buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, or historic monuments may constitute … a war crime and that perpetrators of such attacks must be brought to justice.”
Tag: 03.25.17
Michael Chabon, Nostalgia, And A Hundred-Year-Old Jew
“My work has at times been criticized for being overly nostalgic, or too much about nostalgia. That is partly my fault, … but it is not nostalgia’s fault, if fault is to be found. Nostalgia is a valid, honorable, ancient human emotion, … the ache that arises from the consciousness of lost connection.”
My War With Language (Why Romanticize It?)
“Some writers swoon over language: ‘It’s my muse, my lover’, and so on. Well, it’s my enemy, and I seem to spend all my life arguing and battling with it. Also, sitting down at a desk aggravates my sacroiliac joint, so by the end of a week of solid writing I’m pretty much bed-bound or crawling around on all fours. What else? Writing is static, unsocial, and restricts opportunities for the uptake of vitamin D via dermal synthesis.”
Is This The Worst Piece Of Public Art In The UK?
“Clumsy, aggressive, cheap-looking (despite costing £100,000), it’s the very opposite of a raindrop. Like the worst public art, it’s also the very opposite of art — ungenerous, suggestive only of itself. Who to blame? The artists, Solas Creative, for sure. But also the arrogance of the bureaucrats who commissioned it.”
Ontario’s Stratford Festival Sold 500,000 Tickets This Year Setting The Stage For…
The surplus was $687,000 on revenue of $62.4 million, with attendance of 512,016, the festival reported at its annual general meeting on Saturday. According to a news release, passing the 500,000 mark is significant because it’s “where the festival begins to operate most effectively.”
Why Do We Want Good Musicians To Be Good People, Too?
Interesting question. But it’s not just musicians: “A product’s worth is often linked to the perceived ethics of those who produce it. When it comes to music, this means that artists are viewed as part and parcel with the work they create.”
An Opera Couple Offstage, But Only Sometimes On
Soprano Diana Damrau and bass-baritone Nicolas Testé, who travel with their two home-schooled boys, ages 4 and 6, have a match made at an oratorio. Damrau: “The aim is that we are together, that we can make family life and life as a couple possible in our profession. As traveling opera singer-soloists, it’s really hard to find the right partner. It took both of us a long time. You meet a lot of villains and also Don Giovannis and Giuliettas.”
Poetry Is Roaring As Festivals Sell Out And Book Sales Shoot Up
Well, at least in the UK: “Poetry book sales have gone up by more than 50% in four years, while there are now more than 30 annual events devoted to celebrating spoken and written verse.”
Theatre Isn’t Just Fun; It’s Work, And It’s Necessary
Harvey Fierstein: “I’ve heard that more tickets are sold on Broadway in a year than are sold to all the city’s major sports team events combined. Wouldn’t it be great if the last seven minutes of the news every night was dedicated to theater?”
Vladimir Lenin Loved Literature, And That Shaped The Russian Revolution
“In April of [1917], he broke with Russian social-democratic orthodoxy and, in a set of radical theses, called for a socialist revolution in Russia. A number of his own close comrades denounced him. In a sharp riposte, Lenin quoted Mephistopheles from Goethe’s masterwork: ‘Theory, my friend, is grey, but green is the eternal tree of life.'”