“Depressive disorders may have a beneficial mechanism behind them; dreams may be meaningful after all; and hysteria – now called conversion disorders, and by which they mean the physical expression of emotional trauma – may actually exist. This may not totally redeem Freud from his sex-obsessed cokehead crackpot reputation, but this is his territory.”
Tag: 04.05.10
Stanley Kubrick, Chess Hotshot
“I told him I had a date with a chess hustler in Washington Square Park to play for money. Kubrick wanted the name. ‘Fred Duval’ I said. … ‘Duval is a patzer,’ is what he said. Unless you have been around chess players you cannot imagine what an insult this is.”
A Machine To Break In Your Fiddle So You Won’t Have To
String players agree that a new violin or cello doesn’t achieve its full sound potential until it’s been played and played and played some more. Can’t wait that long? “The ToneRite slips over the strings of an idle instrument and begins emitting subsonic noise that is intended to mimic the physics of actual music making. The result, the maker claims, is a greatly accelerated breaking-in period.”
Wood, The Sine Qua Non Of Civilization
“Wood, as fuel and building material, is the unsung hero of the technological developments that brought humanity from a bone-and-stone culture to the Industrial Revolution.”
When Bad Art Meets Worse Politics: The World’s Worst Public Statuary
“This week, Senegal officially unveiled the African Renaissance Monument, a 160-foot statue of a man, woman, and child emerging from a volcano,” depicted in a style that would look right at home in the 1960s Soviet Union or North Korea. “What follows are 10 more examples of why bad art and bad politics are a dangerous combination.”
‘Tis The Season Of Zelda
With a Hollywood film and an Off-Broadway musical in preparation, it seems that Mrs. Fitzgerald suits the zeitgeist. Says the star of the musical, “She got the spotlight on her and had nothing to deliver, like so many young girls today who get arrested for being drunk and crashing up their cars. I think she probably would’ve been famous anyway, without Scott, just for being outrageous.”
Charleston Musicians: Shutdown Is A Labor Violation
“Players Association spokesman Ryan Leveille said musicians, under the auspices of the American Federation of Musicians Local 502, are in the process of filing a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board” over the Charleston Symphony Orchestra’s suspension of operations.
Director Robert Wilson Wins $100K Jerome Robbins Award
“Wilson (‘Einstein on the Beach,’ ‘The Black Rider’) — also a choreographer, designer and visual artist — was a leading figure in the downtown New York arts scene in the 1970s and has gone on to become a prominent creative on the international theater landscape.”
Books On Paper, In Pictures
Images of libraries and reading by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa et al in a Magnum Photos slideshow.
Countering The Pessimism That Quashes Creativity
Michael Kaiser: “It seems that the leadership–in many cases people like me who have been in the field for twenty years or more–has gotten tired, conservative and frightened. We have become so scared that we won’t balance our budgets that we forget that taking risk is a central requisite for arts making.”