The Orchard... I weep

The Orchard performed at Opening Night for the 2008 Vail International Dance Festival.
Choreographed by Damian Woetzel.
Piano: Philip Glass
Cello: Wendy Sutter
Dancers: Carla Korbes, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Tyler Angle, New York City Ballet.
(p.s. the video is soft, I had to turn up the volume on my computer)

Television Crush: The Wonder Years

Wasn't everyone's? Trish and I have been watching Wonder Years episodes together and it is wonderful. This, in particular, is a scene that moves me in the entirety of such a young boy's earnestness. And love. For the one and only Winnie Cooper:

L’Age Mûr : Camille Claudel

I realized that there were few expressions of our female crushes, maybe because the awe is different, instead of just devotion there is sometimes more connection and self reflection with women. So I present Camille Claudel (in a fashion similar to Brian Doyle's proclamation on William Blake), but Camille who tragically most people in the world only know as Rodin's mistress. Is she my crush or my alter ego?

Perhaps it is because of her defiant gaze and upswept tossled hair that stood against art critics, lovers, and family who were baffled at the idea of a female sculptor. Because she was Rodin's equal and even her best work happened after their relationship ended. Because the famous art critic Octave Mirbeau wrote she was "A revolt against nature: a woman genius". Because of the insufferability of living in a time when it was a revolt for a woman to be a genius. But maybe Camille Claudel haunts me because of the honest arms outstretched to her former lover leaving her for a harpie. Because when she first released "L'Age Mur" or "The Age of Maturity" Rodin was horrified because the fingers of the man and the implorer touched and furiously demanded the separation of them. Because in the her work she achieved a level of expression that had rarely appeared in sculpture before and does not have to hide behind appealing model poses. Because for 30 years her family kept her in a mental institution even though the hospital said she didn't need to be there. Because it has been said she was unstable, and yet she still had an old wise soul beneath her as can be seen in her work "The Prayer". "Because in women courage is often mistaken for insanity." Because Camille Claudel haunts me as the internalized pain of insulted and abandoned passion. Because her stare is one of necessity.

the beauty and glory and sadness of the world in a single chord progression

it feels appropriate for me to mention at some point in time my continuous crush (or perhaps one-sided love affair) of many years with sergei rachmaninoff. i was a sophomore in highschool the first time i listened to his music - really listened, put my heart in and let it fill gaps and listened. i was working on a stack of chemistry homework, trying my hand at stoichiometry, when suddenly elements and notes combined in the tragically beautiful melodic lines of his third piano concerto. it was the first time i cried while listening to music. it was the first time i wanted to reach out and touch the composer and thank him for having exhisted.

it was rachmaninoff that took me through my freshman year at byu, when a kind classmate lent me a cd called RACHMANINOFF PLAYS RACHMANINOFF (titled, appropriately, in caps on my itunes playlist). it was rachmaninoff on cello that i listened to, weeping, on a meadow in the alps a year later, while the snow breezing from off the peaks caught the sunlight and radiated it in rainbows all around me. it was rachmaninoff that made me alive, that pulled me out, that made me weightless and wonder, like mary oliver,

"oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?"

i wish i could trumpet him across the planet to the few his presence has not yet graced, and proclaim that his is the power to capture the beauty and glory and sadness of the world in a single chord progression.

meanwhile, i'll just sound off on this lovely blog that he is my composer crush of the hour, year, and (quite possibly) eternity.



(excuse the home video taping - this is his sonata for cello and piano in g minor, op. 19 - andante played by an israeli cellist)

first off

i'm in love with the danish poet.

i expect (and hope) that many have seen this delight before (i know dearest thelma has), but it's worth another viewing.

it is especially on my mind and deserves my first post because just two days ago i finally finished the novel kristen lavransdatter mentioned in the short film, which i have grown up hearing was the best novel ever written by my incredibly intelligent mother, who reads it again every few years. the novel was gorgeous and sweeping, i have rarely (if ever) read something which so completely and subtly captures what it means to be human with all its imperfections. you can feel the presence of the characters, you know them and can recognize them as actual human beings, not shallow caricatures or stock stereotypes. from a female point of view, the novel doesn't skip over domestic and daily realities, like what it is like to feel a newborn baby's head pressed against your neck. i love how much of such seeming "banality" of daily living is embedded in the novel, since fiction often likes to aggrandize itself by overlooking or idealizing the very stuff that makes up the majority of our experiences as humans.

it is rare for me to sit down and read fiction, unless it has a heavy dose of ideas embedded within (hello, kundera) - but i was transfixed by sigrid undset's prose. on my edition in the back one critic states "undset's trilogy embodies more of life, seen understandingly and seriously, than any other novel since the brothers karamazov." i've rarely agreed with a critic more.

and of course i'm also transfixed by this charming film, who wouldn't fall in love with kasper?

one word: rumi.

thelms did me the delicious honor of sending this poem to me. of course, don't we all crushes on rumi?

I Have Five Things To Say

The wakened lover speaks directly to the beloved,
"You are the sky my spirit circles in,
the love inside of love, the resurrection-place.

Let this window be your ear.
I have lost consciousness many times
with longing for your listening silence,
and your life-quickening smile.

You give attention to the smallest matters,
my suspicious doubts, and to the greatest.

You know my coins are counterfeit,
but you accept them anyway,
my impudence and my pretending!

I have five things to say,
five fingers to give
into your grace.

First, when I was apart from you,

this world did not exist,
nor any other.
Second, whatever I was looking for

was always you.
Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

Fourth, my cornfield is burning!

Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia,

and this is for someone else.
Is there a difference?
Are these words or tears?
Is weeping speech?
What shall I do, my love?"

So he speaks, and everyone around
begins to cry with him, laughing crazily,
moaning in the spreading union
of lover and beloved.

This is the true religion. All others
are thrown-away bandages beside it.

This is the sema of slavery and mastery
dancing together. This is not-being.

Neither words, nor any natural fact
can express this.

I know these dancers.
Day and night I sing their songs
in this phenomenal cage.

My soul, don't try to answer now!
Find a friend, and hide.

But what can stay hidden?
Love's secret is always lifting its head
out from under the covers,
"Here I am!"

And then some.

And I'll even go a step further, if you don't mind. In Spirited Men, Doyle writes about a whole bunch of brilliant people he admires for various reasons, one of those people being William Blake. And upon being asked why he admires Mr. Blake so much, Doyle responds with this list:

"Because he told the truth, because he shoved an insolent leering soldier down the road and stuffed him through a doorway, because he saw angels and saints and talked openly about his visions. Because he published his work himself. Because he was a tender and difficult and solicitous friend. Because he took great pride in his engraving and worked endlessly on plates to make them perfect. Because when he knew he was going to die he lay in his bed singing softly. Because he smiled at the deft poetry of the message when his wife served him an empty plate at dinner to remind him that they were starving. Because he wasn't satisfied with extant mythology and so built a vast grand impenetrable one of his own. Because in all the things he wrote he never mentioned his weight, which was ample, or his height, which was not. Because he single-handedly rescued the ampersand from oblivion. Because in the few drawings of him he is alert, intent, attentive. Because even though he claimed much of his work was dictated whole to him by angels and prophets, he edited heavily. Because he and his wife used to sit naked in their garden and recite passages from Paradise Lost. Because when he was asked to recite his poems at parties he got up and removed his coat and sang his lyrics aloud while dancing around the room, which is why he was subsequently not invited to parties anymore. Because he taught his wife, a farmer's daughter, to read. Because he rose every morning and laid the fire and made tea for her. Bcause he was endlessly exuberant. Because once at a dinner party he suddenly said to the child next to him, 'May God make this world as beautiful to you as it has been to me,' a sentence she remembered the rest of her life. Because he held his opinions firmly. Because his wife said she never saw his hands still unless he was asleep. Because to walk with him 'was like walking on air and talking with the Prophet Isaiah,' said his young friend George Richmond. Because he took great care to leave no debt at his death. Because he wrote and then threw away 'six or seven epic poems as long as Homer, and twenty tragedies as long as Macbeth,' judging them not worthy of publication or engraving. Because in the ringing fury of his lines there is also great mercy. Because even when he was sick unto death he engraved a little business card for his old friend George Cumberland. Because he could not stop painting and died with his pencil in his hand. Because he bought a new pencil two days before he died. Because the very last thing he drew was his wife's face."

You see what I mean? So good.

I love him like I should,

that beautiful soul named Brian Doyle. And you should love him too. Love him for his incredibly long and listy sentences that lull and lift. Love him for his ability to write really well about subjects like love and grace and family. Love him because he is an honest man who has probably made mistakes and who works hard and loves his wife and kids and who once said that 'the tragedy of death is the loss of story' and at least a few other things really worth hearing and reading and thinking over for yourself.

Here, a few lines from his introduction to Spirited Men: Story, Soul, & Substance:

"Look: We are all, male and female alike, absorbed by what we might be at our best. We are all chasing after the mysterious nutritious song of the Creator. We are all riveted by art, by how human beings mill their unique and idiosyncratic talents into stories and songs and paintings and dances and sculptures and photographs and plays and films and moments that break your heart, make you howl with laughter, make you sense, for a brief and stunning moment, how brave we are, how foolish, how brief, how holy."

Willkommen!

To the newest minted Transpacificist, Julianne Rose!

instrument crush: cello

had my middle school strings teacher not been a total freak, i probably would have gone with cello over the oboe. the cello--i mean, it can really do no wrong. like here, dear mstislav rostropovich (we seem to be on a mother russia kick with this and thelms' post!) starting at 4:00. this song just makes me weep with joy and sadness. it is so beautiful.

Oh the Cold War... Soviet Fashion Show

Sometimes I honestly miss the Cold War... maybe its because there is a part of me that loves stereotypes, and this Wendy's commercial brings the house down. Many thanks to Jooj for brightening my day with this

illustrator crush

i think that it's fair to say that for most of us quentin blake was numero uno in our childhood (and adulthood) hearts. i mean, look at these:

the dear, the darling Esio Trot

everything good in the world summed up here:

hero:

Oh the tragedy of WWI

My writer crush big time, the WWI poet Wilfred Owen. Can't remember when it first all happened, sometime in high school but grew massively when I took the WWI literature class at BYU. Part of my intense hatred for WWI comes a lot from the fact that it killed this man.

The Parable of the Young Man and the Old

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned, both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake, and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets the trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

a poem, a deep rooted crush

I can't help but be so in love with a man who would find a way to remember, to breathe deep and to remember.

Poem

Every morning I forget how it is.
I watch smoke mount
In great strides above the city.
I belong to no one.

Then, I remember my shoes,
How I have to put them on,
How bending over to tie them up
I will look into the earth.

-Charles Simic

Artist/Writer/Thinker/Mover/Shaker/Doer Crushes

September FIRST!!!! How did this happen, dear people? Anyway, it is time to start our month long celebration of all the artists who we have secret or well-proclaimed crushes on. So get up on this mountain of a blog and spin around shouting "I'm in love, I'm in love and I don't care who knows it!"

the deepness of a word

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AratTMGrHaQ

I can't embed this video, but it's Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah. There is something about that word that fits so perfectly with so many things I want to say. Things that are happy but a little sad, or sad but a little happy. The word itself is more dynamic than I sometimes give it credit for, and I think this version does an excellent job of dramatizing the richness of one word.