Classical 'CD' published online

It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last: a group of classical musicians have released an opera by Handel exclusively online.

The website on which it is released licenses its music to the public under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike stipulation which is the same as that of the blog you’re reading right now.

In other words, you can listen to a lo-fi version of the music for free through internet streaming, or pay to download a high-quality copy. You can buy a CD which will be made on demand when you order.

However, as liberating as this is for the music, I do have reservations about the quality of the product. It’s all very well to evangelise increased coverage for classical music, but its audience will still be very much the same: classical music lovers.

Given this, a couple of things need to be thought about. First: very few classical lovers currently have the ability to pipe a digital music file to their audiophile hifi equipment (or even their stereo). There are external ways to do it, but until they become standardised in computers and audiophile amps, this platform won’t flourish as much as it could.

Second: CD booklets matter to classical lovers. They want to know about the historical, societal and musical contexts of what they are listening to. They want information on the works, composers, performers and conductors. They want, in some cases, information about the instruments used and the recording venues and dates. And it has to be detailed. In the case of an opera, context alone won’t do; neither will just a libretto.

So far, what I’m seeing is that the digital equivalent of a good classical CD booklet is nowhere to be seen. Hyperion Records has its sleevenotes online, and it has a listening room where I can preview new releases before buying a CD to be played in my hifi. Until the improvements I’ve discussed above appear, this is what I’ll remain happiest with.

tags: [classical music] [creative commons] [opera] [hifi] [audio]

Streets of coffee

We’re entering those wonderful mid-spring evenings which are cool and lush, and get pleasantly chilly a little later with the fading of the sun. That is the time to find the coffeepot, and enjoy little sips of a very hot beverage along with the breeze from a cool window.

And in the fading light, New Yorkers can now be forgiven for thinking that that thing... really is... a cup of coffee in the road...?!

tags: [coffee] [spring]

The Writer

From the suuuuperb blog nyclondon comes this set of photos of Neri’s table and chair on Hampstead Heath. I would post one of the nyclondon photos you’ll see there, but I haven’t the heart.

tags: [london] [photography] [writing] [sculpture] [art]

They're doing it

...already in my garden. Or rather, over the fence. Standing outside a few minutes ago, I heard a loud leathery flapping sound from a tree and at first thought 2 birds were fighting. But no.

I was a shameless voyeur as two pigeons, perching on branches close to each other, flew off and towards each other, beating against each other (heh, pardon the pun) and perching again. This went on for a couple of minutes until the female — shameless hussy that she was — took up a position on a branch in full view of every house in the neighbourhood. I’d like to be able to say that she tried to defend her virginity. But this is the start of the breeding season, so...

Birds must have really shit sex-lives, however, as it was all over in 15 seconds. The female flew onto the school roof, and the male stayed in the tree and went “coo-COOO-coo, coo coo” over and over. Clearly pleased.

Nicked from things magazine, a true site for Londoners: tubemap.org. Pick a tube station and go forth into the surrounding streets, taking photos. Jonathan, Scott and Owen in particular, this is your chance. And Jay, if you get enough time away from the cookies.

This month is also US National Poetry Month, and so as well as reading some great new work (please do check out the title-poem of Seamus Heaney’s new collection, and no he isn’t American but he’s good!) glory with Gothamist over Whitman. And listen to Garrison Keillor. Daily.

tags: [sex] [birds] [london underground] [photography] [poetry]

Spring

spring (n.)
7. A source, origin, or beginning.
8. b. A time of growth and renewal.
— Answers.com Dictionary

A day of bright sun and gentle melancholy today as I slowly close a long weekend in which Jonathan has been visiting. As usual, a mix of homeliness and activity, happiness created and shared, enduring bonds. And at his departure, the knowledge that more friends need to be caught up with, more distances need to be travelled, and reached across with the heart... so it feels like a true new year. A feeling, not yet familiarly comfortable, of newness all around. Truly spring.

tags: [spring]

Black-and-white

It was the talk of New York. The elevator operators, the cab drivers, the doormen, as soon as they saw you with a mask or headdress, they said, “Going to Truman’s ball, huh?” New York had that funny small-town feel to it; they were all excited that you were going to the ball. That part was fun. It was like the Super Bowl.
—Herb Caen, on Truman Capote’s black-and-white ball, New York, 1966

A page of reminiscences about Caopte’s black-and-white ball. There were 540 guests accommodated in the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel. $13,000 was paid by Capote, who at the time could probably easily absorb the cost of 400 bottles of vintage Taittinger. Celebrities and lesser-known writers moved through the grand rooms; later the usual arguments rose and fell in ragged waves, with Caopte, by all accounts, bobbing delightedly in the centre of it all.

tags: [capote] [new york] [masked ball] [black and white]

Capote

A novelist’s life can be lonely: consumed by the responsibility to fix plot, character and atmosphere on the page and make them real, the writer must work long hours and socialise rarely. As such, writers often make uncharismatic impressions, and their works are remembered more than their personalities.

CAPOTE the film invites you to imagine a time when writers achieved the kind of fame and notoriety that is today associated with pop culture personalities. Americans read more in those days than they do now, and books mattered. More importantly, Truman was a natural born self-promoter who paved the way for the cult of celebrity that is omnipresent today. His fame cut across all categories, from high to low culture, from literary seriousness to high society frivolity.
—promotional materials, Capote

Not so for Truman Capote. This film, directed by Bennett Miller, focuses not on his pen or his paper — although they are included — but on his face, his manner, the tilt of his head. The actor who plays him, Philip Seymour Hoffman, allows the audience to focus deeper. His portrayal bores into Capote’s insecurity and coldness as he takes two murderers as the subject of a non-fiction novel which — he assumes — will end in their deaths.

Truman Capote: I couldn’t have done anything to save them.
Nelle Harper Lee: Maybe not, Truman. But the truth is, you didn’t want to.
—Capote, 2005

His predation of the two murderers behind the Clutter murders of 1959 is masterfully dissected here, teased out into strands of determination, offhandedness, obsession, and the sardonic grotesqueries which result after a reading (which he gave while his befriended murderers were still alive and oblivious to the book’s title).

But Hoffman is skillful enough never to let his character slide into purely shallow opportunism. The film’s focus and characterisation are sparse enough to push Capote’s intentions into view for close examination, and what emerges is a very personal obsession with the killers. The writer who at first assumed — and then hoped — that they would die finds himself torn between his cold desire to master the non-fiction novel, and his hope that they might live.

I found myself grimacing with distaste and staring with arrested disbelief at Hoffman’s superb realisation of Capote, but a freakshow or a one-actor show this film is not. As Jonathan said to me by text the other week: “Capote. Go see it. And that’s an order.”

tags: [film] [cinema] [capote]

The little bastards!

Not the lovely clams sitting like divine little marine dumplings on top of the chowder above, of course. Oh no. They look lovely, as Gothamist points out, and aren’t in the least illegitimate.

However, over the past few weeks, peripathetic’s blogger has had at first a set of bites, next an unsightly and infuriating rash, which he suspects were caused by a few biting insects. Which somehow found their way to his skin and proceeded to raise their predatory (and illegitimate) spawn therein.

Of course, it could all have been caused by stress, or at least inflamed by it. But another post on Gothamist has caught your writer’s eye because of this: bedbugs. It turns out that students at Columbia University are being bitten by blister-inducing bloody little bed-infesting bastards, AKA Cimex lectularius, which feed on the blood and can grow to half a centimetre in length.

Of course, an animal that size doesn’t just “feed”. It has to punch its disgusting head violently through several layers of skin and surface tissue, bathe its vile face in blood — your blood — and then suck. A lot.

Oh, and they shit on your sheets afterwards. All over your sheets.

tags: [food] [seafood] [clam chowder] [parasites] [bed bugs]

Golden Gate Suicides — misrepresentation?

During 2004, a guy asked for, and got, permission from the Golden Gate Bridge authorities in San Franscisco to set up cameras which would film the bridge for the whole year.

During daylight hours, that’s whaty happened. Every single movement of the sun along the brick-red girders was recorded; every gradation of shadow and cloud stored away, the shades of the sky over the structure preserved for posterity.

As well as the people jumping off the bridge to their deaths.

Steel says his goal is to “allow us to see into the most impenetrable corners of the human mind and challenge us to think and talk about suicide in profoundly different ways.”

“Are we angry? Absolutely,” said bridge district spokeswoman Mary Currie.

“A guy this duplicitous — there must be a way to yank that stuff away from him,” said Marin County Supervisor Hal Brown, a member of the bridge district’s board. “It’s just a horrible thing to be taking pictures of.”

Interviewed for the linked article, the guy who set up the cameras has now revealed that that is really why he was filming — not to make a snuff movie but to raise troubling and very real questions about the human spirit that are framed by the bridge itself.

After all, give a city’s population something big and universally accessible to jump off, and those who want to kill themselves will use it, breaking their bones and liquefying their internal organs when they hit the water. In 2004 alone, 19 people actually jumped, and more carried out ‘cries for help’.

So how is this project of his unrepresentative of the reality of that bridge? Sure, when dealing with human death by suicide all the precautions necessary when interviewing people and editing a film should be followed. But aside from its history and appearance, the bridge is well–known for suicide. Let the guy make the film. And let him do it well.

tags: [golden gate] [architecture] [suicide]

West 16th Street

w16 street
Originally uploaded by mmonk.

Wow. A snowstorm in the NE USA, and this is New York City. Gorgeous.

3d optical illusions

And now for the reality...

More like this amazing installation / headfuck / here. Via the excellent things magazine.

tags: [optical illusion] [3d] [perspective]

The Prophet of Doom

There aren’t quite any fatwas yet, but if there were, the above image could get the cartoonist killed. As it is, the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten has got its home country into trouble with muslim countries because it printed cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. He isn’t ever meant to be depicted visually because apparently, to do so would distract from the greatness of Allah.

It started when the paper printed the offending cartoons, and a cacophony of protest washed northwards from muslim countries and crackled over the country lanes of Jutland. The paper has had its second bomb threat in as many days.

Ambassadors from offended countries issued statements of reproach through diplomatic channels, as other European papers showed their solidarity on freedom of expression issues — by reprinting the cartoons themselves.

And then, with a sick sense of inevitability, the first diplomatic rebuke arrived from none other than Norway! Apparently Norway “understands the anger and dismay” (my italics) felt by the aggrieved states, and feels that for a Norwegian paper to reprint the cartoons is “not positive for the dialogue between different cultures and people of different religions”.

Germany’s Der Spiegel said:

But what should one call such a statement? Preventative capitulation? Suicide out of fear of death? A contribution to a multicultural life in which one side acts insulted and the other side promptly takes distance from itself? Or perhaps simply: The interplay of extortion and opportunism.

Today, at least outside of Norway, there is precious little solidarity with Jyllands Posten. The conservative daily Die Welt was the only German paper to show enough courage to reprint the caricatures. In Paris, France Soir stepped up to the occasion.

And what happened then at France Soir? Hmm. Let’s see:

Under the headline “Yes, we have the right to caricature God”, France Soir covered its front with Buddha, the Christian and Jewish deities and the Prophet all sitting on a cloud. The Christian God says: “Don’t complain Muhammad, all of us have been caricatured.”

Shortly after the paper appeared, however, its managing editor, Jacques Lefranc, was sacked. Raymond Lakah, the paper’s owner, issued a public apology: “We express our regrets to the Muslim community and all people who were shocked by the publication” of the cartoons, he said.

The Danish paper has now also been forced to apologise. Its editor has done so reluctantly, conceding that the forces of self-righteous indignation have won again, and predicting that nobody in Denmark will draw a cartoon of Mohammed for the next 10 years or more.

Whatever the truth of that augury, here is a page which has an article on the scandal and full-size reproductions of the cartoons. There’s a blog, called ‘Draw Mohammed Week’. MetaFilter discussion. Latest updates on this Wikipedia timeline. And finally, I’ll also support France Soir as it was before its editor was sacked, for writing this:

It is necessary to crush once again the infamous thing, as Voltaire liked to say. This religious intolerance that accepts no mockery, no satire, no ridicule. We citizens of secular and democratic societies are summoned to condemn a dozen caricatures judged offensive to Islam. Summoned by who? By the Muslim Brotherhood, by Syria, the Islamic Jihad, the interior ministers of Arab countries, the Islamic Conferences — all paragons of tolerance, humanism and democracy.

So, we must apologise to them because the freedom of expression they refuse, day after day, to each of their citizens, faithful or militant, is exercised in a society that is not subject to their iron rule. It’s the world upside down. No, we will never apologise for being free to speak, to think and to believe.

Because these self-proclaimed doctors of law have made this a point of principle, we have to be firm. They can claim whatever they like but we have the right to caricature Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha, Yahve and all forms of theism. It’s called freedom of expression in a secular country ...

For centuries the Catholic church was little better than this fanaticism. But the French Revolution solved that, rendering to God that which came from him and to Caesar what was due to him.

Moving on, lest I explode: lovely panoramas of New York, via Gothamist. If you live in the UK and are interested in the historical mapping of your surname, make with the clicking. The perils and pleasures of literary translation. (I once had some experience of this, and my god, it was fun. And infuriating.)

tags: [muhammad] [mohammed] [prophet] [religion] [extremism] [fanaticism] [atheism] [cartoons] [comedy] [denmark] [europe] [freedom of expression] [new york] [surnames] [translation] [literature]

Pipe organ building...?!

Here’s a very strange photo. Sorry I can’t provide a larger shot, but my photo links to the photo page, which in turn links to a very large full-size original — of a building, somewhere in Japan, whose façade seems to have been designed to mimic an organ!

A bit of googling gets you nowhere, because if you search for “pipe organ building” you’ll get pages about the building and construction of the musical instruments themselves. If anyone happens upon this post and has any knowledge, please let me know via comments, or my username at gmail dot com. Thanks...

tags: [pipe organ] [classical music] [architecture] [design] [japan]

Historical miscellany

Dropping by the excellent Things Magazine tonight, I’ve found one of the best repositories of historical maps of cities there could possibly be online. And of course, when I visited the London page, and another site linked from it, I started to think yet again about London. — Although not before I’d also looked at another recommendation which seems to be mostly maps of Swiss towns and cities.

Handy, then, that I clicked into Wikipedia’s page about London’s streams and rivers (now all fascinatingly hidden underground) — this is the real value of a site like Wikipedia. Many people call for its destruction but I can’t think of another way to get a comprehensive list and helpful links about such a subject on a single page. Can you?

To further business. We don’t often think too much about the now fragmentary and evanescent ‘street history’ of London. Mostly we think of the great fire or the menace of the Spanish Armada, but not how Moorgate got its name, or whether the new, shining walls of the corporations can measure up to those of the Romans. Nor do they think of the hidden delights like Bunhill cemetery, which I encountered before a job interview near Old Street, and in which William Blake is buried.

Which is all very strange, because in London, the modern world and the open wells of living history coexist on the streets. So next time you wander your city, do it with your eyes open.

tags: [london] [cemeteries] [romans] [maps] [history]

Cold... and snow on the wind...?

It’s a cold night, and I have been dreaming of London, and walks along Bankside past the New Globe, to get to Tate Modern. Where they will have a new gallery space this December, called Poetry and Dream. It sounds enchanting. And the above painting will be shown there.

Tate Modern in winter was dark and spacious — in winter it seemed even more spacious than it did in summer. Perhaps it was the neutral light and commanding works inside standing monolithic against the ever-changing city outside. Anyway, I only really posted this because I love this painting and it suits the night.

tags: [twombly] [winter] [cold] [london] [art]

Uncledom

I just called a friend of mine and the first thing I heard when he answered was not his voice, but the half-babyish, half-boyish attempts at speaking of his nephew.

Of course, we can never remember that far back in our lives, but how wonderful it must have been to realise, in glimpses, that our parents’ noises meant something. That we could make those noises. And how adventurous and exciting to start to make them ourselves.

My niece’s first properish word (or that I heard, at least) apart from ‘mamamamamamam’ was ‘shit’. But sort of like ɕɪʔ rather than ʃɪt. The wonders of a characterful mother! ;o)

tags: [language] [swearing] [phonetics] [speaking]

New Year musings

Well, another year... we’re in the strange and wonderful interregnum between the start of 2006 and the end of Christmas. I know that when the new year glow dies down for many, they assume that’s it — the end of the holidays; time to stow presents and cards away into the usual places of everyday life; the candles don’t get lit again; perhaps the tree even gets put away early.

All of which is anathema to me. Although religion has nothing to do with it as far as I’m concerned, I still like to think I keep Christmas in the way it should be kept: a reservation of time shared with family and friends, an appreciation of the childlike magic inherent in the season as winter really starts in earnest and all the contrasts between humanity and shivering nature are on display.

I love the decorations — around this house are sprigs of holly, some gathered from our tree in the garden, some from elsewhere, and to me it brings an exciting, sharp reminder of coldness and pagan ceremonies into a warm, cosy house. The tree contains some sparkling glass decorations and painted eggshells which I remember marvelling at when I was 5 or so.

For at least a few minutes each Christmas — possibly more — I go back to being 5. This is not about holding back the return of the everyday for a little while longer; every Christmas, I simply don’t feel the return of the everyday until sometime mid-January, even when I’m back at work.

For now, this house is warm, a cold sun shines on the ice-filmed twigs in the garden, and pies and cakes bulge with dark, spicy fruits laden with fiery alcohol. Millions of children still look at their empty stocking in wonder because Santa actually touched it... why waste that? Happy New Year, everybody. :o)

tags: [christmas] [new year] [relaxation]

Absences

This article says that prolonged silences on blogs are usually the result of bloggers getting disillusioned with the process, or lazy, or affecting a writerly repose. That’s not the reason for the latest silence here — and I apologise for it — which has instead been caused by a mixture of work, work, tiredness, more work, The Lord of the Rings DVD set, and most recently a week without a wireless router.

However, all of that is now solved. Today I was pointed towards an excellent blog about cooked breakfasts to be had in London, and reminded, with the arrival of a Christmas card from Jonathan, that I haven’t followed through with my cunning plan of actually writing cards to people this year and including little haiku in them. Oh well. *blush*

tags: [london] [breakfast] [food]

Ice wine

If you are at all excited by food and wine, the approach of Christmas, the excitement of shopping for increasingly special food and drink as this month progresses, you need to read this article in today’s Observer Magazine, in which Nigel Slater is educated by Tim Atkin:

As I bring in the long, thin mincemeat tart straight from the oven, Mr Atkin produces a glass of Riesling from the most elegant bottle I have ever seen, long and slim like a Giacometti sculpture. The contents are the colour of purest acacia honey. This is Tim's ‘navel’ wine and I see precisely what he means, though he declines my suggestion of a hands-on demonstration. He passes me a glass of garnet-red Port.

We take a mouthful of hot mince pie, followed swiftly by another of the chilled Riesling ice wine. ‘Look at the legs on that,’ says Tim, pointing out the rather beautiful pattern of streaks and dribbles trickling slowly down the sides of the glass. ‘The Germans call them “Cathedral windows”, the French call them “legs”.’ Their presence is a big clue as to the viscosity and richness of the wine. I’m listening, but it is difficult when you are eating a mouthful of food and wine that is so utterly, gloriously sublime. Soft, honeyed, sweet, hot, icy, intensely fruity and buttery — a mouthful that tastes like all your Christmases have come at once.

The wine, by the way, is this and is buyable here. You will have to make your own mincemeat and apple tart. And it will be a pleasure. Trust me.

tags: [food] [wine] [ice] [christmas] [pleasure]

Of waking from dreams

A few nights ago, I went to bed feeling not exactly anxious about the morrow, but aware that I would have to uncurl myself from my warm cocoon at an obscene hour and drag myself, defenceless and half-asleep, into an alien world. The following morning, I woke of my own accord a few minutes before the sterile bleep of the alarm.

For all of you who have done the same, here’s why. Absolutely fascinating.

When the volunteers knew they would be woken at six, levels of the central stress hormone adrenocorticotropin began rising around 4:30 a.m. But subjects expecting to wake at nine and rudely awakened at six experienced no such hormonal surge. Our bodies, in other words, note the time we hope to begin our day and gradually prepare us for consciousness…

The next question to be answered is: how is it that we are able to start the process of waking ourselves up, about an hour before a set time, while we are unconscious?

tags: [sleep] [waking] [hormones] [science]