is 'wickedfat' already taken?

dear wendy

2006-04-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

playlist: barr, fennessz, coco rosie, the movie "dear wendy"

post::::

I feel as though it will be harder to blog about the history portion of our lectures as they have yet to complete. But I can say there is a sordid history I knew nothing about concerning Austria and Germany. I could shallowly pick a favorite "character", but I won't. Although, Frederick the Great holds a special place in my heart.

I've been wondering about a fact Scott told us on Wednesday: that there were 3000+ providences (i guess you could call them) in the Holy Roman Empire. How did these exist? Surely there were discrepancies between each providence as to where their borders were? I suppose it was to confusing for a slightly more modern culture as their numbers were reduced to 39. Being somewhat ignorant to geography and politics and history in general, I can't think of anything "modern" that would compare to the HRE and its sheer number of divisions. What does this say to us? If there are other places that exist now like the HRE did then, I guess this says that I don't know what I'm talking about. But if there isn't a situation like that today, I can assume that it says that maybe the fewer different opinions you have to deal with and take into consideration, the better. I know the United States of America has 50 states (providences, if you will) but we're still considered one country. Why can't each state be it's own country? Confusion. Impractical. But the HRE was around for a long time. What did they do right?

I have no handle on politics and history.

I learned about a few artists I had never heard of before during Sarah's lecture. Klee was one of my favorites. The whole Blauer Reitter movement was fascinating. The love of primitivism and the look to children for this love I found fascinating. Although, every time the idea of the "primitive" is brought up, I cringe. The implication is that whomever is calling something primitive feels as though they are more modern (and therefore superior). And this yearning for a "simpler" way of living/creating/etc. leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. This does not affect my opinion of the artwork, as I found I enjoyed it a lot. But you can't ignore the message.

ps....still having trouble making connectiions. they aren't there for me.

squid/whale

2006-04-02T18:24:00.000-07:00

playlist: test icicles, rattlesnakes, vaqueros

Art art art. I have a very hard timing talking about art. This was proven, yet again, on Monday. Self-analysis aside, I found the Picasso pieces spoke to me the most. The untraditional use of space (making the girls that were lying down look standing up, most notably) is one of the few things I will probably ever understand. This reminds me of certain kinds of music I enjoy. Musicians like Lucky Dragons for instance break down song structure, sometimes making climaxes of songs in the beginning, letting the rest of the song defuse into silence, sometimes having no particular structure at all, etc. So you think you’re listening to a normally-structured song until, by the end of it, you realize that this is not the case.

The Dreyfus Affair: honestly it took me discussion in class on Wednesday to realize how and why people would think this was the beginning of the Holocaust (in some respects). Call me stupid. I can definitely relate to being blamed for something and treated harshly (respectively, I was never sent to a prison island or anything) simply because I was an odd duck of sorts. I hesitate to go into details because it’s certainly not something that happened exclusively to me. I’m sure more people than you’d realize have has their own small-scale Dreyfus Affairs. It’s very easy for a group of like-minded people to blame someone that does not share that same like-mind.

Unfortunately, I found it particularly difficult to talk about these past two classes. I’m having a hard time finding the connections between the art and politics of this particular era. It’s probably just me, and this is definitely something I will be bringing up to Steve, Scott, or Sarah, but I don’t see it.

indiana wants me

2006-03-23T20:23:00.000-08:00

playlist: dirty projectors, hidden cameras, and david sedaris audiobooks and "live at carnegie hall"

After hearing a little bit of Debussy's opera, and understanding that he was influenced very much by Wagner, and then hearing Wagner...I had a hard time believing Wagner inspired Debussy at all. The music sounded nothing alike. Granted we only heard a little bit of Debussy's opera, I understand that it hangs without any true tonal melody. This is much unlike Wagner. But thankfully, Steve gave us a quick crash course on the concepts that Debussy did borrow from Wagner. Truthfully, I have nothing else to add to that. That was merely an observation.

We also discussed doing away with the term "classical music", or rather, what its relevance was . I feel it's a very constraining term like any genre. And I think you can directly attribute the death of classical music to its title. When something is considered classical, we can assume that it is no longer relevant because it has asserted it's status as classical. And giving it such a status seems to make people feel as though it's unnecessary to try to do anything more with it. It's become so classic that it has, in fact, killed itself. And while we were discussing this in class, the death of the orchestra and operas etc. I was reminded of the band the Dirty Projectors and an album they put out called "Slaves' Graves and Ballads". They recorded half of it with the Orchestral Society for the Preservation of the Orchestra. The album itself reminded me of Italian opera simply because of the delivery of the lead singer's (Dave Longstreth) voice. It soars, albeit somewhat out of key, over the orchestral music. That whole half of the album (the "Slaves' Graves" portion) is very dramatic. I thought of this at first as a sign of hope. But now I think of it as more of a dying example on such a small scale. Listening to this album is like trying to resuscitate someone's heart with a defribulator that hasn't been beating for hours, or like going to a friend's house to see an old, captive endangered species no one really cares about. It's a good recent example of "classical" music, but it's not going to help anything. She's gone, world. It's time to say your "goodbye"s and just let go.

We also touched on the anti-semetic undertones of Wagner's "Meistersinger". How would one present this opera today? Should you change the anti-semetic parts? Should you keep it the same with a disclaimer? My thoughts were that you should show it as is, which is somewhat anti-Barthesian of me. To change the anti-semetic parts simply because you feel they may offend someone is a bit of a slap in the face to their intelligence. How can people not see that this opera has it's entertaining qualities and realize that, if it is anti-semetic, there was obviously a context within which it was written, and that these undertones do not represent the feelings of those involved putting it on today? Maybe I give people too much credit. Because anti-semitism is obviously not a light matter, but I feel as though people would know that this was written at a time when anti-semitism was common.

k for ken's b for blog

2006-03-19T16:46:00.000-08:00

playlist: the saddest song by cat power (her cover of "I found a Reason" by Velvet Underground)

We didn't get too much time to talk about Puccini's "La Boheme", so I don't have much to say about it unfortunately. I learned that "RENT" was adapted from it, and quite honestly, I can say that that ruined "RENT" for me. Watching the parts of "La Boheme" that we watched, and knowing that "RENT" came from it, all I could see was how easy it would have been to adapt.

But I digress,

The famous Puccini voice thing. I was unclear as to whether or not this was a revolutionary thing. But I can say this: it certainly stressed the importance of a singer's voice, the quality and sheer volume thereof. I can contrast the music of Puccini against someone like Ives or Scriabin because the focus was not on the experimentation and narration of the music, rather the melody which, though played by instruments, is also sung. Not that when I say "music", i am referring to the notes played by the instruments and not what is sung but am fully aware that singers sing music. making sense, am I?

This reminds me of a trend that seemed to infiltrate pop music. I guess it's always been this way, but the composer of the song being sung by pop musicians is back-burnered by the talent of the voice singing it. This is not a bad thing. I find myself enjoying versions of songs not performed by the original composers more so than the originals. Take my current playlist: Chan Marshall (Cat Power) covers a Velvet Underground song. She must have wrote the melody that she sings because there is hardly any in the original. The Velvet Underground wasn't about writing pop songs, they were about experimenting with the format of song writing and making people see beauty where you wouldn't think you could find any. Chan Marshall's version of their song is quite the opposite. She has a nice voice and sings a heart-breaking melody. Though this particular song (or any she has done really) didn't rocket her into pop stardom, I still like it more than the original because it's prettier. Her interpretation, I guess, brought the beauty Velvet Underground was trying to get you to see out of the atonal/noisey veil they draped it in. Though Puccini wasn't doing the exact same thing, he had an ear for tonality and melody that would be hard to rival. He brought beautiful pieces of music into perhaps a more beautiful state by stressing the importance of the singer's voice that sang the song. The voices soar over the music. They break through the clouds. Does this make sense?

I don't know, lately I've been having a hard time bringing my points "home". this is going to have to do unfortunately because I feel as though the more I try to explain myself, the more confused I make myself and anyone else reading this.

end of a nightmare

2006-03-05T21:33:00.000-08:00

current playlist: sparklehorse, animal collective, barr, other things...

i know this is late, but i've had a hard time digesting all of class. i realized a few things though. i've taken them in, absorbed the knowledge, and can now process it, like a nice, smart, clean waste product.

first thing is i know nothing about art. i find this somewhat perplexing, but at the same time not. i thought i might be more inclined toward the visual arts, but also understood that there was a world to paintings i had never seen and would probably not understand. that being said, i received a headache in exchange for contemplating the slides Sarah showed us in class. i could appreciate and understand everything that was said about Van Gogh, Monet, and Fry's essay, but i was left speechless when asked to answer anything about them for/by myself. but i was able to draw a parallel between Van Gogh's "offensive" painting of a church (all off kilter and askew) and something modern. Remember the painting of the Virgin Mary where the artist used some sort of feces to paint her skin? the criticism for Van Gogh was that his church didn't look like what a church should look like. it was offensive to God. The modern artist (whose name I know not) was criticized for making the Virgin Mary look African and out of dung.

and now onto history...i didn't understand why the chapter we read was called "The End of a Dream" (Scott, you really are looking at it with different eyes than mine). Though I see the connection now. the decision to become an imperial-esque country went against everything America was founded on. We were not supposed to be like the British. And it's very eerie how similar the political climate is now to how it was back then. maybe there's only so much that can happen in politics. but i know that a big gripe with our current political situation is that we are not dong what America should be doing.

fine, one more drink. but then i really have to go...

2006-02-20T18:31:00.000-08:00

i'm a bad blogger.

A few things struck me about the reading for class last week. thing one: the description of the queen at the end of the procession with the multitudes of other countries that England colonized represented. It made me laugh, thinking that what that scene represented was the fact that behind all of the conquering and wars sits a little old woman.

thing two was how scary the paper for the class is going to be to write. i think that's enough said.

thing three doesnt exist. but i wrote that a few things stuck out to me. i meant a couple.

wow, this is a bad bad blog. i'm drained and promise i will blog again this week. right now i have to sleep and get ready for animal collective tomorrow :-) i am ready for amazing things to happen.

i guess i just wanted to remind my professors that i'm alive. but this is probably the worst way to do it. more in-depth stuff later this week. i promise.

current playlist:

lucky dragons-"sewing circle"
antony and the johnsons-"antony and the johnsons"
coco rosie-"noah's ark" and "la maison de mon reve"
fennesz-"field recordings"

the post to end nothing

2006-02-10T20:43:00.000-08:00

blog of blogs... reason for my hesitation on posting this blog was because i wanted to get the full effect of Steve's performance. We sampled the presentation/performance this week in class and i wanted to wait to comment on it until after the actual event. now that the event has come and gone, it is time to blog, blog, BLOG!

It's remarkable to think and know that Scriabin, Janacek, and Ives used the same motif (for lack of a probably more appropriate word) in their pieces. I'm referring to the minor third. This is remarkable not only because it's such a distinct sound and probably not a commonly used one at the time (as it is not very tonal necessarily), but also because they wrote the pieces in the same year without having heard and probably not even knowing of each other. There's a certain odd connection to these pieces, not just in the fact that they all use the minor third. There's a certain human quality to each one.

Ives piece, as was discussed in class, is like a personal exploration. It's as if we're in Ives' head as his mind meanders from thought to thought. Janacek's piece was a reaction to the death of an innocent man. This speaks for itself on it's own personal and human qualities. And Scriabin was kind of a combination of the two. His piece was a personal exploration as well as a reaction. He's reacting to his mysticism and his muse, the Poem of Ecstasy. His piece also seemed to be a combination of the Ives and Janacek because of it's helter-skelter form (again, for lack of a better colloquialism) and bits of tonality. It combined the bi-rhthym of Ives with the more tonal aspects of Janacek''s piece.

A good question to ask in class would probably have been this: would any of these pieces have been a reaction and/or addition to the anarchy movement? I can see how all of these hold some sort of aspect of anarchy in them. Ives' because of it's form (the anti-sonata). Janacek's because of it's intent of bringing to light horrible events that could have been avoided had there perhaps been better understanding of the need for education. And Scriabin's because of not only the form, but also the seemingly un-orthadox religion that inspired it. I supppose it's never too late to ask this question.

For the life of me I cannot come up with an entertaining or even pertinent story from my own life to relate to these pieces. Did I already use the classical dance one? Because I think that's a doozy and could apply here as well. Oh who am I kidding, I was stretching it when I used it in the other post.

I wil say that hearing the stories behind these pieces makes a good argument for program music, though I'm sure the default interpretation of them had I not known what they were about would be that they were personal explorations of the mind. And I would have been right about two of them (maybe even Janacek's).

anarcy in the u.k..a...

2006-02-02T21:58:00.000-08:00

The question that hung over my mind like a dark cloud while reading the book on Modernism was that of "How are art and music political?" It's more of a question that I have to answer myself, without the aid of the book, but that was what was on my mind while reading it. To answer it, I would have to say that art and music are political because they are a personal expression of a person's feelings, and people are often effected by politics. If I were to make a painting or piece of music right now, it would have to be political because, like it or not, I am effected by politics. And I may not be aware of it, but how I view the world and how I feel are intertwined.

I love how modernism and what is considered modernism is always changing. because very soon, my computer will become obsolete and something more modern will take its place. There will always be something more modern than what is currently modern. And that's something that struck me about the book: that it was about modernism but spanned the century in terms of the kind of art that fell into the category. I don't think it could ever end. Modernism can never end simply by definition.

My eyes were certainly opened to the truer definition of anarchy. I too fell for the trap of anarchy only being about no government. but a few things that were new that stuck out for me were the concept of there being a huge reliance on the goodness of mankind (which is apparently in us all...though i question that) and that of property as theft.

I don't believe in the goodness of mankind. But I think that those who do not have that goodness are equated to those that are in power. And they would be gone, so anarchy would work theoretically. The bad people are gone so all that's left are the good ones.

Property as theft: someone should read Roland Barthes essay "The Death of the Author". This is my newest idea for a research paper. His ideas in that essay (which are too extensive to detail in this blog) are that there should be no authors anymore. The author is just a symbol of capitalism. There is a "scriptor" which is just the textual "I" and the one that arranges the words that make up a text. Anything can be considered a text in its own right, including contexts (like how one reads a certain text, where it comes from), this blog, a conversation....everything is a text. It's really interesting and really complicated, but i know i'm on the right track because i mentioned the connection to my professor and he agreed.

sorry excuse for a first blog

2006-01-26T19:45:00.000-08:00

upon listening to "Death and Transfiguration", I realized how little due i gave classical music in the past. i knew i was starting to appreciate it more during and after the Reich to Radiohead class (with Debussy, Stravinsky, etc.), but my history with classical really starts there.

Actually, it starts with my love of dance from ages five to ten. i would choreograph dances to paula abdul and mariah carey and michael jackson and taylor dayne and perform them for my parents and brother in our house in extraordinarily rural Sidney, Maine. In probably my second or third year of performing at the living room (after the controversial, yet surprisingly accepted "Pretenders/Michael Jackson/Bon Jovi/Grammy Award Winner Medley"), i decided to move into something a little less contemporary. i wanted to show my versatility as a dancer, so I discovered the Mozart CDs my mom would listen to during her studying of accounting at UMA. I removed the thick layer of dust, popped the CD in the (then new) CD player and let the music move me. I attempted some flourishes and slower movements, but i felt like something was missing. It was time to raid my mother's drawers, and I did in full tilt discovering, what i felt at the time was a 'killer find', four neon-colored head scarfs that smelled like a perfume my mother hadn't worn since the seventies (I know this now because she told me). I was inspired. my moves became more fluid and the performance i ultimately put together was met with applause, cheering (from my mother and brother) and head-shaking disapproval (from my father). Such is my history with classical music.

That being said, i did not want to dance to "Death and Transfiguration". I did however find myself circling the times on the sheet Steve handed out that held my favorite parts. The fact that we are told that this is about a mans death and transfiguration helped me fully realize the emotional level Strauss (perhaps) hoped I would feel. the 'sudden eruption of pain and agony' did not startle me, as i am easily startled by nature and scanned for any possible jumpy points, covering my ears slightly so as not to have to put the class through my very girlish screaming. The introduction sounded not unlike a Sigur Ros song, or something equally as ambient. This really drove home the point of the class being about how the present day is so very much like the first modern decade. Not because the music sounded anything like the contemporary music of today, but rather because it stirred up the same emotions in me. I can relate to something written a hundred years ago.

Okay, so now having typed that out, I see that it seems silly that THAT would dive home the seemingly overwhelming theme (or really the backdrop) of the course that there's a parallel between today and the early twentieth century. so i take the remark back. What REALLY drove the point home was the discussion of anarchy and social revolt. The same feelings brought forth by the word 'terrorist' today is the same as the word 'anarchist' back then. That along with other things discussed that are occurring both now and then. it's almost scary to think that even history repeats itself. i can be comfortable knowing that music is, in a way, cyclical in terms of how it is viewed, what is viewed as revolutionary, what's 'in' in terms of tonality or atonality. and i can be comfortable with art being cyclical in the same manner. But history...it leaves me unsettled. and i suppose that's a good thing. in any respect, i feel as though the sky covering our heads in this class is that fact: history, art, music, everything repeats itself.

i'm looking forward to getting deeper into this class and really exploring what all this means and should mean to me.

ps. i'm regretting naming my blog what i did. what was funny to me then is really starting to wear thin...

it's great to be back in san francisco everybody!!!

2006-01-25T22:07:00.000-08:00

this is just a testy first post. if you'll note, i chose the template "sand dollar" and i hope none of you take it. i want to be original for once.

i'd have more to say had i done the reading yet, but i havent. but i will. but but but. a whole lot of but. it's going to get done, worry not.