Discoveries: Arts and Culture

The theme was "just one" in all observations and thought and living...I think this was published on Amazon.com.  .  REFRACTIONS AND REFLEXIONS (2012) did not go into publication.  

Having had the privilege of attending the author's portion of the International Scandinavian Studies conference held in San Francisco, I spent a wonderful day absorbed in the readings of important Scandinavian writers.  On two occasions, a young scholar was seated near me in the vast audience, and asked very pertinent questions.  Included was the writer, from Iceland, and a poet from Norway, and other notable writers, some in English, but most still only known in their native tongue. The young scholar, when I told her about my stay at the Karen Blixen housemuseum as a guest of the director, and my own exploration of the life and works of Karen Blixen(Isak Dinesen), she gave me a copy of her dissertation published as "Texts at Play", a very intriguing title, which encapsulated and reminded me of the axiom by Buckminister Fuller, "Play is the highest form of human activity"  The book focusses, of course, on intertextuality, but also on the creative process and ...

Berkeley City Book Club Meeting March 26, 2020 /Discussion:    Patrick Leigh Fermor, A TIME OF GIFTS.   Intro by Jan Morris. / New Yorker article by Anthony Lane.   2007.      Co-Chair, Carolyn Whittle, presiding.   Participant Tel. dialogue, Janet Roberts. Observations and Topics:    1.          Author’s Style : Beautiful phrasing and memorable employment of language.   Janet cites: “ cataracts of vegetables ” p 90.   “ There were gardens and a castle and an ornamental lake where a nearly static and enforcedly narcissistic game of swans were reflected in holes that had been chopped for them in the ice: but no black one that I can remember, like Thomas Mann’s in the same piece of water.”   Place: Skagerrakbruche, the Rhine, outside Dusseldorf)…                  Examples: Carolyn reads passage...

Listening to Helene Grimaud, pianist, plays  WATER. (2016 Deutsche Grammophon)  ”There are two significant measures of a society: how we support culture and how we treat our  environment.” Evocations of rivers, lakes, seas, snowflakes and  raindrops. "   Includes Faure "  Barcarolle No. 5 , Ravel " Jeux d’eau ” , Liszt “ Les Jeux d’eaux a la  Villa d’Este   » ; Janacek " In the  Mists : No 1 . " and Debussy, " La Cathedrale engloutie " , as well as  Takemitsu “ Rain Tree Sketch II”  a nd other composers. . Observation:  The lyrical nature of this album would be perfect ground for Pianist, Sarah Cahill. I also wrote my second haiku of the week, and this one came out about our Shelter in Place.  Today is Friday :  White vague emptiness  in the sky,  a void in space, -- we remain in place.  Monday, when the sky was blue and the sun shining:...

NYT Today.   Selected  Quotes from . “ What Writers Say About Plague Season : Loose Ends, Dwight Garner. “ It was an uncertain Spring ”, Virginia Woolf. “The Years”. “ Lord! How sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people .”   Samuel Pepys, Diary “ A friend of mine says this is the beginning of the end of the global order ." – Rachel Cusk. “Coventry”. “ One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.” – Gwendolyn Brooks, “in the Mecca”. “That’s the world out there, little green apples and infectious diseases .” Don De Lillo “The Angel Esmeralda” “ All is infection, mother…We shall sit quietly in this room, and I think we will be spared …” Rita Dove, “Fiammetta Breaks Her Peace”. “I have always thought of the whole of life as a kind of disaster area .” J.G. Ballard, “The Drought”. “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company. ”   - Attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre. “ If you don’t kn...

Another important piece in NYT Friday, April 10,  was the feature by  Holland Cotter, “ Lessons in Constructive Solitude”   Cotter's thesis is " Thoreau used his self-quarantine at Walden, to pursue an intensive course in self education.  In the present pandemic moment, there’s plenty to learn from standing still.” // "...An intensive course in self education:  “Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.”  The list he compiled was long, ambitious and culturally far – reaching, stretching from Classical Greece to Vedic India”… I would add, China. Many studies have been done on Thoreau in China…I traced his Chinese references while living there.   “ In a letter to a friend he wrote: “The Yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation; he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things.   To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi.”   He made his life at W...

Opera TOSCA   S oprano Anna Netrebko, whom the  New York Times  hailed as “magnificent” when she made her role debut as Tosca in 2018, returns as Puccini’s explosive diva, back by popular demand. Tenors Najmiddin Mavlyanov and Brian Jagde alternate as the idealistic painter Cavaradossi, and baritones George Gagnidze and Michael Volle complete the opera’s fatal love triangle as the sinister Scarpia. Bertrand de Billy conducts Sir David McVicar’s stunning production. Production a gift of Jacqueline Desmarais, in memory of Paul G. Desmarais Sr; The Paiko Foundation; and Dr. Elena Prokupets, in memory of her late husband, Rudy Prokupets/ Major funding from Rolex/Revival a gift of C. Graham Berwind III — Spring Point Partners LLC COMPOSER Giacomo Puccini   LIBRETTIST Giuseppe Giacosa, Luigi Illica ITALIAN ACT I Rome, June 1800.  Cesare Angelotti, an escaped political prisoner, rushes into the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle. After finding the key ...

Wow! I neglected blogging all of 2019.  // Well, in this shelter in place, I am coming back...// Berkeley City Book Club Meeting March 26, 2020 /Discussion:    Patrick Leigh Fermor, A TIME OF GIFTS(1977).   Intro by Jan Morris. / New Yorker article by Anthony Lane.   2007.      Co-Chair, Carolyn Whittle, presiding.   Participant Tel. dialogue, Janet Roberts. Observations and Topics:     Ptrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) Knighted for his services to literature and to British-Greek Relations (2004)  1.          Author’s Style : Beautiful phrasing and memorable employment of language.   Janet cites: “ cataracts of vegetables ” p 90.   “ There were gardens and a castle and an ornamental lake where a nearly static and enforcedly narcissistic game of swans were reflected in holes that had been chopped for them in the ice: but no black one that I can remember, like Thomas M...