a fool in the forest

Self Portrait, Chicago [in Collaboration with Anish Kapoor]

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Christmas Time is Here, Los Angeles Union Station

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Photo by the blogger, 4 Dec 09; also viewable, slightly larger, via Flickr. 
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The Angels' Share - 091009

Time again for dribs and drabs of this and that that I have accumulated all magpie-like in my wanderings of the Internet.  I term this feature The Angels' Share, as explained in the original edition back in July. 

On this occasion, the angel in question is the Archangel Uriel, seen above armed with an attractive flintlock.  The painting is Peruvian, and that incongruous firearm drew a delighted chuckle from me when I discovered it last month while visiting, for the first time, the Denver Art Museum and its remarkable collection of Spanish Colonial art.  

Uriel does not receive the same prominence in art as some of his fellow archangels, though he is the heavenly emissary Leonardo Da Vinci included in his Virgin of the Rocks.  

  

John Dee, seeker after wisdom and astrologer to Elizabeth I, claimed to have had personal communications from this particular Archangel.

According to his diary on May 25, 1581 Dee first saw spirits while crystal gazing, and during the following year, he saw a vision of the angel Uriel, who gave him a convex piece of crystal that would allow communication with the spirit world.

Armed not with crystals but with flatscreen and mouse, let us look at this miscellaneous collection of links and trinkets:

• Via Ron Silliman: Allen Ginsberg versus Bob Dylan [video]
• Alex Ross explores the files: The FBI versus Leonard Bernstein.
• All your radical self-expression are belong to us: The Electronic Frontier Foundation versus Burning Man.
• Radiohead [15 Step] versus Dave Brubeck [Take Five]:

• Daniel Pi versus himself versus Britney Spears, in "How to Write a Fugue":

• Finnegan's Wake - The Motion Picture.  Really.  That's exactly what it is.  (via)
• The virtues, and the limitations, of libertarianism explained by quotations from Monty Python sketches.
• Not the premise for a Monty Python sketch: 25 million Britons injured by their biscuits.
• Baby you can groove my spleen: Charles Baudelaire and Les Fleurs du Mal versus Yvette Mimieux and Ali Akbar Khan.
• Sequenza21 reports from the big Minimalism Conference in Kansas City, and embeds a performance of Tom Johnson's composition Narayana's Cows.  If Tom Lehrer had been as serious a composer as he was a mathematician, but still funny, he might have produced something like this:

Narayana's Cows - Tom Johnson

• Cecilia Bartoli's record label versus good taste: Worst CD cover, October ‘09.

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Illustrations: 

Uriel (with firearm) via The Shrine of the Holy Whapping.

Virgin of the Rocks (Louvre version) via Wikimedia commons.

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Important Postscript/Update:

I have shared this with my Facebook connections some weeks ago, but I nearly forgot to include it here.  

Pure, sweet pleasure of the most purely sweet and pleasurable sort. A little line from The Importance of Being Earnest (Act II) set in exquisite Renaissance counterpoint, achieving bliss of a high order:

And so, we have done.

The Angels' Share - 080709

The Archangel loved heights.  Standing on the summit of the tower that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devil crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched on his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardly room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for the Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens.  The Archangel stands for Church and State, and both militant.  He is the conqueror of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God.  His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find him here.  For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the patron saint of France.  So the Normans, when they were converted to Christianity, put themselves under his powerful protection.  So he stood for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watching across the tremor of the immense ocean,-immensi tremor oceani,-as Louis XI, inspired for once to poetry, inscribed on the collar of the Order of Saint Michael which he created.  So soldiers, nobles, and monarchs went on pilgrimage to his shrine; so the common people followed, and still follow, like ourselves.

    -- Henry Adams, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, Ch. 1

Henry Adams' way with a paragraph leaves me cowering in my unworthiness.  Nonetheless, I take him as patron, and the Archangel Michael as symbol, for this edition of The Angels' Share, my recurring collection of Web tidbits drawn largely from my Google Reader "share" page.

• The LA Times' Christopher Knight defends the Detroit Institute of Art from political know-nothings.  As a proud son of the Motor City, much of my early aesthetic growth occurred at the Institute.

• John Crowley (Little, Big -- by all means read it if you haven't) is pleased to be included in the Library of America's upcoming two-volume set of American Fantastic Tales, edited by Peter Straub.

• Bruce Nauman apparently intends to make art in the skies outside my Pasadena office window on September 12.

• Oliver Sacks on Music: "Darwin, famously, played music to his earthworms, to see if they would respond; alas, they did not."

• Pynchon backlash, no doubt orchestrated by powerful forces behind the scenes.  [Via 3quarks daily.] 

• What does the world need? More videos of cats playing avant-garde 20th century music. (It's a bit complicated, involving Arnold Schoenberg and the editing together of snippets from some 170 YouTube segments of cats on pianos and . . . well, you should see for yourself.  Glenn Gould, who was a cool cat but not that sort of a cat, is also invoked.)  [Via C-Monster.net]

• Find out here what manner of noisy interruption threatened music lovers' enjoyment in the era before cellphones.

• Finally, I had never so much as heard of historian/political philosopher/serious Marxist G. A. Cohen until he died this week, and I suspect I would have little sympathy for his thought if I had. (Cf. the jaundiced view of Tom Parker of the Cato Institute.)  I have to link Chris Bertram's more sympathetic and heartfelt personal appreciation because I so enjoyed the banner in the accompanying photo of Cohen's valedictory lecture:

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The upper photo, of the Archangel atop the spire of Mont-St.-Michel, comes to us via Wikimedia Commons.  

This vintage postcard image is drawn from the collection of the Czech artist Tavik Frantisek Šimon (1877-1942):  

And two interesting views of the Archangel undergoing refurbishment can be seen at the site of The Coubertin Foundation.  

Post title explained here.

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The Angels' Share - 073109

Makers of whiskey (and of whisky), makers of wine, and makers of other spiritous beverages that age in barrels all know that a certain portion of their production will be lost through evaporation, vanishing into air as if sipped by invisible supernatural beings.  That disappearing portion is known as "The Angel's Share."  The particular angel involved is likely to be the happily tipsy one who adorns the facade of the Cathedral at Reims, in Champagne:

I keep track of numerous weblogs using Google Reader, and I recently began to use Reader's "Share" function for items that I particularly liked, or wanted to remember, but that weren't necessarily fodder for a full post of my own.  Those who are so inclined can follow those shared items here, and the true zealots can subscribe to them via Reader or any other RSS tool.  Beginning with this post, I hope to collect them semi-regularly here, under the title of "The Angels' Share."

Here, then, in no particular order, are some of the items that caught my eye over the past week or two:

• At 3QuarksDaily, Elatia Harris goes on at deserved length on James Ensor, in connection with the huge retrospective now on show at MOMA.  (Huge, but missing one key item we southern Californians have kept for ourselves.)

• Stockhausen and Jellyfish

• Two worthy recent live sessions at Daytrotter: Richard Swift  and Portland's own Blitzen Trapper.
  

• Just in time to accompany his new novel, Inherent Vice, it's the Unofficial Thomas Pynchon Guide to Los Angeles.  
  
  Bonus: visit the intersection of Western Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard with your celebrity host, Charles Bukowski.

• Ron Silliman is your one-stop Merce Cunningham shop.

• Via Erin O'Connor's Critical Mass, Tom Shone on when novelists sober up.  John Cheever is Exhibit A.

• DJ Spooky connects the dots between the Italian Futurists and Terry Riley's In C.

Speaking of Italy, look who's in Rome and sending back photos both fascinating and (literally) Fascist:

• David Byrne has seen the future and it is broken.

• Far flung C-Monster.net correspondent SanSuzie provides an eye-opening tour of the legendary Cinecittà studios.

• All too adorable little white rats with musical instruments.

And to conclude, via the m john harrison blog, a masterful display of unconventional guitar technique, not involving rats:

~~~

Planespotting

B-2 Spirit [fka Stealth] Bomber, en route to overfly the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, as seen from our back yard in neighboring Glendale, January 1, 2009.

This fool Welcomes You to 2009

Under the familiar weight 
Of winter, conscience and the State, 
In loose formations of good cheer, 
Love, language, loneliness and fear, 
Towards the habits of next year, 
Along the streets the people flow, 
Singing or sighing as they go: 
Exalte, piano, or in doubt, 
All our reflections turn about 
A common meditative norm, 
Retrenchment, Sacrifice, Reform. 

-- from W.H. Auden, "New Year Letter" (1940)

So Hang Your Holiday Rainbow Lights in the Garden

Merry Christmas to each and all, from this friendly fool.  And in these days so cold and dreary, whether literally or metaphorically, let cockeyed optimism thrive.  

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Photo: "Fairy Lights" by Flickr! user dandy_fsj, used under Creative Commons license.  Post title via The National.

Miscellahootenany

Do not stop to think or edit:
You must be the first who said it.

-- Baby’s First Internet

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Some traveling music please, maestro:

I -- I can remember (I remember)
Standing -- by the Wall (by the Wall) . . . 

[via The Morning News.]

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Genre, I'm Only Dancing:

The Los Angeles Times' Michael Chabon interview from a week or two back revisits, more interestingly than it deserves, the well-worn topic of Serious Writers Working in Genre Fiction:

Let's start with some of the pulp or genre writers who have spoken to you over the years and perhaps inspired your own books.

There are so many.  Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Ross Thomas, Ursula K. Le Guin, Frank Herbert, Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury, Jack Kirby, Steve Gerber, Alan Moore.  And there are a whole list of borderland writers -- John Crowley, Jorge Luis Borges, Stephen Millhauser, Thomas Pynchon -- writers who can dwell between worlds.

[fool's note: That's a very nice list of very good writers there -- other than the comic book guys, whose work I am not qualified to assess.]

Where did this bias against work created for a popular audience come from?

In all fairness, it came from the fact that the vast preponderance of art created for a mass audience is crap.  It's impossible to ignore that.  But the vast preponderance of work written as literary art is high-toned crap.  The proportion may settle down in the neighborhood of 90/10 -- Sturgeon's Law said that 90% of everything is crud.

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On the subject of recommended reading lists, Robin Varghese of 3quarksdaily points to China Miéville's top 10 weird fiction books for the Guardian.  It actually dates back to 2002, but the list -- at least the half of it of which I have personal experience -- is a good 'un.

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With Deerstalker, Calabash and Tentacles:

Neil Gaiman is no stranger to weird fiction.  His tale, "A Study in Emerald" [PDF] cross-pollinates the worlds of Conan Doyle and Lovecraft, with not necessarily predictable results.  Several key characters go unnamed; readers reasonably familiar with the Holmes canon will draw the appropriate disturbing conclusions.

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Unhappy with your bank?  Keep your chin up and remember that things could always be much, much worse.

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Tom Wark offers up Lester Bangs' Lessons for Wine Writers.

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Virginibus Puerisque:*

Friends, are you looking for lawyers rapt in the contemplation of life's rich pageant in all its scintillant richness?  Then, look no further than Victoria Pynchon's brightwhiteandsparklinglyvirginal edition of Blawg Review #171 on the IP ADR Blog.   It's lubricious and nutritious!   

Vickie, who is known to have a soft spot for poetry and other humanizing pursuits, is also well worth reading on a regular basis at her other shop, the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog (where, for the benefit of executives, millennials, blogging fools and others with foreshortened attention spans, she offers a handily pre-digested Executive Summary of Blawg Review # 171). 

As a twice-three-time Blawg Review host myself, I am appropriately awed by Vickie's accomplishment -- or her stunning Beginner's Luck, as the case may be.

* Don't get excited: that's just classical Latin for "boys and girls" or "youths and maids."

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Photo: "Foolish House, Ontario Beach Park in 1910," via Flickr user (!) the George Eastman House.  More on the Eastman House collections here.  Existence of Eastman House photostream discovered via ::: wood s lot :::.

Sparkling Distractions

A random collection of links and remarks that have been piling up in recent days, weeks, months:

• It seems like only yesterday that Cyd Charisse was dancing on these pages, and now comes word of her passing at age 87.  By way of tribute, Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News offers a comprehensive collection of YouTube exemplars of Ms. Charisse's terpsichorean artistry.  His choice of Brigadoon as all-time favorite would not be mine, but is entirely defensible.
  

• Sir William Hamilton is best known as the cuckolded husband in the romance of Emma Hamilton and Lord Nelson, but he was also The Volcano Lover referenced in the title of Susan Sontag's (excellent) novel.  The Volcanism Blog has an appreciation of Sir William's thoroughgoing fascination with all things Vesuvian: 

• "Aesthetic geology - Sir William Hamilton’s ‘Campi Phlegraei’." 

(Via Alan Sullivan.)  Previously, of related interest, but not involving volcanos:

• When Emma Met George
• Susan Sontag Breaks Camp, Moves On Into Larger World

• I have been entirely willing to overlook it, given the beauty and charm of the site and the high fascination value of the objects in question, but Lee Rosenbaum is right: the theming and many (not all) of the supporting labels at the Getty Villa really ought to aspire to a higher lowest common denominator than they do.  (In the Getty's defense, the available audio commentary on much of the collection is generally better than the display labels.)

• Louis Menand in the New Yorker gives a good precis of what was right and wrong (and deeply dreadful) about Ezra Pound.  He also does a good job of capturing what still appeals to me about the High Modern moment at the start of the last century, before the 1914-1918 War distorted and disfigured it beyond recognition and the 1939-1945 War did it in altogether.

[Hugh] Kenner’s title was deliberately ironic: the point of 'The Pound Era' is that a Pound era never happened.  The hopes of the pre-war avant-garde, the artistic excitement of the years between 1908 and 1914, when the modernist movement spread throughout Europe, died in the trenches and the camps. 'Dreams clash and are shattered': two wars of annihilation destroyed the aspirations of poets and painters to be the authors of an earthly paradise

Via former Reasonite Tim Cavanaugh at Opinion L.A.  See also my previous mumblings on Kenner and Pound here.

• Also from the New Yorker: Jonathan Rosen thinks much more highly of Milton than Menand does of Pound.  With reason.

• If anyone cares, I am of a mind that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Boumediene decision, acknowledging the potential habeas corpus rights of Guantanamo detainees, is pretty plainly correct.  This places me in the company of wild-eyed leftists the like of Barack Obama and ... George  Will.  (Link via Tim Lynch.) 

• The sad story of the Power of the State and Tom Stoppard's swimming pool.

Finally, speaking from personal and ongoing experience, this list by Matthew Baldwin is remarkably accurate:

• Typical Reaction to the Revelation That I Do Not Own a Cell Phone, By Year. 

(Via The Morning News.)

California will ban the use of hand-held cell phones while driving, effective July 1.  Not good enough: use of the pestilent contraptions should also be prohibited while walking. 

In fact, I would propose the wholesale reintroduction in this country of the fully-enclosed Telephone Booth, with this difference: instead of containing pay phones, the Booths would be empty.  The Booths would also be declared by law to be the only places, outside of one's home or private office, that cell phone use would be permitted.  There would be no Telephone Booths in public restrooms.

This is an idea whose time will surely come, and you will all thank me for it.

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Illustrations:
Ezra Pound by R. B. Kitaj, via Second Evening Art. 
"Phone booth near Death Valley 431-5--Oct 1981" by Flickr! user km6xo, used under Creative Commons license.