woobiquity

cxliv. Of words that are like temples

I'll be honest. I've often thought while sitting through an early music concert (that is, after pinching myself back from contemplating the nuns' social lives or adding dinner ingredients to an imaginary shopping list) that the words themselves in this kind of music have very little sting, stretched out like they are to fit the lengthy cadences and rigid structures of liturgical ritual.

But genius grant winner Osvaldo Golijov takes the opposite opinion in a recent Studio 360 podcast. He's a 21st-century classical composer who loves Montiverdi, whose music he was referring to when he said:

"...you really are able, through music, to enter the meaning of those words. To slow time, to reorganize it, to abolish time. So the words become temples, and you can inhabit them."

How blooming marvelous. Not least for the comfort such a metaphor offers to a slow reader (such as myself). I'm just giving every word the reverence it deserves... by admiring its interior through all the tiny doors and windows. Sigh... Skipping to a different medium, the same concept may also help to explain what's built into this artist's work.

cxliii. Of feelings wrapped up in twilight

Maybe the curators of the V&A’s Twilight exhibition should just have trawled the New York Times archives, if this photo is anything to go by. With the added context of internet-propelled manslaughter it’s at least as compelling as most of the pictures that made the cut at the V&A.

I’m not knocking the work of the museum’s eight international photogs. And full credit to Chrystel Lebas, whose creepy, alluring pictures of Wiltshire bluebell forests are a startling reminder that within the surreal and tranquil hour lurks a choking urgency that no other time of day can claim.

But as a whole this exhibition is a faint slight to twilight, even if you accept that people can’t detect the stretch marks on a metaphor when darkness is nearly upon them. Next time, please, a lot less twi and a little more light.

photo: pine trees in fading light, Harkers Island

cxlii. Of devastation in my wake

Ruby was the first casualty. We'd been at B.B. King's jazz club on Beale Street the night before, enjoying the vocal talents and stage presence of a Tina Turner-impersonating covers diva who interrupted her Nutbush raconteuring and mostly failed attempts to organize a sparse-enough Wednesday night audience into line dancing groups to say this: "Now I want y'all to know... we've got royalty present here tonight. [Rotates head sassily.] And when royalty is present in the house, royalty ought to be recognized."

She asked Ruby Wilson, "The Queen of Beale Street", to stand up. The drummer clanged the symbols. Everyone applauded. And the next morning as we drove toward the interstate we heard on the radio that Ruby Wilson, The Queen of Beale Street, and her band had been unceremoniously dropped from their Thursday night slot at B.B. King's after years of service. (It seems something changed after this, because Ruby is still on the roster, mercifully, but the news is the news and on that day it wasn't good. And we'd had a first-hand glimpse of the apparent power struggle the night before it all went public.)

A few days later I stood in the rotunda of the Texas State Capitol in Austin, waiting for W. to come out of the loo (no, not that W.) and trying not make eye contact with the sheriffs. I studied the official portraits of the only two Texas governors I recognized, That W. (whose eyes looked too close together, I hate to say it, a bit like a monkey's, despite the accomplished, high-art minimalism of the portrait's background) and his immediate predecessor, Ann Richards.

Meanwhile nearby, Ann Richards lay dying. When the AP reported a few days later on the President Clinton-led procession of her casket into the capitol, the portrait got a mention. It had been draped in black for the occasion. I wondered how many others reading that article had recently looked that picture in the eyes.

Then this past weekend news broke of the early-morning fire that destroyed or badly damaged several of the lovely, old buildings around Court Square in downtown Memphis, where we'd spent a magical twilight under the oak trees listening to jazz from the recently restored bandstand. Even the Lincoln American Tower got flames.

Now, I don't mean to scare anybody, but three's a pattern so if you happen to live in, work in or regularly visit any of these places, you might want to be prepared to... run for your lives.

cxli. Of health and safety as cop-out

I never expected that a familiar childhood ritual on a sunny, October Sunday would lead down a path of disappointment. If I'd known, I wouldn't have suggested it. But the omens were good. Lunch, with seven home-cooked vegetable dishes, fried chicken, gravy, cornbread and biscuits, had been divine. Then, as we set out along the railroad tracks, trying to balance our steps on the rails and soon jigging merrily, like trapeze artists in a mosquito colony, a cat appeared from one of the yards and showed us effortlessly how it was done.

The dam was the destination, as it had always been, not just in my recollection but in my dad's and his dad's too. With its stonework pathway and perch above a curved, concrete drop in the river, the dam here was never really a complete pastiche of local life without some Opie traipsing barefoot across the stone wall that led up to it, with a fishing rod draped across one shoulder. In spring my grandfather would walk me up to the unprotected edge of the stand, chuckling at my fear of the rushing water below and pointing out the rockfish in the spray jumping boing boing, mechanically, beautifully, even sometimes (to our delight) successfully into the deeper waters above.

Last time we walked to the dam, the prospectors who had bought rights to use it for its original intent, generating small-scale electricity, had surrounded the antique viewing area with safety barriers made of ugly, rusting pipe. Some kids, obviously not of my father's generation (or mine for that matter) had sprayed rude, neon-colored words on some of the old valve works.

We thought that was bad. But this time the new people had sealed the entrance with a large metal door, itself already graffitied. We took our turns peeping through the narrow slits at the side and then turned back toward the house, none of us bothering to try to walk on the rails. "If my Daddy knew you couldn't get to the dam anymore," my dad muttered, "it would break his heart."

Later, though, I would chuckle about one thing, especially knowing as I do that certain 'bad' words are still so taboo in this area that even their precise spelling is a mystery to some. The graffiti had read

OPEN THE
DAM DOOR
BITHC!