Bookend Books

I just finished reading two books that quite accidentally are perfect bookends for each other. Paul LaFarge's Luminous Airplanes is a wistful coming-of-age story. I usually avoid coming-of-age stories, I find that my own was quite enough, but this one slipped through. A young man goes to his recently deceased grandfather's home to clean it out. He begins a search for his dead father who he never met. He was raised by his mother and aunt, a fun pair of eccentric characters. He encounters a childhood friend, and begins a repeat of his father's failure. He had been a graduate student of history, always a good setup for characters looking back. History, memory, loss and finding you self.

In Lily Tuck's I Married You For Happiness a woman's husband dies unexpectedly after many years of marriage. She takes us through a stream-of-consciousness of memories as she sits through the night. Her husband was a mathematician, but not a recluse: he loved good food & wine, and sailing. There are fun math anecdotes, for example the story of "amiable numbers" and lots of travel references, especially in France. The two books make a good pairing, which I have not encountered in this way before.

Anonymous 4 at St. Francis Cathedral

Anonymous 4 performed at St. Francis Cathedral Basilica, as part of their 25th anniversary tour. They sang acapella music that spanned 11 centuries, including the 21st: a commission-in-progress by Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lang of Bang on a Can. This type of singing is not my usual cup of tea, but they were extraordinary. They are described as angelic and it is true: tight harmony, clear tones, perfect pitch, and....hooray...no vibrato! The Basilica was a perfect setting for this ethereal singing. They sang for 1 hour & 15 minutes in this dry climate, kudos to them! Speaking of centuries, the St. Francis parish is in its 401st year, which precedes the landing of the Mayflower! This town is old!

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein at Santa Fe Institute

The novelist/philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein spoke at the Santa Fe Institute on "Why Einstein Wrote a (Bad) Love Poem to Spinoza". Her wonderful lecture was mostly about Spinoza, but also about his influence on some heavy weights, such as Einstein and Antonio Damasio. His work paved the way for "The Age of Enlightenment" after his death. As a non-dual meditator, I loved her comments about Spinoza the "great collapser", who sought non-dual unity, quite contrary to his older contemporary Descartes and his famed/dreaded duality. Salon.com's review of her book Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave us Modernity called Spinoza the "atheist Jew who was drunk on God". The definition of God, discussed in the lecture was quite interesting. I originally knew Ms. Goldstein from her novel Properties of Light: a Novel of Love, Betrayal and Quantum Physics, which I recommend. After the lecture, the SFI physicists cleared out quickly, so we got to have a nice chat with her. She was kind enough to listen to my story of how Spinoza influenced my cousin when she discussed him with her father as a young girl. By the way, Ms. Goldstein is the Miller Scholar at SFI, a chair funded by DRZ's old nemesis, Bill Miller!

Some new elements in painting

Trying something new with the background. Also, a looser touch with the "falling" accents.

Gerhard Richter Retrospective at Tate Modern



We had the good fortune to see the Gerhard Richter retrospective at The Tate Modern. It was doubly good since we had seen a show of similar scale at MOMA a few years ago. Richter is certainly the most highly regarded painter living today. His work cuts a broad swath, but I don't view it as ground breaking as were many artists from the early and mid-20th century. He is famed for being one of the first German artists to acknowledge and deal with the elephant in the corner, the collective Nazi history. His painting Uncle Rudi brought this home with a bang in 1965. This piece is typical of the period in which Richter did large realistic black and white paintings based on photographs, in which the edges of forms are smudged. This has a haunting effect. By contrast, he did a large body of abstract conceptual work that dealt with monochromatic color, sorry, of little interest to me. He later did a series of realistic paintings based on German terrorist groups, leaving ambiguous commentary to the viewer. In the realistic department, Richter did several color portraits, usually with the subject's face away from the viewer. The Reader is a great example of these insightful works. He is today most well known for large abstract oil paintings made with squeegees, that are...just plain gorgeous. I have watched a person walk into a gallery room, see one of these works, and drop their jaw. Maybe that was me. The internet is chock full of images from all of his periods of work, so give a look next time you are surfing!

The Have-Nots by Katherina Hacker

Katherina Hacker's The Have-nots is dense with ideas and sharp insights, about....property reparation in Germany, the FDR and the GDR, loss and memory, the Iraq war, domestic violence, love, and sexuality. Yes, it's not a light read and takes a bit of effort, but is worth it. It is well written and structured, with good character development. The Have-nots won the German Book Award in 2006 for best novel. It is published by Europa Editions, a great press for contemporary European novels.

Danish Director Susanne Bier

I've been on a Danish film kick for the past year. Recently I did a Susanne Bier mini-fest: In a Better World, 2010; After the Wedding, 2006; and Brothers, 2004, the original of this title, by the way. She's a great director who doesn't flinch. She works with lots of big social and cultural issues without preaching, and usually finds the edge of the envelope. She's able to book great actors: Mads Mikkelson, Ulrich Thomsen and Mikael Persbrandt. Two of the best were young teens in In a Better World, Markus Rygaard & William Johke Nielson, from whom she coaxed great work. These films also have good cinematography, plot, and pacing. They're all intense. Check them out!