The Artist of Disappearance

The reading year 2012 has started. The first finished novel (actually a collection of three beautiful novellas) is by Anita Desai called The Artist of Disappearance.

Book's three novellas fit in 156 pages (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and share some big themes like problems of modernisation of society, solitude, social alienation, nature of art, role of artists and such things somewhat familiar from her previous books.

Whitman, Shakespeare and Company

Picture by Hanhensulka

The picture is of Walt Whitman and is located on a wall next to the Shakespeare and Company bookshop in St. Michel on the left bank of Seine opposite Notre Dame in Paris, France. The previous owner, an American called George Whitman, died in December 2011 in Paris at 98. The text (translated into French by León Bazalgette about hundred years ago) is from from Walt Whitman's poem 'To A STRANGER' from his life's work "Leaves of Grass":

"Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you..."

The Shakespeare and Company is presently owned by George's daughter, Sylvia Whitman. Neither she nor George is related to Walt the Poet.

Tilda has no errors, or does she?

Aargh! Apparently there is an error in this, if one can call it like that. The photo is linked to the image sharer site imgur.

The picture depicts Tilda Swinton as 'Orlando' in film by the same name, which is based on Virginia Woolf's book Orlando: A Biography. The book tells a tale of a woman (or a man) who exists through space and time starting in the Elizabethan England.

Aurora Borealis 70N, 30E

The Aurora from TSO Photography on Vimeo. Video is by a Norwegian nature photographer Terje Sørgjerd from TSO Photography

Ah, nostalgia. Here, it's been three days close to plus 40 deg, today was better but we'll get the heat back shortly.

On the other hand, through the warm, flowing tears or nostalgia I do remember the frost biting my cheeks, fingers and toes. Oh well, there it is...

It is no Stradivarius, just a naughty violin

Picture: Satu Vänskä of Australian Chamber Orchestra plays her million(+)-dollar Stradivarius, taken from The Age

It is a truth most likely that World is full of judgements governed by Wanker Index (WI).

I don't know how the index works but can give wine tasting by us ordinary mortals, who don't carry a dog's snout to smell things, as an example, or food tasting, appreciation of poetry, hiphop or music in general for that matter. It seems that judging violins also falls under the spell of WI.

Today's The Age reports of a finding by Dr. Claudia Fritz of University of Paris that modern violins are indistinguishable from, or better than, the Guarneris or Stradivari raped by time and lauded by hordes of opera and symphony loving rankers (like this blogger, by the by).

I wonder if WI also governs the use of plural with an 'i' for all instances of nouns ending with '-us'. Naah, most unlikely.

Read more in 'Million-dollar Stradivarius loses out in play-off with modern violin' by Ian Sample and Gina McColl in The Age

Facebook celeb

Want to be a Facebook celeb? This is how.

Cheers

Nothing is so cheerless than an old facebook entry (apart from an old, unchanging blog posting, maybe).

2012

The morning stirred up
like yesterday and before
Still, it’s a new year

Arab Spring and another wisdom

The still continuing 'Arab spring' shouts loudly 'al shaab yureed asqat al nitham', or in English 'the people want collapse of the system' or something like that.

Perhaps they get it and more permanently than intended; this 2012 is, after all, the last year in history (according to some interpretations of Mayan wisdom).

A Twenties Memory

Not my memory, mind you. But a short story by Woody Allen, "A Twenties Memory" in his 1971 book "Getting Even", turns into "Midnight in Paris" in mere 40 years.

The "Midnight", his best picture for quite a while, might still rescue Allen's battered reputation from the gutters. I loved it.

The linked article, "Woody Allen's First Stab at 'Midnight in Paris': A 1971 Short Story", is from The Odds by Steve Pond.

Would you rather be hanged than stoned?

Islam is such a sensible and lenient religion, isn't it. How about all us gentle-hearts come out in chorus and excuse Islam because 'all this is part of their cultural heritage' and we should, naturally, embrace multiculturalism with all our hearts.

Read this article Iran says woman's stoning case might change to hanging in Reuters.

IBM bares the Future

IBM, who first estimated that the world needs about six computers and then that nobody would want a personal computer, now says that we'll be carrying mind-reading phones by 2016. Oh well...

Havel and Kim Jong Il

It's easy to say that all Nations get political leaders they deserve. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Maybe a people that has no desire to better its lot would get what the history lobs at it. It is difficult to say why the Czechs and Slovaks deserved an imperfect humanist like Vaclav Havel and the Koreans a perfect tyrant like Kim Jong Il as their leaders. The answer may lurk in history and time, and Nation's soul, or somewhere.

Well, hopefully they'll not issue a...a...Hey, what's fatwa in Korean? While you think that you may want to read the article Kim Jong Il Might Be Gone, But the Satire Will Live Forever in The Atlantic.

The Turkish version of the nations' destinies goes like this: 'It is not only the fault of the axe but the tree as well'. Somehow 'Cometh the hour, cometh the man' sounds more optimistic and kindly. Perhaps both influenced by their environments?

The Hand of God and Januszczak's foreskins

Dear Reader, I'm almost sure that spiritually you reside somewhere between Christopher Hitchens and Jesus of Nasareth. If so, it may be of interest to read Waldemar Januszczak's take on the Christ's foreskin and that sorts of thing, in case you find them palatable in the countdown to Christmas, the highlight of the Christians' annual calendar of commerce and overeating. The article is called The Hand of God.

Freewheelin' Europe

When the bottom is reached, it will hurt. If there is a bottom in this European bog.

Looks like Bob Dylan was forecasting the European Union's dim economic future with his album 'Freewheelin' (1963) with such tracks as "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "Boots of Spanish Leather".

Is reality hollow?

Obviously Reality is a hologram, or, more likely, an illusion - for proof, look no further than at any politician trying to explain their policies.

Thus, a two-dimensional hologram as a 'virtual' boarding agent at the CDG airport in Paris is not out of place and quite appropriate.

Some scientists claim that we and our world are, in actual fact, just a two dimensional hologram projected from a real world light years away.

Obviously all scientists believe in Occam's razor and only propose the simplest solutions to explain the reality and won't use complex explanations - like God, for instance.

Flying wild Alaska

One 'reality' TV series I actually enjoyed watching from the beginning until the end. You may enjoy it, too, even if you are not an aviation geek.

Flying Wild Alaska is following the owner of Era Alaska, Jim Tweto, his lovely family and company's bush-pilots flying single-engine Cessnas around western Alaska. With no drivable roads for hundreds of miles, Era Alaska is the lifeline for the isolated communities along the Bering Sea coastline. Twetos are based on Unalakleet, 750 inhabitants and a small airport right on the seafront facing Russia across Bering. From that point of view they are as much educated in foreign policy as the ex-Governor of Alaska and the potential next US president. What's her face?

Jim Tweto, bushpilot

An Education

Sarah Thornton, the author wronged

Lynn Barber said in June 2009 about ‘An Education’ that tells of her fling with an older man when she was 16:

“Oh, it's a bad moment and it's going to be bad whatever happens”.

Not bad enough, apparently. Recently she wrote in The Telegraph:

“Sarah Thornton is a decorative Canadian with a BA in art history and a PhD in sociology and a seemingly limitless capacity to write pompous nonsense”.

Sarah didn’t like that much and The Telegraph was condemned to pay £65,000 damages to the photogenic author of Seven Days in the Art World.

The Judge sentencing The Telegraph to pay said:

"a reviewer is entitled to be spiteful as long as she is honest"

The difference between honest and not-honest in this case seems to be that Barber forgot the fact that Thornton had interviewed her and said so in her review.

Midnight in men

President Nixon on his life:

“journey to the mountaintop and the despair of life’s deepest valley”.

Are all men in time turning into self-parodies of themselves (look at Murdoch, Reagan, Ted Kennedy, Mao, Hemingway) unless they are lucky to die early enough (JFK, F. Scott Fitzgerald).

There may be exceptions like Eastwood and Philip Roth, but it may just be too early to tell.

The connection is Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

Lost in cultural translation...

Everybody must've seen this already but still, it's too good not to share. The background is that Dalai Lama was visiting Australia, but apparently not any pizza shop, and a Channel 10 interviewer decided to tell a joke...