What did these guys do before 3D CGI? I always imagine there is a certain percentage of artists and craftsmen that are made by their media. Without computers some may have been diplomats. Without the attraction of the smell of clay a sculptor might have been a football player. Who knows? I like to think I would be a billionaire industrialist if it weren’t for the fluorescent orange powder they put on cheetos. Sigh . . .
Mr. Cross lives on the South Pacific island of Niue, which is by the Cook Islands north east from New Zealand. In other words, he lives and works in paradise. See, this is where they should send a few of the angst-ridden East European surrealists who haunt DeviantArt. Just for a holiday, you understand. Take off their black camos and skull rings for five minutes and get into some white linens. Do a few nude studies in the bath-warm tourquise waters. Fill them full of fruit and sunshine. But then, hey, the art world wouldn’t meet it’s quota of WWII gas masks, facial features Photoshopped out of existence, and limbs turned into giant rose thorns. And we wouldn’t want that.
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We went to a chicken show yesterday. I tell ya, if I didn’t know anything about chickens, I would have been outa there in about 5 minutes. As it was, it took us over an hour to find and buy what we we looking for. Images of even the most spectacular varieties of birds on the ‘net is almost a waste of time. Stuff I thought was going to be great (Silver Phoenix) was mediocre. Things I thought were the epitome of lame (Delaware) turned out to be magnificent. And critters that I’d never seen in person (all the little bantams) made me grin for half an hour straight and want to buy a freaking armful.
I don’t want to launch into a rant against industrial agriculture, but being a city guy and having my experience of chicken-kind limited to McNuggets and children’s book illustrations, to find out only now the awesomeness of these critters. . . well, it’s really sad how chickens have been treated an even sadder what most North Americans have been missing.
So here’s the plug: go find out what your bylaws are. I only discovered after I moved out of the city that I could have had up to three hens (but no roosters) in my backyard all these years. WTF. You want free eggs and a quiet little pet for your kid? For five bucks, you can’t do better. At this bird show, it was really heart-warming to see a munchkin on a kiddie stool with a little brown hen on his lap. That in itself was worth the price of admission.
I picked The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin in a local bookstore just weeks after an extensive online search for a version of Bach’s magnificent suites that didn’t drive me up the wall. How could I resist this book? Especially since it would doubtless give me a few more ideas on good recordings of the works, self-interested greedy-guts that I am.
It was a bit of a shock to see a book devoted to entirely to the history of one (albeit six part) piece of music, let alone one of my favorite pieces of all time. Except when I was a teenager and my wife, I’ve never been part of a circle of friends or acquaintances that knew classical music well, so I’ve always ventured into music stores (in both cyber- and meat-space) on my own wheel-reinventing exploratory mission. Being in Canada, I’m lucky to have CBC FM (or Radio 2 as it’s now known) spitting a fair bit of classical over the airwaves. But no one ever held up a Bach piece and said, “You gotta hear this!”. What I’m blithering on about is, having discovered the Cello Suites on my own back in the days of vinyl, and having invested some decades saturating my little brain with their melodies, I have a very personal attachment to them. Not in a skin-tag kind of way, more like a favorite teddy bear.
Now, Mr. Siblin’s excellent book has added a nice new layer to my savoring of the works. The book is pretty much a triple concerto featuring bios of J.S.Bach and Pablo Casals plus the author’s own experience of the pieces. I’ve never been much for bios, ever. I’ve only read a handful (Liszt, Beethoven, Dylan Thomas, George Sand (why?), Aldous Huxley) and never really got into the whole voyeuristic headspace necessary to appreciate famous people’s breakfast choices and bowel movement schedules. And this one’s no exception. But hey, it’s Bach. It’s sort of like reading a bio of Jesus, if you’re religious. Reading it becomes some sort of reverent act where you subconsciously think the book is dipped in genius juice just ’cause it has his name on the cover.
Despite my constitutional indifference to biographies, I liked what I learned about both Bach and Casals and I was able to tolerate the author’s florid descriptions of the pieces because he’s such a heartfelt writer, not because I care what he thinks or feels while listening to Bach. (It was all dancing about architecture to me.)
Before I picked the book up, I had no idea Casals was the guy who made the world sit up and take notice of the Suites. From today’s vantage point, the magnificence of the works feels self-evident. The music world, and I gotta say, me very personally, owes maestro Casals a huge debt of gratitude. So, hey, one more reason to read the book. Spanish cellist genius juice.
