She was one of my favorite pianists, a trio specialist with a wide-ranging musical mind. At 60 it seems she was just getting started.
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 78
Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia (1933-1944) is available in its entirety on Spotify. Is it possible to listen to the whole 11 plus hours from beginning to end without tiring of this glorious singer and the great musicians who adopted her? Four hours and counting, and I have no desire to change the channel.
Monday, June 12, 2017
KD
I was for the Cavs... the amount of talent the Warriors have assembled is simply unfair, and I think LeBron is not just the greatest, but the most un-selfish superstar I have witnessed in any sport. Still, you have to be impressed when you watch the Warriors getting it done. They have so many ways to win. And KD is such a classy, chill, and lethal player. So, yes, well done Dubs... Talent notwithstanding, you deserve it!
Friday, June 2, 2017
Love in the time of apocalypse
Jeff VanderMeer and Mohsin Hamid wrote some of my favorite books of the last few years. Both have new novels out, which I purchased for my flights to and from New York City last weekend. Strangely enough, different as they are, both books take place in a dystopian future and feature love stories of couples on the run. Though neither is up to its author's previous standard, both are good reads.
The title character of VanderMeer's Borne is an odd bit of genetically engineered something-or-other discovered by the book's resourceful scavenger-protagonist Rachel in the nightmarish Mad Max landscape she inhabits. She decides she'll keep him. I was immediately reminded of one of my very favorite Dr. Seuss poems:
Needless to say Borne doesn't remain merely a curious little lump for long, and soon he is a large, very smart, and voracious shape-shifter. Borne aside, Rachel has plenty of problems on her hands, struggling to stay clear of the terrifying giant flying bear that rules much of her territory as well as the Magician, a powerful warlord who has recruited an army of ultra-violent bio-damaged orphans to compete with the bear and the Company, which apparently was responsible for the mess everyone is in.
I wasn't really convinced by the bear or the Magician, and if you read much sci-fi you've probably already encountered someone like Borne. The book is not as downright weird and compelling as VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy. Still, Rachel and her drug-dealing partner Wick are a couple worth getting to know. And VanderMeer's powers of description remain acute.
Mohsin Hamid's Exit West takes place in a much nearer future that closely resembles our own time. There is no flying terror-bear, but the religious extremists who take over Nadia and Saeed's home town (perhaps Aleppo) are just as scary. As chaos, violence, and intolerance descend on their city, rumors spread that there are doors hidden in the city that can take you far away to a safe somewhere-else. These portals, like the wardrobe that opens into Narnia, are an odd contrivance. In an otherwise realistic work of fiction, they serve one main function in the narrative: to permit the plot to follow its refugees directly from origin to destination, skipping the journey itself– no harrowing boat ride across the Mediterranean, no airless shipping container, no trek across the desert and treacherous midnight crossing of the Rio Grande, no underground railroad... such an odd choice for a novel about forced migration!
Hamid's previous novels were concise, tightly focused, compressed. His prose has been referred to as "lapidary," which describes both its beauty and its cold, sharp, even cruel precision. These virtues are present in Exit West too, but for once I found myself wishing for a more expansive, epic approach. A refugee story that crosses multiple continents– from an unnamed city in the Middle East or Central Asia, to Greece, to London, and to the future favelas of Marin County (!)– and that posits a humanistic, even optimistic vision of the refugee community as full of progressive possibility– really deserves a longer treatment... to take its time. Instead, Hamid rushes toward the ending. Did he have trouble juggling the diverse settings, or the seemingly gratuitous element of magic realism? Need the paycheck? Just lose interest? Mohsin, take this one back and work on it a couple more years. It could be a masterpiece.
The title character of VanderMeer's Borne is an odd bit of genetically engineered something-or-other discovered by the book's resourceful scavenger-protagonist Rachel in the nightmarish Mad Max landscape she inhabits. She decides she'll keep him. I was immediately reminded of one of my very favorite Dr. Seuss poems:
Needless to say Borne doesn't remain merely a curious little lump for long, and soon he is a large, very smart, and voracious shape-shifter. Borne aside, Rachel has plenty of problems on her hands, struggling to stay clear of the terrifying giant flying bear that rules much of her territory as well as the Magician, a powerful warlord who has recruited an army of ultra-violent bio-damaged orphans to compete with the bear and the Company, which apparently was responsible for the mess everyone is in.
I wasn't really convinced by the bear or the Magician, and if you read much sci-fi you've probably already encountered someone like Borne. The book is not as downright weird and compelling as VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy. Still, Rachel and her drug-dealing partner Wick are a couple worth getting to know. And VanderMeer's powers of description remain acute.
Mohsin Hamid's Exit West takes place in a much nearer future that closely resembles our own time. There is no flying terror-bear, but the religious extremists who take over Nadia and Saeed's home town (perhaps Aleppo) are just as scary. As chaos, violence, and intolerance descend on their city, rumors spread that there are doors hidden in the city that can take you far away to a safe somewhere-else. These portals, like the wardrobe that opens into Narnia, are an odd contrivance. In an otherwise realistic work of fiction, they serve one main function in the narrative: to permit the plot to follow its refugees directly from origin to destination, skipping the journey itself– no harrowing boat ride across the Mediterranean, no airless shipping container, no trek across the desert and treacherous midnight crossing of the Rio Grande, no underground railroad... such an odd choice for a novel about forced migration!
Hamid's previous novels were concise, tightly focused, compressed. His prose has been referred to as "lapidary," which describes both its beauty and its cold, sharp, even cruel precision. These virtues are present in Exit West too, but for once I found myself wishing for a more expansive, epic approach. A refugee story that crosses multiple continents– from an unnamed city in the Middle East or Central Asia, to Greece, to London, and to the future favelas of Marin County (!)– and that posits a humanistic, even optimistic vision of the refugee community as full of progressive possibility– really deserves a longer treatment... to take its time. Instead, Hamid rushes toward the ending. Did he have trouble juggling the diverse settings, or the seemingly gratuitous element of magic realism? Need the paycheck? Just lose interest? Mohsin, take this one back and work on it a couple more years. It could be a masterpiece.
Thursday, June 1, 2017
I knew he would do it...
... so why am I feeling shocked that he did it? So petty. So stupid. So depressing.
But if withdrawing from the agreement will not make Mr. Trump’s domestic policies any worse than they are, it is still a terrible decision that could have enormous consequences globally. In huge neon letters, it sends a clear message that this president knows nothing or cares little about the science underlying the stark warnings of environmental disruption. That he knows or cares little about the problems that disruption could bring, especially in poor countries. That he is unmindful that America, historically the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, has a special obligation to help the rest of the world address these issues. That he is impervious to the further damage this will cause to his already tattered relationship with the European allies. That his malfeasance might now prompt other countries that signed the accord to withdraw from the agreement, or rethink their emissions pledges.
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