"The Empire State Building is a star!"
--Andy Warhol
When I got to room #118 at the Magic Castle Hotel, I didn't know what to expect. I had heard that one of Andy Warhol's films, Empire, was going to be shown there in it's full 8 hour and 5 minute entirety, played over and over again starting Friday and ending sometime on Sunday. When I heard what the movie was about, I was very cynical but also intrigued. It was to consist of nothing but one constant real time shot of the Empire State Building (in New York) filmed from the inside of some other building across the street, sometime in 1964. The filmng started around 8:10pm and ended around 2:30 am the next morning.
The film was shown in this little room in a hollywood hotel. I entered a dark room with two other people in it. The movie was being projected from a reel-to-reel projector on to a canvass type screen. On the screen was an image of the top half of the Empire State Building with a few smaller buildings in the background. That's it. No action. No sound. Just three people in a dark room sitting watching this static screen with the eerie sound of the projector humming in the background. Now I'm not an art snob. In fact, I can't even appreciate most art because it doesn't touch me in any substantial way, and I can't find any meaning in a lot of art. The thing that bugs me about Andy Warhol is that he doesn't seem to give any particular meaning to his art, nor does he appear to care. When accused of not having any purpose in making his art, he usually agrees in a way that makes me resent him for thinking he is this wise Zen master. I guess I've come to expect all artists to have a reason why they do art, why they create what they do. I've never really understood Andy Warhol, or why so many people love his work so much. Anyways my creative juices are drying up, so I'll get to the point. In the nearly 4 hours that I watched of the film, the most exciting thing that occured was an unidentified man reflected in the window at the beggining of reel 5. (There were 10 reels total, each 50-60 minutes in length). But the point of showing the film was not to have it shown in a museum or a movie theater where people were forced to watch the whole thing. Warhol intended it as a wall piece, to be shown in a domestic setting, like a house or a hotel room at the Magic Castle Hotel, where you can do other things while the drama of the film slowly unfolds. So I wasn't glued to the screen for 4 straight hours--I played a game of chess, read the paper, learned of a supposedly cool Japanese girl band called Ex-Girl from one of their biggest fans, and when I looked back up at the screen I hadn't missed a thing (although I was informed that I missed a bird flying through the picture while I was in the bathroom.)
It was probably 3 hours into the film that I realized that I was completely lost in the picture on the screen, imagining that I was looking out at the Empire State Building from my window, observing the day fading into night and eventually night becoming day again, all the while gazing upon the building I found myself giving the film meaning, ya know, all that metaphor for your life bullshit.
Well, my attention span demands i do something else now, so thanks for listening
Last night I went to see Ustad Zakir Hussain, who may be the greatest tabla player in the world today.
I knew it would be hardcore when there were more elaborately dressed Indian couples with serious facial expressions
than grinning yuppies in ethnic sandals from Cost Plus.
People came from other countries to see this concert.
Hussain was playing with one Pandit Shivkumar Sharma,
A santoor player who's elevated the instrument from folk to classical status in his 50-some years playing.
The santoor is an absolutely crazy instrument.
Picture a trapezoid filled with 116 strings that someone plays by lightly hammering at the strings with a pair of wooden sticks.
The sounds that come out of that thing are like what it would be like if smoke could sing as it curled.
The music was just unbelievable. I think they played a lot of traditional ragas, but improvised the hell out of them.
One of the things I love about tabla drums is that they're an active part of the melody.
Instead of just keeping rhythm, a tabla player has to mirror the melody with their beat.
And these players were so in unison that they would become distracted at the same time,
You'd see them wander off in the same tangents, stare off into the same space, and breathe as a unit.
Sometimes the piece would get very fast and complicated and other times it just kind of shrugged along.
The cool part was seeing how they kept up with each other. It was like a complex race they were both winning.
Watching the guys' faces, you feel like you're in on some private joke,
The way they make eye contact and test each other's ability to keep up and be flexible.
One musician will suddenly stop, and the other one mirrors it exactly, even though he couldn't have predicted it.
It was like watching two men read each other's minds.
The music does something strange to the mind.
It feels like it clarifies your brainwaves and unclogs thought passageways.
Ideas were sparking up and I found myself urgently scrawling all kinds of random nonsense on the back of the paper program.
The notes from the santoor were flat out giggling and skipping around my head
And the tabla beat was some kind of scuttling companion crab.
Maybe this sounds like a ridiculous acid trip, but it was just genuinely incredible music.
At every twist or stop, your head nodded appreciatively and your whole body said, "Exactly So."
But then something really tragic happened.
I don't know who it was; I was sitting around a lot of men in that stuffy auditorium,
But someone must have opened their legs to air themselves out or something.
I was overwhelmed with the sickeningly musky scent of sweaty balls.
It was not cool.
I tried to ignore it and focus back on the music, but that only made it worse.
I started to think about how sticky and hot the performers' balls must be… and that led me down a deep, dark road.
I started envisioning the santoor player dressing up as a woman and hitting the bar scene.
I started thinking about what faces they'd make when they were shitting…
It was bad.
I began to giggle uncontrollably.
I was thinking how these esteemed Indian mega-stars probably only agreed to come to the U.S. for the Fatburgers.
I was laughing the kind of treacherous laughter that perpetuates itself only because you know how inappropriate it is to be laughing.
I was embarrassed, but I couldn't stop.
I was biting my purse to try and shut up.
But anyway, that's just my silly hang-up.
The music was too cool!
Hussain makes these faces like he's delightfully surprised to hear what comes from his tabla,
He looks like someone playing with a young puppy that every now and then will do something unexpected like
Leap up and lick the hell out of your face.
One of the guys next to me told me he asked Hussain one time what he thinks about when he's playing and allegedly Hussain said that he
Envisions himself going on a grand adventure with his tabla, leaping over great mountains, wading through streams, etc…
If you ever get the chance to watch him play, it's really cute thinking of him and his little tabla on some mighty exploit.
The guy next to me scared me.
When I first sat down, I was whipping my head around, trying to look at all the people in the auditorium.
Everytime I looked towards him, I saw him out of the corner of my eye giving me weird looks and acting as if he was going to say something.
I stopped looking over that way.
Then he started making small talk with my boyfriend about the show.
My boyfriend's a drummer and indicated that he wanted to learn to play tablas, and the guy's like "Oh, well I'll introduce you after the show
To Ravi Shankar's most senior student. He teaches in Pasadena. That guy in the front row."
He told us how he had seen Zakir Hussain many times in concert and had interviewed him a while back for some blah blah blah.
I'm sure the guy's perfectly decent and all, but he made me nervous.
Some people seem too eager to spill all their guts to you.
I like the friendly people who don't throw all their cards at you at once.
After the show, he gave my boyfriend his card.
On the way home, my boyfriend was all defensive of him, "He was a really nice guy."
Yeah, and so are car salesmen.
Anyway, I guess I won't be studying with Ravi Shankar's senior student any time soon.
Yeah so, I've been exposed to a fair amount of art lately. For starters, I recently went to the 2211's Inaugural Exhibition. It featured work by Alex Grey, Jim Campbell, Paul Laffoley, and Jody Zellen. The media included video, painting, drawing, and photography. Overall it was a very respectable display of modern art. The highlight of the show was without a doubt Alex Grey's Buddha Embryo Series.
I went to see a film called Sacra Corona. It dealt with the founding of the Hungarian state and the calamity following the early royal successions. As will all historical movies, much is left to conjecture...particularly the interpersonal relationships. The lowpoint was probably the muddle and lack of fluidity of the battle scenes. Thankfully those were few and far between. The highpoint was the portrayal of King Laszlo by Attila Szarvas.
I've also been to several concerts lately. Most recently would be two shows(at the Whiskey and the Galaxy Theater in Santa Ana) by Jerry Cantrell, the guitarist and backup singer of Alice in Chains. Both were very inspired shows that were much appreciated by a throwback crowd. Nothing bad to be said about either. Both shows had a fair mix of material from Alice's catalog, Jerry's first cd, and new songs from his forthcoming album. The highpoint of either concert was the performance of "Man in the Box" followed by "Would?".
Here's my immpression of a show I saw last week at a
club called Smalls here in the Village,
which is our
sort-of underground all-night jazz club. It was a
trio of Sam Yahel on Piano, Brian Blade on Drums,
and Johanness Weidenmuller on Bass.
Blade is one of the baddest young drummers around on the scene, and I
check him out every chance I get.
He and Yahel play together pretty often, and sometimes when they get
together Joshua Redman shows up
and they make it an organ trio.
Johanness is a teacher at the New School in addition to being a fine bass player.
Smalls consists of one basement room.
No food or drinks are sold, but there is free coffee and juice and sometimes
little munchies,
and most people carry in a six-pack or bottle or a few.
The ceiling is low, the lights
are dim, the air is filled with smoke, and every once
in a while water leaks down through the ceiling
from the nasty pipes above.
But the thing of the night is
Brian Blade.
He plays with such intention, matching
intensity and precision, that listening becomes
more than an aural experience and the music starts to occur
inside the head and deep in the chest, not just in the
room.
Every time I hear him, my own gets lifted to
another level for a couple of days afterwards.
This
particular night, the piano trio setting makes for a
lot less bash than one gets hearing Blade with a horn
player,
but the group is tight and moves in and out of
forms and feels weightlessly, with solos bleeding into
one another, becoming inseparable (which drives a lot
of the college kids crazy because they're intent on
proving their hipness by clapping in all the right
places).
Listening to this trio reminds me of how
deeply involved three players can become improvising
together,
how maleable harmonic and rhythmic space is
in the hands of masters-- it is a portrait of one of
the truest intentions of jazz,
which is freedom within
form to create new music moment by moment, and have it
really be new and really be music.
It's the kind of
set where you don't want it to end, and then when it
does you don't want to hear another note for the rest
of the night.
So I like Brian Blade, and if you get a chance to
hear him play, you should.
It's a beautiful thing.
There are some good films in LA...film "Gendernots" (this might not be
spelled right) shown at the LACMA March 2001 http://www.lacma.org/lacma.asp
Your Reaction:
Very good independent film with interesting view point and subject matter.
German born director.
Did you have any prior expectations?
No
High Points/Low Points/Overall:
The only low point was over an hour of discussion prior to showing the film
about another unfinished film by the same director.
Most of the people in
the audience didn't even know that this was going to be part of the evening.
What made it good/bad/neither/something else?
I liked the way they explained the ideas, concepts and realities of people
who feel they are neither one or the other gender. It was interesting to
hear how each individual figured out what is the best path for them. It was
also interesting to see how that path changed over time. I think the film
left me with a feeling that the people in the film were not that different
from other people and that they were expressing feelings that most of us
experience in different levels if given the freedom to see life that
differently.
Butthole Bonanza
An independent film called Butthole Bonanza by Todd Hughes.
A fake documentary about an artist (who really exists)
Who paints his canvases by squirting paint out from his butt.
It shows the reactions of people who have seen this happen.
It was a great film because it gave off a good
message.
Its point was to show how putting reason and tradition into art can be damaging or
limiting to it.
It talks about how limiting art shows how people are afraid of difference, and have to
have everything the same.
It was a great film because this artist who squirts the paint out of his
butt onto a canvas refused to create exactly the same as others.
Bad Company
You know those shamefully bad teen flicks that haunt American cinema?
This isn't one of those.
A french film about a young adolescent girl who falls obsessively in love for the first time
with an unworthy fella,
finds strength and unparalelled support in friendship,
and grows considerably as a human being.
What makes it so incredible is the acting of a humble bunch of young kids
& the multi-faceted characters they portray.
Where films like "Cruel Intentions" or "Dude, Where's My Car?" or...
ANY of the crap that's fit the mainstream teen genre
in the last 4-5 years present these one-sided, vacant characters,
Bad Company exhibits to the audience complicated and interesting souls, worthy of our attention.
Even the would-be villain of the movie is not stuffed so neatly into a stereotype.
Where some teen films like "Kids" and "The Doom Generation" have used superficial
characters to tell some
"Shocking Truth" about kids today,
Bad Company unpretentiously illustrates how fragile, unsure and dangerously determined
the adolescent experience is
without manipulating unduly or being graphic and violent.
The girls in this film are strong, bright, sensual, beautiful and thoughtful.
Too bad our flicks only focus on a young gal's sex appeal.
I'd recommend this film to anyone who thought there was something poetic about
the ages between 14 and 20
But never felt like they saw it done right in the media,
To anyone who appreciates films about genuinely sacred friendships,
To anyone that doesn't mind feeling horrified and disgusted,
To anyone looking for teenage role models,
Or to anyone who's ever contemplated using someone else very badly.
Lotus Flowers and Tortured Soles: Foot Binding in Chinese History
I'm in Toronto for a few weeks and decided to visit the BATA Shoe Museum,
A multi-cultural history of foot adornment.
There is so much beauty to see in this city,
but I was drawn to the BATA for an exhibit of shoes and artifacts
from China's ancient practice of foot binding.
It was a strange sort of art,
the shoes meticulously designed for feet horrifically deformed.
Most shoes
fit into the palm of one's hand, and women with bound feet (said to take on
the shape of the Lotus petal) always had coverings, even for bed.
I was blown away by the photographs of bound feet and the step-by-step
explanation as to how the procedure was performed.
It has sadomasochistic
themes: the smallest bound foot was most desirable for marriage.
I swear I will never complain about a pair of sexy but uncomfortable high heels as long as I live.
What we do for fashion.
In the week I have left in Canada, I'll continue to shop while the dollar is
so strong,
visit the Art Gallery of Ontario (again...loved the Henry Moore
Sculptures)
and get some history lessons at the Royal Ontario Museum.
Tomorrow I am off to Niagara Falls, in part to marvel at the magnificence,
but also to get my hands of a kitschy Niagara Falls snow globe.
"And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing: I didn't open my mouth, I didn't repaint my half of the world." Helene Cixous
Taking the girl's advice, we wandered into an exhibit by Peter Howson.
All three of us immediately agreed that the paintings were interesting and walked closer to them to examine the details.
Howson's style is reminiscent of cartoons, with thick lines accenting the bulbous shapes on people, creating disproportionate figures.
The result is friendly forms, without much expression.
Howson's colours were vibrant, but with dark values. Bright red sky was used as a backdrop in some paintings, which provided an awesome contrast to the dark landscape so prevalent in his paintings.
Red and bright blue were also used to accent various aspects of the scenes, such as blood dripping from torn flesh.
The result was a powerful message that attracted the eyes.
Most of Howson's paintings seemed to deal with war, and struggle, but the virtual lack of response of the figures in the paintings to the situations around them made the message eerie.
In one painting, set in London, many people were scattered, naked, clawing and fleeing.
The colours were natural, but the eye was attracted to a single, torn Union Jack on the right side.
The faces of the people engulfed in the madness were bulbous, and so despite their slight frowns seemed almost happy, making the spectacle even stranger.
The next room we went into had a large picture of a circle on it, whose neon colours made the painting seem to pop out. The three of us stayed in that room for awhile,
Rushing back and forth and occasionally going "AAH!" at the burning sensation the bright blue and pink circles created in our eyes, and then left the exhibit.
We wandered through the parking lot for awhile, until we found ourselves in another room, where the artist was making pictures composed entirely of newspaper.
Some of the paper was painted, creating a woven mosaic of simple pictures: legs, dogs, faces. The colours were bland and the detailing poor; the three of us left shortly.
We passed through a few more rooms, unexcited, and were beginning to wonder if maybe the Howson exhibit was the only room that was worthwhile.
Soon, however, we came upon an exhibit of photography. Right as we opened the door, we knew we would like it, and rushed up to examine the first picture: a collage of a staircase.
The photographer, Jenny Oken, took many pictures of a winding, yellow, metal staircase, and overlaid them, creating the sensation one gets when falling down stairs.
After marveling for awhile at the harmony of the railings and the steps, we moved on to another picture of lighted circles.
Max explained that photomontage the best.
"I like this because it's not pretentious...it's like the artist just said, 'hey, this would look really cool', and took pictures. And it does."
We wandered into another section of the room, which had a set of four, large, pictures of neon lines...possibly from a large sign, or a spinning Ferris wheel.
We couldn't tell, but the bright pink, slightly softened on the edges, contrasting with the dark night behind it, was really pleasant to view.
It was like candy, for the eyes. It was peaceful, and very familiar.
The three of us stood in front of that collage for awhile, mesmerized by the sight.
"It reminds me of what it's like late at night at a fair, when you're really tired and waiting for your little brother to get off the ride..." said I.
"I really like the curvilinear aspect of it," said Nagle.
"What the hell are you talking about?" said Max.
The next exhibit of interest to us was one which had mirrored spyrography, each painting made of two basic colours...we left, however, once we realized that the artist was in the room
And was very upset at Nagle's proclamation of, "That one reminds me of Batman!!"
The last room we entered was mixed media modern.
Most of the pieces seemed to lack innovation, however, and we quickly became more entranced in the fake waterfall that was part of the furniture than in the art around us.
In the middle of the room was this big, hollow, aluminum shape. During our wanderings around the room, Nagle walked by it and accidentally knocked into it,
Making it rock back and forth and create a loud "BOOM BOOM BOOM" sound. We paused, nothing bad happened to us. We began touching the cool metal piece, and soon began tapping it.
Depending on where Nagle and I hit, a different sound was made. Max joined in, and the three of us began a rhythmic percussion, excited that we finally found a use for this piece of art.
Suddenly, a guard rushed up. "EXCUSE ME," she said, "that is a "SCULPTURE". Oops. We asked who the sculpture was by - Brad Howe - and then left the gallery.
All in all it was a fun trip, and we were exposed to interesting styles and techniques of art.
I just read a small book, published by MTV (!!!) that was actually quite astounding. if one ignores the actual plot, and concentrates on the feel of the novel, it is very rewarding. its called the perks of being a wallflower by stephen chbosky. basically a story of a freshman boy entering high school. However, it's overall message is, look at the good things in life. concentrate on moments when the world is at peace, you're surrounded by friends... things like, the look on you're friend's face on her birthday, the smell of rain, a really good car ride. i read it at a time where all i could see were big, impenetrable blocks of Generally Shitty Stuff. so all in all, not a bad read. i am currently in the middle of pomosexual, which kinda celebrates the various types of sexualities out there... beyond lesbigay. (for example, lets say you're a man born in to a woman's body and have a sex change in order to be a straight man but end up being a gay man... and so on) EXTREMELY interesting. i'll fill you in whenever more things come to mind.... love tallie
