Music, Art, Movies

 In other words, life continues under the new normal.  But first, a word about my hearing.  My right ear has improved somewhat since November, when it was about 90% blocked.  Then, after taking Serc for many weeks, it rose to about 50% of normal.  Today it improved slightly again, perhaps up to about 70% of normal.  I noticed it right away at the piano this morning.  The high notes (my right side) were louder, clearer, and more bell-like.  I have cut the meds from 48 mg per day to 32 mg per day.  So far so good.

Work on my "old" piano program continues, along with two pieces of the new one.  The first program is completely memorized, while one piece on the next program is getting there.  The Schubert Impromptu Op 90 #3 is coming along nicely, with two pages remaining to be memorized.  It's possible that this piece will be included in my "old" program, whenever it gets performed.  The Beethoven Variations Op 34 will require a long time yet before it is publicly playable, but it shouldn't be too hard to memorize, at least.  I have not learned a new Beethoven piece for several years now, being so involved with Haydn, but this seemed the year to do it.

In cat news, Mogollon has gone through a crisis, as his glaucoma suddenly worsened.  His right eye is now totally blind, and has gone white.  He was in a type of migraine pain for many days.  A trip to the vet, and subsequent e-mails and phone calls have relieved the pain, but he is now totally blind in one eye.  He seems more normal and relaxed today, and is eating well.

In movie news, I had two picks last week, and this weekend is Deb's 3-film festival.  Kagemusha (1980) is a late Kurosawa film, not showing onthe Criterion Channel.  Instead, we used our DVD box set (Criterion) for this one.  Not having watched DVDs for a long time, we immediately noticed the poorer image quality as compared to recent streaming.  The film is based on historical events in the early and middle 1570s, when one clan was wiped off the map by another clan who used muskets (hundreds and hundreds of muskets).  While overall the 3 hour film is quite good, and time flies as we watch, two things make it less than a perfect film.  One is the music, which is western style, with lots of trumpets, and does not fit the scenario at all.  I understand that Western influences changed the course of Japanese history and marked the end of the samurai era, but this music is really terrible, often spoiling the wonderful images it is supposed to enhance.  The second thing is the ending, when Kurosawa shows the aftermath of the slaughter of hundreds of men and horses.  We get it.  War is terrible, and not very pretty.  But the images of horses struggling to stand (after obviously being drugged for the scene) go on and on and on.  Enough.

                                    We watched our own DVD copy of the film, from Criterion. 

Next up is one of the quirkiest noirish films ever made.  We had seen The Seventh Victim (1943) before, though not for many years, and had completely forgotten it.  A senior schoolgirl is told by administration that her sister has stopped sending tuition money.  She sets off for New York to find out what is going on.  And just what is going on?  Her sister has sold her cosmetics business and has been taken into a satanic cult, where she is manipulated and brain washed.  When she attempts to leave the cult, they make attempts to kill her.  The film is very hard to describe.  Produced by Val Lewton, it has many of his trademark elements, such as a lone female in heels on the street alone at night, being pursued by a killer.  Not entirely successful, it still is a fascinating film to watch.  Nothing happens the way one expects, and viewers are kept continually wondering just what exactly is going on.  The ending is truly amazing and unexpected, especially for a Hollywood film.  Definitely one for the books, and unique in film history.  Kim Hunter gives a really good performance of the younger sister.

                                        Showing only until Sunday on the Criterion Channel.  

 

Turning to art from the DIA, and continuing with our landscape theme, we turn to a favourite painting of mine by Corot.  Corot lived from 1800-1875, and this painting is from 1875.  We see a peaceful scene, painted in most monochromatic style, with small splashes of brighter colour reserved for the tall maiden's skirt.  The children accompanying her blend completely with their surroundings.  This is a meditative painting, one that invites quiet reflection, and while it doesn't reveal any great truths or require much interpretation, it does show humans interacting with nature in a way that makes us realize what we are missing when away from such pleasures.  The fact that it doesn't show a dramatic mountain, nor a splashy sunset, or a threatening storm or deep, dark, mysterious woods, also speaks of its gentle quality.  This is a place similar to those we have all visited at some time.  Not surprisingly, it is a popular painting in the museum.

 

Gathering Fruit At Mortefontaine, Jean Batiste Camille Corot, French.  Oil on canvas, 24.5" x 17.5", unframed.  Collection Detroit Institute of Arts.  

 

Detail of bottom right.

 

And that wraps up another blogging session.  Back to my exciting life!

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

Murderers, Guns, Brexit, Climate Change, Kurosawa

As I write this at 5 pm, it appears that the two teenage Canadian murderers on the lam have been found, or at least their bodies.  No doubt done in by the flies, which can drive a person completely insane within minutes.  I am hardly qualified to get inside the head of someone who wilfully murders without motive, but killing strangers has always been a rare thing.  Like child abuse, it is usually done by someone who knows the victim.  There are very few random murders of strangers in Detroit, but there are plenty of murders.  Sometimes crossfire will kill an unintended victim, too.  Having been to Detroit hundreds of times, though mostly in better areas, we haven't even seen a gun yet.  Odds are we won't, but one never knows.  America is one of the more dangerous countries on the planet.  The price of freedom?  It is a rather high price.

Trump has split the US politically more than anyone else in my lifetime.  So have guns.  And so Brexit has split the UK more than any other event in my lifetime.  The world seems to be heading for an either/or showdown, which will result in more violence, more protests, and more damage to human relations.  This is not a world that is ready for any sort of peace.  And so it is a world that will never be able to agree on methods to control climate change, or stem the flow of greenhouse gasses.  And some people wonder why we did not wish to have children.  This crisis of humanity has been a long time in the making.  I see no hope for a solution.  As one country enables a liberal and Earth-loving leader, another one enables a right wing denier.  This is not balance, but catastrophe.  Deb and I should be able to live out our days on the planet, but adaptations are already required.  How many people/countries will be able to adapt?  We watch our Detroit River and surrounding Great Lakes at record high levels, with flooding a daily event.  Our backyard creek, which is supposed to flow into the major river, cannot.  Instead, the Detroit River now flows into our backyard.

As Kurosawa notes, in his weird, epic film "Dodes'ka-den" (the sound of a trolley moving along the tracks), poverty will never go away, and will only increase.  Climate change and violence always hit the lowest income earners the hardest, as they have less leeway and wiggle room than anyone else.  As a result, they are in the line of fire more often than anyone else.  

Kurosawa's first colour film is from 1970, and he uses colour in unique ways.  The film would have been too unrelentingly depressing in black and white, though perhaps some scenes would have worked better this way.  A small village built upon a landfill on the outside of the world, it would seem, is inhabited by a collection of rough living people living around a fresh water tap.  Shelters are made from old gasoline tins, a car, and scrap of all kinds.  The film is episodic, and examines several lives a bit at a time.  I have seen the film before, but remembered almost nothing about it, which is rather strange.  It is a memorable film, firstly for its use of colour, and secondly for its unrelenting look at the lowest class of humanity, those just barely able to scrounge a life from their surroundings.  Of course watching a depressing film makes one reflect on any manner of depressing events going on around the world at the time, so forgive me my first few paragraphs of this blog.  Of course everything will work out okay.  Brexit will be wonderful, as will another four years of Trump, and an upcoming Conservative government in Canada.  At least two murderers have been brought to a form of justice.

 Dodes'ka-den. 

In other cheerful news, typical of Detroit, the largest downtown skyscraper project has suddenly been greatly reduced in scope.  From 912 feet, it is now way, way down.  No one yet knows how low, but I'm guessing that leasing hasn't gone well.  Oh well--I always said that I wouldn't care about any new buildings downtown, as long as the major existing skyscrapers were fixed up and occupied.  At least that part has come true.  And downtown has never been more lively or beautiful since we moved here in 1976, so I am not going to complain about the height of a new scyscraper being reduced.  Detroit day was moved till tomorrow.  Looking forward to it, as usual.

Mapman Mike

Round and Round We Go

Two ice storms inside of a week.  Winter, which began late (exactly on January 9th), has been pretty miserable for us since then.  Cold temps and a bit of snow don't bother me too much, coming from the background that I have.  But extremely cold temps combined with gale force winds tend to get under my skin, in more ways than one.  Luckily all the driving we had to do over the last month (mostly medical appts) went well.  We seem stuck in a weather loop:  cold, windy weather, followed by a warming, then moisture, usually either snow, sleet, rain, or a combination of all three and more.  Then it gets briefly mild.  Then the wind and cold air come again, and on it goes.  The wind is just beginning to die down from the umpteenth iteration of this pattern.  In the good old days, when you could predict weather a bit more without complex computer programs, our winter would begin to wind down by mid-February.  Let's hope it holds true for this year, though somehow I doubt it.

Last week my retina check up appointment was cancelled, because the power was out at the clinic.  I now go on February 27th.  As to my cataract surgery, it has now been over two weeks and everything is fine.  I can now lift things again, which is a relief.  And on February 28th I see my optometrist for reading glasses.  Last Saturday was the second performance class for my students.  For the November one I only had 2 show up.  Saturday I had 4.  That is a 100% improvement!  Next one will be in late May.  I am off the hook for a year-end student recital this year, due to my small number of students.

Continuing on with a brief look at some of the best paintings from the Detroit Institute of Arts, I would like to follow up with a second painting by Salvatore Rosa.  This self portrait is one of the most stunning, outside of Rembrandt, that I have ever seen.  The museum has a large number of artist self-portraits, including famous ones of Gauguin and Van Gogh, and even Whistler.  But this one is totally amazing!

 Salvatore Rosa, Self Portrait, ca. 1650s.  72 cm x 63 cm.  DIA.  I am beginning to 

look something like this, as our dreadful winter carries on.    

 Detail of above.  What a head of hair!

Rosa, by contemporary accounts, was not a nice man.  Things were done his way or not at all.  He had few friends, was somewhat of a recluse, and would have likely fit more comfortably with the art scene 200 years later.  The landscape by him that I showed last time has a pendant, a painting that was meant to hand with it.  It is in the National Gallery, London, and is also a very wonderful and romantic-era landscape.  It would certainly be fun to see an exhibit devoted to Rosa's art, and to see the pair of paintings side by side.

Over the weekend we watched an epic film by Kurosawa called "Red Beard."  Though it meanders sometimes, this is a wrenching tale of doctors working at a public clinic in Japan in the 1800s, as they try to reconcile traditional medicine with what they have learned from the Dutch.  Mifune is a wise elder doctor who holds the clinic together.  He request a new, young doctor, one trained in Dutch treatments and diagnosis, and the movie is really about the character development of the young doctor.  He arrives arrogant and wanting to get out no matter what, but as time goes on and he deals with the poor class of people who depend on the clinic, he learns much and gradually accepts his vocation.  When he gets a chance to leave,he refuses.  it's a very long movie, but we watched it all in one go without any trouble staying tuned in.  Fascinating stuff!

 Based on a Japanese novel, and also one by Dostoevsky.  A really great film!  

Mapman Mike