Essay on Caravaggio
The Quietest Painting in the Room is an essay I wrote on this painting by Caravaggio and its relationship with Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling and published over at Comment Magazine. You can read the whole article by clicking this link.
Upon Arrival
After being squeezed from the great sausage-casing in the sky that is modern air transport, what one notices upon landing is the first thing one sees, that is, what he can't help but notice: the airport. Our wildest movies about future utopias don't equal the present good sense and design featured even in 2nd-rate cities like Stuttgart. Immediately, everything is calm and beautiful. The passport control officer is kind and gentle, without the trace of sarcasm and suspicion and boredom that mark his American counterpart.
But the goodness starts even before that transaction. Here, the boarding gate--what is that tube called that rolls up to an aircraft door?-- has windows and smart metal railings so that, instead of the anxious shuffle toward who-know-what-fate, the passengers disembark in a leisurely cantor, looking up at the sky, watching the men at work below.
And even before that, we knew that entering the EU was entering a different sort of place; seen from the sky over Baden-Wurttemberg, villages huddle in crevices and along rivers without a trace of sprawl, and this is not some romantic idyll, or town treasured for being picaresque. Stuttgart is a manufacturing hub: the head of Mercedes, Porche, Siemens, Bosch, and several other international conglomerates. What would be in America a huge warehouse district is here perfectly-squared fields. There is literally corn growing right up to the edge of the tarmac.
Once off the plane it is all leather seats and trim people in sexy clothes, glass walls and orderliness everywhere. Instead of a McDonald's, there are fresh sandwich shops with subs piled up, overfilled with colorful vegetables. All things bright and beautiful, indeed. Then, the stupefyingly gorgeous car rental stands, then the sane and talented drivers--quick and controlled--as our cab (itself a Mercedes; they all are here) whipped us out to suburban Bad Canstatt, where our sensible, if a bit rural, hostel is found.
They let us check in five hours early and we use all of them for sleep.
New Poem in Grain Magazine
Favorite Things: Rdio
There are heaps of great music-steaming services out there, now that, apparently, music is free. Really, they should be used as over-qualified previewers in determining which LPs or CDs you really need in your collection, if permanence and sound quality matter to you. Among them,
- Spotify: of which I might be a terrific fan, where it legal in Germany, where I am currently living, but alas, it is not.
- Pandora: the great pioneer and game-changer that plays a virtual radio station built on a matrix of similar-sounding artists. A great service, but it won't play an entire album, and I've never been much of a singles guy. Also illegal in Germany.
- Naxos: this is the largest classical record label in the world, and they're buying up smaller companies by the cello case to add to their online streaming service. It is a subscription service, so you pay for access to their 800,000+ tracks but can stream them at CD quality, if you have the bandwidth. They also have a pretty deep bench when it comes to jazz.
- Rdio: Another subscription service (my plan costs something like $6 a month), Rdio features the best interface of the lot, tons of obscure recordings, a social feature that is (for once) actually useful--I'm not talking about updating one's facebook automatically every time a new record comes on, but the "playlists" feature, where some pretty tasteful people put together great jazz mixes, Christmas tunes, KEXP-based melodica, and other turn-ons for this traveller.
City Library
On Friday, Amber and I went into Stuttgart to see the Opera, about which more later, and made a detour en route to visit the newly remodeled Stuttgart City Library. I knew, depute the lack of directional specificity on the part of Broom-Helga the Wicked, our typically-Swabian helper at the tourist office, that we had the right building because I'd seen the drawings from
, but we approached the glowing stack of blue cubes with some hesitation, not only because it looked so little like a library, and not only because it was raining and we didn't want to wander too far into what looked like a construction zone cum office park, but because the only markings on the building's exterior were some three characters in Arabic, carved into the white stone. If I've seen a less-reassuring approach, I'm sure I couldn't name it.
Once inside though, all is well. Or, nearly all: there aren't any books for awhile. They begin on the fourth floor. The first few floors are given over to "media," which is usually done badly, but which Stuttgart manages to do pretty well here. There are rows of flatscreen TV's, listening stations for the vast music library (this is Germany after all) including private listening rooms full of couches and pretty-serious equipment, and various adolescents strewn about like shwarma wrappers plugged into the laptops one can rent from the desk for less admirable forms of "research."
The central receiving room is a giant cube, white and undecorated, without furniture or markings, and while this enthusiast appreciates the grand gesture, the space does feel a little wasted in this case. What do we need all that absence
for
, in a space like this? Libraries are for contemplation, sure, but isn't it active contemplation we're after, rather than the absence one hopes for in a cloister?
When, having wound around the exterior up four flights of white tunneling, and having shaken off the suspicious feeling that someone might be above, watching and promising cheese, the books appear and color explodes everywhere.
Another experiment in the linearity of libraries, not unlike Rem Koolhaas' stunning (and similarly difficult) glass refraction in downtown Seattle, the Biblio anchors a developing area off the Schlossplatz that attempts to lure both tourists and residents through the sleek, if over-planned, spaces between the skyscrapers, towards a feeling for the real daily life of this sturdy and serious place.
Building by
Year's Best
Last year, one of my favorite musicians ever, Iron and Wine, released their new album on my birthday, which felt like a gift from the world. The year before, the band that has taught me more than any other (about art, about life) Bright Eyes, released two albums on my birthday. It seems fitting then, that I should offer something back, in the form of a Best-of list, since this year's birthday has just passed without fanfare from the musical community. Here then are my favorite albums from 2011, offered in a spirit of generosity rather than contention, for those of you with whom I no longer share car rides or mix tapes.
 |
| Girls- Listen Here |
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| Iron and Wine- Listen Here |
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| The Antlers- Listen Here |
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| Youth Lagoon- Listen Here |
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| Bon Iver- Listen Here |
On the Town
My wife and I were missing our hometown (Seattle) the other day, as we are exiled and adventuring abroad for the year, and counting its many glories, not least among which is the thriving theater scene. "Remember that one play?" she'd say, and I: "that was great; remember this other one?" Suddenly it seemed like we'd seen a lot of plays during the last two years. Suddenly it seemed we should try to make a list of those we remembered particularly.
Comedy of Errors
dir. George Mount for
: we saw this Shakespeare-in-the-park production twice, once at the show's open, and again at its close, as a treat for our out-of-town wedding guests.
Julius Caesar
: Another Shakespeare-in-the-Park, this time at Seward, and a season before.
Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World
dir. Anita Montgomery for
: Staring my good friend Carol Roscoe in a breakout role.
The Tempest
at Seattle Shakespeare Company: featuring, on the night we went, live music by
, composed especially for the show.
Crime and Punishment
: one of the only competent productions I've seen at this beleaguered, (since closed) regional playhouse more concerned with furthering a sociological agenda than with making good art.
Othello
Intiman: Officially the worst play I've ever seen, despite (because of?) the cast's having been shipped in from New York, to the understandable pique of Seattle's own talented acting pool; we walked out at half-time and were dismayed for weeks.
On the Town (a musical)
at 5th Ave: the actress/singer/personality Sara Rudinoff enlivens everything she touches.
39 Steps
Seattle Repertory Theater: disarmingly charming and British.
Jude the Obscure
Erikson Theater: My own entry in Book-it's Novel Workshop Series; actors reading from stools on stage hasn't been so entertaining since Dylan Thomas' reading of
Under Milkwood
in New York, which I unfortunately missed, having been born forty years too late for the premier.
The Cider-House Rules
(parts 1 and 2): an epic production full of moving performances, which addressed, I think, social problems we're not really having. It made terrific sense when they staged it 15 years earlier, to general acclaim.
Great Expectations
: Unbelievable directing, a terrific supporting cast, and Jane Jones (as both Havisham and Betsy) in a performance I think I'll always remember.
Oh Lovely Glowworm
dir. Roger Benington for
: A flawless production of a flawed but terribly-inspiring play. Magical in nearly-every way: this was one of those rare (for me) pieces of art that made me want to do everything differently.
Hunter Gathers
: This tiny theater is (was) the most important thing happening in the Northwest for the last decade. The ambition and level of artistry on evidence was just stupefying. Then, they lost most of their ensemble, artistic directors, and lighting designers either to New York or to theaters with bigger budgets, and have since become a gay teen youth center that sometimes does plays.
Twelfth Night
Seattle Shakes: A Christmas production! So fun and Dickensian!
Two Gentlemen of Verona
: A mod-production that used technology in a smart way: characters texted each other and we could read their screens via subtle projections. Sounds fishy, but it wasn't. Definitely the coolest production I've ever seen of this play.
Electra
: This was kind of a play, but mostly a vehicle for the emoting of its female lead Marya Kaminsky. She's a phenomenal actress, but it was unsettling to basically watch someone hurt for two hours straight; like watching
Passion of the Christ
, that.
Those were the big ones anyway. Added to the concerts (notably, the XX, Sunny Day Real Estate, Rufus Wainwright, and Mark Kozalek) and dance shows (importantly Nacho Duato,
--which may be the single best thing I've ever seen--Pacific Northwest Ballet's
Romeo &Juliet
and year-end
Gala
, Seattle Opera's
Don Quichotte
, and the powerful modern company Sonia Dawkins' Prism Dance Theater), well, we were busy. Still, what a city.
What it's Like Living in a 500-year-old Building
When my wife and I first moved to Germany, we thought we might live in Stuttgart, the main metropolis in Baden-Wurttemberg, and that I would commute to Tuebingen to teach classes. Once we saw the sleepy, lovely, medieval college-town of Tuebingen though, we knew immediately that it would make a better home base. Unfortunately, everyone else seems to have had the same idea and so the small town was experiencing an unprecedented housing shortage. Students literally dropped out of the University because they couldn't find a place to live.
After a few (very expensive) days in a University Guest House, during which we tried to figure out a) the German housing market b) the German phone system--note: you can't just put coins in and make calls--and c) the locker-rental scheme at the train station, which held all our worldly belongings, including, interestingly, Amber's guitar, we found a half-timbered building directly on the Neckar river facing the park. Built in 1478.
It was beautiful: perfectly-located about a mile from my offices and directly above a bakery. It was also the filthiest place I've ever seen. The man showing it to us cringed when we said we'd take it. "Really?" he asked, incredulous. Imagine Mrs. Havisham's place from
Great Expectations
and you more or less have it. The house hadn't seen a broom since the 1970's, from which era there were (and are) piles of magazines to attest to the proprietor's war on hygienic living.
We cleaned for days. We threw things out with righteous zeal.
We put furniture in the attic, for which we were later reprimanded, and pulled down others and dusted, rolled, tipped, stored, piled and otherwise organized where we could, holding everything in pinched fingers as if it might be contagious. It's one of the more disgusting projects I've been a part of, and I'm saying this as a former part-time janitor at an elementary school, who knows whereof he speaks.
Everything slants at whimsical angles; there are splints holding up every furnishing that isn't nailed to the sometime floor. The wiring is mostly electrical tape and the lighting (who plans ahead for lighting in the 15th century?) bare bulbs hanging from strings. Some of the installation is crumpled up paper sacks from the grocery, which I know because I thought of pulling one down in one of my more zealous fits. None of this would matter, of couse, had the place been decently cared-for, which finally--the house creaks like mad, but can it sigh in relief?--for this year at least, it will be.
The effort was worth it. We now have a charming flat in the center of town in a building that's literally post-card perfect; it is featured in every advertisement for the town of Tuebingen, and has come quite a way in these last months, now a serene escape along the river's bend from whose windows we watch swans and tourists, the latter pointing their cameras at our half-timbered tumble-down home.
After:
New article on Bernini at Curator Magazine
Near where the peasant girl is being raped, and in the same room as another attempt, there stands in the Villa Borghese, a stone David facing a Goliath we can’t see. In a city where the classical and Christian collide, bristle, fizz, and even combine, these galleries, and this sculpture stand out as strange for that monstrous marriage...
Letter to the Editor
A letter I sent to the Editor of Poetry Magazine in response to a review written by (the usually very good) D.H. Tracy, about what is probably my favorite poetry book of all time. Read it on their website here:
Poetry Reading Poster
In August, I gave a poetry reading at the Phinney Ridge Community Center whose advertisement was designed by my talented friend Mark Selander at Machines and Humans. Several people commented on the poster, so I thought I'd post it. Check out more of Mark's work here: www.machinesandhumans.com
Places: Versailles
As with nearly every other spot on the ever expanding tourist map, Versailles is a place no longer to be beheld, still less to be awed by, or disgusted by–depending on the strength go one’s constitution, and the romance attached to her sense of history–but a place to be captured, recorded, digitized, and filed: less under the heading I was here, than under veni vidi, vici.
It is not a matter of course, though perhaps it is not surprising to hear the Versailles defies such capture, if not by its opulence, which can be rendered through a pictorial study of it’s minutiae, but by its sheer size. Even 1300 frames of similarly-proportioned gilt chambers do not convey the monstrosity, the monotony even, of winding through its miles of royal residence. Still, ten million visitors every year try, and if the mob on the day of my visit is indicative, 95% do not remove their eyes from the viewfinders of their handheld recording devices.
Versailles is an interesting place because for all its attempts at intimidation–it was a state headquarters designed in large part to reign in rogue nobles–it is surprisingly un-monumental. For all its marble and gold, it is surprisingly homey; cute even. Given all this, Bernard Venet is a pretty smart choice as this year’s artist-in-residence to display on the grounds. Unlike the Jeff Koons exhibit last year, which was, as always, an awful, tacky, and wierd-ly perfect sprinkling of the proverbial confettii (life is a cabaret!), Venet’s work seeks first to understand and then to participant in that enormity.
Aesthetic intimidation isn’t much a tactic the modern mind is overwhelmed by anymore…seeing the Sun-king on a gold horse at the entry of the gates feels kind of royal, but not exactly impressive, still less god-like, or sublime. Venet has gone about his project in a smart way then, by re-interpreting the scale of Versailles in standards that still provoke: if 1300 rooms in a row doesn’t make the jaw drop, 1300 tons of unfinished steel still can. A rusted arch large enough to cradle a suburban house says something about scale that was once conveyed by two enclosed stories in stone. In the age of the discount skyscraper, no one thinks “wow!” when confronted with the spectacle of a three story building, no matter how much gold tops the fence without, but set in the lens of Venet’s concentric arches, piled up in corners of the gardens like Valhallan horseshoes, one shivers with the original excess thinking at once, all that weight, all that waste, what’s the point and wow, which is what you’re supposed to have been saying all along.
Things I'm Happy About: King Street Station
King Street Station in Seattle’s once-glorious and much-neglected Pioneer Sqaure, is a beautiful, classic train stop whose clock tower is modeled on San Marco in Venice. It was grand and lovely until the 1950’s, when, in a misguided attempt to modernize, they put in a drop-ceiling, covering the height, windows, and terra cotta carvings on the ceiling. Instantly, the place felt like a bus depot: a cramped and criminal bin for only the most-desperate travelers. Ridership dropped to a trickle. Thanks to some heroic Democratic legislators, spending political capital, and standing up to virulent, inchoate, spittle-flecked, rage-driven opposition, we’re getting the money to update the station, bringing some decency and grace to an area that badly needs it, some jobs to a town that does likewise, and some future-planning to a region that could use it.
This update came out today from the department of transportation.
Review of Michael Dickman's "Flies" published
My review of Michael Dickman's book Flies is up on the Books and Culture website now. You can read the whole thing here.
If there's anything that the onset (or is it an onslaught?) of e-books should teach us, it's that books themselves matter. For the most part, if the publishing industry crashes, I say they deserve it for keeping the public trust so poorly.
Case in point: the publication of Michael Dickman's new book of poems Flies, recently out from Copper Canyon Press, is one of the major events of the year for people who care about poetry. His first book, The End of the West, was the bestselling debut in the long history of that press, and if it was filled with a sagacious quietness that suggested an author twice Dickman's age, it was also filled with promise. Many of us reacted with a compound clause: that's amazing; I can't wait to see what he does next.
Part of that feeling comes from the fragility of Dickman's lines. His verses seem weightless at the same time that they feel enormous and heavy. That's not a hyperbolic contradiction: think of a blue whale and you have it—this slow, gigantic force. Or, picture the cover of that first book: a photograph by Ralph Eugene Meatyard (Untitled, 1960) depicting a hanging victim, who, due to the camera's trick and limit, seems to float, or even to fly up off the page, when he should be dropping.
The cover of Dickman's new book...
New Essay Published by Mellen Press
Literary and Poetic Representations of Work and Labor in Europe and Asia During the Romantic Era: Charting a Motif Across Boundaries of Culture, Place, and Time is available now from Mellen Press, featuring a chapter I contributed entitled “Theatricality and Imaginative Failure in Keats.”
This chapter is part of a larger project I have in mind called “The Vanishing Point,” which will begin seeking a publisher sometime next Fall. Meanwhile, you can find this book on Amazon, or straight from the publisher here.
Abstract:
In The Sublime Object of Ideology, Slavoj Zizek writes that “sublimity gives us simultaneously pleasure and displeasure: it gives us displeasure because of its inadequacy to the thing-idea, but precisely through this inadequacy, it gives us pleasure by indicating the true, incomparable greatness of the thing, surpassing every possible phenomenological, empirical experience.” Keats’ “Ode of a Grecian Urn” may be one of the language’s greatest poems, but it also contains some of poetry’s worst lines. Those lines, especially “More happy love, more happy, happy love,” are not mis-steps; they are failures, and, I’m arguing, active failures in Zizek’s sense, a kind of theatrical dive, meant to claim for the poet a documentable experience of the sublime. In what thereby becomes a discourse on imaginative limits, Keats discusses the form’s ability to “tease us out of thought,” connecting that lack of thought with silence, and ultimately to a breathlessness he enacts in these passages. As the poet demonstrates the failure of the poetic faculty in the face of the sublime encounter –making a spectacle of the climb, failure, and recovery– he also hopes to induce a similar reaction in his readers, attempting to move us out of breath and to the same pitch of delirium he has exhibited, to make his private imaginative environment a public one wherein his theatrical swoon is contagious.