July 2007 - Los Cuadernos de Julia

Memento Ossis (Remember the Bones)

As many a blog reader will agree, you never know what you find in blogosphere. Just like in any sphere, really. Blogosphere is your web Cosmos, and the last thing I read about our galaxy was that, unfortunately, Uranus was no diamond quarry. Neither is Neptune.

Thankfully, in our Blogalaxy there are some sparkling stones, and on this occasion I’m speaking of a post in Jezblog. Jez, as he says about himself on Flickr, is a “good freelance translator” and a “bad photographer”. I can’t doubt the former, but I do think he’s slightly too modest about his camera skills. At least, when he visited the Sedlec Ossuary in Czech Republic, he’d taken some stunning photos.

Ossuaries date back to the time before our era, but the examples of this somewhat morbid art that we see today across Europe have come into existence since the Middle Ages. Sedlec Ossuary that Jez has documented for his blog and Flickr photoset was created in 1870 by František Rint at the request of the Schwarzenberg family. One of the compositions that Rint had made was the family’s coat-of-arms. Below, on the left, is Jez’s photo of it; and right next to it is the original coat-of-arms. Rint’s interpretation lacks neither wit, nor creativity. Other examples of his artistic vision come from Jez (left) and the ossuary’s official site, http://www.kostnice.cz/.

Sedlec Ossuary in Kutna Hora is not the only European site of this kind. The most famous is, perhaps, the Portuguese Capela dos Ossos in Evora. Built in the 16th c. by a Franciscan monk, the chapel has the following inscription above its entrance: “We bones that are here, for you bones we wait” (“Nós ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos”).

I notice that the mendicant brothers were particularly apt at spreading the word about life’s being transitory in this peculiar “bony language”. Another ossuary was created by the Capuchin monks in Rome, in the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini. The Order of Friars Minor of Capuchin, a deviation of the Franciscan Order, was established in the 16th c. in Italy. The church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini has also got the website, with a special section highlighting The Crypt.

The most recent ossuary is the Douaumont Ossuary in Verdun, which commemmorates the unthinkable cruelty and catastrophic human losses during the battle of Verdun in the First World War. Inaugurated in 1932, the ossuary (on the right) is the resting place for the staggering number of unidentified French and German soldiers.

Links:

Jez’s Kostnice Ossuary set on Flickr

Pictures of Capela dos Ossos at Sacred-Destinations.com

Exercises in Loneliness – IV

I’m sitting at Cornerhouse in Manchester, on the first floor. There aren’t many people there yet, and I am fortunate to find myself by the window in the farthest corner. People are eating, or drinking, and chatting, and at the next table to mine sit two Spanish girls, in similar clothes, with laptops.

It’s almost seven o’clock. Going to work in the morning happens pretty quickly, or so it seems, perhaps because I’m in a hurry. But in the evening homecoming takes ages. In truth, it takes probably just a little bit longer than in the morning – about 20 minutes longer – but somehow I’m conscious of this difference.

And so, I’m sitting here, writing this, and the tea in a delicate glass cup is still fairly hot, but will get colder by the time I finish writing.

What is it that I wanted to say? I came here with the intent to carry on with my musings on self-identification and categorisation. I spent the most fulfilling half an hour on the train spilling the words out on the lined pages of a reporter’s notebook, where I’m now continuing with this. Henry Miller – and with him many a writer – would call this “dictation”. It’s this wonderful state of things when you feel as a tool in someone’s hands who, somewhere afar, is whispering these words into the tip of the tool, and they pass at the speed of light to land in your head to be heard and discovered.

I don’t enjoy being lonely. I don’t want to be lonely. But rather often than not I want to be alone to capture moments like this. When this moment is gone, I will probably feel empty, not being certain about anything, whether future, past, or present. But how should I feel otherwise, if on the train I have suddenly and plainly realised that I don’t belong to anything but this huge multitude of human bodies that we call mankind, and that I was happy to realise this?

This doesn’t mean that I don’t want to friend or to bond, or that I don’t ever belong to any group. It simply means that I want to friend and to bond by essence, and not by category. And our only essence is deeply, painfully, undeniably human. It’s not our religion, or political views, or nationality, or sexuality, or social class. It is all that remains after these “identities” are stripped away – a human figure, forever insecure, forever seeking for acceptance, which is why it wants to identify itself somehow, sometimes for the mere sake of it.

My tea is now warm, and it’s quarter past seven. At the crossroads of Oxford Rd and Whitworth St there aren’t many cars, and even less people. The Spanish girls are joined by other Spanish girls, and Cornerhouse now sounds like a multilingual beehive. They already took away a chair from my table, and, God knows, I may be compelled to move to another place. But while I’m here – isn’t it peculiar that I’m writing this at Cornerhouse, of all places?! Am I truly at some kind of corner? And what is there around it?

I don’t know, and I won’t know. Only when you observe one’s life from a distance it may look like a effortless soaring or a roller-coaster. While you’re in the process of living it, you’re always on the road, and you can never know where it takes you. Is it good? Probably not, if you end up at the dead end. But it’s the most fascinating journey if you arrive to San Salvador instead of India.

The Spanish girls have gone, as did a lot of other people. I know that once I finish this I’ll go to an internet café in St Ann’s Sq and type this text in Los Cuadernos. I’ve just thought that all I wrote has originated in the moment, and that later tonight or tomorrow or later in life I might change my mind. But how, and will I?

The truth is that even when we – when I – speak in favour of loneliness, there are different meanings to this. Which makes me question the nature of a union (of any kind). Can there be such thing as complete acceptance of the other? Or does acceptance imply insincerity for the sake of a union?

I know – and so do you – that everything complete, ideal, perfect only exists in theory. To ask ‘is complete acceptance possible?’ is to paraphrase the question from Jacques Derrida: ‘is absolute forgiveness possible?’ To accept is to forgive another person for not being what you want or expect them to be; to forgive is to accept that the other person will never become what you’d like them to be; to forgive and to accept is to forget – not to cast into oblivion, but to draw the line between the other’s essence and the cloak of their “identity” and your expectations that conceals the essence.

Forgiveness, acceptance, forgetting can only be absolute and mutual. It isn’t enough for someone to look past the others’ “identities” – others have to recognise that identities, like paradigms and art movements, are fleeting. They come and go in order to shed the light on that part of the essence that has yet remained undiscovered. In the words of Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, ‘everything flows and nothing stands still‘ (panta rei), and if there is any true lesson of history, it is the lesson in change. Life is that very perpetuum mobile (perpetual motion), and so is everyone as a particle of it, if only we recognise that our human essence is the only constant thing for as long as the mankind lives. It is possible to change views, religion, or gender; it is possible to be inhumanly cruel; but it is not possible to regress to become a monkey. It is probably possible to never start thinking, but once you’ve started, it is impossible to stop. And as we’re being told, this capability of coherent and creative thinking is exactly what makes a human being.

I enjoy being human. Even my mistakes and those severe moments of self-doubt – would I be happier without them? Is it not those moments that produce the hours that I spend at Cornerhouse, as if in a café in Montparnasse? Is it not in these hours that I understand why, of all novels and stories, Maugham’s Theatre is the one to which I most closely relate, though far from identifying myself with the protagonist?

Like Julia Lambert at the Berkeley, so I at Cornerhouse think that all we, people, are trying to do is to find a role to stick to, and it’s only art, by touching the deepest layers of one’s being, can lift the curtain off this stage, to show that the only true, inimitable, constant thing about us is our human individuality, unique by definition. It is to this individuality one really belongs, and any change that occurs serves the purpose of staying true to this essence, to the feelings and thoughts that lay hidden beneath the stage persona.

‘You know, it’s strange how people differ. Mrs Siddons was a rare one for chops; I’m not a bit like her in that; I’m a rare one for steaks‘.

Indeed, I am a rare one for salmon.

Notes:

I left Cornerhouse around 8.30pm. I did go to St Ann’s Sq, and I did log in, but the keyboard proved to be the worst I’ve ever used: the space bar didn’t work unless I stumbled upon it, and if I didn’t, then words were joined together. I went home, which is where I have now finished typing the text at 11.10pm.

The Story of Discobolus

Imagine this: you’ve been waiting to take a picture of something. You found a perfect angle, even conjured a title for your photo, but your precious sight is an object of adoration for too many people, mainly tourists. They keep coming up to it, their figures exuding admiration, and their eyes lit with fever of connoisseurship. They don’t notice you. Worse still, they sometimes appear in front of your camera at the exact moment of your pressing the button.

Let’s not be dismayed by tourists – for all I know, I may be just as inconsiderate. Occasionally, though, this inconsideration becomes a blessing in disguise, as I found out when I visited London this April.
I went to the British Museum, and I couldn’t resist taking a picture of Discobolus. I saw this statue in the books before, and I had previously visited the British Museum and taken a picture of it. But for me, it is a historic statue in more than one sense.

When I was in my first year at the University in 1997, we had a course in Art History and had to pass an exam. The task was to list all (or as many) monuments (sculptures, edifices, paintings) from a particular period in Art History within 40 min. After 40 min. the (now late) examiner collected our papers, checked them immediately and told us, whether we passed or not. I sat next to a girl who had a question about Ancient Greek art and knew it very poorly. This is when Discobolus appears. This statue was made by Myron during the classical period of Greek art (in the 5th cc. BC). The lecturer also touched on Homer whose lifetime – between 8th-7th cc. BC – is seen to have initiated the entire Classical Antiquity.

I vividly remember the girl asking me, if Discobolus was made by Myron or by Homer. I confidently whispered ‘Myron’. Nonetheless, the girl ended up writing that Discobolus was sculptured by Homer during the Myronian period. This true story became one of the best-loved anecdotes of the Faculty of History at the Moscow State University.

This time in London, when I first tried to take a picture of Discobolus, a group of visitors with children was around the statue. The parents did move, but a child, being a child, couldn’t stand still, and eventually I wasn’t satisfied with my first attempt. I decided to wait, but the visitors kept walking up and down the staircase, not even intending to disappear. I decided to wait out and took this picture – I thought it sent an interesting message (right).

Just as the staircase emptied, a couple appeared out of the blue. The woman struck a pose beside Discobolus, the man took a photo of her, and then the woman walked to the man, and they froze at the top of the stairs looking at the pictures they’ve taken. I stood several steps below, clutching my mobile phone and wondering, if they would possibly move elsewhere, so I could have a clear view. The speciality of the moment was in that there were only us three on the staircase, so providing they’d moved I could take a decent shot of Discobolus.

But no, they didn’t move. They were totally oblivious to the fact that the British Museum is one of London’s principal attractions and is visited by thousands of people each day, who may fancy taking a picture of Discobolus. I put it down to the special feelings they shared. Me, I was alone, and my despair was beyond imagination.

I was released from despair by my own roguish spirit. To paraphrase the well-known saying, if Discobolus couldn’t show its unspoilt angle to me, I was going to find an unspoilt angle of Discobolus. I suddenly realised that the majority of pictures of the statue were taken from the staircase. But what about the actual frontal view? Well, here was one.

What a sense of liberation that was! Nothing could stop me now. Another staircase was behind me, which was decorated with a vase. There was something intriguing about a composition involving Discobolus and the vase (left). And then I went as far as to almost lie on the stairs, to take the picture on the right.

So, waiting and not getting to snap Discobolus from a conventional point of view was entirely worth the trouble. Even for me, for whom Discobolus was anything but unknown, to see this sculpture in so many different compositions was a great way to enjoy it again. I know for a fact that next time I’m at the museum, I’ll be looking for something unusual in the objects I might photograph. And so should you – who knows what story you may be able to tell?

Bad Language: The Involuntary Swearing

At work, I am currently being perturbed by a task I never even dreamt of performing. I need to compile a list of negative keywords in Russian. I have an English list in front of my eyes, which includes about two dozens of swearing words, and what perplexes me is that for many of the words there will be more than one Russian equivalent.

The conundrum is further complicated by the fact that, although I know all these words, I don’t say or write them. I’ve always thought that, no matter how annoyed I am by a situation, if I can express my annoyance without using “bad language”, then that’s how I’m expressing it.

With writing, I don’t have any particular prejudice against any of those words, but again I’m thinking in terms of why I would need to use them. I object to using “bad language” merely for the sake of it.

Recently, I read the musings of one seasoned romantic, who explained at length that a decent girl/woman wouldn’t even know such words. Although his musings had a lot of common sense, myself and a few other readers found them overall cynical. One could substantially broaden their awareness of bad language by just using public transport regularly, which I’ve been doing all my life. If you’re an avid reader like me and have read, say, Henry Miller, your awareness has grown further. And even if you never said or wrote (or intended to say or write) words of this kind, your job may eventually compel you.

The whole situation reminds me of the time when I was trying to read 120 Days of Sodom by de Sade. I couldn’t progress in reading one of the chapters, until I realised that I was reading it passively. Once I put myself in the place of an active figure, I found the chapter quite entertaining. So, I’ll have to adjust my frame of mind, to clutch my teeth, and to approach the task professionally. And when it’s completed, I’ll sit back and marvel at how good I really know my native language.

Having said it all, bad language isn’t exactly bad. My personal rejection of Russian swearing words stems not only from their meaning, but from how they sound – I really find them awful to the ear. Surprisingly, it’s different in English or French, which I haven’t really tried to explain, but would be struggling, for sure. A lot of swearing phrases in Russian that I don’t like are either too crude or totally devoid of meaning, although the word-building is always mesmerising.

I suppose this qualifies me as an incorrigible aesthete, who even wants to swear in style.

Those who have thicker skin pursue their passion for Language Studies in the field of scatolinguistics. A very enlightening article from the BBC, The Origins and Common Usage of British Swearing Words, which I highly recommend, will give you more insight into the findings of scatolinguists. As the authors state,

One of the things which becomes clear is that usage varies widely from country to country, and within countries. In one place a word may be a term of affection, in another a clear and direct term of abuse. And these words provide a potted social history of the speakers of the English Language. However, used appropriately and with panache, many people feel that these words actually add depth, colour and a sense of regional variation to the English language.
If you’re interested further, you may visit Swearaurus, which will be your very first search result on Google. You can browse categories by language.

And a couple of funny real-life stories. One I read in someone’s LiveJournal. A person, originally Russian, went to live in America. By the time he returned, French Connection UK has opened a few outlets in Moscow. Going past one of the shops and noticing “FCUK”, the person thought: ‘Now the world has definitely come to an end – they can’t even spell ‘f**k’ without an error’. He was later enlightened by his female friends that there was no error at all.

Another story I read on Linda Jones’s blog. Linda blogs about twins, triplets etc. on You’ve Got Your Hands Full, which can teach you a plenty about kids even if you don’t yet have children or have only one child. She also writes about journalism for a few other resources. Once Linda went to an Ann Summers party, where they were offered to play a “rude alphabet” game. The task was to name a swearing word on each letter of the alphabet. I must admit – as I admitted to Linda in the past – if I was in her place, this would be my story.

In fact, I think this is already my story.

Bastille Day + Michel Polnareff = On Ira Tous au Paradis

Yesterday, when it was sunny, in France they celebrated Bastille Day. In fact, not only in France, but in England as well. Craig McGinty reports on French-style celebrations in Manchester’s Platt Fields on his blog This French Life, a great gateway to those who think of heading over the Channel to the land of decadence and fashion.

Thanks to Craig, as well, I’ve learnt about Michel Polnareff’s special appearance at the yesterday’s celebrations at Le Champs de Mars in Paris. And thanks to Craig I found a video of the song I like a lot, On Ira Tous au Paradis. So, watch the performance by l’Amiral, read the English text if you want to know what the song is about, and practise your French if you’re versed in it! In short, enjoy! And many thanks to Dailymotion user who produced the video.

michel polnareff

All will go to paradise, even me.
Be they blessed, be they damned, all will go.
All nuns and all robbers,
All sheep and all knaves,
All will go to paradise.

All will go to paradise, even me.
Be they blessed, be they damned, all will go.
And saints, and assassins,
And society women, and hookers,
All will go to paradise.

Don’t believe what people say.
Your heart is your only church.
Open your soul a little,
Don’t be afraid of the colour of the hell’s flame.

All will go to paradise, even me.
Those who believe in God, and those who don’t, all will go.
Those who do good, and those who do evil,
All will be invited to the ball,
All will go to paradise.

All will go to paradise, even me.
Those who believe in God, and those who don’t, all will go.
The Christians, and the pagans,
And even dogs, and even rats,
All will go to paradise.

You can find French text here.

Loch na Garr (George Gordon Byron)

It’s raining. Yesterday it was sunny. Today it’s raining again. I feel this is the return of the summer of five years ago.

I’ve always loved rain, like I’ve always loved the sky before the rain or thunder. Both to me symbolise all that is hidden, buried of fear to appear weak. We don’t like rain because we’re afraid to admit that we don’t know how to deal with it, that we don’t want to deal with it. Umbrellas are cumbersome, we can’t wear the clothes and shoes that we like because they may be damaged by rain, we have to be twice as careful when driving in the rain. On a sunny day we may go out and enjoy people and places, and to only talk about things that are plesant, sunny. Rain forces us inside our homes, inside ourselves where we have no choice but to look at that which is hidden, and think and talk about it.

This is why, perhaps, as much as I like rain, I also love the idea of travelling in the rain. By car or by train, or even by bus. As long as I go somewhere I’m happy. I don’t mind walking, but for that I need an umbrella: rain doesn’t go well with my specs. I must be afraid, too, of what I have hidden inside me, or maybe I just find it easier to think when I’m on the move? I don’t know.

Or maybe I like rain because it’s so natural to be happy in sunny weather and melancholic on a rainy day, and I want to smile on a rainy day, just to change this routine?

Rain to me is the past; like snow. It dates back to the times when I was reading Byron’s Loch na Gar, which has become one of my favourite poems. Maybe I was a Scot in one of my previous lives; I don’t think about such things, but who knows, after all?

Away ye gay landscapes, ye Garrdens of roses
In you let the minions of luxury rove
Restore me the rocks where the snowflake reposes
Though still they are sacred to freedom and love.
Yet Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains
Round their white summits though elements war
Thorough cataracts foam 'stead of smooth-flowing fountains
I sigh for the valley of dark Loch na Garr.


Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wander'd
My cap was the bonnet, my coat was the plaid
On chieftains long perish'd my memory ponder'd
As daily I strode through the pine-cover'd glade.
I sought not my home till the day's dying glory
Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star
For fancy was cheered by traditional story
Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch na Garr.


'Shades of the dead! have I not heard your voices
Rise on the night-rolling breath of the gale?'
Surely the soul of the hero rejoices
And rides on the wind o'er his own Highland vale.
Round Loch na Garr, while the stormy mist gathers
Winter presides in his cold icy car:
Clouds there encircle the forms of my fathers;
They dwell in the tempests of dark Loch na Garr.


'Ill-starr'd, though brave, did no visions foreboding
Tell you that fate had forsaken your cause?'
Ah! were you destin'd to die at Culloden,
Victory rown'd not you fall with applause:
Still were you happy in death's earthly slumber
You rest with your clan in the caves of Braemar'
The pibroch resounds to the pipers loud number,
Your deeds on the echos of dark Loch na Garr.


Years have roll'd on, Loch na Garr, since I left you
Years must elapse ere I see you again
Nature of verdure and flowers has bereft you
Yet still thou art dearer than Albion's plain.
England! thy beauties are tame and domestic
To one who has roved o'er the mountains afar
Oh for the crags that are wild and magestic!
The steep frowning glories of dark Loch na Garr

The image is taken from Ensis Ltd.

Matthew Barney in Manchester

In April 2003 I was approached by a friend of mine who is now on the editorial board of The Herald of Europe (“Вестник Европы”), to do a few translations for their forthcoming first English issue, from Russian into English. I translated a lot of texts, but then it took them a year and a half to actually publish the journal. By September 2004 the majority of texts became outdated, except one, and that was a review of Matthew Barney’s The Cremaster Cycle by Alexander Parschikov (it is now available online at The Herald‘s website, slightly edited for publication and, alas, uncredited, like all translations). It was a very deep review, as you would consider any review that references Samuel Beckett in the very first paragraph. Back then it was the first time ever that I read the name of Barney, and my natural curiosity was helped by detailed descriptions of all five films.

This, for instance, is what you could see in The Cremaster 1:

One of the protagonists finds herself under a table that is covered with a white cloth. She wears a skimpy light silk dress and dances slowly around the hollow table-leg, lying on her back. Then she makes a hole in the tablecloth with her hairpin, and surreptitiously steals some grapes, which magically roll through her body and pour onto the floor through a hole in the high heel of her mule. When they reach the floor, the grapes link together like necklaces and form regular, symmetrical, mirror-image patterns. The figures they form look like female genitalia, and replicating this, the chains of girls in the football stadium arrange themselves into identical biomorphic shapes. The film has no beginning and no resolution: the balloons will never land, the protagonist will go on building new figures out of the grapes, stretching slowly like a mollusc as she looks for a lipstick; the air hostesses will not break their silence, and the smiles of the girls in the stadium are frozen for eternity. Perhaps, the protagonist, hidden from these sculpture-like air hostesses, expresses their subconscious desires, their biological rhythms and their suppressed eroticism.

The reviewer concluded that

…Barney takes his characters from the Pantheon of digital images that represent nothing but their own electronic essence. In his works we find an epic uniformity, a never-ending movement towards some objective. Nothing is clearly defined or attainable; rather there are opal lights reflecting on surfaces, high-molecular materials, and artificial or natural extensions of the human body. This leaves only one question. Where do these extensions take us?

The Manchester audience, especially that part of it which is better versed in Barney’s art than either me or Richard Fair, probably already knows a very detailed and long-winded answer because Matthew Barney’s genius has now marked Manchester with its presence. All in all, Manchester has done incredibly well for its first International Festival. We had Chopin’s music at the Museum of Science and Industry; Carlos Acosta is performing both classical and modern ballet numbers at The Lowry; jazz musicians entertained everyone who would drop in to the Festival Pavilion; we had a maverick Peter Sellars uttering age-old paradigms at the Guardian Debate; and eventually we had Guardian of the Veil, complete with urinating women and an impotent bull. And all this is against the backdrop of Barbra Streisand at the M.E.N. Arena on Tuesday and the forthcoming final performance of The Tempest at the Royal Exchange Theatre.

On Thursday night Deansgate was swarming with people in all sorts of evening frocks going to see Il Tempo del Postino. I haven’t been to the performance, but the headline “What if an exhibition was not about occupying space but about occupying time? Can contemporary art be interpreted outside of a traditional gallery environment?” doesn’t strike me as novel. André Malraux famously called on creating a “museum without walls”, which in simple terms means a museum in your head where you can wander at your leisure. Which means, in turn, that you’re occupying time while contemplating and interpreting art outside any kind of physical space.

And yet it looks like the show has gone the extra mile because Richard Fair says in his review:

I knew before the piece – Guardian of the Veil by Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler – that I was in for something different. Something challenging. Apart from what was going on stage, all around the auditorium were actors dressed in IRA-type uniform brandishing ukuleles. Let me tell you, if that was the chosen weapon of the paramilitary group in the seventies the troubles would have ended a long time ago.

Back to the question then: do art and politics mix? Should art and politics mix? Or should we simply wander from an excited bull to a guy with a dog strapped to his head, simply recognising that their nature as images and wandering off, without ever finding an idea behind an image?

Sometimes I feel that contemporary art is a mere, yet constant, wandering-off.

Barbra Streisand in Manchester (M.E.N. Arena, July 10, 2007)

And so, Manchester has finally joined the cities on the route of Barbra Streisand’s first European tour. Some reports prior to Manchester concert expressed fears that the night might fall through because of high ticket prices. Admittedly, pleasure of seeing Streisand on stage wasn’t cheap: add a program’s price (£25) to your cheapest ticket (£75), and you’ll get quite a sum. Looking from my seat in the stalls down on those who sat in the first row in the box did bring certain thoughts to mind. But as the show went on, I realised that with my £75 ticket I bought myself much more than just a lifetime experience.

Like with quite a few other things, it started thanks to my mother. I said before that my mum has got this tremendous ability to discover things – and once Russia has opened her arms to the West after 1991, there was (and still is) a lot to discover. I believe that the discovery of Barbra in my family has started with the song Woman in Love, which was in an audio cassette collection. Around 1996-97 the articles about Streisand have really flooded our first Russian editions of Harper’s Bazaar and ELLE. They wrote about her youth, her romances, her music, but, being an adolescent, I was most interested in her portraits. As terrible as it sounds, before I saw those photos, I thought I would never look good in front of the camera. Studying them, thankfully, changed me in many ways. I still haven’t seen a lot of Streisand’s films, but Funny Girl, The Mirror Has Two Faces, and The Way We Were have entered my memory forever. I would watch The Way We Were anyway because of Robert Redford, but the first two we watched because of Barbra. So, it was only natural that when I saw an email about the release of her tickets I knew I had to go. I wanted to surprise my mother, but in the end we had this conversation on Sunday night:

I: Mum, do you want to be jealous?
Mum: Why?
I: Do you know where I’m going on 10th July?
Mum (anticipating pause)
I: I’m going to Barbra Streisand’s concert
Mum (after a long pause, and with a sigh): Yes, I’m very jealous.

Although I’ve been living in Manchester since 2003, July 10th was the first time I went to a concert at the M.E.N. Arena. Contrary to all fears and misgivings, the hall was full: at 7pm people were coming in tides, and by 7.40 there was virtually no room to move in the foyer. The audience’s rapture was palpable; and how could it not be if the man with a black-and-grey scarf around his neck was one of the first to rise from his seat when Barbra appeared on stage for the first time? I cannot say I’ve been to many concerts, but I’m certain I won’t see such frequent standing ovations any time soon. Where I sat, people behind me were humming and singing along with the performer who – we all hope – celebrates the 50th anniversary of her stage career in three years’ time.

As you can guess, from photos on Flickr and from videos on YouTube, the organisers’ appeal against taking pictures wasn’t acknowledged, and we shouldn’t blame the fans for many of whom this was once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see and hear their favourite performer. In the audience there were Mancunians, Liverpudlians, Geordie, as well as Italian and Spanish fans whom Streisand greeted in their native language. When answering questions, she admitted that of all three – singing, acting, and directing – she enjoyed directing more because of what she called ‘inclusiveness’, and this show may very well be the proof of her directorial hold. Alas, we were not introduced to Samantha; instead we saw Streisand putting on glasses and demonstrating her – quite good – piano technique.

The importance of seeing an “old league” performer cannot be underestimated. A rather simply decorated stage was a perfect backdrop for the stunning costumes (designed by Streisand and Donna Karan), a warm smile, and the beautiful, powerful voice of the world’s first showbiz diva. I must admit, after reading several fans’ reviews, that I couldn’t put my feelings about the evening into words better than John Grundeken from the Netherlands did, which is why I hope a lot of you will follow through to Barbra’s Archives to read his heartfelt story of the night at Bercy in Paris. Moreover, John is travelling to London’s concert, as well. What I must absolutely agree with John about is the incredible power of Streisand’s voice: ‘”Starting here, starting now”, her voice sounded so warm and rich. I realised this was the first time ever I wasn’t listening to a recording of her voice, this was the real thing’. And one more fact about John: I am used to seeing people wearing T-shirts with John Lennon’s or Che Guevara’s face, and I made myself a T-shirt with the print of the Beatles’s Let It Be cover. But, upon my word, this was the first time I saw someone decorating a tie with their favourite artist’s portrait. I’ve got a feeling that the world of fashion has already been there, but this tie is special for its colour, design, and image. Above all, the whole work glows with admiration for Barbra Streisand, which makes it really impressive, and this is why I asked John for permission to use the image in my post. Thank you, John.

I have a confession to make. As I mentioned above, my mother is a huge fan of Barbra Streisand. I haven’t been back to Russia since I came to Manchester, which makes almost four years. So as a present for her I recorded several songs from the concert, which are strictly for private use and will not be put up anywhere. However, I noticed that there are many videos on the web, which probably warrants my action: I cut and put together two extracts from the concert. The first extract is a great proof of cordial atmosphere at the M.E.N. Arena, not without a few funny moments. The second is the song Unusual Way from the second half of the concert. Please note that the audio, like all the content of this site, is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial – Non-Derivative Works 3.0. If you wish to cite it, please do so accordingly.

[To be reuploaded soon – JD]

The songs may very well be the ones that people older than me have already heard Streisand singing live before. Yet, as Paul Vallely from The Independent puts it, ‘she progressed from one song to the next in a way which was not autobiographical so much as the story of the lives of those who listened. She was singing the soundtrack to their joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures’. In spite of my age, Smile, Unusual Way, Papa Can You Hear Me resonate in me deeply, while People and Somewhere fully correspond to the views and ideas I behold dearly and often express in writing and here, in Los Cuadernos, for which you can certainly call me a Cockeyed Optimist.

The peak of the performance for me was when Streisand run and danced barefoot on stage. And it was most lovely to see the audience standing and greeting Barbra with several rounds of ovation. In Russia, it was a part of nearly every performance experience: to call actors or singers come back on stage several times. In four years here, attending theatre and cinema many times, I almost got used to people giving a few claps, standing up and leaving, so seeing this “Russian” reaction felt incredibly warm.

It is evident that I, like many others, enjoyed every minute of two-and-a-half hours of Streisand’s concert, including the interval, when I took the photos of the Arena’s hall that are now scattered throughout this post. And I feel I should comment on a criticism that the show was scripted. Where I sat, on the side, was the perfect place to see both the stage and the screens with running scripts. First, the lines run fast, so unless everyone (Barbra and the Broadway guys) knows what they are to say, they won’t be on time with the script. Most importantly, though, is that they didn’t actually follow the script word for word. Yes, maybe it’s bad to direct your own show, but as a spectator I think it would be worse to listen to an artist, who sounds and looks like a sheep, not knowing what to say. From my own experience of writing scripts or watching written scripts going live I can only say that it’s essential to know where your carriage (be that a play, a radio or TV show, or a performance) is going at any given minute. To ensure that it runs naturally is up to a performer, and for Barbra Streisand it was a piece of cake.

“Barbra – was she worth the money?” – a sly question that has left many a reviewer’s pens. Someone cynical may say a performer like Streisand is used to the crowd’s adoration, but no matter how used you get to people praising you, there are always new people, and every performer needs them, not only because ‘people need people’, but because people need art, and a performer is the mediator between art and the world. This entire contemplation on worthiness reminds me of Maugham’s Theatre, one of my favourite novels. In one chapter, the heroine’s son reproaches her for being “false”. He fails to understand how one minute Julia Lambert can be all emotion on stage, then have a go at the technician during a short interval, and then immediately regain the altitude and power of her performance once again. She feels disturbed, but in the very final passages of the book she realises that the actors give substance and meaning to the lives of people in the audience: ‘… out of them we create beauty, and their significance in that they form the audience we must have to fulfill ourselves… We are the symbols of all this confused, aimless struggle that they call life, and it’s only the symbol which is real. They say acting is make-believe. That make-believe is the only reality’.

You may cue in Vallely’s review or Gogard’s musings on image and reality in Notre Musique. Or you can read the review of one of the concert’s attendees, who (though not without some inner struggle) has taken from this single night something precious and indelible. One thing is certain: art transforms life, and ever since coming out on stage 47 years ago Barbra Streisand has been doing just that.

Links:

Barbra Streisand official website

Manchester reviews: BBC and Manchester Evening News

Paul Valley, Broadway Diva Lives up to Her Billing, The Independent, 11 July 2007

Set list, photos, press and fan reviews at Barbra Archives.

Barbra Streisand group on Flickr

John Grundeken

The Cotton Mill Blog

Barbra Streisand in Manchester set on Flickr

About images:

All images used in this post are copyrighted. The details for the booklet illustrations can be found in the captions to the pictures here. ‘The Tie’ is designed and produced by John Grundeken.

Manchester Bloggers Meet at the Festival Pavilion

What do you do on Monday evening? Come home from work and wind down in front of your TV? No, no, and no, especially when you’re involved in Manchester’s blogging scene and when you know that the BBC’s Robin Hamman and Richard Fair have reserved a table at the Festival Pavilion near Manchester Central. Is there a better way to spend a hard Monday’s night than in a company of familiar and unfamiliar faces, in the heart of your lovely red-brick city, in the location that looks so stupendously grand?

This is exactly what we did tonight, and as I’m writing this post, the clock is close to striking midnight, which means that I haven’t slept for 18 hours. Still, it’s nothing in comparison to Robin who seems to be travelling non-stop in space both virtual and physical. And nothing in comparison to Richard, who admitted with a sigh that he hasn’t got a slightest idea of when he was going to have his holiday. So far the hero of all Alan Rickman’s fans has been faithfully blogging about the Manchester International Festival and is on duty next week to cover the Tatton Park Flower Show. Oh well, I regularly get my own doze of excitement with Search Marketing.

Craig McGinty was over, giving, as usual, a plenty of helpful advice (thank-you, Craig!). I had the pleasure to meet Stephen Newton and Andrew Wilshere, Paul Hurst and Vince Elgey, Edward (whose blog I don’t know yet) and Ian, and to see Stuart Brown again. Apologies to everyone who saw me but whom or whose blogs I don’t know – please feel free to add yourself to my map of friends, and we’ll all know who you are and what you do.

In general, this meeting was a good opportunity for me to test my memory. I recognised Stephen Newton from his blog’s profile picture. Better yet, I recognised Paul, who works for one of Wigan’s schools as a media instructor. I saw him one and only time in the summer of 2005, when I went to help out Paul Ridyard, my once colleague at QT Radio in Northern Quarter. There was, however, no difficulty in recognising Phil Wood, on whose show I had my first ever radio placement back in February 2005. Broadcasting from the Pavilion late at night, Phil was, as ever, all smile and professionalism – which is exactly the memory I’ve taken of him from the placement.

The Festival Pavilion is open to everyone during the Manchester International Festival, which is to end this Saturday. I’ve planned to blog about Manchester Peripheral and Carlos Acosta, but before I do either I will go to MEN Arena tomorrow to see Barbra Streisand. This reminds me of two guys who came all the way from Birmingham to see George Michael at the Arena. They met me in Bridge St, and with a sheer distraught on their faces anxiously began to explain that they got lost and that George Michael was unlikely to wait till they find the way to the venue. Standing under my huge umbrella in the drizzling rain I was explaining to them how to get to the Arena, but eventually I began to doubt the guys were actually going there. Anyway, I do know where the Arena is, although, alas, it seems that I won’t be able to take any pictures.

And it’s almost 1am now…

For more pictures, go to: BBC Manchester Blog on Flickr

Update:
First comes an observation: Alan Rickman has got a huge retinue of fans (I shall confess – I am one of them) who, I guess, are following publications about him online via news subscription (I don’t). There is such thing in Google, for instance, as Google Alerts: it saves time ego-surfing and also keeps you updated about your favourite subject. I didn’t check it for other email applications, but I’m sure this service is quite wide-spread. Well, Alan seems to be the subject of such alerts for a few people, and we can count this as yet another beauty of blogging and analysing who visits your blog, and why. I’m sure BBC Manchester Blog has amassed a stupenduous log of “alan rickman” queries since the broadcast of his interview.

And second, as I promised, several links to the posts about the meeting. Robin said on his blog that I wrote “what must be the definitive round-up of the evening”, but what I didn’t do (so tired I was) was that I didn’t say a word about this lovely little thing which you can find at http://www.kyte.tv. To see how it works, head over to Robin and Craig.

Richard Fair (who is the hero of Alan Rickman’s fans in Manchester and elsewhere in Britain, in case I didn’t spell it out right the first time) reviewing the night on BBC Manchester Blog. Also, BBC Manchester Blog on Flickr.

Vince writing about the night on It’s a Blog! Not a Log! and uploading pictures.

Robin Hamman doing a nice mosaic of photos on Flickr.

Paul Hurst uploading many interesting pictures on Flickr, as well as Ed Brownrigg from Mamucium.

Ian from Spinneyhead and Kate from Mersey Basin Campaign each offering their take on the night.

If anyone else writes their impression of the night, please feel free to add links to the comments.

And to round it all up, a picture from Paul Hurst: it shows two die-hard Mancunian bloggers at the meeting. Have I said before that I liked monochrome photography and blur? No? Well, now you all know it.

The Visions of Begemot (Part 1)

It’s been a few months since Manchester bloggers met at The Hare and Hounds pub in Shudehill. And we’ll be meeting again this coming Monday, between 6 and 11pm at the Festival Pavilion outside Manchester Central (G-Mex). Read more at BBC Manchester Blog and leave a comment there if you want to come along.

And when I was at the memorable meet-up in April (when I saw a man in a yellow duckling suit, unzipped on the back), I was talking to Rob Baker, who happened to be having an on-and-off romance with The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Like most readers, he was fascinated with the cat Begemot (or Behemoth, if we opt for historical spelling). This cat is an adorable black gluttonous creature that walks on his back paws, speaks rather eloquently, and rides a tram. On occasion, he can also tear one’s head off and even fire a gun, but for that one needs to seriously enrage the cat.

As we know, artists see things differently not only from other people, but from other artists, as well. I wondered how many interpretations of Begemot in illustration I could possibly find, considering how popular Bulgakov’s novel is. The result can be seen below. I didn’t even think of making a complete list of all Begemot’s images that could be found online, but even those that I found make up for enjoyable and observant viewing. There are also so many of them that I will have to organize them in a few posts, otherwise there will be too much writing and too many images.

Book covers.

Type in “bulgakov” in Amazon.co.uk Search window, and in a matter of seconds you will be staring at the innumerable covers of editions of one of the best-known and loved books in world’s literature. And on almost all of them you’ll see Begemot. We may speculate endlessly, exactly what makes this character so appealing. It is generally appealing – as any tram-riding cat would be. It challenges our attitude to black cats – again, a black cat may be a symbol of bad luck, but Begemot appears to be a master of smooth-talking, and how can it then bring any bad luck? This creature is lovely, fluffy, magical in every sense of the word, and it’s a cat. I suppose one of the reasons why Begemot is so popular is because it seems easier to conceive of a cat’s, rather than human, face.

The covers of the first English-language editions showed a particular fascination with Begemot’s rascal and smart side. It is no wonder that Harper & Row 1967 cover (left) is liked by many: the illustrator has probably come closest to capturing the cat’s mischievous essence. The Grove Press edition of the same year takes more interest in Begemot’s “human” side, falling short of giving us an ultimate boxer-cat (right).

It is interesting to see how the same
publishing house – Penguin and Picador, on this occasion – can present two so different interpretations of Begemot. With Penguin, one illustrator opted for a carnival mask (thus highlighting the theatrical and the figurative in the novel) (left), whilst another chose to produce a caricature (right), not unlike those drawn to illustrate one of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s books (below).

Picador’s covers are no less peculiar: one shows you, well, a cat with cards (left); and on another the cat has got an extreme modernist makeover (right). Vintage Classics and
Avalon Travel Publishing both take on the theme of all-pervasiveness of a devilish spirit, which Vintage makes slightly more figurative and political. On another Vintage cover we see Begemot in profile, and the angle of his head reminds me of a gargoyle at the Notre Dame de Paris. The Harvill Panther’s monochrome cover brings to mind politics, the black-and-white cinema and photos of 1930s, and the closeness of the Second World War (below, from left to right: Vintage, Avalon, Vintage and Harvill Panther covers; the gargoyle image is displayed on top). Finally, the cover of Fontana 1974 edition (further below, right) made me wonder if it had had any influence of the make-up artists who subsequently worked on The Cats musical.

(And please forgive me this little rant, but how could The Daily Telegraph reviewer back in 2004 ever allow themselves to write this phrase, which is now proudly cited on the book’s page on Amazon: “The Master and Margarita comes over like a grown-up and vastly superior version of Harry Potter”. OF COURSE, it is VASTLY SUPERIOR to Harry Potter and to the vast majority of other books out there. OF COURSE, it is incomparably thought-provoking, challenging and complex, which is why there hasn’t been and still isn’t any equally great adaptation of this novel in cinema or on stage. OF COURSE, The Daily Telegraph was reviewing one of the most influential books of the 20^th c. I’ve got nothing against Harry Potter (or J K Rowling, for that matter), but to even compare it to Bulgakov’s novel is too much of an honour for the young wizard saga).

Russian cover artists also like Begemot, although the cat doesn’t feature prominently on the Russian covers. The covers of EKSMO-Press publishing house, as well as that of Molodaya Gvardiya (Youth Guard), present an unmistakably feline face of Behemoth. Personally, I like the Sovetskaya Literatura (Soviet Literature) cover better of the three, which partly has to do with the fact that it was this edition that I read myself more than ten years ago (below, from left to right: EKSMO, Molodaya Gvardiya, and Soviet Literature covers). Surprisingly, the only website I found which has got this edition listed is Kevin Moss’s comprehensive resource.

A Hungarian cover gives us a giant Behe-Cyclop, while two Italian covers give completely polar interpretations of Behemoth: one cat is arrogant; another reminds me of a rabbit (below, left to right). Yet another Italian cover looks familiar to the Vintage’s that you saw above. This profile view seems to be the most popular, as it is also replicated on a Portuguese cover (I didn’t include either in this post).

A Chinese book brings to mind those beautiful medieval Chinese paintings; German and Estonian covers have not at all been taken by Behemoth (at least those that I saw), and a Polish 2006 cover gives the cat a minimalist feel (below, left to right).

Links:
Master and Margarita, a resource created by Kevin Moss at Middlebury College. The site lists published texts of Bulgakov’s novel, translations and bibliography, as well as the list of illustrations and themes. Unfortunately, the list of links hasn’t been updated for some time, but otherwise it is a very useful website. In addition, Kevin has also created several other sites dedicated to the Russian choir at Middlebury, Russian literature and language, and Russian gay culture.

Master and Margarita, a very comprehensive resource from where I linked to many images here. The resource was created by Jan Vanhellemont from Belgium, and, as Jan tells us on the front page (written in quite good Russian, I should say!), he never heard about the novel until one summer night in 2003 in Paris, where he first heard about the book. A year later he finally got to read it and has been studying the Russian language since, in a hope to be able to read the book in its original language one day. I must admit, I’m very smitten by this story. Bulgakov’s novel has played a crucial part in my life, as well, but Jan’s is a very different experience. Judging by the site, he’s doing pretty well, and since I’m sure he’ll know about this post, I’m happy to provide some distant language tuition. The site contains articles, illustrations, film excerpts, music pieces, and many more, so is definitely worth a visit.

Illustrations:

Most of book covers’ images were taken from Amazon.co.uk and Jan Vanhellemont’s site. Soviet Literature edition’s back cover image is on Kevin Moss’s site. The cover of Mayakovsky’s work is of the Krasnaya Nov’ (Red Novelty) edition displayed at Mayakovsky and His Circle site (some areas of the site are still in development). The gargoyle picture comes from this lady, WTS, at traveljournals.net. The Chinese painting is Plum Blossom and the Moon by Chen Lu (Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644) at http://www.xabusiness.com/china-resources/song-liao-jin-dynasties-paintings.htm. All images are linked to their original location.

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