Family & Friends: Personal Indulgences No. 4

When I was growing up, my mother pointed out to me that, among my aunts, uncles, and myriad cousins (along with any spouses and offspring that had accreted to them), the ones that I liked best invariably had the "worst" personalities, moral characters, and behavioral track records. At least according to the standards of our petit-bourgeois world. This was true, but not entirely true. My absolute all-time favorite family member, my mom's elder sister, Ann, was a saint--all self-effacing and genuine sweetness and tenderness. I adored her and named my daughter after her. I still cherish her memory and talk about her to my daughter's daughters, my grands. But I digress.

Once I got considerably older, I noticed how many of my closest friends (a majority of them artistic types like me) were "peculiar," as my mother would have put it--vulnerable, even fragile creatures, given to unconventional behavior because they recognized norms only grudgingly as they went about their business of making the world continually new. I was happy, at this point, to discover what Morison Cousins, the great designer of Tupperware, said: "People who are the most interesting are often neurotic. The ones with good sense almost lose their allure."

© 2007 Tobi Tobias

November 18, 2007 7:50 PM |

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. . . and while I know a woman who learned Greek at ninety there are nevertheless some skills, like ballet dancing and gum chewing, which can only be mastered by the very young.
-- Jean Kerr, Penny Candy

Now that my hair is white, and my years of life ahead are growing fewer, I think that the pains I have taken over dancing have not really been pains, and I must study harder, much harder.
-- Onoe Kikugoro VI (familiarly called Rokudaime), in Ben Bruce Blakeney, "Rokudaime," Contemporary Japan, 18

When people grow old they must be dull. Dancing can't go on for ever.
-- Anthony Trollope, Can You Forgive Her?

When you do dance, I wish you / A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do / Nothing but that.
-- William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale

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ARTSJOURNAL

ARTS & LETTERS DAILY

BALLET.CO

BALLERINA GALLERY

THE DANCE INSIDER

DANCEVIEW TIMES

FOOTNOTES

GREAT DANCE WEBLOG

THE WINGER

The RÉUNION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX (The National Museum Association's Photographic Agency) offers a photographic catalogue of some 200,00 holdings of French museums. It can be searched by artist, country, period, subject, and so on. You can make a personal album of your favorites on the site. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and D.C.'s National Gallery have similar services, but the French one is the most ambitious and extensive. Text in English as well as French.

AddALL is an ultimate umbrella for finding used and out of print books online. It doesn't have the atmosphere of Foyle's, Powell's, or even the Strand, but it will give you every opportunity to need yet another bookcase.

PROJECT GUTENBERG More books. No bookcase required. Over 6000 free electronic texts.

CALLIGRAPHY LESSONS ONLINE Learn the italic hand and make yourself legible. Don't miss the animation.

Color charts of HERBIN INKS. If you have to ask, you'll never know.

THE NEW YORK TIMES Because it's there.

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Seeing Things published on November 18, 2007 7:50 PM.

Tel Aviv's `Gaga' Dancers Dance to Eno and Bach was the previous entry in this blog.

City Ballet's Annual `Nutcracker' Defies Gravity is the next entry in this blog.

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