Not the raw meat dish, silly; she means the painter. “I am no connoisseur, cultural scholar, or art historian. I know nothing about painterly techniques, chromatic gradations, or artistic affinities, and my infatuation with him is largely affectionate fancy. I feel I know him personally, and I often sense that I am directly in touch with him across the centuries, across the continents, as one might be in touch with a living friend. But however much I delight in Carpaccio’s virtual company, I know hardly anything about the man, and in this I am not alone.”
Has The Toronto Film Festival Lost Its Way?
“Maybe it’s time for a break. TIFF has gotten too unwieldy, too Hollywood, too focused on the dozens of film junkets attaching themselves, barnacle-like, to the festival itself.”
Reading Insecurity: Has The Internet Really Killed Our Ability To Deal With Long Things Like Books?
“Maybe we’ve sensed that we rely on physical cues to ground ourselves in complex arguments, and that we get more of those from books than from flickering screens. … And after centuries of vaunting the solidity of written language, there’s a kind of whiplash in signing on and watching our literary output swoosh by. … Yet the Web giveth, even as it taketh away.”
Writers Paying Homage To Other Writers Deal With Pitfalls In Their Own Work
“Should you explain the referenced work so that those unfamiliar with it can enjoy your book? Or should you simply accept that some readers will fall behind and end up befuddled? It’s a tricky enterprise.”
People Can’t Finish Things Because We Actually Have A Damned Hard Time Starting
Set your deadlines now. That “doesn’t mean right this second, but it does mean now, as in this month, this year, or whatever time-frame feels most like the present rather than the future.”
Another Lawsuit Against Hollywood Studios’ Anti-Poaching Pacts
“Robert Nitsch Jr, a former visual effects worker at DreamWorks Animation, has became the latest to go to court over an alleged conspiracy to deny workers in the visual effects community better work opportunities.”
The Destruction Of Syria’s Cultural Heritage Is Far From Incidental
“The nation’s heritage has been used as a weapon to finance bloodshed, to settle sectarian scores and to erase entire chapters of the country’s past in the expectation of radically reshaping its future.”
Australia Seems To Be Almost Completely Out Of Theatre Ideas (Say Some)
“Five Sydney and Melbourne theatres have been criticised for an absence of curatorial ideas in their 2015 seasons, failing to engage with contemporary Australian and world politics and for being ‘very cosy and white.'”
How’s That $44 Million Stonehenge Restoration Working Out, Then?
“A 360-degree theater uses finely detailed laser scans of the stones to show the monument’s evolving shape, while a wall-size animated map shows Stonehenge within a puzzling network of mounds and ditches, barrows containing burial remnants, and vestiges of unexplained earthworks that extend over miles.”
The Senior Ballet Pros Going Back To The Barre
“They all admit to varying degrees of trepidation. There’s no disguising that, collectively, they are a wrinklier, baggier version of their past selves, and there’s much searching for reading glasses whenever they need to consult their rehearsal notes.”
A Brief History Of Hold Music (Those Damned Earworms They Play While You’re Waiting For Someone To Answer Your Call)
“Who had the idea that there should be a soundtrack at all? Perhaps surprisingly, given that select late-19th-century audiences in Europe had actually received live opera broadcasts via telephone, the idea of hold music doesn’t seem to appear until fairly late in the 20th century.”
Soprano Magda Olivero, 104
“Olivero never had a glitzy recording career, but she did have something her contemporaries didn’t: longevity. She sang in public for more than seven decades.” (includes audio clips)
Gay Culture Is Dying, Thank Goddess
Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart (who says she’s “dancing on the grave of gay culture”): “As our culture evolves toward a more humane, accepting attitude toward gay people and their relationships, it makes sense to ask: Is there any place for a gay culture in this bright new future? … Should the wider LGBTQ community really be spending time, energy, and emotional bandwidth on pleas to preserve gay spaces?”
Gay Culture Is Most Certainly Not Dying, Thank Goddess
June Thomas: “It’s perfectly possible, normal even, to treat queer culture like a drop-in center: read a gay novel now and then; go out on a jaunt with a lesbian bird-watching group occasionally; take in a drag show once every decade. Those things will continue to exist and thrive if enough people are interested in them. Otherwise, they’ll disappear, only to be memorialized in queer studies monographs; collected in lesbian herstory archives; and remembered with fondness by the folks who enjoyed them in their heyday.”
World Ballet Day: Behind The Scenes With Five Major Companies In One Day
“Starting at the beginning of the dancers’ day, each of the five ballet companies – Australian Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, The Royal Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada and San Francisco Ballet – will take the lead for a four-hour period streaming live from their headquarters starting with the Australian Ballet in Melbourne. The live link then passes across time zones and cultures from Melbourne to Moscow to London to Toronto to San Francisco.”
A Woman’s Epilepsy Medication Turned Her Into A Compulsive Poet
“Introducing what appears to be the exact opposite of writer’s block: After starting a new medication for epilepsy, a 76-year-old woman was suddenly stricken with an unstoppable urge to write poetry, according to a [new] case study.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.08.14
Local arts funding and urban design: responses
AJBlog: For What it’s Worth | Published 2014-09-09
Back-To-School Time: A Test
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-09-08
And Now: The Answers To Who Said That
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-09-09
Gerald Wilson, 1918-2014
AJBlog: RiffTides | Published 2014-09-09
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How – And Why – One World Trade Center Has Betrayed New York
“When Ground Zero was finally cleared after the fall of the twin towers, New Yorkers trusted that thoughtful, ambitious urban design could make the city whole again. Why have they been so badly let down?”
It’s OK To Feel Guilty About Watching, Reading, Or Listening To Crap
“There are dozens of better options out there, but this one is cheap, easy, and we know what we’re getting. It doesn’t challenge, inspire, or ask anything of us at all beyond our fleeting attention span. We know there are better things out there.”
Lots Of Fun But No Clear Standouts At First Weekend Of Toronto Film Fest
This could be because big-name films like Reese Witherspoon’s “Wild” opened at Telluride – and were thus banned from the first four days at Toronto.
What Do You Do About Streaming Music When You Just Can’t Give Up Your CDs? Asks Alex Ross
“Recently, while moving my CD collection to new shelving, I struggled with feelings of obsolescence and futility. Why bother with space-devouring, planet-harming plastic objects when so much music can be had at the touch of a trackpad? … What was once known as building a library is now considered hoarding.”