Art – Page 26 – the coffee philosopher

Posted on February 10, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

Yusef Komunyakaa

It was a great concept. The measured, yet musical poet Yusef Komunyakaa reading his poetry in correspondence to the photography/painting exhibit, Snapshots.

Except that it’s at the Phillips Collection. Which is in Dupont Circle. And it started at 6:30 pm.

Have you ever tried to get from anywhere outside the city into Dupont Circle before 7:30 pm on a weeknight?

Needless to say, I was late and missed at least one third of the reading.

Komunyakaa, fortunately, is a great reader. Relaxing, deeply felt.

He dresses like a jazz musician (the black cap, camel hair jacket) and his writing has a very melancholy quality. During the question and answer session, he described his style as based around observation, ‘but not clinical, detached,’ he said. But for me, it was the word ‘melancholy’ (which he didn’t use) that kept coming to mind.

Years ago, I’d bought a copy of his Talking Dirty to the Gods and I brought that for him to sign. He was personable and chatty, but not excessively so. If this event had taken place at the Folger Shakespeare Library, it would have been perfect.

Posted on February 8, 2012February 6, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

Midweek Staff Meeting – Montmartre Edition

Though my high school buddies and I singularly failed to recreate the creative and artistic atmosphere of the cafe culture in Paris from 1900-1929 at a series of diners and coffeehouses in Florida in the early nineties, at least we can read about the real thing.

‘Live Like a Poet’

Do writers intend to by symbolic?

Vienna was cool, too.

Remind me again, what was Modernism about?

It wasn’t about forgery, was it?

Of course, if literature has died again, it might not even matter.

Posted on January 28, 2012January 27, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

Mad Love

In case you were worried, I am not writing about some future rom-com starring the latest pretty blonde actress, but rather Andre Breton’s meditation on… well, what?

On Jacqueline Lamba, a painter and also Breton’s second wife?

Sort of. But to my mind, not really.

Certainly, she is an object of desire. And that’s the real focus, desire and desire’s object. And sometimes, the fading of desire for the object.

Lamba is less clearly to focus here in Mad Love than the titular Nadja was the focus of Nadja. Mad Love is also much more autobiographical. In fact, it’s not a novel in the way Nadja is. It’s poetry, prose, prose poetry, and a running commentary on desire.

Certainly, it picks up where Nadja left off, with the convulsive nature of beauty.

But Lamba doesn’t even appear until a third of the way into the book. Before that, boding poorly for the couple’s future, Breton is walking with the sculptor Alberto Giacometti and suddenly Breton must purchase this spoon he finds in a market, but then later admits to losing most of his interest in it.

A short read and easier to understand than Nadja and more easily enjoyable to read than a full collection of his poetry, it’s a great introduction to the writing of the leading surrealist.

The forms range from the dreamy, gauzy prose of Nadja to more manifesto-like writing (he did write the two manifestos of the surrealist movement, after all) to actual poems inserted whole cloth within the book.

This bouncing between forms goes to the point of how this book is not about Lamba in the same way that Nadja was about Nadja. If I were to say what it is about, I would come down on the side of it being an aesthetic manifesto. Breton was always the most dogmatic of the surrealists, expelling from the movement those he felt betrayed the values and politics (surrealism was closely tied to the pro-communist left) set down (and generally set down by Breton), so it is hardly a surprise that this work would so often take that form.

Posted on January 26, 2012January 24, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

Dungeons & Dragons Reboot

Dungeons & Dragons in the New York Times

I’m basically unaware of much of contentiousness the article talks about, mainly because there was a twenty-year gap, more or less, between last playing the game and joining a campaign in 2010. I’m just happy that I can remember some things from the now ancient days of the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

But, to date myself, I will admit to remembering when AD&D issued its second edition rules. I will also admit to having greater affection for the 1st edition rules. I will further admit that I like the relative fluidity of the current D&D rules (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t exist anymore; the ‘advanced’ literally referred to the greater number of rules governing more situations, as opposed to the greater emphasis on ad hoc improvisation in D&D), though I am still getting used to the greater tactical emphasis implied by playing out fights on a grid with small figurines indication the location of each actor in the fight (AD&D fights were somewhat more likely to be simply sounded out verbally than played out in this manner, or maybe I was just doing it wrong before).

This article also makes me think that it’s no surprise that our group is made of men in the 30s and 40s. We predated the dominance of video games. Oh, I had video games as a kid, but they weren’t the huge, all encompassing part of culture that they seem to be now.

Of course, I was warned off joining a group by a friend who tried to take the game again after a similarly lengthy absence and said, Don’t do it! Everybody was a teenage! I felt so old and creepy!

It seems that it is my band of intrepid, armchair adventurers who are typical and his that are the atypical ones. Breathing a sigh of relief.

P.S. – The company that now owns D&D is preparing to re-release the original, 1st edition rules from 1974 (the year I was born, actually) in honor of Gary Gygax.

Posted on January 25, 2012February 7, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

The Cathedral

It was a bit of a slog, but I finally finished The Cathedral by J.K. Huysmans.

Unlike the works from his Decadent period, namely Against the Grain and The Damned, The Cathedral lacks that tasty frisson of sex and evil. It actually continues the story of Huysmans stand-in, Durtal, that was begun in The Damned. If you think of the four Durtal novels as a tetralogy, than The Cathedral is the third novel in the series.

Durtal is a writer of modest success but good connections who, in The Damned embarks on an affair with an upper class woman and the two of them explore the world of satanism and Black Masses.

Apparently, the second book, En Route, features a re-conversion by Durtal to Roman Catholicism. The Cathedral finds him living in Chartres, beneath the shadow of the great Cathedral, Notre Dame de Chartres.

The novel lacks much resembling a traditional plot. Mostly, it is a series of conversations between Durtal and himself and Durtal one or both of a pair of priests on Catholic symbolism, particularly the symbolism of the art, statuary, and architecture of the titular cathedral.

The long, constant discussions of odors, animals, gems, etc. and how they relate to particular saints, angels, and virtues can get tiring. There’s even a discussion of how to plant a garden to symbolize various attributes of the Virgin, Christ, and saints and apostles.

But beneath all that is an interesting story.

Durtal is bitter and restless and can only truly see meaning in art and literature and a particularly medieval style of Catholic worship. For all his efforts to be holy, everything is through this filter that stands between him and world. It should be noted that Chartres, cathedral aside, is depicted as a gray, lifeless, industrial town. Durtal seems to enjoy the self flagellation that living in such a lonely, culture-free locale entails for a man of art and learning.

It should be noted that the book ends with Durtal traveling with one of the priests to a convent and adjoining monastery where Durtal retires in the fourth book.

The Cathedral was actually one of the first books I purchased for my nook.

Posted on January 20, 2012January 13, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

Weekend Reading – Creativity, Science

Why I am so eccentric.

Outside physicists.

Posted on January 17, 2012January 13, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

Tuesday Morning Staff Meeting – Gertrude Stein

The Tournament of Books is about to begin!

How the world is changing for historians.

The art collecting of Gertrude and Leo Stein.

Stein stuff in DC.

Posted on January 16, 2012January 15, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

Happy Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

When I lived in the South (variously in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi), I learned the importance of using the late Rev. Dr. King’s full title.

Sometimes, whites, as a subtle means of resistance to the idea of equality, would leave out the ‘doctor.’

Of course, sometimes it is just a simple matter of everyday laziness (even I will say ‘MLK’ on more than a few occasions). Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, but a cigar becomes important in those times when it is something more. So, it was drilled into me the necessity of making an effort to always say ‘Reverend Doctor’ before his name.