"After the Dance"

"--AND you say that a man cannot, of himself, understand what is good and evil; that it is all environment, that the environment swamps the man. But I believe it is all chance. Take my own case . . ." started Tolstoy his short story, "After the Dance." That was pretty much what I was thinking after I watched the, sometimes superficial and sometimes deep, but throughout graceful and colorful dance of the Collage company.


The dance was to a moving series of eclectic and mesmerizing songs, the origins of which came from very very old lands and from cities the ruins of which do not even exist anymore. The dancers, half of whom are dear friends, moved uncompromisingly and with an obvious eagerness to please.

And this was their choice to create their environment, actively, with sweat and compromise, not by chance. They not only committed to a painful process of training, but they stripped their personalities and ideas, submitted to an idea and were part of an echo from the past into a back-alley Cambridge theater. They created their environment, and I am glad to touch it, albeit briefly.

Glenn Gould - Again

I am just mesmerized by Glenn Gould. I do not know if deep inside, I want to be like him, or just admire him for his childish arrogance. He is just a wonderful character.

Jacqueline Mary du Pré

She was just amazing!!!

I came across Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Min, performed by Jacqueline du Pré. Her performance was, even to unpolished ears like mine, just breathtaking.



Yo-Yo Ma's interpretation of the piece, which I would have taken as the definitive version (as his performance on Bach's Cello Suites), remained by far the weaker one. Remarkable, considering that Yo-Yo Ma is a brilliant artist and both artists play with the same Cello, the fabled Davidov Stradivarius.



Later, it dawned on me that the film Hilary and Jackie, which I saw with E. ages ago, was actually her life story. And a sad sad story it was. A great talent shadowed by immense fears and insecurities, and above all, a horrible disease. The lives of some people are just remarkable. And these lives remind me of a section from Nietzsche's Gay Science:quote:

It is true that there are men who, on the approach of severe pain, hear the very opposite call of command, and never appear more proud, more martial, or more happy than when the storm is brewing; indeed, pain itself provides them with their supreme moments! These are the heroic men, the great pain-bringers of mankind: those few and rare ones who need just the same apology as pain generally — and verily, it should not be denied them. They are forces of the greatest importance for preserving and advancing the species, be it only because they are opposed to smug ease, and do not conceal their disgust at this kind of happiness.

Italy and Bosnia - 10 Minutes

Sad, true, blunt. Imamovic captures the amazing obliviousness of the world and Europeans, in particular to the violence in the heart of Europe.


It seems that the director's new film, Go West, is facing stiff criticism in Bosnia because it tells the story of a clandestine gay relationship in the backdrop of the Bosnian war.

The new exotic and the new cool!

Brooklyn Funk Essentials one of the many groups that have become regulars of the Istanbul music scene.

In the confusing, yet ever growing cultural maze of Istanbul countless groups and artists emerge in the last decade. For some, Istanbul, "where east meets west" became the new intellectual focus, as the east European cities were, when the grip of Soviets were weakening. For others, it represents a lost illusion of peace and tolerance. Others, who search for the 'safe exotic', found it in the hamams and whirling dervishes of the city. The more daring,went to the underground dens of vice, hidden in Beyoglu. It indeed has been a place for exotic and interesting social norms and histories and we pick and choose among them. Istanbul is becoming the new 'cool.'


I find this amazing and equally confusing. We, the conformist intellectuals of the 21st century, are shaping an illusion of a city for our own use.

The power of the Music

Milan Kundera asked in his fabulously inconclusive novel Immortality:

"Does love for art really exist and has it ever existed? Is it not a delusion? When Lenin proclaimed that he loved Beethoven's Appassionato, above all else, what was it that he really loved? What did he hear? Music? Or a majestic noise that reminded him of the solemn stirrings in his soul, a longing for blood, brotherhood, executions, justice, and the absolute? Did he derive joy from the tones, or from the musings stimulated by those tones, which had nothing to do with art or with beauty?"

His question, long forgotten, popped right back in my mind when I see this clip...

An exotic train inside your soul -or our pathetic generation

The lost souls of the post-modern age hit us on the face everywhere we turn. Daarjeeling Limited by Wes Anderson is just another slap, a very gentle one, but a slap nevertheless...

It seems for the generation Y, or whatever my generation is called, there is no cause except a nihilistic emotional self-exploration and no ideology except an extremely sophisticated mourning for a colorful, exotic and irreversibly lost past.

My personal mystery man: Glenn Gould

About 3-4 years ago, R. gave me a copy of Glenn Gould's two and three part inventions. The moment that I started listening to that CD, I was bewitched. Not in the same manner that I was impressed by Lang Lang's amazing performances.



No, I was amazed by something intellectually deep, which I could not put my finger on. There was something with Gould's playing that made me wonder about his thinking about music. However, given that I had neither the perfect pitch, nor a great knowledge in music, I never could really understand his touch, I just appreciated, probably on a very shallow level, the fresh intellectual vigor he was bringing his generation.
Nowadays, the fragmentary, intelligible and amazingly kitsch culture of you tube opened a new window to Gould's world for me: His interviews. His amazingly arrogant manners and sickly good looks and above all the mastery of the instrument mesmerized me.



I wanted to share!