Flamenco Dinner Show

(El Farol, 29 December 2012)

Sport teaches one how to lose, but so do various other (often nobler) pursuits on occasions that life invariably furnishes. A remaining excuse for sport is that it teaches one to take responsibility and be in the spotlight. Flamenco teaches so, too, but employs a richer vocabulary.

Physical appearance is secondary. It suffices that it bear an imprint of one's lifestyle. The movement communicates the soul.

The presence of one is a gift from many.

"Playback" by Raymond Chandler (1958)

Aware of the material world's imperfections, he invests little in it. He invests little in general (except in his character), for fear of loss. He stirs up his environment in order to generate the data from which to learn and using which to teach by exposure---quickly and efficiently, since his encounters are brief.

He disentangles others' lives in order to uncover a story that he can admire and inscribe himself into.

ProArteDanza

(Harbourfront Centre, 6 October 2012)

"Expire": Subordinating two bodies to either mind in turn, stifling each other's voices by mutual consent, exchanging sacrifices for favours---this is a strangers' compromise, sustainable and brutal. Friendship connects those who seek to not dominate, but merge their minds spontaneously.

"We will": Unconditional respect invites trust. Then, one can generate conflict intentionally, in order to debug, not insult, nor reject. Restart until it is right. Only that final time counts.

Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years

(The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 30 September 2012)

Warhol's goal was to diagnose---not cure, nor soothe, nor gratify. His specialty was anxiety.

Stravinsky/Balanchine: The Collaboration

(New York City Ballet, 29 September 2012)

Many a classical ballet could have been improved had it been feasible to separate some dancers and eliminate others. A ballerina's spins and dives would have been greater technical achievements had she not been supported by the man. When a man has a dramatic role to play, it is typically one of watching the woman admiringly. Dancers hardly communicate. Their relationship does not develop onstage, but is delivered frozen in a rather dull state designed to look pretty. It often does.

Balanchine breaks with the aesthetic convention of classical ballet in Part II of the "Symphony in Three Movements." The dancing couple creates an entity that exists in its own right and imbues each constituent individual with life. The remaining dances are explorative, occasionally baroque---Citizen Kanesque in that they contain innovations (e.g., non-classical positions, no plot), but these innovations add up to a study, not a perfected work of art.

Balanchine's dances are Art Deco. They communicate little, worship the form, and suppress individualism. They worship the machine and subordination---with individuals being means, not human beings enriched and exposed in interactions with others.

One cannot blame Balanchine for not being a Hitchcock. Balanchine lacks Hitchcock's obsession with human relationships. Balanchine's interest is in that which transcends the human, and that which transcends is at risk of speaking little to humans.

Vertigo (1958)

Hitchcock is too impatient to seek out accidental beauty; he constructs beauty. Circumstances change; ideals persist. Hitchcock's pictures age little. For him, beauty and class are not fetishes, but are essential for fluent expression. Beauty is efficient on screen. Dignity is the appropriate surrogate off screen. By revealing the rungs of the social ladder, Hitchcock invites to ascend.

Movies that last preserve that which has no logical structure, that which one remembers well, but cannot evoke on a whim: rich colours, deep shadows, supple movements, unrecognised longings, the plurality of lives and their bearers.

Obsessions animate, nearly consume. Obsessions with people possess nobility, denied to all other obsessions.

Harrison, TX

(59E59, 18 August 2012)

In provinces, one excels by doing well in the game. In big cities, one excels by changing the game. For some, it is best to accept the game and to master one's strategy, instead of being a perpetual amateur player in an ever-evolving game that no one else wishes to join. With the rules of the game well defined, the game itself becomes a character, in provinces.

In the "Blind Date," individuals crave others' company, not others' individuality. And they know it and accept it.

"The Midnight Caller" advocates individualism. Ultimately, for everyone's good, one ought to act selfishly, and let another exercise his choice, as this exercise cannot be forestalled, but only delayed, at a cost for all.

One needs partners in play; one does not need particular individuals---most of the time. Yet, one is not deterred from electing someone specific to be that partner, and craving this someone specific, thus denying the power of abstraction.

The key to contentment is to pride oneself on having solved a constrained optimisation problem.

Smuin Ballet

(Joyce Theater, 18 August 2012)

The dancers' movements lack inevitability. They convey the ambition to succeed at ballet, instead of conveying ideas that admit no means of expression other than ballet. The movements lack amplification through resonance with music, and through weight and momentum transfers between dancers. Thus emerges not a conversation but a show, deliberately choreographed, competently danced, but neither superhuman, as elite classical ballet can be, nor super human, as a ballet by a smaller company has no choice but to be.

The dancers are more comfortable using the classical ballet vocabulary in the "Medea" (an illustration for a borrowed story) than jogging through the "Oh, Inverted World," which, even though premiered in 2010, comes across as conceived in 1980s, not least because of the puerile costumes. In these two ballets, the intensity of the dancers' sexuality is curtailed by their haphazardly revealing costumes, which obfuscate the intention of the movement, instead of accentuating that intention.

The third, redeeming, romantic, piece "Soon These Two Worlds" suits the company's character, which seeks to gratify and cheer.

Le Dernier Métro (1980)

A film does not merely tell a story. It constructs a world into which one is drawn. It teaches how to construct a world of one's own.

Le Dernier Métro culminates in a compromise. It does not strive towards ideals that could be mixed at will. Instead, it offers a ready-made mixture, a dignified resignation, along with a manual spelt out in prose. It is a child conceived to be as old as its parent, now gone.

Hedda Gabler

(Court House Theatre, 27 July 2012)

The play is an argument for a social order in which there is no one to blame but oneself.

Powerless, one seeks the environment whose safety is signalled by its natural beauty. Free, one strives for the perfection that is man-made beauty. Obsession with beauty is thus found at the extremes, in desperation and in inspiration.

Humans enslave themselves to ideas or, more commonly, other humans. A well-designed society at least ought to provide one with the freedom to choose what or who to enslave oneself to.

Death in Venice (1971)

Into the visual mumblecore, arrives a mute protagonist afflicted by unmerited boredom, corrected by means of a belated departure, on the islands populated by the refugees unblemished by the Renaissance, sitting out the Industrial Revolution.

Wild Strawberries (1957)

Art typically evokes emotions, which then trigger intellectual response. By contrast, Bergman's picture, devoid of emotion, just reasons. Interpretations age faster than dreams.

Bergman's understated tone promotes Ingrid Thulin, whose looks require little acting upon and little backstory, and Gunnar Björnstrand, an actor.

The characters in need of transformation are dead, so one settles for their alteration instead.

To Rome with Love (2012)

Woody Allen does not base his movies on true stories. Much that is worth knowing about life does not present itself as a story. Besides, one does not need to deal in facts when one's ambition is to inspire the audience to depart from the received life stories.

Realism convinces by deception. Allenism seeks consenting audience. It then speaks to one in seven, as good poetry does, appearing foreign to the remaining six, but never insincere.

Not to be intense is not to be. One can be more if offset by an appropriate hue of red.

"Chroma" by the National Ballet of Canada

(Four Seasons Centre, 15 June 2012)

If tutus had had aesthetic merit, they would have been adopted by popular culture some time in the past hundred years. By contrast, the costumes designed by Moritz Junge are fit to become mainstream. Unisex, unburdened by prejudice, they leave it to dancers to define what is unique about genders. The costumes bare every muscle capable of communicating without distracting. Beige and minimalist, the costumes frame the bodies, never speak on their behalf.

John Pawson's Apple-store-like set is pierced with the sounds that brushing minds make (arranged by Joby Talbot). Lit blindingly even in reflection (by Lucy Carter), dancers project directly onto the viewer, and yet do not intrude. Human body is revealed as the ultimate communicator, the highest form of art.

Ideas are the characters. Ideas animate the more perceptive minds, which light up bodies, are passed onto other bodies, then minds, and live for as long as they are in transit. Bodies live for twenty-three minutes.

Elena Lobsanova is a class apart. Peter Lorre learnt his early English parts phonetically. Similar delivery is often practiced by dancers (from ballet to ballroom) and opera singers. By contrast, Lobsanova is fluent in the language that she voices.

Lobsanova narrates each idea linearly, continuously, with dignity. She is in control of her body (never overstretching for effect; Wayne McGregor's choreography leaves no time for excess), and thus refines ideas, instead of being possessed by them. The knee that bends a little too far, the thigh full, the calf slender, the chest pliable---the Shiva of the peak shift executed right.

One consumes beauty in order to ascertain that the environment is safe and fertile. One produces beauty in order to feel alive. One can recall a fact and take comfort in it; emotions are harder to evoke at will. Hence the need for the constant reassurance of beauty.

"Selected Poems" by Manuel Bandeira, translated by David R. Slavitt (2002)

Humility promotes ideas over autobiographical incidents. Economy and simplicity evoke images, persuasive because one's imagination (unlike reason), once enlisted, cannot evade. Slavitt's matter-of-fact translation, untamed by rhyme, has sincerity of a dinner companion, whose thoughts, even if alien, one would not judge.

Bandeira longs for both death and love, in either order. The confidence in the gratification from each is inversely related to familiarity. The gratification's intensity derives from synchrony, sought in reciprocity, understanding, and the coördination of bodies.

"The Tell-Tale Brain" by V. S. Ramachandran (2011)

Evolution has favoured the skills that transcend simple reflexes. These skills (or culture) are acquired through imitation. Thus enter the social, neotenous human, with the gift for empathy for the like. (Upstage right, fish eat fish. Upstage left, civilization flourishes through calculated empathy.)

Knowledge is created by imagining alternative narratives. The innate taste for narratives and puzzles urges an artist to discover his own narrative, and draws audiences to consume his discoveries. Both art and science prize the economy of expression. Art bypasses consciousness, or at least approaches it through the backdoor. Science is concerned exclusively with consciousness.

Ramachandran's detective work, based on case studies and experiments, uncovers how one's emotional responses change with age or injury, how they can be rewired by persistent thought patterns, and how they constitute a compromise among multiple selves and senses, which present themselves (alone or in company, with or without introduction) to vote (in a secret ballot) on a dominant hallucination, which is then hastily stitched into a narrative. The self is the narrative.

"An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry" (1972)

A poem, a meme, outlives the moment, surpasses the poet, passes neglected---serendipitously selected, nudges, evolves, nurtures, dissolves. A thought, an emotion, lighter than prose (tumbles if verbose), sails (mumbles and wails) the mind (a parasite rhymed), daintily spoken (often broken), suspended in action (indulgent distraction).

Indiscreet (1958)

Romancing is divulging who one is, so one must be in order to divulge, and therefore multitask, or task with flair and hope that someone may be there, deciphering.

A play talks in order to say. A film advances a plot, and says most by talking not.

You Can't Take it with You

(Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 4 May 2012)

If one has the privilege of doing what one likes, one should. Then, when employment opportunities for many were dull, doing nothing or doing housework was no worse than having a paid job. Now, one aspires not only to avoid what one dislikes, but also to do what one likes, which typically involves specialising in assisting those outside one's family, and earns a pecuniary reward.

Performing screwball comedy is hard. It requires dignity. Individual peculiarities must reveal deeper features of one's character, instead of being mere aberrations.

"Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert (2006)

Reported experiments measure happiness according to subjects' instantaneous satisfaction. An alternative---and possibly more appropriate---measure of happiness is satisfaction with the narrative of one's past, a sense of accomplishment. This alternative is likely to be correlated with instantaneous satisfaction (e.g., because instantaneous satisfaction helps focus on long-term goals, or reflects the anticipation of future satisfaction with past accomplishments), but is distinct.

The challenge in psychology is to distinguish a bug from a feature. For instance, is assessing one's life according to the quality of its story---as opposed to accumulated instantaneous satisfaction---a bug or a feature? The book offers limited framework for drawing this distinction, at the individual and societal levels. Instead, the book lists bugs, governed by ancient gods (e.g., the "psychological immune system"), introduced as mnemonics, not scientific explanations. The author's fascination with human propensity to err (i.e., to make inconsistent choices) borders on misanthropy.

The prose is consistently clear, if verbose and occasionally (infrequently but irresponsibly) pandering to the aficionados of bathroom references. To assume that a reader savouring bathroom humour prefers it to other modes of discourse is akin to assuming that a beggar wears torn shoes in order to let his feet breathe.

A psychological experiment can make the same point as a novel would---but succinctly. Where philosophy used to reign, psychology and, more recently, neuroscience have taken over.

"The Little Sister" by Raymond Chandler (1949)

He aspires to accomplish most given his limitations, without lamenting their injustice.

He is surrounded by cinematic characters, eager to live up to their parts, out of courage or conformism.

Objects speak to him of others and of the civilization in which he is fortunate to have secured a part.

He writes his own dialogue (in black and white), inhabits his scenes, owning none, hopes for a plot, without expecting one.

"A General Theory of Love" by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon (2000)

One should be aware of one's "limbic brain"—without indulging it promiscuously. (An arbitrary attachment is more crippling than occasional solitude; it changes who one is. Because arbitrary attachments mutilate, individual freedom of movement is critical for private and social prosperity.)

Since brain plasticity declines with age, there is no second chance to become what one would like to become. The knowledge of what one would like to become is acquired by inferring one's desires and limitations from one's past choices, and deriving the implications of alternative courses of action (including altering malleable preferences).

Plato's ideals are approximations that emerge in the brain, often unconsciously. Hence, there is no paradox in the existence of a simple concept and the absence of its counterpart in practice.

The book is at its strongest when it reports empirical research.

Collaborators

(The National Theatre, 17 March 2012)

The play lacks the terror of uncertainty and thus lacks depth. The characters' Russianness is not integral to the play, but is accidental. Secondary characters are merely sketched, often caricatured to amuse.

The character of the protagonist is carefully developed. Improbable and unpredictable, Stalin (played by Simon Russell Beale) cannot be but inscrutable. Beale's portrayal is lighthearted enough to fit into the allegory, but also cunning enough to deceive.

The play would be improved if parts of it were set as a ballet. All scenes in Stalin's compound stay unchanged. The remaining scenes are rewritten wordless, kinetic. The most expressive scenes now are the most physical ones (e.g., the play within the play); they would accommodate the grotesque better if stripped of dialogue.

Edith Piaf

(Ginger and Fred, 11 March 2012)

In a city's variety, there is hope, to which one tends to cling, irrationally, happily. A city may succeed even if it supplies only aesthetics; much of the rest can be imagined and realised individually.

The promise of a life is the chance---however improbable---of being called upon. This chance keeps one alert and alive. Because of the prospect of responding to this chance, one values liberty.

The greatest compliment is trust. It dresses lightly.

Pina (2011)

Dignity is the art of accentuating the positive.

Freedom is in denying reputed constraints.

More is corrupted in translation than is lost in incomprehension.

Images of foreign lands corroborate the existence of external reality. Familiar lands, conjured up by imagination and controlled by routine, merge with the internal.

One does not dance about architecture for the same reason one does not use one's right hand to mime a story about one's left hand. Both dancing and architecture serve similar purposes. Both are elements of the extended phenotype revealing a carrier who through resistance asserts existence.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Justice is defined in terms of ideals, which change little, but whose interpretation evolves. Citizens may not grasp the ideals, but would know their neighbours' interpretation of these ideals. Trial by jury accommodates geographic and temporal interpretations, while the common ideals enable jurisdictions to learn from each other.

Rationalism is suitable for all ages. Empiricism requires engagement, leading to responsibilities and risks. One can learn to deny inferences, but not facts. In order to learn to withstand facts, one ought to be exposed to empiricism from an early age, notwithstanding the risks.

"Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas R. Hofstadter (1979)

By means of reason alone, hunger can be traced to a simple source. Complex emotions cannot be. Instead, one must vary a multitude of actions in order to identify each action's impact on the one-dimensional measure of one's well-being. When a simple reason for action is hard to articulate, one tends to favour inaction. This bias can be resisted by developing the habit of indulging into new experiences without a clear rationale.

Zen embraces the paradox as a means for preventing one from drawing conclusions from insufficient data. The circularity of a paradox tires one's mind, and nudges one to stop brooding and to start acting, collecting data. Some data are acknowledged and processed only subconsciously. (Sleep, exposure to beauty, nature, and art generate such data.) Zen reminds one not to overlook the tacit behind the articulable, and highlights the absurdity of the dichotomy between the mind and the body.

Even though sometimes knowledge can be gained by holding hands, holding hands is an inefficient way to transmit that knowledge to future generations. One should interpret and codify, thus preserving---the memories of---civilization.

Campus Starbucks

The music is sourced from someone in touch with the right kind of reality. Students commune with MacBooks or each other. The flux of avocational baristas promises structures of inviting complexity.

The patrons are selected on taste or parental income, conducive to indulging one's taste. Those whose indulgences displease are amended by the décor and generally have a point to make.

Some recurring characters look twenty-first-century scholarly, multitasking and consuming ambient noise. Others are refugees from all scholarly.

The queuing customers converse orally with each other or tactilely with iPhones. One wonders how, in a few years, one shall distinguish a wired customer from an alert one. Perhaps, the wired shall be alert, queues shall parish, and entire campuses shall have the ambiance of a Starbucks.

Wounded when engaged at half capacity; enveloped into the ether of potentiality when nearly empty. A self-effacing host bringing out the best in his guests.

The Artist (2011)

European fascination with Hollywood's confidence that the attitude loads the dice, that one is an audience, and that handsomeness never lies pictures two silent lives threatened by idleness, salvaged by smiles.

"The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" by Michael Lewis (2010)

Virtuous behaviour is shaped by circumstances as much as by personal integrity. The economic regime and corporate cultures determine which personal qualities thrive. Even if the economic regime exalts personal wealth, the diversity of corporate cultures enables one to choose whether to amass this wealth by improving the world or by seeking rents. Rent-seeking carries a pecuniary compensating differential. Indeed, the downside of a hired trader's risk seems lower than that of an entrepreneur, and the upside seems higher; yet entrepreneurs persist.

An ideal salesman increases his customer's valuation for the product. An artful salesman deceives. In order to deceive the rich, a salesman will benefit from being bred among the rich. Hence the rents in sales.

The thesis that prices of securities would or should reflect the fundamentals is not immediate. Securities can serve as fiat money. Market participants' agreement on the price of a security is more stabilising than proximity to any particular price of that security.

The Art Institute of Chicago

(8 January 2012)

A painter can be intense bordering on madness, without seeming grotesque, by being true not to the images of the physical world, but to the images of dreams and nightmares. In contrast to a flickering display, visual memories retain what is essential about an object, without corrupting arbitrarily. Visual memories are the images of emotions. What is remembered is a mood, a reflex, not the stimulant.

A painter specialises by developing the vocabulary of the physical world (Edward Hopper in "Nighthawks"), of memories and dreams (Gerhard Richter in "Christa and Wolfi", "Mrs Wolleh with Children," and "Woman Descending the Staircase"), or of an invented world (Vincent van Gogh in "Bedroom in Arles").