(Sadler’s Wells, 23 December 2018)
Certain maturity, intensity of the production were lacking, although the modern (for the 1990s) twists were an improvement on the original narrative. The music was arranged and performed well. The imperfections of the dancers did not quite cohere with the ideal parts they were portraying.
25 December 2018
42nd Street
(Theatre Royal Drury Lane, 22 December 2018)
The 42nd Street is a solid musical with no dramatic depth, with underdeveloped narrative arc, and with no memorable musical numbers (possibly except for the one remembered by Mike Coupe right before his ITV interview). Tap dancing is good. The mood is cheerful.
Weimar-era paintings are rather gory. By contrast, the enduring flicks and musicals from the 1930s and the early 1940s are lighthearted and gay. Two such different recollections of misery may be at least in part due to the technological accident: the cheer of Berlin cabarets was ephemeral, whereas that of Hollywood motion pictures has happened to be preserved on film and then revived, onscreen and onstage. Thus, the streak of optimism that has entered the American DNA may have been accidental.
(Comparisons are delicate because movies and paintings address different audiences, just as movies and theatre do. American optimism is probably mostly due to the consistent inflow of talented, hard-working, and forward-looking immigrants.)
What has kickstarted the US economy after the Great Depression was purportedly the WWII. Later, the Silicon Valley flourished thanks to defence contracts. The challenge is to maintain state support for fundamental science and technology in the absence of the threat of war by betting not on technologies but on outcomes, such as colonising Mars.
The 42nd Street is a solid musical with no dramatic depth, with underdeveloped narrative arc, and with no memorable musical numbers (possibly except for the one remembered by Mike Coupe right before his ITV interview). Tap dancing is good. The mood is cheerful.
Weimar-era paintings are rather gory. By contrast, the enduring flicks and musicals from the 1930s and the early 1940s are lighthearted and gay. Two such different recollections of misery may be at least in part due to the technological accident: the cheer of Berlin cabarets was ephemeral, whereas that of Hollywood motion pictures has happened to be preserved on film and then revived, onscreen and onstage. Thus, the streak of optimism that has entered the American DNA may have been accidental.
(Comparisons are delicate because movies and paintings address different audiences, just as movies and theatre do. American optimism is probably mostly due to the consistent inflow of talented, hard-working, and forward-looking immigrants.)
What has kickstarted the US economy after the Great Depression was purportedly the WWII. Later, the Silicon Valley flourished thanks to defence contracts. The challenge is to maintain state support for fundamental science and technology in the absence of the threat of war by betting not on technologies but on outcomes, such as colonising Mars.
Tell-Tale Heart
(The National Theatre, 21 December 2018)
The play begins with a provocative assertion: art is created by the not very smart as a safe space for the not very smart; art normalises mediocrity. A visit to many a modern art gallery or an exhibition would appear to support this hypothesis. Plays are not immune to mediocrity either, although playwrights do have to pass a literacy test. (Some of the mediocrity one encounters, however, is accidental: the impressionist canon was purchased by Gustave Caillebotte, a patron and himself an artist, on the grounds that it was not good enough to appeal to regular collectors. Caillebotte later bequeathed this canon to the public, while some of the better works remained in private collections.)
Mediocrity in art has three redeeming features. The acceptance of mediocrity unsettles existing social hierarchies by helping a greater number of individuals discover a source of self-esteem. The exposure of the public to mediocrity also illustrates that good art is hard, liable to false starts, and relies on nurturing a flow of ideas, only a fraction of which end up having some merit. Acceptance of mediocre art, on balance, encourages more individuals to engage in art. To the extent that engagement in and with art promotes social cohesion, this sacrifice of quality for quantity is welcome.
Should the government be in the business of promoting mediocre art? Perhaps indirectly so, the way venture capitalists promote more bad entrepreneurs by virtue of promoting more entrepreneurs, (ex-post) good or bad. The case relies on the assumption that markets alone would not provide artists with the funding commensurate with the social benefit that artistic activity generates, and that this under-provision is more severe in art than in, say, biotech.
The government may do more for art by investing in infrastructure and growth-friendly policies than by directly investing in art.
The provocative opening line is the play's high-point. Does the play itself illustrate the value of mediocrity? Is it an NT-worthy failure? Not quite.
The play begins with a provocative assertion: art is created by the not very smart as a safe space for the not very smart; art normalises mediocrity. A visit to many a modern art gallery or an exhibition would appear to support this hypothesis. Plays are not immune to mediocrity either, although playwrights do have to pass a literacy test. (Some of the mediocrity one encounters, however, is accidental: the impressionist canon was purchased by Gustave Caillebotte, a patron and himself an artist, on the grounds that it was not good enough to appeal to regular collectors. Caillebotte later bequeathed this canon to the public, while some of the better works remained in private collections.)
Mediocrity in art has three redeeming features. The acceptance of mediocrity unsettles existing social hierarchies by helping a greater number of individuals discover a source of self-esteem. The exposure of the public to mediocrity also illustrates that good art is hard, liable to false starts, and relies on nurturing a flow of ideas, only a fraction of which end up having some merit. Acceptance of mediocre art, on balance, encourages more individuals to engage in art. To the extent that engagement in and with art promotes social cohesion, this sacrifice of quality for quantity is welcome.
Should the government be in the business of promoting mediocre art? Perhaps indirectly so, the way venture capitalists promote more bad entrepreneurs by virtue of promoting more entrepreneurs, (ex-post) good or bad. The case relies on the assumption that markets alone would not provide artists with the funding commensurate with the social benefit that artistic activity generates, and that this under-provision is more severe in art than in, say, biotech.
The government may do more for art by investing in infrastructure and growth-friendly policies than by directly investing in art.
The provocative opening line is the play's high-point. Does the play itself illustrate the value of mediocrity? Is it an NT-worthy failure? Not quite.
“Bad Blood” by John Carreyrou (2018)
One cannot short a startup. Therefore, before investing in a company, it is important to note not only who has aleady invested in it (and whether investors are likely to have performed due diligence), but also who has refrained from investing.
For success, wishful thinking is insufficient, although typically necessary. Charisma is neither necessary nor sufficient. Nor is dropping out of college. One of the essential skills that one learns in college is the ability to identify nonsensical discourse, even one's own.
The society will extrapolate one’s successes and failures onto similar others. One has no moral obligation to internalise this externality. By contrast, those who regard themselves as being in the business of social engineering may wish (but, again, have no moral obligation) to account for this externality. Lawyers do so when they seek a perfect victim to file a civil rights suit.
Countries have historically competed in military might, not in product markets. International law enforcement is weak. International mobility is costly. It is simpler to steal than to innovate.
Companies are not inherently different but are constrained by the state’s monopoly on violence. Even then, whenever not controlled by a mob, companies control armies of lawyers, media, and politicians.
Any remotely fair, efficient, and reliable mode of social organisation is likely have much redundancy, seek excessive compromise, and, so, be rather far from the first-best.
“How to Be Parisian wherever You Are” by Caroline de Maigret, Anne Berest, Audrey Diwan, and Sophie Mas (2014)
Being a Parisianne is making most of one’s circumstances, which, here, are Paris: high-density urban living, among benevolent snobs and a handful of friends; small apartments; and a subtle equilibrium in "what we do with what is done to us” (Sartre's definition of freedom).
Sometimes, in order to be X, one must not be born X. It is only by consciously deciding to be X that one can confidently inhabit X.
Why would one want to be a Parisian wherever one is? One may naturally be a Parisian to begin with, and it is reassuring to know one is not alone in one's constructed world. One may also wish, if not to be someone else for a while, then at least to be aware of alternative ways of being.
Sometimes, in order to be X, one must not be born X. It is only by consciously deciding to be X that one can confidently inhabit X.
Why would one want to be a Parisian wherever one is? One may naturally be a Parisian to begin with, and it is reassuring to know one is not alone in one's constructed world. One may also wish, if not to be someone else for a while, then at least to be aware of alternative ways of being.
15 December 2018
Twin Peaks: the Return (2017), Revisited
Twin Peaks is a shared dream.
Everyone lives in a dream, his own world, most of the time. On few occasions, individuals meet to share the dream. There's often music in the air on such occasions.
Everyone lives in a dream, his own world, most of the time. On few occasions, individuals meet to share the dream. There's often music in the air on such occasions.
A conversation is a dance. The dance reduces the conversation to its essence. It removes the middle-man, the macguffin, the plot, the purported meaning. Twin Peaks, like a dance, dismisses the middleman.
Most of the time, one is in the Black Lodge, the waiting room. What is remembered, is the finite time outside, on earth. One should make most of it.
Most of the time, one is in the Black Lodge, the waiting room. What is remembered, is the finite time outside, on earth. One should make most of it.
Today, characters are no longer developed in the legacy world but online. Relationships are cultivated online. What will the movies set in the present look like? Will action ever be spectacular again?
"Autofagia" by Arturo Rivera
(El Claustro de Sor Juana, 17 November 2018)
Rivera cures pain by conjuring up beauty, which he distills from pain itself and from freedom.
Rivera cures pain by conjuring up beauty, which he distills from pain itself and from freedom.
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