Pandemic sees pianist sell his beloved Steinway
Musicians chief: New York faces cultural depression
Very sad news that Robert Fisk, veteran UK journalist, has just died aged 74. Reading Fisk (The Independent, UK), I always felt my cultural writing and goings on were a bit akin the actor in Lost in Translation: shooting a Japanese whiskey commercial in Japan, looking at carpet samples sent FedEx by the wife. Not that writing about culture wasn't and isn't important. Simply, Fisk was there in the heart of war-zones. An independent voice always taking the flak from those many who disagreed with him. It takes guts and passion to write the way he did. Above all, a belief that the world could be a better place by better informing people of really went on. The voice of Robert Fisk will be deeply missed by many.
Anthology Film Archives were already screening this documentary on Robert Fisk before his death was announced. Available to rent to $10 (until Nov 10).
The American Presidential election is here. There are even Broadway performers manning polling stations in a work shift akin to a film shoot! But one mustn't judge those for whom such commitment just doesn't work. Nor should one 'judge' those who simply aren't of one's own political persuasion. The trouble is, of course, when democracy is going 'my way' it's great. In the current administration's case, for many, it's a 'bastardization'. Wasn't it Churchill who thus wrote about democracy….!
Perhaps a primer for all elections is the TV series Succession. Series 2 was out on DVD this Fall. It's impossible to find fault. The casting so decisive and rigorous, the cast so nimble, adept and boisterous. The music score so poignant. A script so incisive it burns and burns and burns. An executive team..!!!!
My mind flipped to Sean Connery (who passed away today this Saturday). He was offered the role of John Hammond the 'architect' of Jurassic Park and turned it down. The great actor/director Richard Attenborough crazily said yes to Steven Spielberg for the role. Just cannot imagine Connery in that part, of relating his dream for the park over melting ice-cream as the dinosaurs inexorably make their way into the compound now all the fences down. Attenborough simply became, iconic. So did dinosaurs.
Wondered that about Succession and the casting. Sure it would no doubt work with other actors, yet….actor Brian Cox is Scottish (as is Logan Roy the media baron he portrays). And Mr. Cox has not exactly been a shrinking violet about anything over his illustrious career! There are many somethings beautiful and irretrievable in this series. The cloying demands of remembrance for a place so yearning an escape. Yet return.
One mustn't judge Americans who feel hope in what liberals see as utter despair. America has in history always been a divided country (as has the United Kingdom-the irony of such a name, the Brexit vote unquestionably manipulated YES LEAVE by 2%). Very few elections in the United Sates of America over the last two centuries have been won by more than 1-2% of the vote. So what does that say? One could blame the electoral collage vote system. Yet…as Winston Churchill spake….
In my limited experience (and I cannot vote so I'm totally nonpartisan) of this country, there is a union of common decency. Of grass-roots activism. Of not tolerating being screwed over by a system that doesn't listen. And when liberals speak derivatively of 'middle America' values, perhaps they should try harder to understand how 'screwed over' many decent folk have felt and been over decades. Isn't it Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino (2008) where Walt Kowalski rocks on his porch with a shotgun until….
Nobody wants to see rich kids in their playgrounds while others can barely pay their bills. Yet: nobody chooses their parents. So mustn't ever assume that, as Ibsen the playwright wrote, that "the sins of the fathers' "inevitably "are visited upon the children". All those folk living in penthouses ain't evil. Nor corrupt. No more so than those in ‘trailer homes’.
The racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, ultra-Right Wing are a minority in America. That is not 51% of America. Yet it only takes sparks, one bad apple, to start a major life-threatening fire. To utterly destroy the harvest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson — "An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man"
Poor Tom's A-Cold
Isak Dinesen told Truman Capote that she judged people by what they thought of King Lear.
Dawa.
