Having just viewed Brideshead Revisited again after 30 some years here is the infamous and deliciously obstreperous John Freeman-Waugh interview.
Jazz in Japan
The Japanese people want to thank the United States, New Orleans and Satchmo for giving the world such wonderful music called jazz.
A lovely example of the power of this music to spread the joy, the conduit the very special Yoshio Toyama. In Treme (1:5) you may recall a Japanese jazz fan does a good turn for Antoine. Check out the photos as well.
Vettriano
Hated by the art establishment and other literati snobs, no doubt many of them would see virtue in Andrew Lloyd Vombo. JV’s film noir perspective is a lost idealized world of menace and sleaze with elegance, strong sexy women, sinister men, sexual “deviance”, drinking, smoking, politically “incorrect behavior” . . . some mid-Atlantic world, the LA of Marlow meets Bournemouth. NOLA would of course “get” Vettriano.
See this article The Singing Butler Did It – the writer Amy Fine Collins seems to be very versatile and writes competently on fashion to sex trafficking and much in-between.
Brain plasticity and the internet – a debate
Neil Levy takes on Susan Greenfield.
I started by mentioning Plato’s worry that literacy would weaken memory. As a matter of fact, Plato may not have been entirely wrong: there is evidence that people in preliterate cultures have better memories. It does not follow, however, that the invention of writing had costs as well as benefits, or rather it does not follow that any effect on short term memory is simply a cost. It may that (sic) writing did not merely provide us with an external memory store that was superior to brain-based memory (much more reliable, for one thing). By decreasing the burden on our memory, it may also have freed up brain-based processing resources for other tasks.
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?
86-year-old returns to New Orleans, fulfilling wish of a lifetime
Her eyes still light up when she talks about New Orleans. When asked the top three reasons she loves New Orleans, she quickly answers with, “the food, the music, but especially the people,” referring to her close friends and the 400,000 friendly locals who make the city what it is.
Floyd’s American Pie
Food writing at it’s entertaining best. This is the guy (a wonderful character – who else would use the rather naughty The Stranglers’ Peaches as a theme tune) who brought me to Dooky Chase and Paul Prudhomme – I let the latter know of this 20 year journey and he very kindly sent me a lovely inscribed paper table cloth with the words: “Good cooking, good eating, good loving.” Sums up what is important in my world at least. For more on Floyd see this droll documentary.
NOLA @ Newport
NOLA is very well represented at this year’s event. This from the Providence Journal.
Dr. John & The Lower 911 featuring ex-Brit Jon Cleary (there are a few of us who are besotted with NOLA), Preservation Hall Jazz Band, with special guests Catherine Russell and Jonathan Batiste.
Parsifal: the greatest meditation on death?
I’ve been watching James Levine‘s version of Parsifal. Though quite the production, it doesn’t come near the experience of the starker Simon Rattle production I saw at the Royal Opera House some years back in which I thoroughly appreciated Vera Dobroschke’s lighting design (see photo below). Here is the NYT review, far more receptive than the reviews of the 2007 production revamp. Speaking of Levine, I bumped into him on my way to “water the horses” – he wasn’t looking well at all. (An artist friend very kindly invited me to share his Symphony Hall box – I’ve never come across someone so knowledgeable and passionate about music and a very tough hockey goalie as well).
Yom huledet “Pops”
Today is Louis Armstrong’s birthday, in my view a musical titan to match the likes of Wagner. No artist has given me such pleasure as Pops as well as being a perennial symbol or a paragon of dignity in trying circumstances. Below are two of my favourite photos of Pops. I also highly recommend you read two books, the latter author works tirelessly and brilliantly as a keeper of the Pops flame @ The Louis Armstrong House Museum. The world is forever indebted to the Karnofskys.
Terry Teachout’s Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong
Ricky Riccardi’s What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years
Hubig’s Pies
It’s been just over a week since Hubig’s Pies burnt to the ground. To get a sense of the importance of this institution here is no less the NYT and the local view from NOLA.com.
manwithoutqualities 