Sunday Salon 5-19-19

Time and Place: 8:00 Sunday morning, at my main computer in the living room.

Reading: I finally decided to take the plastic wrap off of my copy of Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore, and read the latest novel by one of my favorite authors. I’m now about three-quarters of the way in, and, while musing that the book could perhaps have profitably been 500 pages long, rather than around 700 (just a little too much repetition and marking time for me), I’m still enjoying it very much. At the same time I’m also a ways into Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, among the most-recommended “advice” books for authors, and one that seems to have lifted me, at least temporarily, out of my recent writing slump (or was it just laziness?)

Viewing: Perhaps it’s because I check out reviews before watching films, or because most of my viewing comes either from my own collection of Blu-rays and DVDs or from reliable sources like MUBI and the Criterion Channel, but I have watched a string of really fine films in the last couple of weeks. Just to mention a few … Love Education (2017) by the multi-talented and prolific Sylvia Chang, Joanna Hogg’s first feature Unrelated (2007; her first three films are all happily available on the Criterion Channel), the classic I Remember Mama (1948), and the most recent, and in my opinion probably the best, film by the wonderful Kelly Reichardt, Certain Women (2016). It is perhaps not a coincidence that three of these four films, all excellent, were written and directed by women.

Listening: I’ve lately been gravitating back toward my usual sort of music – modern and contemporary classical music that straddles the line between consonance and dissonance, between tonality and atonality (or at least free tonality). Recent enthusiasms include the symphonies of Allan Pettersson, orchestral and chamber music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Become Ocean by John Luther Adams, a remarkably atmospheric work that deservedly won Adams the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. Living amidst the desert as I do here in Reno, I can hardly wait for Adams’s “sequel,” Become Desert, to come out on CD next month.

Blogging: I’m still not making promises about my blogging on a more regular basis, although I’ve got lots of ideas and plenty of items partially finished.

Pondering: Throughout this morning, I’ve been listening to a very loud bird singing from the tree just outside my front door. Her song seems to have a seven-note core: roughly E, E, E, down to D, up to F#, back down to D, and a return to E. There are a multitude of variations, though. For instance, there can be anywhere from one to four soundings of E at the beginning, at the end there might be an added D or a second E, and so on. It is very pleasant, but it also got me thinking about composer Olivier Messiaen, who was famously obsessed by bird songs, transcribing many hundreds of them and including them throughout his compositions. I’ve noticed that my bird isn’t absolutely predictable about pitch, and definitely has a liking for microtonal variations of her song. This has me considering how Messiaen dealt with these variations, and the ways in which he adapted the songs for fixed-pitch instruments like the piano. I’d like to read more about this.

And finally: Speaking of Messiaen, for many months now I have been enjoying Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s recording of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux, thirteen portraits of birds (their songs, their habitats, their flight) composed in the second half of the 1950s. Even before I’d heard a note of the set, I was favorably disposed to it, having found inside its box, along with the CDs and booklet, a couple of feathers!

I’m a big fan of Aimard’s playing – his recording of György Ligeti’s Études is another great favorite. Having studied with both Messiaen and his wife, Yvonne Loriod (for whom he wrote the Catalogue), Aimard’s Messiaen performances seem pretty authoritative. Before the Catalogue recording came out, Aimard performed the entire set in a very special way at the 2016 Aldeburgh Festival, documented in this short video. I truly would have loved to be part of the audience for this!

Sunday Salon 4-28-19

Time and Place: 10:30 Sunday morning, at my main computer in the living room. I’m obviously getting my day off to a relaxed, or one might say slow, start.

Reading: It has been a good couple of months since I checked in with a Sunday Salon, so I’ll try to be selective about describing what I’ve been up to during that time. Much reading has occurred, fortunately. Among the books I’ve completed in recent weeks are Hiromi Kawakami’s The Nakano Thrift Shop, Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell, Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station, Belinda Thomson’s Impressionism, and, because I spend more time trying to motivate myself than I do actually motivated, James Clear’s Atomic Habits and the recently-released Keep Going by Austin Kleon.

Viewing: My enthusiasm about the recent launch of the Criterion Channel has been significantly tempered by the fact that its copy-protection methods are incompatible with my seven-year-old television. Therefore, I have to watch its films on my computer. Even so, I may continue the subscription simply because the offerings are so interesting. Film watching hasn’t been a huge focus for me lately, to be honest. But among the fine films I’ve watched are the classic William Wyler version of Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning Shoplifters (as great as advertised), and, a very pleasant surprise of a film I hadn’t heard of previously, Microhabitat, the first full-length feature by South Korean writer-director Jeon Go-woon (thanks to MUBI for making this gem available).

Listening: There are two significant reasons why I haven’t been active on the blog recently. One is that I’ve started a new job as Content Coordinator and Producer at KNCJ Radio, where my task is to bring music, interviews, and such from our area’s excellent classical music community to the airwaves. My other reason for being away is that I agreed to do a series of three ninety-minute presentations on the connections between visual art and classical music for our local OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute). As usual, I vastly over-prepared for all three classes, and much of what I put together went unused. Even so, I learned a lot in the process. The topics were the Renaissance, Impressionism, and music inspired by specific works of art. This allowed me to listen to quite a range of music, from Renaissance choral music (Josquin des Prez and Monteverdi were my faves this time around) to Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead, Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, and music by the Impressionists Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel (see one example below).

Blogging: As explained above, there hasn’t been much blogging lately, other than posting some paintings that I’ve been dealing with in the OLLI talks mentioned above. I hope my blogging habits will improve … but I’m not making any promises!

Pondering: An unfortunate thing I’ve had to deal with lately is the need to say “no.” In the last few weeks, I’ve been nearly inundated by requests for unpaid work, mostly writing projects but also donations of time and other services for non-profits. While there hasn’t been a project brought to me that wasn’t totally worthwhile, and while I appreciate that so many people like my work and want me to share it with them, I’ve had to put my foot down about how much I can, or want, to take on. I hope to get better at this “no” stuff one day.

And finally: Since I’ve been spending so much time with the Impressionist painters and composers recently, I though I’d end today’s Salon with an example. Water was, obviously, a major theme for the Impressionists. Musically, both Debussy and Ravel turned to the idea often. Maurice Ravel wrote his Jeux d’eau – which can be translated as “Fountains,” “Playing Water” or literally “Water Games” – in 1901, “inspired,” as he put it, “by the noise of water and by the musical sounds which make one hear the sprays of water, the cascades, and the brooks.” Here, Martha Argerich plays it with profound musicianship and appropriately dexterous fingers. This video was made back in the 1970s, but I’m willing to bet she could still tear through this piece in the same way today.

Godzilla Out For A Walk

Today’s Wordless Wednesday … from the set of the original Godzilla in 1954, Haruo Nakajima, who played Godzilla in twelve films, and Momoko Kōchi.

Sunday Salon 2-10-19

Time and Place: 9:00 Sunday morning, at my main computer in the living room.

Reading: I’ve managed to get somewhat stalled in my reading the last week or two. I’m making good progress in The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, edited by Jay Rubin, and have spent a few very enjoyable moments, mostly in the evening, slowly making my way through The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. Both are quite large books, though, and may not be completed any time soon.

Viewing: A showing on Turner Classic Movies last week of F.W. Murnau’s silent masterpiece Sunrise, the first film he made after moving to America from Germany, got me hooked on Murnau again and led me to a couple of his other films. One was his third American film, City Girl (the second American film, 4 Devils, is, sadly and highly frustratingly, lost), as well as the film he made in Germany immediately before Sunrise, the highly atmospheric Faust. I may well continue with more Murnau, moving forward to his final film, Tabu – he died in a car crash at age forty-two right after completing Tabu – and backward to some of his German films, like Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), Herr Tartüff (Tartuffe), and perhaps even a tenth-or-so viewing of the classic Nosferatu.

Listening: My music listening recently continues to be tied to the program note writing I do. Just a couple of days ago, I finished up notes for the next Reno Chamber Orchestra concert, which allowed me to revisit, and write about, favorites like Maurice Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin and the Variations on a Theme of Haydn by Johannes Brahms. Next up are notes for the Reno Philharmonic that will include Antonín Dvořák’s famous “New World” Symphony No. 9.

Blogging: My main post this past week was also inspired by recent program note writing, as I looked at some of the bad reviews received by Pyotr Tchaikovsky over the course of his life. I’ve also finally finished (I think) the article on the connections between Claude Monet’s work and Japanese art that I’ve been considering for many weeks now. That should appear in the next few days, as should a look at Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, as I get back to the Japanese Literature Challenge I’ve been participating in.

Pondering: I feel myself being pulled in a bunch of different directions lately, and am getting a bit frustrated by my inability to focus on any one thing. There’s the Japanese Literature Challenge. There’s the ongoing program note writing. I’m also making a presentation on “Music and Renaissance Art” in a couple of weeks, and am fairly drowning in facts, dates, names, music, and paintings as I prepare. A couple of potential job offers are floating out there, too. All this and trying to maintain my daily schedule of exercise, meditation, and Japanese language studies are rather overwhelming me. Wish I had a larger, better-functioning brain.

And finally: This showed up on Facebook yesterday, and it provided a nice laugh to end the week.

Sunday Salon 1-27-19

Time and Place: 7:00 Sunday morning, getting an early start for a change, at my main computer.

Reading: As reported a couple of weeks ago, the reading year has gotten off to a fine start, with eight books completed already, and another two underway! Much of that recent reading has been related to the Japanese Literature Challenge 12, hosted by Dolce Belleza, that I have been participating in. I’ve already posted a review of the first book read for that Challenge, Masks by Fumiko Enchi. Reviews of two further books, Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen and The Japanese Sense of Beauty by Shuji Takashina, will be coming in the next week or two. My current focus is a volume I’ve been anxious to read since it came out a few months ago, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, edited by Jay Rubin (who is also one of Haruki Murakami’s main English translators). For a blog article or two as well as a presentation on Impressionism I’m doing in a couple of months, I’ve also completed Karin Breuer’s Japanesque: The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism.

Viewing: I only watched two movies this week. One was middling, a Korean historical drama called Empire of Lust. But the other, Gabbeh, a 1996 film directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, was outstanding, atmospheric and poetic and wonderfully colorful. Makhmalbaf is a prolific, highly-regarded Iranian director, but Gabbeh was just the first film of his I’ve seen. I will be seeking out more!

Listening: My main listening for the last week was related to program notes I wrote for the next concert of the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra. The program is an interesting one: Missy Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) (this gave me an excuse to revisit her excellent Vespers for a New Dark Age that she recorded with her group Victoire), Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, and the famous Piano Concerto No. 1 by Tchaikovsky. The latter inspired a short blog post on Tchaikovsky’s bad reviews that I’m going to post tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Blogging: This week saw only the posting of my review of Fumiko Enchi’s Masks and a Wordless Wednesday bit of medieval illumination. Coming this week, I hope, are a look at Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto and the short article I’ve been planning for some time on the connections between Claude Monet’s work and Japanese art. My problem with the latter, which I’ve been thinking about for weeks, is the same one I often have – I enjoy the research too much, accumulate way too much information, and then have a hard time figuring out exactly what my subject is. I’ve got dozens of pages of notes for this darn Monet article, which probably won’t end up exceeding 1,000 words. We’ll see how it turns out, and what I actually end up writing about.

Pondering: I feel strongly the desire to travel, but also feel equally strongly the need to keep a close eye on my finances. What to do?

And finally: Something I came across this week, which has pleased me greatly and gotten itself lodged in my head, is a version of Queen’s song “Killer Queen” played on, of all things, a hundred-plus-year-old fairground organ. It’s much too delightful; the entry of the chorus (“She’s a killer queen…”) makes me laugh, in a good way, every time I hear it. The introduction to the video mentions a version of “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the same organ, which you’ll also find below in case you need it … which you might.

Sunday Salon 1-13-19

Time and Place: 9:45 Sunday morning, at my main computer, newly moved to the dining room table (a useful change).

Reading: 2019 has gotten off to a great start in my reading, as I’ve already completed five books! Granted, a couple of these were relatively short, and one was an art exhibition catalog with lots of illustrations. Still, I’m happy about the start. Not only that, but as I mentioned on the blog this week, I’ve joined the Japanese Literature Challenge 12, hosted by Dolce Bellezza. So I’ll be joining several bloggers in focusing on Japanese books through the end of March. Without even knowing about the Challenge, I had already decided to devote a lot of the coming year to novels in translation by Japanese authors. So the Challenge came along at just the right time. I finished my first book for the Challenge, Masks by Fumiko Enchi, yesterday; I hope to write about it in the coming week.

Viewing: After a gangbusters finish to 2018, with seven films viewed in the last five days of the year, I’ve gotten a bit of a slow start this year. I did, however, watch again Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first feature film, Maborosi, in a very nice new Blu-ray issue. The film moved me as much as ever, and remains in my Top Ten films of all time.

Listening: Music has been a bit of a non-issue in my life in recent weeks, so I’ll mention a couple of current favorite podcasts instead, both of which happen to deal with film. I continue to listen to and enjoy You Must Remember This, in which Karina Longworth talks about, as she puts it, “the secret and/or forgotten history of Hollywood’s first century.” I’m currently in the middle of a series in which she analyzes stories from Kenneth Anger’s famous, scandalous, very enjoyable, and occasionally accurate Hollywood Babylon. Newly a part of my podcast lineup is Her Head in Films, in which Caitlin talks about her favorite films in very personal terms. She is attracted to foreign and art house films, as am I, and the repertoire of films she has talked about in the podcast is such a close match to my own tastes that it feels I have found a friend in film in this podcast.

Blogging: My main accomplishment this week was returning to blogging at all. After a month away, this is my fifth entry in five days, which pleases me very much. The pace may slow a bit in coming days, but I have a couple of things in the works for this week, including the aforementioned review of Fumiko Enchi’s Masks and a short article on the connections between Claude Monet’s paintings and Japanese art and gardens.

Pondering: Should I take in some of Noir City 17, the festival of films noirs coming to San Francisco in a couple of weeks? I know I would love it, but I also need to be careful of finances, having little regular income at the moment. We’ll see…

And finally: With his most recent film Shoplifters having won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year, and with my own recent viewing of Maborosi and The Third Murder, I’ve had the films of Hirokazu Kore-eda, one of my favorite film directors, much on my mind recently. One of the best introductions to his films is this short piece by the filmmaker and critic kogonada that I posted here on the blog several years ago (you can read what I wrote about it then here), and am happy to present again.

The World According to Koreeda Hirokazu from kogonada on Vimeo.

Sunday Salon 11-25-18

Time and Place: 9:30 Sunday morning (I slept in), at my main computer at home.

Reading: This week I finished two books, Michael Pye’s The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe and John David Anderson’s delightful Granted. I’m now at that great moment where I get to choose my next book – but haven’t yet!

Viewing: With the end of FilmStruck in just a few days, I’ve been engaging in a bit of a marathon of film watching, more or less a double-feature every day. I’ve completed watching the early Ingrid Bergman films included in the Eclipse DVD set Ingrid Bergman’s Swedish Years, seen a bunch of Japanese films from the 1950s through 1970s (perhaps my favorite segment of film history), and even made room for classics like last night’s viewing of Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth, with the unbeatable combination of Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. I’ll miss FilmStruck very much, but also look forward to the new Criterion Channel on its way in a few months.

Listening: Not a lot of music in my life this week, although I’ve been enjoying Recurrence, featuring the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Bjarnason playing works by contemporary Icelandic composers.

Blogging: The main accomplishment this week was a look at Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King, an excellent book that enhanced my already-considerable appreciation of Monet’s late paintings. All of that Monet has inspired me to do another blog post on the connections between Monet’s work and Japanese art and gardens. Coming soon to a blog near you…

Pondering: I will soon be taking off for a few days in San Francisco, during which I will be taking in several art exhibitions, including two I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while: Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World at SFMOMA, and Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey at the de Young Museum. By the way, I will be Tweeting throughout my trip, so I invite you to follow me on Twitter for all the fun.

And finally: This Tom Gauld cartoon says it all…

Sunday Salon 11-18-18

As this is my first blog post in quite a while, I will resist the temptation to detail my activities over the last year-and-a-half, and just talk a little about the last week or two (and the future!)

Time and Place: 7:30 Sunday morning, at my main computer at home.

Reading: In an attempt to find motivation, feed my creativity, and address my ever-faltering self-esteem, I’ve been spending a lot of time with self-help books recently. The one I’d like to call special attention to is Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit, perhaps (along with Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist) the best book on creativity that I’ve ever come across. Tharp is direct, detailed, revealing of her own pretty astonishing creative life, and full of practical suggestions. I’m also currently in the middle of Michael Pye’s very entertaining and informative The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe, and have been eyeing hungrily my as-yet-untouched copy of Haruki Murakami’s new book Killing Commendatore.

Viewing: The imminent demise of the invaluable FilmStruck service – apparently to be replaced in a few months by the new Criterion Channel announced a couple of days ago – has led me, and many others, to try to go through our queues of movies before FilmStruck disappears on November 29. My focus has been on two areas: expanding my knowledge of the works of Japanese directors like Kon Ichikawa and Masahiro Shinoda, and becoming acquainted with the films Ingrid Bergman made in the early, Swedish part of her career (many featured in the Eclipse DVD set Ingrid Bergman’s Swedish Years). I’ll save for another time the overwhelming experience of last night’s viewing, in its beautiful new Criterion Blu-Ray edition, of Andrei Tarkovsky’s magisterial Andrei Rublev.

Listening: Over late October and early November, I spent a couple of weeks writing program notes for a chamber music festival. It was such an intensive and awful experience – 63 compositions and 16,000 or so words written (edited down to 10,000 for space) over fourteen days! – that I came out of it with a genuine, and I suspect temporary, aversion to classical music. So I’ve been checking out lots of other fun stuff: Thai and other southeast Asian pop and folk music, my old favorite Stereolab, Bollywood soundtracks, and more (see below for another example). A lot of my listening, too, I have to admit, has been to my own music, as I’ve recovered my music-writing groove and am busily assembling bits of what will eventually be a long piece that I trust is going to be great!

Blogging: As I mentioned above, this is my first blog post in a year and a half, but I’m pretty sure not my last. I’ve been accumulating some content which will be turning up here soon, as well as developing a new project about which I’m going to remain silent for the moment. More news soon! By the way, my Twitter feed is now much more active than before, so I encourage you to follow me there.

Pondering: I left my previous job, a very demanding and time-consuming one, about three months ago. As with the last time I left that organization, it has been a difficult transition, especially on a personal level. I had always guessed that most of my friendships within that workplace, even some of the close ones, were not actually friendships but rather relationships of convenience, existing simply because of my title and possible utility to people. It’s not really unusual or surprising, nor am I really complaining about or condemning those people. But it has admittedly been painful to see my social circle diminished by something like 95%. However, I’m also extremely grateful for the people that have stuck with me and stayed in contact! And my social horizons are growing, gradually…

And finally: I’m pleased to share some music by a recent, very pleasant discovery, Khruangbin. This Houston-based band brings together a diverse group of influences, from Thai pop music to progressive rock to surf-rock instrumentals to film scores and more, via the rock-solid grooves of drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson, the hypnotic and melodic bass playing of Laura Lee, and the virtuoso guitar of Mark Speer. When I found out that (1) Laura Lee came up with the name Khruangbin, Thai for “flying engine” or “airplane,” because she’d been studying the Thai language at the time and liked the word, and (2) they have a website, AirKhruang, where they put together Spotify playlists of cool and obscure music from around the world, I knew this was a band I would like. Their NPR Music Tiny Desk concert features three songs: “Maria También” is a great introduction to their musical world, the bass line of “August 10” has been stuck in my head for weeks, and the closer, “White Gloves,” pretty much makes me cry every time. I absolutely love this stuff, and hope you will too…

Sunday Salon 6-25-17

Time and Place: 11:30 Sunday morning, at my main computer at home.

Reading: At the beginning of the year, I set myself a goal of reading forty books during 2017. That’s the same number I read last year, which was my best total since 1997. As of today I’m at nineteen, so I’m more or less on track. Among the books I’ve read in the last few months are The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, James Gleick’s Time Travel: A History (I took many notes while reading this, and hope to write about it before very long), How To Be Everything by Emelie Wapnick, the collection of Haruki Murakami short stories Men Without Women, the first volume of My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgård, and Hanya Yanagihara’s The People in the Trees.

Viewing: For whatever reason, I’ve found myself drawn to nature documentaries recently. I’ve worked my way through the series Planet Earth and Frozen Planet, and may next go back to an old favorite from years ago, The Living Planet. Yes, I’ve probably heard Sir David Attenborough’s voice more than my own in recent weeks. A few films have found their way into my viewing as well, including the French film Henri, Gus Van Sant’s The Sea of Trees, the rather charming We Bought a Zoo, David Lean’s classic Brief Encounter (a longtime personal favorite), and both Martin Scorsese’s and Masahiro Shinoda’s film versions of Shusako Endo’s novel Silence. As for art, during a recent trip to San Francisco I was able to see the exhibitions Tomb Treasures: New Discoveries from China’s Han Dynasty at the Asian Art Museum, Matisse/Diebenkorn at SFMOMA, and Monet: The Early Years at the Legion of Honor.

Listening: Aside from listening I’ve had to do for the occasional program note writing, I’ve been listening to and enjoying Penguin Cafe’s most recent album The Imperfect Sea, Mare Nostrum by Hespèrion XXI and Jordi Savall, and Michael Habermann’s recordings of the music of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji that were reissued not long ago by Naxos.

Blogging: This is my first blog post in about four months, and my first since taking on the job of Executive Director of the Reno Chamber Orchestra on March 1. Whether this is simply a check-in or a return to regular blogging remains to be seen. My tendency, however, to spend my free time worrying about work rather than doing anything productive (say, writing) is not a helpful one.

Pondering: Oddly, but perhaps not paradoxically, I have found myself openly discussing my feelings, my deepest concerns and interests, much less in the last three or four months – when my job has forced me to be in social settings a lot of the time – than I did during the previous year of very solitary unemployment. In fact, I pretty much never have a serious conversation anymore.

And finally: According to the Population Reference Bureau, something like 107.6 billion people have lived in the course of our planet’s history. The current population of the world passed 7.5 billion on April 24 of this year. Therefore, about 7% of the people who have ever lived are alive right now. Just so you know…

Sunday Salon 2-12-17

Time and Place: 7:30 Sunday morning, at my main computer at home.

Reading: Along with continuing in the novel Headlong by Michael Frayn, which I should finish in the next day or two, I read one self-help book this week, Susan J. Elliott’s Getting Past Your Breakup, which I indeed hope will prove to be self-helpful.

Viewing: My coolness toward film watching continued this week, as I only watched a couple of documentaries: InnSaei, a somewhat muddled exploration of intuition and mindfulness, and 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama. It’s never a bad idea to spend some time listening to the Dalai Lama.

Listening: It has once again been a listening week dedicated to the music I needed to write about for my program note projects. This time, it was the contents of the concluding concerts of the Reno Chamber Orchestra’s current season: Beethoven’s concert aria Ah! perfido and Antonín Dvořák’s Stabat Mater.

Blogging: My blogging goals seem to have settled into the idea of doing two extended pieces per week, along with a Wordless Wednesday and a Sunday Salon. I usually feel fairly good if I can manage that much. And this week, I succeeded, producing:

* An article I had meant to write for a long time, Looking At Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks
* My impressions of Frank Stella – A Retrospective, an exhibition currently at San Francisco’s de Young Museum

Pondering: This has been another of those weeks where pondering, thinking, anticipating, remembering, dreaming … they’ve all turned out to be more harmful than helpful. Living in the present moment, which is all we’ve got after all, without judging and evaluating and comparing seems to be a more beneficial way to go.

And finally: Returning to the theme of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, the painting has been enormously influential. One never knows where it will turn up…