For those who prefer games of skill,
there is Oakland.
There were no Log24 posts on March 17 or March 19.
From a March 18 post, a flashback to February —
"In The Girl Before, the house is almost a shapeshifter as it fits
the needs of the story. Sometimes it feels like an art gallery,
with its inhabitants on display. It's a smart home (of course it is),
and its automated locks and lights and creepily intuitive A.I.
give it the feel of a high-tech prison. Sometimes it's a mausoleum
for Jane, who's dealing with the recent pain of a miscarriage.
Sometimes it's a fortress for Emma, who's dealing with the recent
trauma of a home invasion." — Joe Reid at Primetimer.com.
“Communications disorders were the overarching theme of my mother’s career.”
— Anne Louise Oaklander, daughter of a famed autism expert, Isabelle Rapin,
who reportedly died at 89 on May 24.
See also a post on Mark Zuckerberg's recent Harvard commencement address.
Some background — Overarching in this journal.
Quotations by and for an artist who reportedly died
on Sunday, January 15, 2017 —
"What drives my vision is a need to locate
a 'genetically felt' devotional space
in which a simultaneous multiplicity
of disparate realities coexists."
— The late Ciel Bergman, in her webpage
"Artist's Statement"
"Once a registered nurse who worked in a hospital
psychiatric ward, Ms. Bergman was a struggling
single mom of two when she couldn’t resist the pull
of her art. In 1969, she entered a painting in the
Jack London Invitational, an art contest in Oakland,
and won first prize. This compelled her to enroll at
the San Francisco Art Institute, where she earned
her master of fine arts with honors in painting."
— Sam Whiting in the San Francisco Chronicle
See also Oakland in this journal and
"Only a peculiar can enter a time loop."
"The peculiar kind of 'identity' that is attributed to
apparently altogether heterogeneous figures
in virtue of their being transformable into one another
by means of certain operations defining a group,
is thus seen to exist also in the domain of perception."
— Ernst Cassirer, quoted here on
Midsummer Eve (St. John's Eve), 2010
"Modern Times, his first album since Love and Theft, debuted at No. 1
on the US pop charts last September. At 65, Dylan became the oldest
living person to achieve this feat." –New Zealand Herald, Feb. 12
"Each epoch has its singer."
"Anything but the void. And so we keep hoping to luck into a winning combination, to tap into a subtle harmony, trying like lock pickers to negotiate a compromise with the 'mystery tramp,' as Bob Dylan put it…."
"You said you'd never compromise |
In today's meditation for
the Church of Peter Gabriel,
Dennis Overbye plays
the role of Jack Horner.
(See Overbye on Sagan in today's
New York Times, Sagan on Pi,
and Pi Day at Harvard.)
For more on Jack Horner, see
The Rise and Fall
of Popular Music,
by Donald Clarke,
Chapter One.
For two contrasting approaches
to popular music, see two artists
whose birthdays are today:
In other Grammy news–
At the end of Sunday's awards,
"Scarlett Johansson and Don Henley
put themselves in the pole position
to star in a remake of 'Adam's Rib'
with the following exchange:
Henley: So you're recording
your first album?
Johansson: Yeah. Do you
have any advice for me?
Henley: No."
"Her wall is filled with pictures,
she gets 'em one by one…."
The Dirty Thirty
For Amy Tan:
“Tan has a strong distaste for ‘hodge-podge collections’ that have no unifying theme. But as fate would have it, she had just recently recognized the common thread running through her own work.
‘It has to do with my upbringing with a father who very strongly believed in faith as a Baptist minister, and my mother, who very strongly believed in fate, and I’m trying to find things that work for me.’
She proposed a collection based upon her lifelong search for a philosophical middle ground between faith and fate, to be called The Opposite of Fate. When her puzzled editor asked her what the opposite of fate might be, Tan cryptically replied, ‘Exactly!'”
For Lee Marvin:
“On Feb. 19, 1945, during World War II, some thirty thousand U.S. Marines landed on Iwo Jima, where they began a monthlong battle to seize control of the island from Japanese forces.”
— Adapted from “Today’s Highlight in History,” by the Associated Press
Crimson
on St. Cecilia’s Day
“… from the Age that is past,
To the Age that is waiting before.”
— Samuel Gilman, “Fair Harvard“
Published by The Harvard Crimson
on Monday, November 22, 2004:
Dylan Performs By KATHERINE CHAN Shouts of “Make way! Moses is here!” filled a restless crowd as legendary musician Bob Dylan closed off his College tour last night jamming in front of a sold out audience of Harvard undergraduates and Cambridge residents…. The turnout for last night’s two-hour show was greater than many of the student audience members anticipated… But despite the legendary hits and massive crowds, several students said they were disappointed with the show. “I love Bob Dylan. I just don’t know what he’s saying,” said Alexander A.C. De Carvalho ’08. |
From an entry of October 29, 2004:
“Each epoch has its singer.” “Anything but the void. And so we keep hoping to luck into a winning combination, to tap into a subtle harmony, trying like lock pickers to negotiate a compromise with the ‘mystery tramp,’ as Bob Dylan put it….” “You said you’d never compromise |
From The New York Times today:
“It’s official, I guess. Forty years after he recorded it, Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ was just named the greatest rock ‘n’ roll song of all time….”
Song
"Each epoch has its singer."
— Jack London, Oakland, California, 1901
"Anything but the void. And so we keep hoping to luck into a winning combination, to tap into a subtle harmony, trying like lock pickers to negotiate a compromise with the 'mystery tramp,' as Bob Dylan put it…."
— Dennis Overbye, Quantum Baseball,
New York Times, Oct. 26, 2004
"You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp,
but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into
the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to
make a deal?"
— Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone
"About a century ago scientists began to realize that beneath the too, too solid veneer of what had passed for reality for 2,000 years there was some pretty funny and fuzzy business going on….
Most of us, I suspect, would rather believe that the devil is running things than that no one is in charge, that our lives, our loves, World Series victories, hang on the whims of fate and chains of coincidences, on God throwing dice, as Einstein once referred to quantum randomness….
[But] we are people, with desires and memories and a sense of humor – not Ping Pong balls."
— Dennis Overbye, Quantum Baseball,
New York Times, Oct. 26, 2004
"You can be replaced by some Ping Pong balls and a dictionary."
— Anonymous source, March 29, 2001
Our Town:
No There There?
Paul Newman, scheduled for his last performance in “Our Town” today, said in 1961:
“With that fifteen hundred, I could have beat him. That’s all I needed Charlie…You’d love to keep me hustlin’ for ya, huh, wouldn’t ya? I mean, a couple more years with me scufflin’ around, in them little towns and those back alleys, you might make yourself enough to get a little pool room back in Oakland – six tables and a handbook on the side…Lay down and die by yourself.”
— Fast Eddie Felson in “The Hustler“
For another view of Oakland, see
|
Gertrude Stein on Oakland, California:
Well, maybe a little pool room….
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