'That big wild good life'

William Shatner performs Palinesque Twitter free verse, complete with the appropriate Beatnik musical accoutrements:

At 50, 'Kind of Blue' still resonates

Here are some exquisite excerpts in The Guardian from Richard Williams' new book on "Kind of Blue," which was released exactly a half-century ago this year. It's still the all-time best-selling jazz record, for reasons Williams explains in part here:

"Its increasing success over 50 years has been the result of a wholly organic process, the consequence of its intrinsic virtues and of its special appeal to a particular layer of the human spirit."

What Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and others coming along after the heat of the Bebop period were trying to achieve was to go beyond the raw power -- and I would presume the enormous burden -- of the virtuosity of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, et al. It was, as the headline of the story attests, the quest for something akin to "The sound of isolation:"

"But there had never been anything that so carefully and single-mindedly cultivated an atmosphere of reflection and introspection, to such a degree that the mood itself became an art object. Kind of Blue seemed to have taken place in a sealed environment, with all its individual sensibilities pointing inwards. In its ability to distill its complexity of content into a deceptive simplicity, in its concern for a sense of space within the music, for a unity of atmosphere, and for the desire to create a mood of calm contemplation in which the troubled western soul can take its rest, it has become one of the most influential recordings of our time."

The sound of jazz was forever changed, and jazz traditionalists mark this period of time -- by then both Parker and Billie Holiday were dead, as well as Lester Young, all the victims of drug addictions -- as when the art form lost its way. In fact, many of them remain ambivalent about the influence of "Kind of Blue" while admiring his musical achievement. Williams is clear where he stands:

"The principle of darkness, the sensation of natural light, the element of tranquillity, a heart-piercing beauty, the freedom of the imagination: Kind of Blue has all these qualities, and many more that lie far beneath its seductive surface. Whenever it is played, in whatever circumstances, it provides further evidence that its essence remains undisturbed, a rare example of human perfection, never needing to raise its voice to make itself heard but speaking more clearly as the years go by."

(Update, Aug. 29, 2009: The link to the above story appears to have been taken down from The Guardian site; I have not been able to find it anywhere after first thinking it was a broken link. It did not come up on searches or by scouring through that site. But since the quotes were the heart of this post, I merely removed the link. -- wp)

Time to get to Spain -- and soon

If I ever get to Spain -- Lord willing -- the world-famous trio of Madrid art galleries is the one thing I see in the capital (Barcelona's where I really want to spend a good deal of time).

But I'm having a hard time figuring out which of the three galleries is highest on the must-see list. All of them pack a punch, but the Thyssen-Bornemisza seems to put on some of the most intriguing exhibitions in Europe. And now a special exhibition is forthcoming on the endlessly fascinating Eros vs. Thanatos, with an equally disturbing, but also fascinating twist: Sexual Desire and Death. (Pictured: Giambattista Tiepolo's "The Death of Hyacinth.")

"The Tears of Eros" will run from Oct. 20 to Jan. 31, 2010, with works taken from Georges Bataille's early 20th century ideas and writings on the subject. From the promo:

"The exhibition focuses primarily on 19th-century European painting and sculpture, including the work of Canova, Ingres, Delacroix, Millais, Moreau and Rodin, but also looks back to earlier periods, in particular the Baroque with Rubens and Bernini."

Oh God, am I there! Would I love to be! But wait, there's more:

"In addition it looks at later art, for example, the presence of 19th-century erotic themes in Surrealism and its wake. Figures and episodes derived from classical mythology and from the Judeo-Christian tradition make up this survey, which is organised into two principal sections: From Temptation to Sacrifice, which looks at the presence of death in erotic passion through themes such as the Birth of Venus, Eve and the Serpent, the Temptations of Saint Anthony, and the Kiss, and a second section entitled The Eternal Sleep, which analyses the subject of death and dying transformed into a trance similar to amorous ecstasy, present in themes such as Apollo and Hyacinth, Venus and Adonis, Mary Magdalen and the skull, and the “beautiful suicide victims”, Cleopatra and Ophelia."

Got to find a way to get there.

An oasis of comfort amid the banality

I had to unplug and flee the Web for a while today in an escape from the incessant Wacko Jacko Palooza.

At a bookstore I found a new copy of "The Best and the Brightest," David Halberstam's epic portrayal of the architects of American policy in Vietnam. Yesterday Robert McNamara died. You might have missed it, given that all-news were dedicated to one story, one story only.

The late Halberstam, a fierce critic of celebrity obsession but comfortable in the public eye, thankfully didn't witness the farcical media circus from Los Angeles. He's been one of my favorite journalists, and it was that book that set him on the course for a fabulous career as one of the best historical authors of our times.

The new introduction to this edition of "The Best and Brightest" had me excited anew for the passion, wisdom and erudition Halberstam brought to every writing project. The deep love of craft for writing is not lost on many people who pen (or type) words for a living, but I've not found many better expressions of it than here.

I'd like to share a few examples that had me feeling a whole lot better about what it is that I do, and how I would like to proceed, in my line of work. Halberstam remains a true inspiration as he explains how he came to the book idea, and to a life as an author:

"That had been a quantum leap not merely in terms of time and space, but, more important, in terms of freedom. . . . The only failings would be my own."

"It was, as much to my surprise as to [those of his friends], the easiest thing I had ever done. I had replaced the need for immediacy with the something far more powerful, an obsession. . . . I never regretted the deadlines, never missed the office."

"The great liberation for me was the ability to escape the limits of form. So it was that the interviews became more than mere source material, they became part of an education. . . . Now something more complicated was happening to me -- I was becoming caught up in the excitement of history, in the pull of the past."

"Writing the book was the most intellectually exciting quest of my life. Each day for the three and a half years the book took to write, I simply could not wait to get to work. Most journalists are impatient to get their legwork done and to start the actual writing, but I was caught up in something else, the actual doing."

And the last paragraph is the very best:

"The great pleasure for me was an inner pleasure: it was very simply the best I could do. In my own mind, I had reached above myself. There were no skills I possessed which were wasted, and there were skills which I found in doing it which I had never known of before, of patience and endurance. If a reporter's life is, at its best, an ongoing education, then this had been in the personal sense a stunning experience, and it had changed the way I looked not just at Vietnam, but at every other subject I took on from then on. I had loved working away from the pack, enjoyed the solitude of this more different, lonelier kind of journalism which I was now doing. I had gotten not just a book which I greatly valued from the experience, but a chance to grow."

Where's Tina Fey when her nation really needs her?

Or, Sarah Palin, we already miss you: