Aesthetic Arrest: Weekly Cultural Highlights 5/27/22
“The aesthetic experience is a simple beholding of the object . . . you experience a radiance. You are held in aesthetic arrest.” - Joseph Campbell
Aesthetic Arrest is our weekly dip into the Epicurean pleasures we’ve been enjoying lately. Here we go!
Ryan Wildstar’s Recommendations:
Reading: Eve’s Hollywood by Eve Babitz. If you want a brilliantly written, laugh-out-loud insight into the underbelly of Hollywood in the 50s, 60s and 70s, then look no further. Her father was a professional classical violinist, her mother an artist and her godfather was Igor Stravinsky. From her hilarious account of introducing Frank Zappa to Salvador Dali to the sordid details of her drug-addled youth on the beaches of Santa Monica, I couldn’t put this book down. In her own words:
“Once when I testified before a Senate Committee about LSD, Bobby Kennedy asked me how many people I knew smoked marijuana. Brazenly I announced, ‘Everyone I know smokes marijuana except my grandmother.’”
“You can't read Proust at the Laundromat.”
Listening: Last night, for the first time in over two years, we attended a live concert. It could not have been more transcendental. It wasn’t just the fact that we were seated in the third row of Skopje’s Macedonian Philharmonic concert hall, but that we were seeing one of our favorite bands of all time, Dead Can Dance. This was their “greatest hits” tour and it was absolutely mesmerizing. They opened with “Yulunga (A Spirit Dance)” from their sixth studio album Into the Labyrinth, a song I covered with my band E.X.P in 1997 on the Dead Can Dance tribute album, The Carnival Within. I was immediately awestruck. By the second song, “Amnesia,” tears were streaming down my face. For almost two hours, we were simply enthralled and it was as if their music was penetrating my soul. Positively life changing.
Looking:
The other day, on the ever-changing slideshow of over six thousand images of art on Ryan’s computer, I caught a glimpse of one of the most hauntingly beautiful, life-like busts of the 19th century: Woman from the French Colonies, by sculptor Charles Cordier. We had the pleasure of seeing a whole room of his sculptures on display at an exposition in Paris several years ago and I was transfixed by his entire body of work.
"Beauty does not belong to a single, privileged race, I have promoted throughout the world of art the idea that beauty is everywhere.” - Charles Cordier
Viewing: The Kids in the Hall are back! As a lifelong fan of the original, groundbreaking series of Kids in the Hall (1989-1995), I wasn’t sure if their reboot could really live up to my expectations. However, as soon as the opening credit music started, nostalgia kicked in and I let Dave, Bruce, Kevin, Mark and Scott take me on the absurdist sketch comedy journey that only they can do. I’m not sure what’s stuck in my head more, Buddy Cole and Queen Elizabeth II paying tribute to the last glory hole or my doppelganger Dave Foley’s weary, post-apocalyptic DJ endlessly playing Melanie’s Brand New Key on repeat.
Tasting: We arrived in Skopje on Monday and checked into our adorable little house in the center of the city. Just a stone’s throw from our house sits the Debar Maalo (the old Bohemian area of the city), a 2,000 square meter pedestrian zone of cobblestone streets strewn with cafes and restaurants with live folk bands playing into the night. Last night we decided to dine at the neighborhood’s namesake, the Kafana Debar Maalo. Kafana is a term used throughout the Balkans to describe a neighborhood bistro that serves alcohol and coffee with meze (often lots of grilled meats) and live music. And that’s exactly what this was. The huge open terrace was packed with locals of all ages, sizes and types, all there to enjoy large platters of fried zucchini chips, grilled kofta, freshly baked bread sticks with ajvar, sarma and roasted meats. The band was a group of seasoned musicians in their 60s playing traditional songs from Macedonia, Greece, Turkey and throughout the Balkans that everyone, despite their age, was singing along to (in five or six languages no less) and clinking together their full glasses of beer, wine and raki. We ate baked cheese with peppers and then a huge plate of delicious wiener schnitzel, slow-roasted pork ribs with potatoes and a couple of bottles of crisp tamjanika. Delicious!
Ryan Elston’s Recommendations:
Reading: Before Night Falls is the literary autobiography of gay Cuban writer and dissident, Reinaldo Arenas. Written in exquisite and occasionally shocking prose, Arenas unflinchingly portrays his own suffering, imprisonment and eventual escape from Cuba on the Mariel boatlift in 1980. The horrendous persecution of queer people in general, and gay writers in particular, under Fidel Castro’s regime (at least as Arenas experienced it in the 1960s and 1970s), is something rarely mentioned when discussing modern Cuban history. This is why Arenas worked nonstop to finish the book before his death in 1990. A gay classic.
Listening: Normally we choose to write about different things each week, but this week I must write about seeing Dead Can Dance. We’ve both said that the previous time we saw Dead Can Dance, way back in 2005, backed by the entire L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, was one of the best concerts either of us had ever seen. Tuesday night’s show was even better. I didn’t know this was even possible. How can Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry’s voices and talent and artistry just keep getting better with every subsequent decade, with every new album? This concert was the embodiment of Aesthetic Arrest.
The entire band of multi-instrumentalists made seven musicians feel like seventy. An amazing venue, all wood – staggering acoustics – at one point Lisa Gerrard’s voice was resonating so powerfully that the entire building – seats, floors, our rib cages, everything was vibrating. It’s how I imagine the sound of the harmony of the spheres. I honestly can’t get over their voices. The goddess and the philosopher. She’s a one-woman celestial choir taking us to Mount Olympus and he’s the world-weary wanderer, a deep-toned troubadour gifting us with pearls of cynical wisdom and truth.
And to see them here in Skopje, Macedonia! Here in the Balkans, at the geographical crossroads of the musical traditions that inspired Dead Can Dance: Greek, Macedonian, Celtic, Italian, Slavic, Bulgarian, Ottoman, Romani, Persian, Arabic . . . this fascinating place with countless cultural and spiritual links to the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, the Silk Road and the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe. Classical traditions in every direction. A place of shifting boundaries and identities. Their music embodies and reflects this special region in such a potent way, and the set list seemed designed to give us that full range of experience. At different moments, there were songs that brought tears to our eyes, songs that made us move and dance and clap, and songs that froze us in place, paralyzed by the beauty of it all. When some songs ended, there were a few beats of pure silence, as the crowd let out a collective gasp. You could hear a pin drop. Other songs were immediately greeted with uproarious applause and shouts of joy. Every song was perfect. On Tuesday night in Skopje, The Dead were definitely dancing.
You can see the full set list from the show here (including links to Spotify and Youtube and such). I was especially thrilled to hear “Dance of the Bacchantes,” from Dionysus (their most recent album):
Looking: Abstract painter Carmen Herrera left us earlier this year at the remarkable age of 106! Born in Cuba in 1915 (!), Herrera sold her first painting at the age of 19. She left Cuba in 1939 and then lived primarily in New York and Paris with her husband of 61 years (a high school English teacher, who died in 2000). However, after spending decades painting incredible canvases using bright contrasting colors in sharp, geometric patterns, Herrera never received the recognition she deserved until an exhibition in 2004 when she was 89! For the last 17 years of her life, afflicted with arthritis and using a wheelchair, Herrera continued painting, this time as a darling of the art world. She lived to see numerous commissions, solo retrospectives, museum exhibitions, commercial success and critical acclaim. In 2015, a short documentary about her life, The 100 Years Show, told the unlikely story of this wonderful artist and person.
Carmen Herrera at Lisson Gallery
Viewing: George Carlin’s American Dream, the two-part documentary directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, debuted on HBO and HBO Max last week. In-depth interviews and hundreds of archival clips provide a detailed insight into the life and career of George Carlin, who (along with friend and fellow comic Richard Pryor) literally transformed stand-up comedy into the art form we know today. A modern-day gadfly, a Socrates with a punchline, Carlin’s genius for dissecting language and his searing critiques of mainstream society and politics are sorely missed. We could sure use his influential voice (and the voices of his late peers) in today’s troubled times. Can we even imagine what George Carlin and Richard Pryor and Joan Rivers would have to say about the last few years?
Tasting: Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy is probably flying under the radar for most folks. I haven’t seen much mainstream coverage, but this is a food and travel show designed for real foodies and real travelers. Tucci’s irrepressible charm, affable nature and sincere curiosity make him the perfect culinary guide to each of Italy’s 20 regions. Whether he’s hunting for white truffles in Piedmont or cooking squid ink risotto in Venice, watching Tucci and his hand-picked team of local chefs, wine-makers, farmers and experts will always make you very, very hungry. Can’t wait to be back in Italy again!
That’s it for this week! What are your reading, listening, looking, viewing and/or tasting recommendations?
There is such beauty, such dignity in Charles Cordier's sculptures. Also, looking forward to the George Carlin doc. I can only imagine the scathing review he would give to our current culture.