Went to see Cosi fan tutte last night with Gigi. Lovely. I love the new opera house. I'll admit it though - where we were sitting made me a little dizzy - that place is like, you know, in that piece of shit Star Wars movie, when the Senate was meeting - the tall one. It's tall, in other words. I have a bad time with heights I can't fully explain. Some stupid vague adolescent poetry of self-destruction, I suppose, because it kept striking me how cute I would look in the dress I was wearing if I hopped over the railing.
And I'll also admit that the spartan-but-impressive aesthetic doesn't play to my tastes. What can I say? The Opera Garnier got a roof mural by Chagall . . . we have a five-story sanded glass staircase that makes me nervous. I'll take the Chagall any day - I know he's dead and honestly I've almost completely stopped paying attention to modern art that isn't Figaro's so besides him I don't know who they could have got for it, but they could have got someone, I'm sure. Had an international portfolio competition so some kid could make their name overnight.
By the way, did you hear the owner and attempted seller of Picasso's "The Dream" put his elbow through it? Bloody fool. I don't like Picasso on a day to day basis - looked like a brutal womanizing pinko who was bluffing his way through half the time - but I love "The Dream". I have a mounting of it over my bed to help inspire sexy dreams. It was going to go for USD$139 million, can you imagine? And when he was showing it to the agreed buyer he stumbled and put his elbow through it. Poor "The Dream".
Speaking of sexy, "Cosi fan tutte" was sexy. Lovely building and perfect acoustics aside. The COC pulled together a set that really worked for once, I mean really worked. I was shocked! And the singers were great - Despina (Shannon Mercer) staying stronger in the acting than the singing, but that served her well when she dressed up as the notary and stuff. The lady who sang Dorabella, this awesome buxom singer Krisztina Szabó who I think did a gypsy in Carmen last year singing that tarot card song, was just - so - engaging, so good.
Anyways, you know what the plot of "Cosi fan tutte" is, right? Three guys and the chambermaid trying to headfuck Dorabella and Fiordigli into being unfaithful? Mozart was such a clever little Masonic fuck. I had never fully appreciated the point of his libretto before - that hearts and emotions are unfaithful and that's where reason must step in - and I found it awfully interesting. I'm trying to get used to the idea that emotion is at the base of rationality, which my analyst won't let go. And while I can say that, and believe it, see it in my own behaviour and rationalizing, it has made me beg the question of where, therefore, rationality gets really useful. The answer of "Cosi fan tutte" seems to be that the role of rationality is to protect the emotions. That's an answer I can work with.
venerdì, ottobre 20, 2006
giovedì, ottobre 19, 2006
Lady Madonna, get that baby off your breast
Call me superficial, but I haven’t been so disgusted by anything in the media since Israeli warplanes bombed off the balconies of the woman I love in Beirut and mainstream newspapers blamed the victims en masse.
I suppose I could write about why I’m disgusted. About how the claims of abuse look so opportunistic that they’re horribly damaging to the women who are abused by their husbands; about how the ‘illegal drugs’ were obviously reefer and nobody but Americans gives a shit; about how I’ve instructed many people that their fun bits belong to me and I’ve never had to pony up alimony for it, blah blah blah.
But I’m much more interested in why I even care to speculate about the relationship and divorce of two people I’ve never met, and about the hearsay and media scandal surrounding it. I think it’s because I had a greaaaaaat biiiig pre-pubescent crush on Paul McCartney. Pre-pubescent crushes are psychologically formative, you know.
I started thinking he was dreamy when I started listening to the Beatles, after I was alienated from David Bowie by his Tin Machine projects and before I realized physically attractive people like Michael Hutchence (in 1990 – oh yes he was – oh yes – he was – shut up, you!) were in fact physically attractive. But until the age of 12 at least, Paul McCartney was one of the eight husbands I wanted to have on a Greek island. And even now I would let him visit, if he brought enough reefer, which he would. I still don't fully understand why I care now though.
Ah, whatever. Everyone knows May/December shit like that only works for Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester anyways. And only when he’s blind and a staircase falls on him.
I suppose I could write about why I’m disgusted. About how the claims of abuse look so opportunistic that they’re horribly damaging to the women who are abused by their husbands; about how the ‘illegal drugs’ were obviously reefer and nobody but Americans gives a shit; about how I’ve instructed many people that their fun bits belong to me and I’ve never had to pony up alimony for it, blah blah blah.
But I’m much more interested in why I even care to speculate about the relationship and divorce of two people I’ve never met, and about the hearsay and media scandal surrounding it. I think it’s because I had a greaaaaaat biiiig pre-pubescent crush on Paul McCartney. Pre-pubescent crushes are psychologically formative, you know.
I started thinking he was dreamy when I started listening to the Beatles, after I was alienated from David Bowie by his Tin Machine projects and before I realized physically attractive people like Michael Hutchence (in 1990 – oh yes he was – oh yes – he was – shut up, you!) were in fact physically attractive. But until the age of 12 at least, Paul McCartney was one of the eight husbands I wanted to have on a Greek island. And even now I would let him visit, if he brought enough reefer, which he would. I still don't fully understand why I care now though.
Ah, whatever. Everyone knows May/December shit like that only works for Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester anyways. And only when he’s blind and a staircase falls on him.
mercoledì, ottobre 18, 2006
martedì, ottobre 17, 2006
I left my heart in San Marino
Last weekend my old roommate from Italy came to visit, and it was so nice to see her again. It got me thinking about Italy, as do all the episodes of the Sopranos Figaro and I are trying to get through (in a binge reminiscent of Deadwood all those months ago), as did the Piemontese Argentinian girl I met on Sunday, as does Figaro himself, as does my family.
People have asked me how realistic the Sopranos is as regards Italian families, and the answer is really that I've got no fucking idea. First because mamma mia is not Italian, which makes all the difference, and second because I have no experience of Italian families outside of Italian families who are actually in Italy or Italian families here in Canada. I don't know shit about Italians from the tri-state area.
What I can say is the integration process looks familiar-ish; most of the Italians in Canada who I know are off the boat or else first generation so it's not as far along, generally, as the families in the Sopranos. We've been crap at keeping the language, half-assed about keeping the religion, and pretty faithful about keeping the food, which I think is the standard immigrant pattern.
But then it's so different - what Figaro tells me about his Australian Italian family is so different from mine here, which is so different from the shit you hear about tri-state Italians. If I was an anthropologist I would love to sink into a study of how immigrants from the same shit-poor Italian regions shape themselves to suit their new surroundings. Think of the food alone. Fucking hell. I wonder if someone has done that yet.
People have asked me how realistic the Sopranos is as regards Italian families, and the answer is really that I've got no fucking idea. First because mamma mia is not Italian, which makes all the difference, and second because I have no experience of Italian families outside of Italian families who are actually in Italy or Italian families here in Canada. I don't know shit about Italians from the tri-state area.
What I can say is the integration process looks familiar-ish; most of the Italians in Canada who I know are off the boat or else first generation so it's not as far along, generally, as the families in the Sopranos. We've been crap at keeping the language, half-assed about keeping the religion, and pretty faithful about keeping the food, which I think is the standard immigrant pattern.
But then it's so different - what Figaro tells me about his Australian Italian family is so different from mine here, which is so different from the shit you hear about tri-state Italians. If I was an anthropologist I would love to sink into a study of how immigrants from the same shit-poor Italian regions shape themselves to suit their new surroundings. Think of the food alone. Fucking hell. I wonder if someone has done that yet.
lunedì, ottobre 16, 2006
Why can't everyone be like me, damnit
Things with Figaro are great. I could go on and on about how great they are, but that’s not a gentlemanly thing to do, so I won’t. What is disconcerting me enough that I want to write about it here is how this has changed my attitude to other people’s relationships in a very narcissistic way. The massive egoism, I see now, was always there; it’s just different now, and suddenly more obvious.
When I was in a miserable relationship, I looked at people around me and saw them only from that point of view – the single ones were unutterably fortunate to be single and the ones who seemed happy in relationships were living in a vale of tears that was due to flood any second. When I was single again afterwards, things were pretty much the same; other single people were simply insane to not like being single and to try to change that situation, and people in relationships who thought they were happy were just fooling themselves.
So I always just assumed, depending on my mood, that I was either overly cynical or wonderfully realistic about relationships. Now that things with Figaro are great, I realize I was in fact simply completely unempathetic and egotistical. Because now people keep breaking up around me who I had persuaded myself were in real love matches, and I’m like, “whaaaaaa? People don’t do that. People are happy together. Yeah? What? Where are my pants?” I still think single people have both sides of their bread buttered – being single is the second best thing to being with Figaro, as far as I’m concerned – but I guess I’ve deluded myself into figuring if I’m happy, everybody either is or should be – geez.
To be a Jungian analyst, which is still third or fourth on my list of professional ambitions, you need vast amounts of head shrinking both before and during the course – they describe the need for it as the capacity to distinguish between your own emotions and the patients’ . . . that’s hard. I thought it was hard before and now I think it’s really hard.
When I was in a miserable relationship, I looked at people around me and saw them only from that point of view – the single ones were unutterably fortunate to be single and the ones who seemed happy in relationships were living in a vale of tears that was due to flood any second. When I was single again afterwards, things were pretty much the same; other single people were simply insane to not like being single and to try to change that situation, and people in relationships who thought they were happy were just fooling themselves.
So I always just assumed, depending on my mood, that I was either overly cynical or wonderfully realistic about relationships. Now that things with Figaro are great, I realize I was in fact simply completely unempathetic and egotistical. Because now people keep breaking up around me who I had persuaded myself were in real love matches, and I’m like, “whaaaaaa? People don’t do that. People are happy together. Yeah? What? Where are my pants?” I still think single people have both sides of their bread buttered – being single is the second best thing to being with Figaro, as far as I’m concerned – but I guess I’ve deluded myself into figuring if I’m happy, everybody either is or should be – geez.
To be a Jungian analyst, which is still third or fourth on my list of professional ambitions, you need vast amounts of head shrinking both before and during the course – they describe the need for it as the capacity to distinguish between your own emotions and the patients’ . . . that’s hard. I thought it was hard before and now I think it’s really hard.
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