Election Sunday

Went to IMMA yesterday to see the Georgia O Keeffe exhibition. Still love her paintings, the cloth like desert warmness of them - even though they also always remind me of snow in Taos New Mexico where I lived in 1984. Saw the work of two others artists there too, photos of Thomas Demand and paintings by Alex Katz. Liked both a lot. The Thomas Demand work made me look forward to Berlin where I'm visiting in May.

Bertie called the election yesterday, so I'll be out of the country on election day and (worse) the day of the count. Not that bothered about missing the election but really pissed off at missing the count. Should have thought of all that before I booked my trip. Oh well, I'll observe it from Berlin.

It was strange to have the election called on a Sunday morning – apparently the president was leaving for America and had to sign the Dáil dissolution order before she left. Waking up and unexpectedly listening to a slightly over excited RTE special news programme was a bit disconcerting. No “Sunday Miscellany” today then. You’d think it was September 1939 again, that fine Sunday that Chamberlain declared war on Germany! Still, the end of an era. Took this photo in the grounds of IMMA.

God and the City

Another great quote from AA Gill in today's Sunday Times : "It’s only in a city that God really understands how to organise nature." He's talking about cycling by the river in London but what he says can be applied to many cities. As usual, in his funny provocative and OTT way he hits the nail right on the head.
"If this were the country, I’d never be able to get near the river. There would be a Passchendaele of barbed wire, seeping drums, decomposing agricultural machinery and miles and miles of agri-business megafields with an odd bit of brutalised hedgerow. The only thing skulling the river would be a skeletal sheep’s corpse. The countryside is nature’s scrap yard. You need a park to see the true symbolic beauty of Gaia’s bounty, and London has the greatest parks of any city — certainly far better than any bit of unmade, raw, grubby, poisonous, dung-and-pesticide countryside."
The full article (masquerading as a restaurant review) can be found here
The photo is from today's New York Times
(another city and another park as Spring arrives in NYC)

the who?

reminds me of 1970s. Still love it.

the Sopranos in 7.5 minutes!

LA Stories

a very good piece by Steve Gillmor about friendship, the 1970s and LA :

"LA is somehow feeling more like the 70’s now than in decades. I hated the 70’s at the time; a rough mix of post-Beatle depression and chalky outlines around the body that was the revolution. Thank god the revolution was over, but thirty years to wait for the wisdom that comes from enough mistakes to convince you of your own mortality"

more here

a poem for spring

Talking Sense?

Prospect magazine asks people what will replace the left/right agenda. I liked this reply by Rudi Bogni:
"Left vs right was and is purely a nominal distinction between two strands of the same totalitarian posture. The real problem of the 20th century was that the demographic and economic pressures that fractured the empires gave rise to national states with leaderships ill equipped to face the nihilist challenge. The vacuum was filled by totalitarian regimes, whose ideologies set fire to Europe and the world. Remember that Hitler was a failed architect, Stalin had studied for the priesthood and Mussolini was a schoolteacher. The heirs of the 19th and 20th century nihilists are today's faith-based terrorists. If today's democracies fail to win against the new nihilists on the intellectual and communication level, they will have no chance to win in the security space and will create another dangerous vacuum, ready to be filled. Nation states have proven a disastrous political experiment in the 19th and 20th century; they may well prove catastrophic in the 21st century, due to nuclear proliferation. Nevertheless, I hope that the 21st century will see a substantial reduction of political infrastructures. If a conglomerate is bad or indifferent at most of what it does, shareholders force it back to its core competences. Everything else has got to go. Why should it be different for governments? This is neither left nor right; it is common sense. Large countries' politicians love to deride small countries' direct democracies. Why? Because they fear their example and their nimbleness. The political systems inherited from the 20th century, whether democratic or totalitarian, are neo-feudal, incompatible with a 21st century when electors vote every so many years, but consumers vote and bloggers blog 24/7."

favourite clip from a favourite film

12 good things about 2007 #10

just finished watching the movie THE LIVES OF OTHERS. I know its early in the year, but I'll be surprised if I see a better movie this year.

12 Good things about 2007, # 11

AA Gill's food column in the Sunday Times Style magazine. Today he is writing about bores. Here's an excerpt , you can read the whole thing here:

"There was a time when numberless bores strode the earth. They were famous, fascinating and feared. Hostesses would use them to punish rivals. They were pitted against one another in great buttoned-leather, port-fuelled, fireside bore-offs, competitive raconteuring. A bore’s lonely calling was respected — the slow winnowing of facts until just the grittiest chaff could be thrown in the faces of the stultified. But today, a fractured society, disjointed by haste and hustle, fleet with texting, e-mail, iPods and Sky+, has worn away the bore’s domain. Where are the 12-course dinner parties of yore, the bridge evenings, the wet-country-weekend lock-ins? Nowadays, it’s lean pickings for the bore. The only protected environment left to him is a newspaper column, where he can expostulate ad infinitum into the darkness and the kitty litter."

Did he overlook Blogging as part of that protected environment?

Alice Munro

Just finished listening to “The View from Castle Rock” by Alice Munro. A very satisfying book, its Southern Ontario Gothic perfect for a foggy Februaury Dublin Sunday!. Something beautiful and “woven” about the writing and the feelings it evokes of place ,time and memory.

hotel california

I’ve watched more TV this past Christmas than I have in a long time. All thanks to BBC 4. Already a long time BBC Radio 4 junkie, it now seems that the TV version has me hooked as well. Well, maybe just for those nights when there’s nothing good on the internet. I’ve just finished watching a good documentary on California and the way folk/rock music based itself in LA in the mid 1960s. Something Jackson Brown said in the programme sticks in my mind. Talking about David Geffen and Asylum records, he referred to him as “the Medici of rock” (or words to that effect) It set me thinking about record labels and the way we all take heart today in their decline and the rise of sites like “myspace” where musicians can make direct contact with the public. I’ve always gone along with the conventional wisdom that this is good. But I wonder if artists need the power of the Medici behind them? And if so, who are the Medici of the web? Is Goggle it? Microsoft? Apple? None of them , not even Apple, seem to fit the bill. Is it time for a multi millionaire to set up a site and pick and choose who to promote on it? Do we need managers again, or editors? Do we need a virtual Asylum?

12 Good Things about 2007 , # 12

Leo Enright, as stand in presenter on RTE Radio's Drivetime programme. He's become one of those floating broadcasters, slotted in when the regular presenter is on holiday. I always thought he had a great radio voice, the right mixture of excitement and authority. He is of course forever associated in my mind with his commentaries on space travel on RTE going back to the days of the Apollo programme. Even today, when I hear his voice on radio there is part of me waiting , and wishing, for him to tell us about some great new milestone in space exploration.

I'm Spiderman (and 75% catwoman

Just took an online test to find out which superhero I must resemble! Here’s the result:

You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 85% Catwoman 75% Robin 70% The Flash 65% Superman 65% Hulk 65% Green Lantern 55% Supergirl 50% Batman 45% Wonder Woman 30% Iron Man 30% You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility. Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Christmas Day

The day is overcast, misty, very Irish Christmas day feel to it. Everywhere round here as quiet as a bell, apart from the actual Christchurch bells that rang out for mass a few hours ago. Listened to a few tracks from an album by a young singer songwriter called Fionn Regan. He has a great way with words. Full of that honest intensity that comes with youth. It can sometimes be misguided but it’s also sometimes full of shards of wisdom. As it is in this case. Spend last night watching a Fanny Craddock night on BBC 4! Old footage of her 1970s Christmas cookery shows and an interesting drama in which she was played by Julia Davis. I wallowed in its strangeness and campiness and thought about how far away the 1970s seem. The young Polish people who are renting the apartment next door had a Christmas Eve meal late into the night. In town yesterday I was struck by the variety of nationalities , Chinese, African, Indian, East European – all buying presents and wrapping paper. It was a wonderful sight. Below my window, I watched men walking home with Christmas wrapping paper sticking out of plastic bags. Something tender about it all.

moving hearts

Putting old records onto my ipod. Strange to listen to them again. Wasn’t sure I wanted “Moving Hearts”, as my own heart (or mind) would be far removed from it now. But as I listen to it , I’m transported back to the 1980s in Dublin. To youth, naivety and all of the longings of one’s twenties and thirties. (Though I never did agree with any of that "irish ways and irish laws" stuff even when I was young.) Still, safe in itunes now, some of the the music is still very moving.

Dublin Fog

A cold foggy day in Dublin. Took this picture with my phone. Didn’t really capture what I saw. The 2mp camera of my Sony 990 phone didn’t really capture enough low light detail. Still, it reminds me of those smoggy Dublin 1950s photos. Very Christmassy day in town, fog a good second best to snow.

Radio Times

I bought the Christmas edition of the Radio Times yesterday. I’ve been buying it for years along with the RTE Guide , though in recent years I’ve dropped the Guide realizing at last that I now make little use of either magazine. So I have an important question for you this dark wet morning. What’s the future for “bumper TV guides to your holiday viewing” in the age of utube? They sell in great numbers , but are they now more decoration than practical? Part of that dream that you will batten down the hatches while the snow falls outside and you settle down to watch a “feast of Christmas movies” Movies that you most probably own on DVD anyway. Still, it’s very hard not to pick up the Radio Times with its Christmas cover all aglow with promises. (there is by the way a web site showing all the Christmas covers going back to 1923! http://www.tvradiobits.co.uk/radiotimes/christmas.htm

Most TV Guides will probably survive for a good while yet , continuing along the route they have taken, becoming lifestyle magazines. It’s difficult though to see any long term future for the listing function unless they find some way to make it wider and more active, something that is hard to do on the printed page. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing printed web links and not being able to click on them. Anyway, for those of us who came of age in the 1970s and 80s, the glory days of “bumper TV”guides, we will I think continue to buy the Christmas Radio Times , if we haven’t gone abroad for the holiday. But it’s now probably more like a Christmas card from a relative who you feel is getting on a bit now , but who you hope will live for many years yet.

what came out of the fallout shelter

A very good piece by Bruce Sterling on Wired site about the Web, and the future. I've always been an optimist, and the older I get the more optimistic I get. Which is why I like pieces like this. I especially liked this sentence:
"The Internet, for instance, crawled out of a dank atomic fallout shelter to become the Mardi Gras parade of my generation. It was not a bolt of destructive lightning; it was the sun breaking through the clouds."