Autumn Sonata, or Kodak carousel slide projector (discontinued October 2004), or Do you remember?

Sitting in the dark, the sequence of images flicker and flit across the screen, some holding there a beat too long, others never enough. Dusty darkness, dusty past, never past enough, never near enough, gone, extinguished, when lights come up and the lamp is off.

Winter nights, the fan rumbles on, cooling the machine, after the images are gone, but the air it blows on me is hot, hot in the cool, lonely air, wishing for more, more time to stay awake before it's time for bed, more joys, more sadness worth living.

bb

I give you a kiss

I remember when I first heard this phrase. I was speaking over the telephone with an Italian - a beautiful Italian - I had met the day before, and just before hanging up came that phrase: "I give you a kiss..." We had met incidentally if not randomly and exchanged numbers. I thought there was a flirtatious frisson there, but couldn't be sure.

I couldn't be sure because it was the first time I had met an Italian from Italy. Indeed, it was my first week on my own, outside the little world (albeit large country) in which I grew up. I wasn't used to seeing people stand so close to each other during casual conversations, kiss socially, and it seemed pause for normal conversation within continuous flirtation. I didn't know that this phrase or some variant of it can close a conversation among friends in more than a few European languages.

Of course, this is the way I saw it then. In India, no one kisses socially: parents and children, husbands and wives, movie actresses and movie actors, no, no, no. It is more common to see two men holding hands - a friendly gesture - than a man and a woman. Coming from this world, I couldn't tell what was going on. Was everyone sleeping with everyone else, or at least trying? (Having to come to understand the male subspecies a bit better over the last decade I actually now believe the latter is true, but that's another story.)

Coming back to me an my beautiful Italian. I heard the words and my heart jumped. I was aglow from within. I felt as though I had actually been kissed, unexpectedly and wonderfully. We kept on meeting from time to time, always with warm flirtation, and I got comfortable with the right-left (or is it left-right, to this day I am never sure and am convinced I get it wrong) kiss. I didn't really expect anything to happen, though I might have hoped, and it didn't. But I was always thrilled to hear this awkwardly translated phrase at the end of our phone conversations.

BB

Tonight's program was taped before a live studio audience

Tonight's program was taped before a live studio audience.

Your host, BB, foolish enough to have considered taking 2 days off, has been temporarily lost behind a mountain of papers. The network denies this is punitive.

* * *

Good evening friends. Welcome to another episode of stolen-wifi, our airport, stream of consciousness, one-too-many musings. I've decided to tape delay this rather than broadcast live for two reasons. First, I was rather pleased with my last post (though I suspect my loyal reader...s craving more celebrity sightings are a touch disappointed). Second, you know the rule about never drinking and driving? Well it applies to blogging too (though rarely enforced).

I only took to blogging after trying every number on my mobile. But friends were asleep, family traveling, and not quite ready to face my exes (tearful phone calls several years in the future...)

But now that I'm here, I find this cozy intimacy so comfortable. I feel as though I could tell you anything. Confess to all my blog and non-blog secrets. Won't tantalize you any longer - no such confessions today. Well, I'll give you one.

When I was 18, I met this fantastic looking violinst. Actually saw. On the plane to Vienna. I was in the aisle seat and watched the violin walking by. Now a violin in and of itself is attractive. A fine piece of construction. But when combined with player... Let's just say it's always been a weakness. There was a moment when our eyes locked. Mine at least popped open. I'm sure a felt a little jolt pass through our optic link. I spent the flight thinking: how do get back there? I went down the aisle only to see my violinist sandwiched in a middle seat, asleep. Each one of the 5 times I walked by. Story over. Case closed. I fled. I didn't wait around at the luggage carousel. Because my violist turned out to be in a violin section and I couldn't find my courage...

I forgot, tried to forget about this lost opportunity during my 2 weeks in Vienna, which I managed to do until I was heading down the escalator at the Opernring. And coming up the other way was a shoulder with a violin. But not looking at me -- instead caught up in conversation with a cello. I waited, moment by moment, second being draw out into eternity, for the violinist to look at me. It didn't happen. Was it time for me to change my ways? Reverse directions, turn around, give chase. Quoting King Lear, "Never, never, never, never, never." Not yet at least.

So here we am. [Editor's note: the author insisted on this formulation.] Remembering a day when we were younger, when the tree of possibilities of life had many more branches. Regret. No. Nostalgia. Yes.

BB

iPod versus City (or Beatles to Bruckner)

I recently acquired an iPod. Well, more truthfully my second iPod. The first I bought two years ago to assist with my on-the-go flugelbindery lifestyle. It was a clunky 60 GB model which I used to transport a chunk of my music library rather than the binders full of CDs as we used to do back in the day. In any case, I had seen those small clip-size iPods and finally succumbed to the desire to own one.

The first day was a bit frustrating. The ear buds (as they are now called - earphones or headsets, so passé) kept falling out of my ears. I invested in a more expensive model which stayed in place long enough to test drive them. It was strange. Though I knew otherwise, I thought everyone was looking at me, giving me a knowing glance and passing judgment on music taste. I know the Beatles are very old fashioned, but I happen to like them. Or could it have been because I was unconsciously, step-by-step morphing into one of those wild-haired people in the iPod adverts who gyrates silently to music that only he or she hears? I think not.

The thing is I want to hear the sounds of the city, up to a point at least: conversations of those around me, the mechanical, the banal, the loud, the angry. Up to a point. But if it's a screeching lorry then why not crank up the Fab Four instead? It also turns out that my morning commute is mostly by foot (the Flugelbindery starts up early - 6.30 is not an uncommon time for me to be walking). It's quiet. There is almost no one around except the street sweepers (so charming! in New York the only garbage activity you see on the street are people adding, not subtracting it.) So I was really substituting silence for a bit of pulsating wakeup music.

It was all going as planned till I reached the end of Beatles Greatest Hits. My iPod was in continuous play mode, not shuffle. So what comes after b-e? On my play list b-r, Beatles to Bruckner, from "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand" to "Bewegt, nicht zu schnell". Disconcerting to put it mildly.

I also found the music sometimes making me more anxious. While I was negotiating a stressful situation the music would tryi to soothe me, or when I was trying to rev up it would insistently go into a quiet passage. In the end, I suppose I'm just too used to paying attention to music.

So now, more than anything, I'm confused. Is there a perfect playlist out there? Something engaging, but not too much? Something lively, but not too much? Something trendy, but not too much? I'm open to suggestions.

BB

Running / flying / fling

Running, flying, flinging myself back across the Atlantic.
Again in the pressure filled capsule that seems to relax me so;
Undoubtledly it's the bubbles.

I read these lines by A.O. Scott in the New York times:

Just about everyone who has been the parent of a young child has a priceless collection of masterpieces: treasured drawings and paintings taped to a closet door, stuck to the refrigerator with magnets or rolled up in a box somewhere in the basement. The value of these artifacts is personal and sentimental, but they can also have an aesthetic power that goes beyond parental pride. The untaught sense of color and composition that children seem naturally to possess sometimes yields extraordinary results, and the combination of instinct and accident that governs their creative activity can produce astonishing works of art.

Video

I wish I could have stopped there. But he continues:

Except that these magical finger-paint daubings and crayon scribblings aren’t really works of art in any coherent sense of the term, but rather the vital byproducts of play, part of the cognitive and sensory awakening that is the grand, universal vocation of childhood.

Not sure what this refers to, or why it inspires me and depresses me. I believe all of us have that Platonic spark within us, if we are willing to release it and not be embarrassed by it. It's vital, and brilliant. But, sadly, not great art.

Cheers,

BB

Somewhere in the world...

Today in London it's like this:


low 7 degrees C, high 13 degrees C, relative humidity 70 percent. Autumn? Winter? You decide. But somewhere in the world it's like this:


low 23 degrees C, high 33 degrees C, relative humidity 40%. And that's where I am.

Cheers,

BB

P.S. I know - annoying when people gloat over the weather there versus the weather here. How petty. Is there nothing better to talk about? No, but I'll take it for now.

Magic Mountain -- back to flight

Gentle reader(s),

It's back to flight for me, my true addiction, flying, flying, slightly pampered, far from e-mail and work obligations, with worry held at bay by the bubble of stale and pressurize air. Someday, perhaps, I'll figure out how to get this feeling with getting on a plane. But in the meanwhile, I'll keep on flying.

Cheers

BB

Back in the saddle

Back in the saddle of the cowperson lifestyle that is life at the aglet factory. Whilst I was away, no breakthroughs, still the same little transparent caps at the end of your shoelaces.

After a weekend of glorious London summer weather (resembles glorious autumn weather in New York - warm and dry), I awoke to the usual London sky frowning down on me. Had I missed that moody visage? Yes.

Welcome back the city says to me, and I say to myself.

Cheers,

BB

Invisible

I supposed to be there, but instead I'm here. Except I'm not really here. So if you see me here, then you didn't. If you thought you spotted me there, then perhaps you did, or at least that's my story. Clear?

BB

Flugelbinder's holiday

As you might have gathered I'm still in New York. I'm here on a bit of a flugelbinder's holiday. For those of you not familiar with this term, it substantially resembles a busman's holiday. When we travel, we take our work with us: always in our minds and sometimes in our tool bags. A little bit like a child with a toy in his or her pocket, it brings order. But one's passion can also be a burden.

Cheers,

BB

Blah, blah, blah (couldn't resist)

So as you've gathered I was at MoMA the other day admiring the new works by Richard Serra. I'm just part of a big crowd who believe that he is a great artist producing great art. But wandering through his works (literally) I was mulling over two ideas.

In our post-modern times, we are hesitant to crown artists with laurels of greatness. We are more than willing to bid up their auction prices into the 8-digit range, but shy when it comes to asserting their greatness shoulder to shoulder with the giants of the past. Why? The burden of historicity (we won't know who is truly great until the dust has settled), or perhaps a reflection of our own insecure age. But I think we shouldn't shy away from it. Even if we are wrong, and history rates our greats to be second-rate hacks, we are still participating in the process of art, which is almost as important as art itself. The process of art involves the patrons, the artists, the public, and the plate tectonics of critical opinion.

It's refreshing to see so many people celebrate Serra's work, but also a bit jarring. There was a fun house atmosphere, with children running up and down the snaking alleys between huge, torqued sheet of metal, delighting in the echo of their shouts. Adults - art lovers and tourists alike - also approached the works with a child-like wonder. What holds them up? What do they feel like? How do they sound (metallic, not surprisingly). I'm not a snob, not at all -- I don't believe in exclusion. But I can't deny a touch of the elitist in me: not the desire to exclude, but a belief in a certain set of values. In the case of art, these values seem a little old fashioned (or perhaps reactionary). A belief in form, a belief in idea, a belief in feeling. All of which explains why I like Serra.

Having recently mused in London on whether fun house art could be serious art, let alone great art (for example, most of the installations in Turbine Hall at the Tate), Serra steps forward to answer the question.

Enough self-important musings for the day. Next post will be on fashion!

Cheers,

BB

So what (exactly) do you do?

Sooner or later this question is going to come up, so we should address it now. There are two things I do (in the New York sense, more on this below). I am a Flugelbinder, aspiring to someday achieve the title of Meisterflugelbinder. This is my passion. I real life, to pay the bills, I work in an aglet factory. They have to come from somewhere, those invaluable plastic caps that keep your shoelaces from fraying. I can tell you where they come from. I wish it were more artisanal work, but that's the way it is. At least I can live for my art.

When you meet you someone in New York, first few lines of dialogue pretty much goes like this.

"Hi I'm X."

"Hi, I'm Y."

"So, what do you do?"

And somewhat later,

"So, which part of town do you live in?"

We'll come back to the last one some other time, but the "so what do you do" question is way to pin someone down. No, not just box them, but also to suggest lines for further conversation. "Ah, latex. A fascinating industry."

I am still trying to figure out what they say to each other here. Not, as far as I can tell, the old fashioned "How do you do?" I've tried a few others, with limited success: "Hi, I'm BB and I'm a flugelbinder. What about you?" or "What do you folks do around here?" or even the old New York standby "So how do you know [enter here the name of the host of the party you're at - a person neither of you typically knows directly]?" No, I'm coming to the conclusion that in this city people just tend not to speak with each other, unless of course introduced by a mutual acquaintance.