I'm a bit off the Solstice, summer's return, but recently came across for a second time the title below - prompting some thoughts:
The Muse of Urban Delirium: How the Performing Arts ...
https://www.amazon.com/Muse-Urban-Delirium-Paradoxically.../dp/0997496290
This collection of essays seeks answers to the challenges of urban diversity, conflict, and creativity by examining the emergence of musical and theatrical originality in a series of specific cities at particular times. It does so by using various performing arts - opera, dance ...
This comes out of the Woodrow Wilson (Smithsonian) think tank and, however idealistic and even reverent the tone, it gave me pause regarding many aspects of the urban condition and how life in close-packed communities veers between the best and worst of worlds. I also was prompted by a recent afternoon session with an Apple, Inc., technician replying somewhere in the world to my appeal to figure a perplexing problem (hardly a major one): my Samsung printer, that only recently printed wireless, had gone on strike. No matter what options arose, two and a half hours later we had no solution - and the jinx was that I had no notion of why the machine suddenly balked and then why Apple could not make the laptop keyboard move at my command at some point. We were cut off at every corner: perplexed, undone. Wasted time and effort and no wisdom gained. So, it seems, goes the presentThus seem the present perplexing questions of how high and low or no income people live together where a tax base determines personal wellbeing. Without overriding federal programs to balance the extremes, where are we to turn in an effort to maintain the so-called democratic experiment?
Does the digital age have some built-in sermons to preach? That forget rational thought, maybe even instinctual thought, since nobody is in charge beyond random and bewildering efforts at change.
Does the digital age have some built-in sermons to preach? That forget rational thought, maybe even instinctual thought, since nobody is in charge beyond random and bewildering efforts at change.
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And another way to scope the city scene: a visit to Washington's National Gallery of Art's current exhibit through early August (The Urban Scene), a showing of prints in many mediums done by master craftsmen and one lone woman. with a well -informed NGA employe of 39 years explicating in detail historic and technical details of works on view. A cursory look at artist's views of city life (New York especially but also Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles) many of them architects who turned to drawing - lithographs (prints) in many technical forms. A 'View of NY" in 1932 that is a tribute to the landscape of towers; a study in patterns of light under the old El (elevated subway), a view of Philadelphia at rush hour in 1950 and, my favorite, an 'aquatint' from 1932 titled "Civic Insomnia" - an affectionate portrait of a city in constant motion. These are only a few of the 130,000 works on paper available to the public (individuals requesting on-site intimate views of the originals without glass cover). The exhibit gives a viewer a glimpse of how the artist saw the world around him/her as well as insights into society of the time - from 1920-1950.
And another way to scope the city scene: a visit to Washington's National Gallery of Art's current exhibit through early August (The Urban Scene), a showing of prints in many mediums done by master craftsmen and one lone woman. with a well -informed NGA employe of 39 years explicating in detail historic and technical details of works on view. A cursory look at artist's views of city life (New York especially but also Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles) many of them architects who turned to drawing - lithographs (prints) in many technical forms. A 'View of NY" in 1932 that is a tribute to the landscape of towers; a study in patterns of light under the old El (elevated subway), a view of Philadelphia at rush hour in 1950 and, my favorite, an 'aquatint' from 1932 titled "Civic Insomnia" - an affectionate portrait of a city in constant motion. These are only a few of the 130,000 works on paper available to the public (individuals requesting on-site intimate views of the originals without glass cover). The exhibit gives a viewer a glimpse of how the artist saw the world around him/her as well as insights into society of the time - from 1920-1950.
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