Letters to the Editor
jprfrog
Published Letters: 46 Editor's Choice: 1
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Hear, hear!
[Read the article: Time to start over]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm taking a practicing break from Chopin (A-flat Polonaise) and feel refreshed to know that somewhere someone gets something out of the things I spend thousands of hours working on. Musically, I am a classical dinosaur, now retired from making my living at it (that is, I no longer work to another's schedule) in Boston but I do recall that the dinosaurs were the 8000-pound gorillas of their own time, and I could fantasize about letting a couple of velociraptors loose at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In short, we could use a few more dinosaurs like Faure and Garrison Keillor (who is so old-fashioned with his well-constructed sentences) roaming around.
I'm also about to move my domicile, less than a year after having done so and am utterly amazed at the way, in such a short time, every horizontal surface in my apartment has acquired piles of paper, random volumes of music, and books that may or may not ever get finished. It relieves me that I'm not the only one who lets this happen. I guess those of us who focus their organizational skills in one area (e.g. playing music or writing) tend to let the rest of the our world clutter up...I guess the entropy has to go somewhere.
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Who would you have a beer with?
[Read the article: Brand-aid]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One thing that has always mystified me: GWB as a regular guy you'd like to have a beer with.
Not me.
In my hard-drinking days I spent a lot of time and money mainly in two places: a Harvard Square pub called the "Casablanca" which was a favorite of junior faculty, a bunch of mid-level lawyers, and a smattering of students, and a Central Square pub called "The Plough and the Stars" (h/t to Sean O'Casey) catering to llterary types and artists (including one Nobelist, Seamus Heaney), a few IRA operatives, mediocre rock bands and their fans, some folk singers (remember John Lincoln Wright?)Red Sox maniacs, and a large bunch of construction workers. I have a really hard time imagining GWB being welcome in either place (and its perfectly possible that he might have tried, during his time at the B-school, Harvard Business). An obnoxious frat-boy drunk, proud of his ignorance, entitled by his family name and little else, his BS would have been deconstructed in a matter of minutes. Nobody I knew would have wanted to have a beer with him, or even look at him.
But then, this was the People's Republic of Cambridge. The telling anecdote (from the mid-80's, Reagan time): three short blocks up Mass Ave from the Plough, a 12-story office building was in the steel-frame stage of construction, and the high-steel men would come in after work for a few. The scene was probably confusing to them: bikers, intellectuals, Jews, Blacks (including some Eritrean revolutionaries), a few obviously gay of both genders, working men and college professors all mixed together. At one point in the construction, perhaps as a "message" to our mongrelized clientele, a Confederate flag appeared on the top story of the new building, and it was a topic of considerable discussion around our bar.
And then one evening in spring, about the time when it just gets dark, one of our own showed up with the glag itself, neatly folded, and presented it to John Lincoln as a trophy (he still has it, I believe). Our hero, whose name I don't remember although he resembled another wild Irish acquaintance, Joe Flaherty of the Village Voice, was himself a high steel man, and despite (or because) of the addition of a few beers to his metabolism, had scaled the monster and retrieved, stolen, or liberated the flag (your choice). And made a statement that needs no translation.
A few days later, so I heard, the door opened and a few workers from the building came inside, clearly looking for trouble...but when they saw the entire bar lined with people who looked them in the eye and showed no sign of waffling, they quickly retreated and were not seen the place again.
The flag was never replaced. There should be a plaque on the building, now just another ugly remnant of the Reagan years.
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Plagiarism as high art
[Read the article: Attention, all you memoir fabulists!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]@pacrat
According to Igor Stravinsky: "Lesser artists borrow, greater artists steal." Considering that some of his major mature works were based on the themes of others (Tchaikovsky and a faux-Pergolesi most notably) it is pretty clear in which category he wished to be placed. But when asked if he thought that Leonard Bernstein stole ideas, he is supposed to have called Lennie a kleptomaniac.
Then again, there is evidence that many of his (Stravinsky's) witty not to say catty remarks (not to mention many articles in the NYRB and other places) were really authored by Robert Craft. Go figure.
Baroque composers, even the greatest, regularly stole from themselves...half the Bach B-minor Mass is recycled (albeit made sharper) from earlier cantatas.. and one reason that Handel was able to have composed "Messiah" in few weeks, was that he filched stuff from some of his earlier Italian operas. ..some of them very secular indeed... and just reset the words.
Consider it a tribute.