Yesterday there was a special showing of the new HD film "Leonardo
da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan" in Moscow.
It was very interesting, and done in a way that one could learn and remember what was presented. And, the hall was completely full, with many in their 20s and 30s, a good sign for Moscow.
One aspect of the film that was perhaps not directly noticed, was how much could be seen and gleaned by closely watching the two British hosts to the program, and the many interviewees. They themselves were living paintings to study.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
The Changing "Looks" of Moscow
The young Russian girl in Starbucks Friday looked at me in a way impossible in the Soviet times. It was from her purely personal inner position with a purely personal evaluation.
In the 1980s, when I first came to Soviet Russia, and for the majority beyond its demise and thru until the end of the 1990s, there was still a certain "solidarity" of society and commonality of experience to most people's lives. They may not know, or they may know and hate, each other, but they readily understood each others lives, as most people were "in the same boat". Increasingly during the 2000s and now, that is not often so. There is now very little in common among many, and little can be presupposed in common between strangers. Now there is a great diversity of conditions to life, both inner and outer, with people of many differing conditions, experiences and possibilities.
That girl's representative look at me was mostly critically evaluative, but in a purely personal way. There was nothing assumed to be in common between us. And if there was a kind of "unconscious field" between people before, now encounters are often just from person to person, which is much smaller. The young girl only had her own self -- not some greater social ideology and system -- to view me from within.
In the Soviet time such a girl would -- in fact did -- look at me with very different eyes. And -- one more aspect of the many that most just blithely ignore in all the changes here -- she perhaps would and could not have done so even 10 years ago. That "look" was new in Russia.
In the 1980s, when I first came to Soviet Russia, and for the majority beyond its demise and thru until the end of the 1990s, there was still a certain "solidarity" of society and commonality of experience to most people's lives. They may not know, or they may know and hate, each other, but they readily understood each others lives, as most people were "in the same boat". Increasingly during the 2000s and now, that is not often so. There is now very little in common among many, and little can be presupposed in common between strangers. Now there is a great diversity of conditions to life, both inner and outer, with people of many differing conditions, experiences and possibilities.
That girl's representative look at me was mostly critically evaluative, but in a purely personal way. There was nothing assumed to be in common between us. And if there was a kind of "unconscious field" between people before, now encounters are often just from person to person, which is much smaller. The young girl only had her own self -- not some greater social ideology and system -- to view me from within.
In the Soviet time such a girl would -- in fact did -- look at me with very different eyes. And -- one more aspect of the many that most just blithely ignore in all the changes here -- she perhaps would and could not have done so even 10 years ago. That "look" was new in Russia.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Of a piece
The young woman (~25) teaching a younger woman (~18) beside me in a Starbucks yesterday were both interesting and annoying, though they should not have been annoying, for they were just facts of life, like weather or mosquitoes.
What I noticed was how the teacher spoke with a perfectly predictable pronunciation, with a tone of voice, and with an intonation of what she was saying, that was one "standard pattern" I have come to note living here. (How many such patterns are there here? 15-20 patterns of speech? From those of teen girls of varied social circles to those retired women who dye their hair the same unconvincing colors?).
There was nothing in a single word she said, not a single emotion in her voice or words, nor in the intonation pattern (which is under recognized in language I think) of her explaining math, that I have not heard precisely the same way many times in Moscow.
When her young student, apparently at successfully responding to some test correctly, gesticulated with her arms and hands in a way that one could observe in a thousand thousand cases, like a cliche of gestures (probably from TV), I had additional confirmation of their standardized, group-personalities.
And when they got up to leave -- after sitting for 1/2 hour having bought nothing -- their clothing and faces conformed to these other facts.
After they had gone I reviewed in my mind a conclusion I had reached long ago: Though they were of course individual persons, they were carried by their social patterns, rather than carrying themselves.
What I noticed was how the teacher spoke with a perfectly predictable pronunciation, with a tone of voice, and with an intonation of what she was saying, that was one "standard pattern" I have come to note living here. (How many such patterns are there here? 15-20 patterns of speech? From those of teen girls of varied social circles to those retired women who dye their hair the same unconvincing colors?).
There was nothing in a single word she said, not a single emotion in her voice or words, nor in the intonation pattern (which is under recognized in language I think) of her explaining math, that I have not heard precisely the same way many times in Moscow.
When her young student, apparently at successfully responding to some test correctly, gesticulated with her arms and hands in a way that one could observe in a thousand thousand cases, like a cliche of gestures (probably from TV), I had additional confirmation of their standardized, group-personalities.
And when they got up to leave -- after sitting for 1/2 hour having bought nothing -- their clothing and faces conformed to these other facts.
After they had gone I reviewed in my mind a conclusion I had reached long ago: Though they were of course individual persons, they were carried by their social patterns, rather than carrying themselves.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Maybe $681 to Finish the Bolshoi Theater?
RIA Novisti reported last fall:
"The Russian government spent 21 billion rubles ($681
million) on the restoration [of the Bolshoi Theatre], which involved more than
3,600 designers, builders and engineers."
Cost too much? Took too long? Perhaps.
But anyone who takes a casual look at it can see that they
skimped on the painters or the paint for perhaps the most visible parts of the
Theater: the columns.
Take a look. The
columns look in part like old, blotched, white skin. Probably an extra $681
would have covered the painting and cheap labor costs. Does the management have
poor eyesight?
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
American ahistoria in Moscow
The "Five Rings of Moscow" is a road bicycle racing stage race which was to start nearby just minutes from when this was written. The announcer spoke in Russian, then in English. I went to correct him when he said that racers should come and put their "sign" at registration.
The first entry from the USA was in this race, and as it is May 2, on the speaker system the race host asked the young contestant if he knew the meaning of yesterday May 1, International Worker's Day. No. Told that it started in the USA, the host asked if he knew when it started. The young American's answer: April.
Preventing Poetic Suicides
I met with a well-known poet yesterday here in Moscow.
Sometimes you meet a person you like instinctively. It may not occur as often as we -- or certainly I -- wish -- and certainly less than those who imagine all their meetings are part of some cozy, convenient divine, providential plan unfolding just for them specially...
Interestingly in this case, in my lifetime I have developed a sincere disinterest in, even a very low tolerance for, poetry. (Though I can politely smile when need be.)
After four hours, mostly listening to good stories in his kitchen, as we were walking out to glance at the nearby birthplace of the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, I inquired why two unexpected nets (actually adapted chain link fencing) were placed in the open stairwell areas on the 4th and 2nd floors of the old, ~6-story building famous for its pre-Bolshevik Silver Age and later poets and writers.
Helps prevent successful suicides.
Sometimes you meet a person you like instinctively. It may not occur as often as we -- or certainly I -- wish -- and certainly less than those who imagine all their meetings are part of some cozy, convenient divine, providential plan unfolding just for them specially...
Interestingly in this case, in my lifetime I have developed a sincere disinterest in, even a very low tolerance for, poetry. (Though I can politely smile when need be.)
After four hours, mostly listening to good stories in his kitchen, as we were walking out to glance at the nearby birthplace of the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, I inquired why two unexpected nets (actually adapted chain link fencing) were placed in the open stairwell areas on the 4th and 2nd floors of the old, ~6-story building famous for its pre-Bolshevik Silver Age and later poets and writers.
Helps prevent successful suicides.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Page from a Psyche Guide to Moscow?
It was a really lovely spring yesteraft and -eve in Moscow...the government typically making it one of three working Saturdays so as to constitute a coming disorder of May holidays... The women were, as usual, seasonally dressed to attract and distract; the men, also, indifferently. The crowded Arbat...where Russians and tourists stroll looking for little more than passing time, or a partner. The Alexander Garden, near the historic and powerful Kremlin, with its predictable thousands of the unhistoric and powerless lounging on the greens, walking by with their uncertain faces...
Thousands I watched walk by. Happily, I was little observed observing. Someone should write a psychic guide to Moscow. (And not only for Moscow, but it could not be "politically correct".)
Thousands. How, why, can so many be so boring and predictable? The most interesting and entertaining person was a quiet, polite quite drunk man, as he tried, without falling, to get over a mere string surrounding a memorial area to which he had gone -- uselessly -- to try to read a plaque. Charley Chaplin could have done it. (He finally went under. A TV quality performance.)
Goethe in his last decade, if I recall correctly, was asked if he would like to go again to Rome or to Paris. He said he would rather go where there are not only larvae and pupae.
Thousands I watched walk by. Happily, I was little observed observing. Someone should write a psychic guide to Moscow. (And not only for Moscow, but it could not be "politically correct".)
Thousands. How, why, can so many be so boring and predictable? The most interesting and entertaining person was a quiet, polite quite drunk man, as he tried, without falling, to get over a mere string surrounding a memorial area to which he had gone -- uselessly -- to try to read a plaque. Charley Chaplin could have done it. (He finally went under. A TV quality performance.)
Goethe in his last decade, if I recall correctly, was asked if he would like to go again to Rome or to Paris. He said he would rather go where there are not only larvae and pupae.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
praying for a missing god
(A note to Russian poet IS.)
Just finished a book yesterday on Nietzsche reception in
America from the 1890s to 1990s. Very interesting and enlightening. I went as
usual into a Starbucks coffee shop to be for a couple of hours, and make some notes with my friendly moka, then
walking alone out into another Saturday night, I happened onto, and -- needing
some impossible consolation -- into a Russian Orthodox Church (Церковь введения
во храм пресвятой Богородицы в Бараша). There was almost no one in the church, though it was during
the evening service, and I found a distant place aside to be alone with myself,
my thoughts and longings...
I thought about how when someone is ill, people go to pray
for their restoration, and how there was no place in Moscow, or likely anywhere
else?, to go and pray for the health... the safe return... the revival, the
resurrection, of God, after what FN in his "madman" well termed the requiem
aeternam deo...
How there are no real places in cities for meditation of
those suffering from agnosticism... no agnostic churches to a missing god... no "Sils Marias" in cities...
How stepping inside a Russian church allowed one suddenly, as is
almost impossible outside in the city's noisy streets, shops, cafes,...quiet
reflection on the higher, the deeper, what Berdyayev, et al, called the "vertical" questions of
life and meaning...
And then unexpectedly, I heard someone mumble something behind me, apparently
to me...and when I turned around from my isolated, solitary thoughts to see what it was, I saw a babushka, who pointed to
a carpet, indicating that I should rather stand there...
I turned back to face the iconostasis, reflected on this event for about 1.5 seconds, and walked
directly out of the church. I sincerely hoped she felt a bit guilty, or regretful ,
and might perhaps hesitate next time before bothering someone not
disturbing anyone but a missing God.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Moscow Policemen, Car Rally Faces, and Goethe's "entelechies"
The newly-named Russian "politzia" arrived early in the morning to guard a temporary fence around the park where the Motor Rally Car race was to be held. Hundreds of hundreds of spectators arrived to catch a glimpse thru the thickening crowd.
I was one of the very first viewers, not of the race itself, which is of no interest to me, but of the viewers.
These policeman were of the level that are assigned to stand at 10-meter intervals to keep order within and people without. Still early, they were yet bored, and thus still interested to look and comment among themselves at my appearance (whether my bearded face; bare, well-toned jogging legs; both or other...). I came to observe them; they were clearly observing me. Their faces were those that can be expected of such policeman. Obedient. Rather simple, though not stupid, looking. A couple of them had found some girly magazine, and were sharing it amongst themselves...
I thought of what experience and view of the world they had to obediently spend some perhaps 5-7 hours at a fence... joking amongst themselves at me... having a chance to see cars and trucks speeding around the former 1980 Olympic bike track. What will they learn before they die, from "how they are" now? And I thought of the many who learn little after their teens, some even listening to the same music for their "three score and ten".
The crowd that came and stayed to watch were those one would expect at such an event. Their faces matched the event they were watching.
I thought of Goethe speaking to Eckermann about how if he continued to work and learn even onto his death, nature would provide a way for him to continue. September 1, 1829: "I do not doubt our continuance, for nature cannot do without continuity; but we are not all immortal in the same way, and in order to manifest himself as a great entelechy, a man must first be one."
In Goethe's well-known talk with Falk on their return from the funeral of Wieland in 1813, Goethe described "monads", in ways that explain the faces I saw today.
I was one of the very first viewers, not of the race itself, which is of no interest to me, but of the viewers.
These policeman were of the level that are assigned to stand at 10-meter intervals to keep order within and people without. Still early, they were yet bored, and thus still interested to look and comment among themselves at my appearance (whether my bearded face; bare, well-toned jogging legs; both or other...). I came to observe them; they were clearly observing me. Their faces were those that can be expected of such policeman. Obedient. Rather simple, though not stupid, looking. A couple of them had found some girly magazine, and were sharing it amongst themselves...
I thought of what experience and view of the world they had to obediently spend some perhaps 5-7 hours at a fence... joking amongst themselves at me... having a chance to see cars and trucks speeding around the former 1980 Olympic bike track. What will they learn before they die, from "how they are" now? And I thought of the many who learn little after their teens, some even listening to the same music for their "three score and ten".
The crowd that came and stayed to watch were those one would expect at such an event. Their faces matched the event they were watching.
I thought of Goethe speaking to Eckermann about how if he continued to work and learn even onto his death, nature would provide a way for him to continue. September 1, 1829: "I do not doubt our continuance, for nature cannot do without continuity; but we are not all immortal in the same way, and in order to manifest himself as a great entelechy, a man must first be one."
In Goethe's well-known talk with Falk on their return from the funeral of Wieland in 1813, Goethe described "monads", in ways that explain the faces I saw today.
"How much or how little of a personality deserves to be
preserved, is another question, and an affair which we must leave to God. At
present I will only say this: I assume different classes and degrees of
ultimate aboriginal elements of all beings which are, as it were, the initial
points of all phenomena in nature. I might call them souls because from them
the animation of the whole proceeds. Perhaps I had better call them monads. Let
me retain this term of Leibnitz, because it expresses the simplicity of these
simplest beings and there might be no better name. Some of these monads or
initial points, experience teaches, are so small and so insignificant that they
are fit only for a subordinate service and existence. Others however are quite
strong and powerful…"
Monday, April 16, 2012
Bohemian ad nauseum in Moscow?
The cafe tonight full of poets,
their audience,
and their smoke.
Some well known, I hear.
Rising puffs of smoke made clear
cigarettes the unpoetic do not know,
are au courant again.
are au courant again.
A chamber of chain smokers,
'tweenst Lubyanka and Chisti Prudi...
All looked like poets should look,
and acted like poets should act,
and were all polite and ardent
as polite poets' are wont.
It all seemed, to me,
unconsciously,
a "bohemian" evening,
in act.
in act.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
A "Jubilee" of Faces in Moscow
There is a phenomena in nature called a “jubilee”, wherewith
the mixing of salt and fresh water -- which can only occur in certain conditions
of tide, wind, moon, season -- makes sealife “drunk”, and they head en masse to
the shore where people may yell “jubilee”. This is an extraordinary occurrence,
and one is lucky to experience it, even if one lives permanently in the few
locations in the world where it is known to occur.
Tonight in Moscow, there was what could be called a jubilee
of faces. Unexpectedly, one begins to see attractive and interesting
faces everywhere. It can last for 30 minutes, up to an hour, in my experience. Perhaps
like a “jubilee” in the sea, it might occur in one location, and not even nearby…but
I have experienced only about 5 such “jubilees” in the 25 years I have visited and then lived Moscow.
There was a jubilee of faces in Moscow.
"Unchained Melody" in Moscow 2012
After some 40 years of observation, study and reflection, it seems to me that the human being prefers to dream: homo somnians.
Most want blue jeans and Disney, the same old songs and burgers... to conform to the (current) now global standards of style, taste and "cool". Once they conformed to their village life, then perhaps to their national...
I had another example of this two days ago here in Moscow -- after observing such since the collapse of the USSR -- when I heard a string of songs from my "60's" coming from an apartment somewhere below me in my building, and echoing in the courtyard area.
I recall hearing even the Beatles' "I wanna hold your h a a a n n n d d d", and my favorite music to smooch by: "Unchained Melody". I do not know now who might have been playing these songs, but to hear them in a residential apartment building in Moscow in 2012, while not completely unexpected and surprising, is another instance of how the world is passive to American culture, and that of even more than 50 years ago.
Most want blue jeans and Disney, the same old songs and burgers... to conform to the (current) now global standards of style, taste and "cool". Once they conformed to their village life, then perhaps to their national...
I had another example of this two days ago here in Moscow -- after observing such since the collapse of the USSR -- when I heard a string of songs from my "60's" coming from an apartment somewhere below me in my building, and echoing in the courtyard area.
I recall hearing even the Beatles' "I wanna hold your h a a a n n n d d d", and my favorite music to smooch by: "Unchained Melody". I do not know now who might have been playing these songs, but to hear them in a residential apartment building in Moscow in 2012, while not completely unexpected and surprising, is another instance of how the world is passive to American culture, and that of even more than 50 years ago.
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