June 16

On the lake in the center of my Korean city, there are a resident pair of very large Chinese Geese (the domesticated version of the wild Swan Goose) who are, to mix species, complete hams. They love the attention they get (and the food they are fed). They are also happy to do call-and-response honking with humans. Here is one of them hanging out by a little floating house; he also has a reedy area that he favors.

The lake is home to cranes, small brown ducks, turtles, and huge koi of many colors (who also greatly enjoy being fed). There is an octagonal pavilion out on the lake which you reach by a footbridge; they sell food and souvenirs there. "Enchanting" is a good word for all this.

Kyle Gann's ongoing series of posts at PostClassic about the economics and practicalities, the satisfactions and dissatisfactions of his composing and pursuing his musical interests, evokes a profoundly sympathetic response in me. I am 51 to Gann's 54, and understand completely what he means when he says that

I've been working very hard for 27 years, through weekends, through summers, on holidays, even on vacations. I've put out a ton of work and after much consideration I'm finding that what I've published and produced is not generating better opportunities for me. I always knew the books wouldn't make money; I thought they might help me in academia, but I have evidence that I've reached the end of that road. I'm just now realizing that to enjoy the rest of my life, I need to change direction. No self-pity here, no depression, just an assessment of unavoidable facts.

"To enjoy the rest of my life, I need to change direction": that is unquestionably a thought I had before coming to Korea.Whatever I was doing wasn't working for me, and ultimately it did not matter whether the fault was in "the system" or myself; something had to give. So far I am hopeful of the results of the change of direction I decided on; I am liking Korea, and even better perhaps, I am gainfully employed at a decent job with a decent boss.

The passage of Gann's that I give above is from a post he first largely scored out, then appears to have removed from his blog altogether; but it showed up in my Google Reader feed, and I don't think that Gann needs to be apologetic at all about writing so honestly of a dilemma that a number of us come to face sooner or later. He mentions that of all his music-related activities, "the blog is the only thing I do not costing me money (and not paying anything either)." That is a saving grace of blogs. Of course they are another sign of the "hobbification" that I have written about here, but for any but a select few, they never held the promise of making any money to begin with, or even of generating other money-making opportunities, and thus are remote not only from external commercial pressures, but even internal ones -- a form that floats free of the almighty dollar as much as anything can. Whatever activities Gann gives up, I hope he keeps blogging, which is something you do just because.

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2010/06/almost_all_is_vanity.html

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2010/06/success_is_just_another_form_o.html

Joshua Cohen, the author of the new mega-modernist novel Witz, compiled a very stimulating list of novels from various countries that are comparable in some respect to Joyce's Ulysses, and then Omnivoracious chimed in with several more suggestions:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-15/a-bloomsday-celebration-by-joshua-cohen-author-of-witz/full/

http://conversationalreading.com/brazils-ulysses

http://www.omnivoracious.com/2010/06/the-united-nations-of-ulysses.html

Some of these novels were specifically influenced by Ulysses (Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz for sure, Leopold Marechal's Adam Buenosayres); others don't seem particularly Joycean at all, even by analogy.  This sort of comparison is fun as long as one doesn't take it too seriously. The call for a similar list of national War and Peaces could be fruitful, because most European nations did spawn mammoth Tolstoyan novels (Jules Romains's Men of Good Will is a possible nominee for the French War and Peace). 

I am very glad to have discovered dance critic Marina Harss at The Faster Times, where she is doing excellent work; she has also written on dance and film for The New Yorker (a combo reminiscent of the great Arlene Croce). She writes very well about "readjusting her eyes" to the style of the British choreographer Frederick Ashton (1904-1988), in whom I take a special interest because I once attended an excellent lecture on him in San Francisco (artists, take note: it doesn't take much for me to adopt you!).

http://thefastertimes.com/dance/2010/06/10/dreaming-of-ashton-at-abt/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Ashton

Some names seem to suggest what their possessors must do with their lives: what could a "Wade Boggs" or a "Chipper Jones" be but a baseball player? Similarly, if your child is named Rackstraw Downes (Rodney Harry Rackstraw Downes, to be precise), he had better be a significant British artist. Being named "Rackstraw" and being insignificant would be quite embarrassing; that is a name you have got to live up to.

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=38452

http://www.bettycuninghamgallery.com/current_exhibition.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rackstraw_Downes

The fun blog Television Obscurities discusses the charming British tradition of TV series "annuals":

What’s really interesting about annuals is that a show like The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. was given an annual despite the fact that it wasn’t all that successful when it was broadcast in the United States. Three different annuals were published for The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., in fact, for 1968, 1969 and 1970 (likely published in December of 1967, December of 1968 and December of 1969, respectively). Shows like The Dakotas, Gemini Man, Logan’s Run, Man from Atlantis and The Quest also had annuals. Even Manimal was given an annual.

I would be more interested in the annuals for British series myself, and might part with a small fortune for any annuals related to The Avengers, Upstairs, Downstairs, A Family at War, and All Creatures Great and Small.

http://www.tvobscurities.com/2010/06/bookshelf-british-tv-annuals/

Among notables born on this date are travel writer Jean de Thevenot, newspaper publisher Katherine Graham, novelists Joyce Carol Oates and John Howard Griffin, science fiction novelist Murray Leinster, soprano Helen Traubel, golfer Phil Mickelson, rapper Tupac Shakur, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmnond, photographer Irving Penn, and actors Stan Laurel, Jack Albertson, Eileen Atkins, and Laurie Metcalf. Speaking of Upstairs, Downstairs (my favorite television series, besting even The Sopranos), Eileen Atkins was a co-creator of the series along with Jean Marsh, and originally intended to co-star in it (since she was stage-committed at the time, her slot was taken by Pauline Collins, and it put Collins on the map). Atkins later starred in Robert Altman's transcendent take on the Upstairs, Downstairs milieu, Gosford Park, along with Upstairs, Downstairs alumna Meg Wynn Owen. For me, quite predictably, Robert Altman + Anglophilia = Heaven.