Saturday, April 18, 2009
wabi sabi
margaret 4/18/2009 08:47:00 PM
The dogwoods are in full bloom today and it makes my heart sing to see them.
An English couple walking behind me on Flatbush were talking about the relationship of looks to talent.
He was saying, "David Beckham is a great soccer player because he's worked hard at it all his life, he just happens to be very good looking. Victoria Beckham is a mediocre singer who happens to be very good looking..."
Well I never considered Victoria Beckham to be all that good looking but I see that's beside the point.
When I saw the Susan Boyle video, a day or so before the major hype, I was expecting low comedy, or at best a good rock'n'roll song... and of course I cried for the next thirty minutes. It was a rainy Tuesday morning and I felt like a fool. I am easily manipulated by music, and my feeling was that it was a very moving song from a musical about the French Revolution, sung very well, with heartfelt emotion, by a woman who looked like she'd never been given the benefit of the doubt, like the scullery maid in a Victorian novel. But I could burst into tears listening to a gospel choir sing the weather report, so I certainly didn't expect the media frenzy that followed.
The performance, to me, was wabi sabi, the japanese aesthetic of rustic beauty, the beauty of every day: "if an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi."
It was as if the plastic wrap of superficiality that covers everything on tv was torn away and we got a glimpse of the real world that can be amazing, but is jarring in the context of Simon Cowell and manufactured reality show starlets. And the media frenzy that has followed has been nauseating in equally amazing fashion, as if they are scrambling to put the plastic wrap back on because they're a little uncomfortable with the fact that they don't quite understand why everyone is sitting and crying into their laptops, for all the dreams that have been killed.
Having re-watched the clip I can see all the edits they used to manipulate the viewer but I still think it's great storytelling, start to finish.
Here's another uplifting video from youtube
margaret 4/18/2009 07:47:00 PM
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
guardian.co.uk | Art and design | Proposed art projects that never happened
margaret 4/15/2009 08:40:00 AM
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