"I am that I am," says #Jahweh, Exodus 3:14. Each of us must build a life on our own version of this, the father of all sentences. In my case, this self-definition must always include an admission of eagerness, a certain unbridled need to get from A to B, the sooner the better.
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Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
The #Art Darters. By John von Daler
You
may remember #Malamud's young American art student who arrives in Italy thinking
that he alone has discovered a relatively obscure Italian painter called #Giotto. He wants to write a doctor's thesis that not only will make his own
research famous, but also will resurrect the artist's reputation. (I think the
book is called "Pictures of Fidelman.")
Monday, October 28, 2013
A Discretionary Tale. By John von Daler
Paris.
The City of Love. I was "between marriages" and had invited my girl
friend of the last half-year to France on a romantic holiday. We visited
Montmartre, ate delicious meals, gave old Pablo a visit and generally just
enjoyed the pleasant weather about which charming songs so often have been
written.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
In principle. By John von Daler
You
know the situation: it's against your principles, but you need the money. I had received notice from the
musicians' union that there were tryouts for a solo #advertisement for a Danish #beer. They needed a violinist and the job paid about $2000 for a day's work. I
talked myself into it mostly because I often drank their beer and we were
pretty poor.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Sizing up #Symbols. By John von Daler
I
was twelve years old. We drove, two families in two cars, from Oklahoma to #Colorado to spend our vacation in two cabins at a resort high in a pine forest.
There was a girl my age in the other family and I did what I could to be in a
backseat with her as often as I could. The fathers steered and the mothers
chatted and we kids looked out the window or messed around with each other. A
tussle can be a wonderful thing.
Friday, October 25, 2013
Passing on. By John von Daler.
It
was summer in #Surrey. The long rolling garden behind the red brick, ranch-style
house stretched its green tongue into the valley, lapping up deer and rabbits
and pheasants that also thought of Lime Tree Cottage as their home. I had come
to #Marley Common because my mother had #died.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
A Loving #God. By John von Daler
In
my memoir, #Pieces: A life in Eight
Movements and a Prelude (WiDo Publishing), I have to describe #God at one
point. The book is called "Pieces" for several reasons, one of them
being the fragmentary nature of the text: the reader is supposed to fill in the
dots. For example, when new characters enter, I do not necessarily describe
them physically. So I thought it
might be fun to make an exception out of God.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Make slow. Eat slow. By John von Daler
In
the summer the heat pounds into you and if it were not for the sparkling view
of the bay, you might give up and hire a car to drive you up the winding roads.
But people can and do climb the steep stairways up the mountain from #Amalfi to #Scala. These stone passages are surrounded and covered with lemon and olive
trees through which you can see the blue sky intersect the blue waves beneath
the golden sun. This is a place of primary colors and fundamental values. No thought
or action here can be anything less than grand. After all, the Magna Carta was
written on paper from Amalfi.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Believable Dreams. By John von Daler
We
were supposed to have eaten lunch at a better restaurant in #Amsterdam, but our
feet got tired and we stopped beating the path we had planned and went into a
little bar by a canal. The plastic menu listed a spicy chicken and some beers,
so that is what we ordered.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Cultivate your garden. By John von Daler
The
alarm clock rang stridently at five in the morning. Peeking out the window I
could see the sun was up and a robin already stood listening for his breakfast
on the front lawn, his head cocked, his eyes round and dark as sin, his belly
as orange as an Irish protestant. He looked at me as I peered at him from under
the window curtain. Then he took a quick hop or two towards me and fell into
his listening stance again.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
I Got Rhythm. By John von Daler
Choreographers
and ballet dancers see eye to eye with conductors and musicians: we all serve
the music. The sounds of a ballet should be just as the composer imagined them
and the movement of the dance should describe, interpret and embody the music.
We agree on that.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Confessions of a #Violinist. By John von Daler
Theater
groups often live up to their reputation: bawdy, unmanageable, a threat to
society, hilarious, naive, beautiful. The troop I worked with in the 1980's in
Denmark lived up to these descriptions and even occasionally added some new
twists on its own. I played the violin and composed for a farce that toured the
country in a couple of small busses, just the way players had been traversing
countrysides for at least a thousand years in Europe.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Easy Rider. By John von Daler
They
liked us before we arrived, our hosts who had arranged a concert in #Oslo. They
had asked for a rider.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Evaluating contemporaries. By John von Daler
In
response to my question an art historian friend explained that the term
"gothic" in its first usage meant something outlandish, something the
goths might have built.
Monday, October 14, 2013
#Mimesis in Junior High. By John von Daler
I
noticed the differences immediately when I arrived in my new class in the ninth
grade in #Norwalk, Connecticut. We were many thousands of miles closer to
Greenwich Village than #Tulsa, Oklahoma where I had spent my first thirteen
years.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
In the Footsteps of #Nureyev. By John von Daler
Once
I had friends in a circle of ballet dancers, an experience not unlike
socializing with #violinists. Their trade has its rules just as mine does and we
all talk about them constantly. Not that those rules necessarily always make
our performances worth seeing or hearing.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Show, don't tell. By John von Daler
In
my travels on concert tours I have received many different invitations, mostly
to events that take place late at night. You get used to people coming
backstage with their cards in hand: How
about supper and a beer at our place? We are going down to a little pub, wanna
come? Let's get a cup of coffee and talk about the concert...
Friday, October 11, 2013
Bach Beaming. By John von Daler
Let
me admit it at once: at concerts I do not always concentrate on the music. I
will go to hear some music that I love and instead of following the piece from
start to finish I glide away in my own thoughts and pretty soon I'm well into
some project of my own. Let's just say that I get a lot of work done while
other people are playing.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
I love you. Be mine. By John von Daler
Sometimes
you run into something so beautiful that you just have to own it. Sometimes you
even want to make yourself into it.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Jack-in-the-box. By John von Daler
Most
of us love surprises. Not big, unpleasant ones like, say, slipping on a banana
peel, but something more like a jack-in-the-box that fascinates you enough to
keep you pushing it into place and letting it loose again time after time. The
small joy of that smiling face hopping out of its case has no logical reason;
it's a pleasant emotion, fear turned into farce.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Danish Rubbing off. By John von Daler
Let's
get this straight: Danish sounds like the coughing teenagers used to do in math
class to camouflage their swear words. Hugga
hugga hugga Fug ga You ga! It's that glottal stop.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
A #Blog about #blogging. By John von Daler
Now
as I approach the half year mark of my blogging life, it is time to take a look
around, to take stock.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
With a vengeance. by John von Daler
The
old man looked like Fidel Castro disguised as Buddha. For years he had sat in a
worn armchair behind unwashed windows filled with potted plants that probably
could have lived off the smudges on the glass. From his place behind an antique
table covered with spots from forgotten meals he read his paper, ate his meals
and told his stories.
Friday, October 4, 2013
#Heaven. I'm in heaven. by John von Daler
My
father and I stood in waist-high water and talked about everything and nothing.
The warm, Oklahoma weekends were made for hanging out at the pool, lying in the
sun, small talking.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Tintinnabulation! by John von Daler
From
the first day that I at the age of four walked into a music faculty (at the
University of Tulsa) I was sold on it. I'm not talking about the people or the
architecture or even the music lessons themselves. It was that thick,
conglomerate sound of everybody at once, the patchwork quilt made up of rows of
tones.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Small World by John von Daler
I
used to love to visit the little shops. Touring through Scandinavia meant finding
a tailor in Bornholm who sewed leather vests by hand or a man in West Jutland
who had filled a huge warehouse full of English books or a butcher in Sønderborg
who had concocted a great sausage. I bought things and talked to people about
their trades.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
The Funchal Game Plan by John von Daler
At
our place we love garlic. Fresh, cooked, lots of it, just a touch of it, any
old way. So we are very tolerant when we meet garlic breath.
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