So Long, Decade One.

Wow !!

2000-2009

R.I.P. first decade of this century. You had a great run.

Monsieur Sitar

My newest buddy-thing. He's very complicated, but I love him.

Hopefully we will become good friends in due time...

Out on a Wintry Day

Rainy Evening on Hennepin Avenue, by Robert Koehler ca. 1902--hanging at M.I.A.

So, I did say in the Andrew Bird post that Saturday December the twelfth was filled with beautiful everything, and here I have those day time things. (I'm working backwards!)

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is a wonderful place, and I've enjoyed going there a lot in the past few years. The resident-art is free to look at, and (save for a few over-zealous guards eyeing you down) an afternoon spent there is quiet and wondrous. I recommend it.

Anyway, currently, they have an exhibit of borrowed pieces of art from the Louvre. (!) My grandparents invited us to go look at it with them, and it is really nothing less than amazing. Although only the tiniest fraction of their art could be borrowed and brought across the sea, the ones that made the voyage are exceptional. There were archaic pieces, Da Vinci sketches preserved on their paper, and also there was The Astronomer. Present, in real life! Wow! This was a very special meeting for me! Do go, if you have the chance.

After we finished poring over the pieces in there, I spent hours more wandering about the rest of the museum (one could easily spend a week there and not get bored). The building itself is beautiful. The place is immaculate.
I looked out the multi-storey wall of windows, and saw a lovely panorama of a wintry Minnapolis. In the foreground were kids and their trails left by their sleds on the gentle hill with trees scattered, up to their ankles in white snow. The middle had some city streets and the various apartment blocks and the back held the classic line of sky-scrapers. It was a very pretty sight.Later, after having left the musee', we went back to the grandparents' place, where I left to take a walk. The weather was good; the air crisp but not harsh, no terrible wind, the sun casting light along the trees and the structures. It was beautiful. I stopped for a moment to take a fellow's photo with his bike on the greenway, then walked uptown. It wasn't terribly slushy yet, so I went on to cheapo records, where the warmth fogged up my spectacles. The sky began to dim, so I strode briskly back, reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography to keep me company. I was met back at the grandparents' with grilled cheese sandwiches and hot chocolate, paired (oddly enough) with a can of tropical fruit bits. At any rate, I think my day epitomized the romantic and jazz aura of the town. And it proves that it actually can still exist and happen in that way. It's very lovely.

Ornithology and Stained Glass

It has almost been an entire week now that I get around to writing about this, but Gezelligheid is still stuck in my mind.

Saturday, December the twelfth was filled with most beautiful everythings; notably, Andrew Bird at Saint Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis. It was his third night playing his Gezelligheid shows here at this immaculate church plopped down in Loring, and the weather was crisp and promising. Sitting beneath the doubled Victrola was one bevested sock monkey. Andrew came on stage looking dapper as usual, albeit with a little five-o'clock-shadow about his face and mussed hair, with a slight limp, which he acquired the first night after smashing his heel in (as he told us). This show was largely instrumental, comprised of most beautiful melodies that Mr. Bird has been working on. He played these long, epic pieces, with masterful use of loop to layer under the cry of his dear fiddle, and the result was truly chilling. With every factor playing in, I venture to say that this was the most aesthetically beautiful show I have ever watched. I was stricken, at the time, by the realization of all the beauty. I try to paint it.

Try to imagine:
The all-encompassing sound of the violin loop, echoing off the ancient walls of this cathedral, and the quiet of all the listeners. Behind Andrew's sweet head was a startling wall of illuminated stained-glass ikons, illustrating some epic tale of yore, while this young man and the violin produced such sweet sounds that would make even Cremona's original inventors of the instrument proud. His elongated shadow jumped and twisted over the left wall, making a dark silhouette of a man and a bow in some passionate work. Projected on the immense beige walls behind were vibrant colors of cyan, magenta, green and white. Stephen (?) emerging to accompany Andrew on clarinet, then saxophone for the next song. Andrew knelt down to play and attend to the loop button, and Stephen (?) shaking while playing his sax madly, with insane other-worldly effects bending the sounds. Andrew's flowery and colorful gestures with his hands as he spoke to silent us. The shaking of his head while he whistled and plucked at the catgut. His ever un-conventional strumming of those strings and striking them, bouncingly, with the hard side of the bow. Natural Disaster. Stephen (?) on his standing bass, pulling and pounding his thumbs to rhythm. "Minnapolis has been like a home to me." An old song, from the Bowl of Fire days... The Swimming Hour-- so beautiful. And another new one, and finish with Scythian Empires. We stood and clapped and clapped and clapped and he came back out, and played a little Bob Dylan, with Oh Sister. My, was it wonderful. Very special indeed.