Thursday, August 30, 2007

tell me where it hurts

When people talk about their first memories I am always skeptical. Did you keep a calendar (or a secretary) in your bassinet? So it is with caution that I allow that one of my earliest verifiable memories is of playing with toys on the floor with a young woman (I would consider her such today but it was a distinction I would hardly have made at 5) who had long dark hair. I have a vague association with Cher but that was the period. She was foreign-- middle eastern, I think, and perhaps Armenian (Cher again). I base these extrapolations on conversations later in life with the adults who brought me to meet her, and who waited--downstairs as I recall-- while the young woman and I negotiated over blocks.

The ensuing decades of therapy with dozens of psychiatrists, psychologists, and assorted faith healers suggest that at some point during that fateful first session, I must have tried to put a square peg in a round hole.

Champion narcissists, Americans love their therapy. Like me, most of the people I know have spent years discussing their feelings with people who are paid to care, or at least to attend. I have certainly benefited from some of my encounters with these professionals. But statistically, how could it be otherwise?

Therapy and the culture industry are bound up in so many ways in the US in particular. Even if you're not a member of the talking classes, you cannot avoid its moist embrace. Perhaps you are seeking closure on a death in the family, or in the family of a celebrity, or that of some one else featured on Larry King. Or maybe you have become uncomfortable in crowded spaces like the mall, and attribute this to the impact of '9-11' on Minneapolis.

As direct or indirect consumers, beneficiaries and proponents of psychology and its attendant explanations, justifications and claims, Americans should take notice and respond to the APA's failure to condemn the participation of its members in military interrogations involving torture.

I was impressed by the Democracy Now interview with Elizabeth Phipher, who 'returned her Presidential Citation award from the America Psychological Association in protest over the group's policy on military and CIA interrogations. "The top leadership, the people on the council have been there for decades. It's a very ingrown group of people and I think we probably need some new leadership in APA"'.

Check out the audio interview here .

Monday, August 27, 2007

family values

'Recent operations had cleared "terrorists out of population centers" and given "families in liberated Iraqi cities a safer and more normal life," Bush said'.

Somebody should tell
Abdullah.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

breaking news

I took Ursa back uptown for a redo today as her stripping Monday left her furrier than it should, and cringed as she whimpered under the closer plucking. I'm not a mother and hope I will never hear myself saying: this hurts me more than it hurts you.

We got on the express from 86th, market bound, and as the doors closed, heard the the words all metrocard holders dread:

'Ladies and Gentlemen, stand back. You are in the presence of professionals'.

You know what happens then: the tourists giggle and clutch their bags, the tattooed and gelled guys from the boroughs turn up the volume and stretch their legs wide in the aisle, and the rest of us shift in our seats hoping not to attract attention.

But what followed from there to 59th was the best performance I have seen since The Tristan Project at Lincoln Center. And at 5 hours shorter and 350 dollars cheaper, I 'm thinking something's not right and I'm part of it.

Two guys and a boombox delivered a fearless and flawless acrobatic routine that spanned the packed car and was clearly designed to take maximum advantage of the poles and spaces and you know they're in and out between stations, gauging the crowd, the velocity, the volume, plunging forth with multiple individual and paired backflips and single hand stands and flying manoeuvres, repeatedly scaling a parked stroller and shopping bags not to mention protruberant knees and toes and baseball visors.

Even I couldn't help but laugh out loud and cheer, behaviours from which I have heretofore managed to refrain while engaged in the less-said-the-better business of mass transit.

I feel cheap having responded with a dollar and a compliment.

Give me a second chance. Does anyone know who these guys are?

Breaking News

Friday, August 24, 2007

Arpege

Everything wonderful arrives obliquely, which is why I should have known better than to have made a reservation at Arpege a month in advance.

It only happened because Pierre Gagniaire, Mon Vieil Ami and so many other top drawer restaurants were ferme le aout, and I was too greedy and too unsure of myself in other respects to leave my 72 hours to chance. I heard that the betterave was worth the 80 or so euros and so it came to pass that after an absence of nearly 2 decades I celebrated my brief and halting return to Paris with a room full of Americans, each of around 15 tables visibly and, in the case of the 8 Texans (including 4 large bottle blondes one of whom told the server very loudly that she couldn't eat anything with cheese, butter or cream, I kid you not), audibly; willing the subdued and open room into the backdrop for their separate dramas. These included a couple of proposals (nerdy men with hair receding from their foreheads and slipping down their necks facing women with straight blonde bobs and black eyeliner, facing the room and each other occasionally and nervously, between exaggeratedly intense moments with their respective partners); a table that may have been from the Korean embassy around the corner, including a couple of delectably dressed and well behaved children; and a few additional couples and allsorts.

Chuckeats had said that Arpege was hit or miss and unfortunately I hit the miss. They offer a coupe de champagne as an aperitif, which was a lovely Billecart Salmon Brut Reserve (magnum), and three amuses, the first a tiny wafer with a bead of mousse (and now I'm forgetting what it was). The texture was a miracle, like popping a caviar egg between tongue and palate. This was followed by the much vaunted Egg which frankly I hated. The moussed white was ok but the yolk was just completely uncooked and pooled at the bottom of the shell like, well, a raw egg yolk. I didn't get the maple syrup either. I should say that I don't like my eggs separated in general, and I'm not much for sweets. But I could have been persuaded by this dish and I wasn't. Happily, this was followed by four more of the exquisite tartelets.

I ordered a la carte as I simply couldn't stretch to 350 euros for the tasting. And the other point that is significant to what follows is that I conducted my order in French. The staff all seemed to speak both French and English (good thing as almost their entire clientele was American, that evening anyway) and graciously asks diners which language they prefer. Part of the point of being in Paris was to exercise my sketchy language skills (the French ones) so it is entirely possible that the entree was my fault.

I ordered the entree for two primary reasons: 1) it was a variety of vegetables, so I thought it would best illustrate this reputed strength of the kitchen; and 2) the name of the dish was poetry-- which I can't now recall, but it was an evocation of the sensual experience of the garden. So the waiter told me that there were two preparations of the dish, the first a crudite with olive oil, and the second-- well, I remember 'melange' and 'salsifis' and 'speck' and 'mousse' and I had some idea that it was a cooked version of the dish, accompanied by a mousse of salsify and speck. Sadly, I missed the part about how the vegetables were all put in a blender with cream and pureed until a uniform beige, plated and topped with a large scoop of salsify and speck mousse.

The whole was oversalted, with zero visual and textural interest. And at 58 euros, that is just not acceptable, even if I did order soup.

The main course was a spectacular dorade that exhibited a depth and range of flavor (noticeably of nuts) that I had not previously encountered with this fish. The vegetables were quite nice but strangely cooked with NO salt, which was, however, amply compensated by the speck foam! that had been generously applied to the entire dish. The waiter had herself suggested the dorade after I had selected the unfortunate entree, and I wish she had alerted me to the fact that I was basically ordering a bacon tasting. What's worse is that the bacon was all vaporised so while everything tasted of speck, it contributed none of its potential crunch or chew or visual contrast.

I tried hard to enjoy myself, but I never fully recovered from the boredom (and lingering aftertaste) of the speck soup. As the evening wore on, the Texans got louder, the staff (I counted 6 front of the house for around 60 covers) were visibly stressed, and I started thinking about brushing my teeth.

I skipped dessert and returned to the metro, seduced and abandoned.

Arpege
84, rue de Varenne
75007 PARIS
Tel : +33 (0)1 47 05 09 06

to lift

I came late to Richard Serra, through Torqued Ellipses at the original DIA . My father was in town. He's an engineer and I was kind of challenging him by including the exhibition on our itinerary (Eddie Izzard was another highlight). But he absolutely flayed me not only with his fascination and insights as an engineer (which absurdly I hadn't anticipated), but also with his spontaneous personal engagement. It felt, in a way, more honest than my own. A few years later I was back in New York and so was he, and we went up to the then-new DIA-Beacon, to revisit the work. It was so very different, the skin had turned from smoother black to mottlier copper and you approach them by going down stairs, where the light is dimmer and the experience more sombre than it was in the white Chelsea gallery.

Today I went to the MoMA retrospective. I had never seen the earlier work (on the 6th floor) and it was kind of disappointing at first-- the evidence of evolution breaks the spell (and Belts' Dan Flavin fillip really made me cringe)-- but of course it was a healthy thing to do as my crush was entirely inapposite to begin with (see: father, above). Which didn't inure me to the enchantment of the new work, particularly Sequence:

vertiginous veil
a secret in the open
my future ruin

and Torqued Ellipse IV:

specificity
excised from a womb of steel
patch of sky above

sclerotic armour
abandoned who knows when, finds
a new occasion

Richard Serra Retrospective, MoMA