{"id":2368,"date":"2010-10-12T05:39:17","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T10:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/?p=2368"},"modified":"2011-05-11T08:32:53","modified_gmt":"2011-05-11T13:32:53","slug":"here-and-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/news\/2010\/here-and-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Here and There"},"content":{"rendered":"
This has been a month of every tentacle of my life finding something to grab on to. I went on tour with Bedroom Community, to finish off our ash-beleaguered Whale-Watching Tour. I went to London and had a few days of press and logistics and meetings about Two Boys, and then played two shows at the Barbican with Stephen Petronio & his Company. Then, to Amsterdam, where I am loosely supervising the orchestral score I wrote for Benjamin Millepied’s<\/a> new work at the Nederlands Ballet<\/a>. Then, next week, to London again to supervise some more recordings with the lovely and youthful Aurora Orchestra,<\/a> and then one more nip back to Benelux to play at the World Soundtrack Awards. It’s all been very confusing physically; I’ve entirely lost track of what day of the week it might be at any time, and am perpetually at the mercy of the never-quite-100%-working GPS function on my iPhone. <\/a>There is a feature, for those of you who don’t have one, where you can see a map, with a blue blinking dot representing your own position, and if you press a thing, you can then see what direction you’re facing vis \u00e0 vis the map. This is incredibly useful if you, say, alight from a bus in a quaint european city and you can’t get a sense of where the coffee might be at. Or the internet. Or puppies. Ideally, it’s one place that has cappuccino, puppies, and the internet, but really any of the three will do. In any event, if this “locate me” function doesn’t work, the phone asks you to move it in a figure 8, which I assume is the industrial designers’ way of punking all of us. You so know in 25 years there are going to be weird videos of our asses doing hand-jive in the middle of Ghent, Haarlem, Arles.<\/p>\n Last night, I dined in Paris in the most extravagant and decadent way. We started at Brasserie Lipp, had a dozen snails, leeks in vinaigrette, and a fris\u00e9e salad with her attendant lardons and poached egg. Divine, <\/a>simple, perfect. Then, across the street for the last seating at l’Atelier de Jo\u00ebl Robuchon, for, if memory serves, a first course of sweetbreads, as well as bone marrow on toast, followed by girolles with a sculptural piece of macaroni and foie gras, and an entrec\u00f4te the size of Cameroon, and a raspberry Pile in Different Temperatures. Pommard. Crozes-Hermitage. All of this after a lunch of a dozen oysters and a beef tartare with wonderfully feminine, diamond-earring-like capers. Late taxi to a friend of a friend; something resembling sleep, morning train to an orchestral rehearsal in Haarlem: fix the aleatoric string bit, tease out an erhu-like moment for the inside stands of the second violins, encourage some more volume from the bass clarinet, compliment the piccolo, prod the violas, swap out a vibraphone mallet for something a little more muh than puh, get back on the train.<\/p>\n Good God, I love French Bookstores. The proportion of books seems immediately familiar but then you realize that actually 1\/3 of the books are about De Gaulle, and then another 1\/3 are about \u00e9criture and the shoah, and then the remaining 1\/3 are other books. It’s really intense: I am starting to get into the rhythm of Amsterdam more. I still don’t quite know how to process the quietness versus the insanity. There doesn’t seem to be a middle-ground neighborhood I have access to, where it’s just sensible and calm. Everything seems to go from Calvinist cool-stone hear-a-pin-drop to Mega Ultra Euro Winkels Maxxxi Hoog Super Plus Party Club Disco Untz Untz Untz Untz<\/strong> so quickly. \u00a0I’m still convinced that for a major world power \u2014 especially one that has enjoyed such a long trading relationship with Japan \u2014 they should have better all-night dining options, esp. Izakayas (Izakayim?) or something. \u00a0It should be said that the one restaurant that really transcended<\/a> is beyond booked up, like, for the next six months or something. \u00a0Good. \u00a0Now, more of the same please!<\/p>\n In the old media corner, everybody needs to buy Alex Ross’s book. \u00a0Read Proper Discord’s take<\/a> on one of the chapters. \u00a0It’s so spot-on; he says:<\/p>\n The chapter on music technology (\u201cInfernal Machines\u201d) might just be the only sensible thing I\u2019ve ever read on the subject. He avoids the temptation to make overblown pronouncements about the future of recording, pointing out that the same things get said every time anybody threatens to change anything. It should be required reading for anybody who plans to\u2026<\/p>\n a) \u2026proclaim that a new format is indistinguishable from a live performance.<\/p>\n b) \u2026proclaim that the old format was much warmer and more lifelike.<\/p>\n c) \u2026proclaim that technology has ruined music.<\/p>\n d) \u2026proclaim that technology will save music.<\/p>\n e) \u2026bore me senseless in meetings with simplistic and nostalgic nonsense about how fantastic everything was before my generation came along.<\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is something I’ve been suffering with since I was old enough to use a computer. \u00a0I had people tell me \u2014 usually friends of my parents \u2014 that writing by hand focuses the thoughts more. \u00a0Sometimes that’s true for me and music, but for writing text, I’ve <\/a>always been able to do either screen-based or desk-based. \u00a0And surely that’s the joy of the modern condition: if you can do both, you can do both! \u00a0If there are three formats, you can do all three! \u00a0And there is a joyful interplay between all these different inscribing methods. \u00a0Whatever: Frank Gehry clearly makes origami out of champagne foil and it trickles down into paper, models, quicktime walkthroughs, etc. \u00a0Get into the simultaneous multiplicity of formats.<\/p>\n Speaking of old\/new technology, everybody get immediately into the Met Player. It’s basically a video archive of Metropolitan Opera productions from Today and Yesterday. I’m watching right now a G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung from the 90’s with Behrens, I mean, it’s a divine thing. You can scroll around, find what you want: it’s an amazing research tool as well as a pleasurable way to see things you wouldn’t have been able to see before; I checked my diary and when this shit was originally broadcast, I was 8.<\/p>\n
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