LA you're dreaming!

LA you’re dreaming!

”All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown) 

And the sky is gray (and the sky is gray) 

I've been for a walk (I've been for a walk) 

On a winter's day (on a winter's day)

I'd be safe and warm (I'd be safe and warm)

If I was in LA (if I was in LA)”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-aK6JnyFmk

 

Getting to know Boston…..again!

 

Stanley Whitney - How high the moon

The exhibition of ‘How high the moon’ by Stanley Whitely at the ICA, Boston is a retrospective of his paintings over 50 years. It’s stunning, colourful and expressive of his life’s  journey in paintings. It was a pleasure and privilege to experience his life’s journey. 

‘How High the Moon is the first retrospective to trace the evolution of Stanley Whitney’s wholly unique and powerful abstractions over the course of his 50-year career. The exhibition’s title is inspired by the 1940 song penned by Nancy Hamilton and Morgan Lewis, which became a jazz standard that has conveyed enchantment, longing, and, in some interpretations, has reached for the sublime’. 

https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/stanley-whitney-how-high-the-moon/

Tale of two universities

Harvard and MIT: a tale of two universities.

Harvard President

‘We believe that the government overreach and devastating attacks on scientific and medical research are unwarranted and unlawful, and so we have taken legal action to defend the institution’. Allan Garber

MIT President

‘I’m a firm advocate for freedom of expression. I strongly endorse the final statement, which is confident, nuanced and alive to the subject’s inherent complexity and tensions’

Institute for Contemporary Art: Watershed, Boston - Chiharu Shiota

A journey across the water…a metaphor for the works of Chiharu Shiota. Stunning, provocative, insightful, prophetic and reflective of our times.

‘In Accumulation – Searching for the Destination’, dozens of vintage suitcases hang from red rope, occasionally shaking with the turbulence of anticipation. For Shiota, who brought only one suitcase with her when she moved from Japan to Berlin in 1996, the suitcase symbolizes the starting point of a new journey. 

Home Less Home features an enormous field of red and black ropes forming the shape of a house. Within this symbolic form, Shiota suspends paper documents—passports, letters, immigration papers, messages—and embeds beds, desks, chairs, and tables to underscore how people create their homes through communication, stories, and objects. Together, these transporting works will consider the journey towards one home and away from another’.

Reflections on my travels

It was a trip that was a work in progress from start to finish! Home exchanges in Vancouver and Toronto were followed by an unexpected but welcome opportunity to spend time with son and grandson in New York City and Boston. 

A conference in NYC on ‘Academic Freedom’ and a stopover for our grandson in our home exchange condo in Toronto was the start to a shared exploration of New York City and Boston, American cities stark in contrast but linked by a Presidency that is as unpredictable as it is chilling. 

As we walked and talked on the footpaths, in diners, cafes, restaurants, buses and subways and in museums with the alternative and compelling views of artists exploring what it is to be human, we discovered in conversations and engagements with locals that there was still a sense of ‘hope and freedom’ despite the overshadowing of distress and despair. 

There is clearly a crisis in capitalism and democracy resulting in homelessness and hopelessness that confronts New York City. The bright  lights, the pulsating billboards and the vibe does not hide the inequality. But one never feels unsafe or threatened. It’s loneliness that inhabits the streets. 

Boston seems to have inoculated itself from the pitfalls and sustained and retained an urban quality that it has become renowned. 

On the west coast LA is city ithreatened  by the National Guard and the Marines and the heavy hand of autocracy and from within for its own inequities and injustices 

Security guard patrols are ever present on the subway and downtown reflects a disbanded commercial centre. But again it’s safe and sorrowful rather than intimidating. Mobility has been enhanced by separating cars  from mass transit and pedestrians. Freeways run deep into the city’s fabric and trains move underground or through the air. It’s a dense but ever expanded metro city. 

We’ve been alerted to the vibe, the vision, the frustrations, the fervour and the fight that will dominate America’s political, social and cultural life over coming years. 

But it’s a fight we all share. 

We have to stand up to Trump and those that coat tail on his power for profit and self aggrandisement. His threat to us is palpable.  He is usurping the role of our government through threatening and bullying tactics.  We need to have our government resist his demands. 

Reflections on Manhattan

 

Individualism, tribalism and communitarianism coexist and are played out across Manhattan the epicentre of the City of New York. The city is a compilation of seamless but also distinct neighbourhoods and suburbs. 

The beating heart of the city however is Manhattan with its taller than tall skyscrapers and its traffic both car and foot that never stops. It’s a hybrid of gauche and gaudy. The street canyons look to go forever but a few blocks and you are walking through a medium rise neighbourhood with its local shops and pizza slices! 

Horns blast constantly in response to the traffic congestion as pedestrians ply their way through street vendors and rough sleepers. The billboards  beat out their vibrant and competing messaging.  

The subways are piping hot and the trains are frigid cold. Extremes are nothing to this city. But the Big Apple is big enough to accomodate it all. Big buildings, big billboards, big diners, big traffic, big. . . It’s so big that only doing it ‘my way’ gets any attention or personal satisfaction. It’s diverse, unequal, unliveable, intoxicating, enthralling, inspirational and dystopian. 

NYC reflects the crisis in capitalism and in democracy.  For the Democratic Party it’s a crisis for its  future. 

New York City for now is a bulwark to the MAGA tribe and what that stands for. The disaffected and angry are at the border determined to turn a Blue city Red. 

The nostalgia for NYC is ephemeral and is nurtured on and off Broadway and in the music played in the bars and clubs that litter the city.

As a young clarinetist played out the soulful and enigmatic Rhapsody in Blue  in Washington Square others are absorbed in a cacophony of activities being played out across the square unhindered by the other. 

A metaphor for the City of New York.