| Art Film Music | |
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Back from Japan
We have been back from Japan now for I don't know how long -- three weeks? Both got sick when we returned. I especially had a hard time getting back to local time. It took me a week. While I had adjusted to Tokyo time in a couple of days. Because it was spring in Tokyo and we could lie out in the sunshine at Shinjuku Gyoen. Stayed at the Easton Hotel in Nakano-Sakaue. Every morning had coffee and pain au raisin at the Vie de France at the station. There was a Romanian restaurant just down the street but we did not go because Isabella thought it would be just too weird, to eat at a Romanian restaurant in Tokyo.
Saw a lot of Noh plays. 10? 11? Over three days. My impressions of Noh: refined, delicate, at the same time raw, primal. Refined movements, and I must presume the poetry; raw in the drums and drum calls and chanting. (I wonder what effect a soliloquy would have if punctuated with drum calls.) Abstract in the sense that objects or people have significance that is understood, and no effort is expended on illusion. So -- a golden tablet falls from heaven -- the stage hand brings it out and sets it down before the actor. Look! A golden tablet fell from heaven!
We also saw one scene of Kabuki from the 47 ronin. The strangest thing is the stage hand dressed as a ninja (and all the more visible for that) running out to crouch behind the main actor and wait patiently for minutes until his moment came -- to remove the tea tray! Unless he also represented the evil impulse moving Lord such-and-such to goad his companion into drawing his sword.
Saw a lot of Noh plays. 10? 11? Over three days. My impressions of Noh: refined, delicate, at the same time raw, primal. Refined movements, and I must presume the poetry; raw in the drums and drum calls and chanting. (I wonder what effect a soliloquy would have if punctuated with drum calls.) Abstract in the sense that objects or people have significance that is understood, and no effort is expended on illusion. So -- a golden tablet falls from heaven -- the stage hand brings it out and sets it down before the actor. Look! A golden tablet fell from heaven!
We also saw one scene of Kabuki from the 47 ronin. The strangest thing is the stage hand dressed as a ninja (and all the more visible for that) running out to crouch behind the main actor and wait patiently for minutes until his moment came -- to remove the tea tray! Unless he also represented the evil impulse moving Lord such-and-such to goad his companion into drawing his sword.
Tom Paine on Stephen Harper
"The world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any."
Tom Paine to George Washington in 1796. Quoted in William Christian's column in this morning's Record (unfortunately behind the subscriber wall), where he also expresses reservations about other leaders.
Tom Paine to George Washington in 1796. Quoted in William Christian's column in this morning's Record (unfortunately behind the subscriber wall), where he also expresses reservations about other leaders.
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