When I interviewed John Cage in 1987, he told me something I’ll never forget—that attending Edgar Varèse’s concerts conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky in Philharmonic Hall in downtown Los Angeles in the late 1920’s were “statements of belief” for him. The experience set Cage on course for a lifetime as a composer of new and challenging music.
In 1976, while working in Paris teaching ESL to middle managers at a French language school, I splurged and bought two tickets to the Béjart Ballet. I wasn’t making great money so this was a big expense. I had a hot first date, however, and wanted to have a special…
I love to feel something when I drive a fast car, or as a passenger in a nice car with a good driver at the wheel. Rental cars don’t matter, though when in Europe on nice big autostradas I always drove small cars like Renault 5’s and would have loved a Ferrari…
When I was 12 and 13, cycling was everything to me. I rode around 100-150 miles weekly, was on an informal team called “Le Voyageurs” (The Travelers), complete with jerseys, chamois-seated shorts, toe clips – the whole deal. A weekend ride would have us all ride from Santa Monica Canyon up PCH…
In 1973, fresh out of grad school and after an unhappy spell in law school, unable to land a job teaching in American community colleges, I found two job postings on a UCLA international job bulletin board. One was to teach English at a brand new university in Constantine, Algeria.…
I lived in Paris for several years in the 1970s. Things were cheaper then–five francs to the dollar–but gourmet dining in fine restaurants was out of my reach. I usually ate at North African restaurants, or enjoyed the humble, bland faire at the Cité Universitaire. I nevertheless had vicarious methods…
I was both a literature and French major in college, so I could read Samuel Beckett’s novels and plays in both languages. His plays used a literary device called “stichomythia,” which had characters speaking short lines back and forth, so it was easy to read in French. Beckett, like Joseph Conrad or Vladimir Nabokov,…
George Whitman just died at the ripe old age of 98. He opened the famous Left Bank bookstore Shakespeare & Company in 1951, renaming it in 1964 in tribute to Sylvia Beach’s bookstore of the same name that closed at the onset of World War II. She ran it as a publishing company that famously published James Joyce’s revolutionary novel “Ulysses” in 1922….
I love David Byrne and Barry White, and I love cars, too. My favorites include the 1953 Packard Caribbean convertible, Henri Chapron Citroën DS 23 Pallas, 1956 Buick Roadmaster, Ferrari 365 GTB, Maserati 3500 GT… all cars I can ill-afford to own let alone properly maintain. When David Byrne once…
Keith Jarrett has released another solo album, this time called Rio. As the title would suggest, it was recorded in Rio de Janeiro. On it we hear the now familiar musical mood swings: from angular vertical runs, acrid harmonies, to unbearably lovely encores. The audience once again goes wild at…
I recently read about a new John Cage biography in the New York Times Book Review. I ordered the book, Begin Again by Kenneth Silverman, and it just arrived. Cage influenced people who don’t even know who he is. And then there are folks like Brian Eno and Ryuichi Sakamoto, both of whom owe huge…