Back in Vancouver

We are back in Vancouver now.  It was hard to leave; the calendar showed upcoming performances of Ives 4th symphony by the NY Philharmonic, a Charpentier opera by Les Arts Florissants, and a performance of Weill's opera "Mahagonny" by the Manhattan School of Music, among other things.   But, on the other hand, we have seen and heard many things, and I do feel the urge to sit at my desk and produce things.  Vancouver is very green and quiet, two qualities in short supply in New York, and it is great to reconnect with all our friends here.

Perhaps the lawn needs to be mowed...

I did see several more exhibitions in New York in our last week.  The Bill Brandt photography show at MOMA was impressive.  I was particularly struck by the techniques he used in altering his prints as he developed them, using various black washes to darken his prints and isolate things that interested him.  And, in general, things are dark.    I also finally caught up with the Surrealism show at the Morgan Library.  The show, like the abstraction show at MOMA, strains to include everyone they can, including Pollock and Rothko.  While I don't really have much interest any more in the surrealist aesthetic, which seems very dated to me, I did find the range of techniques that the surrealists and their fellow travelers used to be of interest.      The Morgan also had an exhibit of Proust manuscripts and corrected galleys that was fascinating.  Impossibly small handwriting, and infinite numbers of crossings out, scribbled annotations, and arrows and lines leading here and there.  It is a wonder that any Proust scholars could figure this out; it is like looking at Ives's manuscripts.

A sample corrected galley: