The Pearl Flash_01

Foreword

Yes, it´s time for something else…

I have indeed been busy sorting out the many ideas, input and inspirations that came across my way and my mind recently. I decided that I needed another tool to collect and make them into some kind of an order... et voilà: here is my first issue of The Pearl Flash:-)
It might have an introspective and self-portrayal aspect and surely does not deliver an in-depth consideration of all the issues raised, but that´s meant to be: is it really always necessary to think everything through from beginning to end? Sometimes, we sure wouldn´t even start doing a thing if we knew about its forthcoming, sordid end... um... well, well.

Anyway, let me say that I rather intend to structure my own flashes and snapshots on other peoples more or less outstanding accomplishments, performances, behaviour and thoughts. I will add some insignificant comments of my own here and there, but please feel free to ignore me completey: As usual, I´m writing mainly for my love for words and thoughts, and secondly for anyone interested.

x Alice

Octobre 28, 2006

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Stuff to catch

Literature

Joe Boyd: White Bicycles - Making Music in the 60ies
edited at Serpent´s Tail Press in May 2006, ISBN:1852429100

A most insightful, witty and `out-of-the-guts´ book! The 60ies throughout and beyond clichés, and a wonderful chronicle of British music. I discovered some grandious British folk singer/songwriter through this book, like Anne Briggs. I might was born too late, but I caught the ring.

For more, visit:
www.joeboyd.co.uk
www.serpentstail.com


Music

“12 Secundos de Oscuridad” by Jorge Drexler

Noted for his musical contribution to the brillian movie “The Motorcycle Diaries”, this former otorhinolaryngologist and lyric poet from Uruguay has delivered a quiet, intelligent and subtle record about the constructive force of doubts. I´m not that much into South-American music and my Spanish is rather poor, and I usually dislike smooth male voices, but this piece is well worth hearing. My favourite is “La vida es más compleja de lo que parec" - life is much sublter than it seems.

For more, see and hear here: http://www.jorgedrexler.com/


Lieu

The White Dunes of Norderney

"Sea, old sea
Please, hear my plea…"

The harsh wind blowing on sandy dunes, the wild north-sea, the ever-changing sky made my heart leap. Besides, there´s a very nice ´n´cosy restaurant near-by:-)
I´m a lucky woman.

http://www.norderney.de/publish/viewfull.cfm?objectID=212E97EF_9A36_4172_474B4BCBA8BCAE8C
http://www.weisseduene.com/

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Flashback in Admiration

Film

”As It Is In Heaven” by Kay Pollack
Sweden, 2005

Best foreign film at last year´s Oscars, I missed to see it (not only because of this reason, but for various reasons). Now I caught up, and I was more than delighted. This film about a burnt-out superstar conductor who returns to his homeland village in Sweden, where he learns to simply live and love again - music, people and... a woman, is beautifully crafted, very enrapting and all-over rousing.

For more, see:
http://www.wie-im-himmel-derfilm.de/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382330/


Music

“Crossroads” by Cream

Exactly, not that Gibson guitar, not the Festival, not the Centre, not even the collection-CD. The late 60ies Cream-version that appeared on “Wheel of Fire”, of course! What a mighty kick-ass song!! I can´t stop listening to those physical guitar licks..


Literature

Joseph Conrad: The Return
written circa early 1897; never published in magazine form; collected in "Tales of Unrest", 1898;
(Conrad, presaging the sentiments of most readers, once remarked, "I hate it").

This dissecting marital short story by Polish born British novelist Joseph Conrad punched me in the heart and made my blood freeze. It´s a set book for all newly– and elderly-weds, and for all
adulterers in mind and in real.

For more, simply read this incredible short story. Full stop.

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On the Horizon

Exibition

Picasso - Malen gegen die Zeit

Düsseldorfer Kunstsammlung K20
February 3, 2007 to May 28, 2007

I have focused a lot on Picasso in the mid-90ies when I lived in Paris, visiting as much exhibitions as possible, and reading everything about his life and work that I could grab. Like the bewildering and fascinating autobiography “Life With Picasso” by his longtime (but not last) mistress and companian Francoise Gilot.

The Düsseldorf exposition will highlight his late work, and especially how his work became a fight against his leaking life-time. I heard that it will also reflect his love and relationship to his last wife Jaqueline Roque, who was 46 years younger than him. I don´t like her as much as Francoise, but it´ll be interesting to learn how she gave him the space and the atmosphere for his late creative activity.

And I really look forward to rediscover that 90-year-old Picasso who said: "I have just begun."


Science

Phenomenons of Assortative Mating and Major Histocampability Complex

I just bumped into these two scientific phenomenons, which are very interesting it seems.

I´ll have to get into that...

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A closer Look

Personality

Hannah Arendt, German Jewish Thinker and Political Theorist
(she refused to see herself as a philosopher...)
1906 - 1975

Young German journalist Arno Widmann who met her in the late 60ies instantly fell in love with her for her radiant "sex-appeal of intelligence". She was an outstanding woman, best-known for her Political Theory, her passion of thinking and her brilliant analysis of human nature and collective phenomenons, like totalitarism.

But I am interested in another aspect of her. As a very young student in the early 1920ies, she fell deeply in love and became the mistress of her older teacher, famous philosopher Martin Heidegger who was married father of two children and 17 years older than her. This alliance had a major influence on her life and work.

Although after a few difficult years of a hidden relationship, she was married twice herself, she kept a life-long, intense though sporadic romantic relationship with that man, and even managend to forgive him not only his emotional flaccidities, but also his "intellectual mistakes" when he adhered the Nazi party in the thirties for conceptual reasons. After consequently cutting off all contact during that time for many years, she (!) had the nerve and dignity to get in touch with him again in the early 1950ies and to install and keep up a beautiful and enriching conversation and very special friendship until his death. How admirable that she was able to differenciate between the weak and recreant side, and the brilliant, loveable and admirable other side of the man.

I want to learn more about her, she´s thrilling. I will get into her life soon.

http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump.fcgi/2006/1014/feuilleton/0012/index.html
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt

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Forecast

The next issue of the Pearl Flash will deal, amongst other things, with Italian Philosopher Umberto Galimberti´s notion of love as developed in “Le cose dell´amore” that has been recently edited in Germany, the new DVD of German musician Marius Müller-Westernhagen and the magical Island of Corsica.