And new cups, plus a word on universal goodness

.


The two mugs are thinly potted, well proportioned (both pretty to look at and well-shaped to limit heat-loss through surface evaporation), light-weight (easy to lift, don't take too much heat out of the tea), and they fit my hand perfectly (they are five-fingers-high and just the right width for my hand to wrap around comfortably). They take about 200 ml of tea, which is about the right serving for my body-size (and appetite). The fluted opening assures that the edge remains cool, allowing one to lift them (as one lifts Asian cups -- by the edge) without burning one's fingers.

The first one is matte. I have yet to research this type of glaze.



It's certainly very pretty: mildewed reeds in early autumn. This cup is especially pretty inside:



even though, personally, I prefer cups with white or light-colored glazing inside as they allow one to see the color of the tea. (This is not only pleasant, but also has the practical benefit of allowing one to judge whether the tea is strong enough).

The second cup is glossy-glazed. The outside glaze is called robin's egg: the glaze contains a mixture of two different salts which melt at slightly different temperatures and separate in the kiln, creating tiny, milkish runs in a dark-blue background.

This is not the best robin's egg I have seen, or even the best I own, but it is the best robin's egg I own on a cup which is comfortable to drink from. This glaze is famously difficult to fire: out of 10,000 cups perhaps 2 or 3 might be "perfect" (and command huge prices). Finding a piece which has both the right shape and a well-executed robin-egg is very difficult.






The inside is glazed in a different color: a kind of blond caramel. This, too, has run revealing finger marks on the inside of the cup (the cup was thrown on a wheel). They seem to me like the ribs of the great behemoth -- seen from inside the belly.



I like containers with a strong color contrast between inside and outside. And the caramel color is light enough to allow me to see the color of my tea.

I have declared these two cups to be a set: similar enough to be a set, yet different enough to be interesting. I like to mis-match my pottery this way: uniform sets testify to the aesthetic laziness of the host.

I'll serve you your tea in them when you come. By the side of my pond, of course (small ponds being, as you know, the perfect place to have tea, especially if there is a small wooden bridge nearby, or a small painted wooden boat; or so says a Chinese classic, the Chasu).

Here I have them all: the pond, the bridge, the boat, and the tea.

*

The Platonic question as to whether there are universal values has herein its answer: some cups are better than others. A cup must be not too large (or one can't finish the tea) and not too small (or one is kept busy rebrewing and refilling); it must be of a shape that fits one's hand well; and shape and thickness which won't cool the tea excessively; it should be white or light-colored inside to allow one to evaluate (and enjoy) the color of the tea.

Thus a goodness of an object can be shown to depend on the use to which it is put. It is very well for someone to say "I prefer that cup over this", but what if he is not a tea-drinker? Then, in a certain sense, his opinion is irrelevant and his cup is probably useless -- for tea.

Similarly with glazes: as one learns about the techniques and looks at different pieces executed in it one learns to recognize quality -- the difficulty of the piece and the excellence (or not) of its execution: a connoisseur is only as good as the sum total of everything he has seen. It's hard to say that a robin's egg is better than a celadon; but it is quite easy (and uncontroversial) to say that this robin's egg is better than that. And thus under certain circumstances one may well say that this robin's egg (a rare, well executed robin's egg) is better than that celadon (a badly executed celadon). In this sense it is true that quality is relative; but not in the sense in which the phrase is usually meant: there is nothing arbitrary about the goodness, only the initial conditions are. (E.g. shall we have a tea cup in robin's egg? If so, which one will do best?)

Thus it can be seen that there are true value judgments: they are true within a context. It's a little like the direction in which you point your car: north is the good direction if that is in fact where your destination lies. But if that is where your destination lies, no other direction will do.

An experiment in aesthetics

How good Maria Joao-Pires is, I thought to myself with surprise, while listening to this: Mozart's piano concerto No. 9, the Jeunehomme ('the young man", 1777), the middle movement, Andantino ("somewhat walking").

She isn't boring at all, I said to myself with surprise, but most amazingly, gently touching, sensitive and wise! And: how wrong have I been all my life thinking otherwise! How unjust!

But then I returned home, got out the album and, having listened to it several times through, had to concede that Maria Joao-Pires was, after all, incredibly dull. It hadn't her rendition of Mozart that was so great; nor even the Mozart himself; it had been the view out of the window: the sun slowly leaning towards the evening, the light turning golden, then somewhat orange, then orangish-russet-red, shadows growing in the world, breeze rising off the sea, white clouds' reflections on the bay, their most Piero-della-Francesca liquid edges in yellowish grey.

Such evenings are rare even here.

On such evenings, even Maria Pires sounds good.

And the lessons in aesthetics? It is this: when you think something moves you, double check: are you entirely sure that what moves you is what you think moves you, or could it be something entirely else happening at the same time, in parallel, possibly even unnoticed?

In which he descends (briefly) into hell

(and makes his own illustration)

Every great classic must obligatorily contain a chapter in which the hero travels out to the limit of the known world and peers beyond. (If it doesn't, it fails; ask Camoes and Mickiewicz why they are not taught in the Dead White Men courses in America).

The epic chapter of my life took place this morning.

I went to a certain suburb to look for shoes in a certain large shopping mall. This expedition necessitated a departure from the quaint city center, with its seven hills, its aqueducts, its triumphant arches, its mosaicked side-walks, its cute wooden trams and the levitating clouds of blooming jacaranda everywhere, its tiny retail shops and minuscule family owned eateries, its mainly pedestrian traffic -- and into the wholesale mass-market world of modernity.

The impression this created was so overwhelming that upon returning I immediately set out on a massive substance abuse program, carefully blending uppers and downers for that so very much needed knock-out blow.

Over there there had been broad freeways down which endless chains of motor vehicles tore with a roar; and square honey-comb towers -- factories for living -- in which people somehow managed to live cheek-by-jowl without going on a wild shooting spree too oft; gigantic shopping malls, convoluted architecturally, full of absolutely worthless, shockingly ugly stuff; and proferring in their feederies (deemed "restaurants") what looked like mold-injected, polymer-based artificially colored sugar pulp. Everything was fast and noisy and there was not a single pretty thing upon which to rest one's soul.

A huge tower full of apartments with head-bashing low ceilings (but central vacuum-cleaning, I am sure) was being marketed at a site overlooking a major snarling freeway traffic exchange. "Lux living" said the copy, but it should have said "Luxury living easy to get away from" (that is -- if you buy this place, you needn't really be here).

A hard thought struck me: goodness gracious, people live like that.

My god, I thought to myself, these suburbs have grown in the last fifty years; but how did they grow? Where must one come from to find this kind of life sufficiently bearable to choose it over wherever it is one comes from?

*

Later, a glance at the real-estate magazine revealed a puzzling fact: the housing there, in the middle of all that, is hardly less expensive than it is here; 20-30% discount on average over this -- which is, I grant you, a theme-park life, but a cute theme park life all the same, agreeable in the extreme, easy on the senses, and pretty well laid back.

Which means that the quality/price curve is here extremely shallow -- as it is in the rest of the world: as one travels down the curve, one gives up a tremendous amount of quality to gain a little in price advantage -- an apartment which costs 10% less to rent is a lot worse than its 10% more expensive brother.

But try to go up from the middle and the opposite seems true: to generate a 10% improvement in quality from here -- the place where I am -- one must be prepared to double the price one pays. The price-to-quality curve seems therefore to look like this:



Where the axis cross is the "middle" of the market (me, and almost certainly -- you). If we go down from here (look for a cheaper apartment, for instance), any saving will come at a huge cost to quality; but going up from here we pay through our nose for even a small improvement.

I am not sure why the curve should look like this, though suspect it has something to do with income distribution.

*

How steeply prices rise as one tries to go up from the middle was confirmed for me in the afternoon when I visited an oriental carpet dealer -- in my own quaint and laid-back neighborhood of course (my much abused soul had needed to look at pretty things to recover from the morning's rude shock). The friendly Iranian man took me through the back, up some regal stairs and into a cavernous apartment hung and laid with delicious carpets (it was like entering the Ali-Baba cave). And there they were, beautiful, restful and silent: mamluks, tekkes, herazes, sardes, qoms reposing in total and absolute silence, not rushing anywhere, not making a sound. There I sat on a snow-white silk qom, all 40,000 euros of it, and slowly my soul calmed down.

Another theory break

.
(Enough looking. Now think).

Listening religiously to the BBC3 series of complete Handel operas (what a worthy project to play them all, what a worthy project to hear them all!) I have had the opportunity to hear more than several interviews with conductors and performers regarding Handel's music, and this occasioned a most interesting discovery: more than several of these great men and women have praised the profound psychology of Handel's operas.

Yes!

I quote: his deep understanding and realistic, convincing representations of human psyche in action.

Er????

This can only serve to prove one point: that music, good music anyway, makes us stupid.

First, Handel had nothing to do with the writing of his libretti, which means that he wasn't responsible for their psychology, realistic or otherwise; and, in any case, anyone in his right mind must surely agree that these libretti are all hilariously unrealistic. They are not just silly in the extreme, they are also all written to the hackneyed Metastasio pattern:

1) love quadrangle + 2) disguise + 3) vendetta + 4) happy end (i.e., the square squared).

The music which Handel wrote for these libretti is of course often magnificent (if sometimes repetitive, but, hey, anything which is good to hear once is surely good to hear seventy five times, no?), but this does not change the fact that the libretti are inane.

Personally, I love Handel operas -- most of them, anyway. Indeed, listening to Handel operas is one of my most preferred ways to waste time. But I am refusing to let myself be carried away: for all its wonder and beauty, the greatness of the music does nothing to improve the disarming silliness of the story. Indeed, it is precisely in this that Handel's greatness is revealed: great music can be composed to any text, a laundry list if need be.

So why do all these people think Handel's psychology is great?

For the same reason, I suppose, for which high school girls think their beautiful boyfriends are also incredibly smart; and scholars spend their lifetimes investigating the supposed deep meanings of Giorgione's Philosophers. Some mis-wiring in our brain makes it difficult for us to grasp that perfectly beautiful objects may be in every other way perfectly trivial.

And this is, of course, the greatest mystery of life: only a faulty wiring in the brain could make the universally made connection between: "oh, he is so good looking" and "I want to waste the rest of my life raising his offspring".

Beauty is a way to subvert the minds of others. The art of its appreciation lies in being able to admire it without letting one's brain to be subverted.

(I am not saying that beauty is worthless; for the pure pleasure it renders, it is hard to beat; all I am saying is -- try to be smart when indulging it).

A clue to successful concert going

FF.
.

Yundi Li rocks.

No, that's not right.

Let me rephrase that.



******************
YUNDI LI ROCKS
******************

It was by far the best Pictures I have ever heard. I was sitting at the edge of my seat, holding my breath and gripping the arm-rest for dear life.

Whoa.

Now, until winning the Chopin competition, aged 18, Xiao Yun had never studied in the West, or even outside of China; so much for the old saw, then -- the vaguely Eco-Steinerian hogwash so beloved of pianists in western music schools -- that Asian pianists are dull because they don't understand the music (have not read the Greeks, don't personally know Jesus, whatever). In truth, many Asian pianists are dull (we shall not name any names); but so are most pianists world over; and I have personally known a few Asian pianists who weren't dull at all. (And even slept with one: she played a real mean Piano, Percussion and Celesta).

Now Xiao Yun stands proof for all to see the hogwashness of hogwash.

*

By the usual vagaries of concert-going (whereby the front row seats get blocked out to sponsors who then do not bother to turn up), I spent the first half sitting in the third row -- the only seats available in the whole house at the time I made the booking. And it was naaas-tea: O Grande Auditorio proved to be, in fact, O Grande Ospedale -- bird flu or something (pooh-leaze, if you can't stop yourself from coughing, hacking and snorting stay at home and give your ticket to someone who can). Besides, it seems, the locals must keep cats (here, "a common parasite found in cats may be affecting human behavior on a mass scale", read it and have your cat put to sleep now): there was so much fidgeting, twitching, program dropping, notebook consulting, purse-innards inspecting, and just plain wheezing, I could not concentrate at all.

In the third row, damn it. What did the poor wretches in row 29 get out of the concert, I have no idea.

But then, for second half, I snuck (sp?) into one of those VIP-abandoned seats; and the experience was incredible; best second half for many years; heaven and hell. You do not just hear the music better -- the sound wave gushing out of the open box hits you right in the face; or see the artists better (the fingers, the beads of sweat, the color in the cheek, the painful concentration, sometimes fear, sometimes delight); you also do not hear or see the audience.

This is what business consultants like to call a win-win situation.

*

(By the way: the best way to listen to the grand piano is to lie under it while it is being whacked. In college, I had a pianist girlfriend and used to lie under her piano when she played. In time I developed a trick: I went to the music school and simply barged in on one of the practice rooms, asking whoever was in there to let me lie under his or her piano. They almost always did. (Wouldn't you?) The ability to do so is the only thing I miss about my college town. Many years later, my heart skipped a beat when I read a letter of Georges Sand talking about her lying for hours under Frédéric's piano).

*

Now, onto the (usual) points.

First, lesson one:
If you go to a live concert, get seats in the first row -- whatever they might cost: an arm and a leg, your grandma's hearing-aid, whatever; just do it; or else -- don't bother. Really. I mean it. Just don't.

Second, lesson two:
If you ever wonder why other people do not share your impressions of a concert, well, they must have sat in a different row from you.

Corollary:
The concert is thus a good model for understanding all opinions regarding culture: there are 29 rows in the Gulbenkian plateia (plus Allahu-Akbar only knows how many in the balcao); which means that no more than 1/29 of the audience had the first rate experience. (Less than that in fact: the guy sitting next to me must have been from the sponsors: he kept consulting his watch).
This fact makes it virtually certain that the opinion you are getting from random someone else about a concert -- or a piece of art -- is wholly and completely worthless. (They are just too likely to fall into the 28/29ths cohort).
If you must consult, consult with those who have the time, money and commitment to do it right. Or not at all.

The truth is that art is not just an elite experience; it is an extreme-elite experience, as Nancy Mitford's Love in cold climate shows (in the novel, the aristocrats who own the art works are almost to a man too stoopid to know what they own). It's not that "only 10% know anything about it". Proper art appreciation is measured in parts per billion.

(Like -- three).

*

Anyway, here is Xiao Yun beating the bejeezus out of Prokof's Number 2. Prokof's Number 2 is some of the most barbarous -- no -- deranged -- stuff ever written for the piano (Bartok's Allegro Barbaro is tame substance by comparison) and on this account it has been rarely played or recorded; ("Er", said Prokof to himself halfway through a movement. "I don't like this tempo. Let's speed up", and sped up but after 12 bars: "Nah, that's too fast! Let's slow down", etc.); but delicate Xiao Yun (note the permed hair-do a la Frédéric -- who else? -- ) serves it up right. (Too bad about the orchestra; Xiao Yun also recorded this work with BerPhilius but no one had thought to pirate that on you tube, so you must buy it online to the get the optimum bang.

Alright, enough talk. Here is Xiao Yun. Knock yourself out:



PS. Alright, so I can't stop. Googling a bit I find that Xiao Yun played the same program in NYC in October, and that the NYT reviewer thought (here) as I did: that the Mazurkas were alright, the Polonaise fine (it was fine, I just don't love Polonaises, they're too close to home or something), and the Pictures fantastic ("a gripping, boldly conceived account"). Clearly, all great minds do think alike -- provided they have the same input (i.e., sit in the same front row seats, etc.)

(It's nice to read a reviewer one agrees with; especially since most I violently do not).

PPS. The reviewer is right in pointing out technical imperfections in the Pictures. I too have spotted three places where things didin't go exactly right (in one instance even outright wrong). But it is possible -- as paradoxical as that sounds -- to fail technically and yet deliver fantastic music all the same. There is a live Gilels recording -- the Busoni here -- to prove the point; error ridden and absolutely superb.

Greatness isn't possible without superb technique, but it isn't identical with it.