2005.07.02 LIVE 8 at the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia
2005.07.02 Pope John Paul II visits the Life of Constantine tapestries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
| |
2005.07.04 12:37
1972 Olympic Stadium Munich satellite photo
Very interesting reflections of the sun.
Pan (slightly north)east and literally see BMW (Bavarian Motor Works).
And now on to find the Villa von Ow.
Already found Herrenchiemsee, due to it being in Bavaria's largest lake, and later finding Neuschwanstein should be fun.
Aerial view of the Villa von Ow, München
| |
2005.07.05 13:29
reading list (was question)
I finished reading Vanishing Point a few days ago, and I enjoyed reading it. It's not really a novel, but maybe it's at least somewhat novel. Markson continually lists a lot of (famous people) deaths along with where they occurred (which I found oddly akin to listing (famous people) deaths and when they occurred). Vanishing Point and The Odds of Ottopia make nice companion pieces for books written in 2004, although Odds's style is somewhat in advance of Vanishing's--Odds is a novel and is also novel.
The notion of Markson finally getting around to sorting out and using all the individual notes he's collected in a couple of shoeboxes (as expressed on the back cover) immediately reminded me of Ludwig Wittgenstein: Zettel (1967)--from it's back cover: "The paragraphs in this volume . . . were collected in a box file by Wittgenstein from a period beginning in 1929, though the bulk of them come from typescripts dictated between 1945 and 1948 . . ." (I've never read all of Zettel, and I probably haven't read any of it since the early 1990s, though I just found two bookmarks in it, at pages 67 and 121.)
I found I could relate to almost all of the "occidental high culture context" Markson "decapitates," so Vanishing Point did make some sense to me. Markson does tell a story, one that's on a wavelength a bit dislocated from life, and Markson's/Author's own real dislocated footsteps that have started to occur (like when he walks down the hall he's walked down hundreds of times before) act as tiny signs of his (and all our) own ultimate dislocation from life.
I think I'll read Vanishing Point again, like maybe next weekend. Hey, any book that mentions Thackeray, as a young boy, sailing from India to England, who is told by his guardian to take note of the man in the garden on the island west of Africa where the ship stopped for provisions, is certainly worth my reading again. Yes, Vanishing Point and The Odds of Ottopia are very likely the only two 2004 novels to note Napoleon at St. Helena.
ps
I was somewhat surprised to not find any mention of Life Savers in Vanishing Point, but not as surprised as when I, after the fact, realized that I twice wrote about "life savers" on 27 June 2005, first here at design-l at 11:49, and then at archinect.com (as Rita Novel) at 12:32. Life Savers really do come in all kinds of flavors.
2005.07.05 14:18
Live 8
I didn't go downtown (Philadelphia) for LIVE 8, but I did watch some of the local news coverage as the concert started and later as it ended. (I don't have cable tv.) That's about the same thing I did the day of LIVE AID. Back then the (local Philly band) The Hooters opened the show. I liked Will Smith's musical performance, and when Richard Gere introduced Smith's performance, after he (Gere) said he was born in Philadelphia, he should have said that his parents then sold their house to Smith's parents (just to make Smith laugh).
I drove through parts of Northeast Philadelphia in the late afternoon, and the street traffic was noticably thinner than usual. The waitress that served me dinner out near King of Prussia Friday nigth said she was going to LIVE 8 by train, so I assume a lot of locals did the same thing. After Saturday night dinner at my Mom's, we watched a little of the end of LIVE 8 on the local news (--it was the only news reported that night). There was lots of behind-the-scenes stuff, and when my mother saw Paula Abdul being briefly interviewed, she (my mother) said something and just started laughing. I said, "What did you just say?!" "Why doesn't she just let them hang out altogether?" Mom replied. Paula was wearing a low cut dress. I think that's my favorite LIVE 8 moment.
...the crowd also compressed on the Parkway in 1979 the moment when Pope John Paul II arrived to serve Mass atop Logan Circle. I left (and walked back to my car parked behind the Art Museum) very soon after that happened too.
I have a feeling that a lot of "stars" are now Horace Trumbauer architecture fans, but they just don't know it in those terms yet.
| |
2005.07.07 17:45
and then there's pop-out-of-it culture - Unbekannt
2005.06.11: And don't forget "Creating One's Own Virtual Museum of Architecture" will be presented by Richard Krautheimer and Philip Johnson on 7 July 2005 within the enormous subterranean arched vaults of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Yes, calendrical coincidence was all the buzz again. As was last weekend's London/Philadelphia bilocation reenactment. And now subterranean arched vaults...from the tube to front row seats.
Krautheimer is still just in awe of Tertullian's and Piranesi's "De Spectaculis II" delivered 14 May 2005. It just never occurred to him before that the Mausoleum of Romulus/Circus of Maxentius complex (which reenacts the almost two hundred years earlier Mausoleum of Hadrian/Circus of Hadrian complex) became the paradigm, albeit inverted, for all the Roman Christian "church" architecture immediately after the Basilica Constantiniani (St. John Lateran) and the Basilica San Pietro Vaticano. That aerial shot of the Mausoleum of Constantina (Santa Costanza) adjacent the circus-like dining hall first "basilica" of St. Agnes made it all so clear. If only the circus-like dining hall first "basilica" of Sts. Pietro and Marcellinus adjacent the Mausoleum of Helena were still to be seen from the air. How clever of Eutropia and Helena to invert the pagan 'munus' architecture into Christian 'munus' architecture, and how very clever of Piranesi to secretly hide all this architectural history information within the ever quaestio abstrusa Ichnographia Campus Martius. Krautheimer freely admitted he wants to "redux" his "virtual museum of architecture," the Corpus Basilicum Christianum Romae.
Alas, Johnson is still in surprise shock since late January, i.e., he's for the most part speechless, which is a welcome change, even for himself. He never imagined such a thing as the Horace Trumbauer Architecture Fan Club that he is now a part of it, albeit he now has so, so much to really learn. Funny though, he's still "dying" to know what other architects will be joining the club. Whenever he names one of his quondam architecture "friends," the rest of the club just shake their heads "No" and say, "You still shouldn't throw stones."
Krautheimer's 108th birthday party yesterday was ever so intellectually stimulating, and Johnson's 99th birthday party tomorrow is being based on the theme of stupefaction. Apparently, Eutropia and Helena still like to invert things, and rumor has it that Maxentius and Constantine might even provide some entertainment with a "song and dance."
2005.07.07 18:21
Krautheimer and Johnson
Wow, Denise Scott Brown (coincidently) speaking in the quondam Constantinople!
I wonder if Scott Brown remembers how I told her, at the 14 July 2001 Out of the Ordinary book signing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, how St. Helena (a native of Drepanum, today's Yalova, Turkey) was the first master architect and planner of Christian architecture. She (Scott Brown) at least said, "That's fascinating." Now I have to tell her how Eutropia, a native Syrian and the mother of Maxentius, was what one could call the brains behind Helena's (and Constantine's) architectural operations.
Gosh, 14 July 2001 was also the first and last time I shook hands with Steven Izenour. He died a month and a week later, on the same date and time as my maternal grandmother's 1988 death.
I also told Robert Venturi he was the reason I now often visit Stenton. Venturi said, "What!?" So I explained how he, in 1983, via an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, said Stenton was on his list of favorite Philadelphia buildings. Venturi then said, "Oh, you forget things like that."
Odd how Venturi, later that afternoon, decided to take the group I was with to a house he recently "discovered" on Girard Avenue, his latest favorite Philadelphia building.
|