Found Around NYC...

So Long NYC...

This week I leave NYC, the country's city of commerce that has always pulsated 24/7/365.  I select this final photo because it is a defining symbol of the essence of this city and it is a place, too, that has changed.  Where once it stood as a classical structure amid modern buildings in this city of commerce, it now stands draped and covered and the structure is less prominent than the new (old) symbol behind which it stands. 

Nothing stays the same.  This is the the last post here.

I'll continue blogging at MotherPie.
 

How Has 9/11 Changed Us?

This drawing, left, is the main illustration for the provocative wall of simple drawings entitled "What Happened to Us?" by Dan Perjovschi on view at the Museum of Modern Art May 2 - August 27th.

It is a wonderful project to make you be taken in and give some thought to what the artist is saying about how we have changed since 9/11.

We have changed but how, exactly is something we can now begin to come to terms with, now nearly six years later. 

I put this up after the last post on the Unintended Memorial (my word for it) because these go hand-in-hand.  Six years later there isn't much really to see at WTC, the site of the horreur. We collectively watched the event ad nauseum on cable at the time and for days thereafter.  Now the impact  of the event is greater than the victims, is greater than the ruined site, is greater than the one city that suffered.

Perjovschi created the work on the site and interacted with viewers.  The fact that he is Romanian might even give him a wider perspective on how it has changed us than we ourselves can even grasp.  Although his work seems simple - just line drawings - the most effective arstists are those that make you think about things.

Instead of seeing the hole-in-the-ground site, instead of visiting the Unitended Memorial, you might be better off visiting this art piece (if you can't go and see bunch of drawings on the huge wall, see them online - pdf) and thinking about what it has to say about how this event has changed us.  All of us.

The Unintended Memorial...

This sculpture, left, might come to be the most appreciated memorial to the 9/11 tragedy.  Pilgrimage paths and visuals keep  memories alive and there just isn't much to feel part of at the 9/11 site, visually speaking.

The Memorial to the victims of the Oklahoma City Murrah building was up fairly quickly after the event. It has empty chairs to represent victims.  It is at street level.  It has a way of marking the event and has easy access for tourists. By the time the Word Trade Center memorial is built, memories might have faded.  Hence, this sculpture in Battery Park might be the default tangible to mark the event.  It symbolizes something that survived.  What survived and how we are changed is something to contemplate about 9/11.

For three decades this sculpture by artist Fritz Koenig stood in the Plaza of the World Trade Center. Damaged on 9/11, it has been moved to the Battery Park esplanade and an eternal flame was lit on the first year anniversary of 9/11 adjacent to the sculpture. 

Like the cyclone memorial fence surrounding the OKC site at  the first large-scale terrorist attack on U.S. Soil, the original fencing surrounding the WTC had ribbons, personal photos, notes, dried flowers and teddy bears.  Now the cyclone fence at the WTC is santized, formalized and structuredas shown in the photo, right.

How something makes its way into our public psyche and becomes our collective pattern of memory might now be more digital than real.  The sculpture, above, is more suited to digital sharing and the news reals from that day are more embedded in our historical memories than any physical place might be.

Just something to think about.

A Fly on The Wall...

Art, good art, makes you think.  It stops you or stays in your mind long after you have seen it.

This fly art was plastered along the street over other poster advertisements.  I took the picture because it was unexpected and quite interesting.

It made me think afterwards about the metaphor of the fly on the wall, being able to overhear and see things that we aren't directly participants in -- the unseen observer.

This art had no words, no signature.  The ephemeral fly that makes one wonder why.

Learning to Ride a Bike...

Training wheels.  We all start life using training wheels.  I don't see many kids learning to ride  bikes in Manhattan...

This was in Central Park yesterday.

Grey Gardens...

Grey Gardens started as a documentary and is now a top Broadway musical with a book out and a film planned, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore.

Actually the story begins with a true story based on The Beales - mother and daughter - who were Lee Bouvier Radziwill's and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis' debutante cousin and her mother, their aunt.  They went from star social status to notorious reclusive characters in their 28-room mansion in East Hampton which went to the cats and decay.

What might the story be like if they had been medicated? Hmm.  Ever thought of that?

As a show, it is interesting, if not depressing.  The documentary was a reality show before anyone knew what a reality show was.  Some things might be more interesting when viewed later.  That is why I've ordered the documentary from Amazon (plus it is an interesting mother/daughter sad story).

Freedom is a Lady...

Looking up at the idea, here, in NYC - the symbol from the French who name their nouns by gender, the statue is a lady and the idea of freedom is a feminine one. 

Have you ever thought of it in quite this way?  In France, where the gift was constructed, the Statue of Liberty stood for an idea of equality.  There was a feminine strength at work.  Nouns here, in America, are thought of as being neither male nor female.

Perhaps we're missing something by limiting ourselves in our language.

Kristin Chenowith - A Mighty Mite...

Kristin Chenowith became my daughter's favorite Broadway star after seeing her as Glinda in Wicked the first week we moved here (she was nominated for a Tony for her role but lost out to her co-star, the Wicked Witch). Chenowith as born and raised in Oklahoma, the place of my daughter's birth.  Chenowith was the first-runner up in the Miss Oklahoma pageant.

It isn't often you have a star with such cross-platform talent.  She's one to watch.  She was the subject of a recent NYTimes article, She Sings! She Acts! She Prays!

She has issued two CDs, Let Yourself Go and As I Am.  Her vocal range is four octaves.

We just saw her in The Apple Tree, a Broadway musical that will open December 14.  If it wasn't for Chenowith's performance and my interest in seeing her talent onstage, we would have walked out.  Everyone else seemed to stay.

She might be a talent to watch.  She had a role in Nora Ephron's 2005 movie Bewitched and In 2006, she appeared in five films including The Pink Panther, RV, Stranger Than Fiction, and Deck the Halls.  She also has done commercials for Old Navy. 

After her stint in The Apple Tree, she is set to play the British singer Dusty Springfield in the 2007 musical Asphalt Beach.

At 4'11, she's a mighty mite.

 

John Lennon Would Have Been 66...

Lennon would have been 66 this month. He is still relevant.  In many ways he was way ahead of his time.

The Beatles' Cirque-du-Soleil Las Vegas Musical, The Beatles LOVE, is running at The Mirage.  The soundtrack, a  mashup album, will be released in November.  George Martin and his son, Giles, are the producers.

The U.S. vs. John Lennon, a documentary, opened in NYC last month and two weeks ago nationally. A.O. Scott of the New York Times wrote that the documentary did some interesting historical spade work and was flavored with the era's excesses and oddities.  It tells the tale of Lennon's anti-war activism and the effort to deport him by Nixon in order to silence Lennon.

In a review, John Weiner of The Nation wrote, "Those "activities" – planning a concert tour that would combine rock music with antiwar organizing and voter registration for the 1972 election – were stopped cold by Nixon's deportation order,"   and the tour never happened.  Fast forward to more than 30 years later, in the '04 election, and "another group of rock stars finally did exactly what Lennon had been thinking about doing...when Bruce Springsteen and a group of activist rock musicians did an election year concert tour of battleground states with a strategy very much like Lennon's. The tour, organized by MoveOn PAC, brought the Dixie Chicks, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, and a dozen others on a tour of swing states, with the explicit goal of getting young rock fans to register to vote and vote against the Republican in the White House."

John Lennon's killer denied parole again, according to an article in the SF Gate.   Mark David Chapman  51, killed John Lennon in 1980.  A lot of things happened on October 15 in The Beatles' history... this blog has some interesting facts, fyi.

The Real Deal...

Wall Street Titan Sandy Weill's new autobiography will be released on October 9.  Called The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy, the last chapter is written by his wife, Joan. 

Margaret Atwood has learned to sign books over the internet.  Maybe he'll be able to do the same.  Weill, former CEO of Citigroup is a living legend.  His book should be a very interesting read.