"Size Matters Not" - Yoda

[nfotxn]

Mrs. Spleit's season finale concert went down gloriously if I do say so myself. One thing I've gotta learn is to shake people's hands when they offer it to me in odd situations. I sorta just smile an seize up. Not that I'm socially tragic, usually I'm quite gregarious. Anyhoot, happened three times tonight. On the third attempt I got it down. Old men really dig shaking my hand. It is true that you don't see as many men playing string instruments. Because I look the oldest I suppose they figure I'm the guy to congratulate.

Works for me.

I must add that although the Sandra Dakow arrangement of The William Tell Overature is monsterously simplified for the kids it's still truly glorious in that old oak church, even when full of people. The threshing D+ chords played intensely but slowly in 6 are totally.. trascendant is the only way I can describe them. Those kids make a good noise.

Ian (etherlad) came down for the concert, as he has for many and I have thanked him, which was cool. I know a lot of you have asked in the past to come down for a concert, and I appreciate your interest whole-heartedly but I'm always afraid the pressure would crack me. At least in the last year, it's been a reconstructional time to say the least. In the future, I promise.

Afterwards we returned a la casa Noble-Chree and watched Empire: Old crappy edition. It totally rocked, it'd been too long since I watched it. One thing I'd forgotten was that wonderful bitchy chemistry between Hand Solo and Princess Leia.

What I'd hadn't forgotten about was all the rad brutal/60's modernist architecture in Star Wars. Maybe it's 'cause when I was a kid growing up in Hamilton there was tons of that shit erected all around town because the place was booming from the steel industry in the 60's. I mean, most of it's totally unliveable and imposing.. but I'm oddly attracted to it's raw display of power. All the sharp edges and concrete doom pillars rising out of the ground towards the sky without regard to the weakling human beings forced to forever toil under it's imposition!

Oh, it's because I'm a megalomaniac.

Also got to chat briefly with Maria McArthry, my old art teacher, who's daugher plays with Mrs. Spleit. We get along famously and I fix her computer lots. Must reply to her email... Funny story between her and I. When I had my highschool freak-out period and finally came out my friends told her. They were enamored with the fact that I was queer at the time. She was all "Yeah, not suprising". I mean, didn't they understand? She's got her masters in studio art! The lady knows fags.

Yeah, so we're gonna do coffee sometime. It's kinda strange, in the past I'd thought it would be weird, ya know hanging out with "adults"... but now it doesn't phase me too much. It's funny, you have this precept when you're a teenager that adults are somehow really different from you. But really as you get on in age the gap seems smaller. Depending on my mood people generally seem somewhat similar to me.

Ok, I could go on tangents all night. I'm over-stimulated from all the fashionable coffee drinks and music today. Time to twitch off to bed.

Comments

[basskitkays.livejournal.com]

yeah it's odd...
at 16, 30 yr olds seem soooo different...
but yet go just a few years and say at 21...
35 yr olds don't seem nearly as different..
yet the age gap is the same...

[plaidninja.livejournal.com]

Well, when "the adults" lose their awe inspiring presence it usualy means that you yourself are becoming an "adult".
Unfortunately I've found that people with a good number of years on me can't relate very well to my life and vice versa.
A lack of comon intrests, dig?
However, if you're cultivating some mature intrests, that might make a difference. I, on the other hand, will probably never find a 40+ social group that likes to play video games and skin-pop heroin.

c'est la vie. N'est pas?

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Love that brutalist architecture - the Hamilton Art Gallery and its little "plaza" is IMO the finest example, in Hamilton, of architecture not really meant for people. When I was skipping school I always knew I could go there and hole up in a corner and read a book all day and NOBODY would accidentally find me, cause NOBODY ever went there. What were they thinking? They still (30 years later) whine constantly about how no-one uses the sculpture "plaza" ... I've heard it several times during my stint at the art/design school here in Toronto.

As for the adults vs not thing ... I find it a complicated issue, I never got on very well with most people under 20, not until I passed 30 anyway, but was always fine with 35+ people. I think most people have an age range they most easily associate with because their own personalities at that time in their lives concur with the activities and interests expected of that group; but also, as your chronological age changes, you are pushed very hard to accept certain responsibilites, roles and attitudes expected of that age group. So to me it's a pair of curves that for the lucky few run together, but for most of us, there's usually some pretty important differences between the age we feel and the age people see us as being.

In my own life, I feel out of sorts if I don't have contact with people of all ages :)

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

Upon further thought last night I think what brutalism comes close to is being like a natural (not national) geographic feature in the landscape made by man. You can climb around in it, throw down some eames chairs or a few area rugs but ultimately it's hugeness is only paralleled by mountains, oceans, cliffs and escarpments.

It's funny, I used to do exactly the same thing. Or when I was younger Barb and I used to score a smoke (Benson&Hedges Menthol 100's, we were so fuckin' sophisticated) in the many enclaves around Stelco tower at breaks from rehearsing at Hamilton Place.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I never quite thought of it that way ... for me there are a couple of important differences. The first is that natural systems never have the perfect planes and corners that brutalist architecture throws at you; the other is that I know that human beings designed and built this architecture knowing full well it was unfriendly and inhospitable and, well, brutal ... and they went ahead and did it anyway; it's like being in a house where you know you're not welcome. Of course that suited me just fine in my Angsty Tortured Teen years - see! I knew you hated me! :)

Scale and Geometry..

[sonoranbear.livejournal.com]

"..natural systems never have the perfect planes and corners that brutalist architecture throws at you.."

Take some hikes in the Catalinas the next time you're down for a visit. You'll find huge granite faces in perfect right angles and planes.. but yes, for the most part you don't find that.

I think the scale and singular composition of materials (form-poured concrete in this case) is what echos for me the natural forms while still saying "a man built me".

Defintiely not friendly, but from a psychology of space it can be very provacative.

Re: Scale and Geometry..

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I gather the "giant's causeways" (Britain) is also pretty remarkable - giant haxagonal basalt formations, in pictures they look like they musta been a Christo project or something like. There are granite formations like the ones you describe, here in midnorthern Ontario near Sudbury - giant scarps of black granite, some of them overhanging in the most improbably ways. Really makes you feel small :)

[teljanin.livejournal.com]

heh, gary and I watched empire last night!

Oh, I donno...

[danthered.livejournal.com]

As for having coffee with a former teacher...I don't know that that's so weird. Certainly it doesn't compare in weirdness to going and visiting one's former kindergarten teacher at t-plus-twenty-years and having her start a conversation about the relative merits of alcohol and marijuana while she cuts out construction-paper elephants for the next day's class project...now *THAT* one's gonna warp your mind.