Notes & Quotes

Hiatus

2011-03-03T05:39:00.009+01:00

(h-ts) A gap or interruption in space, time, or continuity; a break.

"Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another."

Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

She Could Have Been A Scientist

2011-03-02T05:41:00.001+01:00

The New York Times reports an interesting background story to Oscar winner's Natalie Portman's career: "On Sunday night, the gorgeously pregnant Natalie Portman, 29, won an Oscar for her performance as Nina, a mentally precarious ballerina in the shock fantasy “Black Swan.” Among the lesser-known but nonetheless depressingly impressive details in Ms. Portman’s altogether too precociously storied career is that as a student at Syosset High School on Long Island back in the late 1990s, Ms. Portman made it all the way to the semifinal rounds of the Intel competition. For those who know how grueling it can be to put together a prize-worthy project and devote hundreds of hours of “free” time at night, on weekends, during spring break and summer vacation, doing real, original scientific research while one’s friends are busy adolescing, the achievement is testimony enough to Ms. Portman’s self-discipline and drive. While carrying out her investigation into a new, “environmentally friendly” method of converting waste into useful forms of energy, and maintaining the straight-A average she’d managed since grade school, Ms. Portman already was a rising movie star. She’d been in films directed by Woody Allen, Tim Burton and Luc Besson, appeared opposite Julia Roberts, Jack Nicholson, Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, Drew Barrymore and I’m getting tired of typing celebrity names here. She took on the major role of Queen Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy that rocketed her to international fame. And then she went on to Harvard University to study neuroscience and the evolution of the mind."

Bach

2011-03-01T05:35:00.002+01:00

"Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all."

Helmut Walcha

Audition

2011-02-28T06:11:00.002+01:00

To sit in an audition jury is less fun than most people think. Most of all for a sensitive writer. It's always an awkward situation to watch a professional actor/singer show off to get a job. I tend to suffer with the contenders. Sometimes I even get upset. This happens when a gifted singer presents a song that is beyond his abilities. Deplorably that is not an exception.

How To Avoid A Fall

2011-02-27T05:47:00.003+01:00

"No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings."

William Blake

The Inspiration Of Anger

2011-02-26T05:03:00.002+01:00

"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret."

Ambrose Bierce

Better

2011-02-25T06:08:00.003+01:00

"It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not."

André Gide

An Understanding Agent

2011-02-24T05:49:00.001+01:00

"Sometimes a writer may look for more than questions or may ask for concrete suggestions, but one way or another the choices for the work have to be organic and emotionally logical to the writer, or else they do come from someone else, will be false and stilted, will take away from the organic rhythm of the work, and the play invitably suffers. I don't believe play doctoring works. Nurturing does."

Peregrine Wittlesey

The Scent Of Women

2011-02-23T05:52:00.001+01:00

Recent studies have found large changes in cues and behavior when a woman is at the stage of peak fertility. Lap dancers get much higher tips. The pitch of a woman’s voice rises. Men rate her body odor as more attractive and respond with higher levels of testosterone. At this peak-fertility stage, women are more interested in going to parties and dance clubs, and they dress more attractively (as judged by both men and women). Some women’s attitudes toward their own partners also change, according to research by Dr. Haselton along with a U.C.L.A. colleague, Christina Larson, and Steven Gangestad of the University of New Mexico.

Driving Out Hate

2011-02-22T05:20:00.005+01:00

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Crie De Coeur

2011-02-21T05:16:00.000+01:00

Toward the end of 2010, a small book by a 93-year-old man unexpectedly reached the summit of the bestseller list in France. Indignez-vous! by Stéphane Hessel sold more than 600,000 copies between October and the end of December, propelling it above Prix Goncourt–winner Michel Houellebecq’s novel La carte et le territoire by several hundred thousand copies. Hessel had written other books. His publishers, the independent Indigène Editions in Montpellier, far from Paris, had produced other volumes. But none had reached the public in such numbers. The book both reflected and anticipated the spirit of student demonstrations in France and Britain, as it did the wave of revolt now challenging dictatorships in the Middle East.

Hessel’s life would make a novel, although his story is too hopeful to be told by nihilist Houellebecq. His father, Franz Hessel, was a German Jewish writer who emigrated to France with his family in 1924, when Stéphane was 7. Franz’s friend Henri-Pierre Roché used him and his wife, Prussian beauty Helen Grund, as models for Jules and Kate in his 1953 novel Jules et Jim. This was the enchanting tale of a woman who loved and was loved by two men that was translated to the screen in 1962 by François Truffaut. Franz Hessel wrote novels in German and French. His admiration for France and French literature led him to produce, with the great German Jewish literary critic Walter Benjamin, the first German translation of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. Stéphane grew up in a literary milieu that the German invasion of France shattered in 1940. After studying at the University of Paris’s prestigious École Normale Supérieure, he served in the French Army during the Battle of France and, like more than a million other French soldiers, became a prisoner of war. Following his escape from a POW camp, he joined Gen. Charles de Gaulle and his small band of Free French résistants. Hessel’s was a rare act of patriotism when most of the French professed loyalty to Vichy leader Marshal Philippe Pétain and his policy of collaboration with Germany. The attitude of the majority of Hessel’s military colleagues found expression in the decision of a French court-martial that sentenced de Gaulle in absentia to death for treason. Hessel belonged to a tiny minority that was outraged enough to oppose Pétain’s New Order, which replaced “liberty, equality and fraternity” with “work, family and nation.”

While Stéphane was working with de Gaulle in London, Franz Hessel died in France. Stéphane parachuted into occupied France in advance of the Allied invasion of 1944 to organize Resistance networks. The Gestapo captured him and subjected him to the baignoire, a form of torture that would later be called waterboarding. He was transported to Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps, avoiding the gallows only by switching identities with an inmate who had died. While being transferred to Bergen-Belsen, he escaped.

Hessel became a diplomat after the war and was involved, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, in drafting the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Awards and honors followed, the most recent of which are the Council of Europe’s North-South Prize in 2004, the rank of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor in 2006 and the 2008 UNESCO/Bilbao Prize for the Promotion of a Culture of Human Rights. Throughout his postwar life as a diplomat and writer, Hessel has retained the sense of indignation that drove him during the war. This book is a testament to his belief in the universality of rights, as his defense of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and of illegal immigrants in France attests. The popularity of this slim but powerful volume answered the public’s need for a voice to articulate popular resentment of ruling-class ruthlessness, police brutality, stark income disparities, banking and political corruption, and victimization of the poor and immigrants. Hessel had arrived in France when many of the French were decrying Jewish immigration as the “threat from the East” (about which Joseph Roth wrote movingly at the time in essays later collected and published in the book The Wandering Jews). Of course, the real threat from the East was the Nazism that many on the French right admired as an antidote to what they perceived as the indiscipline of French society. Their intellectual heirs—echoing the earlier distaste for foreigners and for the ostensible fecklessness of the working class—hold positions of power in France today.

Hessel writes in this book, “How lucky I am to be able to draw on the foundation of my political life: the Resistance and the National Council of the Resistance’s program from sixty-six years ago.” That program, declared on March 15, 1944, set out the wartime and, significantly, postwar goals of the Resistance. Defeating the Nazis and their French collaborators was only a stage, the combined Resistance declared, on the way to “a true economic and social democracy.” Hessel rejects the claims that the state can no longer cover the costs of such a program. It managed to provide that support immediately after the Liberation, “when Europe lay in ruins.” How could it not afford to do the same after it became rich? Similarly, in Britain the state paid for free universal education, including higher education, free universal medical care and other benefits that improved the health and well-being of the country’s children immeasurably after a war that left the nation bankrupt. Now, after half a century of prosperity and the accumulation of fabulous fortunes, the government says it can no longer pay for the social rights for which an earlier generation fought and for which it voted overwhelmingly in 1945. The British coalition government’s cuts in social benefits, its dramatic increase in the cost of university education and its transformation of the National Health Service into blocks of private trusts come in tandem with its absolution of the tax obligations of major corporations like Vodafone and its public subsidies to private banks. Outrage and indignation are not inappropriate responses.

Charles Glass in "The Nation" (Abridged)

GPS Controlled Students

2011-02-20T05:58:00.004+01:00

Students cutting class is something that has existed ever since school was invented. But the Anaheim Union High School District school district is enacting a plan to get their kids in line. According to the Orange County Register, "seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences or more this school year are assigned to carry a hand-held GPS device about the size of a cell phone." The program has a great success rate: "Where the GPS technology has been implemented, average attendance among chronically truant students jumped from 77 percent to 95 percent during the six-week program."

Bed Pets

2011-02-19T05:46:00.002+01:00

According to a recent study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 14 to 62 percent of the 165 million dogs and cats in the United States sleep in bed with humans, with other surveys skewing higher. Other surveys are skewing even higher.

First Musical Ever

2011-02-18T05:37:00.005+01:00

The other day I was asked what I regard as the first musical ever. Spontaneously I answered: "The Magic Flute, of course". In the late 1780s Mozart complained that theatre music should be for everybody and not for the manicured gardens and gilded opera houses reserved for the aristocrats. Mozart was proud of his hits, boasting in his letters that his melodies where being played and sung on the streets of Prague and Vienna.

TV

2011-02-17T06:09:00.002+01:00

"The vast wasteland of television is not interested in producing a better moustrap but in producing a worse mouse."

Laurence C. Coughlin

Kurzweil

2011-02-16T05:36:00.001+01:00

On Feb. 15, 1965, a diffident but self-possessed high school student named Raymond Kurzweil appeared as a guest on a game show called I've Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he played a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that Kurzweil was hiding an unusual fact and the panelists — they included a comedian and a former Miss America — had to guess what it was.

On the show, the beauty queen did a good job of grilling Kurzweil, but the comedian got the win: the music was composed by a computer. Kurzweil got $200.

Kurzweil then demonstrated the computer, which he built himself — a desk-size affair with loudly clacking relays, hooked up to a typewriter. The panelists were pretty blasé about it; they were more impressed by Kurzweil's age than by anything he'd actually done. They were ready to move on to Mrs. Chester Loney of Rough and Ready, Calif., whose secret was that she'd been President Lyndon Johnson's first-grade teacher.

But Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out what his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't have a self. To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial intelligence.

That was Kurzweil's real secret, and back in 1965 nobody guessed it. Maybe not even him, not yet. But now, 46 years later, Kurzweil believes that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. When that happens, humanity — our bodies, our minds, our civilization — will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this moment is not only inevitable but imminent. According to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.

Respect!

2011-02-15T05:25:00.002+01:00

"Television has raised writing to a new low."

Samuel Goldwyn

New Glasses

2011-02-14T05:56:00.005+01:00

Maybe quite soon, eyeglasses will have tiny batteries, microchips and assorted electronics to turn reading power on when you need it and off when you don’t. Traditionally, people who hit their 40s often need extra optical help as farsightedness sets in. They may buy bifocals or no-line progressive lenses. But such glasses have a drawback: the lenses that magnify fine print also blur objects more than an arm’s length away when a wearer looks down, distorting the view when on a staircase, for example, or when swinging at a golf ball. New electronic spectacles, made by PixelOptics and called emPower, are intended to handle that problem with an unusual insert in the bottom part of the lenses: liquid crystals, cousins to the familiar ones in television displays. The crystals change how the lenses refract or bend light, just as varying levels of thickness do in traditional glasses. Only one downside: You have to charge them overnight.

Fame

2011-02-13T06:01:00.002+01:00

“What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.”

Lord Byron

Fame & Fortune

2011-02-12T05:44:00.004+01:00

Fame and fortune do not change men. They only unmask them and reveal their true character.

Happiness

2011-02-11T05:19:00.005+01:00

"Le bonheur n'est pas chose aisée: il est très difficile de le trouver en nous, et impossible de le trouver ailleurs."

Nicolas de Chamfort (1741-1794)

Ah, That's Why!

2011-02-10T05:27:00.003+01:00

"I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well."

Johannes Sebastian Bach

Panned Before Opened

2011-02-09T05:13:00.005+01:00

Spider-Man, the 65 million dollar Broadway musical doesn’t officially open until March 15. That date was postponed several times. Last Staturday, for the first time ever, the New York Times decided to send its critic, Ben Brantley, to a preview. His review was published in yesterday's paper; it is devastating. Brantley finds Spider-Man so grievously broken in every respect that he thinks it is beyond repair. Brantley is often unfair, so his judgement has to be taken with a grain of sugar. Nevertheless it is surprising that the show's director, the revered Julie Taymor who also wrote the book, is panned by one of her former admirers. Brantley writes: Spider-Man is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst."

Community

2011-02-08T04:53:00.002+01:00

One of the best things ever said about community is what Saint Paul said: "What I am for you frightens me, but what I am with you comforts me. For you, I am bishop; with you, I am a Christian."

Judging Greatness

2011-02-07T05:30:00.002+01:00

"Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them."

Arthur Schopenhauer

Literature

2011-02-06T05:34:00.003+01:00

"Nothing endures except change; nothing is constant except death. Every heartbeat wounds us, and life would be an eternal bleeding to death, were it not for literature. It grants us what nature does not: a golden time that doesn't rust, a springtime that never wilts, cloudless happiness and eternal youth."

Ludwig Börne

Arrogance?

2011-02-05T05:49:00.011+01:00

Songwriting collaboration is a volatile business at best. I have worked with composers who refused to rewrite melodies which did not fit the characters they were meant for, and for a time I suspected the refusal was based on arrogance. But I was wrong. Composers who stubbornly stick to what they have written are afraid they have no other notes in reserve. Their refusal to rewrite is just a ploy to cover their imagined infertility.

Auditions

2011-02-04T05:02:00.000+01:00

I have witnessed a number of memorable auditions, often wondering why young actors and singers try to do stuff that exceeds their abilities while they would be very convincing if they just would show what they actually can do well. The best audition performance I ever saw was that of Wolfgang Pampel, a very experienced actor (he lip-synced J.R. of the tv series "Dallas" for the German screen). He came on stage with a little doll, sat down and, miming an old lady, started singing "O What A Beautiful Morning". We were so stunned that we hired him on the spot to play Duke Max in "Elisabeth".

The Artists' Drive

2011-02-03T05:23:00.000+01:00

"Artists don't wonder, What is it good for? They aren't driven to create art, or to help or teach people or to make money. They are driven to lessen the burden of the unbearable disparity between their conscious and unconscious minds, and so to achieve peace."

David Mamet

Smarter

2011-02-02T05:01:00.001+01:00

"I've been working with audiences for thirty years or more, in different venues. And I've never met an audience that wasn't collectively smarter than I am, and didn't beat me to the punch every time."

David Mamet

Perversity

2011-02-01T05:58:00.004+01:00

Freud called music polymorphous perversity. We take pleasure in music because it states a theme, the theme elaborates itself and then resolves, and we are then as pleased as if it were a philosophical revelation - even though the resolution is devoid of verbal content.

Fear

2011-01-31T05:57:00.000+01:00

"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."

Marie Curie

Words

2011-01-30T05:54:00.000+01:00

"When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Climbing

2011-01-29T00:50:00.001+01:00

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."

Sir Winston Churchill

Take A Good Look

2011-01-28T05:14:00.003+01:00

"If you have the right eye for these things, you can see that accused men are often attractive."

Franz Kafka

Theater

2011-01-27T06:06:00.001+01:00

“Our strongest writers keep falling away from the theater because they can’t make a living. And without writers we can’t have a theater. So we are responsible for them. We are responsible, I think, for turning our theaters into artistic homes.”

Molly Smith (Cradle Theater, Washington)

Parallel

2011-01-26T05:09:00.004+01:00

Emilio Estevez, a successful screenwriter, owns a small estate in Malibu. In 2005 he started planting the front yard with vines. His parents, Martin and Janet Sheen, protested: "Son, you're out of your mind". By now Mr. Estevez produces not only screenplays, but about 800 bottles of good wine every year. His two passions share an interesting parallel: “Your grapes are really your script,” he says. “Without good fruit, you’re just not making a good bottle of wine. Without a good script, the best actors in the world have struggled against bad material to make a good movie.”

Adagio For Strings

2011-01-25T05:25:00.000+01:00

Early Success

2011-01-24T05:13:00.000+01:00

Born 9 March 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Samuel Barber started composing at age 7 and attempted his first opera at age 10. He was only 28 when he wrote his master piece, Adagio for Strings. That was in 1938. Barber was very productive after that, but none of his works achieved similar recognition. After the harsh rejection of his third opera Antony and Cleopatra which he believed contained some of his best music, he was diagnosed with clinical depression.

Loners

2011-01-23T05:39:00.007+01:00

I'm drawn to loners. It's hard to trust people who can't stand being alone. And I find that those who take time to be alone usually have something to give me.

Bono's Remembrance

2011-01-22T05:43:00.001+01:00

"I was not old enough to remember the sacrifices of the great generation who saved Europe in the Second World War, or to quite comprehend what was going on in Vietnam. But what I do remember, and cannot forget, is watching a man walk on the moon in 1969 and thinking here is a nation that finds joy in the impossible. The Irish saw the Kennedys as our own royal family out on loan to America. A million of them turned out on J.F.K.’s homecoming to see these patrician public servants who, despite their station, had no patience for the status quo. I remember Bobby’s rolled-up sleeves, Jack’s jutted jaw and the message — a call to action — that the world didn’t have to be the way it was. Science and faith had found a perfect rhyme."

Bono

Great Range

2011-01-21T05:01:00.003+01:00

Every now and then, there is a star on a musical stage with such a charisma that you don't care about the singing. Think of Glenn Close who turned the musical "Sunset Boulevard" into an unforgettable event on Broadway. In the Fifties, Gertrude Lawrence who had no voice always brought magic to the theater. Kurt Weill once praised that quality: "She has the greatest range between C and C sharp of anyone I ever knew".

No Right Not To Be Shocked

2011-01-20T05:53:00.007+01:00

Philip Pullman, a British writer ("The Golden Compass"), is the author of a critical book about the Christian faith, titled "The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ". When outraged believers challenged and threatened him, he answered them like this: "No one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if they open it and read it, they don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me. You can complain about it. You can write to the publisher. You can write to the papers. You can write your own book. You can do all those things. But that your rights stop. Nobody has the right to stop me writing this book. Nobody has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read."

The Real Challenge

2011-01-19T05:48:00.005+01:00

"Failure is very difficult for a writer to bear, but very few can manage the shock of early success."

Maurice Valency

Hatred

2011-01-18T05:20:00.000+01:00

"Hatred is the fool's revenge for being intimidated."

George Bernard Shaw

Best

2011-01-17T05:17:00.001+01:00

When still at Disney Studios, Jeffrey Katzenberg once told screenwriter Dale Launer: "In Hollywood, Disney is the best place to work. Here we don't stab you in the back. We stab you in the chest."

VIP-Treatment

2011-01-16T05:14:00.003+01:00

On a sunny California day in 1994, director Steven Spielberg was whizzing through the lot of the Universal Studios. His sports car hit a speed bump and he banged his head. He did not stop nor did he complain, but somebody must have watched the incident. By the next morning, all the speed bumps on the lot had been removed.

Image

2011-01-15T05:46:00.002+01:00

"In today's media world, an ounce of image is worth a pound of performance."

Laurence J. Peter ("The Peter Principle")

American Fairytale

2011-01-14T03:05:00.002+01:00

Ted Williams was a homeless man who held a weathered cardboard sign in his hands that said “I have a God-given gift of voice.” A reporter happened to see the panhandler and interviewed him. The video from that encounter placed on youtube received more than twelve million hits in the last days and is the most-watched video on youtube today.

The man’s voice is amazing and Americans love a good redemption story.Ted Williams says in the video that he used to be addicted to drugs but he’s been clean for two years now, yet still unable to get a job. Last week he received offers from all over the country. He also was invited to various tv shows.

That's the end of the fairytale, but not the end of the story. Ted Williams was detained, and then released by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), after he got into a heated argument with his daughter Monday night at the RenaissanceHollywood Hotel & Spa where he stayed on occasion of a tv appearance. His daughter accused him of drinking and becoming violent again.

There are a lot of things in that story that make you think. One of them: How much must a daughter hate her father to publicly tear the veil from his reality.

Good Dog

2011-01-13T05:29:00.001+01:00

Chaser, a border collie, has learned more than 1000 words, showing U.S. researchers that her memory is not only better than theirs, but that she understands quite a bit how language works. The dog learned the names of 1,022 toys, so many that her human trainers had to write on them in marker so that they wouldn't forget. With that repertoire, Chaser has far outpaced another dog, Rico, found by German researchers to be able to grasp about 200 words. Also, Chaser understands that names refer to particular objects, independent of the activity requested involving that object.

Walk!

2011-01-12T05:47:00.010+01:00

Maybe that parking space a half mile from the mall's entrance is a blessing in disguise. Art Kramer, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois, found out that even modest amounts of walking, such as 40 minutest three times a week, can engender substantial improvements in memory, decision making and other cognitive processes.

Wear Red!

2011-01-11T05:38:00.009+01:00

Women are more attracted to men wearing red than to men wearing other colors, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. According to University of Rochester psychologist Andrew Elliot red is an aphrodisiac for women. Women have reason to try some crimson, too: men spend the most money on red-clad ladies.

Warm Rain

2011-01-10T05:21:00.005+01:00

The Beatles are still drawing crowds. The Beatles tribute show “Rain” earned $1.4 million last week for 11 performances on Broadway. "Rain" is not much more than a revue of famous Lennon/McCartney songs, but it is nevertheless a hit. After closing at the Neil Simon Theater on Jan. 15, the show will move five blocks south to the Brooks Atkinson Theater and resume performances there on Feb. 8 for at least 16 more weeks.

Tears

2011-01-09T05:04:00.005+01:00

As I learn from an article in yesterday's NYT, we may be doing more than expressing emotion when we cry. Our tears, according to striking new research, may be sending chemical signals that influence the behavior of other people. In several experiments, researchers found that men who sniffed drops of women’s emotional tears became less sexually aroused than when they sniffed a neutral saline solution that had been dribbled down women’s cheeks. While the studies were not large, the findings showed up in a variety of ways, including testosterone levels, skin responses, brain imaging and the men’s descriptions of their arousal. The researchers started with women because when they advertised for “volunteers who can cry with ease,” they could not find men who were “good criers,” readily able to fill collection vials. Several experts said the findings — besides potentially adding subtext to crying songs through the ages, from Roy Orbison to the Rolling Stones — could be a first step toward a breakthrough on a mysterious subject.

Acting

2011-01-08T05:09:00.001+01:00

"Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made."

George Burns (1896 - 1996)

Race

2011-01-07T05:25:00.000+01:00

"There is no evidence that there is any advantage in belonging to a pure race. The purest racees now in existence are the Pygmies, the Hottentots, and the Australian aborigines. The ancient Greeks who were the most civilized, were also the most mixed."

Bertrand Russell

Fools

2011-01-06T05:22:00.002+01:00

"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."

Mark Twain

The same is true for the lazy ones.

Creativity

2011-01-05T05:22:00.001+01:00

"Creativeness often consists of merely turning up what's already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?"

Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

Good Advice

2011-01-04T05:42:00.001+01:00

We all know the liar paradox that the Cretan Epimenides created when he told us that "all Cretans are liars". But I am confused in the same way by Anselm Feuerbach's good advice which goes like this: "If someone gives you so-called good advice, do the opposite; you can be sure it will be the right thing nine out of ten times." Help!

Goof-Off Era

2011-01-03T05:49:00.002+01:00

"This is the great era of the goof-off, the age of the half-done job, a stampede away from responsibility. The land is popularized with laundry me who wont iron shirts, with waiters who wont serve, with carpenters who will come around some day maybe, with executives whose mind is on the golf course, with teachers who demand a single salary scale so achievement cannot be rewarded and with students who take cinch courses."

Charles Brower (1901-1984)

Inspiration

2011-01-02T05:46:00.000+01:00

"My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a producer."

Cole Porter

Wishes

2011-01-01T05:48:00.000+01:00

Dance like no one is watching,

Love like you’ll never be hurt,

Sing like no one is listening,

Live like it’s heaven on earth.

Librettist? Ah, Pathetic!

2010-12-31T04:49:00.000+01:00

Screenwriter legend William Goldman states in his cranky classic, "The Season": If you actually think of yourself as a writer, writing a musical comedy book is degrading... You are just not going to find any writer of genuine talent making a career in this field. Well, I don't love to degrade myself, but I understand Goldman's point. I may lack genuine talent, but at least I love what I'm doing.

Benefit

2010-12-30T00:12:00.000+01:00

There is no guarantee that you will live longer if you never spoil yourself with those tempting unhealthy treats. But life will no doubt feel longer.

An Artist's Compass

2010-12-29T05:42:00.001+01:00

I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Jorinda and Jorindel

2010-12-28T05:13:00.008+01:00

There was once an old castle, that stood in the middle of a deep gloomy wood, and in the castle lived an old fairy. Now this fairy could take any shape she pleased. All the day long she flew about in the form of an owl, or crept about the country like a cat; but at night she always became an old woman again. When any young man came within a hundred paces of her castle, he became quite fixed, and could not move a step till she came and set him free; which she would not do till he had given her his word never to come there again: but when any pretty maiden came within that space she was changed into a bird, and the fairy put her into a cage, and hung her up in a chamber in the castle. There were seven hundred of these cages hanging in the castle, and all with beautiful birds in them. Now there was once a maiden whose name was Jorinda. She was prettier than all the pretty girls that ever were seen before, and a shepherd lad, whose name was Jorindel, was very fond of her, and they were soon to be married. One day they went to walk in the wood, that they might be alone; and Jorindel said, 'We must take care that we don't go too near to the fairy's castle.' It was a beautiful evening; the last rays of the setting sun shone bright through the long stems of the trees upon the green underwood beneath, and the turtle-doves sang from the tall birches. Jorinda sat down to gaze upon the sun; Jorindel sat by her side; and both felt sad, they knew not why; but it seemed as if they were to be parted from one another for ever. They had wandered a long way; and when they looked to see which way they should go home, they found themselves at a loss to know what path to take. The sun was setting fast, and already half of its circle had sunk behind the hill: Jorindel on a sudden looked behind him, and saw through the bushes that they had, without knowing it, sat down close under the old walls of the castle. Then he shrank for fear, turned pale, and trembled. Jorinda was just singing,

'The ring-dove sang from the willow spray,

He mourn'd for the fate of his darling mate, when her song stopped suddenly. Jorindel turned to see the reason, and beheld his Jorinda changed into a nightingale, so that her song ended with a mournful _jug, jug_. An owl with fiery eyes flew three times round them, and three times screamed:

'Tu whu! Tu whu! Tu whu!'

There stay! Oh, stay!

Hie away! away!'

Jorindel could not move; he stood fixed as a stone, and could neither weep, nor speak, nor stir hand or foot. And now the sun went quite down; the gloomy night came; the owl flew into a bush; and a moment after the old fairy came forth pale and meagre, with staring eyes, and a nose and chin that almost met one another. She mumbled something to herself, seized the nightingale, and went away with it in her hand. Poor Jorindel saw the nightingale was gone--but what could he do? He could not speak, he could not move from the spot where he stood. At last the fairy came back and sang with a hoarse voice:

'Till the prisoner is fast,

And her doom is cast,

When the charm is around her,

And the spell has bound her,

On a sudden Jorindel found himself free. Then he fell on his knees before the fairy, and prayed her to give him back his dear Jorinda: but she laughed at him, and said he should never see her again; then she

went her way. He prayed, he wept, he sorrowed, but all in vain. 'Alas!' he said, 'what will become of me?' He could not go back to his own home, so he went to a strange village, and employed himself in keeping sheep. Many a time did he walk round and round as near to the hated castle as he dared go, but all in vain; he heard or saw nothing of Jorinda. At last he dreamt one night that he found a beautiful purple flower, and that in the middle of it lay a costly pearl; and he dreamt that he plucked the flower, and went with it in his hand into the castle, and that everything he touched with it was disenchanted, and that there he found his Jorinda again.

In the morning when he awoke, he began to search over hill and dale for this pretty flower; and eight long days he sought for it in vain: but on the ninth day, early in the morning, he found the beautiful purple flower; and in the middle of it was a large dewdrop, as big as a costly pearl. Then he plucked the flower, and set out and travelled day and night, till he came again to the castle. He walked nearer than a hundred paces to it, and yet he did not become fixed as before, but found that he could go quite close up to the door. Jorindel was very glad indeed to see this. Then he touched the door with the flower, and it sprang open; so that he went in through the court, and listened when he heard so many birds singing. At last he came to the chamber where the fairy sat, with the seven hundred birds singing in the seven hundred cages. When she saw Jorindel she was very angry, and screamed with rage; but she could not come within two yards of him, for the flower he held in his hand was his safeguard. He looked around at the birds, but alas! there were many, many nightingales, and how then should he find out which was his Jorinda? While he was thinking what to do, he saw the fairy had taken down one of the cages, and was making the best of her way off through the door. He ran or flew after her, touched the cage with the flower, and Jorinda stood before him, and threw her arms round his neck looking as beautiful as ever, as beautiful as when they walked together in the wood.

Then he touched all the other birds with the flower, so that they all took their old forms again; and he took Jorinda home, where they were married, and lived happily together many years: and so did a good many other lads, whose maidens had been forced to sing in the old fairy's cages by themselves, much longer than they liked.

Shuttlecock

2010-12-27T05:53:00.002+01:00

"It's advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at only one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends."

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Don't Forget!

2010-12-26T05:50:00.000+01:00

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

Christopher Robin to Winnie-the-Pooh (A. A. Milne, 1882-1956)

Christmas Message

2010-12-25T05:48:00.001+01:00

“I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.”

Taylor Caldwell

Christmas Morning

2010-12-24T05:36:00.000+01:00

“There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.”

Erma Bombeck (1927-1996)

Berlioz

2010-12-23T05:37:00.000+01:00

"Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently."

James Gibbons Huneker

Wealth

2010-12-22T05:35:00.000+01:00

"There is no wealth but life."

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Sensitivity

2010-12-21T05:30:00.003+01:00

An American producer had commissioned Igor Stravinsky to compose a ballet. After the opening in Philadelphia, the producer sent Stravinsky a telegram which read: Your music great success Stop Could be sensational success if you would authorize Robert Russell Bennett retouch orchestration Stop Bennett orchestrates even the works of Cole Porter Stop. Stravinsky wired back: Satisfied with great success Stop.

Wrong Priority

2010-12-20T05:52:00.000+01:00

"Men take only their needs into consideration - never their abilities."

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Aaron Talkin' About Face Book

2010-12-19T04:37:00.002+01:00

Great Heretics

2010-12-18T05:41:00.002+01:00

"For you are not to suppose, brethren, that heresies could be produced through any little souls. None save great men have been the authors of heresies."

Saint Augustine (354-430)

Character

2010-12-17T05:36:00.001+01:00

"Integrity has no need of rules."

Albert Camus

Greatness

2010-12-16T05:32:00.002+01:00

In his novel Lotte in Weimar, Thomas Mann lets Goethe make a remarkable statement: "People forget that you must first be a great man before you can be a great poet." I think Mann/Goethe is absolutely right, and not only with respect to poets. You cannot be great in anything without being a great human being. We should revise our education system from this perspective.

A Writer's Fate

2010-12-15T05:35:00.001+01:00

Why is it that even successful writers are often too modest to demand their share of credit and respect? It has to do with our profession. As writers, we're always starting all over again. Being a playwright, you have to live with despair, resentment, rejection and failure. Whenever you deserve praise, there are many others to take it away. If what you wrote is a success, it's the director's merit; if it's a flop, you get all the blame. Take it and live with it, or try to find another line of work. You can always become a director.

Dispraise

2010-12-14T04:52:00.006+01:00

"People are never more ready to believe you as when you say things in dispraise of yourself; and you are never so much annoyed as when they take you at your word."

Somerset Maugham

Life

2010-12-13T04:54:00.004+01:00

"Life is like a blanket too short. You pull it up and your toes rebel, you yank it down and shivers meander about your shoulder; but cheerful folks manage to draw their knees up and pass a very comfortable night."

Marion Howard

Defuse Hatred!

2010-12-12T05:57:00.000+01:00

"Hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy. I hope therefore to be able to transcend my personal vicissitudes in understanding the development of the state and changes in society, to counter the hostility of the regime with the best of intentions, and defuse hate with love."

Liu Xiaobo

Coincidence?

2010-12-11T05:10:00.001+01:00

A motorist caught speeding in London two years ago moved to New Zealand only to be booked by the same police officer for again exceeding the limit, reports said Wednesday.

Former London bobby Andy Flitton ticketed the man in Britain two years ago, shortly before migrating to New Zealand -- then caught him again in September on a highway in the South Island, the New Zealand Herald reported.

Flitton, who now works for the New Zealand traffic police, said he had forgotten about the original booking until the man approached him while he was writing out the ticket.

"He asked if I had worked in London, I said 'yes'. He asked if I used to operate the laser gun on the A5 in North London, I said 'yes'," Flitton told the newspaper.

"And he said 'I thought it was you, you gave me my last speeding ticket there two years ago'."

Flitton said the man told him he had moved to New Zealand two weeks before his latest booking, unaware his nemesis was also in the same country.

"We must have some sort of connection," he said. "He only ever broke the law twice and both times I was the one to give him a ticket... it just shows what a small world it really is."

Revelation

2010-12-10T05:08:00.002+01:00

"Those who belong to the orthodox faiths claim that the authority of their faith rests on revelation, and that revelation is given in the pages of books and accounts of miracles and wonders whose nature is supernatural. But those of us who have long discarded the belief in the supernatural still are in the presence of revelations which are the foundation of faith. We too have our revealed religion. We have looked upon the face of men and women that can be to us the symbols of that which is holy. We have heard words of sacred wisdom and truth spoken in the human voice. Out of the universe there have come to us these experience which, when accepted, give to us revelations, not of supernatural religion, but of a natural and inevitable faith in the spiritual powers that animate and dwell in the center of [a person's] being."

John Lovejoy Elliott (1868-1942)

Memorial

2010-12-09T05:07:00.002+01:00

"This would have been the 70th birthday year for John if only he was here. But people are not questioning if he is here or not. They just love him and are keeping him alive with their love. I’ve received notes from people in all corners of the world letting me know that they were celebrating this year to thank John for having given us so much in his 40 short years on earth."

Yoko Ono

Wonder Drug

2010-12-08T05:55:00.002+01:00

New research shows that taking one Aspirin per day reduces the risk of tumor cancer. From two groups of people the one that took Aspirin over a ten year period developed 21% less cancer, reports the New York Times in yesterday's edition.

Too Late

2010-12-07T05:44:00.001+01:00

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)

Illiterates

2010-12-06T17:02:00.001+01:00

"Musicals continue to be the only art form, popular or otherwise, that is publicly critcized by illiterates."

Stephen Sondheim

Three Pianos

2010-12-05T05:40:00.002+01:00

"An evening based on Schubert’s “Winterreise” seems an unlikely antidepressant. But Rick Burkhardt, Alec Duffy and Dave Malloy give this gloomy song cycle an amusing theatrical makeover in Three Pianos ...in the scrappy and surreal piece, the 24-part song cycle unfolds amid cleverly constructed mayhem, with Mr. Duffy, Mr. Malloy and Mr. Burkhardt metamorphosing among characters and centuries. Scenes shift with dizzying speed…they leap among pianos and pound out the songs with irreverent twists…Like the drama, the pianos are never static — energetically pushed and pulled around the set as giant props. Liquor was plentiful on set and off; bottles of wine and cups were distributed among the audience, which seemed thoroughly entertained by the trio’s goofy and touching musings about love, life and art."

Helen Shaw, Time Out New York

A Good Reason For A Trip To London

2010-12-04T05:48:00.002+01:00

The well-reviewed Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice, starring Academy Award winner Al Pacino, could possibly cross the Atlantic for a London run, according to the Daily Mail. British producers Duncan C. Weldon and Paul Elliott are reportedly in talks with the Public Theater and the Merchant producing team about bringing the production to the West End. There has also been speculation that The Merchant of Venice will likely extend its Broadway engagement, which is currently scheduled to conclude its limited, 78-performance run Jan. 9, 2011.

Musical Boom On Broadway

2010-12-03T04:40:00.001+01:00

It's hard to recall a Broadway season full of so many expensive musicals like the upcoming first half of 2011. One, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” with its record-setting price tag of $65 million, has disproportionately skewed the shows’ total costs of more than $135 million, in their Broadway debuts. Among the other coming big-budget musicals are “Wonderland,” at a cost of $15 million and featuring music by Frank Wildhorn, who works regularly on Broadway (“Dracula, the Musical,” “The Scarlet Pimpernel”); “Catch Me” at $13 million, featuring music by the Tony winners Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (“Hairspray”); “Sister Act” (with music by Glenn Slater and the Academy Award-winning composer Alan Menken) and “Priscilla” at about $10 million apiece; and “The Book of Mormon,” whose cost has not been disclosed but is likely to total at least several million dollars. The “Mormon” music is by another new team, Robert Lopez of “Avenue Q” and Trey Parker and Matt Stone of the television series “South Park.” One reason for the bounty of new musicals is ready money. The stock and bond markets remain uncertain investments, but there is still plenty of investor money sloshing around, as record-setting art auctions have shown. While only 25 to 30 percent of Broadway shows make back their investments each year, a hit musical has been an abiding dream for generations of investors, and taking a chance on Broadway can be considerably more fun than watching stock tickers, producers say.

About Failure

2010-12-02T04:16:00.004+01:00

In choosing the perfect project to work on, all artists must follow their creative conscience and their instincts. There is no such thing as a certified success. There is nothing wrong with falling, as long as you don't fall from the lowest rung of the ladder. It's better to be proud of a gem that failed than to be ashamed of some successful trash.

Skins

2010-12-01T05:44:00.003+01:00

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.

Meister Eckhart

Islands

2010-11-30T05:42:00.001+01:00

The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees.

Andres Segovia

Forgiveness

2010-11-29T05:41:00.001+01:00

Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.

Dag Hammarskjold

Expensive Ambition

2010-11-28T05:02:00.008+01:00

Turning the cartoon series Spiderman into a musical has so enraptured the director, Julie Taymor, and the composers, Bono and the Edge, of U2, that they have built a $70 million show around him, replete with perspective-skewing scenery and flying sequences that are unprecedented for Broadway. That's a high goal, but the creators want even more. Being artists who dream big they compare the show’s themes to great literature and philosophy. “We’re wrestling with the same stuff as Rilke, Blake, ‘Wings of Desire,’ Roy Lichtenstein, the Ramones — the cost of feeling feelings, the desire for connections when you’re separate from others,” said Bono in an interview. “If the only wows you get from ‘Spider-Man’ are visual, special-effect, spectacular-type wows, and not wows from the soul or the heart, we will all think that we’ve failed.” Spider-Man, the musical, is scheduled to open on January 11th at the Foxwoods Theatre.

My Favorite iPhone Apps

2010-11-27T05:07:00.002+01:00

I've been asked which iPhone Apps I actually use. Well, for a start, here's my top ten:

1) WordBook. English Dictionary & Thesaurus. Excellent. As good as any printed dictionary.

2) Wikipanion. Shortest way to gather infos on the road.

3) Shazam. I hold this app up to a song on the radio, and Shazam gives me all the information I need and even shows me the CD cover.

4) DocsToGo. This app allows me to carry and read important pdf-docs on my iPhone.

5) BrainTuner. Great little app to avoid getting nervous while waiting for a belated train or plane.

6) RadioBox. Best internet radio receiver I know.

7) Gorillacam. This photography app has a lot of great functions; I only use its Self Timer, and this alone is worth much more than the zero bucks they charge.

8) YouTube. Works really everywhere. Gives me the chance to check back on songs and even shows I wish to refer to.

9) 7 Chords. Whenever a need to know how one of these unusual chords are played on the guitar, I just look it up.

10) Things. A great organizing tool. Helps me to remember my daily tasks.

A Good Season For Babies

2010-11-26T04:23:00.003+01:00

According to Harvard University researchers, Babies born in October and November have the longest life expectancy and best chance of good health. If you're born at this time of year you have a better chance than others to become a professional footballer or an Olympic athlete. Also, Babies born between December and February grow into taller, brighter and more successful adults than their summer counterparts. They are also less likely to need strong spectacles.

Why-Musicals

2010-11-25T05:18:00.003+01:00

Mary Rodgers defines the "Why-Musical" as a perfectly respectable show based on a perfectly respectable source, that has no reason for being. Why-Musicals usually come from successful novels, movies or plays. Their authors, blinded by the proven potential of the source material, never question the need to turn it into a musical. They never ask themselves what music and songs will do for the story that hasn't already been accomplished by the original work.

Best Musical I've Seen This Year

2010-11-24T05:39:00.002+01:00