Valentine’s Day

Posted on January 28, 2012 by

I was trying to introduce my kids to Malay legend/history. There is always a thin red line between our classical history and myth. A fantastical myth (are myths necessarily fantastical?) is always interlaced into our classical history. To make matters worse there is always a love story to complicate the narration. How am I going to do this with the kids?

The legend of Mount Ledang speaks of a princess with supernatural abilities who resided on this mountain, a stone’s throw away from my family home. She was betrayed by her family and the man she loved and wooed by a king who betrayed his family and his beloved. Tragedy!!!

Not very romantic! Painful! Happy Valentine’s Day! The end!

No, not quite! Thanks be to God Mount Ledang is such a beautiful place and so I will tell my kids this legend. Being in Munich my kids are so filled with German fables and tales of princesses, witches etc. The Princess of Mount Ledang should serve as a magical reminder that Malaysia too is a land of natural beauty with its own legendary princesses with magical abilities. Perhaps it would inspire them to go ‘wandern’ up the Mount Ledang despite the incredible heat and humidity.

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New Year’s Eve (read: Anarchy) in Munich

Posted on January 1, 2012 by

Last night was New Year’s Eve, also known as “Sylvester“, in Munich, practically the only time when the honest, upright and law-abiding citizens of the city let themselves go… (except possibly during Oktoberfest).
Everybody buys fireworks and lights them everywhere in the city. It’s loud, noisy and like a war zone. Even the streetcars slow down, *don’t* honk at all the people in their way but just wait until everyone’s off the tracks.

I love it! Last night was rather unusual in that it rained, instead of being either a) snowy, b) cold or both of the above. And in that sense it wasn’t quite as gemütlich as usual, prompting us to go home sooner than usual and finishing our champagne there.

The cleanup is something else. We always go for a walk the next day and look at the remains, which are usually prolific. Except for this year. For some reason, the street cleaners had already been there. When, I can’t fathom. By the time we got out in the afternoon for a look, the streets were clean and the only thing we found was the results of the streetcleaners’ herculean efforts:

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Christmas in Munich

Posted on December 20, 2011 by

Christmas… The most troublesome thing about it is the ability to write a fresh and original wish. I was attempting or rather fumbling at doing that just a while ago. Christmas wishes? Now? My delay obviously displays my incomparable ability to procrastinate and float onto other things while attempting to do another.

So there I was seated at my desk when I floated into another time and age. The year was 1805 and the city was Munich….On December 19 just shortly before Christmas Josephine received a heart-wrenching note from her beloved Napoleon. Perhaps she too was seated at her writing table when she floated onto the note….

“Great Empress, not a letter from you since your departure from Straßburg. You have passed at Baden, at Stuttgart, at Munich without writing us a word. That is not very admirable nor tender! I am still at Brunn. The Russians are gone; I have a truce. In a few days I shall decide what I shall do. Deign from the height of your greatness, to occupy yourself a little of your slaves.
Napoleon

I guess Josephine forgot to send out her Christmas wishes to her dearest. Or perhaps she too was fumbling about an original content to her 1805 Christmas greetings. No…Sigh! She was most probably occupied with merriment in Munich.

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If Anton Bruckner had Asperger’s, do I?

Posted on December 6, 2011 by

I recently translated a very interesting text in which the author referred to Bruckner’s “latent autism”. Never having running across this, I googled “Bruckner” + “autism”, with somewhat consternating results.

First of all, there’s a huge number of blogs, YouTube videos and websites all about famous people who are/were supposedly autistic or have/had Asperger’s. The list I looked at even includes sci-fi TV characters. My favorites: The Doctor, the Daleks and the Cybermen from Dr. Who!

But seriously, folks. What’s the point of a list that includes everyone from Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes to Henry Higgins (the linguist in Pygmalion), to Petrushka (the puppet in Stravinsky’s ballet) to Thomas Jefferson, Emily Dickinson, Bill Gates, Al Gore, Albert Einstein, Woody Allen, Garrison Keillor and many others. Besides Bruckner, other musical Asperger candidates include the composers Bartok, Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Mozart and Mahler as well as singer/songwriters Bob Dylan and John Denver. Where’s the evidence? Does intelligence, single-minded purpose and supposed weirdness equal Asperger’s or autism?

After quite a bit more googling, I came across a well-written academic paper on Bruckner that goes into detail about his various quirks. The author concludes that quite enough evidence can be found in both Bruckner’s music and life, for that matter, to support the theory that he was quite probably obsessive-compulsive.

Ok, I can buy that, and it does make me feel better to know that the head-banging of my childhood years, my rocking (which I still find quite relaxing!) and my still somewhat obsessive-compulsive behavior aren’t in and of themselves enough to get me on the list!

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My aural fixation

Posted on November 23, 2011 by

I suppose that along with reading, it was music that has always accompanied me. I sang since I can remember. In grade school music class, I played or sang harmony just for the fun of it. In high school, I begged one of my music teachers to teach me “real” harmony. I learned piano, recorder, guitar, flute, then baroque flute. Studying anything other than music was not an option. At 16, though, I didn’t how hard it was making a living as a musician. Which is why I now translate.

It’s a strange thing with music and words. I have a great deal of trouble with poetry. It doesn’t make sense to me; I have very little patience with it. Unless it’s set to music. That extra layer of meaning, the intervals and harmonies, give me what I need to grasp the text, to understand the words. I often understand the emotive meaning of the song from the music without knowing the text.

Currently, I am besotted with the songs of Erich Korngold (1897-1957), especially his “Lieder des Abschieds” op. 14 (Songs of farewell). The expressivity he achieves in the third song, “Mond, so gehst du wieder auf” (Moon, you thus rise again over the dark valley of uncried tears…), is largely due to his melodic use of sixths and sevenths and ambiguous playing with minor sevenths and major sevenths.

Aural fixation, you ask? Well, l find listening to Korngold better than any narcotic. But I can also get off on nyan cats! I have to admit, the only ones that are *not* bad for my aural health are nyan jazz cats!

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Confessions of a non-reader

Posted on November 16, 2011 by

I started reading at three going on four. My mother tells me I was already sounding out words on billboards and cereal boxes and that I was so desperate to read that she took me to a tutor, who had me reading in no time.

As a child and teenager, I inhaled books. I hid in closets reading so that I didn’t have to go outside. I constantly checked out stacks of books from the library, read them in three or four days and went back again. Once I was so mad at my parents that I decided to run away. I snuck out of my room and went, of all places, to the library. It closed at 9:00 p.m., however, so I had to go back home and sneak back in. So much for rebellion.

And now? Thanks to the Internet and my fairly new Android smartphone, my reading has dropped to about nil. I read so much online (yeay NY Times – I even purchased a subscription!) that when I try to read books and newspapers I skim them the same way I do when I read online. And it doesn’t work. I get distracted; I can’t sink into the text anymore; I’m horribly impatient.

I have so many half-read books lying around that it’s ridiculous. And what do I want? Theoretically, more books. Bill Clinton was on Jon Stewart recently and I decided that I need his new book.

But I’m holding off. Until I can get my reading life under control, I do not need to buy more books that will just languish on my shelves, waiting for me to attend to them.

A friend of mine who can’t stand the Internet suggested that I read for 20 minutes a day, seated in a comfortable chair or on the couch. In other words, the kind of methods one uses to get kids to learn to do homework. But I guess it’s necessary. I can’t go on much longer as a non-reader.

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Bill Cunningham…Mr. Streetstyle

Posted on February 16, 2011 by

Bill Cunningham is just brilliantly fascinating. Here’s a short clip from the new film by Richard Press which honors the visionary Mr. Streetstyle himself.

“When fashion fans talk about street style these days…….most of them forget about a true pioneer in this field, 80-year-old New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham, who now gets the credit he deserves in new documentary Bill Cunningham New York.”
- The Independent (UK) (“ New documentary honors streetstyle visionary”)

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