Happy Friday everyone! Here’s five things I found interesting this week:
I just got back from a 10 day trip to France! This was my first trip to France and I now have a whole new world to explore: the history, the culture - including movies, music, books (I picked up a copy of Victory Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame at Shakespeare and Company) - and of course the art! Blog post coming soon.
Sidenote: I'm an avid cyclist and big fan of the Tour de France which started on July 1 and ends in Paris on July 24. Here's a video about the race. If the race isn't your thing but you enjoy cycling, check out Lachlan Morton's Alt Tour, completed 1903-style, (or any of his other cycling adventures).
Books - I finished three books over the last month:
The Twilight World - Werner Herzog
Twilight World is a surreal take on the experiences of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier during World War II who held his post in the Philippine islands until 1974.
Less Than Zero - Brett Easton Ellis
My first Ellis novel. I found it disturbing and depressing but strangely hard to put down. The book became a bestseller when Ellis was just 21 and could be one of the quintessential Gen X novels. The book reads like the diary of Clay, a young man who has returned home to Los Angeles from college and describes in cold, emotionless detail the exploits of a lost generation.
Cold War Swap - Ross Thomas
A spy thriller with noir overtones set in postwar Germany during the Cold War. Thomas is a master storyteller and executes this genre extremely well. I imagined a sort of Casablanca-meets-Cold War vibe as I read this (it’s a fun read in an airport).
Movies: I watched a bunch of movies while on flights over the past few weeks including two worth mentioning: The Lighthouse and No Sudden Move.
The Lighthouse is an interesting, strange, confusing film which portrays the isolation and loneliness of two men operating a remote lighthouse. The cinematography and acting (Willem Defoe, Robert Pattinson) are on point. I liked the way the plot involves sea mythology - even though the protagonists are not technically 'at sea', it certainly feels that way.
No Sudden Move, starring Don Cheadle, Benecio Del Toro, David Harbour with a star-studded supporting cast, is a fresh take on the 'gangster' film, set in 1954 Detroit. A group of criminals are hired to retrieve a document and find themselves in a lot more trouble than they bargained for. I found myself laughing at the dry humor of the situation as Cheadle and Del Toro navigate their criminal circles in search of the document and the men who double-crossed them.
Music: All Melody - Nils Frahm.
Listening to an album is one of my favorite things to do on an overnight flight. I'm relatively isolated, immobilized and hurtling through the air at 36,000 feet. Once the cabin lights go down, I can drift between the unconscious and conscious as I fall in and out of sleep. This can be a magical time for listening to music and something interesting happens - I become a part of the album’s universe. I never know which album is going to accomplish this for me.
This time it was neo-classical musician Nils Frahm's album All Melody . It's soothing, moving, and haunting as it oscillates between synthy beat driven melodies, to toy piano, to vocal choir. The album, recorded live at Funkhaus Berlin, contains nuanced artifacts including footsteps or an instrument creaking, reminding the listener that though there's electronic synthesizers, this is still a live, organic performance happening in an amazing sounding room. Here's Frahm performing the title track off the album for the documentary Tripping with Nils Frahm.
NYC's Department of Records & Information Services (DORIS for short) is collecting oral histories for it's Neighborhood Stories Project. I am entering my second year volunteering with DORIS by interviewing New Yorkers. Interviews are recorded and the participant's story is preserved in the City archives - how cool is that?! If you have lived in NY (or consider yourself a New Yorker) I encourage you to share your story (or volunteer!) and become a part of NYC history.
Got something to share? Leave me a comment!
That's all for this week! As always, thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
Until next time,
KW