Saturday, June 01, 2024

Rosa 'Charles de Mills' - 1 June 2024

 

Because I was a magazine photographer for at least 43 years, and I had to photograph people from the arts, sports, politics, cinema, etc, I gained knowledge of what these people did. I had to research them before I photographed them.

Now when I scan my plants, which I have been doing since 2001, I am absorbing knowledge thanks to the fact that I live in this 21^st century. I no longer have to go to the library to do research with the card catalogue.

The plants themselves, especially the roses with their names of people of the past and the present, give me the curiousity to find out who they are. My Galaxy 5  is my personal card catalogue.

I have been mating my photographs with my favourite literature (poems, too) now since 2001. Of red roses I have mined the internet and repeated often the Borges poem that mentions a red rose. I have gone to other writers including Julio Cortázar and Emily Dickinson.

What this means is that the older I get the more literate I have become. Unfortunately I have never been invited to a book club nor do I know anybody now willing to compare notes with me on the poems (I know almost all of them) of Emily Dickinson and Jorge Luís Borges.

Today I wanted to find an excuse to scan these lovely deep red bloom of one of my favourite roses, Rosa ‘Charles de Mills’.

I found today, courtesy of my Galaxy 5, this Robert Burns poem which is a love poem. I thought of Rosemary when I read it and only in the last few years did I come to understand the rose part of her lovely name. Unlike Burns, neither Rosemary or I believed we would ever meet again. I feel that loss every minute of my waking life.

A Red, Red Rose

BY ROBERT BURNS

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

   That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

   That’s sweetly played in tune.

 

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

   So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

   Till a’ the seas gang dry.

 

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

I will love thee still, my dear,

   While the sands o’ life shall run.

 

And fare thee weel, my only luve!

   And fare thee weel awhile!

And I will come again, my luve,

   Though it were ten thousand mile.

 

 

Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' - 1 June 2024

 

Alexandra Elizabeth & Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent'

 

 

The Argentine Navy lieutenant commander when I stupidly told him, “I flatly refuse to follow your order,” told me, “Conscript  in time of war I could have you shot or I could send you to the Argentine Antarctic where the only women will be female penguins. I will do you a favour because we need you as a translator. I will have you arrested for two weeks and you will spend evenings in the navy brig. Furthermore I will advise you to go now to a bookstore and buy some books. You will need them.”

I did not know then that this lieutenant commander was singularly responsible for transforming my life that to this day is a thinking one. At Librería Pigmalion I purchased Dag Hammarksjöld's Markings translated into English by W.H.Auden.  A month does not go by that I don’t remember some passage that I underlined or one that I cannot forget and I can quote in my head.

There are these writings of Hammarskjöld that come to mind today.

 

What makes loneliness and anguish’

Is not that I don’t have anyone to share my burden

But this:

I have only my own burden to bear.

 And this:

What I ask for is unreasonable: that life shall have a meaning

What I strive for is impossible; that my life shall acquire meaning.

I dare not believe, I do not see how I shall ever be able to believe: that I am not alone.

 

Writing this blog has an ancillary and positive function. I am going pleasantly crazy scanning the roses of my garden. Here I have a reason for using them to illustrate the blog. The rose in today's scan is 51/2 inches wide. And the scent is lovely. She is an English Rose that was one of Rosemary's favourites in the garden. When I look at this rose it is like seeing Rosemary smiling at me and saying, "Isn't she lovely?"

Alan Storey - 31 May 2024

 

Alan Storey June 2002

 

 For the record I will state here that I never again want to listen to or to go to a performance of Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043 or listen to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (exception the Winter Largo). Why? Read on.

This blog will be followed below by the original blog I wrote about the Microcosmos Quartet concert on 24 May.

I know a few teachers in this century who dislike what they do because they say their students are stupid and ignorant.

I come from a family of teachers, my mother, grandmother and my wife were teachers. I even taught at a Jesuit university in Mexico City.

The four of us would have agreed that it is the obligation of a good teacher to inspire students.

I have known an inspiring teacher since around 1990 who keeps teaching me. This is violinist extraordinaire Marc Destrubé.

In these last few years I have come to understand why he likes to organize house concerts like the one I went to last week and a repetition of that one yesterday Friday.

What I have learned from Destrubé is the mechanics of listening to music.

Yes you can listen to Beethoven being played at the Orpheum. If you  are from the last century like me you would understand the concept of ignoring the sound of a Musak version a Beatles song in an elevator.

I would be the first person to tell you that the idea of making myself a nice mug of Earl Grey Tea, lighting a fireplace and then to sit down to listen to a Bártok quartet in my living room would be anathema.

This bring me to the two concerts where Destrubé’s Microcosmos quartet played Béla Bartók’s String Quartet No. 1 (1909).

You are in a small room, last night it was in Alan Storey’s home, and you are sitting (me) on the first row facing Destrubé and his music stand.

Everything they do, every nuance of their playing I could hear. Because they are in a room they do not have to fill the room (like an Orpheum) with a projected loud sound. Bártok has some dissonance and some quiet lovely melodic sounds. But if you have listened to this concert twice within two weeks you can almost (as in almost!) predict what is coming.

Sitting in an intimate situation with a small audience the quartet somehow makes Bártok and his String Quartet something that I might want to listen to in my living room.

Why?

Because the music would not come from a recorded studio but from my memory of a concert I was present at with musicians I know.

So Destrubé and company keep teaching me stuff.

And at age 81 I think I can listen to those 6 Bártok quartets without tiring.

 

 

Saturday, May 25, 2024

Marc Destrubé some years ago when I was having my Picasso Blue Period

A preview explanation of the concert 

I have to admit that if I were alone in my house (not quite, as I have two cats, Niño and Niña) I would not play a Béla Bartók CD (I don’t have one).

But Marc Destrubé and his Microcosmos Quartet know something that has been plainly evident to me too, as I have gone to two previous performances in the quartet’s house concerts of Bartók’s 6 string quartets and also 3 of Benjamin Britten’s.

24 May 2024

 

What is evident is that music that might seem unlistenable in the comfort of your home has a pleasant immediacy when one is in the first row (my friend graphic designer Graham Walker and I always sit on the front row). By observing each musician, who often smiles in pleasure, I can almost feel that I am with them in their joy.

Last night’s concert, at The Amenities Room of Ocean and Lee’s residence, had outstanding acoustics. In particular, the sound (and the playing ) of Hannah Addario-Berry’s cello (a rich reddish brown) was literally music to my ears.

 

Of the other featured composer, (my Valencian grandmother would have told me, “En su casa lo conocen,” or they know him at home, American Ned Rorem, was another example of Marc Destrubé’s talent of being an educator. We were pleasantly educated by music that had all kinds of moments that were lyrical and not so. Who would have known that a composer would have been so inspired by an artist (Picasso) to write this piece of music?

I was so interested in this process that I found out that my Argentine hero, Ástor Piazzolla, also wrote a composition on the painter.

Piazzolla - Picasso

Please go to the link below of the Microcosmos Quartet as there are a few more concerts that will repeat this program in the next few days.

Microcosmos web page

And as for me, while I am no artist, I can attest that recently I have been having my very own Picasso Blue Period.

 

And for anybody not willing to listen to Béla Bartók, while sipping some Hungarian red wine, I can only repeat  what American composer Charles Ives once said when he noticed people making a quick exit from one of his concerts, “Stand up and take your dissonance like a man.” And that applies to all you women, and the gender fluids, too.

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, May 30, 2024

 

I cannot speak for others about this topic, but for me, one of my life’s tragedies has been that when I became curious enough to ask a question the person who could have answered it was dead.

I remember to this day the first time I ever saw Rosemary. It was from the back. She was walking out of the school where we were both working in (I did not know this) in Mexico. On the street I saw a woman with straight and long blonde hair. She was wearing a dark blue miniskirt and she had legs that were astounding.

I have no idea how I approached her and how I felt when I first saw that lovely face of hers. I have no memory of what I said to her. We were married a month and a half later.

Perhaps I was always destined to fall for a blonde. In 1958, homesick for my mother in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila, while in my boarding school in Austin, Texas, my mother came for a visit. She suggested we go to a movie on Congress Avenue at the Varsity. It was Raintree County with Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint and Montgomery Clift. My eyes were only for Saint and I had no interest in Elizabeth Taylor’s purported violet eyes.

While in Buenos Aires around 1966 I had a blonde girlfriend called Corina Poore. She was a fine guitar player with a lovely singing voice. She introduced me to the music of Bob Dylan (I was an ignoramus) and of Peter, Paul and Mary. She contacted me in 1968 to tell me she had found a job in the Mexican Olympics. I turned her off by telling her I was married to Rosemary.

My interest for for folk music I retained especially in appreciating when Joan Baez sings in Spanish. I have a special place in my heart for Peter, Paul and Mary. Somehow Mary reminds me of Rosemary even though Rosemary never wore bangs.

The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face - Peter, Paul & Mary

I now only wish I had asked Rosemary, “What did I first tell you when I must have touched you on the shoulder on the street?”

When I went to Buenos Aires at Christmas 2021 to avoid being in Vancouver for a Christmas without Rosemary, I remember being in the lobby of the Hotel Claridge. I was sitting on a wing chair reading the love poems of Alfonsina Storni while staring at the elevator door imagining that it would open and Rosemary would be there. It was then that I realized that I was falling in love with Rosemary all over again.

So many of my blogs since she died on December 9, 2020 are about her. I have come to the conclusion that I am wooing her all over again.

Rebecca and Lauren - 2 July 2006 with Rosa 'Sexy Rexy'

Today I went to my local nursery on Broadway near Macdonald called David Hunter. I went with the intention of getting some slug bait as one very nice and large hosta, Hosta ‘Northwest Textures’ has lots of holes. I want my garden to look as perfect as possible when I open it for the Vancouver Rose Society next week.

Glen Draper and his Hosta 'Northwest Textures'

I did find the slug bait but I also bought some hostas(!) and a rose.

Why?

In English we have the word whim and we use it as “in a whim I…” In Spanish we have a word antojo (the verb is to antojar) which is a combination of two words before/eye. What this means is that when you see something you sometimes fall for it. In Mexico the word antojo more often than not applies to food you want to it. These can be tacos,etc. In Mexico this food is called antojitos.

Why did I buy a rose when I really have no more room on my deck?

My whim was measured by memory and nostalgia. In our Kerrisdale garden one of the roses that was there when we bought the house in 1968 may have been that rose. Or perhaps I bought it a few years after. The rose was called Rosa ‘Sexy Rexy’. It is a nice rose that for me was all about that womanizer Rex Harrison that I liked as an actor. I quickly found out that the Irish hybridizer, Sam McGreedy who moved to New Zealand. He came out with the rose in 1984 and named it after a friend.

So we had the rose in our garden and I even used it to photograph my two granddaughters as you can see by the photograph in this blog. I have no memory on how it disappeared.

So for that past memory, those rosy times when our granddaughters would spend Saturdays with us, a memory that included the bucolic times share with my Rosemary, will be back when my purchased rose will bloom in perhaps a week.

 Somehow I never did scan a Rosa 'Sexy Rexy'. I will now have a chance. And that makes me smile.