When lots more terrorism began to unfold in the new century my Argentine artist friend Juan Manuel Sánchez discussed that a safe heaven far from it all would be the Argentine Patagonia. Since then wealth Americans have discovered it and property would now be at a premium.

One of the more onerous by-products of social media these days are the ambulance chasers who clamour to be first with the “This is my favourite song (video, film) by so and so.” It is interesting to note that none of my social media friends noted the death of Ben Bradlee. He spoke good French but didn’t sing.

Then there is that picture of one of those American women with I believe an Armenian background that appears with the heading that fewer people have died of Ebola than married her or one of her sisters.

TV news, social media, newspapers, the on line ones and the hard copy ones, all tell us of relevant but mostly irrelevant details about disasters, kidnappings, and war. But most recently it was all about the terrorist tragedy in Ottawa. The me-tooers are reverently placing their ten cent opinions on the matter as if I would be interested on the opinion of an eminent local actor’s opinion on the matter. I would be most interested in noting that the terrorist, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau when he ran from the first assassination to his car I was sure he had no gun. Did he leave it behind? Did he have more guns in that car?

After a few years of watching MSNBC and particularly Rachel Maddow I have come to the conclusion that American politicians are either Democrats or idiots. One of them Republican Representative from Alaska, Don Young (81 in spite of his name) said a few things in a recent debate that he had to apologize for. One of them I thought was funny:

Dismissing same sex marriage he asked, “What do you get with two bulls?”

But this other statement made me think:

He offended some high school students who recently lost a classmate to suicide by suggesting that suicide was result of a lack of support from friends and family.

That made me think of dead terrorist Michael Zehaf-Bibeau’s mother in her apology to the murdered soldier Cpl Nathan Cirillo’s family that she had not seen her son in five years and she hated him. How off the mark is that idiot from Alaska?

In 1191, after the fall of fall of Acre (in the Holy land), during the Third Crusade, Richard the Lionheart attempted to negotiate terms of surrender with the Saracens. Richard wanted to exchange over 3,000 captured prisoners for the True Cross, as well as a hefty ransom and imprisoned Christians.

After much delay by Saladin and the Muslims, Richard, became impatient so he personally marched his prisoners to a hill called Ayyadieh. There, in full view of the nearby Muslim army encampment, Richard ordered the slaughter of the over 3,000 prisoners, women and children included. They were all mercilessly beaten to death, axed and cut down by swords and lances. A Muslim force, so enraged by this act, attempted to charge the crusader lines but was repeatedly beaten back, allowing Richard and his army to retire in good order. It would seem that terrorism in the name of the True God does not differentiate from one God or the Other.

While I never met a terrorist in person I did meet Alfredo Astiz as a young and handsome (clean cut, too) Argentine Navy Lieutenant. I wrote about him here. And in related blogs here and here.

Not a terrorist in Acapulco

How could I have foreseen that this man would perform unspeakable crimes against humanity?

It is know but forgotten that when the Brazilian government was attempting to unite the vast landmass with highways into the Amazon interior that small airplanes were sent that dropped dynamite to help depopulate Native Brazilian villages that were in the way. There was never a confirmation that deadly spores were also thrown over.

It would seem to me that terrorism has always been with us and that it has been universal and that it has not respected any skin colour. The Japanese massacred the Chinese in Nanking and Generals Julio A Rocca and Bartolomé Mitre in Argentina pacified the natives dead much in the same way as in the United States. Is there any difference between massacre and terrorism? We know that in WWII the Luftwaffe installed specialized air brakes and sirens that made the dive bombing runs of their Stukas fill those in the ground with terror.

At this date the 42 young Mexican students (to be teachers) that disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero have yet to be found. This will be probably seen as narco-terrorism associated with dishonest Mexican police.

My friend Trans-Link driver Paul came to visit me on Wednesday afternoon and I told him, “Watch for men, or women with bulky midriffs who board your bus.” I then added that Patagonia was looking pretty good.

My first book purchase when Rosemary, Alexandra, Hilary and I arrived in Vancouver from Mexico City in 1975 was The Random House Dictionary of the English Language – The Unabridged Edition – 1966

I don’t open it much these days with the ready availability of on-line dictionaries. I chose to do so today as a form of illustrating today’s blog on the theme of the over use (in my books) of the word still.

For anybody not acquainted with photography you might not know that the photographer, who shoots (non-moving) photographs when films (the moving kind) are being made, is called the stills photographer.

If you know a bit about art you might recognize the name of the New York-based photographer Cindy Sherman. She achieved international fame with her series Untitled Film Stills, 1977–1980, which consists of 69 black-and-white photographs. The artist poses (they are self-portraits in different roles and settings (streets, yards, pools, beaches, and interiors), producing a result reminiscent of stills typical of Italian neorealist or American film noir of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

I shot stills of CBC variety and drama series at the CBC from 1977 until the early 80s. I always argued (for fun) with the crews that stills came before moving pictures and thus they should be called moves photographers.

Another romantic use of still is to attach it to the idea of making illicit booze in the Deep South of the United States.

So far so good. But I started noticing by the early 90s that people I had not seen for a while would start conversations with, “Alex are you still…” I knew what they were driving at. They did not consider photography a relevant (much as it in fact is not relevant now) profession and they wanted to know if I had moved to a better and more established mode for making money. I particularly got miffed when the questioners were lawyers, I usually responded, “Are you still lawyering?”

Another awful use of still is in connection with the proliferation of female selfies in facebook (note that the style of the logo means it should be in lower case). Because I have few acquaintances under 40, most of these selfies are of women over 40. Many of the pictures are terrible phone selfies or dark with light backgrounds, or in a merciless flash situation at a restaurant or party. Friends will comment, “You are still beautiful.” Since I don’t rant or complain on facebook I do not put stuff like, “Wow, what an active and incisive brain!”

The other side of the coin is that nobody comments on man selfies, “You are still handsome.”

If I were a woman over 40 and someone wrote about my perceived beauty with still, I would immediately go to the Hudson’s Bay and purchase a large jar of Oil of Olay.

And yes I am still taking photographs. On a sadder note I remember the many times my mother told me as a young boy, "Your sister, Vicky had red hair. She was still-born."

One of the most pleasing aspects in my ever diminishing profession as a photographer is to be able to photograph someone more than once. It especially interesting when time has transpired between the sittings.

Sometime in 1989 as I was planning my show of women photographed in tubs I went through the people I knew and asked them, “Would you pose for me in tub?” Without mentioning that I wanted them unclothed the idea of them being in a tub of water precluded clothing as such except for two of them who wore bikini bottoms. I found out quickly that the easiest way to have a woman take off all her clothes was to suggest a bathtub.

In my search for subjects once I exhausted my list of friends I went to Emily Carr to have lunch with my friend Derrick Carter, who at the time was teaching design at the former institute but know university. I asked him if he knew of any possibilities. He coincidentally pointed at young red-haired woman on the cafeteria line-up and said, “She would do it.”

In retrospect, I know realize that this whole procedure would now be deemed inappropriate by any education institution. But things were definitely different in that past century.

I got up and without any kind of introduction I went to the red haired woman and quickly told her of my project. I finished it with, “If I were you I would not do this.” To which she said, ‘I’ll do it.”

When my 21 year-old daughter Alexandra insisted in being photographed in the tub and I found it a bit uncomfortable I wavered but she was insistent. I decided that the safe route was to get her to pose at the same time as the red-haired Joelle who was also 21. They helped each other in the process and I was delighted with the results. I was particularly impressed by her delightful smile and that sparkle in her eyes.

Joelle - 2003

I have no memory on how it was that in June 2003 a visibly pregnant Joelle again posed in my bathtub.

Just a few days I posted a blog about my daughter’s tub photograph here. In facebook Joelle commented on the title of that blog in this way:

“This title makes me laugh! That must have made me the ‘The Virgin Floozy’".

I talked to Joelle today and so that is the explanation for this day’s blog title.

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: “I’ll go take a hot bath.

I meditate in the bath. The water needs to be very hot, so hot you can barely stand putting your foot in it. Then you lower yourself, inch by inch, till the water’s up to your neck.

I remember the ceiling over every bathtub I’ve stretched out in. I remember the texture of the ceilings and the cracks and the colors and the damp spots and the light fixtures. I remember the tubs, too: the antique griffin-legged tubs, and the modern coffin-shaped tubs, and the fancy pink marble tubs overlooking indoor lily ponds, and I remember the shapes and sizes of the water taps and the different sorts of soap holders.

I never feel so much myself as when I’m in a hot bath.”

Sylvia Plath —The Bell Jar, Chapter Two



You take about 50 photographs of a beautiful woman in a tub and you pick one for a show. Years later you go back to take a look and you notice these. We do know that Sylvia Plath and Diane Arbus are connected by the fact that both committed suicide. Plath was a poet, novelist and short-story writer who put her head in an oven. Diane Arbus was a photographer known best for her "freaks" and the best portrait ever taken of Jorge Luís Borges. She died by slitting her wrists in a hot tub of water. I find it paradoxical that Plath found comfort in a tub and wrote beautifully about it.

Sometime in 1988 I went to see a punk band at Gary Taylor's on Howe Street. In a dark corner I spotted this young girl with a face that could have launched thousands of men to start smoking. Since I have never been shy about these things I approached her and that led to a couple of years of a photographic relationship where I began my personal obsession for the photography of women in bath tubs. 

I look at these pictures and marvel at the human face. How can a pair of eyes, one nose, a mouth a couple of eyebrows all result in this remarkable and haunting face? I will never understand the photographer who is attracted to the landscape when the landscape of a human face can be so much more interesting simply because I can never really pin down what may be behind those eyes staring at my camera.

Years before I had known a dancer at the Number 5 Orange called Snow who had a look similar to Alexandria. I would often describe to my friends that Snow was the kind of woman you would see getting off a Flxible Continental Trailways bus in a small West Texas town in the middle of a hot  summer afternoon. She would have been wearing a white gingham dress, high heeled shoes and carrying a cheap cardboard suitcase. When I see such faces it is easy for me to understand why all those Greeks fought a war over the face of a woman.

Coyoacán, Mexico 1962

Globalization has helped standardize language. Not too many days ago I was lambasted by a friend for using a word, flummox.

Amazon these days is being accused of being a monopoly in its battle with book publisher Hachette. Paul Krugman  the economist/NY Times columnist does not agree and uses a word I had never seen before, monopsony, which he defines as: a dominant buyer with the power to push prices down.

The reason for my bringing up the subject and the word is that I have long taken the advice of a book I used when I taught high school in the early 70s in Mexico City. It was called 30 Days Towards a More Powerful Vocabulary by Doctor Wilfred Funk & Norman Lewis. Central to the book was the idea of using the new words in sentences orally and then writing them. This was a way of making these words “your own”. Thanks to the book I was able to teach my students the difference between an ophthalmologist (a medical, as in MD, eye doctor/surgeon) and the optometrist (someone I would not only not buy a used car from but would not trust for an eye check-up). The book taught the students and teacher the meaning of ennui and its difference from weltschmerz.

1. The ennui induced by persistent solicitations to join new social networks.

2. 'Sunday Morning ' is sweet as a picnic and full of cut-price weltschmerz to luxuriate in, even though I was only just nineteen.

I feel both these days and perhaps because of their joint participation in my state of mind I don’t flame people who use:

1. Absolutely!

2. At the end of the day.

3. Award-winning (writer, photographer, designer, idiot, etc)

I would suggest that for 1 you might replace it with a simple Yes! or even Exactly! For 2, I thought that at the finish line might work or perhaps at sunset. And for 3. I would list the awards or not use the combination award-winning at all.

 All the above serve but as excuse to place two photographs I took in Mexico in 1962 which I entered into a an art competition at the University of the Americas where I was struggling to become an engineer, a task I failed when I had to face figuring out the difference between capacitance and inductance.  My photographs, including these two won the photography side of the university competition and the award I got was signed by Rufino Tamayo. As far as I am concerned that is the only award I am proud of and the scads that I won later have left me in complete ennui.

Addendum: How could I forget the "I am going to curl up with a good book." 

Flute Concerto in E minor František Benda

It was as new, pristine, fresh, and as surprising (and exciting) as going to my first opera at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in 1964. A beautiful Viennese girl invited me to Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel. 

The Fiery Angel -Sergei Prokofiev

It was as new, etc as my first listening to Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd playing Desafinado in Jazz Samba in 1962.

Desafinado

In fact of all the new music I have been exposed to since I can remember, it was that Jazz Samba, coming out, seemingly from nowhere, that truly wowed me to the experience of listening to something for the first time. 

That lyrical Jazz Samba gave me the impetus to take my chances on a record I purchased at an import store where I could not listen to it first. It was Stan Getz's Focus with a string orchestra and music composed and arranged by Eddie Sauter. This record, with the tune I'm Late, I'm Late first weaned me from syrupy jazz and prepared me to some day "take music like a man" as Charles Ives once said. Dissonance was now part of my vocabulary. But Arnold Schoenberg had to wait.

I'm Late, I'm Late

At the time there was a movement called Third Stream Music that attempted (successfully in my opinion) to merge jazz with contemporary classical (as in New Music) of the time. In fact it was John Lewis and his  Modern Jazz Quartet’s 1959 album Third Stream Music that had alerted me to the wonders of dissonance and the sound of cellos being played loudly particularly in Sketch For Double String Quartet.

Sketch

Learning to print b+w prints in the darkroom of Mexico City’s University of the Americas with my friend Robert we would listen to Getz, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and The Modern Jazz Quartet from his huge reel to reel tape machine. I also listened to an odd rendition of Tea For Two played by the solo piano of Thelonius Monk. To my ears he seemed to play the right wrong notes. Almost more lyrical is Dmitri Shostakovich’s arrangement of that song.


Tea For Two Thelonious Monk, Oscar Pettiford bass, Art Blakey drums 
Tea For Two Arrangement Dmitri Shostakovich & directed by Mstislav Rostropovich

It was in 1962 that the Baroque Era blossomed into a re-existence as new music through the proliferation of recordings by the German label Archiv. It was in 1962 that I first heard music by Girolamo Frescobaldi in a Mexican baroque church concert. Being up close in a small place gave the music an immediacy I had not experienced before. Because of my mother I had listened to too much Tchaikovsky, Grieg and, Rachmaninoff although I never ever got tired of listening to her play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. 

Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor, Op. 27 No. 2 "Moonlight"

Now, most recently Early Music Vancouver has been featuring the music of the 17th century sometimes called music of the fantastic period. Many of the composers, up until now, in our times, may have been unknown and recordings of their music all but unavailable. That has changed. Consider that a small group called Stile Moderno is playing a concert on 14 November with music by luminaries of the 17th century Marco Uccelini, Dario Castello, Biagio Marini, Girolamo Frescobabldi, Giovanni Battista Vitali, Johan Rosenmüller, and Antonio Bertali. How is that for new music? And there are other groups that play this fantastic stuff like Zephiro

In spite of my early exposure to the harpsichord through the music of Girolamo Frescobaldi I did not much care for the instrument, particularly as I could not sense its presence in a baroque orchestra when it played in a continuo (bass accompaniment) mode. But talking to virtuoso harpsichord man, Alexander Weimann, Artistic Director of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra I found out that lots of that continuo playing is not written down. The harpsichordist must then improvise. With this connection to jazz, my ears opened to the wonders of the instrument.

Beethoven, Bagatelle No. 3. Op. 126 Glen Gould

If you go to any New Music concerts in Vancouver be presented by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra or concerts with the Turning Point Ensemble you will note musicians that play for other well-established orchestras. They, too, must feel a need to approach music for the first time. Or as in the case of a recent concert by Turning Point Ensemble to have the renewed pleasure of being exposed for a second time of rare music of Duke Ellington. Where else in Vancouver would you get such a chance? Or how about Stravinsky’s 1940 Tango for piano? TPE’s pianist Jane Hays’s rendition sounded as Argentine as anything by Piazzolla. 

Vayamos al Diablo Astor Piazzolla 
Tango - Igor Stravinsky Elena Kuschnerova

Music that has been played and played can be new, too. I remember the first time (and just as fresh the last time) I heard Pablo Casal’s conducting Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto in my 1987 cassette tape. Casals directs the first movement Allegro and the third Allegro assai, my favourite concerto for trumpet part as if there were no tomorrow or the musicians were being paid per minutes played. After this bullet train performance the trumpet player must have been given oxygen. It wasn’t until I came to Vancouver that I first heard the Number 2 played live. In Mexico City no trumpet player could tackle that first movement with the oxygen depletion of Mexico City’s 2250 meter altitude.

Brandenburg No. 2 JS Bach Casals directs first Allegro. 

I must confess that I went nuts over Bach only after listening to the Dave Brubeck Quartet play in their 1958 record Jazz Impressions of Eurasia a lovely piece called 

Brandenburg Gate

Nor am I too embarrassed to admit that the Swingle Singers helped, too.


Usually in Vancouver, New Music concerts involve programs that draw from the fact that our city has an abundance of contemporary music composers. I have been to concerts featuring many of them. That some of these composers had theirs works performed by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra tells you that your musical institutions are not ready to rest on their laurels. Not only that the VSO has opened a smaller venue near the Orpheum that is part of its Vancouver Symphony Orchestra School of Music. And next to it is Pyatt Hall. Both these nice intimate halls feature lots of new and experimental music.

The Pacific Baroque Orchestra has commissioned works by the likes of Bradshaw Pack, Jocelyn Morlock and Peter Hannan. In a recent past Ballet British Columbia, under John Alleyne hired Turning Point Ensemble Musical Director Owen Underhill to compose the music for Boy Wonder. Ballet BC did the same with Underhill and Michael Bushnell to adapt the music of Henry Purcell for Fairie Queen. And more recently Ballet BC and Turning Point Ensemble worked together in Grace Symmetry. 

Not all the orchestras that commission new stuff are big. Novo's young cellist Marina Hasselberg does interesting stuff too.

In 2008 I attended a concert Turning Point Ensemble concert at Ryerson United Church that was all intimate warmth even though I did not expect such a thing to happen. In my ignorance I thought that Olivier Messiaen was one of those distant French composers of the mid 20 century that I did not need to know anything about. His Quartet for the End of Time was one most pleasant surprise for me as played by these guys!


Quartet for the End of Time - Olivier Messiaen

I have to admit that I find American Charles Ives a tad difficult but if you begin with the Unanswered Question and prepare for it with Aaron  Copland's El Salón México you will be well on your way to appreciating music that is old enough (well into the past century) so that the very idea of that concept "New Music" should simply be replaced by good music that will challenge and surprise your senses. 

Unanswered Question - Charles Ives Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas 

El Salón México- Aaron Copland 

In closing I must point out that if your first opportunity to listen to opera is to listen to a recording, forget it. You want to see an opera performed. Then it makes sense and it will grow on you. A good sort of modern opera to go to (or listen to if you must) is Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. That I saw it performed by Evelyn Hart means I kind die soon and not feel that the world passed me by.

Romeo & Juliet - Prokofiev Dance of the Knights.

I never did like Stravinsky's Firebird. I could not understand all the big bangs and the noise.  Then I saw it performed (as it should be) as a ballet by the National Ballet of Canada and all the bangs and the noise fell into place. And it did more so when in 2011 I saw a version by the Turning Point Ensemble in cooperation with Ballet BC's Simon Orlando and composer Jocelyn Morlock.

Perhaps some of the most intimidating music, even though it is from that past century, is the music of Béla Bartók. His Six String Quartets are especially so. And yet I heard them all this year (some more than once) played by the Microcosmos String Quartet. I can certify here that I cannot yet hum any parts or differentiate one from another. But...

Listening to them in the intimacy of a living room in a nice home, with goodies and wine and being so close to the quartet that could hear them breathe contradicts the idea that this sort of music is remote and cold. Part of the fun is watching the musicians of the quartet smiling as they navigate trying parts. There is an exhilaration that is catching. The Microcosmos String Quartet headed by violinist Marc Destrubé sweetened the programs with the three Benjamin Britten Quartets. All of the music, the Britten and the Bártok were new to me, therefore it was new music!

I would like to finish this with saxophonist and composer Colin MacDonald's Folie à  Deux. It is a re-interpretation of La Folia, a sort of Louie Louie of the 16th century that was interpreted by the likes of Arcangelo Corelli in 1700 and by Francesco Geminiani later in the 18th century. MacDonald makes really old music seem fresh with his interpretation (and added composition) in which he mixes conventional instruments of a past age with a more modern and rarely used (in new music) soprano saxophone. MacDonald could be your first potato chip into enjoyment of many more to come.   

I am not yet sure I can tackle Arnold Schoenberg - early 20th century music that might be my new music of tomorrow.

In recent times one of the most famous of women has been Frida Kahlo. But there are others of note that somehow have been overlooked. It is interesting that three of them were magnificent photographers. One, Tina Modotti was expelled from Mexico for being a Communist. She did not leave without giving her 4x5 view camera (which had been a gift from her friend Edward Weston for whom she had posed in the nude) to a noted Mexican-photographer-to-be Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Another was Margaret Bourke-White who was a WWII photographer and the first woman in a bombing run over Germany.


 A third is only now being discovered. She is Lee Miller who appeared in many avant-garde films of the 30s and was a model and assistant to Man Ray. Like Bourke-White she was also a photographer on the European front in WWII.

Imagine my surprise to have found in a pristine condition, this book on Lee Miller, originally published in 1985, but this one reprinted in 1999. I found the book in the reject book cart at my Oakridge Public Library. I paid $1.50.

Of interest to me was a stereo photograph of Lee Miller taken by her father Theodore Miller when she was 21. It is a full-frontal nude that I will not place here and just leave it to your imagination that Miller was one of the most beautiful women to have ever been photographed by Steichen and his kind. The double photograph was taken 1 July 1928 in Kingwood Park, Poughkeepsie, New York.

In 1989 I embarked on a project to photograph about 16 women, one at a time, in a tub. I shot the pictures with my medium format camera shooting down on the tub. The tub in question, in my basement had a ledge so that I was able to lodge my tripod. I used the same lens and film and light setup. This project ultimately became one of my better known gallery shows. 

Halfway through the project, one weekend, my wife asked me, “What floozy is posing for you today?”  I could not resist saying, “It is a floozy you know very well. It is our daughter Ale.”

During my tub picture taking my 21-year-old daughter asked to be part of the series. I found her request uncomfortable but she insisted. On the day of the pictures I asked another of my subjects (about Ale’s age) to come so that the two would assist each other and make it less of an issue for me.