Hilary - Mexico City - 1973

 

Había aprendido sin esfuerzo el inglés, el francés, el portugués, el latín. Sospecho, sin embargo, que no era muy capaz de pensar. Pensar es olvidar diferencias es generalizar, abstraer. En el abarrotado mundo de Funes no había sino detalles, casi inmediatos.

Irineo Funes murió en 1889, de una congestión pulmunar.

Funes el memorioso – Jorge Luís Borges

He had learned without effort English, French, Portuguese and Latin. I nevertheless suspect that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget differences. It is to generalize to abstract. In Funes’s crowded world there were only details that were almost inmmediate.

Irineo Funes died in 1889 of a pulmonary congestion. Jorge Luís Borges

The Borges short story, Funes el memorioso from his lovely volume called Ficciones has been in my mind and I think at night and remember.

In Spanish to remember is to acordar. But there is another word, a much nicer word rememorar (not at all equivalent to the prosaic remember).  And there is another Spanish word whose definition in English would be “one who remembers”.  It is a word that Borges adored – memorioso. And that word is the title of the short story of a young Uruguayan who has such a perfect memory that he is unable to process all the he can instantly remember when he looks at something.

My thoughts these days have been about the difference of remembering a person without remembering the portrait I may have taken or the circumstance behind the taking of the portrait. These portraits of my family are all over the house. When I look at them, the process of remembering may be a bit more complex than remembering without facing the portrait.

And yet, when I remember these family members as well as other people I have photographed in my past, I instantly connect the memory of the person with the memory of the portrait and the taking of it.

Here is an example. When my daughter Hilary was 3, she, her older daughter Ale, Rosemary and I drove our VW to San Francisco from Mexico City. Because Rosemary and I taught English in Mexico City hotels that were part of the Weston chain we were able to get a reduced rate at the St. Francis Hotel on Union Square. The morning after we arrived we went for breakfast. The place was posh. Our waiter wore tails. Hilary began to cry and would not stop. Our waiter came and asked us, “Is there anything I can do to please your young lady?”  My answer was immediate as I knew the futility of the problem, “Yes, if you can bring her some tortillas and beans. That’s what she is crying about.”  

I did not take a picture so my memory depends on my memory and nothing more. When Hilary was 2, I placed her on a high bookshelf knowing that she would cry. I had my Asahi Pentax S-3 loaded with TRi-X waiting for her to do that. I waited for the tears to drop and I snapped my shutter. There is a 16x20 inch framed print on one side of my bed that I can see all the time reflected on the mirror closet doors at the foot of the bed. I have a T-shirt with that image and I like to go to Hilary’s job and ask her manager  or fellow workers to guess who the crying baby is. They can never guess. In Mexico City, in mid October when I chatted about my author photographs to 1000 people at the Zócalo at the Book Fair, I was wearing the T-shirt and mentioned it in my chat.

So my question here is what is the difference between my memory of Hilary crying at the St. Francis and that of my taking the photograph?  Unfortunately Borges, the expert on the subject is not around for me to ask him.  And Irineo Funes would not be able to process my question.

Peter Breck - May 1989

 

By a departing light

1714 Emily Dickinson

By a departing light

We see acuter, quite,

Than by a wick that stays.

There’s something in the flight

That clarifies the sight

And decks the rays.

Thanks to my 6001 blogs (including this one) I have become quite literate. My literacy is almost one-sided as when I began in 2006 I found it fun to mate my photographs with poems by my favourite poets. One of them is Emily Dickinson. I have over 100 blogs that feature my photographs. I have done the same with Jorge Luís Borges, Julio Cortázar, Alfonsina Storni, Alejandra Pizarnik, Shakespeare, William Carlos Williams, Alfredo Galeano, Mario Benedetti and a few more.

 Of Dickinson I have retained in my memory most of them as I have her complete poems in one volume. Somehow the one I have used today escaped my notice. I saw in on Twitter/X and saved it. In the last two nights I decided I wanted to illustrate it with my portrait of a Canadian actor.

I had a problem. Because of my age (81) names are beginning to fade. How could I find him in my files?

The solution  was to call John Lekich. I asked him, “What is the name of the Canadian actor I photographed in North Vancouver who appeared in many Westerns?

He immediately remembered. “Alex that’s Peter Breck who also appeared in some Perry Mason’s.”

So here you have Peter Breck

 And more Emily dickinson

Nature rarer uses yellow

Rosemary white and a bit of yellow 

Nature rarer uses yellow

Luck is not chance 

T is iris sir 

The white heat

I tried to be a rose 

nature rarer uses yellow 

The Tulip

Nor would I be a poet 

November left then clambered up
You cannot make remembrance grow
November
the maple wears a gayer scarf 

Fabián Panisello - Orpeheum Annex - 13 January 2024

Corey Hamm

People in this century still marvel at the Renaissance cathedrals and like me are unable to figure out how they could have possibly been constructed.

Involved were Freemasons. Of them we remember their secret handshakes. While as a teenager I was taught to read music, my knowledge of the practice has faded with time. I now believe that musicians and their skill in reading and writing music makes them this century’s Masons.

While for many years I wrote blogs that were my amateur versions of concert reviews, I have now avoided writing them, perhaps because once my Rosemary died in Dec 2020, I had no concert companion.

Last night at Turning Point Ensemble's concert featuring the Argentine/Spanish conductor/ composer Fabián Panisello, I had the company of my graphic designer friend Graham Walker who is able to read music very well and for many years played the flute.

Of the concert my initial reaction is, that after a terrible 2023, my presence at the Orpheum Annex, around the corner from the Orpheum, was like a palate cleansing experience that just might make me turnaround from being a recluse, living alone with two cats.

For those who may not know about the Turning Point Ensemble they are a musical group celebrating its 20^th anniversary. Except when playing with last night's smaller orchestra, their main venue is the large basement musical centre of the downtown Simon Fraser University campus at what used to be Woodward’s. For antsy folks in fear of a possible nuclear holocaust I can assert, here, that this basement location, where cell phones do not work, may be the place to be if such an occurrence could happen.

Last night’s concert, in its smaller space brought several, wonderful advantages. Graham Walker and I were sitting dead centre in the front row. I have observed that many Canadians prefer to sit in the middle of the middle. Walker is Scottish and I am Argentine!  In this small orchestra place, when you look at any of the musicians, you can hear their instrument. If you move your gaze the sound is then that of the complete orchestra.

I was able to also see the changes involved with these musicians. Trombonist Ellen Marple used five different mutes (in one of photos below). Flutist Brenda  Fedoruk played a piccolo, a normal flute and Walker noticed and was delighted when she played on a larger alto flute. Harpist  Janelle Nadeau who was close to us had several strings on her instrument that were bright red.

If you have gone to a few Vancouver concerts you might know that the hardest instrument to tune is that harp.

Brian Nesselroad, on percussion, except when assisted by Yueyi Liu, had to navigate a very wide wall of instruments. In one occasion he had to run from one side to the other in order to get to what to me looked like upright gongs on time for Panisello's nod.

Some orchestra musicians that play Beethoven and other composers of the 19th century may feel restless and even bored. Such is the case of the Turning Point Ensemble members.

Quite a few musicians of the Turning Point Ensemble who are also in the Vancouver Symphony wanted to explore the 20^th and now 21^st century music. A Turning Point Ensemble headed by the approachable (and sweet) Owen Underhill play music that challenges us with innovation, and the use of the digital possibilities of this century. David Brown, double bass player of the Vancouver Symphony, I have seen play with all kinds of amplifiers in concerts for Turning Point Ensemble in the past.

Where anywhere would I have heard Duke Ellington’s symphonic compositions if not for this orchestra? This Argie had never heard Stravinski’s Tango played by Jane Hays on the piano some concerts back.

With all the above out of the way, I will now go to my uncharted territory of the amateur music appreciation guy I am. My friend Graham Walker answered in the affirmative when I asked him if he heard any of the four works of the night on another night if he would recognize them. With the possible exception of György Liget’s Piano Concerto I could not. Since the solo playing of Corey Hamm was on a piano that was placed up and down so that he could face Fabián Panisello, I was not able to see all the fireworks his hands must have been doing. All I could see was his face.

After many years of listening to lyrical music, with some dissonant detours to Thelonius Monk and Astor Piazzolla, I was not quite ready for a complete concert featuring music that was not so. I believe that I would have a hard time sitting down in my living room to listen to Fabian Panisello’s Concierto de Cámara (2005). Watching him conduct and going from one musician to another, as they were featured, was part of the fun in my absorbing the dissonance and getting to appreciate it.

St Augustine, Bishop of Hippo may have had my problem, too. He stated that when you listened to music you heart a note in the past, then one in the present and then you could predict the future with the next one.

Another plus was being able to see Fabián Panisello's sheet music that had multicoloured notations and scribbles. They were a work of art.

Since I am an Argentine and Fabián Panisello is, too, on our way to an after concert party at Brenda Fedoruk’s home (when I asked her if she had cleaned the place which was spotless she told me she had done it that morning) I asked him why I could not discern anything Argentine in his composition. He may have perhaps wanted to tell me be, “Because I made sure that was the case,” but he told me about going back to ancient Phoenician times, etc. My photograph does not look like anything I did a few years ago. Panisello is working on his ideas that seem to avoid (thankfully?) the influence of Piazzolla, the tango and Ginastera.

As for the photographs illustrating this blog I can state that no magazine hired me and therefore my photographs don’t have to be sharp so the musicians can be recognized. I think that Panisello and I, and, of course the Turning Point Ensemble, we are all on the same ground of escaping that middlemarch.