How are you? I went to an excellent concert a couple of weeks ago and I'd like to share some of that music with you. The concert was called "8 Hands" and I think it's played in a few cities, so if you see a poster for it in your town definitely go. It's experimental/minimalist piano/percussion/found sound music, so if that is your jam (and it's certainly mine) you will love it.
Let's start with Bushra El Turk, whose Ostina-bush-to was on the programme (not on ours today unfortunately as I couldn't find it on youtube). Here she is talking about her creative process:
using one parameter from one tradition (e.g. rhythmic elements of an Arabic ekaa) blended with one parameter from another tradition (e.g. the harmonies used in Japanese court music) or it can be a mix of ideologies from these respective cultures. In the music-making: I work closely with musicians from these traditions and give them a strong conceptual base to work from. I invite them to bring their culture and personalities to find a space within my music to feel comfortable enough to express themselves. I notate my music in a way that hopefully gives them fertile ground–enough material to play with, yet frees them creatively.
The programme described Unsuk Chin's Etudes as "ferociously demanding". Obviously a phrase like that describes a pretty broad space and includes both things you will enjoy a lot and things that are entirely horrible. Fortunately for us, today, the ferocious demands are more on the player than the listener. Here's Yejin Gil rising to those challenges:
I went to see the Cornelia Parker exhibition at the Tate Britain last weekend, and you should definitely go too if you can make it to the Tate in time - it closes on Sunday. I went in not knowing a lot about Cornelia Parker other than that she did "found objects," which is cool, but I didn't realise how weird the found objects were going to be. Like, stuff that she found and asked to keep from… UK Customs and Excise. The Royal Mint. Gun factories. It's really good! Here's an exploded shed:
Here's an interview where she talks about one of my favourite pieces in the show, a cast of pavement cracks from Bunhill Fields:
Walking her 11-year-old daughter to school, she began to notice the cracks in the pavement. "I passed these same bumps and divots every day and actually got to know them quite intimately. And cracks in the pavement are kind of worrying. Kids get obsessed about not stepping on them. I did. My mother was German and I was brought up with Struwwelpeter stories, which are invested with all sorts of horrors waiting for you if you do the wrong thing. There is a lot of anxiety that gets welded into your psyche early on and pavement cracks are one of those, so I quite liked the idea of making them into an actual obstacle."
Of course, she's not the only woman found object innovator - here is an article about the theory that Fountain, widely attributed to Duchamp, was actually by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, baroness and modernist:
The answer to the question of who had been responsible for Mutt’s urinal’s journey from Philadelphia to the Grand Central Palace via 110 West 88th Street lies in the printing and the handwriting. The first in one hand, the second in another. They were in fact from the hands of two women. The first woman has been marginalized in art history, while the second has remained completely anonymous. One of the women who may have actually created the artwork was Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. She was a resident at the time in Philadelphia, when according to the two leading critics of modern art in New York—Gustav Kobbé of the Herald and Henry McBride of the Sun—the fictitious hoaxer Mutt had sent the urinal to the exhibition venue via 110 West 88th street. This explains the two different hands: the first done in Philadelphia by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and the second in New York by somebody else.
This week, I learned about Wisdom the albatross, who is over 70 years old and still going strong. Still having baby albatrosses! I think she's probably earned a rest at this point, but if you read the article it seems that the secret to her success is living in community and keeping things incredibly chill:
Scientists already know a lot about Wisdom. They know she was banded in 1956, as part of a long-term research project that has identified more than 260,000 individual albatross since the late 1930s. They know her favorite nesting spot. And they know she laid an egg late last November, like she has done at least eight out of the past 11 years, and that it hatched into a fluffy chick on February 1. But there’s still much about Wisdom and her species that scientists don’t know, starting with the obvious question: How long can she live? “We really have no idea,” says Plissner. “We also don’t know if she’s the exception. She’s probably just the oldest one we know about.”
Of course, as well as women birds it's great to honour women bird scientists as well. Here's Corina Newsome, in a good, long interview, talking about her "gateway bird," the blue jay:
At college, one of the courses that I had to take was ornithology: the study of birds. I was dreading it; I expected to fail. One of the first birds I learned about was the blue jay, a very brightly colored bird, full of different shades of blue and white and black. I was like, “Wait, this bird has been here the whole time?” I immediately fell in love with birds, in particular chasing and stalking birds. But I also fell in love with using them as a vehicle for education for people like me, who had no idea what to look for and what was out there. And now, I study birds in graduate school. So, my love of birds really was born in that class.
It's going to be a short Fem Fri today, but I think you're going to love it - I read an author, Charlotte Mendelson, on holiday and she's AMAZING. The books I read were When We Were Bad and Daughters of Jerusalem, but I could have read all of them very happily I think. You'll love them too.
I mean, look at this pullquote (about When We Were Bad). This is exactly my sort of thing:
"I wanted to ramp up the pressure in this book," Mendelson explains. "I thought: 'If you're a rabbi's family, it's not just about scandalising your own family and the neighbours, it's the whole community.' You are on a pedestal with everyone looking at you. It's about increasing the pressure on your characters to behave as badly as possible."
OH AND ALSO she loves Iris Murdoch too! Here's an introduction she wrote to Under the Net:
Is this the first Iris Murdoch novel you have ever picked up? If so, you are not alone. Her fiction is so extremely unfashionable that, to have reached this point, you’re a brave pioneer, virtually a Scott of the Antarctic of mid-twentieth-century novels. It isn’t your fault. Readers, and critics, who should know better, frequently dismiss her; they call her books arch, artificial, mannered, frantic. As literary criticism goes, this is like writing off Charles Dickens because he was too fond of a silly name, or Jane Austen because everyone gets married.
I hope you are all excited for Guinea Pig Awareness Week. This is a rare topical Fem Fri – I love piggles and am thrilled that there is a whole week devoted to promoting the welfare of these delightful little beings.
I had guinea pigs from the age of seven to the age of fourteen, and my final two, Ruffles and Tiffany, lived a (mostly) happy bachelor existence together. I’m sure you’re thinking, surely Tiffany is a name for a lady piggle – delighted you asked, in fact he was named (by my mother) for Louis Comfort Tiffany.
As I said, these lads shared a hutch and were normally very happy together. But every month or so Ruffles would think
HANG ON
I’M A GUINEA PIG
THAT MEANS I SHOULD BE MAKING GUINEA PIGS
WITH ANOTHER GUINEA PIG
Whereupon he would JUMP RIGHT ONTO Tiffany. Tiffany, who had had no such recent thoughts (potentially, no recent thoughts at all?) would decisively shrug him off like
COME ON MAN
I’M TRYING TO ENJOY THIS CARROT
WHY DID YOU THINK I WOULD BE INTO THIS
After that peace would pretty much reign until two weeks later Tiffany would realise
HANG ON
I’M A GUINEA PIG
THAT MEANS I SHOULD BE MAKING GUINEA PIGS
WITH ANOTHER GUINEA PIG
And the whole little drama would repeat again in reverse! Aaahhhhh I loved them so much. 🧡🤍🧡🤍🧡
Here is an interview with Amy Garrett, piggle fan, who explains this behaviour – not in the below pull quote, you need to click to read it. There are plenty of charming details here:
Guinea pigs are also very affectionate. They're not like hamsters, mice or gerbils, who don't care if there's a human in their life. Guinea pigs bond with you; they love to be held. I once had a guinea pig who would run up and put her paws on my feet when I got home from work. That's not common, but all guinea pigs do squeak a greeting when you walk in the door – probably for food, but also to say hi.
Now how about an interview with celebrity piggle fan Phoebe Waller-Bridge:
But before I met Hillary who stars in Fleabag I wouldn’t have answered that way! Beforehand I had no pre-existing relationship with guinea pigs. When I was young, I had a hamster that I adored, so before Fleabag I would have said that. But I’ve since played with a guinea pig on set endlessly and fell insanely in love with that stupid little rodent.
How are you doing, alright? I hope so. I’m still on holiday but in incredibly exciting news have found a ska bar in the village where I’m staying. I love ska so here is a Fem Fri recommending three woman fronted ska bands.
We start in the second wave, with this absolute classic. I don’t think The Selecter are as famous as they deserve to be! They are well worth seeing live as well. 🎺
The Selecter: Celebrate the Bullet
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rFXbcOfybQY
Now here’s one of the sweetest songs to come out of ska’s third (and my favourite) wave. I have loved this track for more than two decades now. 🎷
The Usuals: Orange Boy
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rFXbcOfybQY
Finally, it’s easy to forget – probably because Gwen Stefani would prefer you to – that No Doubt were actually a third wave ska band, at least for their first two LPs. Let’s enjoy that fact together today. 🏁
I am on holiday. This means that as well as sitting on a beach and reading for 8h a day, I’m playing a lot of cards, so here is a Fem Fri about women and cards.
We start with this utterly superb cover for the Japanese translation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando:
The first recorded card game was played by a woman (and her in laws) too. I was very interested by the link between cards and another paper based innovation:
The first reference to the card game in world history dates no later than the 9th Century, when the Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang, written by Tang Dynasty writer Su E, described Princess Tongchang (daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang) playing the “leaf game” in 868 with members of the Wei clan (the family of the princess’ husband). The Song Dynasty (960–1279) scholar Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) asserted that playing cards and card games existed at least since the mid-Tang Dynasty and associated their invention with the simultaneous development of using sheets or pages instead of paper rolls as a writing medium.
https://theplayingcardfactory.com/history
Now, these aren’t playing cards, but they are cards for having fun with – nineteenth century companion cards. Parents disapproved!
A couple of months ago I had a Fem Fri about making communication clearer, and today I'd like to do a complementary one about making listening better. I've read this piece several times already - it's not particularly long, or particularly dense, but there's so much insight here. Things that I feel like I can work with for the long term. Here's Mandy Brown's All Communication is Lossy:
The most impactful mitigation strategy is to accept that lossiness exists. Simply adopting the mindset that signal loss is normal shifts your attention in ways that start to reduce it. Most miscommunication happens because we aren’t aware of the potential for it, or because we presume it’s unlikely rather than the default state of affairs. If you are aware of the likelihood that some of what you say is getting lost—and, conversely, that you aren’t hearing or absorbing everything that other people are trying to tell you—you are already three-quarters of the way to reducing the signal loss down to something sustainable, if not inconsequential.
How is it going! Britishers, are you stoked for the long weekend? I am. Americans, don't worry, Labor Day is quite soon. I hope that in Europe as well you have an upcoming holiday. I'm not going to even pretend that today's theme, modernism, is related to bank holidays.
I mean, it's specifically modernist women that you might not have heard of or that you might like being reminded of! Let's start with Amy Lowell, poet and… kind of impressario, I think. She did a lot for the scene and that doesn't always get you the recognition you deserve:
“God made me a business woman,” Lowell is reported to have quipped, “and I made myself a poet.” During a career that spanned just over a dozen years, she wrote and published over 650 poems, yet scholars cite Lowell’s tireless efforts to awaken American readers to contemporary trends in poetry as her more influential contribution to literary history.
Of course, you know of Zelda Fitzgerald as the author of Save Me the Waltz, but did you also know that she was an artist - both fine and family. She made so many little paper dolls for her daughter to play with, delightful wee dresses and all:
Here's a book review of a collection of her art:
Zelda: An Illustrated Life […] collects 140 illustrations and 80 of her paintings from the late 1930s and 1940s, lovingly compiled by her granddaughter, the Vermont-based writer, filmmaker and artist Eleanor Anne Lanahan. From her cityscapes of New York City and Paris to her psychedelic Biblical allegories to her delicate paper dolls she made for her daughter Scottie, the art paints an intricate picture of her psychoemotional world and reflects her passion for fairy tales, her irreverent dance with the absurd, and her enormous sensitivity to beauty — a visual reflection of the blend of intense intelligence and unapologetic mischievousness that made Zelda so alluring.
Finally, let's end in the Harlem Renaissance with Gladys Bentley; gender innovator and, if this article as anything to go by, a proper laugh on a night out:
While as a blues singer she followed the trope of the down-on-her-luck woman mistreated by men, as a nightclub entertainer Bentley donned masculine outfits and haircuts, flirted with women, and performed sexually charged songs whose lyrics were often a rewritten, bawdy version of popular white ballads. She is considered one of the first drag kings, and impersonated that kind of mock, stereotyped masculinity that is typical of drag acts. However she did not try to pass for a man, nor was she preoccupied with concealing her love for women off the stage.
Having now spent a Saturday in Margate (last Saturday) here is the long-awaited Fem Fri on the impressive women you might find out about if you go to Margate.
We start with Ingrid Pollard, who is from Guyana, and there's a major retro of her work at the Turner Contemporary which you should definitely make the trip to see if you can. A lot of her work is in photography and video, but it was her kinetic/sculptural work (pictured below) that I loved the most in that exhibition. She does talk about that but obviously my pullquote is her talking about rowing:
I used to row, and I was studying tango. I was doing both at the same time. They are very similar. You have to be super-aware – you’re listening with your body. If you go like this [tilts head] in the boat, it makes the boat go like that [indicates the other direction]. You have to cooperate with everybody: you’ve all got to be doing the same thing at the same time. The tango, it’s traditionally not a choreographed dance. […] The leader and the follower are doing different dances. The leader is saying, with a gesture, please come this way. And the follower doesn’t have to do that.
Now here is Margaret Bryan, early science educator and publisher of textbooks. There's not a lot about her on the internet (or what there is makes it clear that we don't know a lot about her) but as this post tells us she inspired a lot of people:
Mrs Bryan is an enlightened educator of some note, and introduces her female pupils to the wonders and principles of scientific enquiry and natural philosophy – all generally considered to be a male preserve in the 18th Century. In 1797, while living in Margate, she publishes a Compendious System of Astronomy, earning her a degree of fame. A year later, she moves her academy to Blackheath in London and publishes Lectures on Natural Philosophy (thirteen lectures on hydrostatics, optics, pneumatics, and acoustics) in 1806 and then in 1815, an Astronomical and Geographical Class Book for Schools.
