Downtown Amblings, Ramblings
The Portland area is, I take it, ridiculously gorgeous for February. In fact, for the most part is has been since I first arrived. I've squandered much of this unseasonable luck inside Kyle's studio apartment in McMinnville -- combing through online ads, intermittently phone-interviewing, doing dishes, basically (as it were) playing Super Unemployment Bros. all day -- with a vague sense that I may regret it when it gets dark and rainy again.
Today, though, I've had an early and leisurely day downtown, since Kyle is working in Portland today and Friday and I've tagged along for the ride. This entailed leaving McMinnville not-so-bright and early. Though it did get brighter as we, unfortunately, had to search her car and its immediate environs for a while, since her keys somehow went missing in the process of her unlocking the car, putting our overnight bags inside, and trying to turn on the ignition. After deciding that the keys were almost surely in the car somewhere and starting the engine with a spare, we had a decently pretty and only mildly trafficky drive north to the city. I'm very used to commuting by myself and it's nice to observe how much faster a drive goes with a lively enough conversation. (Including, in this case, some discussion of how quickly one's mind can abandon logic and seek recourse in the supernatural to explain unanswered questions, even extremely mundane questions such as Where The Hell Did My Keys Just Go.)
Once we got to her company's downtown office I took a bus to the city center and settled into the first satisficient coffee shop I found. I read the first chapter of Alex Ross' book (on loan to me from Jack), an agreeably swift-moving description of (mostly) the relationship between Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. I like Ross' style so far: As he notes in his preface he presents a very much reduced overview of culture, history, and individuals, with individual anecdotes or works standing in for the larger, thornier view. The result feels like an elegant montage or rhapsody* on the themes at play -- the fault lines emerging in imperial culture in Europe circa 1900; the enthusiasm for music, but persistent lack of a national identity in music, in the U.S. at the same time -- that portrays well what Ross is mainly trying to get across, an idea of how classical music in the twentieth century is bound up in its time. I'm guessing that readers without a background in classical music, or at least in reading reviews or program notes on classical music, would find his synopses of pieces a little bit opaque in places -- certainly, if you want to know what sonata form is before learning how Mahler explodes/ bludgeons/ recombobulates it in his symphonies you might want to have access to a music dictionary, or maybe just Wikipedia -- but as its presence on a bunch of critics' end-of-year book lists attests it's a good general read. Hey, maybe I should actually read more than 30 pages of it before going on about it.
As with any book I'm getting into, my thoughts try to conform to its subject matter for a little while after I put it down. So, as I walk out of the coffee shop and down towards the grassy walk along the west bank of the Willamette, my brain tries to mash my interior monologue into something like an episodic Richard Strauss tone poem: Strongly defined in tone but weakly defined in content, except for a general sort of programmatic outline (The Hero Ruminates on the Fine Weather and the Prospect of Obtaining a Job in this Downtown Area, etc.) Where Taylor Street empties out onto the parkway next to the waterfront I can see Mt. Hood looming in a bluish haze beyond the east side of the city. This seems like a good portent, even though I miscall it "Mt. Doom" in my mind at first. Kyle calls during a break from what is apparently shaping up to be a slow work day, elated that she found her missing keys in a particular nook behind her car's rear window well and seat back: Also happy. As I walk southish and look at the skyscrapers to my right my musical reference point turns to Jennifer Higdon's City Scape; it occurs to me that a lot of what reminds me of city architecture in her music is how it is rooted in mid-twentieth century style. Architectural artifacts, more than any other cultural objects I can think of off the top of my head, stay visible after their stylistic moment has passed.
From there I've walked between the river and Multnomah County's ever-impressive central library a couple of times, using the library for typing and the not-library for buying a slice of pizza and making a couple of phone calls. The wheels of the job search, going round and round through the beginning of this week, have gained some real traction yesterday and today, and (knock discreetly on the wooden library table) I should have some good news to report from that front shortly. A pleasant day so far overall.
* Easy musical analogy deliberately not avoided. --ed.
Today, though, I've had an early and leisurely day downtown, since Kyle is working in Portland today and Friday and I've tagged along for the ride. This entailed leaving McMinnville not-so-bright and early. Though it did get brighter as we, unfortunately, had to search her car and its immediate environs for a while, since her keys somehow went missing in the process of her unlocking the car, putting our overnight bags inside, and trying to turn on the ignition. After deciding that the keys were almost surely in the car somewhere and starting the engine with a spare, we had a decently pretty and only mildly trafficky drive north to the city. I'm very used to commuting by myself and it's nice to observe how much faster a drive goes with a lively enough conversation. (Including, in this case, some discussion of how quickly one's mind can abandon logic and seek recourse in the supernatural to explain unanswered questions, even extremely mundane questions such as Where The Hell Did My Keys Just Go.)
Once we got to her company's downtown office I took a bus to the city center and settled into the first satisficient coffee shop I found. I read the first chapter of Alex Ross' book (on loan to me from Jack), an agreeably swift-moving description of (mostly) the relationship between Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. I like Ross' style so far: As he notes in his preface he presents a very much reduced overview of culture, history, and individuals, with individual anecdotes or works standing in for the larger, thornier view. The result feels like an elegant montage or rhapsody* on the themes at play -- the fault lines emerging in imperial culture in Europe circa 1900; the enthusiasm for music, but persistent lack of a national identity in music, in the U.S. at the same time -- that portrays well what Ross is mainly trying to get across, an idea of how classical music in the twentieth century is bound up in its time. I'm guessing that readers without a background in classical music, or at least in reading reviews or program notes on classical music, would find his synopses of pieces a little bit opaque in places -- certainly, if you want to know what sonata form is before learning how Mahler explodes/ bludgeons/ recombobulates it in his symphonies you might want to have access to a music dictionary, or maybe just Wikipedia -- but as its presence on a bunch of critics' end-of-year book lists attests it's a good general read. Hey, maybe I should actually read more than 30 pages of it before going on about it.
As with any book I'm getting into, my thoughts try to conform to its subject matter for a little while after I put it down. So, as I walk out of the coffee shop and down towards the grassy walk along the west bank of the Willamette, my brain tries to mash my interior monologue into something like an episodic Richard Strauss tone poem: Strongly defined in tone but weakly defined in content, except for a general sort of programmatic outline (The Hero Ruminates on the Fine Weather and the Prospect of Obtaining a Job in this Downtown Area, etc.) Where Taylor Street empties out onto the parkway next to the waterfront I can see Mt. Hood looming in a bluish haze beyond the east side of the city. This seems like a good portent, even though I miscall it "Mt. Doom" in my mind at first. Kyle calls during a break from what is apparently shaping up to be a slow work day, elated that she found her missing keys in a particular nook behind her car's rear window well and seat back: Also happy. As I walk southish and look at the skyscrapers to my right my musical reference point turns to Jennifer Higdon's City Scape; it occurs to me that a lot of what reminds me of city architecture in her music is how it is rooted in mid-twentieth century style. Architectural artifacts, more than any other cultural objects I can think of off the top of my head, stay visible after their stylistic moment has passed.
From there I've walked between the river and Multnomah County's ever-impressive central library a couple of times, using the library for typing and the not-library for buying a slice of pizza and making a couple of phone calls. The wheels of the job search, going round and round through the beginning of this week, have gained some real traction yesterday and today, and (knock discreetly on the wooden library table) I should have some good news to report from that front shortly. A pleasant day so far overall.
* Easy musical analogy deliberately not avoided. --ed.
1 Comments:
Wow! It's been nigh on a year since any of us blogged from the central branch of the Multnomah County library! How exciting!
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