As opposed to an inward-looking, navel-gazing, ultra-nationalist, ultra-religious, increasingly authoritarian and illiberal Turkey, the dream of a secular, democratic, pluralistic, inclusive and modern Turkey is still very much alive. [The incoming mayor of Istanbul posted:] “As we celebrate our victory, we send a resounding message to the world: the decline of democracy ends now. Istanbul stands as a beacon of hope, a testament to the resilience of democratic values in the face of rising authoritarianism.” … [In] these elections the proportion of locally elected women has almost tripled… [One new female mayor] was applauded enthusiastically by crowds chanting, “Women, life, freedom”, in an emotional reference to the plight of women in Iran… “The essential doesn’t change,” says one of the characters in Samuel Beckett’s play. But sometimes it might.
Kristi Balden chairs Enid OK’s Social Justice Committee. It’s prob got like seven members, prob all of them women. (Enid’s only got around 50,000 people.) Not sure where the men of Enid are on the fight against fascism front.
This year’s Templeton Prize winner is an African woman who has made it her life’s work to destroy this scourge. Her against-all-odds life story is every bit as inspirational as you’d imagine. At age 85, she’s busy training hundreds of midwives at the hospital she founded.
[T]housands of Georgians took to the streets of the country’s capital Tbilisi for two days of protests, waving EU flags and facing down riot police armed with water cannons and tear gas. The contentious [now withdrawn] legislation would have required all organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as foreign agents. The Georgian law was widely viewed as inspired by Vladimir Putin…
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SING IT.
Georgia, Georgia The whole day through As you march toward Your place in the EU
I said Georgia Georgia, what joy I find Freedom’s old sweet song Keeps Georgia on my mind
Other arms reach out to you Other eyes lie viciously Still in peaceful crowds I see The road leads back to you
ThisNYT article from the streets of Tehran features photos of Iranian women routinely going about the city without the hijab which – thanks to the vicious mullahs running the joint – millions of citizens now actively hate. Nothing like jailing and killing women because of their headgear to make yourself real popular.
And don’t forget – it’s not just the hijab.
Iran’s hijab law mandates that women and girls over 9 cover their hair, and that they hide the curves of their bodies under long, loose robes.
So the regime seems to have caged the young males they used to let loose among the population to attack unswaddled women. Maybe the government will bring back the morality police and maybe they won’t; the nuts are now talking about “warning women by text message, denying them civic services or blocking their bank accounts.”
Well, the war against women will always rage in theocracies; whether it’s waged crudely by killing them, or suavely by stalking them and making it impossible for them to live a normal life, the predilection to torture women into one or another form of invisibility will always be the most noteworthy and enduring feature of fundamentalist religious states/organized groupings of any kind. Given the Iranian state’s vileness and its power (authorities are already going after this incredibly brave woman — get a load of the way sheHURLS the hijabto the floor! Note the lusty cheers.), it’s astoundingly impressive the way millions of Iranian women are just saying fuck you come and get me.
Virtuosity on this level, in material this ravishing, is elevating to witness — which is why, even after so many hours, I was left at the end feeling an exhilarated lightness. Like many others I saw, I drifted up the aisle and onto the street unable to stop smiling.
Does UD wish she’d been there? Sure. (She tried for a ticket long after it sold out.) Is she sure she would have stayed in her seat (well, there were intermissions) for all four and a half hours? Hm.
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The ravishedNYT reviewer offers some nice writing:
[H]er prevailing style is sprightly, which is why the concert didn’t feel like eating five slices of chocolate cake in a row…
Her pillowy chords at the close of the Second Concerto’s middle movement floated quietly into place…
This handful of measures painted a whole situation and personality: vulnerable, strong, searching but not lost...
A shivering hush in the first movement of the Third Concerto was like a snow in which Wang made soft footsteps with the palest chords.
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Gevalt. Financial Times:
[T]icketless crowds … congregated on 7th Avenue, many bearing placards — “I need just one! I’ll pay anything!” …
The audience staggered out into the Manhattan dusk, as one, all changed; all humbled; all grateful for that ticket.
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Update: Further thoughts on the Wang phenomenon. For what it’s worth. And I’m only a reasonably informed amateur pianist. And more self-deprecating stuff like that.
I want to suggest that, counterintuitively, it’s Yuja Wang’sLACK of sensibilitythat lifts her above other pianists, who don’t typically produce crowds of people begging for tickets outside their venues.
When I watched my first Wang YouTube, I relaxed immediately into the knowledge that she simply would never hit a wrong key. Never. Not that I could hear.
I also relaxed in the face of her TOTAL absence of neurotic ego, as in Glenn Gould or V. Horowitz… With Horowitz, for instance, his immense sadness –his ashen features as he played even the most exuberant music — for me, it’s a one-note emotional experience, hearing him. He’s in it too much. Muddies the music.
And it’s not even fair, mentioning Gould.
But consider another, contemporary performer, a great pianist, and one with whom Wang has played duets: Khatia Buniatishvili. Close to the same technical virtuosity, to my ear. And I listen to her a lot. Howsomever…
There’s still the sense she conveys of what a heavy-weight experience it is, playing this stuff. Her features are usually squinched in a private angst as she plays. Which is okay… I mean, of course it’s authentic, and it conveys the poignancy of the sound and the challenge of generating it, etc. But it disallows the thing that allows the NYT critic to note not only Wang’s effortless production of many hours of difficult playing (plus encores); just as importantly, it allows him to say this:
[H]er prevailing style is sprightly, which is why the concert didn’t feel like eating five slices of chocolate cake in a row…Virtuosity on this level, in material this ravishing, is elevating to witness — which is why, even after so many hours, I was left at the end feeling an exhilarated lightness. Like many others I saw, I drifted up the aisle and onto the street unable to stop smiling.
Ungluttonous, elevating, light, drifting… Here is a pianist who generates in her audience, and I don’t want to get too-too about it, transcendence. She literally made an enormous roomful of people transcend the weight of being human (“It’s hard to be human,” as Tommy Raskin put it.), and they naturally craved that and stayed for that and drifted into the streets retaining that for as long as one can in the middle of Manhattan.
And just how does Yuja Wang take them there? She herself transcends the dull stupid particularity of being the human being she is while she plays. She is in the transcendent realm of beautiful complete expressivity and she’s simply really happy and grateful to be there. No complex sensibility at all; just delight. Michael Tilson Thomas
liken[s] her to a racehorse.
“She wants to run; she wants to show everything she can do.”
People wept when Secretariat pulled away; and yes of course great artists aren’t in competition yadda yadda … But the reality is that the relaxation I felt in the first seconds of encountering Wang is about this insanely rare capacity she has to stand aside and let me inside too.