Straddling today’s 4:32 pm sunset, in a former industrial building: Plantulary. A “word-list-dance-song-architecture made from observations, conversations, and relationships with each other and the plants that continue to teach us about what it means to be in relationship with the cycles of time, the processes of living and dying, and with this place that sustains us.”
Category: Arts
Exploring Death and Mortality
It was a sellout crowd at Orchestra Hall this evening. Here, members of the orchestra are slowly taking their positions and tuning up. Later, the 80+ members of the Minnesota Chorale filed in to perform Mozart’s Requiem.
Neighborhood Gems
After school, I enjoyed a delicious, runny fried egg sandwich for lunch at Mill City Museum. In the winter, this lobby of the former 1890s flour mill hosts our local farmers market. Next door, hundreds of school kids poured out of the Guthrie Theater after a special performance of A Christmas Carol. I asked a teacher about it. “It was awesome, awesome!” she exclaimed, her arms raised in a celebratory gesture.
Coffee, Donut, and Democracy
At Open Book, a building dedicated to all things book-related, The Minnesota Center for Book Arts had set up an antique letterpress machine. How could I resist pulling the lever? I’d ducked in from the rain for a coffee and donut at FRGMT Cafe. Today, the building is also serving as our polling place, though I’d already voted by mail.
How We Live
Movie night tonight! The blockbuster anime “The Boy and the Heron” is finally available for rent at a reasonable price. Today, I’ve been skimming the 1937 Japanese coming-of-age novel “How Do You Live?” (in translation, of course), which apparently provides some of the philosophical underpinnings of the movie but not the plot. Interestingly, the novel also makes an appearance within the film itself. The author’s backstory is a lesson for our times as we slide towards authoritarianism.
From Darkness to Light
Went on a journey from despair to celebration with the Minnesota Orchestra. The opening piece was based on W. B. Yates’ dark poem, Nine Hundred and Nineteen, reflecting the turmoil of Ireland in 1919. The concert concluded with Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony composed in 1944 Russia with notes of celebration in the final movement. Time will tell if there are parallels with the upcoming days in the USA.
Orchestra Hall at 50
At Orchestra Hall, admired a LEGO model of the venue, part of a display celebrating the building’s 50th anniversary. The model captures the auditorium’s angle relative to the rest of the building and the street grid, a tricky feat with LEGO. Inside the auditorium, we enjoyed a concert featuring Shostakovich, Bernstein, and a recent commission by Chinese American, Zhou Tian.
Exploring the Elusive Nature of Home
A visit to the Walker always transports me. Today, the draw was a new exhibition, “This Must be the Place,” exploring the multifaceted concept of “home.” Anything I would write on this worksheet seemed pretentious, so I held onto my thoughts about home being more of an idea woven from experiences, relationships, and memories for this aging, gay, technocratic, married, …, immigrant.
Brushes With AI
At the Victoria & Albert Museum it was Digital Design Weekend. Here, museum visitors are on a date with a difference. They’re communicating via phones using language restricted by AI. Meanwhile another AI system is generating social media comments on how the date is going. Elsewhere, machines creating water colors inspired me to imagine the… Continue reading Brushes With AI
View from Endless Bridge
Endless Bridge is a cantilevered structure that juts out of The Guthrie Theater, reaching towards the river. It has two levels, an outdoor space, and a bar. And the bar is where we’re enjoying a glass beside a mirrored window before The Lehman Trilogy. I’m anticipating a 3-hour critique of unfettered capitalism, starting in the… Continue reading View from Endless Bridge