Giants at the Quarter Season Mark

It's a long season.

Back on March 31st, I speculated about the Giants' chances in 2011, after a surprising world championship in 2010. The team's starting line-up--

Andres Torres

Freddy Sanchez

Aubrey Huff

Buster Posey

Pat Burrell

Miguel Tejada

Brandon Belt

Pablo Sandoval

Tim Lincecum

--has changed, predictably, given injuries and the ups and downs of individual performance. Brian Wilson began the season on the DL, and shortly afterward was joined by Torres and Cody Ross. DeRosa, nursing a bad wrist that didn't respond to treatment, was still in rehab; Freddy Sanchez has had knee problems; Brandon Belt couldn't hit big-league pitching and was sent down for more seasoning in the minors; and Pablo Sandoval broke a tiny bone in his hand, necessitating a month and a half on the disabled list. Barry Zito also managed to hurt himself, apparently for the first time in his career--though there were rumors the team management were actually kind of relieved that they didn't have to worry about him for a while.

Meanwhile, the team's inter-season acquisition, Miguel Tejada, was a flop, batting around .200, and making costly errors in the field at both Third and Short. I will note that I was disappointed when the Giants made no effort to keep Uribe (who signed with the Dodgers), who had been the true glue in the Giants infield in 2010. Bringing in Tejada, whose numbers had been steadily declining for the last three years, at age 37 (Uribe is only 31), looks to have been a really dumb move on Sabean's part. The addition of Mike Fontenot and Burrell for utility fill-in has been, again, predictably unsuccessful.

Throughout the first 35 games of the year, the whole team has been in a batting slump (with the exception of Sandoval, who's unavailable for at least another month). With Torres out, the team led-off with Rowand, who performed in his usual frustrating, streaky, manner. Huff, Burrell and Posey all were hitting in the low two-hundreds for this period, and team "power" simply didn't exist. Without speed, or power, it's hard to see how any team so constructed could long compete.

But pitching has been the story this year, as it was last year. Lincecum, Cain and Sanchez have mostly been very good, with Bumgarner taking over Cain's old "hard luck" position (starting the season presently at 1-6). With Zito out, new arrival (and reconstruction project) Ryan Vogelsong has been a pleasant surprise, winning three of his four starts, with a 2.36 ERA. Among relievers, only Affeldt seems to be underperforming. Wilson has 12 saves, despite 2 terrible outings. And Ramirez, Lopez and Romo have been the brilliant set-up men they were last year. With Ross and Schierholtz (who finally seems to be coming into his own as an all around fine hitting outfielder) in place of Rowand, and Burrell, the line-up looks solid, at least on paper. DeRosa's career--and the Giants' patience with him--seems finally at an end. What would have happened had the Giants put out the cash to keep Uribe (and Ishikawa)--instead of signing Tejada and sticking with DeRosa? Team chemistry is a funny thing. Tejada may seem committed, but his body language and approach seem very compromised--his career is clearly about done. Belt might be brought back up, but there shouldn't be any hurry about that (he's only 23).

Another encouraging sign is Bumgarner, who, despite having very frustrating numbers, has stayed focused and pitched very well last night against the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium, narrowly missing a shut-out (and his first complete game). Take away Sandoval's .313 average when he went down, and the team's combined average is only .238, compared to last year's total year's figure of .257. Clearly, the team won't be able to hold the line with that kind of offense (especially without any power numbers). Last year the team hit 162 homers; at the current pace, the team would hit only 124).

With 43 games completed, the Giants are 24-19. That would yield 90 wins at a steady pace. Last year, the team was 92-70. You could say the team is performing at about the same efficiency and success as it did in their championship year of 2010. But you'd be wrong. Almost no one on the present team is performing the way they've been expected to. At this point in the season, Lincecum should have at least 5 wins, Posey should be batting .300 with 35 RBI's, Huff should have 8 homers, and so on. When Sandoval comes back, that will help, but it can't cure this present anemic batting.

At least two position players will have to start performing up to skill-level, or the wins will stop coming. Last year's surprising play-off run was the result of the old adage about good pitching prevailing in a short series (5-7 games). This year, if the team continues at its present clip, the play-offs are definitely in the picture. But running on three wheels is always risky. With an improved offense, the pitching would have much more impact. The Phillies are only 2 games better than the Giants, despite a hefty power-laden line-up.

There's only so much tinkering you can do with a fluid line-up; Bochy has been moving players around freely to maximize whatever potential the team can muster. But he's no miracle worker. The guys have got to start hitting. There's been a hint of that lately--we got 13 hits on Wednesday, 10 the day before, and 10 the day before that. But there's a briskness, a friskiness which is lacking. The averages of batters with men in scoring position is woeful. Repeatedly, the team fails to pad leads, or to come through in tight situations when there are runs on the table. Back in 2009, I complained that too many Giants hitters were undisciplined at the plate--Molina, Burriss, Renteria, Sandoval, Fredy Lewis, Rowand, Winn, Uribe, Schierholtz, Velez, Torres--as well over 2/3's of the offense performed like minor leaguers, swinging at balls a foot outside or in the dirt, trying to out-guess the pitchers. That lack of discipline is still evident in Rowand and Tejada this year, though there have been stretches when Huff and Posey (and Belt) were just as sophomoric in their performance. What's the problem? In 2009, I thought it was the hitting coach. But now I'm not sure what the problem is. Are the players still "distracted" by the hoopla over their championship season last Fall?

The Fine Art of Calling Strikes

Watching major league baseball games on television is a sedentary activity. You won't get into shape by sitting on your butt. But following professional baseball is a mental activity which has spawned a whole technology of statistical data. There are people who apply higher level algebra to the diagnosis of statistical performance. They measure nearly everything that happens on the field, and cross-refer it by player, situation, across time, frequency, and everything else. Frankly, I'm not one of these types.

I watch my team (the San Francisco Giants), and cheer or moan in proportion to their relative success on the field or in the standings. It's a pastime well-documented in the literature. There are books by serious guys explaining the philosophical and psychological reasons we become obsessed by adult men playing games in public.

Of all the games designed by man for his own diversion, none is so carefully gauged to test the limits of skill, speed, attention and strength as baseball. The dimensions of the field, the distances and relationships, seem so accurate a measure of the tolerances between opposing contenders that the contest is literally a "game of inches"--or, indeed, of millimeters.

However, something I've become more and more aware of, over the course of the last five years or so, has been the touchy matter of the official strike zone. Most people who watch baseball, either in person, or on the media, pretty much accept the definition of the strike zone as an act of god. In the old days, when we listened mostly to baseball on the radio, you couldn't see the balls being pitched, and so if you heard a man being called out on strikes, you tended to think the batter had been outsmarted or had capitulated to the pressure of the occasion. Players might be thrown out of a game for arguing strikes, either pitchers or batters, and umpires were known to "punish" certain players for not being properly "respectful" to an umpire's calls. Umpires didn't like being "shown up" by a player, demonstratively objecting to an umpire's "judgment."

Television has become relatively sophisticated in its presentation of the action on the field. In some parks, cameras are mounted on the roof of the stadium, which can look directly down on the field of play. Cameras mounted directly behind home plate, or aimed in from behind center field, can provide an accurate view of the ball as it crosses the plate. What has become perfectly obvious to even casual viewers these days, is that home plate umpires don't call balls and strikes consistently. That is, the so-called "strike zone" is constantly changing. Each umpire's "strike zone" is unique, and may even change from inning to inning, or batter to batter, or pitcher to pitcher, depending upon the case. Some pitchers are apparently "granted" more leeway than others, while others see their strike zone "squeezed" by the umpire, as "payback" for previous offenses, or simply because the umpire appears to have some prejudicial regard for the teams involved. A batter may be "punished" for some previous sin, or an umpire may be trying to "balance" a previous bad call by reversing the tables in favor of the injured party.

All these kinds of excuses do nothing to rectify what has become--or, perhaps, may always have been--a very inexact science. There is always the "human element" in any judgment situation, apologists will insist. Umpires are human, they make mistakes, they have emotions, they have their moods, their biological ups and downs, and managing a game by defining the limits of the tolerable is partly an intuitive matter.

But we all know in our hearts that the criteria for acceptable risk and measure is truth, not some preferable or compromised standard. Balls should be balls, and strikes should be strikes, and it should be the same no matter who is doing the calling, or who is at the plate, or who is pitching, or which teams are playing, or what inning it is, or how well the umpire likes player X, or the weather, or the standings, or the price of beans. If we are willing to allow any other "extenuating" circumstances to justify departures from the rule, we've admitted to failure even before we've started play. Individual umpires can't be allowed to have "personal" strike zones, and the calling of pitches can't be allowed to descend into contentious interpersonal gamesmanship. The efficiency and accuracy of an umpire's calls should be based on the accuracy of the calls alone, and nothing else.

Baseball's official rule book states as below, the dimensions of the strike zone.

Over the last half century, the evolution of the game had caused umpires to lower and widen the strike zone, a trend which was officially changed in an official directive by Major League Baseball in 2001, insisting that henceforth, the old rule should be reinstated, to prevent false calls. So far as I can tell, this has had no appreciable effect on the strike zone interpretation in the last decade. Umpires still routinely call balls above the belt balls, and umpires routinely call strikes below the knees, and an inch or two outside the outer edge of the plate (away from the batter). Why do these anomalies persist? Why is the strike zone allowed to be "enterprised" by "creative" interpretations?

Based on my purely unprofessional observations of the behavior of umpires calling balls and strikes, I think umpires have become the unofficial arbiters of games, which should be decided by the performance of the players, and the strategical moves of their managers and coaches, instead of upon the vagaries of the umpires' calls. Umpires' calls need to be more closely monitored, and consistency needs to be improved. How could this be done?

Do we have the technology to actually measure actual strikes by some holographic electronic rectangular frame projection? If not now, then someday? Would taking the "human element" out of the calling of balls and strikes somehow make the game less "human"? Or, should we rate umpires by the percentage of calls that can actually be shown to be technically wrong? Does Major League Baseball already do this--behind closed doors? Be careful of what you wish for!

Above is Ted Williams's location chart of the averages he believed applied to pitches in each part of the quadrant of the strike zone. Click on it to see the averages. But Williams's theory doesn't include the umpire's capriciousness. If an umpire is calling strikes two inches off the plate, having an "accurate" strike zone isn't going to help the batter much. Or conversely, if the umpire isn't calling "high" strikes properly, the pitcher is going to be at a definite disadvantage. Either way, the game's fairness gets compromised. Great players will overcome adversities of various kinds, and quality will prevail. But it would be nice if we could see better performance by the umpires. Since they have so much power over the outcomes of games, their accuracy and consistency should be at least as closely watched and administered as any other part of the process.

Alan Ward's Designed Landscapes

[Note: This morning (May 17th), my previous post on Alan Ward was restored by Blogger, after having been "removed" inadvertently a couple of days ago, and then reinstated in its incomplete draft state. I'm leaving both posts up, just in case either one is "lost" again. -CF]

Alan Ward's book, Designed Landscapes, was published in 1998 by the Spacemaker Press [Washington D.C., and Cambridge, Massachusetts] which specializes in books on landscape architecture. Ward himself is both an architect and a landscape architect by training, but he had been photographing gardens and landscape for 20 years when this book was published. The book might be treated either as a documentation of landscape design, or as a pure landscape photography monograph.

In my case, I have a degree in landscape architecture, and am also a committed landscape photographer as well, so my interest in this work is at least twofold. Landscape design and landscape photography come together as different expressions of the same matter, but it's important not to confuse the two disciplines. Designing a landscape for use, is not at all the same thing as making an image of a finished landscape (or a wild landscape). The way a landscape "works" in reality, as a space one moves through or rests within, has really not much to do with the way it is "seen" photographically. Part of the confusion about why, for instance, the International Style, in architecture, was so persuasive and astonishing to its first audiences, seems to have had more to do with the canonical images which were made of its earliest iconic examples (i.e., Mies's Barcelona Pavilion, or Le Corbusier's Savoy Villa), than the actual experience of seeing and and being inside these structures in person.

Photographs are not reality. They present a certain view of space, from a certain vantage, in the moment of their taking, the light and atmospheric conditions varying according to the case, and they may seem more or less "true" to the actual space they depict, than the experience of literally being inside those spaces. Photographic space is a kind of "virtual" space, in which objects and perspective and tonal range are organized by the lens, and by the composer (photographer) to achieve a two dimensional construction which behaves according to the laws of representation. Being in a space is a much more complex phenomena, including, as it does, the other senses (than the visual) and the sensation of movement through it, its smells, sounds, felt textures, subtle shades of color, and so on.

All of which, by way of preface, suggests that I regard landscape photography as a poor stepsister of practical landscape architecture; as, indeed, the process of landscape design is a much more involved and laborious exercise in imagining and realizing arrangements and rearrangements of space and matter. But considered alone, landscape photography is its own art, which--though it depends upon the pre-existence of a landscape or a "garden" or cemetery or park--deserves to be treated as an art on its own, almost without reference or dependence upon its subject.

Ward's photographs in Designed Landscapes are arranged according to a series of eighteen specific sites, i.e., University of Virginia, Dumbarton Oaks, Blue Ridge Parkway, etc., with a set of plates devoted to each space. The work is exclusively black and white, and thus tends to emphasize the visual relationships and gradations of tone, rather than the interplay of colors, which would tend to detract from a purely abstract appreciation of the imagery. Again, it's important to understand that photographs, as I say, are not actual spaces, but only versions derived from them, and as such, black and white photographs are better able to define the qualities of visual definition which often may seem to trump the meaning inherent in objects and spaces in context. Colors (chromatography) have their own language and associations which relate to qualities outside the frame of any given image. And aside from this, the experience of black and white (monochromatic) imagery carries its own special interest.

I have reproduced five images from Ward's book--the first one of which is of Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I've never been to this place, but it appears to be a fairly woodsy space, compared to most cemeteries which I've seen. Sylvan settings are typical of traditional cemeteries, though usually more of the space is given over to the grave stones and monuments than to trees, shrubs and turf, than seems to be the case here. What I particularly like about this composition, is the magical light which seems to highlight the little classical pedimented rotunda to the right center of the scene. It lends a vaguely elegaic mood. When I visit cemeteries (or "graveyards" as we call them), I seldom am moved to consider the lives of those buried there. Instead, I tend to think poetic thoughts about nature, which may be the point. We would rather think of pleasant pastoral things in places dedicated to the dead, though decay itself--which one often sees in really old cemeteries--may become the overriding impression.

One of the considerations of photography like this, is its evident static quality, as if all activity and "accidental" occurrence had been removed from it. I often hear people criticize landscape photographs, because they're "sterile" or "emptied of life." Landscape photography is, however, primarily a contemplative art, which emphasizes control and precision above accident and chance. A dog achieving a frisbee at the height of a graceful jump may be a miraculous image, but it has nothing to do with the careful arrangement of objects in space--it's the expedient capture of an evanescent occurrence, all action and response and energy.

This quality--of purified perspectives and arithmetical precision of line and scope--characteristic of the best architectural photographers, such as Cervin Robinson or Ezra Stoller or Yukio Futagawa--asks that we perceive such imagery as the timeless vision of man's control over nature and materials. Art may be both an imposition and an augmentation of the order inherent in wild nature, and the resulting integration of natural forms and man-made (conceived) forms may be the perfect marriage.

Biltmore - South Terrace and Wisteria Arbor at Sunset

Ashville, North Carolina

This sense of integration between inside (man made) and outside (nature) is nowhere more apparent than in this view into the garden space at Dumbarton Oaks, where the external world seems to beckon through opened doors, a symbolic seduction which carries the metaphorical implication of departure, or exile, or even mortality. Inside and outside are poised at the threshold of decision, just at the point of release. The sense of classical balance, of stasis, calm, and certainty are overwhelming, almost as if one could stop time.

Dumbarton Oaks - View from inside the Orangery

In rural settings, the arrangement of space into a meaningful balance has different implications. Blue Ridge Parkway, in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia [below], bears the hand of man as deliberately as Dumbarton Oaks, but less oppressively. Land which may once have been given over mostly to agricultural use, fades gracefully into the picturesque, as a caricature of pastoral values. We visit our past, as surely as we visit our future (as with cemeteries), knowing full well that the meanings we deduce from it are as tremulous and fugitive as our dreams.

I often think that the sensation of light falling, from above, onto a space signifies a sort of benediction--though not in any strict religious sense--but perhaps in the same sense we have of rainbows, or the Northern Lights, a mystical happenstance of light and atmosphere. Such moments are several times less common in photographs than they are in real life, since they happen so infrequently, that the likelihood of their being caught on film may elevate them to the status of small miracles. An annunciation--of the arrival of the sun's light, or of its inclination just at a specific angle and instant--may be like the sound of a trumpet fanfare. Or, as below, quietly breathtaking.

Miller Garden, Columbus, Indiana

Government Out of the Arts !!!

As an example of a transgressive or disobedient aesthetic act, Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" is a famous focus of public controversy involving public funding of the arts. Exhibition of the piece caused a scandal when it was shown in 1989. The photographic (Cibachrome) image is of a small plastic crucifix submerged in a golden yellow liquid, which Serrano declared to be his own urine. Were he not to have made this claim, the liquid might have appeared to be, or be seen to be some other fluid. Serrano also stated that the work refers to the commercialization or compromising of Christian icons in contemporary secular culture. The image itself is diverting and strange, though not formally very innovative. It bears comparison with religious imagery from across the historical spectrum of art. While it is not overtly critical of religion per se, it does resonate with unsettling energy, and, taken together with the artist's descriptive captioning, is clearly meant to arouse viewers in ways that certainly include negative intuitive feelings about Christianity--though, again, what those negative feelings might be directed toward, or against, remains stubbornly non-distinct (ambiguous).

Enlightened members of any democracy want to preserve the letter and the spirit of free speech. It is the foundation of our political system, and any attempts to abridge or curtail it--no matter from what quarter, or for what purpose--are to be regarded with suspicion and resistance.

But tolerance and encouragement are not the same thing. The National Endowment for the Arts, which began in 1965, is intended to encourage artistic activity through direct financial support to organizations, communities and individuals--"to help create and sustain . . . a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry." The Congress, concerned that NEA not become a kind of cultural czar, urged that "there be given the fullest attention to freedom of artistic expression" and that "the standard should be artistic excellence."

During the 1930's--the period of the Great Depression, and the Administrations of FDR, the Works Progress Administration [1935-43] was created to support artistic activity in America during a time of social and economic hardship, and also to facilitate the creation of documents and events which would dramatize and bring to public attention, conditions which would awaken the national conscience of the electorate to the difficulties of the period, and inspire pride among the citizenry in our homegrown cultural accomplishments. By most accounts, the WPA was a signal success.

Government support of the arts is not a new idea. Noble and religious patronage has been going on for centuries. Pre-democratic support of the arts sustained the Renaissance, and religious and secular glorifications of all kinds have kept painters, artisans, performers, writers, sculptors busy for thousands of years. The question today, of course, is a different one. In a time when kings and bishops and generals ruled, responsibility and justification for support of artistic activity began and ended with vested authority--it was an expression of power. Since the inception of parliamentary democracy, with its power, theoretically at least, vested in the people (or the people's majority, or the people's organs of popular representation), the right and privilege of patronage of the arts has an entirely new dimension.

If the power to tax and regulate and fund commerce and standing armies is extended to cultural realms, the question of how that power should be administered is always under dispute. In aesthetics, there can be no fixed dogma. No one can define the public's interest as a judgment of taste in artistic enterprise.

Any kind of entertainment, any kind of artistic product or artifact is an expression of a specific and individual talent, creative energy, and taste. Though it may well be "in society's interest" to foster an environment in which the free expression of artistic production can occur, the manner in which such encouragement is to be carried out is fraught with contradictory interests and factions. Who is to say what the public's interest should be with respect to the production of art or literature or entertainment?

Writers, artists, performers all are free, in a free society, to express themselves through their artistic media. Private philanthropy and support owe no allegiance to any public interest. It is free to encourage any kind of artistic activity, without limit, as long as it doesn't tread on the rights and freedoms of other members or groups in society. But when government sets about trying to decide whom or what to support--in the public interest--contradictions abound. It is not the business of government to determine public or private taste. Taste is a matter of fashion. It changes over time. There are vast disagreements about what constitutes the value and purpose of all artistic activity. Art and literature and music and performance are, in fact, luxuries, which do not sustain humankind's need for food, shelter, and safety from harm. Nor does art serve a purely political interest. The public's right to be informed and consulted through media does not require that it should necessarily believe in, or invest in, any form of public speech or expression which arises from private, personal or limited ends.

Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" is a legitimate form of personal expression which is protected by the 1st Amendment. It does not follow, however, that the public, through its elected officials and administrators, has any obligation whatever to support such forms of expression. Serrano's work is a private, personal vehicle of artistic expression. Not one penny of the public's wealth should go to support its creation, or the life of its creator, or any institution which supports it (or him). There is no argument that can be brought forward to defend Mr. Serrano's dependence upon the public purse. If he is independently wealthy, or enjoys private patronage, or is a letter carrier, or a teacher of art at a private college, or sells his art on streetcorners--it matters not, as long as the public is not obligated to judge the value of his art through financial or quasi-financial support. Because it cannot judge. It doesn't have that authority, and it doesn't have that mandate. No one can take the public's tax money and decide--by whatever means--who or what constitutes "the standard of artistic excellence." There can never be agreement about this, and that is a very good thing.

That art is strongest which carries the fewest obligations, which is most free of encumbrances. If artists wish to criticize government, or anything else, they should be free to do so. But they cannot be supported by government. Government support of the arts is by its nature backward and oppressive. It should never be permitted. Not one tenth of one percent of the public's treasure should be given to it. In fascistic, or monarchical, or communistic societies, artistic control is from the top down. In a democracy, in which the arts (and religion, and business) are intended to be separate from governance, there can be no official patronage.

Richard Farnsworth as The Grey Fox [1982]

The Grey Fox, a Canadian production released in 1982, with direction by the late Phillip Borsos, script by John Hunter--has become a cult film over the years, appealing to an underground audience of sorts. Both Richard Farnsworth, the star of the film, and the female romantic lead, played by Jackie Burroughs, are now deceased. An Australian by birth, Borsos only lived to make a handful of films, passing away (of leukemia) in British Columbia at age 41 in 1995. Grey Fox, his first feature, was made when he was only 27.

That a director should have so much success in his first important effort is unusual, to say the least. Directorial debuts are typically minor efforts. Citizen Kane was Orson Welles's first feature film, but that kind of triumph is almost unheard of. How to explain Borsos's fresh and original effort?

To make it even more improbable, its star, Richard Farnsworth, had never had a significant acting role in his life, having spent the previous 40 years working as a Hollywood stuntman--principally in Westerns, where his rugged, crusty good looks worked to good advantage. So at age 61, he made his debut as a lead in an obscure, off-beat dramatic comedy set in the Canadian Northwest at the turn of the 20th Century.

To understand the appeal of Grey Fox (and Farnsworth), you have to have some feel for the world in which it's set. The Canadian Northwest was one of the last parts of the North American continent to be settled by whites, and its wild character--and cold, wet climate--kept it pure and largely unspoiled well into the 20th Century. The primary industries were extractive--logging and mining--and life in the frontier towns was rough. Stories set in this terrain would be considered "westerns" if made in typical Hollywood-style. But Borsos peels away the clichés, and presents a narrative portrait that feels as genuine as one could expect.

Outwardly, the plot involves the release of an old-time stage-coach bank-robber from San Quentin Prison in 1901 after 33 years of incarceration. Expelled from the time-warp of prison life into a transformed world, Bill Minor is predictably disoriented and dismayed at how everything has changed. Stagecoaches have been replaced by trains. The wild West has become more civilized. Unable to accommodate himself to the tame pace of a harmless post-incarceration role, he slips across the border from Washington into British Columbia and finds work in a played-out mining operation, while he plots to resume his former life as highway robbery-man. Though he's now no longer young, the spirit of rebellion is still the only role that makes him feel alive and whole. Farnsworth's innate charm and rustic bearing help us to identify with him, even as we see him edging inexorably back into the evil world of his past. This foreboding is balanced by the comic absurdity of his trying to recreate a world of derring-do and hardened criminality--the past can't be recaptured.

He meets and falls in love with a local lady of a singularly independent and liberated turn of mind.* In due course, Miner teams up with a pathetic little runt named Shorty Dunn, robs a train, not very well, and eventually is caught in a cross country tracking sequence by the Canadian police. At movie's end, Miner is seen slogging through a swampy terrain, with a text-over informing us that his successful escape from his second incarceration will enable him to live a life free of crime. Despite the bad-man-makes-good trope, we feel an enormous sense of release, as if some kind of poetic justice has been done.

Farnsworth would go on to several more acting successes, including in The Natural [1984]. His handlebar mustache and relaxed manner are so engratiating, he hardly seems to be acting at all, but simply "aw-shucksing" his way through, much in the manner of Gary Cooper, or Warren Beatty. In an imaginative sense, Farnsworth's long experience as a stunt-man was almost a metaphor for the part he played in this movie. For decades the shadow body-double stand-in for the "face" of Hollywood adventure genres, his flowering as an actor was a verité take on the cowboy persona itself. Farnsworth emerges into the limelight at the "end" of his career in the same sense that Bill Miner is released into the 20th Century after 33 years in prison. Both events are liberations. Other stuntmen have made it as actors. John Wayne began as a cowboy stuntman.

The Grey Fox hasn't been released on DVD, but you can still find it on VHS video. For my money, it's several times better than Clint Eastwood's pretentious late efforts, and it's quietly entertaining on several levels. And for verisimilitude, it can't be beat.

______________

*The part of Kate Flynn is played by Jackie Burroughs, one of acting's most original and down-to-earth ladies. She died last September after a long and varied movie career. Her homely sweetness rings completely true here.

Scarlatti or Soler?

In my youth, I was entranced, for a time, by the harpsichord. In the pre-digital days, the sound of the harpsichord was much rarer than it is today. Despite the fact that in the 1960's--when I was coming of age--baroque and renaissance music was in its first big revival, and harpsichord pieces were frequently aired on classical stations--the only way one might play a harpsichord was to rent or own one. When I got my Kurzweil keyboard in the early 90's, I could make a harpsichord sound which would satisfy most people (if not the purists).

Scarlatti

The big composer for the harpsichord is Domenico Scarlatti [1685-1757], and his output is truly amazing--over 500 sonatas, most of which are superior in lyrical content, and ingenious turns. But for my money, I've always liked those of Padre Antonio Soler [1729-1783]. Scarlatti was Italian, Soler was Spanish (Catalan). Soler wasn't born until Scarlatti was already in his mid-forties, so historically, Scarlatti belongs to a slightly earlier epoch. To put these dates into perspective, Bach was born the same year as Scarlatti (1785), and Mozart was born in 1756, so his work would have been known to Soler. Musical styles--that is to say--had changed considerably between the time of Scarlatti's early maturity and the last years of Soler's life. Which may account, to an important degree, for the significant differences in their respective compositional styles.

Soler

[though no known liknesses of him are thought to exist--?]

To my ears, Soler has always had what I would call a "demonic" quality to his writing, whereas Scarlatti is always--even when he is quite passionate--ultimately decorative and "appliqué" in his effects. Explaining how this may be so in purely musical terms can be--is--a difficult task, perhaps too unnecessarily abstract. Soler's pieces are usually longer than Scarlatti's, though their inherent complexity isn't really greater than his predecessor.

Years ago, a family friend and I were talking about music, and in the course of our discussion, he insisted that Soler had been the pater and Scarlatti the disciple.

--No, I said, Scarlatti was the elder, and Soler had been the junior.

--Wrong, he replied, Scarlatti learned at Soler's knee!

I'm happy now to confirm that I was correct, and my friend was not. Scarlatti was already 43 when Soler was born, and the Spaniard outlived his mentor by some 25 years. There is some dispute, apparently, about whether or not Soler ever actually did meet and/or study with Scarlatti. It's hard to imagine them as separate, given the similarity of their styles, which seem to owe as much to familiarity as to the ambient musical milieu of the time. Travel and communication were immeasurably slower in those days (17th and 18th Centuries), but Soler had to have known Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas intimately at some point in his development.

Ironically enough, Scarlatti's musical influences are notably Iberian folk music--and some even suggest guitarristic effects. Scarlatti's 500+ keyboard sonatas were not published during his lifetime. The harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick catalogued them in 1953, and they have been identified through his numeration system ever since.

Both composers worked for royalty, Soler's keyboard sonatas (apprx. 150) were apparently written for his pupil the son of King Carlos III. Soler's compositions are somewhat more elaborated than Scarlatti's, employing three or four movements, instead of just one. In some, you can just hear the influence of German classicism peeking through. Nevertheless, I always think of his strongest pieces as pure Spanish passion and fervor, with almost a romantic thrust.

In the 20th Century, the pieces of both composers began to be played and recorded on the piano, instead of the harpsichord. The range of tone and sustenance of the modern pianoforte are ten times greater than on the harpsichord--which only plucks, instead of hammering the strings--but the qualities inherent in the music--especially in Scarlatti's case--seem to work better--or at least differently--on the harpsichord than they do on the piano. Horowitz, for instance, recorded a few on piano, and his mincing, gently staccato approach provides an interesting elaboration of the possible sound to be made out of Scarlatti's plucked style. He could also make them sound simply pianistic on occasion.

Scarlatti's work strikes me as every bit as serious and introspective of the best of Bach's work. Bach frequently seems to be working out mental (mathematical) puzzles in his work--something one doesn't find in Scarlatti at all. Each Scarlatti piece seems to exploit the lyrical potential of a specific structural figure, and are almost feats of daring in this respect. They also possess a terrific range of feeling, from delicate joy to moody longing, spirited play to stern condescension.

What happens to music when instruments change? It's a ponderable quandary. In the 20th Century, the guitar underwent revolutionary design changes. What will performers of the future make of our music? What new instruments will be invented, and what of the past glories of the repertory will be played on them, to newer ears? The whole arc of the Romantic Age in music still seems to dominate our emotional (aesthetic) consciousness, though a little over two hundred years ago, the meaning of "romance" was quite different. Developments in science, psychology, medicine, behavioral disciplines etc., over the last century, have failed to alter it much. Do we "hear" romantic qualities in Scarlatti and Soler which they wouldn't have comprehended? Or were they somehow intuitively anticipating the flowering of emotional content, which would come to fruition in the 19th and 20th Centuries? We think of Beethoven or Brahms as brimming with passion and pity and ecstatic content, but perhaps this is nothing more than the difference in stylistic approaches?

The development of the grand pianoforte, which occurred between the early 18th and early 19th Centuries, both facilitated and accommodated the Romantic Era in musical performance and composition. With the vastly increased range of keys, the depth and range of sonorities, sustenance of tone, increased volume of sound, came a whole spectrum of possible expressive projection. Beethoven and Chopin and Brahms, Liszt and Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, Debussy and Albeniz and Ravel--all are inconceivable without the "modern" piano. Working within the much more limited range of the harpsichord, Scarlatti and Soler and Rameau and Couperin were forced to imagine their works as twinkling, flickering, chiming sounds. They had no grinding bass notes, no delicious rubato, no echoing high-register grace-notes with which to play.

Limitation may inspire invention. Undoubtedly, if Scarlatti or Soler had been born later, to later incarnations of the keyboard, they would have been different composers. But their musical natures would also undoubtedly have produced deeply felt and innovative creations. If there is a common element of aptitude in creative endeavor, which spreads across history, across the spectrum of kinds of instrumental applications, then we can with assurance honor the genius in all kinds of musicians, from Indian sitar to zydeco (button piano accordion), from oboists to bongo-players, from Chopin to Carter, from Fats Waller to Julian Bream. Trapped in their world of royal patronage and religious duty, using instruments that some now regard as "antique" or tinny in effect, Scarlatti and Soler composed haunting, inspiring, and joyous works, which characterize what we think of as the emotive machines of their age. Their sound has become their "time."

Therefore, playing the "harpsichord" compositions of these composers on the modern grand piano, involves a reinterpretation of, or introduction of new kinds of "readings" of their works--finding inside the written works subtle emphases, flourishes or nuances which the music somehow contains within it--or simply "hearing" the notes as piano notes through ears attuned to a larger bank of sound-range--a collaboration across time--as, in effect, nearly all music is. Are Scarlatti and Soler more or less important considered exclusively as harpsichord composers? Do they survive today transmuted into reincarnated "piano" versions of themselves? Of course they do, but is that somehow a misuse of their music? What would Scarlatti say today, were he to hear de Larrocha's or Horowitz's piano versions of his works? A purely speculative question....

Listening to these pieces of Scarlatti and Soler brings me unrestrained joy and inspires profound introspection. What is the difference between the ecstasy we experience as the evidence of the deity's grace, and the secular dionysian dervish?

For my money, this fellow Ivo Pogorelich is probably the best I've ever heard doing Scarlatti for piano, following in the footsteps of Horowitz, who opened the door for him--the two have met in some perfect anteroom of eternity and exchanged tips. Listening to these recordings, I'm moved to grant Scarlatti the greater praise--what can't he do with a handful of thirds?--but hearing Hinrichs navigate the emotional contours and passageways of Soler's E flat major sonata (a more ambitious work, I wager, than Scarlatti ever assayed, at least for the keyboard), I can no longer bring myself to choose between the two. I think, too, hearing all this music, that Soler benefits more from the strengths of the romantic grand piano than Scarlatti ever could, largely because, musically, he stradles two distinct periods in the development of musical history, as well as the technics of his instrument.

On harpsichord--

Scarlatti sonata in F major K 418 by Scott Ross

Scarlatti sonata K. 455 by a machine ???

Scarlatti sonata L483 by Smaro Gregoriadou on a high-tuned guitar

Scarlatti sonata K 420 played by Sergio Vartolo

Scarlatti Sonata K 49 player unknown

Soler Sonata in A minor - 1974 recording by Fernando Valenti

soler fandango

Soler sonata no. 53 in a-major

Soler sonata 54 in C major played by Scott Ross

Soler sonata no. 117 in D minor played by Pieter-Jan Belder

Soler sonata No. 7 in C major player unknown (turn down your sound on this one!)

Soler sonata in F-sharp by Michio O'Hara

Soler sonata 15 in D minor by Scott Ross

Soler sonata 49 in D minor by Scott Ross

For piano --

Scarlatti No. 15 in D minor played on piano by Ivo Pogorelich (lovely version!)

Scarlatti No 17 in E major on piano by Ivo Pogorelich

Scarlatti sonata L 104/K.159 by Ivo Pogorelich

Scarlatti no. 45 in G minor by Ivo Pogorelich

Scarlatti in G - K108 on piano - performer unknown

Soler sonata no. 84 in D major played by Michel Mananes

Soler S.R. 17 in E flat major played by Marie-Luise Hinrichs

de Larrocha Soler Sonata in g minor no. 87 (piano)

Soler Sonata in B minor by Ken Lisaka

Soler Sonata en D Major by Luis Fernando Perez

Horowitz Scarlatti Sonata L224

Horowitz makes of Scarlatti's sounds something a little beyond empirical verification. The delicacy and feathery, silken quality of the sound is something very far removed from the plucked dignity of its composer.

Alan Ward's Designed Landscapes

Alan Ward's book, Designed Landscapes, was published in 1998 by the Spacemaker Press [Washington D.C., and Cambridge, Massachusetts] which specializes in books on landscape architecture. Ward himself is both an architect and a landscape architect by training, but he had been photographing gardens and landscape for 20 years when this book was published. The book might be treated either as a documentation of landscape design, or as a pure landscape photography monograph.

In my case, I have a degree in landscape architecture, and am also a committed landscape photographer as well, so my interest in this work is at least twofold. Landscape design and landscape photography come together as different expressions of the same matter, but it's important not to confuse the two disciplines. Designing a landscape for use, is not at all the same thing as making an image of a finished landscape (or a wild landscape). The way a landscape "works" in reality, as a space through which one moves or rests, has really not much to do with the way it is "seen" photographically. Part of the confusion about why, for instance, the International Style, in architecture, was so persuasive and astonishing to its first audiences, seems to have had more to do with the canonical images which were made of its earliest iconic examples (i.e., Mies's Barcelona Pavilion, or Le Corbusier's Savoy Villa), than the actual experience of seeing and and being inside these structures in person.

Photographs are not reality. They present a certain view of space, from a certain vantage, in the moment of their taking, the light and atmospheric conditions varying according to the case, and they may seem more or less "true" to the actual space they depict, than the experience of literally being inside those spaces. Photographic space is a kind of "virtual" space, in which objects and perspective and tonal range are organized by the lens, and by the composer (photographer) to achieve a two dimensional construction which behaves according to the laws of representation. Being in a space is a much more complex phenomena, including, as it does, the other senses (than the visual) and the sensation of movement through it, its smells, sounds, felt textures, subtle shades of color, and so on.

All of which, by way of preface, suggests that I regard landscape photography as a poor stepsister of practical landscape architecture; as, indeed, the process of landscape design is a much more involved and laborious exercise in imagining and realizing arrangements and rearrangements of space and matter. But considered alone, landscape photography is its own art, which--though it depends upon the pre-existence of a landscape or a "garden" or cemetery or park--deserves to be treated as an art on its own, almost without reference or dependence upon its subject.

Ward's photographs in Designed Landscapes are arranged according to a series of eighteen specific sites, i.e., University of Virginia, Dumbarton Oaks, Blue Ridge Parkway, etc., with a set of plates devoted to each space. The work is exclusively black and white, and thus tends to emphasize the visual relationships and gradations of tone, rather than the interplay of colors, which would tend to detract from a purely abstract appreciation of the imagery. Again, it's important to understand that photographs, as I say, are not actual spaces, but only versions derived from them, and as such, black and white photographs are better able to define the qualities of visual definition which often may seem to trump the meaning inherent in objects and spaces in context. Colors (chromatography) have their own language and associations which relate to qualities outside the frame of any given image. And aside from this, the experience of black and white (monochromatic) imagery carries its own special interest.

I have reproduced five images from Ward's book--the first one of which is of Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I've never been to this place, but it appears to be a fairly woodsy space, compared to most cemeteries which I've seen. Sylvan settings are typical of traditional cemeteries, though usually more of the space is given over to the grave stones and monuments than to trees, shrubs and turf, than seems to be the case here. What I particularly like about this composition, is the magical light which seems to highlight the little classical pedimented rotunda to the right center of the scene. It lends a vaguely elegaic mood. When I visit cemeteries (or "graveyards" as we call them), I seldom am moved to consider the lives of those buried there. Instead, I tend to think poetic thoughts about nature, which may be the point. We would rather think of pleasant pastoral things in places dedicated to the dead, though decay itself--which one often sees in really old cemeteries--may become the overriding impression.

One of the considerations of photography like this, is its evident static quality, as if all activity and "accidental" occurrence had been removed from it. I often hear people criticize landscape photographs, because they're "sterile" or "emptied of life." Landscape photography is, however, primarily a contemplative art, which emphasizes control and precision above accident and chance. A dog achieving a frisbee at the height of a graceful jump may be a miraculous image, but it has nothing to do with the careful arrangement of objects in space--it's the expedient capture of an evanescent occurrence, all action and response and energy.

This quality--of purified perspectives and arithmetical precision of line and scope--characteristic of the best architectural photographers, such as Cervin Robinson or Ezra Stoller or Yukio Futagawa--asks that we perceive such imagery as the timeless vision of man's control over nature and materials. Art may be both an imposition and an augmentation of the order inherent in wild nature, and the resulting integration of natural forms and man-made (conceived) forms may be the perfect marriage.

Biltmore - South Terrace and Wisteria Arbor at Sunset

Ashville, North Carolina

This sense of integration between inside (man made) and outside (nature) is nowhere more apparent than in this view into the garden space at Dumbarton Oaks, where the external world seems to beckon through opened doors, a symbolic seduction which carries the metaphorical implication of departure, or exile, or even mortality. Inside and outside are poised at the threshold of decision, just at the point of release. The sense of classical balance, of stasis, calm, and certainty are overwhelming, almost as if one could stop time.

Dumbarton Oaks - View from inside the Orangery

In rural settings, the arrangement of space into a meaningful balance has different implications. Blue Ridge Parkway, in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, bears the hand of man as deliberately as Dumbarton Oaks, but less oppressively. Land which may once have been given over mostly to agricultural use, fades gracefully into the picturesque, as a caricature of pastoral values. We visit our past, as surely as we visit our future (as with cemeteries), knowing full well that the meanings we deduce from it are tremulous and fleeting. ***

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***Please note, Blogger went down, apparently, while this essay was in save mode--or at some point before it had been completed and initially posted online. Consequently, the last third or so of text was lost, and not retrievable. As frustrating as this is, there's nothing to be done about it. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote something like 1000 words on a post about Crews's Pooh Perplex, which was suddenly schnarfed by Blogger before it could be saved. I stormed around the house for ten minutes, cursing my bad luck! Perhaps this is an harbinger of things to come--? I do hope not. Composing these essays takes time and work, even if very few people will eventually read them. I try now to save the texts in Word@ while I'm composing them, just as a precaution.