"Existenzielle Fragen an christliche Themen"

Once again HitTail has provided me with a startlingly random set of search items so I thought I'd use them in a little poem.  The first in the list, 'the smiling Christ artist' refers to Johannes Wickert, whose 'Smiling Christ' we saw while in Luxembourg back in 2007.   'Brad Crowl' doesn't appear on the blog, though Brad Greenburg does, along with Brad Pitt, the animator Brad Bird, and Brad McGann, a NZ film director.  I'd never thought what the name 'Brad' might mean till now, and of course, it's a shortened form of Bradley (usually), and it means a 'broad meadow.'   So there you go. 


Here are the four search items: 

the smiling Christ artist
clippings converter
brad crowl
winnie the pooh symbolism


Another HitTail poem

Wickert's Christ smiles; 
not quite such an 
anomaly as you might expect.  


he whose paintings are 
often existential questions
on Christian themes


might well be ready to put a 
smile on the face of Christ.  
But how curious it is that  


while in the German language 
Fragen has a capital, 
in line with German nouns, 


christliche does not.  Of 
course the word's adject-
tival, but to the English 


eye, and to the average
Spellchecker, christlike sans
capital seems unkempt, 


unfinished.  


A clippings converter seems
to me the machine to translate
hedgerows into leaf litter,


or even leaf-litter-
leftover.  Brad Crowl, I 
suspect, in spite of being a 


spurious adjunct to my 
blog, seems just the man to
deal with such a shrubbery


issue, whilst contemplating, 
between conversions,
Winnie the Pooh symbolism. 
 At the same time can be found in his paintings are often a sign of hope or a new perspective. Many of his images can be understood as an existential questions on Christian theme

In the eye of the beholder

While we were on the Continent, we had the experience of seeing many luxury homes; mostly from the outside. On the bus tour we took in Hamburg, we went around streets where the homes had once had gardens rolling down to the water. In Barcelona we stayed in what was basically a luxury apartment – we were scared to touch anything much in case we broke something.

And in Luxembourg we stayed in what I would class as a luxury home – except that the people living there don’t see it as such.

Up to a point, luxury is in the eye of the beholder. The homes that the National Trust now administer in England are certainly luxurious, but where’s the luxury in having to have dozens of servants to keep the place clean? Even if you do pay them a pittance.

It’s the same with the house in Luxembourg: it’s so large it’s too much for the owners, and they have to get someone in to clean.

It rather takes the edge off the luxury, to my way of thinking, if you have to employ someone to clean up after you. Think I’ll stick with the home I’ve got - which we can manage to keep up by ourselves.

Standardization - not!

It’s strange the things we take for granted: I’d assumed that the QWERTY keyboard layout was the standard (obviously apart from those countries that don’t use the same alphabet), but nope! Even in England there are some differences in layout, though at least here the differences relate to the #, the £, and the @ which are all in strange places.

But when I was in Luxembourg, I discovered that the alphabetical letters are swapped around as well: not enough to make things totally unfamiliar, but certainly more than enough to cause confusion when you’re typing passwords and such: the sorts of things that you take for granted, and don’t bother to check when you’re typing. Seemingly the people in Luxembourg tend to use the French keyboard – and of course those jolly French people couldn’t possibly have the same keyboard as the English. It would just not be the done thing!

You can check out some of the variations in keyboard layouts here.

Funky P Album

Just to keep up with the news on Funky P. In one of my previous posts where I mentioned this Luxembourg group, I wondered if they had any albums out. Not at theis point: there’s only an EP available. And downloads from their site. (Which I can’t download at the moment as I’m using someone else’s computer.)

Anyway, Funky P will have an album out by next summer – that’s European summer, not NZ summer, so I’m assuming it will be the middle of 2008. I’m looking forward to that. A studio recording of this band (where I can hear all the different instrumentalists as well as the singers) will be great.

The photo is of the band in a sedate mood: something they ain't when they get playing.

And there's a very good overview of the life of the band by an objective reviewer on GarageBand.com

Songs, smiles, singers, and a snout

This is going to be one of those compendium posts, where I do a quick squiz over the HitTail results from the last week or so, or at least the ones that seem interesting to me. Douglas Lilburn’s Sing Harry turns up again. It’s good to know that this song cycle by Lilburn continues to arouse interest, especially since it’s one of the few things he wrote that I think does! (Oh, dear, the old anti-Lilburn bias coming out again.)
Another NZ composer is also on the list - at least so it seemed when I first saw the reference. But I couldn’t quite figure out what why anyone would be looking for Snout Gareth Farr. Turns out that there’s an actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company with the same name, and he was played Snout in a production back in 2002. So NZ’s Gareth Farr gets a look-in rather fraudulently.
The king of whistlers, Ronnie Rinalde, is still going strong. Except that his name is Ronnie Ronalde, and I’ve managed to misspell it in one of my posts - as the searcher did.
The Indian actor, Kavi Raz, whom I mentioned the other day in relation to the movie, The Golden Bracelet, is on the list, as is the Jazz/Funk group from Luxembourg, Funky P. More about them another time, as Roosevelt Isaac (their lead singer) has emailed me a few times recently to give me some further gen on their doings.
A couple of non-NZ composers make the list: John Adams, whom I’m going to check up on more when I get back home, and Michael Tippett, who’s been a regular visitor to the HitTail search results.
An interesting search for Jobs for Opera Singers didn’t seem to take the searcher very far, but it did turn up for me a site where most opera singers are listed, but not, rather to my surprise, Elizabeth Connell, who is certainly no minor artist. It’s an interesting site, nevertheless, with info about books, opera houses, and resources for singers.
And finally, my comments about the travelling exhibition of pictures of the smiling Christ comes up. But the results Google turns up (apart from the one on this blog) are from those places that turn Jesus into all manner of beings: smiling, sad, black, yellow, you name it. The one from picturesofJesus4you.com is very American, somewhat hippy and a jolly good chap. Okay, he’s a pleasant Christ, and certainly he’s smiling, but he lacks a bit of the awe I’d expect Christ to have along with his smiles. The artist is Frances Hook, by the way.

Neo-noir

Neo-noir isn’t an adjective I’ve ever heard, as far as I recall. (Which doesn’t mean much: when we went to the Modern Art Museum in Luxembourg, there was a huge chart on the wall showing 20th century art movements, and many of them meant nothing to me.)
The only reason I know neo-noir exists is because it’s the description of Rob Roberge’s novel, More Than They Could Chew.
Noir means something to me: it’s that sort of dark, sometimes comic approach to thirties stories, often including private detectives. Neo also means something to me (apart from being the name of the main character in The Matrix). It usually implies a return to a ‘movement’ that’s died out at an earlier time. So we expect that neo-noir means a return, of sorts, to the noir type of writing produced by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
I’m not sure that either of these writers would appreciate neo-noir, however, if some of the reviews of More Than They Could Chew is anything to go by:

Sick and funny and impossible to put down.
A knack for impeccably grotty details of the demimonde
The grime of these lives still remains in our minds long after the last page has been read
Strap in and get ready for a mind flush. Roberge gives us the rotting tail of the counterculture in postmodern apocalypse. Kesey and Burroughs meet Leonard Palahniuk -- and get stomped. I need a fix. More, now!
Gritty, funky, addictive, and written with eloquent ruthlessness
Call it kink-noir. Call it beer-soaked black humor. Call it whatever you want.

Footnote to Funky P

I didn't give the link to Funky P in my last post. The place to go is their news page, which is a bit more informative than their opening page (though you can hear a couple of fragments of their music there).
The site is okay; a bit fiddly, and not everything is linked well to everything else. Still, if you're looking for info on the band - and now that their name has appeared here, naturally you will be - this is the place to go.

Funky P

On our last night in Luxembourg we went and heard a band (well, it was actually impossible to avoid hearing them) called Funky P. Though listed as Funky Jazz, their lead singer actually claimed at one point that they are not a jazz band. I’m not sure what the definition of Funky is, but it seems to include Jazz amongst its components, or hangers-on.

Maybe you could call them a Faux Jazz Band. (In the same way faux wood blinds are not really wood blinds.) Faux, for those who haven’t been to Luxembourg recently, is a French work used to describe something made to resemble something else. The original French word means false, fake, imitation or artificial. (Always a mine of information.)

Anyway, Funky P, a group of some nine musicians and singers (bass, lead guitar, sax, trumpet, trombone, keyboard, drummer and two singers) were performing in the Abbey Courtyard in the Grund in Luxembourg to a not very large crowd of people. I don’t think this was because they’re no good – in fact, they are very good – but because it just wasn’t really the right place for them. I don’t really know why they hadn’t drawn a larger crowd.

The singers can sing – and dance – the keyboard player is superb (when he gets a chance to be heard), the sax player is a middle-aged feller with real power, and everyone else in the band performs wonderfully. And loudly. I don’t think the loudness was their issue, really: they were performing in a natural amphitheatre, which didn’t need as much reverb and boom and whathaveyou as they were given. They could almost play acoustically and get away with it. (I realise that ain’t the done thing no more.)

Anyway, apart from being temporarily deafened, I’d really like to hear more of their music (on CD, in the quietness of my own home). I’ve found their site, but I need to know now what’s available to buy. This is one of the things about this holiday: quirky things turn up at every corner, and arouse your interest!

What I almost forgot to say, is that Funky P - the most Phat & Funky Soul/Funk/Pop Band in the Universe is from Luxembourg...! Luxembourg, which likes to give the impression nothing funky could possibly happen there.

The photo of Roosevelt Isaac comes from the Funky P, and as far as I can make out from the legal guff, it's okay for me to publish it here. Hopefully Funky P won't regard my inclusion of it on this blog as a way to make some real money by suing me.
And I've found out that Funky P only have an EP out, with three tracks on it. There has to be more out there somewhere.

Frightened in Flight

We’ve just come back from Luxembourg on Ryanair, an airline that obviously believes its customers all have very short legs, and don’t need any space in front of them to do anything – such as letting down the tray to put the laptop on. And because the flights are short they don’t have anything like inflight entertainment – unless you count things like lotto tickets being sold, or having to pay large prices for a cup of coffee.

The Korean flights we came to England on had movies, as I’ve written elsewhere. There was no choice on the first leg of the trip, but on the second leg we were able to choose from a very wide range, and watch the movies on the little screen on the back of the seat in front, rather than on a screen set up high on the cabin wall.

I hadn’t considered something that’s just come to my attention: when the movie is chosen for you, and when you have children with you, they can be exposed to a surprising amount of violence that they probably wouldn’t see at home.

In an article entitled Young Fliers See the Film, Be It PG or R, by Bob Tedeschi (it appeared in the HeraldTribune), the writer considers the complaints of parents regarding films they have to sit through on some flights, and the seeming inability of those in charge of showing the movies to understand the parents’ concerns.

According to one Mr Kleiman, director of product marketing for Continental Airlines, parents need to be responsible for what their children watch while flying. Right: as if a parent is going to be able to take their child somewhere else on the plane.

Mr Kleiman also says that what’s shown on flights is consistent with what’s shown elsewhere in the media.

In the last two years the percentage of R-rated movies has jumped, and more graphic and violent movies are being shown.

Yet Nina Plotner, an account manager with Inflight Productions Inc., which works on behalf of many airlines to review and acquire films, said, in regard to editing movies so that they remove the graphic material, “If we take all the good things out, there’s not going to be a lot left to play.” And she added, “If you get a complaint, you get a complaint. You can’t please everybody.”

Mr. Kleiman, ever the public relations man explained:: “People love Pepsi, and we don’t serve that, so there you go, we just ruined their flight. That’s an accurate analogy.” Yes, we understand you entirely, Mr Kleiman.

I can remember as a child being kept awake by the thought that a mummy was walking down the corridor in my home – not my mummy, I hasten to add. This was after I’d seen Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, which by today’s standards was no doubt innocuous.

But compare that to King Kong, where people are eaten alive by some very nasty monsters, and try and explain to a child that it’s all okay.

Smiling Christ

Today, while in the City Cathedral in Luxembourg, we came across part of the travelling exhibition called Der Pilgerweg des Lächelnden Christus - or in a rough translation, The Pilgrimage of the Laughing/Smiling Christ. This is an exhibition organised across several countries in Europe with participation by a wide number of artists. The paintings and sculptures we saw were only some in the exhibition, and were quite a mixed bag. All of them show that interest in Christ as a subject for art has by no means diminished in the 21st century, and many of the works are quite striking.
You can see all the pictures on a gallery here. Check out the paintings by Johannes Wickert - they’re at the bottom of the gallery’s range. These are ones we saw, and they have a wonderful warmth about them. I tried to find out something about Wickert, but all the entries are coming up in German at the moment. (For some reason, since we’ve been in Luxembourg, both Google and Blogger come up in German, which is fun, but sometimes requires a bit of sorting out.)

June 2012: Since I wrote this back in 2007, the two links to the Laughing Christ have both broken.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to find replacement ones, so if you want to see more of Wickert's work, go to his gallery pages.