Music, Art, and Literature Favorites May 2015

by

Mackenzie Patel

Hello World Travelers! Another month has dissolved into the diaphanous fabric of time, my calendar filling up with sharpie Xs faster than I can keep track of. The slower I want time to go, the more it seems to accelerate, defying my own personal gravity trying to pull it back. May was another fantastic month, mostly because I had an amazing person color my days with laughter, culture, and incredible conversation.  I experienced and loved so many different things that my mind is brimming with music and art that fills me with happiness. I finished high school, listened to gorgeous music performed by The Florida Orchestra, and visited my future university for a few days. In short, my life is about to change dramatically in the next few weeks, and May is my last full month of “normality” before the onslaught of change will barrel me over. So what was I in love with in the past thirty one days?

Art

• Sugar Sphinx by Dali

This slightly unsettling but eerily captivating image was created in 1933 in the thick of Dali’s surrealist phase. Although the fiery orange sky is ambiguous and looks like a blob of cheese spread, it is supposed to resemble a sphinx, the mythical creature composed of a lion and a human female. This composite beast appealed to Dali because of its male/female parts (Dali was obsessed by the hermaphroditic). The woman in the foreground with the fancy jacket is Gala, Dali’s beloved wife that ditched her previous husband (who she already had a child with) for the much younger and stranger Dali. Skinny Cyprus trees dot the unrealistic landscape, and interestingly, the couple from The Angelus (Millet, 1857) appears amidst the foliage.  This duo has a double meaning (of course, one is more overtly sexual and involves the female devouring the male after they mate). For some reason, I am in love with this surreal image that makes no sense and has awkward connotations. However, something about the tempestuous skies forming a mythical creature, the blurred line of the horizon, and the mystery of the invisibility of Gala’s face, is unforgettable. This work is currently being shown at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, although most people file past its quiet beauty for The Hallucinogenic Toreador or The Ecumenical Council.

 

• L’Absinthe by Degas

I mostly studied this painting this month because my beautiful friend, Mar, shot a recreation of it for her AP Art History project! Watch out for an article about her work in upcoming weeks. L’Absinthe currently graces the walls of Musée d’Orsay in Paris and was painted by the creeper Degas in 1875. It shows the negative side of the increasing modernity that was rapidly changing the old world of Europe. Instead of new technology speeding Paris towards a brighter future, Degas believed only isolation and sadness would ensue. For me, the expression on the woman’s face is so dejected and as unsavory as the glass of green absinthe plunked down in front of her. Read more about this poignant image here.

 

Music

• Danzón No 2 by Arturo Márquez

Thank-you so much to my fabulous confidante Liana for first introducing me to this music! It is so lighthearted, passionate, and vibrant that I can’t listen to enough of it. Márquez was a Mexican composer that wrote this jangling piece in 1994 for the National Autonomous University of Mexico. After some research, I discovered that Danzón is a popular type of dance in Cuba, although its infectious melody/dance moves spread to Veracruz, Mexico, as well. I had the opportunity to see The Florida Orchestra perform this catchy tune during their Coffee Concert series on May 21^st! TFO captured the sensual essence and lilting notes, but the version performed by the Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Venezuela will always be my favorite.

 

• La Habanera by Bizet

 

 

The most vivid memory I have of this spicy melody was when Liana and I blasted it in our room at the Grand Floridian Hotel at Disney. La Habanera is part of Carmen, an opera written by Bizet in 1875, and I love the playful, sexy vibe that this tune emanates. According to Wikipedia, Carmen is supposed to be “A Gypsy Girl,” and I can definitely pick out the undertones of wildness and a tempting spirit in “Love is a rebellious bird” (the full translated meaning of La Habanera). I just feel like dancing an exotic Spanish salsa with a jangling red skirt and sweet smelling flowers laced in my hair whenever I hear this. This song is the grand entrance of Carmen in the opera, and while it is sexy, it is also commands the attention of the audience with grace and coquettishness.

 

• Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz

 

This Romantic French composer (with wildly amazing hair I might add) penned this masterpiece in 1830, and, in a fashion that would have made John Lennon proud, he wrote a portion of the work while high on opium. The Symphony depicts the tumultuous emotions of an artist as he falls in love, attends a grand ball with a swanky waltz, meditates very transcendentally in a meadow, takes a dose of opium, and trippily witnesses his own execution. The story behind the works is very strange, but also enchanting in a way (especially the first two movements that portray the flowering and confusing phenomenon that is burgeoning love). Like Scheherazade, I had the meaning behind the work texted to me while my ears were feasting on the melodies late at night. It makes the world of difference when someone translates the auditory stimulus into pictures and storylines that splash into your mind as the musical story unfolds.

 

Other orchestral work I’ve been playing on repeat:

• String Sextet in D Minor by my bae Tchaikovsky
• Maid With the Flaxen Hair by Debussy
• C Major Prelude by Bach
• The Sleeping Beauty Waltz also by Tchaikovsky (<3)

Literature

• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

This is definitely the most depressing novel I have read (which is saying something, since I’ve read Crime and Punishment as well). Plath is known as the American depressive author, similar to how Hemingway is the American expat and drunk that wrote about his WWI experiences in Italy. The Bell Jar, published in 1963, is about a young woman that slowly descends into major depressive disorder after her fake and disillusioned jaunt in New York City. Esther Greenwood, the main character that doubles as the personal voice of Plath, is placed in asylum after asylum and even subjected to primitive electroconvulsive therapy. The heavy prose was so sad and heart breaking, especially the passage comparing the spiraling life of Plath to the stifling and confining nature of a Bell Jar. Watch the 1979 movie based off the novel here.

 

• For That He Looked Not upon Her by George Gascoigne

Interestingly, I first saw this delicious work when my friend wrote an essay about its structure and content for her AP Literature and English class. The English poet penned these words in 1573, and on the whole, I find them quite amusing and melodramatic. A narrator, presumed to be male, is discoursing on his woes with females and how much he’s been burned by their perniciousness in the past. The last couplet is particularly whiny: “So that I wink or else hold down my head, Because your blazing eyes my bale have bred.” For me, the narrator is self-pitying and saying that he will never love again because he was scorned in a past relationship! Get over yourself Gascoigne! I still adore the language and syntax, especially the allusions to fire (i.e. “gleams,” “scorched,” and “blazing”) and the analogy of the mouse trap.

Favorite Quotes:

“Poetry is such a tyrannical discipline.” Sylvia Plath

“It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.” Pablo Picasso

“The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.” Salvador Dali

Listen to an interview with Sylvia Plath here

I hope everyone had a stunning month as well. ;) Watch out for June 2015 favorites—they will be infused with the European and the exotic!–Mackenzie

Pictures from Wikipedia and myself