density and vacuousness at the museum brandhorst

a conversation about great museums a few nights ago reminded me of the brandhorst, which i visited in 2009.

image by art-magazin

after a brief interlude for a stunning andechser doppelbock (dark and clear, with a crisp, malty flavour, plenty of acidity, and the aroma of citrus--thank you patrick), we headed back to the maxvorstadt* to see the new brandhorst museum, designed by sauerbruch hutton. the outside is clad with a bi-coloured steel skin covered with a layer of vertically-affixed ceramic rods glazed in a variety of different colours. the intent was to both shield the building from sun heat and to reduce reverberations from street noise; these objectives achieved, the skin of rods also gives the building an appearance of shifting colouration such that, from afar, it looks more like a collection of rectilinear masses of pure colour than a building.

the collection is from udo and anette brandhorst, yet another pair of tremendously-wealthy art collectors. the brandhorst collection focuses on contemporary artists from europe and north america; they have a stunning number of cy twomblys, and have in fact built the cavernous and beautiful upper galleries expressly to display their collection of twombly's giant rose paintings, a large proportion of the lepanto cycle, and many of his sculptures. i blame my poor education and exposure for my inability to see the slightest sense of wonder, insight, technical development, or rich meaning in these works. fortunately, the profound vacuity of the upper gallery was redeemed by the museum's superb construction (the inside was all limed oak, high ceilings, plastered walls, and frosted glass) and two paintings crammed into the ground floor gallery.

the first, by sigmar polke, is painted on glazed synthetic cloth such that the canvas becomes translucent and reveals the framework of the stretcher behind it; additionally, there is a section of canvas that has been printed with colours handprints and stitched in. the imagery is of a tree bare of foliage and a mountain in segments, both with perspective slightly messed up and represented as blown-up gravure lines painted on with clearly drippy paint--from a great distance, the tree and the mountain appear to have the tone and shade of paint but close-up they are clearly both line art and painting. the title is the three lies of painting which gives rise to a host of possible interpretations given the transparency and intentional fragmentation of the canvas ground and the numerous conscious and explicit pieces of trickery in the painting.

sigmar polke, the three lies of painting, image by the museum brandhorst

the second, by eric fischl, reminds me a little of sargent's el jaleo in the isabella stewart gardner museum. living room #3 (spinning) is part of his krefeld series in which he hired two actors to live in restored mies van der rohe houses and painted a series showing snapshots of their lives. this one is one of the best. the titanium white in the faces creates an irresistible sense of powerful light off to the left, and the sense of movement in the gown suggests an expanse of time, a prior history of interaction, and a durable mood all condensed into an unmeditated and transient moment. this has some connection to the tea ceremony concept of 一期一会.

eric fischl, the living room #3 (spinning), image by the museum brandhorst

john singer sargent, el jaleo, image by carol gerten

margaret was saying [and here, you can read what margaret actually said, which is actually about a completely different thing that i do agree with] that the unique value of paintings is in their ability to do what photographs cannot do, in the same way that the unique value of the novel lies in its ability to do what films cannot do. i think this may be a specifically correct judgment given a particularly good painting and a mediocre photograph, but i can think of many good photographs that are better than mediocre paintings and good films that are better than mediocre books. perhaps a more precise and generalizable rubric is that representations of objects and events are valuable in so far as they capture and can communicate a sort of density of meaning, and they are more valuable the more intense, the more dense they are. these two pieces by polke and fischl (and the flavin and sandback pieces in the pinakothek, and the installations of fragmentary statuary in the glyptothek) are dense with what irene winter calls affective power, the way the numerous pieces by twombly are not.

* margaret also notes that: "In the interests of strict accuracy, the Brandhorst is not at Königsplatz. It's in Maxvorstadt. Königsplatz is a square, not a district. The Glyptothek, meanwhile, is definitely at Königsplatz." 'tis.

pinakothek der moderne

pinakothek der moderne was designed by stefan braunfels and has some truly amazing cast concrete facework. unfortunately, the modern section was mostly underwhelming. fortunately, i could have spent at least four hours in the contemporary galleries.

there were many john chamberlains, though the best one was acme thunderer, placed in a hallway drenched in light from floor-to-ceiling windows.


john chamberlain, acme thunderer, image from the american patrons of the pinakotheks.

and the moderne was more than redeemed by a pair of installations placed side by side through the genius of the curatorial staff. from the stairs to the second floor, a green glow can be seen emanating from one of the galleries. this turns out to be an enormous, high-ceilinged room filled with a dan flavin fluorescent tube sculpture. the green light is remarkably penetrating, such that the tubes begin to vibrate slightly after just a few seconds of observation as parts of your retina become violently overstimulated. the galleries visible through the two exits turn pink, as does the light from the skylights, the way everything turns blue at sunset during the blue hour.


untitled (to you, Heiner, with admiration and affection), image from asymptotia

exiting the flavin room in a pink haze, green tubes seared into our retinas, we then came on fred sandback's pink flamingo, two thin columns of pink yarn descending from the ceiling in a white room that, to green-accustomed eyes, vibrated in shades of pink. at the same moment, a man in a pink shirt and a woman in pink pants came into the room. their shadows blocked out the green light from the entryway for an instant, in which time the sculpture flashed the deep, saturated colour of lawn flamingos. a magic moment.

the glyptothek

having spent many (but perhaps not quite enough) of the last few days dozing by the riverbank, we decided that today, being hot and muggy, would be a fine day to see the museums of munich. the glyptothek in koenigsplatz, recommended highly by no less august an individual than irene winter herself, was the first on the list.

it is a small museum with walls of exposed whitewashed brick and a floor of large grey flagstones, with maybe 9 connected halls around a sunny, tree-ful central courtyard. i don't know if i've ever been in a museum as obsessed with material and with displaying statuary with such care and restraint. each pedestal is carefully and beautifully made--most out of a fine-grained pale-grey granite--with the dressing marks still on every face, but with the corners honed to a fine bevel. when the light comes in through the windows, the pedestals achieve the same soft tone as the marble of which many of the statues are made and seem to disappear.

as in the case of the dog below (in front of a horst thuerheimer drawing) many of the fragmentary pieces appeared to be in the process of flying apart, held together only by the edges of their silhouettes.

image from the glyptothek and antiken sammlungen

the pediment sculptures from the east and west facades of the aphaia temple at aegina were both installed a little above head level, on an unadorned blackened steel and granite base with two corner blocks of granite providing the suggestion of the shape of the pediment that would have been behind them. these fragmentary figures of greek and trojan warriors were originally installed in a different configuration which has since been revised.

the group from the western pediment, image from the university of regensburg

there is an entire room of greek and roman busts installed at various heights, creating the impression of walking through a silent and motionless crowd. it was all extremely satisfying.

london to munich

to munich in 20 minutes on an easyjet ticket that cost $44. incidentally, the streetnet on upper street is a beautiful thing.

london

having procrastinated for days on 3 sizeable papers, i was in the uncomfortable position of writing the bulk of all of them over the last 5 days. i turned in the last paper 20 minutes before hightailing it home to get my bag and leave for the airport. there's still one paper to go but the year is almost over and the summer is dimly visible.

the flight into london got in 20 minutes early, just in time to catch rush hour on the tube. i got to central london by 9am and got out at baker street. it is overcast, cool, and humid, and there appear to be waterfowl everywhere.

the end of term

is always the worst time of the year.

the week in review

whenever deadlines loom, i become spectacularly creative in developing ways to do anything but the work that's due right now. this week i,

1. revisited the best lentils in the world: partly to prove replicability, partly to procrastinate, mostly as a contribution to the quantitative baker's intense middle eastern dinner tonight.
2. discovered the breakfast of champions: killer black beans made from rancho gordo's midnight black beans (steve sando, the founder, gives me constant life envy). tacos made of fresh corn tortillas, avocado, black beans, and cholula=magnificent.
3. procrastinated using food chemistry: to avoid writing the many papers i'm writing and use up the latest avalanche of lemons in the delivery box, tried an all whole-wheat flour lemon cake. flavour is excellent, texture dense. maybe next time with whole wheat pastry flour (does that even exist?) and more milk.
4. procrastinated using hoped-for construction opportunity: 3 hours in conversation with tw and someone who makes paraphernalia for aerial silks, talking about the aforementioned large dining table. it was neat, as always, to observe and participate in the multivariate optimisation process of iterating through construction problems and mediating between design and construction priorities. on the other hand, also a little disappointing to have an idea be realised by someone else with a different sense of priorities in construction or for someone else with a different sense of priorities in aesthetics. as an unintended consequence, i also
   
5. found good coffee and good espresso drinks: after my constant grousing (for example, here and here) about the absence of good espresso drinks in cambridge, i was surprised by simon's coffee shop. they made me an excellent latte, the better for being unexpected, using beans from barismo, a roaster in arlington that seems relatively obsessive. more taste testing is required before a more considered pronouncement can be made about either.
   
6. was thwarted by the ever-present minor failure of intersubjectivity: started reviewing this massive sourceforge association dataset; has many of the things i want but missing a few critical things for a full-on analysis. nathan, ever-obliging, is going to try and patch it next week.
7. had a flash of insight: frames and selective association might be the real-world functional equivalents of the d-dimensional lattice structures network theorists keep modeling but empirical researchers always fail to find. obviously, this bears more thought.

consequently: 0 down; 4 papers to go, 1 paper to review.

the kindle DX, e-book readers, and the halls of academe

here in the sociology department, we've been discussing ebook readers since december. every graduate student and faculty member in the natural and social sciences can be seen on a daily basis hauling around large stacks of printed, dog-eared, torn, coffee-stained PDFs.

some of us resort to extreme measures to reduce the number of pages we print. for a 290-page article, i once printed 8 sheets to the page. i cannot recommend it as a reading solution. what i really need is a good e-reader for these stacks of PDFs: all i want is a large screen (at least 90% of letter-size), the ability to annotate (for PDFs, ideally generating a new PDF text layer), some kind of standard connection system (USB would do), and a sensitive design for the shell. sell it to me for under $275, and i'll be happy for at least a month.

except, i've been waiting for such a thing for literally years now. the original kindles are great for reading books, except i will probably never read a book for pleasure on the kindle. kindle 2 is slightly better designed, but still way too small to display full-page PDFs well, and anyway they lack native PDF support--having to go through a complicated email conversion process just to read a PDF is not cool. the irex iliad reader does everything i need it to but the shell is poorly-designed and i would have to sell a kidney to pay for one. i went and poked at the sony reader at a best buy; it does almost everything, including supporting PDFs natively, but is too small for full-page PDFs and something about the design of the shell again spoils it for me. once again, it is more money than i would shell out for something i didn't love deeply. plastic logic's reader looks and sounds like it could be the real deal, but of course has been delayed to market several times and do i really want to buy the first version of anyone's reader?

so when i saw the kindle DX*, i immediately sent a volley of emails off to the many and various people to whom i've complained about technology's propensity to overpromise and underdeliver. is it possible that amazon has finally made something that inadvertently gives me everything i want in an e-book reader? there's no way to tell, of course: it isn't available yet, and it costs almost $500 (plus i would feel compelled to shell out for the 2-year extended warranty, a mere $109 extra). with the thousands of pages of PDFs i'll have to read over the next 4 months, this is a travesty of cosmic proportions. someone at amazon please read this and send me a unit to test.


* i find it incredible that the kindle DX is being contemplated as a viable replacement for hardcopy textbooks and newspapers--as many people have pointed out, kindle+textbooks is not cheaper than used textbooks+selling textbooks, and newspapers aren't dying off because people need a better thing to read them on than paper.

tvålpalatset

i was walking back from the subway the other evening when i saw a cup of coffee on a sidewalk table with a perfect latte fern on top of it. the owner of said cup emerged from inside the building to inform me of the existence of a cafe with excellent coffee just around the corner, which is how i found tvålpalatset (trans. soap palace), located in the first-floor rooms of what used to be the meeting rooms of a boxing club. under the cafe is a labyrinth of skylighted, marble-floored echoing spaces carved out of rock. the owner, who looks like andy from the mv glassworks. now rents these out to conferences and his son runs the cafe and an espresso school. so i'm sitting in the second room, painted completely white with wide-plank scrubbed fir floors. the room is three times longer than it is wide, the ceiling is higher than the room is long, there are marble-topped tables and overstuffed red and blue (the shade you associate with gainsborough and the french monarchy) cut-velvet armchairs, and a large, cream-coloured swedish tile furnace stands in the corner.* they brew beans from åre coffee roasters, and i'm having good lattes for the first time in months.

* these look great and are also magnificently efficient. the masonry surrounding the firebox is designed to absorb heat from the heat source and then radiate it back slowly and evenly over many hours.

404ed

this is the only http 404 page i've ever enjoyed.

stockholm

i got home later than my usual bedtime last night, after stopping in on detroit's third anniversary party (cake, beer, and nostalgic photographs in a bomb shelter under the vestertorp train station, south of stockholm city center). detroit is a shared studio space for emerging artists relatively close to odenplan; in a city as expensive as stockholm, it is a marvelous thing.

the weather in stockholm has been improbably good this week. for the fourth morning in a row, cloudless blue skies and brilliant sunlight. today, it bounced off the bright yellow buildings across the street and into the apartment, finally waking me up by 11am.

the warmth and light brought everyone out into the parks. we stopped for a coffee at a waterfront cafe in hornstull that has apparently been destroyed three times by radical political and religious right-wingers, then walked along the sodermalm waterfront until we got up into the neighbourhood south of folkungagatan where i got another latte and we sat in the park under the church and ate ice cream for a few hours in the sun while moa's friend's daughter harassed other park-goers under the guise of being friendly. after some discussion, the swedes decided that the ice cream known as hjortron (a tangy ice-cream with pale yellow preserves with large seeds swirled through it) is made of cloudberry, a berry prized across the far northern latitudes for its rarity. i woke up long enough to agree, then fell asleep again. in the spring, this city is easy to fall in love with.

keflavik, iceland

so here we are, on a long layover in keflavik, on our way to stockholm. the indignities of flight delays are mitigated by business class lounges, but only marginally. (side note: viking and thule are both beers brewed in iceland. they taste essentially the same.)

many years ago, i took a train from new haven to south station. it was a sunny day in spring, around this time of year. along the way, the train passed slowly through many small towns in new england, visible beyond the chainlink fence protecting people from the tracks. in many of these pass-throughs, i saw small children standing, hands on the fence, looking through to the trains rumbling past. living on an island is a lot like that.

the day of two breakfasts and baked good reciprocity

the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.* or so says robert burns.

1. wednesday last week, the rumour mill is set afire with talk of a sunday morning blueberry pancake breakfast featuring fresh maple syrup at the clover food lab. expectations at an unreasonably high level, a small cadre plans an expedition.
   
2. thursday, rucker emails from the big apple. she's in town for a signet shindig over the weekend. i suggest pancakes with fresh maple syrup on sunday morning. she counters with the signet's southern breakfast featuring creamed mushrooms, cheese grits, and allan benton's country ham (last seen at hungry mother), cooked under the supervision of matt lee. committed to pancakes and fresh syrup, i am foiled. the disappointment is crushing until i remember: fresh maple syrup!
   
3. friday, word arrives from a trusted source that pancakes will be postponed on account of anticipated bad weather. the disappointment is crushing until i remember: ham brunch is now a go! does it matter that i am not a member of the signet?
   
4. saturday, at the first backyard barbecue of the season, conversation turns to weekend breakfast and the S&S deli vs danny's diner. clearly, only empirical data will permit us to distinguish the superior candidate.
   

this is how it comes to pass that one eats two breakfasts on a bright and cloudless sunday in cambridge. my alarm failed to go off this morning at the appointed hour but the sun coming through the window woke me in plenty of time to make it to danny's diner at 8.30am. the eponymous danny has passed beyond the veil but his diner continues to put out magnificent, inexpensive breakfast: their corned beef hash is great and goes well with banana nut pancakes. tony's denver omelet and chocolate chip pancakes were also satisfying in ways that only diner omelets can be.

shortly later, i was in the signet, interloping with a mimosa and a plate loaded with grits from the old mill of guilford, creamed mushrooms, and thin-sliced country ham from allan benton. this ham bore no resemblance to the junk in bad sandwiches: it was dry-cured, salty, with fine-textured fibre, and dense, complex flavour. i bet almost anything that ham bone would make staggering soup.

then, to clear out the perishables in anticipation of a week away in sweden, i made an orange ginger olive-oil cake. not long after it went into the oven, i got an email asking if i would like some freshly-baked apple walnut olive-oil cake. does a dog have fleas? we arranged a ride-by exchange of baked goods on mass ave. with the benefit of a side-by-side tasting, i got the better end of the deal.

* this was significantly more apropos when i began writing this. now, not so much.

lentils

public service announcement: i have discovered the best thing on the planet. it is brown lentils with carrots and onions, charred kale, and rice, with feta and garlic yogurt. warm, spicy, slightly minty, round from the yogurt, earthy from the lentils, with a slight bitterness from the kale--it is a perfect dinner.

lentils
1/4 large white sweet onion
olive oil
dash each mint, cumin, cilantro, cayenne, fennel seed, mustard seed, dill, cinnamon
1 cup brown lentils
2 carrots
3 cloves garlic
black pepper
pomegranate molasses (dark honeys like buckwheat or tarweed are decent substitutes)
salt

reduce the onion to a 1/2 inch dice. after doing so, in a heavy casserole on high heat, warm about 1 tablespoon of olive oil. add the spices. when the fennel and mustard begin to pop, add the onion and stir. a powerful and promising aroma will permeate your kitchen. reduce the heat to medium and let the onions do their thing. meanwhile, rinse your lentils and drain. bring the heat back up to high and add the drained lentils. stir again. the aroma will now be significantly less promising, and reminiscent of wet earth and pouring rain. add enough water to cover the lentils. when the mix comes to a boil, reduce the heat to medium again and cover, leaving a slight gap for steam to escape. do not add salt or pepper yet.

peel and cut carrots into 1/4 inch half-rounds or whatever shape strikes your fancy; after this, peel and finely mince the garlic. after you have completed these onerous tasks, inspect the casserole again and top up with water to just cover the lentils. at this point, reduce the heat to medium-low and add all the garlic, then re-cover, again leaving the merest hint of a gap. when the lentils are softened but not yet tender, add the carrots. continue to cook until carrots are soft but still firm to the bite and lentils are soft but not mushy. (total cooking time can be anything from 25 to 60 minutes. dried pulses vary widely in cooking time, so keep on checking; it's an excuse to taste.) add about a teaspoon's worth of pomegranate molasses, stir to mix, then season with salt and fresh pepper, remembering that feta is a salty cheese.

i had this with steamed rice (jasmine, for preference) and chopped kale charred in a hot skillet with olive and walnut oil--both excellent in their own right. but what made the lentils into the stuff of myth was first the addition of the garlic and yogurt sauce from the zucchini pancakes, and then the sprinkling of feta over the top of everything.

the container for the thing contained

Whereas nation states have always distinguished themselves from others by means of a thick exterior boundary on the perimeter of a territorial 'container,' they have also maintained the illusion of an interor without borders, a national space kept open by the political public sphere where differences are subordinated by the constitutional state. With the rise of the contractualization of citizenship, an interior border now duplicates that of the exterior. Only those who have borne the burden of internal social exclusion for centuries--first from slavery, then through racial apartheid--are immune from the compensatory allure of the nation.

margaret somers, genealogies of citizenship

this makes me think of hugh of st. victor, quoted by edward said:

the man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land.

zucchini

apparently, some people who cultivate the zucchini plant are overwhelmed by its plenitude, to the point where they creep up to porches in the dead of night to leave bags of the squash hanging, unwanted, from doors. i have never had this problem but, even if i did, zucchini pancakes are clearly the solution. the ny times recently had an article about zucchini pancakes but i found their version rubbery and insufficiently delightful. these i inflicted on the unsuspecting crowd at tory and elizabeth's easter dinner last night; happily, the modifications i made this morning (much less egg, much less flour) produced a truly transcendent version, delicate and crisp.

pancakes
2 medium zucchini
1/4 cup onion
1 egg
1 tablespoon dry dill (or 2-3 if fresh)
handful crumbled feta (large lumps are sort of nice)
handful grated parmesan

after grating the zucchini and the onion, salt liberally and allow to drain for about 10 minutes, then wring as much water out as possible. wrapping the mass of shredded zucchini in a clean towel helps. zucchini shrinks dramatically when wrung out. this is normal. in a medium-ish bowl, mix the zucchini and onions with the egg, dill, feta, parmesan. the mixture should be an appealing spring green and be a slightly runny mass. proceed now to make the sauce.

sauce
5 hefty cloves garlic
dash each cayenne, dry mint, cumin, black pepper
1 cup whole milk yogurt (thick greek style is best)

peel and mince the garlic, combine with spices and yogurt, refrigerate. this stuff will also slay a good lamb burger.

assembly
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder

after putting the sauce to bed, dust off your local cast iron skillet and heat a tablespoon of oil in it. add the flour and baking powder to the zucchini and eggs. resist the urge to overmix. drop about a tablespoonful of the batter into the hot skillet and flatten it out (3" diameter is a good size). an 8-inch skillet fits 3 of these at a time. allow one side to brown before flipping using a thin metal spatula. drain on wire rack on top of newsprint or paper towels, and serve with sauce. these deflate in a particularly dispiriting way when they are allowed to get cold.

hungry mother

if only every long, draining week ended like this one did. back in the semi-palmy days, mission exploration society used to meet mondays for dinner and conversation. we met for the first time in a year last night. halsey showed up from virginia on a smith-related boondoggle and drank hot beverages in the dining room for a couple of hours, then we walked over to hungry mother, which ami, tw, and diana have all recommended in the strongest terms. hammer joined us after the sun set and was served two fine glasses of grain-free, leaven-free wine, and a pity plate of toasted matzo with cinnamon sugar. last night's dinner at hungry mother has joined my very short list of perfect and nearly perfect meals.

country ham with small biscuits and red pepper jelly. the ham was so thin it was transparent, and the biscuits were small, warm, crisp, and tender.

braised beef tongue on a toasted slice of french bread, with gruyere and (the menu claims) dijon. savoury and velvety with collagen in the same manner as jackson fillmore's veal ragu, creamy from the gruyere, and with a hit of horseradish pungency from the dijon.

boudin balls with remoulade and cress. good boudin, but not spectacular. the remoulade though, a totally different story: i'd eat that on its own.

mussels with tasso ham and a barbeque broth (made with barbecue?). the mussels were purportedly wild-harvested from maine. marvelous: steamed to plumpness and no further. ham and shellfish is a combination that'll never go out of style.

gnocchi with mushrooms, pea tendrils, and shavings of parmesan. this was stunningly good, but in a completely humble way. this was the food manifestation of sprezzatura, the art that conceals art. i inhaled the entire bowl with immoderate rapidity.

cornmeal fried catfish with stewed pigeon peas, rice, chorizo. another dish full of powerful flavours and textures, joined by historical context so as to be completely unremarkable but somehow elevated here to their apotheosis. (if you hunger for more history about the variants of beans and rice, together with the social history of chronic undernutrition from pigeon pea protease inhibitors, consult john thorne's superb volume serious pig, p 288)

caramel chocolate tart with toasted benne seeds that came with a large glass of cold milk as the drink pairing. caramel and chocolate are unchallenging flavours for eaters since they are so easy to love (the best dessert i have ever had anywhere was at quince, a peach-leaf infused semifreddo with mulberry granita that had a flavour and texture so evanescent and difficult to place that everyone at the table fell involuntarily silent). even so, the tart was superbly executed and, in a strange way, one of the two most satisfying things about eating at hungry mother was seeing the tall glass of cold milk listed as a drink pairing in the dessert menu.

banana pudding. mild and filled with chunks of banana.

ami the drink snob praises the bartenders here and justifiably—we got some magnificent, simple drinks. halsey had a very subtle (and quite beautiful) vodka-based drink flavoured with grenadine (housemade) and rosemary water (in a martini glass, #42). i opted to submit to the whim of the bartender (#99), indicating only my preference for something herbaceous and citrusy. they came back with a martini glass filled with a cloudy and frosty plymouth gin-based marvel flavoured with lemon juice, yellow chartreuse, honey syrup, maraschino, and (the grace note) fennel-infused gin. drink #99 was the second thing that was most satisfying about hungry mother.

i have groused before about the absence of good espresso drinks in this city. confidence buoyed by the stellar meal now behind us, i ordered a latte. needless to say, the after-dinner caffeinated beverage was the sole blot on the experience, perhaps to prevent the universe from being snuffed out by an angry god on account of dining perfection. when george howell roasts coffee of stunning quality a mere 40 minutes away from cambridge, is it too much to ask for a well-made espresso drink, with properly microfoamed milk poured with care and art? is it fair that san francisco, a postage-stamp-sized city with far too many hills and the slowest public transit system on the continent, boasts not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR artisanal roasteries staffed with fixie-riding hipsters who will pour you a work of art in espresso and steamed milk with lip-biting concentration? is it any wonder that i've given up coffee since moving back to massachusetts?

commensuration and analogical reasoning

Commensuration transforms qualities into quantities, difference into magnitude ... Most quantification can be understood as commensuration because quantification creates relations between different entities through a common metric.

wendy espeland and mitchell stevens, "commensuration as a social process"

metrics and quantification happen to be the most obvious and easily-operationalized action frameworks for commensuration but they're not the only ones. semantic taxonomies perform the same function, such that systems of related meaning function as a way to filter the world of perceived objects into interpreted objects that are more-related or less-related to each other. the example i favour is that of the colour red, which is equivalent to a subjectively-variable domain of coordinates in the CMYK colorspace, another range of domains in the RGB colorspace, and yet another array of colour-words depending on language--what this example shows is that commensuration (the drawing of connections between conceptual or concrete entities) is not purely a process of relation, or purely a process of imposition, but may also be a process of analogical identity-creation.

the agenda espeland and stevens pursue partly explains the restricted set of commensuration action they include in their review article, but it might be fruitful to extend the conception of commensuration to analogical reasoning as well (instead of the purely transitive logic they describe). this enables the further analysis they offer (of institutions, movements, power dynamics, etc) to also inform those situations in which the similarity or difference between entities is an emergent property of interaction. enfolding analogy into the range of commensurative actions also permits us to acknowledge and address the frequent cases in which individuals commensurate objects in spirit while acknowledging their fundamental formal incommensurability. this is akin to the distinction weber draws between wertrationality (value-rationality) and zweckrationality (formal rationality)

data ecologies

almost three years ago now, i was able to get ed wilson, harold varmus, and jeff sachs to google to make a pitch for what we then called biosearch--a facility for biological information that would enable data from multiple fields to interact. not much came of that, though ed was one of the TED prizewinners for 2007, and his TED wish was the encyclopedia of life, now being built by the EOL consortium. this was our general architectural representation of biosearch:

i think it's a good general framework for thinking about what biological data management should look like. thoughts?

moving again; next stop, amsterdam!

APRIL FOOLS ALERT

cambridge has been awesome but only fools and the hard-of-hearing continue reading, oblivious, when opportunity comes knock, knock, knocking at their chamber door. when i idly mentioned, a few weeks back on the plane to sf, that i've always been interested in large-scale and monumental sculpture, i never dreamed that my flying companion was a dutch industrialist and art patron consigned to economy class by the vagaries of the american airlines reservation system. when he emailed me to ask if i might be interested in helping him set up a large-scale fine art foundry in amsterdam, you can imagine how quickly i leaped into action--amsterdam here i come!

so, if you're in the greater boston area and interested in some or all of my 15-box collection of diverse but interesting books, or my slightly-used horseshoe crab, or a freshly-reconditioned low-angle blockplane, drop me a note. and if you know someone with a 15,000 square-foot (more or less) heavy-industry-zoned warehouse space in the westpoort district of amsterdam, or a 500-cup induction smelter in the same general vicinity, definitely get in touch.

yanobe kenji

not everyone is cool enough to build large metal objects that do neat things. for example, how about this foot soldier, a "Weapon for conquest series, A "teleexistence" type, pants model trabelling weapon"? or this survival system train, "Kenji Yanobe's private train possessing various containers with the necessary functions for survival such as the oxygen generation container, water distillation container,and houseuhold tools"? the best one is the 7.2 meter tall giant torayan, "the ultimate child's weapon, as it sings, dances, breathes fire, and follows only those orders given by children."

yanobe kenji's giant torayan breathing fire, as advertised, at the rocking mammoth. image copyright by the man himself and linked from his own fine website.

coincidences

a year and many missed opportunities and assorted cancellations later, i finally met irene winter for lunch. she is an art historian, scholar of the ancient near east and cross-cultural aesthetics, macarthur fellow, great teacher, and undoubtedly one of my favourite and most influential professors--and she's retiring this spring. we spent nearly two hours at pamplona (josefina passed away in 2007 and the restaurant changed hands, but the place and the food remains sort of the same), during which time two jaw-dropping factoids emerged:

first: she and her husband bob are close friends of stanley and rose-mary crawford. stanley crawford is the author of a garlic testament, an unjustly neglected gem of american writing usually filed under gardening*--a semi-philosophical discussion of his family's move to new mexico, the construction (by hand) of their adobe house, and the pound weight of the real. did you know that to testify is to swear with your hands over your testicles? i didn't know that either. the crawfords were recently in cambridge for a book tour and came to dinner; my frustration is a palpable mist.

second: since purchasing the tivoli model one, i have been falling asleep to the well-tempered clavier, played by rosalyn tureck. conversation had meandered onto the subject of a baroque concert hall in munich (which i'm visiting in may) and baroque composers like js bach and how modern interpretations strip out the ornamentation in the scores when she let slip that not only did she enjoy tureck's interpretations, she was also close personal friends with her at oxford and after. i was momentarily incapacitated by this revelation.

* yet another instance of the inadequacy of categories.

automatic translation

compare this and this, two versions of the same article about matthew carter, designer of verdana, who apparently lives just down the street from me.

cheesefest

last sunday, i got up early to get breakfast with peter in cole valley, then marcela and patrick drove through and picked me up for the artisan cheese festival in petaluma. before showing up, i thought a $45 admission was a little steep but i may have broken even on cheese and assorted beverages within an hour of showing up. five hours later, i'd consumed about 3 pounds of cheese and 6-8 glasses of wine and beer and people distinctly under the influence were swapping cheeses and giving them away to anyone who displayed even a slight interest. the standouts:

golden star's sparkling jasmine tea: i thought this would be unbelievably affected but it was very good. only mildly sweetened with cane sugar, with a gentle scent of jasmine and enough tannin to keep it interesting.

rogue creamery's rogue river blue: powerful, creamy, and spicy at the back of the mouth. at room temperature, it overwhelmed even the glass of consecration (and that's saying something).

tumalo's classico sheep milk gouda: chalk white, dense, with a balanced saltiness. the guy behind the counter was closing down and, seeing me cut another chunk, asked if i wanted to take the entire wedge. i acquiesced with good grace.

russian river brewing company's consecration beer: this is one of the sour beers; i've never enjoyed them before but this is maybe one of my favourite beers. patrick and marcela, not incidentally have introduced me to two of my top beers to date (dogfish's midas touch and, now, consecration)

cici gelato: these people are in mill valley only, which is frustrating. they had a buffalo ricotta gelato made with bubalus bubalis ricotta. i always like the mild-flavoured, cream-based gelatos, but this one was magnificent.

wandering aengus heirloom blend cider: the heirloom blend was crisp, dry, and a little bitter. it's nice to lurk around googlers wearing schwag. the owner had two bottles of their pommeau dessert wine on the counter (a very limited production) but was steadfast in his refusal to open them until patrick looked very unhappy when told that it was available only in oregon. (it was unctuous and autumnal, in case you wonder.)

time is on my side

the day before i left san francisco, i saw a sign in the noe valley stained glass store asking for packing peanuts, two giant boxes of which were sitting in the garage trash area (the packing stuff from john's drum set). i told the owner to come over and pick them up. this year, he returned the favour by letting me tape up a box filled with a wagnerware skillet with dutch oven lid and the complete edward tufte which is now making its way slowly across the country toward cambridge, mass.

but more bizarre yet: i stayed with mervin and magali at irving street in the summer of 2005. when i moved out west, i left a wheel-less bike frame (a reynolds 531) in the basement. having a vague recollection that it had a horizontal drop-out ideal for conversion to a fixed gear, i'd been trying desultorily to retrieve it since moving back to cambridge last year. i finally bit the bullet and called the landlord yesterday; we arranged to meet at the apartment this morning and lo! was the frame not hanging in the corner, obscured by a stack of moving blankets? i walked with it over my shoulder back over the river and into cambridge.

LAX

in pursuit of a cheap air ticket, i took a two-hour layover in LAX. the wing operated by american airlines--which continues to be, purely by negligence, the second-worst airline i've had the misfortune of flying (the worst, by far, being aeroflot)--has two places for travel-stained and weary travellers to purchase beverages. at neither of these establishments can be purchased a cup of tea made only of tea. if your heart's desire is a venti cup of a refreshing blend of tarragon and green tea, or green tea and lemongrass, or berry blossoms and white tea, you're in luck. otherwise, be prepared to lurk like i did, unhappy and beverage-less, until boarding time.

strange days

i'm on caffeinated beverage #4 in blue bottle cafe (17-foot ceilings, ash counters) and have just purchased a flat-panel monitor online, piggybacking on wifi from the gbus parked across the street--reading these innumerable AJS and ASR articles will never be the same again.

after breakfast with nat, celia, and dan, i visited liz at cca and saw her stuff (she was at the ranch last summer, then at emma lake after, which was cause for much envy), then went to the galleries at 49 geary to check out the hopper/eggleston/frank exhibition at fraenkel (full of illustrious things but disappointing nevertheless). much of the building was full of white, high-ceilinged galleries full of forgettable art. fortunately, there were highlights, chief among which were the amazing michael david monochromatic oils at room for painting, room for paper. the photographs really don't do these pieces justice--oil thinly applied on gesso, then removed selectively to achieve shade and tone; apparently all imagery from memory and imagination.

michael david's july, 2005. image from room for painting, room for paper.
(i want this one. someone should donate $6000 to my art fund. i look at this and think immediately of "fern hill")

ulrike palmbach's hounds (2006). image from iconoduel's marvellous flickr set.

there were also hand-stitched life-size dogs made of stuffed stockings by ulrike palmbach at stephen wirtz gallery, a great tom killion steamroller print at john windle antiquarian bookseller, large-format photographs of abandoned landscapes by shai kremer at robert koch (also featuring edward burtynsky's shipbreaking #9 diptych, half of which is visible here), and marvellous mixed media pieces by hadi tabatabai at brian gross.

reason

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do.

benjamin franklin

why i miss san francisco #1

ami thought i'd left early this morning but i was actually still snoring gently under a pile of sheets. so, around 11.30, we went to brunch at fattoush (a reliable standby) and then to the farmer's market where i tried a preserve made of nectarines and green almonds that was truly spectacular--it was just like saturdays used to be. it was misting gently, and raining, so i had no qualms about spending the afternoon sorting through email and listening to glenn gould playing the goldberg variations. around 4, i left for mission beach cafe to meet jon, by way of bi-rite (meyer lemon, brown sugar ginger caramel, ritual toffee). by the time he made it up from the peninsula, it was late enough that we deferred pie to try and snag a table early at minako.

patrick and marcela showed up 15 minutes after, and 45 minutes after that, we were seated--by now i know better than to ask why tables remain empty within while people stand hungrily without. lotus root kinpira, green beans in a sesame and miso sauce, fried eggplant cubes, miso paste marinated grilled mackerel, the spicy green roll, the fake eel and cucumber roll, hamachi sashimi with three mints (spearmint, peppermint, and yanagi tade, in a rice bran oil suspension), mackerel sashimi. and i still haven't had the 1969 plum wine that is in back, so clearly i have to return. after, we went back to patrick and marcela's to check on the caltrain schedule for jon and had some allagash barrel-aged musette, the schloss eggenberg brewery's dunkel doppelbock, and a bottle of year-old, bottle-conditioned mead that they'd brewed. this last was remarkable and head and shoulders above the other meads i've had: they made it out of cranberry, honey, pomegranate juice, tarweed and buckwheat honeys, and cardamom.

tomorrow, the sonoma artisanal cheese festival, followed by aziza.

the bay

i got into sfo early in the afternoon and emerged into bright sunlight at the 24th st mission bart. i write from ritual roasters, accompanied by my first good cup of coffee in 8 months. next up, tacos at pancho villa and a quick browse at dog-eared books.