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15 comments:
Interesting (to employ a Tulkinghorn-ism). She's quite hot when playing Bach (of all things), not so much in stills or interviews. When not animated by the spirit.
So, yes, you made me look.
How ungentlemanly of you... I think, at rest, she's at least the equal of Jenny Lewis -- and I'll leave aside the part about being talented at a level that post-pop LA ex-starlets can't even comprehend.
A silly response of mine above, and a knee-jerk expression of my irritation at the whole cute girl pop phenomenon... But there's a point here about non-programmatic music (or, if you will, music without a narrative): at its highest level, it can be filled with an intellectual and spritual passion that is sometimes indistinguishable from physical passion...
She DOES look better than Pablo Casals, you'll admit.
I thought I was seeing your point and agreeing with it.
You were. I was objecting to the notion that Weilerstein was ever anything less than hot....
Probably TMI for a public board, but still.
Which is less interesting.
My response was too impersonal, in other words? Didn't realize thre was a toe to avoid stepping on, here.
I actually think it's a wonderful thing that people can be transfigured by talent or their sensitivity to the work of a genius -- that Bach can make them beautiful. And I certainly don't think beauty of that sort is illusory. But is a type of beauty we don't often see manifested physically. Incarnated, if you will.
In a post by my ex's assistant and co-blogger, a quotation from a source I'm mildly irked to have to admit I agree with:
Beauty is a rigid, static physical image, while attractiveness:
”…is a fluid, variable psychological experience, one that moves from the inside, out and back again. Beauty can be inherited, Photoshopped or surgically attained. Attractiveness develops, evolves over time and can be ageless. One can be attractive to others or simply feel that way about oneself. Beauty leads women toward the pursuit of the physical features associated with the word. Attractiveness is an attainable goal for those who take care of their bodies, enjoy their lives, maintain sensuality and engage with others.”
In pop music we can pile up examples, from Janis Joplin to Patti Smith to PJ Harvey. Not to mention the "ugly handsome" school of male movie stars, from Bogart to Bronson to Craig.
Often people seem to have stronger reactions to the appeal they have to dig for than to the kind that's right on the surface (Grant, Hudson, Clooney).
No disrespect intended toward any of these folks. All public figures, however, and to that extent public property.
Actually, people have compared Weilerstein to Janis Joplin:
http://www.wqxr.org/articles/wqxr-features/2011/apr/19/cafe-concert-alisa-weilerstein/
Cool quote:
The six Bach suites represent the cornerstone of the solo cello repertoire and accordingly, interpretations often range from the hyper-rational to the dutifully reverent.
Then there’s Alisa Weilerstein's approach.
In the WQXR Café, the effusive 29-year-old evoked a classical version of Janis Joplin, fearlessly lunging into the grand emotional climaxes of Bach's Third Suite while reducing soft passages to barely a whisper. When Weilerstein plays, bow hairs break, rosin dust flies.
Your ex's assistant and I have a very different definition of beauty. One wonders if said assistant has read much aesthetic theory, or whether the assistant uses it to mean pure "surface appearance."
Rather a shame that. Beauty is the deeper thing than "attractiveness," though not as deep as the sublime.
I've spent too many hours reading Hegel, Hume, Kant, and Burke to fall for that kind of reductiveness.
When one hears Bach, one hears something beautiful.
I'm not quoting the assistant, Sophia Savage, but a HuffPo article she cited by one Vivian Diller, Ph.D; I guess the link didn't come through:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vivian-diller-phd/beauty-attractiveness_b_841300.html
Diller is a psychologist, so perhaps these terms have slightly different accepted meanings in that field.
I don't know that beauty qua beauty has any accepted meaning in the field of psychology.
Nice appeal to authority there as well.
I would argue that Diller gets the terms exactly opposite of what they are. Beauty is the thing that lasts beyond mere surface appearance...attractiveness isn't.
Lots of women get surgery to become more attractive to potential sexual partners...this usually makes them less beautiful.
I'm sure you're right. I'm using the terms loosely -- as it seems Diller is, too, in spite of her advanced degree.
When Nabokov wanted you to know that the character writing the introduction to "Lolita" was an idiot, he made sure that the guy signed the piece John Ray, Jr., PhD.
And Keats did not, I believe, write: Attractiveness is truth and truth attractiveness.
I get what she means about how attractiveness is changeable, but the free use of the important word "beauty", shows at least that Vivian Diller, PhD, didn't study the classics much.
Whatever.
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