australian rozie

Book of Longing

Originally uploaded by Australian Rozie

Dave and I went to this quite a while ago. I’m catching up on things that I wanted to blog about now that I’ve handed in my Cert IV TAA work in.
I wanted to see Philip Glass before he died. When I saw that he was performing the Book of Longing at the Sydney Opera House, I decided that tickets to this show would make a great present for Dave’s birthday. The show consisted of the poems of Leonard Cohen - he is not my man but I thought it would be interesting anyway.
After birthday drinks at the “perfect Sydney” Opera Bar, we headed over to the concert hall. We had great seats - in the third row from the front! Melody tagged along too in the last minute seats, but she’d seen him before (I think). We all received a little copy of The Book of Longing which was a nice touch, it was s bit like a wedding program, where you could follow along and see where we were up to in the performance.
Philip Glass came out and the crowd went wild. Then, the ensemble of musicians and vocalists came out and did their thing. It was - different, unusual. Dave even mentions, “daggy”. I think that I just wanted to see Glass perform The Hours soundtrack, instead I got nutty songs about love, loss and some rude words. Philip Glass sat on the stage, tinkled a few bars and would then wander off stage letting the other musicians do their thing, then he’d come back, tinkle a bit more, then wander off again. It wasn’t really what I imagined it was going to be. Oh well, I know how brilliant he is, if you haven’t seen Glass: a Portrait of Philip Glass in Twelve Parts, you definitely should check it out. And I got to see him before he… you know what.
Here are some other reviews:
http://www.australianstage.com.au/reviews/miaf/book-of-longing–philip-glass-1974.html
http://www.artshub.com.au/au/news.asp?sc=&sId=174548&sType=review

As a fan of all things Warhol, I Bought Andy Warhol by Richard Polsky was on my reading wishlist. Luckily I picked it up at Ariel for only $8 (a hard cover even). I know I said I wasn’t going to buy books anymore, only borrow them from the library (btw speaking of library books… oh that’s another story) but it was cheap and it wasn’t available at the library. The author is an art dealer (since the 80s) and his goal is to buy an Andy Warhol artwork (under $100,000). The book also covers how the world of art dealers and art auctions worked in the 80s and 90s. His style goes from condescending to self deprecating, sometimes he sounded like a ‘wannabe” and others times a big snob. I was interested in the many references to Andy Warhol of course, but also the Californian art scene (which I had just recently learned a lot about after watching The Cool School). He also referred to work by Joseph Cornell whose work I only discovered when I went to SF MOMA last year. Overall it was an interesting story, but his writing style kind of annoyed me.