Here's an interesting article in Stereogum's "Haunting the Chapel" series, featuring ex-black metal bugaboo Varg Vikernes AKA Burzum.
The interviewer, in his introduction, tackles the question of whether it's OK to appreciate art made by those whose views one finds to be reprehensible.
How do you deal with this? Do you avoid TS Eliot, Wagner, Disney because they were Nazi swine?
Here's the interview. Latewirers chime in below with your cro-mag degenerate drool, please.
Today, I wrapped up a weekend of Italian food adventure with a trip to Pizza Fusion in Mesa to check out their organic pies and general vibe. It's very hard to find restaurants that serve organic chow in Phoenix, and I'm a stone-cold pizza fanatic, so I was uber stoked to experience this joint.
Now, when I mention my pizza fanaticism affliction, I'm not kidding around. I was a regular haunter of Bianco's before it blew up and turned into a day trip instead of a date, and I've pored over every word of Jeff Varsano's blog like it was Henry Jones' Grail diary. Pizza gets created from scratch weekly in the DiBiase haus, and if there's a pizza on a menu, I order it. The way that some guys treat wine, I treat my ancestral home's gift to the universe.
Pizza Fusion is a small multi-state chain that started in 2006, but I never heard of it until local cool person K. Van Slyke (@KrysVS) mentioned it today. They sling organic flatbreads, pizzas, salads, and beer. We hit the joint at 3pm for Happy Hour, when drinks and certain appetizers are half-price.
First off, I'll express appreciation for Pizza Fusion's choice of brand in my preferred libation, soda water : they offer Boylan's, which even for a greaseball like me is a welcome change from the ubiquitous San Pellegrino. Boylan's comes in 12-ounce bottles with nice 50s-style graphics that please the lamp. My co-diners K.J. Van Slyke, W. Nash, and T. Trainor filled their 'Lil Jon' chalices with Lost Coast Great White and New Belgium Blue Paddle. The draft beers were $2 per pint -- unbeatable pricing, especially on a Sunday. There was a significant selection of organic beers on tap, including an $11 pint whose label insisted that the beer was free of crustaceans!
Notes on atmosphere : the whole place is slathered in strangely-attractive green paint, with digital prints everywhere that are emblazoned with green slogans. The prints are a little hokey, but nothing really bothered me until I got to the bathroom, the mirror inside which has the words "This person is changing the world" written on the bottom BAAARF . Some points were won back, though, after I tried the hand dryer, which appears to be a reclaimed jet engine from a downed MIG or something -- it's one powerful blower! My hands were drier than a boozehound in Bridgewater, Connecticut after about ten seconds. One thing that was really great was the countertop of the bar, which was made of concrete mixed with recycled glass and high-polished; a cool touch. The manger told us that everything -- building materials, paint, chairs, etc, are totally green'd out, made from reclaimed stuff when possible, and LEED-certified. It's a nice gesture for sure.
Van Slyke ordered up and graciously shared the flatbread appetizer with marinara, which was pretty good. The flatbread had good texture and wasn't too heavily-seasoned (the latter being a common pitfall of wack flatbread); the marinara was tangy and not bitter or overly-sweet.
There was no pizza Margherita on the menu (what the hoot!?), so we strong-armed our host into making us one, with a multigrain crust. In reality, the guy was more than happy to make us the requested pie -- super nice fellow with fresh ink on his arm that offered us excellent service and didn't complain as we proceeded to nerdily occupy his bar for the next three hours.
A chicken -topped salad was ordered as well. The chow was served with good speed. The manager informed us that 75% of the ingredients are certified organic with the balance 25% being non-certified but 'all-natural,' pesticide-free.
[This last point is worth mentioning -- I've been speaking about the iffiness of the "organic" certification for a while, as it still allows a fair number of chemicals both natural and synthetic, and foods only need to be 95% organic to meet certificate standards. Places that eschew bad chemicals completely but don't jump through the government hoops to get certified, like Desert Roots Farm for example, are more desirable to deal with than mass-produced "certified organic" producers (many of which have lately been rocked with scandal).]
The pizza verdict :
The oblong pie was good, though the most crucial aspect, the crust, didn't have a lot to do with my concept of what pizza crust is about. It was very dense and totally flat. The denseness is probably partially attributable to the heavy multigrain dough; as an amateur pizzaiolo myself, I can attest that whole-grain doughs don't rise as much as white doughs do. Still, there were no air pockets or structure at all -- weird. So I asked the nice manager guy if they rolled the dough out; it happens that they feed it through some kind of flattening robot before loading it into the fancy rotary oven. I'd have much preferred a nicely structured hand-shaped crust. These issues aside, the crust had very good flavor; not too salty and with plenty of interesting grain flavors. The outside was well-charred after a nine-minute cook time. I asked what the oven temperature was set at, expecting it to be in the 700 Fahrenheit degree range; it turned out to be 525, just 25 degrees more than a standard residential oven (which never char well) can get. Props to the oven designers for getting great results at low heat. The crust was also confirmed made in-house, which is a philosophically important point. [Note : they do offer gluten-free crust, but it's not made on-site]
The crust was very crunchy and satisfying to eat; i enjoyed it. It had a real hearty texture that complemented the riot of grain flavors.
The sauce had good flavor and excellent color, though I suspect that it may have been pre-made and bottled rather than made that day from whole tomatoes; it didn't have that fresh kick that just-made sauce has. It wasn't bitter, grainy, over-sugared, or flavorless though; instead, it was a mild, soft-textured sauce.
The fresh mozzarella was undoubtedly the real deal, judging from the characteristic uneven melt pattern. It had a pretty firm texture and wasn't too salty -- nice choice. Mozzarella is probably th' least important ingredient in a pie, but it's much appreciated when they don't skimp on it.
The chicken salad thing was big enough to feed MC Hammer's posse circa 1992. Massive, it was like a huge platter of vibrant greens topped by about a pound of diced chicken breast and accompanied by two vessels of Chelten House Raspberry Vinaigrette. I don't eat birds, so I can't attest to the flavor of the salad directly, but my compatriots seemed very well pleased and scarfed it down like a college kid with an overdue assignment and a bag of Chee-Tos [Am i projecting too much here?] I did sample the vinaigrette, which ranks with my favorite flavored dressings -- specifically, it's not overly sweetened. Nice choice.
The bottom line : Pizza Fusion has good food, though it's not in tune with my preferences for "pizza proper." Tasty and not your average pie, though; a welcome new flavor in flatbread. The beverages and pricing were outstanding. The atmosphere, while a little overwrought, was sufficiently inviting. And the recycled-glass-n-concrete countertop and the hi-power hand dryer were nifty bonuses. the fact that they use strictly organic and pesticide-free ingredients alone makes it a must-visit for Phoenicians who like to avoid poison.
Nicholas' EatHouse Rating : B+
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A window into the DiBiase pizza method and results :
Above you'll see my preferred sauce ingredients : very fresh local pesticide-free Roma and little yellow tomatoes and fresh garlic, all from Desert Roots Farm. The tomatoes are de-seeded and crushed with a hand blender; never cooked. It takes less than ten minutes to make the raw sauce, including washing time. The cheese on this pie was Trader Joe's very good organic shredded mozzarella; the knife of choice is a Wusthof Classic. Not shown in this shot : fresh basil, also from Desert Roots; organic olive oil; true Pecorino Romano cheese, which I apply liberally (even though it voids the 'true Margherita' status, it's hella tasty).
This dough has lots of structure; it's prepped the night before using only flour (one-third whole wheat, two-thirds unbleached white; all organic), water, yeast, and salt. I knead it by hand (even though I should probably start using the pictured KitchenAid mixer for efficiency's sake) and it ferments in the fridge overnight for best flavor. The dough is at just about 50% hydration before cooking; very wet indeed. I prefer it like this to promote structure. In defiance of the Neapolitan rules, I coat my hands with olive oil before hand-shaping in the air. The entire dough process from mixing to shaping only takes about 5 minutes, fermentation time excluded.
The results : Delicious pizza. The crust is thicker and puffier than the Neapolitain rules alllow, but that's just how I've come to like it. The 500-degree maximum heat on my oven precludes good charring, sadly. The sauce tastes incredibly fresh, yummy, and flavorful, with a strong hint of garlic kick. I like my pizzas that use shredded mozzarella to be very cheesy [I use fresh mozz more sparingly]. The basil is put on the pie about 5 minutes into an 11-minute cook time. I used to cook for only 8 minutes, but have come to value a more-cooked crust with cheese at the edge.
Scratch-made organic pizza is a taste revolution! Once you start taking command of your pizza supply chain, you'll be rocketed into unexplored realms of deliciousness. Give it a shot and demand better pizza from your local pizza joint! (505,278)
Although the Cunningham living legacy plan aims to preserve its founder's vision intact as custodian of his intellectual property, that does not mean the choreography will be frozen forever, like an artifact of the past. As a choreographer, Cunningham always welcomed new technology and pioneered countless innovations. Collaboration, chance, and change were the very cornerstones of his approach.
Although the sun has set on his career, a new dawn inspired by his achievement may follow. "Ideas," as the artist Robert Rauschenberg, Cunningham's collaborator, said, "are not real estate."
Neither is intellectual property. It could be a site where past art is not just preserved but fertilizes future growth.
"Dancing is a process that never stops," Cunningham said when announcing his living legacy plan, "and should not stop if it is to stay alive and fresh."
There was a mention of Creative Commons in the article's discussion of copyright issues. Cunningham was one of the few major choreographers to have licensed his work under a Creative Commons license. As an advocate of Creative Commons licenses, I applaud Cunningham's generosity to our collective artistic heritage. However, I should also note as a comparison that in most folk dancing traditions, sharing and open collaboration are the norms– the idea of ownership is fluid and oftentimes forms and techniques are owned and transmitted collectively.
<tangent>Another scenario to consider: Michael Jackson "owned" the moonwalk in the sense that it is a dance move popularly associated with him. But what if he literally owned it as intellectual property? Would the Jackson estate be going after the unauthorized moonwalkers in the Eternal Moonwalk tribute site? </tangent>
The CSM article did not mention Cunningham's life partner and frequent artistic collaborator, composer John Cage. The two men's work similarly combined demanding detailed instructions with indeterminacy and chance operations such as the rolling of dice. The Cage estate has recently gone after what it considered copyright infringements against Cage's (in)famous 4'33" ("The Silent Piece").
The big Zen koan question then becomes, is randomness and silence copyrightable?
The score of 4'33" instructs the performer(s) to not play their instruments for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. But the piece is not really silent. As I have previously written:
The piece is made up of the hum of the air-conditioning in the hall, the ruffle of programs, the coughing of an audience member; it is an invitation, an invocation, to listen to the ambient sounds all around us. Cage rejects the distinction between musical and non-musical sounds, and embraces all sounds, regardless of the performers intent, to be potentially musical. In doing so, Cage completes the break from the history of classical composition and offers up a new model for music in which the primary act of for the composer and for the performer is not to make music, but to listen.
When a critic told Cage that anybody could have written 4'33", Cage responded with his usual charming wit, "but nobody else did." There is no doubt that the provocative and performative nature of 4'33" is an act of creativity, if not genius. At the same time, one could also argue that because the piece is about listening to the sounds that exist in the performance space even if no instruments are being played, then David Tudor's "non-playing" of the piano at the premiere, as well as the noises generated by the audience members present, were all integral parts of the piece. In that sense, the performer and the audience share a kind of authorship of the piece. They all 'performed' 4'33" and made it what it was. By elevating the role of listeners, Cage was in effect bringing back a participatory, interactive element that had been lost in Western "classical" music.
Cage's 4'33" also represents a break from the idea of Romantic authorship, where "an author is perceived to be the source of original ideas, transforming the world around him through his own genius" (Authorship Collective). Romantic authorship would claim that the roll of the composer is to create music out of silence. But Cage's point is that silence does not exist.
One of the inspirations for 4'33" was Cage's experience in an anechoic chamber at Harvard University. An anechoic chamber is a soundproofed room designed in such a way that all the surfaces in the room will absorb all sounds made in the room, rather than bouncing them back as echoes.
Cage entered the chamber expecting to hear silence, but as he wrote later, he "heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation." Cage had gone to a place where he expected there to be no sound, yet sound was nevertheless discernible. He stated "until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music." (Wikipedia)
Composers cannot create music out of silence because silence does not exist. Even if it did, unless we are deaf, it is impossible to perceive it. Cage's 4'33", like Duchamp's ready-mades, is a kind of "found art," comprised of environmental sounds that already exist. We are all constantly surrounded by sounds, they are unavoidable elements of our environment. The role of composers and musicians is to organize and present those sounds, which is exactly what remix and mash-up artists do today when they create new music from the found sounds and cultural artifacts found in our environment. In a way, the "found-sound" composition 4'33" is an Ur-remix, a remix of (non)silence and of reality itself, and John Cage an avant la lettre master of the mash-up.
All of this has inspired my latest composition: 433 trees falling in the forest with nobody to hear the sound. (C) 2009 LEESEAN. All Rights Reserved. Try anything and I'll SUE YOUR ASS LIKE THE RIAA (43,467)
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