Fran Magazine: Issue #92

Classical Music Hour. Plus: Fran gets mean

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Maestro moment

I returned to Queer Quadrant to talk about the Oscar nominated movie Maestro directed by Bradley Cooper. Also: LMAO.

Fran gets mean

I consider myself a hater in the most mild sense of the word. I would prefer to be discerning and skeptical than outright annoyed or dismissive, but sometimes our personal preferences get the better of us. I have, in the world of pop culture, some enemies — some who know me, some who do not. One of them was recently in the news, and I have been asked on more than one occasion to comment.

Long time Fran associates know that there are few people in the greater cultural landscape that I loathe more than Josh Radnor. This extends beyond “How I Met Your Mother is a tedious and unfunny show and for a long time, he was the face of it though the quality of the show has nothing to do with him” (though I believe these things) and into his post-HIMYM output and politics. I like a lot of actors-writers-directors whose output is less-than, and I also like a lot of actors-writers-directors whose politics are diametrically opposed to mine. Radnor’s output and politics, operating frequently in tandem, have been so uniquely grating to me for so long than I have no choice but to roll my damn eyes when he’s back in the news. Those curious to explore the root of my disdain ought to seek out Radnor’s sophomore feature, a terrible little movie called Liberal Arts which is about dating a 19 year old improvisor as a 34 year old. I like when a movie is provocative and I like when a movie is funny; unfortunately, this movie is neither.

Radnor got married on January 6th (lol) and got a coveted (paid for) NYT Vows write-up. I don’t read Vows often, but I do like when you can tell the writer is mostly making fun of the couple. I recommend you read the piece in full (the link above is gifted). But in case you don’t want to give him the time of day because he made a movie where he explains to a teenager named Zibby why Twilight is not good, then consider:

Within months, they were discussing marriage.

“Actors and shrinks,” said Gillian Sturtevant, Dr. Jacobs’s close friend from high school, explaining the couple’s compatible proclivity to talk (and talk) about their feelings.

Or:

Their friends view them as a perfect match. “They are in a perpetual ‘college-dorm-go-deep’ mode that most adults abandon after graduation,” said Elliott Holt, a fiction writer who attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, with Mr. Radnor.

Awesome. I am glad that Radnor has found love with someone who does seem just as annoying as he is. One time I passed him in Fort Greene park while he was on the phone with his mom (I know this because I heard him say, “I know, mom”) and thought, wow, I talk to my mom on the phone sometimes too. My thoughts on the matter are no more complicated than, “all the best to everyone involved.”

Old currencies

Over the weekend, friend of Fran Magazine

lily puckett

retweeted her husband Zac who shared an excerpt from a book called The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.

I know very little about John Maynard Keynes but I laughed at the excerpt because Zac was right: Keynes very relatable here! (I asked Lily if she had any current obsessions she wanted to share, the answer to which was “I’m getting incredibly into balms that I can put on my face and for hands too.”¹)

Prior to reading this excerpt about Keynes and Babylonian currencies, I was familiar with this sensation via a meme Tristan once sent me that we started referring to in shorthand as “night olives”:

I love this meme in part because I am guilty of eating olives late at night before bed (or first thing in the morning) if I see them sitting there in the fridge bobbing up and down in their own brine and also because I think it is an experience of broad universality to develop mini-obsessions with little things that compel you in this way or that way.

I have been trying for a few weeks now to write about Camille Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre, a Romantic-era tone poem that I’ve long found compelling and funny and strange.

I felt down a deep hole of experimental short films by Mary Ellen Bute, who pioneered a kind of audiovisual, abstract style that used to play before any old movie. I look at something like this now and I think it might be the kind of thing that just feels like a screensaver, but I see so much livelihood and excitement in a short like this. It plays in the general collection at The Whitney Museum, though it’s not always out on display. That and Calder’s Circus remain two consistent reasons to pay the Whitney’s price of admission.

It would be easier than I’ve made it, I imagine, to write about Danse macabre if I didn’t keep listening to a different piece by Saint-Saëns in lieu of the one I’ve made my unintentional homework, and that’s Phaéton².

I know precisely why this is happening. It’s happening because I refuse to put Danse macabre on repeat, and the Charles Dutoit album I’ve been using for reference goes into Phaéton right after Danse macabre.

Danse macabre is a spooky, unnerving, and funny little piece. Phaéton, on the other hand, is cheerful and exuberant. “I can’t stop listening to this horse music,” I told Phil. Every time I try to recalibrate what I’m supposed to be doing — listening to Danse macabre — I think, well, what if I listen to Phaéton just one more time…? And you can see how the bad habit starts. I never wind up going back to Danse macabre. The other day I commuted to and from Manhattan, listening to Phaéton the whole way thinking it would cure me.

Phaéton is named for Phaethon, the son of Helios in Greek mythology. The story of Phaethon is kind of Icarus-esque: Phaethon wants to borrow his father’s chariot to fly across the sky. Though Phaethon has a great time zooming over the world, he can’t control the horses and the surface of the Earth gets too hot. Zeus strikes down Phaethon with a thunderbolt, killing him and sparing the Earth from the heat.³

Phaéton begins with three long horn chords that remind me of the starting lights when you play Mario Kart, and then, of course, you’re off to the races. The piece dances back and forth between strings rising and falling in major intervals, pushing forward, like grinding a heel in the dirt. The slight tremolos suggest nerves, nervousness. The horn line remains at a fanfare throughout, blaring through the noise. It’s a cheerful piece, full of excitement and newfound freedom. You can pinpoint exactly where in the piece Phaethon is struck down by the lightning bolt — a combination of a timpani and cymbal crash connote he’s fallen from the sky. Saint-Saëns fights the urge for the piece to return to its central theme, and instead, the final three minutes of Phaéton are slow and mournful.

I played a ton of Saint-Saëns in middle and high school and college, but for all of my years of going to see a professional symphony orchestra, I’ve never managed to see his work conducted live. I haven’t been trying that hard, and it’s not like this doesn’t happen, but it’s less easy to see a Saint-Saëns piece, especially the shorter ones. His work has only been played about seventeen times since I moved to the greater New York area (consider someone like, say, Ravel who has been played 24 times, or Debussy at 33). The slots for shorter pieces fall in the first half of a program, and those works are usually designated towards soloists or newer composers. I’m not mad to see someone like Saint-Saëns, whose work is overrepresented in film and television, get pushed out for newer or less previously observed work.

When you go to the symphony, you hope to get the best bang for your buck; this is the unfortunate position that public arts find themselves in. So you forgo stuff like Phaéton or Danse macabre in live performance so there’s room for Mahler, Beethoven, even Ravel. These pieces are expansive and consuming. They require a full attention. Saint-Saëns is dead, his work is not all that popular — his legacy can drift and fade and shift with time. That I stumbled upon a new-to-me work by him feels like the kind of accident that happens too little, too late. Luckily, I can hit repeat as often as I want, or let the album start over again and again. Phaethon’s flight will take off whenever I want it to.

1. In an addendum, Lily added: “ancient people I hope were happy but I have my own stuff going on.” I also relate to that.

2. girl that’s phaéton

3. Zeus — please do this again!