Margotlog: The Essence of Hawaii: Daughters of Fire by Tom Peek
"Surely,
Hawaii isn't really in the US?" I quip to my husband as our plane
descends into the dark of Kauai. Even more so in the daylight, the
island seems too remote from cold snowy Minnesota to be in the same
family: no icy roads, no bedclothes like Nanook of the North, no winds
that piece down coats. No snow crunches under my boots. In fact I'm not
wearing boots, I suddenly realize. I'm walking around in sandals.
This
should be familiar. I grew up in South Carolina where we learned how to
sweat. Even Minnesotans know how to sweat. In fact the hottest I've
ever been was 98 degrees in a Minnesota July. I left two inches of water
in the bath tub and stepped in every few hours to splash cool. But in
Hawaii, the temp rarely rises above 85, and the nights, well most need a
blanket or two. Hawaii's stately, long-necked palms put Carolina's
palmettos to shame: they never clatter, never look cold, only remote,
closer to the sun. Yes it rains and squawls a bit (even two hurricanes
since the mid-1980s) but mostly the place is more pacific than not, like
its ocean, like the native people. Except for the volcanoes.
We've made maybe six visits to
the Hawaiian Islands, trying out big hotels in Honolulu, and the Big
Island's volcanoland of lava and huge mountains. We've returned again
and again to Kauai because we like the small towns of Koloa and Hanalei,
the remnants of ancient refuges, the many many gardens. In fact, I've
come to believe that what Tom Peek portrays in his new novel about the
Big Island is not just a state of mind, it is a culture bred out
Hawaii's unique mix of peoples, tempered and shaped by a landscape
isolated from most of the rest of the world.
Tom's Daughters of Fire
is about several major elements of Hawaiian experience: the attempt to
plant mega-pleasurelands in a delicate unstable environment and the
people who fight against this, led by native Hawaiians, abetted by a
crusty old WWII vet and a younger Aussie astronomer. Building a
pleasureland rivaling Kubla Khan's ultimately arouses the fiery goddess
Pele. We know by the middle of the book that the danger is extreme, but
Peek does a wonderful job of nudging the eruption just this much further
along the plot, drawing in the native underground (not exactly freedom
fighters, but definitely undercover), along with a finely drawn
native/Asian archaeologist who's been perhaps a bit too lax in
giving developers permission.
She is a magnificent character,
statuesque with a glorious mass of wild hair and charisma to match her
intelligence. When she and the Aussie astronomer try to make sense of
each other, we get a strong introduction to how fierce loyalty to native
culture can perplex even a sympathetic outsider. Given the gentle
"aloha" element of Hawaiian life, this determined refusal to submit
comes as a shock, but also as a relief--there are many Hawaiians
fighting against what could destroy the Islands' unique natural beauty
and way of life. Not only have the Islands already lost many native
birds and plants due to invasive species (read mosquitoes) but the
unique quality of Island life is also constantly threatened by
outsiders (and some insiders) who have no sense of limits.
Tom
Peek's book is huge--nearly 500 pages. It contains a large cast of
characters. It touches the mystical and the sleazy. Most of the time the
extremes are tempered with humor,insight, sympathy. I like
particularly the old codgers--one Hawaiian and the other the aged WWII
vet. Their sage and ironic friendship nicely contrasts with the
larger-than-life movers and shakers, the politicians and developers, the
pussy women and aged seers. It's nice to have two characters who don't
"stand" for something other than themselves. I will remember them, as
well as the native archaeologist and Aussie astronomer's astonishing
underground trek to outrun the volcanic eruption itself. We very much
want them to make it. It's not at all clear that they will.
Footnotes:
Tom Peek was born in Minnesota and grew up "on an island in the
Mississippi opposite Fort Snelling." I heard him say this when he gave a
reading in Minneapolis this autumn. Since then, I've been puzzled by
this. Has anyone lived on an island in the Mississippi opposite Ft.
Snelling since the Dakota warriors were hung in 1862?
Tom has also
worked for a long time as a volcano ranger on the Big Island. His
expertise and face-to-face experience with volcanic outbursts fill the
pages of Daughters of Fire. After reading the book, I have no trouble believing this one.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Margotlog: Cold as a Witch's Titty
Margotlog: Cold as a Witch's Titty
So my daughter used to say with a naughty smirk on her face. She was probably 8th grade, that age when children all of a sudden become aware of what makes adults laugh and then think better of it. Witches' titties: saggy and withered, can put a ruinous spell on you if they win the duel with winter sun.
Sitting in my second-floor study, feet in double socks stuck between the tines of an old-fashioned radiator, I'm spooning soup into my houth. Sun is pouring in, tirmomg the flat Christmas cactus translucent. Julia the cat enters. Orca black and white and sleek as a whale, this most pliant of cats is willing to stare with me across the backyard frozen waste, where bird feeders stand guard against the cold. Have all the birds frozen? Then we spy them, high in the white pine, chickadees and finches basking in sun, before darting down for a seed.
The last time it was this cold was 2007. My first winter in Minnesota, I wore my New York style, knee-high leather boots with silk linings. Smart enough for 5th Avenue, but dumb for standing an hour watching dog races in St. Paul. My feet turned cold, then numb, then brickish. Warmed in tepid water at home, they emerged glistening red, puffy, throbbing and painful. I was horrified. Frostbite, said the doctor. Buy mukluks with thick soles and padding and wear double socks. Hello Minnesota, goodbye wimpy New York.
Now I know how to dress for our fancy dress winter ball. I can cavort with wind-chill and glide gracefully across icy intersections. "I wouldn't recognize you two," say I to yoga pals as they gear up to hit the street, caps down to their eyes, scarves up to their noses. I, on the othr hand, wear a full-length red down coat, making me look like a cross between a extremely large hot dog and a bowling ball.
So my daughter used to say with a naughty smirk on her face. She was probably 8th grade, that age when children all of a sudden become aware of what makes adults laugh and then think better of it. Witches' titties: saggy and withered, can put a ruinous spell on you if they win the duel with winter sun.
Sitting in my second-floor study, feet in double socks stuck between the tines of an old-fashioned radiator, I'm spooning soup into my houth. Sun is pouring in, tirmomg the flat Christmas cactus translucent. Julia the cat enters. Orca black and white and sleek as a whale, this most pliant of cats is willing to stare with me across the backyard frozen waste, where bird feeders stand guard against the cold. Have all the birds frozen? Then we spy them, high in the white pine, chickadees and finches basking in sun, before darting down for a seed.
The last time it was this cold was 2007. My first winter in Minnesota, I wore my New York style, knee-high leather boots with silk linings. Smart enough for 5th Avenue, but dumb for standing an hour watching dog races in St. Paul. My feet turned cold, then numb, then brickish. Warmed in tepid water at home, they emerged glistening red, puffy, throbbing and painful. I was horrified. Frostbite, said the doctor. Buy mukluks with thick soles and padding and wear double socks. Hello Minnesota, goodbye wimpy New York.
Now I know how to dress for our fancy dress winter ball. I can cavort with wind-chill and glide gracefully across icy intersections. "I wouldn't recognize you two," say I to yoga pals as they gear up to hit the street, caps down to their eyes, scarves up to their noses. I, on the othr hand, wear a full-length red down coat, making me look like a cross between a extremely large hot dog and a bowling ball.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Margotlog: Jeremy Denk and the Sunset Maker
Margotlog: Jeremy Denk and the Sunset Maker
In case you haven't heard, Jeremy Denk recenly won a MacArthur genius grant. As did our very own Patricia Hampl, not recently, but well remembered. Ah, genius in relative youth! And I am thinking of Mozart, and his divine sonorities, bred by revolt and acquiescence toward dictator Papa, aka Leopold.
Not Bloom.
Jeremy Denk is a fine pianisto, and just maybe an even finer writer. So I am led to believe by hearing him speak, then play piano at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra this Saturday. (He has been published in The New Yorker and his blog, "think Denk" has been selected by the Library of Congress to be part of its digital archive. When he speaks as he did Saturday night with SPCO chairman Bruce Coppick, he is witty, just enough humble, and insightful about the two works he would be playing: a Brahms piano quintet, and a Mozart concerto from the most productive ten years before the five opera years, before early death.
Brahms destroyed so many of his drafts we will never know his full oeuvre. He also rearranged the quintet from a work for two pianos (probably intending his dear friend Clara Schumann as one of the duo) and at her suggestion replaced one piano with a quartet of strings. Brahms has never been among my favorite composers--too dense, not sufficiently melodic--but Denk and the SPCO strings (including a wonderfully sonorous cello played by Peter Wiley) held my complete attention. Denk subdued the piano (which is after all a percussion instrument) to blend well, and the strings took excellent turns helping to stir up the depths.
Then came the Mozart with a much fuller orchestra, and the huge piano with its guts exposed, at which Denk sat with his back to the audience--"No slight intended," he told us. I assumed he would be signaling the orchestra at key moments.
When I took music lessons in Charleston, South Carolina, in the years before general air-conditioning, Mozart and Haydn were the best I could do. Meaning, I had the physical dexterity to run the notes fast and clear, and the guidance from my rather broken-down music teacher to make small, telling deviations from strict time, for emotional effect. But only over the years as a listener have I attained a sense of what constitutes a truly bravura performance. For my money Christian Zacharias, who often performs with the SPCO as both conductor and pianisto, offers just such performances.
One of our finest poets (and occasional prose writers), Donald Justice also took up the topic of music lessons. In his slim volume The Sunset Maker (1987) I find echoes of my own musical years in South Carolina. We both had teachers and ambitions that soared beyond the dry clack of palm fronds, beyond the department store magic of canisters carrying money into upper registers.
"Busts if the great composers glimmered in niches,
Pale stars. Poor Mrs. Snow, who could forget her,
Calling the time out in that hushed falsetto?" (Mrs. Snow)
---
"on the piano top,
a nest of souvenirs:
paper
Flowers, old programs, a broken fan" (Busted Dreams)
---
"--And sometimes she succumbed
To the passion of a nocturne,
The fury of the climax
Ascending through the folds
Of secret and abandoned flesh
Into those bitten finger-ends" (Those Tropic Afternoons)
Since then, I've developed a theory that the education of American musicians currently emphasizes precision at the expense of inclusive expressiveness (even if secret and decayed) . Jeremy Denk's Mozart did nicely when part of the orchestra, but when his piano was on its own, it became huge and out of sync. Remember, a piano is a percussion instrument. When played with percussive speed, all I could do was hold my breath to see if Denk would hit all the notes. His passages did not blend, They shouted: "I'm bigger, I'm best." When he tried connoting heart-stopping emotion, he lingered with such determined emphasis that emotion dissolved into flamboyance.
European-trained musicians like Christian Zacharias do not aim for such WOW, such rigorous, cliff-hanging, performances. Especially with a composer like Mozart whose own instrument, a pianoforte, had not the excessive force of steel. Instead, they tend to draw out musical lines in lyrical and nuanced ways until an entire ensemble, orchestra and soloist, become joined in a dream of musical possibility, which reaches out and wraps the audience in its embrace. Then, I sigh with completion, and thank the stars for a glimpse of beauty and generosity that includes us all.
In case you haven't heard, Jeremy Denk recenly won a MacArthur genius grant. As did our very own Patricia Hampl, not recently, but well remembered. Ah, genius in relative youth! And I am thinking of Mozart, and his divine sonorities, bred by revolt and acquiescence toward dictator Papa, aka Leopold.
Not Bloom.
Jeremy Denk is a fine pianisto, and just maybe an even finer writer. So I am led to believe by hearing him speak, then play piano at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra this Saturday. (He has been published in The New Yorker and his blog, "think Denk" has been selected by the Library of Congress to be part of its digital archive. When he speaks as he did Saturday night with SPCO chairman Bruce Coppick, he is witty, just enough humble, and insightful about the two works he would be playing: a Brahms piano quintet, and a Mozart concerto from the most productive ten years before the five opera years, before early death.
Brahms destroyed so many of his drafts we will never know his full oeuvre. He also rearranged the quintet from a work for two pianos (probably intending his dear friend Clara Schumann as one of the duo) and at her suggestion replaced one piano with a quartet of strings. Brahms has never been among my favorite composers--too dense, not sufficiently melodic--but Denk and the SPCO strings (including a wonderfully sonorous cello played by Peter Wiley) held my complete attention. Denk subdued the piano (which is after all a percussion instrument) to blend well, and the strings took excellent turns helping to stir up the depths.
Then came the Mozart with a much fuller orchestra, and the huge piano with its guts exposed, at which Denk sat with his back to the audience--"No slight intended," he told us. I assumed he would be signaling the orchestra at key moments.
When I took music lessons in Charleston, South Carolina, in the years before general air-conditioning, Mozart and Haydn were the best I could do. Meaning, I had the physical dexterity to run the notes fast and clear, and the guidance from my rather broken-down music teacher to make small, telling deviations from strict time, for emotional effect. But only over the years as a listener have I attained a sense of what constitutes a truly bravura performance. For my money Christian Zacharias, who often performs with the SPCO as both conductor and pianisto, offers just such performances.
One of our finest poets (and occasional prose writers), Donald Justice also took up the topic of music lessons. In his slim volume The Sunset Maker (1987) I find echoes of my own musical years in South Carolina. We both had teachers and ambitions that soared beyond the dry clack of palm fronds, beyond the department store magic of canisters carrying money into upper registers.
"Busts if the great composers glimmered in niches,
Pale stars. Poor Mrs. Snow, who could forget her,
Calling the time out in that hushed falsetto?" (Mrs. Snow)
---
"on the piano top,
a nest of souvenirs:
paper
Flowers, old programs, a broken fan" (Busted Dreams)
---
"--And sometimes she succumbed
To the passion of a nocturne,
The fury of the climax
Ascending through the folds
Of secret and abandoned flesh
Into those bitten finger-ends" (Those Tropic Afternoons)
Since then, I've developed a theory that the education of American musicians currently emphasizes precision at the expense of inclusive expressiveness (even if secret and decayed) . Jeremy Denk's Mozart did nicely when part of the orchestra, but when his piano was on its own, it became huge and out of sync. Remember, a piano is a percussion instrument. When played with percussive speed, all I could do was hold my breath to see if Denk would hit all the notes. His passages did not blend, They shouted: "I'm bigger, I'm best." When he tried connoting heart-stopping emotion, he lingered with such determined emphasis that emotion dissolved into flamboyance.
European-trained musicians like Christian Zacharias do not aim for such WOW, such rigorous, cliff-hanging, performances. Especially with a composer like Mozart whose own instrument, a pianoforte, had not the excessive force of steel. Instead, they tend to draw out musical lines in lyrical and nuanced ways until an entire ensemble, orchestra and soloist, become joined in a dream of musical possibility, which reaches out and wraps the audience in its embrace. Then, I sigh with completion, and thank the stars for a glimpse of beauty and generosity that includes us all.
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