Category: Journal

Why I Blog

Matthew EilarLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking about blogging a lot recently. I’ve been considering putting this blog on hiatus, as this is turning out to be my busiest year yet. At the same time, I greatly enjoy writing about things I love, and this blog has given me much personal satisfaction.

A few months ago, one of my music teachers asked me about the classical music blogs that I read. I mentioned some of my favorites, from journalists & publication writers (Andrew Patner, Alex Ross), academics (Joseph Horowitz), musicians and composers (Charles Noble, Nico Muhly) to random people (Opera  Chic, Proper Discord). It was this last category that bothered him. He wanted to know how one has confidence in what anonymous bloggers write, since you can’t verify their credentials. I tried to explain to him that, on the internet, appeals to authority don’t work in the same way that they do in academia.

I’m not saying one way or another whether this is a good thing. I’ve learned from the music research I’ve done as a part of school work that it is nice to have confidence in an academic and trust that they are being objective and have supported opinions. But I’m someone that needs to write to understand, and I think that some of the bloggers that I read do as well. I appreciate the personal reflection that it brings, and the diversity of passions that a blog show. Many of the bloggers I read have different favorite pieces, composers, ensembles, whatever, but by reading their words, I’m able to understand that music which I might not try and understand otherwise.

That’s why I blog.

Serpico Redux

Matthew EilarLeave a comment

I love This American Life (big surprise, I know). Last week, they aired the show “Right to Remain Silent,” and I found it to be one of the most thrilling, spooky, and masterfully edited shows that they’ve ever done. The first half is the story of a man that ends up with assault rifles pointed at his face by a SWAT team after he posts on Facebook. The second half is this nightmarish story about a cop that starts recording himself on the job after becoming uncomfortable with police commanders trying to inflate their numbers. He ends up committed to a mental institution by the people he was trying to expose. It’s like something from Serpico. It’s a great show, I highly recommend it.

Sally Mann, and peeking behind the curtain

Matthew EilarLeave a comment

In high school, I took a photography class for a semester. My photo teacher was a traditionalist, believing that –digital cameras began– there is intrinsic value in learning how to manipulate light the old-fashioned way, with film cameras and a darkroom. In her classroom, there were many photography books and magazines. As my photography class was after lunch, I would often go early to class to browse through the books. One of the books that I looked at repeatedly, and made the deepest impression, was Sally Mann’s Immediate Family.

The photo above, “Emmett, Jesse, and Virginia,” is perhaps her most famous photo (not coincidentally, it is on the cover of Immediate Family). Not all of Mann’s photos are of her family, especially now that her children are grown, but her portraits of her children have always had a peculiar effect on me.

There is always an edge in these portraits, a sense of dread, of danger, of the presence of death. Mann plays with the rough edges of childhood, showing her children interacting with dead animals, or taking advantage of the way that dirt looks like blood in a black and white photograph. One photograph in Immediate Family shows her young daughter, eyes closed, looking up in front of a tree branch that looks like a noose. Childhood is a time of exploration, but Mann reminds us that with exploration comes the risk of danger.

Immediate Family may describe Mann’s subject’s relationship to the photographer, but the word “immediate” also conveys some of the intensity that is directed at the viewer of the photograph from its subject. The children stare right at you. There is a distance in their eyes, and the suggestion that it is you that is under observation. They look like they’re a thousand years old. Sometimes, when looking through Immediate Family in the photo room, I’d have to turn away from a photo with an intense glare. I would feel like I was in danger.

Today, I picked out at random the first DVD in the PBS series art:21 (Art in the 21st Century). Sally Mann was one of the featured artists. I had a really weird reaction: I was deeply uncomfortable watching the segment. Mann has never hid the fact that her pictures are posed, and it would be impossible to take quality medium-format pictures the same way that you take a snapshot. And yet the immediacy, the intimacy of her photos made me feel like I already knew her and her family, and to see her on DVD talking about the way she makes art was destroying the conception of the Mann family I had in my head.

I’ve never been like this. I’ve always been a special-features hound. It’s never diminished my appreciation of a movie to know how it’s made. But this bothered me. Mann’s photographs have never felt like photos to me. They’ve seemed like transmissions from another world, and to know that they were made in this one felt disorienting.