Garr's posterous

between a tweet & the presentation zen website

Light snow falls in Osaka as Sakura bloom. Spring is the cruellest season.

Took this pic on campus today. Light snow was falling as sun shines and cherry blossoms bloom (though it is hard to see flakes in this low rez shot).

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Spring is most like life itself it seems...

A few lines from TS Elliot:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding		 
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing 
Memory and desire, stirring 
Dull roots with spring rain. 

Sent from my iPhone

Dear good people of the USA: *Please* watch Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution!

I watched Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on Youtube tonight -- on the big screen for more drama. (We obviously do not get American TV here and the ABC website won't play the show outside of the USA.) The show was great. I am not a fan of TV, but this is one show I truly hope every American will watch. It's very important stuff. As I have said before, I'm right behind Jamie on this one and I hope his efforts can truly start the beginnings of a food revolution in the USA and beyond.

Jamie_bean

ABOVE: Jamie gets tons of resistance from just about everyone. There are some good lessons in this project for anyone who wants to change the status quo, especially if you want to change things in a big way. People DO NOT like change (what a shock), even when that change is a good thing. Go to the ABC website to watch it if you missed it in the USA Friday: http://abc.go.com/watch/clip/jamie-olivers-food-revolution/SH012305440000

For those outside the USA, you can watch it on Youtube (at least for a while). Below is part 1 or 4, you can find the rest on Youtube.

My own attempt at simple, naked food
I was so inspired we threw together some extremely simple (naked?) food for dinner. Could we make something that's "bad" that was super easy, simple, and cheap (and healthy)? Chicken nuggets (well, strips really) sounds terrible when you think of the ready-made kind. But actually, fresh homemade chicken strips are cheaper and just as fast -- and tastes loads better and does not have all the chemicals found in the processed stuff. And it has less fat and much more actual chicken.

Chicken

I bought a package of fresh skinless chicken for about $3.00 at the local market. Fast food chicken nuggets cost more than that and include much less chicken, much more fat and other things I can not identify. The skinless chicken was dipped lightly in a beaten egg, rolled in a bit of flour and bread crumbs and fried in a pan with a bit of olive oil. Fresh lemon was squeezed over the top along with salt/pepper and an herb or two. That's it. It tasted great with rice.

Salad

The über-simple salad contains only lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes and a quickly-made dressing consisting only of olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and a dash of salt and pepper.

Spring can really hang you up the most

Although I should have stayed home and worked more yesterday (my publisher may be disappointed I didn't), I was compelled to go into the city alone just to see the cherry blossoms in the park. Sakura is truly a reflection that spring has arrived in Japan and I wanted to experience it and see the joy too in other people's faces. It was beautiful. Then, by chance, one of my favorite jazz ballads of all time began to play on my iPod (I'd forgotten that it was in the mix). The song is called "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most." It's a classic from 1955 and a jazz standard today. Spring is symbolic of rebirth and hope and new beginnings and myriad other positive things. But spring can also be a time of bitter-sweet pain and stinging ambivalence as one forges ahead, leaving behind memories of a lost love (or a love that could have been), or a lost job or a friend or a place, or even of a dream, and so on. I first heard this haunting ballad when I was 16, thanks to my music teacher Kathleen King, one of the few teachers who made a difference in my life. Some people may think that a 15-16 year-old kid can not understand the lyrics to a song like this, or appreciate the slightly painful beauty of the notes, but they surely can, if they are exposed.

Here is the version I listed to yesterday as I stopped to view the cherry blossoms near the castle. It's by the legendary Mark Murphy, whom I met in person when I was 17 at one of his gigs in the US:

(download)

Spring_slide

(I took the photo for this slide above yesterday in the park in Osaka. The background out of focus is the water of the moat that surrounds the castle. Click for a larger size.)

Hang you up the most
Apparently the phrase "...really hang you up" was inspired by imagining how a hip jazz musician might express the old T.S. Eliot line "April is the cruelest month...." Jazz has a way of expressing things a little more subtly. In the subtly there is great beauty and more room for interpretation.

Checkout the lyrics to the song here. One of my favorite parts is this:
  Morning's kiss wakes trees and flowers,
  And to them I'd like to drink a toast.
  But I walk in the park
  Just to kill the lonely hours.
  Spring can really hang you up the most.

After a while we can get the meaning of the ballad:
  Love seems sure around the new year.
  Now it's April. Love is just a ghost.
  Spring arrived on time,
  Only what became of you, dear?
  Spring can really hang you up the most.

"Love" could mean "Love affair," but I think Love in this case could also be a metaphor for all sorts of things such as hope or a plan or a goal, etc. In any case, as the song goes on, it is clear that the fantastic beauty of spring is no cure.

Clinging to the past or to "what might have been."
To me the greatest line comes right at the end:

  But when you keep praying
  For snow to hide the clover,
  Spring can really hang you up the most.

This is open to interpretation and it surely does concern the pain of a broken heart and not being ready for "Spring" and all that it implies, but to me it also speaks to the pain we cause ourselves by looking back -- or clinging to the past -- and wishing that things were different than they are. When we look back with regret and pray that the present was different and more like the past, well, this is the kind of thing we all do but it does indeed hang us up the most.

Please give yourself a view minutes to watch this version below of Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most by the greatest singer of all time: Ms. Ella Fitzgerald. This is a 1974 live recording in Holland. What Ella does with this song is absolutely stunning; there's no one like her today.