Soundtrack for a City (Any City)
With portable MP3 players containing thousands of songs, it’s now possible to have your day around town scored by multiple composers, Mancini, Rota, or Alison Krauss. Rosecrans Baldwin heads to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and lets chance handle the mix.
which spawns this interesting experiment in synchronicity, reminiscient of the
The Wizard of Oz against
The Dark Side of the Moon:
I made a plan. I programmed my iPod to select randomly from its 1,710 songs, representing most musical genres. (Leaving it on random meant, of course, that it could play every track from Duke Ellington: Live At Newport in sequential order, but the risk was low.) I paid my way into the museum and pressed play. During the first song, I wandered aimlessly, with no strategy for where to go. When the song stopped, I did too, and then spent the span of whatever song the iPod chose next enjoying whatever piece of art was closest. Next song started and I wandered off again, stopping when the fourth song began. And so on.
Gems include
‘Listen Up’ by Oasis
‘Landscape with a Village in the Distance’ by Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael
A woman caught me air-guitaring in one of the museum’s empty rooms and left after giving me a funny look. What can I say – I was moved.
‘Listen Up’ is one of Oasis’s best songs, and, perhaps more than ‘Wonderwall,’ its most self-defining. Guitars like bears standing at the mouth of a river, big-crash drums and a catchy hook. Liam Gallagher’s whines are ideal for the lyrics’ last-man-standing self-confidence: ‘One fine day / Gonna leave you all behind / Wouldn’t be so bad if I had more time.’ (The song in fact used to be called ‘On My Own.’)
I hadn’t seen ‘Landscape’ before, but I took to it instantly. It is a thrilling painting, especially the tree in the foreground, nearly on fire from the light in its branches. The solo figure in the middle ground is an easy match to the lyrics (‘No, I don’t mind being on my own’) but it’s the picture’s vibrant darkness that’s more at home with the song’s survivalist excitement.
William Grimes, the former restaurant critic for the New York Times, once described (in Leslie Brenner’s The Fourth Star) the paper’s one-to-four stars rating system: Let’s say you’ve just gone to a movie and you’ve got reservations for dinner afterward. If you go to a one-star restaurant, I would say your conversation is mostly about the movie, punctuated by remarks about the food being pretty good. Two stars, the movie conversation gets interrupted each time new food comes. At this point, about one-third of the conversation is about the movie, two-thirds is about the food. Three stars, you’re not talking about the movie anymore…And at a four-star restaurant, your eyes are sort of rolling into the top of your head, and you’re thanking God for putting you in this place at this time.
So, Oasis and Van Ruisdael, a four-star pair.
Posted by johndan at May 13, 2004 11:59 PM
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