True Artists

 A little bit ago, I wrote a post that contrasted the films The Imitation Game and Mr. Turner because I was interested in the genius behind their subjects.  Once again, I am compelled to do so, although this time the films are in documentary form.   I recently saw Seymour: an Introduction, an Ethan Hawke film about Seymour Bernstein, a piano teacher who abandoned his ascending playing career to teach piano.  I also saw Finding Vivian Maier (now on rental) about a photographer whose brilliant work was not discovered until after her death.

I was compelled to contrast these two individuals, and both gave me much to contemplate.  These artists had much to say about work, art, and life.  In Bernstein's case, we get to know him first hand through Hawke's interviews and filming of him.  Since Ms. Maier is gone, we get to know her (to the extent we can) through interviews with some of the people that touched her life, mostly the families for whom she worked as a nanny.

Maier was a complete eccentric and I couldn't help but wonder if she suffered from some neurosis that bordered on mental illness.  She apparently never married, did not appear to have any intimate relationships with any man or woman, and lived her life from job to job as a nanny.  She was intensely private, bordering on reclusive and was a hoarder (which got her fired at least once).  And there were hints she was sometimes abusive to her charges.  But she had this gift.   With her Rolleiflex camera, she took street photos, and had this marvelous ability to capture the essence of people.  Holding it at chest high, she captured ordinary individuals close up without the Hawthorne Effect (the phenomenon that subjects change their behavior when they know that they are being observed).   She never exhibited her work and she died alone and largely in obscurity.  While her work is deemed brilliant by many, she appeared to be a very lonely and tortured soul and never quite fitting in.  She seemed to have a passion for this art...and only this art, and worked only to support herself in this endeavor.

Bernstein, a man equally dedicated to his art, presents quite a different picture.  He is a man that seems at peace with himself and his life decisions to eschew performing to teach piano and live a simple life alone in a small apartment in Manhattan.  Seymour: an Introduction is an intimate portrayal of this man dedicated to his craft.  Hawke's film permits us to spend an afternoon with this wonderful human being.  He is easy and gentle and relates well to his students, who clearly revere him.  He is good humored and gentle with his students and at one point jokes with a student that it is against the rules to play better than him.  This film is about mentoring as much as it is the art.  and the message that accomplishment takes talent and enormous amounts of painstaking practice.  

The core of his philosophy was captured in a single, poignant quote: "When I was around the age of 15, I remember that I became aware that when my practicing went well, everything else in life seemed to be harmonized by that. When my practicing didn't go well, I was out of sorts with people, with my parents.  So I concluded that the real essence of who we are resides in our talent, in whatever talent that there is."

The difference between the two subjects is stark.  Spending an afternoon with Bernstein would be a joy, a dinner with Ms. Maier would likely to be awkward and difficult.  Bernstein forsake his career to help young people find their talent.  Maier used caretaking of children to focus on her own art, and indeed, was sometimes abusive to them.

But the two shared a striking similarity in one key respect---the need for solitude.  Vivian Maier's was more of a misanthropic, almost reclusive type.  Bernstein's came more naturally, I think.  But Hawke's film does not delve into Bernstein's relationships at all, so we don't know whether Bernstein was ever married or lived with anyone.  We just know (and he says this explicitly) that solitude was important to him.

Bernstein himself says that "monsters" are capable of having extraordinary talent and ability.   There nasty and incorrigible people that are unbelievably talented and creative.  (See, e.g. Mr. Turner) Clearly, Maier had a dark side.  But Bernstein evidences no such darkness.

But that leaves me with the question of whether true artists need to be solitary, of whether the art takes over so much of their soul that it leaves little room for someone else.   Or whether that time alone is needed for creativity or to synthesize and process the hours of practice and devotion.

In any event, these are both fabulous documentaries with interesting subjects and best seen back-to-back.

Bibi and the Iranian Bomb

When he campaigned for the presidency, Barack Obama promised that he would (a) talk to any dictator without precondition, and (b) take a more multilateral approach to foreign policy than his predecessor.  Faced with the most important foreign policy issue of our time- the Iranian nuclear program- president Obama has shown that he is willing to talk to dictators, but will shut down the voices of our key allies, especially the one ally that has real skin in the game.

The White House threw an absolute hissy fit over Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's address before Congress last week and acted as a six year old that sticks his fingers in his ears and hums to drown out every single word.

That Prime Minister Netanyahu isn't in a full fledged panic is a testament to his self restraint.  He is faced with a regime that has vowed on several occasions to "wipe his country off the map," and has repeatedly defied international pressure to halt the means to do so.  Most troubling for him, he has been repeatedly snubbed by this Administration, told he must roll back his borders to the pre-1967 borders, all while asking nothing of substance from the Palestinians.  And now he is being told by President Obama, "Trust me.  I guarantee if it's a deal I've signed off on, it's the best way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb."

Right.

What does Bibi have to go on to convince him that Obama's assessments are correct and that his negotiating tactics produce satisfactory results?

•  Pushed the "reset button" after Russia's invasion of Georgia and promised "more flexibility" after the 2012 election on nuclear matters. Putin responded by ramping up military modernization and invaded the Ukraine.  Next, the White House dismissed Russia as a "regional power acting out of weakness" in its incursion of the Ukraine.  Today, Russia threatens the Baltics and is carrying out simulated attacks on NATO ships.
  
• Dismissed ISIS as the JV team and declared them not to be Islamic (see link to Atlantic article to the contrary) (http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980) .  Today, ISIS controls huges swaths of land in the Middle East and is now linking up with Boco Haram in North Africa.   It continues unabated on its orgy of murder and mayhem and is now on a campaign to destroy irreplaceable historical artifacts that are part of the birth of human civilization.

• Labeled Assad a "reformer" before he used chemical weapons on his own people, and did nothing after that self declared red line was crossed. 

• Without asking anything from the Castros, reversed unilaterally and without debate, moved to restore diplomatic ties with Cuba and declared that ""What I know deep in my bones is that when you have done the same thing for 50 years and nothing has changed, you should try something different if you want a different outcome."  Cuba immediately responded by delivering a list of its demands on us.

Worse, in an unstable country (which instability the US facilitated), we demonstrated that we could not even provide adequate security FOR OUR OWN PEOPLE.   Can we blame Bibi for wondering whether an Obama deal with Iran will be adequate to protect HIS people if we will not do what is necessary to protect our own?

Netanyahu raised substantive legitimate issues - leaving infrastructure in place, inadequacy of monitoring and a sunset provision.   Obama, in his response, dismissed the entire speech out of hand and addressed none of these issues.

In yesterday's New York Times, we learned that even the French don't like the terms of this deal.  The French?  The French are advocating a tougher stand?

Yet Obama continues to run after the mullahs like a lovestruck teenage girl.  

In each case---Russia, Cuba, and now Iran, Obama's opening move was a huge concession with no quid pro quo.  With Russia, he scuttled missile defense in Eastern Europe.  With Cuba, he opened diplomatic ties.  With Iran, he loosened sanctions.  All in the hopes that these tyrants would be nice and reasonable.

The results have been predictable....and frightening.

Bibi and the Israeli people should be scared out of their wits.

Choking Freedom

President Obama has had a great couple of weeks.  With his pen and his phone and without any debate or any input from the representatives of the people, his minions continued to push and bully, take away our freedoms and affirm his commitment to "fundamentally transform America."  Using the administrative apparatus of the State, Obama did another end around, attacking business and the Second Amendment.

• Congress has effectively blocked gun control legislation, so Obama turned to the ATF which decreed that a popular form of ammunition used in hunting (5.56mm steel tipped bullets) are deemed to be armor piercing and therefore banned.  This, despite not a single fatality suffered by a law enforcement agent from this type of ammunition in more than 10 years.
• HHS and the Department of Agriculture put out statements urging people to eat less beef, due to environmental sustainability issues.  Of course, other environmentalists have been urging us to eat less fish because of overfishing.  Enjoy your alfalfa sprouts, folks.
• And the biggie--- the FCC declared that it had jurisdiction over the internet and adopted "net neutrality" rules contained within a document that is in excess of 300 pages (which the FCC has not even released yet).  Except for a few George Soros sycophants, there has been no outcry over mismanagement or unfairness over the internet.  The internet, not Obama, has fundamentally transformed America and many business and technological innovations have arisen from it----remarkably with no government assistance or interference whatsoever.  No longer.

The Obama administration has created mechanisms to wield a club in three critical areas:  finance (Dodd Frank), health care (Obamacare) and communications (Net Neutrality).  Big Brother, through the apparatus of untouchable and unaccountable bureaucracies now hold tremendous sway over key areas of our lives.   Most pernicious are provisions that grant enormous power to create rules that we didn't even get to vote on or debate.  They are handed down by fiat.  

This is truly a frightening time for the Republic. We now have the president that the founders feared-- a Latin American type dictator that has contempt for the representatives of the people and for us.  

Not surprisingly, Rand Paul won the straw pole at CPAC.  That gives us some hope.  Paul's ascension tells me that the libertarian wing of the Republican party is gaining strength at the expense of the religious right and that, I think, is a positive development.   While I do not think Paul could carry the general election (and I think he is wrong in his isolationism in foreign affairs.), his showing tells me that there is a strong current that values individual liberty over the Big Brother nanny state in America.

I am happy I can still blog without an FCC license.  That may not be the case in the future if the Obama crowd prevails.