Hal

Splendid musician

I wanted to delve deeper into the report I left a few days ago regarding the book "Interviews with Extraterrestrials." During the making of "2001: A Space Odyssey," Kubrick had an idea: to introduce the film with a preface. Specifically, the preface was to be a sort of documentary in the form of interviews with the greatest intellectuals and scientists of the time on the themes of the film. The interviews were supposed to revolve fundamentally around two questions: "Are we alone in the universe?" "How will the relationship between humans and machines evolve? Will we reach a thinking and autonomous machine?" The idea was later shelved, probably because it was not a good one, overly clarifying what Kubrick wanted to highlight with 2001, and excessively prolonging a film that was already quite substantial. The conducted interviews were thus archived.
Years later, those who collaborated on the project thought about recovering them. Unfortunately, the search did not go well. The tapes of the interviews were lost. However, during the searches, the transcripts of the interviews were found, from which the book was born.
The book – which I recommend reading – is very curious and interesting. The reasons are various. The first is that it comes with an extensive introduction (partly by Ghezzi, a well-known admirer of Kubrick) and a postscript. The second reason is that it curiously highlights the positions of scientists and intellectuals on important topics such as "are we alone in the universe" or "how will our relationship with machines change." It is particularly intriguing to discover the naiveté in the thoughts of these people 40 years ago. Reading their future, which is our present, is truly an interesting perspective. There are misjudgments, such as the prediction of an extraterrestrial contact on the brink of the year 2000. But there are also moments of reflection and some jokes: "the clearest demonstration of the existence of an intelligent extraterrestrial life form is the fact that they have never contacted us."
The book suffers just a bit from repetition (the questions are ultimately always the same). Furthermore, it must be taken into account that the interviews were created for the big screen and not for the pages of a book, and this comes across as a limitation in reading. But in the end, it's a thought-provoking and captivating read. It's a pity that the tapes of the interviews have been lost. It was a good thing that Kubrick didn’t introduce 2001 with this documentary, but it would have been nice to see them separately, if only to see Asimov's face (one of the interviewees).
I read the review and also the discussion, which I find interesting overall. But I don’t feel like reducing everything to a rating because I don't believe this film is "reviewable" in the canonical sense of the term, and I don't have that many certainties about all the underlying meanings of the film. I only know that each viewing has given me something, and that's enough for me. Haloa.

Your intervention is interesting, Grasshopper; it adds a lot to the discussion, and I must say I find it beautiful that we’ve ended up talking about these things starting from the Rolling Stones. I wanted to add something else, starting from j&r's latest reflection. Truthfully, the phrase about Saba was more of an extreme quip stemming from the example of the creation of the alphabet, a kind of reductio ad absurdum. Frankly, I didn’t think it could be taken seriously. But since it has happened, at this point it is clear that it is impossible to find a definitive synthesis between our views. I cannot share your logic, which tends to derive a judgment from mere chronological fact; I see it as a methodological error in analysis, a historical reading error. Aside from the subjective nature of wanting to classify everything according to hierarchies, the need for which we should understand, I fundamentally believe that every artist is a product of their time and that their work should be evaluated in light of the historical context to which it belongs. These parallels and hierarchies are often balancing acts, directly proportional to the breadth of the time span. It is a common habit to want to measure figures who belonged to different contexts to answer the question “who is the greatest.” But the reasoning is always forced. Approaching this logic, one might even reverse the question by asking who is greater between one who has explored uncharted territory discovering continents and one who in a nearly explored world has found patches of land never tread by man. In my opinion, this is a question that doesn’t make sense to pose in these terms. The premise is weak as it does not contextualize, tending to homogenize non-homogenizable situations. It is evident that such a comparison does not take into account the reciprocal historical context, which is a necessary framework for a correct evaluation. In his time, Bach created the unheard of, establishing the fundamental premises, becoming a reference point for what followed. But the same was done by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms. None of them started from nothing; all had more or less significant premises. But the most important thing is that despite their premises, they themselves became premises for those who followed; they became sources of further evolutions and explorations of the unheard, which has not been reached once and then merely rediscovered. For Beethoven, this holds to such a degree that one can speak of a before and after regarding his figure in music, as he historically represents the death of classicism in my opinion. From this perspective, his spirit of inquiry—also internal—related to music was fueled precisely by that drive for discovery and exploration that led him to a concept of music as a universal value recognized by History. Beethoven was not, to use your language, a “minor” “inventor”; he was an “inventor” situated in another historical moment. His contribution was not merely a refinement of what came before, but literally a deconstruction and reconstruction through decades of work spent at the piano towards the creation of a musical philosophy. All this makes it difficult for me to place him on a minor level without taking anything away from his predecessors. I note that at least we agree we’re talking about key figures in the history of music. (ps for grass: I believe the voting system has been refined to adhere to the one head one vote principle, so your corrective vote was not counted). Haloa

Porta vagnu, the first album, I quite liked after all, it was indeed a nice surprise. This one a bit less... I have the impression that he changed producer, but I could be wrong.

Listening finally, first positive impression, I will review.

It's been a long time since I listened to it; you brought it back to my mind. I had a passion for Two Folk Song. Later, I discovered my passion for Haden.

A member of the "long live the music of Belgium" club introduced me to her a while ago. I have one of her albums titled "An Pierlé and the white velvet," which I played a lot back then; it’s really beautiful. I find it reflected in your words: "delicate and graceful without being cloying." However, I knew nothing about this musician apart from her origin, so this review is more than welcome.

I haven't read the review and the comments; I have little time. I just wanted to point out in this space a great book published recently about this film: Stanley Kubrick: Interviste Extraterrestri (ISBN Publishing - December 2006). It's a very interesting text because it reveals some behind-the-scenes details about the film's creation. It's too long to explain right now, so I'll come back to it later; for now, just consider this a heads up. Haloa

@ turkey: you say? wait, let me think for a moment... mumble mumble ... so after careful consideration, I feel I must respond no, because it would have had a different meaning. @ j&r: the issue of simplicity is interesting and overall I agree, with a caveat. Simplicity is a gift, but difficult and rare, to be used with caution and judiciousness, properly measured. In fact, the boundary between simplicity and banality (and carelessness...) is incredibly thin and must be handled with care. Simple is not simplistic, in short. As for the rest, I see that the topic has not sparked any reactions, so amen. Haloa

Thank you, bye :)