Random escapes from the humdrum of existence.
Methods used: culture, travelling, and little pretty things surrounding us. Sometimes giving way to anxiety about the environment.
Culture spring is warming up even though the weather is not. In this week's programme: ballet. I'm not a huge fan of traditional ballet with colourful costumes and too much happening on the stage. This time, the National Ballet of Finland was offering something very different and exactly for my taste.
The evening was composed of three diverse pieces. First, George Balanchine's "Four Temperaments" was a dream-like beautiful ballet that was considered ahead of its time when it was made in the 1940s and it still seemed modern.
The second piece was William Forsythe's ballet "In the middle, somewhat elevated" that he made in the end of 1980s. At this point, Balanchine seemed already a bit traditional, but I wasn't greatly moved by this fast-moving and almost rough dance.
The last piece was extraordinary. It was Jirí Kilián's "Bella Figura" (watch the whole thing below) and I loved it, completely loved it. Beautiful baroque music (a new discovery was Pergolesi's wonderful "Stabat Mater Dolorosa") combined with amazing choreography. Even though I'm normally more amazed by humans' capacity to destroy our planet and act like idiots, watching the ballet dancers on stage, I felt that the human potential for creating something beautiful is truly unlimited.
Not only the choreography was fantastic, but also the fact that the human body can move in such amazing ways and, at the same time, translate to the audience in body movements some very human feelings and our insecurity and vulnerability. The dancers were like broken dolls on stage helping one another to feel better or survive. Maybe the message was that we are dependent on others and that we should care more about them. At one point it is me who needs help and, at the next one, it is the other. I felt that there was a beautiful connection and solidarity between the dancers on stage or the roles they were playing.
I had tears in my eyes at the end and I wished that the dance would have continued and continued. My friends agreed!
I did a little Federico Fellini movie marathon this past week. Well, not so little actually, considering the length of his films (La Dolce Vita is almost 3 hours long). I saw four excellent movies:
8 1/2 (1963)
Giulietta degli Spiriti (1965)
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Il Bidone (1955)
Watching his movies with such an intensity might have affected my mood recently. First of all, after being immersed in his amazing surreal settings, my own life felt quite mediocre: no exciting parties with the aristocracy, no orgies with fantastic characters, no bohemian artists or gorgeous celebrities. And above all, no Marcello! Secondly, especially 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita have a melancholic undertone that raises the question of the meaning of life and offers fertile ground for wondering about the quest of love and existence in general. Something has also happened to me in the past few years, as I now understood the lost character of Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita much better than when I last saw the film.
The films were great, all of them, and Italy in the 1960s seemed wonderful. With the exception of Il Bidone, the fusion of dream and reality (which is also very dream-like) was the typical character of the films. Together with the great music by Nino Rota, I could have continued watching the beautiful moving images for hours.
Watching Marcello Mastroianni, I felt desperate about the Finnish guys and started thinking seriously about moving abroad again (obviously not only because of the guys, but because I feel more and more like an outsider in this society, and this can be an especially strong feeling in one's own home country). I miss those passionate-vibrant guys of Southern Europe, they seem to be more alive and more vulnerable to the beauty/exceptionality of women. After 1,5 years in Finland, I'd now be happy if someone called me in the street: "Mademoiselle, mademoiselle, vous avez de beaux yeux..." Sad.
Then, just before starting to write this, I read in the New Yorker book review about a British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips: "Instead of feeling that we should have a better life, he says, we should just live, as gratifyingly as possible, the life we have. Otherwise we are setting ourselves up for bitterness." His point is to avoid mourning for the lives we are unable to live - a source of an endless trauma.
In his book "Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life" he writes about love: "There is a world of difference between erotic and romantic daydream and actually getting together with someone; getting together is a lot more work, and is never exactly what one was hoping for. So there are three consecutive frustrations: the frustration of need, the frustration of fantasized satisfaction not working, and the frustration of satisfaction in the real world being at odds with the wished-for, fantasized satisfaction."
His book sounds really interesting, and I don't think his main message is that we should necessarily settle for the life we have. Indeed, the article continues that Phillip believes that we are not forced (by others) to settle for the life we are living, but we choose to do so. In other words, we should take responsibility for our own lives - and for changing it as well if we wish to do so.
It is actually not a wonder that I end up from Fellini to modern psychoanalysis. Fellini undertook Jungian psychoanalysis during his mid-life crisis and probably in his film 8 1/2 we see some traces of his own process (Boston Review offers an interesting analysis of the film and Fellini).
In the next post, I will write about all the wonderful things happening in my life and in Helsinki...
Oh, I'm so sad I missed this wonderful artist yesterday in Helsinki. Is he the new David Bowie? After all the female singer-song writers I love so much, it's good to get to know some exceptional male voices as well. I have crush (blush).
I love his voice but also his dandy style. This video below is really beautiful.
Even though I'm becoming a Patrick fan, I'm waiting to hear Lana del Rey herself to sing this one (below) live in Helsinki in June - this time, I'm going.
Just the previous day, I had complained that life is boring in Helsinki in the sense that you never encounter strangers the way that you would abroad or as a tourist in general. Obviously, one reason is that our everyday life is much more organised; we follow routines and we have put limits to our behaviour. For instance, I wouldn't join a group of 15 Americans for a pub crawl and then be locked out of my hostel (as I did in Barcelona, 2003), chat the night through with a cute bar tender with few other customers to serve (as in Catania, 2008), spend a fantastic day, including herbal sauna and a buddha statue park, with a middle-aged Kiwi (as in Vientiane, 2011), or accept an offer for a motorcycle trip from a handsome young guy sitting next to me in a café (in San Francisco, 2008). At home, we tend to be more reserved and this rarely gives room for adventures or improvised discussions. We try to avoid unnecessary talk with strangers and don't leave our comfort zone. It's a pity!
Photos of Brooklyn Café from the Facebook page of Brooklyn Café.
Maybe it was the café, the very cute and cosy Brooklyn Café in Viiskulma, that made me act like in a real New York place. The owners of the café are sisters from Brooklyn and the cute waiters speak only a few words of Finnish, so it's not hard to imagine being in New York instead of Helsinki.
Having installed with my iPad in front of another iPad user (see, it really is like a hip place in Brooklyn), I soon engaged in a nice chat with this young man. He was writing his second novel, the first one, he showed me, was on sale in the café. He had written most of it in the corner table. Indeed, this café offers very nice atmosphere for hipster-like experiences in art and creative life. I would definitely write my novel there. But I don't need such an excuse to hang around there because it is probably my favourite café in my neighbourhood in any case and their great filter coffee is one of these wonderful little things making Saturday mornings a bit more glamorous.
Photo from the Facebook page of Brooklyn Café.
The conversation with the young author, and some tips for reading he gave me (and certainly I'll try to read his book "Nyt" as well), made me really happy and disproved my idea of the impossibility of an encounter in this city. It seems to be more about my own attitude, so in the future I'll try to be more open and act more like a tourist with a curious mind.
Actually, the touristy behaviour continued in the evening as we decided to do a Kallio pub crawl with my friends. After a hearty dinner at Ravintola Pelmenit, the great Kaurismäki-like Ukranian restaurant in Kallio, we headed to Pikku-Vallila. It is a super cute little bar with only a few tables in a pretty wooden house in a calm and residential wood house area of Helsinki, the so-called wood-Vallila.
With one irritating guy at the next table (and then later, at our table) buying rounds of shots for the whole bar, our objective of a pub crawl somewhat shrank as we stayed in Pikku-Vallila until the wee hours. The cute and friendly bar tender made toasts for art and creativity and at the end, when he was pushing us out of the door, I said to him: "Thanks, it was a really nice evening", as if we had just had a house party in his living room.
I should definitely go more often to Kallio-side of the city. Though I love my own beautiful neighbourhood, it is slightly bourgeois and boring in Eira and Punavuori. The funny bohemian atmosphere of Pikku-Vallila and the eccentric or purely weird people there are hard to find in my neighbourhood pub.
Unfortunately, I managed to see only one documentary film at the recent DocPoint film festival in Helsinki. But this documentary film is definitely worth watching. It's the extraordinary Planet Ocean by Yann-Arthus Bertrand and Michel Pitiot. It examines its subject, the ocean, from several perspectives and in addition to powerful music and beautiful images, it has a very strong message about the importance of protecting our oceans, the source of all life.
The beginning of the film is quite dramatic (see below), the narrator, with her soft voice, declaring that the ocean contains the origins of our own story, us, the mankind. We are descendants of the ocean and yet, we are super predators exploiting the limited resources of our planet and unable to see the elements of catastrophe surrounding us. The planet is ours, but where are we going?
Like the wonderful BBC series Blue Planet, the film shows us the wonders of the ocean and the audience cannot fail to understand that the ocean contains things that are unimaginable on land. The creatures of the deep sea are more mystical than you could ever see on a science-fiction film. We are far behind the imagination of the mother nature. Sea creatures are just fascinatingly weird and we know so little about them.
At the same time, the film makes obvious the connection between the life on land and the sea. The ocean controls our climate and nourishes us, it serves as means to transport goods and has played a role in making globalisation possible. From the early years of our civilisation, the ocean has expanded the minds of human beings and offered us opportunities in work and pleasure.
Yet, we have polluted the sea, destroyed the coral reefs, depleted its resources and still continue to overfish despite all the warning signs clearly visible to us.
After all the amazing and beautiful images of the sea, I couldn't help wiping a few tears from my eyes thinking of seriously endangered sea animals, dead birds' bodies filled with plastic, deep-water oil rigs. Is the only ocean we will know in the future the ocean shown in the pictures below and colourful colar reefs something we remember from "Finding Nemo"?
I've often used the excuse that baking without eggs and dairy products is so difficult that I can't be a vegan. Well, after a successful vegan cheesecake, vegan biscuits and now vegan cupcakes, I have to admit that life without eggs is possible. Actually, this whole vegan cooking and baking starts to be a nice hobby.
By the way, I love that in my Finnish vegan cook book, there is a section called "munan korvaajat". It means "egg substitutes", but it can also mean "dick substitutes", which always makes a single lady smile... Indeed, what could be a better dick substitute than some delicious cupcakes? :)
I've started reading a vegan blog Chef Chloe by Chloe Coscarelli who won the American reality show Cupcake Wars with her vegan cupcakes. I tried her raspberry tiramisu cupcake recipe with some adjustments. In this recipe she replaces eggs with baking soda and vinegar. The funny thing is that the cupcakes were of very nice texture but actually had an eggy taste. Weird, but the baking soda + vinegar combination worked!
Here's the recipe if you wanna try my version of it.
12 cupcakes:
3 dl flour
2,5 dl cane sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
0,5 teaspoon salt
2 dl almond milk
0,5 dl canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
Mix separately dry ingredients and wet ingredients, then pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture. Fill your silicon muffin molds 2/3 full. Bake for about 15-18 minutes in 225°C.
Strawberry sauce (raspberries were expensive):
200 g frozen strawberries
1,5 dl cane sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
some lemon juice
Mix together in a saucepan and let simmer for some minutes. Let cool. Cut off the tops of the cupcakes, make a little hole with your fingers and pour some sauce into the hole. Place the hat back on top of the cupcake.
Frosting:
some espresso
a bit of almond liquor (if you happen to have some)
50 g vegetable margarine
enough powdered sugar to get the right level of liquidity-solidity
Mix together until smooth. Make the cupcakes pretty.
I enjoyed these cupcakes in a great company of a friend who is moving to New York (very appropriate to eat cupcakes in such an occasion) and naturally with some (might have been a bottle of...) champagne.
There has been a long silence in the blog front recently, or more precisely, in my personal presence here. I think I have too big ambitions and not enough time. I see myself as a New Yorker journalist (apologies for all the New Yorker journalists) and then I try to write something here between work and yoga classes. As you might have seen, it's not working. From now on, I will be focusing on small things only, that's it, on small escapes, god dammit! Or they can, and certainly will, be big things, but I will write about them in a smallish way.
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The objective for the new year, in addition to enjoying small things, is to eat more vegan, do more yoga and find my inner Zen. Indeed, it's New Age stuff, baby! Well, to be honest, it's about things that increase my wellbeing - both mental and physical. Very simple (and selfish?). I get angry, upset or annoyed by things that I cannot change or have an impact on. Why bother? Hence, the thing about finding my inner Zen is about priorities of emotions and actions. (Next year, I might write a self-help book - not!)
This means focusing on the first two things on the following list. Number three is a lost case, I'll try not to waste time on those things too much.
1. Things that I can decide upon myself.
2. Things that I have an impact on.
3. Things that I can't influence.
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Small things, like telling about the small beautiful events that made my day. That should be the point of this blog because I don't have (concentration) skills or time or energy for anything else (please, I do research at work, I can't do it in my blog).
Yesterday, I saw this amazing film "The Beasts of the Southern Wild". A wonderful and truly beautiful film with great music and an incredible young girl, Quevenzhané Wallis, as the main actress. This film really had a huge impact on me. It's a magical film that tells us about the connection between humans and the nature. It was so funny and so sad. It had a grasp of the real world in a fantastical way. It is a film that you need to talk about with a friend afterwards - and those are the best films.
A cosy November Saturday got a dose of glamour this evening as I went to a concert by Berliner Philharmoniker at the Helsinki Music Centre. Sir Simon Rattle was conducting the distinguished orchestra so the tickets were sold out immediately. I was alerted and got mine three minutes after the opening of the ticket sales on internet. Seven minutes later, there were no tickets left. The orchestra deserves its status as one of the best orchestras in the world; the playing was magnificent and the Finnish audience exalted (one gentleman was a bit more reserved).
It was a wonderful concert during which I processed several little ideas and thoughts (I did listen to the music as well and enjoyed greatly my seat of 85 Euros...). Here are some of my thoughts inspired by the music:
1) The gender balance in the orchestra: Of the around 30 players of wind instruments, three were women. All the contrabass players were men (two of which were Finnish and got a huge applause at the end when Simon Rattle shook their hands) as well as the percussionists. 4 women played violin compared to 24 men, and so on. The only female-dominated instrument was the harp (2 women, no men); in fact, I've never seen a man playing a harp. At the same time, music schools are full of girls and many more girls play some instrument in their youth than boys (or the boys are playing guitar dreaming of becoming the new Kurt Cobain or who ever is nowadays their music hero). So what is the reason for this bias? It seems to happen in many fields of culture (think of great chefs for example).
2) How are the musicians in the orchestra remunerated? Do they all get the same average monthly salary, even that guy playing the triangle? How can you make a living with a triangle anyway? (One of the questions I always ask myself in classical concerts.)
3) After the intermission, when the orchestra on the stage was significantly reduced, what did the rest of the group do? Went out to enjoy the Helsinki night life?
4) For whom were the three black and fancy Mercedes-Benz outside after the concert? Simon Rattle, ministers, the President? (I later found out that the attendees included the former president of Finland Tarja Halonen and the Minister of culture Paavo Arhinmäki who hitherto has shown little interest for classical music.) Very glamorous evening in general, for a second I amused myself with the idea of belonging to the cultural elite of Helsinki.
5) How does Instagram work? (I signed up today and the result is below)
6) Why couldn't the Finns dress like this more often? Men looked superb. Bravo! I actually felt that my own red dress was completely inappropriate (and my thighs looked fat in the white tights) - for once I could have put one of my fancy dresses on. Dammit! That's it for me being part of the cultural elite...
7) The guys playing tambourine, castanets, triangle and the cymbals looked like the Mexican mariachi guys at the end of the Ravel they were playing, and when I though of this I had to hold my laughter, but my shoulders were shaking. Hey teenagers, classical music can be fun!
8) I saw one of the jury members of the Finnish Idols and wondered what his last name is, Asko something. Starts with an s.
9) Are there any bald conductors? (I think the whirling hair makes them more charismatic.) And what do they do in any case? Simon Rattle was facing me during the concert, so I could observe him quite closely. This was really interesting and I saw he was gesturing not only with his hands and body but also with his face. But why is he regarded as one of the best conductors in the world? What is he gesturing there? What distinguishes a splendid conductor from an average one?
10) There was no pause between Ligeti and Wagner. That's why it took me so long to understand the programme. It was great anyhow. Wagner's prelude to Lohengrin was absolutely beautiful (see below, it reminded me a bit of Sibelius actually), while Ligeti was super interesting (the players were using ear plugs because of the high tones at some points).
