Wolf At The Door

I interviewed Vicente Wolf today, voted one of America's 10 most influential designers. He has been working as an interior designer in New York for the past 37 years. Unlike many Americans, Wolf travels constantly, the more remote the location the better. He says things like: "My friend told me he was off to Bhutan. I mean I went to Bhutan ten years ago." And he says: "Travel keep me young. It pushes me out of my comfort zone."

Recession-Inspired Photography

Tomorrow, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens Robert Frank's "The Americans," New Yorkers will be able to see these iconic photographs exhibited for the first time ever and at a time that resonates with the past. Frank traveled around the United States with the support of a Guggenheim Foundation grant and presented his book, The Americans in 1959. It coincided with the start of the Cold War and was initially reviled by the press for being "Anti-American." Ten years later, once the world has caught up with Frank's prescient vision, they hailed it as revolutionary. The exhibition also shows Frank's early work, a self-assessment of what he considers his best work called "Black, White and Things," and a short silent film showing Frank assessing his work made especially for this show. Also of immense interest are the six books that represent the tradition that The Americans came out of: The English at Home by Bill Brandt, American Photographs by Walker Evans, Ballet: 104 photos by Alexey Brodovitch, Day of Paris by Andre Kertesz, Fabrik: Ein Bildeposder Technik by Jakob Tuggener, and 50 Photographien by Gotthard Schun. The most endearing element is Mary's Book a book of photographs that he made for his wife prior to their marriage. It is signed "Le Petit Prince" following this note:
Mary,
It is not much, but I promised you a little story. Maybe this is not a story. "Only the essential is invisible to the eyes, one only sees well with the heart."
You remember.
We're lucky to finally be able to view Frank's work outside of the book. Frank, the Met's curators say, resented the success that the book brought him and refused to allow its fame subsume the new work that he had moved on to. But he has blessed this exhibition. Don't miss it.

I Heart Oaxacan Almendrado (Almond Mole)

I took a cooking class in Oaxaca with Oscar Carrizosa from Casa Crespo. I followed Oscar to the nearby Sánchez Pascuas local market to buy squash blossoms (zucchini flowers), passion fruit, cactus pear, and corn fungus. Oaxaca is famous for its seven moles (sauces) ranging from the incredibly rich mole negro which contains chocolate, spices and fruits to the delightfully delicate and easy to make almond mole.

Here's the recipe:

1 tablespoon oil
¼ medium onion
2 garlic cloves
¾ cup (3.5 oz/100 g) whole almonds, peeled
1 large slice (1½ in/4 cm) Challah-type bread
8 (2 lb/1 kg) cooked tomatoes, seeded and peeled
1 teaspoon thyme
1 in (2.5 cm) slivered cinnamon stick
2 peppercorns
1 clove
2 cups chicken broth
1 tablespoon lard or olive oil
Salt
3 almonds, peeled, toasted and sliced
18 green olives
1/3 cup (60 g/2 oz) pickled jalapeño or serrano chilies, sliced

Heat the oil in a frying pan over high heat. Fry the onion. Once it turns transparent, add the garlic cloves, ¾ cup of almonds, slice of bread and the tomatoes. Cook for about 3 minutes over low heat. Remove from heat and cool. Blend all these ingredients in a blender with the thyme, cinnamon, peppercorns, clove and 2 cups of chicken broth (I find that vegetable broth works just as well for vegetarians).

Heat the lard (or olive oil) in a saucepan with a lid, then fry the blended ingredients. Stir constantly to avoid sticking. Cover and cook for 15 minutes over low heat. Season with salt. Add chicken pieces (or fish -- we used yellowtail).

Garnish the dish with the sliced almonds, olives and pickled jalapeño or serrano chilies.

And here are the details for the cooking course:

Casa Crespo
Crespo 415
Centro
Oaxaca
Mexico

Phone:
From México 01 (951) 514 1102
(Phone reservations between 9 am and 5 pm)
Email: casacrespo@go-oaxaca.com

Virgin Territory

I interviewed Jeffrey Eugenides last week for a piece about why his first novel, The Virgin Suicides is still so read.

Click on the link for more...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-22/the-virgin-suicides-sweet-16/?cid=topic:mainpromo1

Obammerce!

On inauguration day, just after Obama took his oath, I went up to 125th Street in Harlem. Many smiley faces--and products! Here are some of faves:

A Front Seat for History

Election '08 is finally here. And Obama is, right now, in the lead. He's winning the cities; McCain is taking the counties But me thinks Obama will take the crown with ease...he's taking too many states that have been Red for at least a decade. I have been at two different parties -- one on the Upper West Side; another on the Upper East. All are eager for Obama to get on with the job of running this country (although he has a rather difficult task ahead of him sorting out this mess of an economy).

Twin Peaks

South African documentary photographer, Brent Stirton won the 2008 Visa d'Or Award for Feature photography at Visa pour l'Image in Perpignan, France on Friday night. It was another in a series of accolades for his acclaimed project on the slaughter of gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In this interview with Photo District News, he also comes out as the photographer of Brangelina's twins. According to Stirton, "photojournalism is about education for change and [selling pics of the twins for upwards of $15 million] is about finance for change."
Have a listen to what else he has to say about it:

http://www.pdnpulse.com/2008/09/video-brent-sti.html

If You Forget Me

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

~ Pablo Neruda

Koons at Sunset

If you haven't been up to the roof at the Met to see Jeff Koons' whimsical POP sculptures, choose a Friday or Saturday night and make a sunset drink of it. There are cocktails on offer named after the works -- Balloon Dog/yellow (top), Sacred Heart/Red/Gold and Coloring Book (bottom, above).

The very idea that Koons became a commodities trader in the early '80s (after spending a few years at the membership desk at MoMa) to finance his art is fascinating. How smart this man is. Definitely worth drinking to.

Obama on Iraq

An Op-Ed in today's New York Times that is well worth the read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/opinion/14obama.html?hp

Divorce and Buddhism

Storms Can't Hurt The Sky: A Buddhist Path Through Divorce is Gabriel Cohen's excellent memoir-come-self-help book chronicling his journey to the other side of anger after his wife walked out one day and never came back. This is possibly the male answer to Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. Did anyone stop and think about the husband she left behind? Well if he was anything like Cohen, he may have stayed in New York and attended a talk about anger given by a Buddhist teacher and then gone on his own spiritual path. Like Eat, Pray, Love you don't have to have had the experience yourself to relate and get inspired. This book has taught me much and I've never been anywhere near a divorce. Read it, even if you do get quizzical looks on the subway.

Cohen will read from Storms Can't Hurt The Sky at Sunny's Waterfront Bar in Red Hook on April 6. He is the man behind the Sundays at Sunny's reading series, so it should be a good one. Get there early for the free Italian pastries.

Friendship Against All Odds

I went to see Two Men Talking at the Barrow Street Theater in the West Village last night. Paul Browde and Murray Nossel, the two men talking, hail from Johannesburg. This is unscripted theater where Paul and Murray confront issues in their lives that would make the average person's toes curl. The two men went to King David High School and Wits University. And then each faced their homosexuality, came out and moved to New York City. Except since 1974, when each man was 14 and they were paired off by their teacher to tell one another a story, they hadn't spoken. (They'll tell you why). These were parallel journeys. Paul, only a few years after coming out, became HIV+. He is now a psychiatrist with a practice on 102nd Street, and he openly declares his status. (He tells me that even from his empowered and privileged standpoint, he still feels the stigma).
Murray met Paul when Paul's French-Canadian boyfriend was hired to direct Murray's play. Murray is a qualified but non-practicing clinical psychologist and an Oscar-nominated film maker. These days he's a full time story teller, offering the art to corporations through his company Narrative Inc.
Imagine their surprise -- to discover one another again, in a different time, a different place, a different sexuality. The two have been best friends ever since. Paul introduced Murray to his partner of 15 years, also a doctor living with HIV. And Two Men Talking has been performed around the world for the past 10 years. When they took the play to South Africa, King David High School wouldn't allow them to perform it for the students (yawn), but Paul and Murray took it into the Soweto and Alexandra townships and into Aids organizations in the Western Cape.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, had this to say: "Storytelling is a powerful medium for communication. Especially in situations where the message is too painful, too embarrassing, too secret to speak it. Storytelling can then become a journey to the truth. Paul Browde and Murray Nossel have been telling their story on stage to acclaim. They speak of being gay, homophobia, racism and HIV/AIDS, subjects that should be acknowledged and discussed but which are too often avoided or denied."

Murray and Paul joined us for dinner after the show. At the end of the evening, Murray said: "Paul and I will do Two Men Talking until one of us dies."

In New York, the show runs at the Barrow Theater on 7th Avenue and Barrow Street until May 3. See it.

Elephantitis of the Emotions

My friend Brent Greenblatt and I went to the Whitney Biennial two Saturdays ago. As always, it is an eclectic and sometimes difficult to understand collection of contemporary pieces by American artists, but what stood out for me was the crossover of art and documentary. Everything from Spike Lee's excellent documentary about the aftermath of hurricane Katrina When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, which was originally shown on HBO, to a beautiful piece by the artist Javier Téllez titled Letter on the Blind For the Use of Those Who See. This gorgeous black and white video could have been filmed by Jean Luc Godard. Téllez's art gives a voice to the marginalised (how cool is that?). It's his way of offering us an out from our false assumptions. In this video, the artist re-created the Indian parable "The Blind Men and the Elephant," filming six blind men as they touch a real live elephant who is standing in the middle of the McCarren Park swimming pool in Williamsburg (now emptied of water and often used as a concert venue for Indie rock bands). The idea is to show that "every being experiences the same thing in a unique way." It was a great lesson in how different people open themselves up (or not) to the same experience. Some of the men lightly touched the majestic (and patient) animal, one man folded up his stick and touched the elephant with his entire body. An embrace. Enormously moving.
Marianne Fassler, who was here last week and also deeply touched by this video, felt that is was addressing the idea of "the elephant in the room": We would never ask a blind person to tell us what they see. True. (She pointed out that elephants were something of a mini-theme at this year's biennal. Another installation upstairs saw just elephant feet and a tusk, and where the rest of the elephant should have been, simply the words "Iraqi Oil".
The Whitney Biennale is on for some time. See it if you get the chance.

http://www.whitney.org/www/2008biennial/www/?section=artists&page=artist_tellez

Hussein: What's in a Name?

When I was in South Africa recently, there was great hysteria amongst the Jewish community (ok, my family), brought on by an e-mail that was being sent around on the Internet claiming that Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim. I tried to explain to my mother that even if Obama was a Muslim (which he isn't), it didn't make him a militant suicide bomber. She regarded me suspiciously, wanting to believe. In Vanity Fair's Hollywood Issue a profile on Obama addresses these accusations thus: Todd S. Purdum writes that Obama told me [him] that he could only laugh at the false press accounts that portray Soetoro [Obama's stepfather] as some kind of radical Muslim who had sent him to an Islamic school. "I mean, you know, his big thing was Johnny Walker Black, Andy Williams records," Obama said. "I still remember 'Moon River.' He'd be playing it, sipping, and playing tennis at the country club. That was his whole thing."
.
And today on Salon.com, there is a longer discussion. Take a look: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/02/28/hussein/

Healing the Art World

Filip Noterdaeme, my art lecturer, who is also the artist, activist, educator and director of HoMu, the Homeless Museum of Art, took me for tea to Bouley Bakery in Tribeca this past Wednesday. We bought our coffees and our mini pastries (although we eyed those illegal Ispahans that Bouley still carries despite being accused of copying them from some other baker-genius) and were forced to go downstairs and take them in between a raw fish counter and a wine cellar. It was a most bizarre place.
Filip told me about his upcoming performance art project (although he assures me that this is not a performance, "I'm serious about it," he says): "I want to heal the art world one person at a time -- weather permitting."
Filip will take to the streets of Manhattan this Spring with his booth that resembles the one that Lucy uses in Charlie Brown. It is labeled "The Homeless Museum of Art -- The Director is IN" and indeed you will find Noterdaeme there to give counseling sessions to the willing.
Filip told me that he was at his least creative when he was doing yoga and therapy, but he didn't discount therapy the way Rilke does. He says it's about controlled madness. For more info go to www.homu.com

Peter Akinti, Debut Author

I met Peter Akinti in September 2007 at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Days later we had a drink in Harlem before he got onto a bus headed to Jena, Louisiana to see what the race riots were all about. He still says he wishes I'd gotten on that bus with him... And I still laugh at the thought of a white South African being anything other than problematic on that particular journey.
Akinti began his novel Forest Gate just before we met. It has nothing to do with Jena, but everything to do with race -- this time though it's race issues in the U.K that are looked at. In early January this year, it was acquired by Jonathan Cape. It will be published in a year from now. Look out for this new voice.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/53274-teen-suicide-novel-to-cape.html

Brent Stirton, Photographer

Brent Stirton, the great love of my twenties, recently won 1st prize Contemporary Issues Singles at the 2007 World Press Photo Awards for his photos of the evacuation of dead Mountain Gorillas discovered in Virunga National Park in Eastern Congo. The story broke in August last year in Newsweek. Take a look at the winning photograph and more of Stirton's phenomenal work at http://www.brentstirton.com/feature-gorillas.php

The Brooklyn Book Festival

I went to hear Dave Eggars, the editor of the literary journal McSweeney's Quarterly Concern in conversation with the Nigerian-born author, Chris Abani. Eggars most recently wrote What is the What, a novel based on the life story of a Sudanese Lost Boy, Valentino Achak Deng. All author proceeds to the Lost Boys of Sudan.
Achak Deng, 26, wasn’t at this talk – he’s studying international diplomacy at a college in Pennsylvania. “It’s strange for him,” said Eggars. “One day he’s a sophmore, but next week he’ll come to New York to speak at the Clinton’s Global Initiative.”
Eager to take any money made from the book to Marial Bai in Sudan to build a primary school, Achak Deng waited patiently for four years for Eggars to finish the book. Now he has started the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation in Sudan. He’ll take it over once he has completed his studies.
Eggars’ slide show showed the village of Marial Bai, razed to the ground during the war, now rebuilt as a returnee camp. “We went to see what could be done,” explained Eggars. “It was a listening tour.”
Achak Deng is particularly concerned with assisting young women in getting a secondary education. “Eventhough attitudes in Sudan are changing, it is still the tradition to marry off 13 and 14 year olds.”
One slide showed Achak Deng talking to two fourteen year old girls. One wanted to be a doctor; the second, a nurse. “Valentino who is usually very optimistic, told me that they will not reach their goals, not in this generation, but in the next,” said Eggars. “The men are becoming open to change and to women’s empowerment. The returnees like Val have brought with them a more progressive attitude from their time in the West.”
After taking in the needs of Marial Bai, Achak Deng has changed his original plan. “We realised that there are enough primary schools. So everything was adjusted according to the community’s needs,” explained Eggars. “Now he’ll set up a teacher training college, a secondary school, and a micro loan program for single mothers who are entrepreneurs.”
Eggars and Achak Deng are also working on another book that will form part of the McSweeney’s Oral Histories collection. They are telling the stories of women who survived the war. While listening to the stories, Eggars said that many times he and Achak Deng had to stop and ask the women if they were OK to continue. “They would say, ‘I’m not afraid. Let’s keep going’,” says Eggars. Many Sudanese girls were kidnapped and sold into slavery or to men who they would be forced to marry. They often endured horrific beatings and rape.

By Nadine Rubin. A version of this appeared as my Made in Manhattan column in the South African Sunday Times.

Above the fold

I call my friend Dan Levin my 26-year-old mentor because his attitude reminds me to be fearless in my own pursuits. In just one year of writing Dan has been published over thirteen times in various sections of the New York Times. Dan had a story published on the front page of the International Herald Tribune today. Hurrah! It's a wonderful tale of how a microfranchising business that gets spectacles to the poor has brought myopic Indians back from the brink of dire poverty just by enabling them to see better so that they can resume their work.

Here's the PDF of the front page: http://iht.com/pdfs/frontpagepdf/asiafrontpage.pdf


And here's the link to the piece: http://iht.com/articles/2007/07/23/business/scojo.php