Andrew Jaffe: Leaves on the Line

In LA for a week, we went to see the Robert Smithson exhibition at MOCA. Smithson is best known for his Spiral Jetty, a fantastic Earthwork on the Great Salt Lake in Utah, underwater for much of the time since its creation in the early 70s (just before Smithson's early death in 1973 at 35), but recently uncovered in a somewhat new form as the lake's water level falls (future PhD thesis: climate change and its relationship to art!). (And Amerindie college-rock enthusiasts will remember a band called 'Spiral Jetty' from the late 80s.)

Despite his early death (his career lasted about ten years), and despite my lack of any art-crit credentials, I would like to make a pitch for Smithson as the most important of the post-post-war American artists of the 20th Century. He was a theorist as much as practitioner, he understood the overlap between art, commerce, and society, and, let's not forget, he made some beautiful things, over a wide range of genres and media. His photographs of mirrors (a recurring motif/object throughout his work) laid on the ground in Central America, or New Jersey, like much of his work, reminds us of the differences and commonalities of place and land, and the effect we can have on it.

Smithson has also been memorialized recently in Mike Nelson's fantastic, but now-closed Triple Bluff Canyon at Modern Art Oxford (Oxford, UK). Nelson, a young, British Artist (not sure if he's officially a "Young British Artist") creates entire environments to be explored by the viewers; this one, among references to entropy, conspiracy theories, much else, contained a reconstruction of Smithson's "Partially Covered Woodshed" which he created for Kent State University in the early 70s.

Since setting this one up, I've spent too much time the last few weeks reading weblogs. But the "meme of the moment" (a phrase courtesy of Dave Slusher) is "podcasting" -- weblogs you can listen to. More specifically, podcasting refers to the confluence of a few technologies: first, of course, machines like the Mac, or the iPod with a microphone attached, have made it easy to record yourself (and more complicated setups allow mixing in other audio feeds, even people calling in from other machines by telephone or VOIP (internet telephony); second, new versions of RSS allow the attachment of the resulting audio files directly to a blog, in a way that external programs can easily grab; finally, new software parses these "RSS Enclosures", downloads the audio files to your machine and even moves them over to iTunes for immediate loading onto your iPod.

This movement was spearheaded by Adam Curry, the former MTV VJ and (formerly) somewhat annoying big-haired 80s personality who became famous again (after hosting "Headbangers' Ball") for being prescient enough to register MTV.com before MTV itself (and, one imagines, reaping significant rewards therefrom). In fact, Adam even mentioned me on his podcast on or about 24 September!

Why is this interesting? Right now, most of the podcasts are (like most early blogs) are just a bit of navel-gazing. But eventually this becomes timeshifting for radio: once, say, NPR, catches on, I can listen to shows like Fresh Air or This American Life on my iPod, even though I live in the UK. And, like much else on the internet, of course, this opens up a new medium to amateurs. It could be a great way to make what used to be called mix tapes -- music to share with your friends (if that's legal, of course).

Yesterday, the trees were still covered in foliage. After the overnight gales, the acer in our courtyard was stripped bare of its gorgeous bright red leaves. I should have been suspicious. At the rail station, I shouldn't have been surprised to find the 0857 to London Paddington delayed about 20 minutes. The usual autumn excuse in the UK: "Leaves on the Line".

Finally in London, more evidence of the new season (proof that I've almost learned to use my new camera-phone!):

BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel passed away today.

Even in the USA, John Peel was a broadcasting legend. We didn't quite understand who he was, but the "Peel Sessions" that appeared for every obscure British (and American) band gave many of us our first taste of The Fall, of Siousxie and The Banshees, of Wire, or Joy Division. These amazing grey EPs and LPs weren't played on some obscure left-of-the-dial station, but on the government-sponsored radio station accessible to everyone in the nation. Those of us who cared eventually became college radio DJs, started writing for magazines, or blogging.

When I moved to the UK, I remember thinking how exciting it would be to actually listen to John Peel live, but I admit I only rarely took advantage, listening more often instead to Radio 3 or watching the news (or worse) on TV. And now it's too late.

Trockenbeerenauslese, from the German trocken (dry), beeren (grapes or berries), and auslese (selected), is wine from grapes that have been shrivelled up by the so-called "noble rot" (aka the botrytis fungus) responsible for the best dessert wines worldwide, like French Sauternes. Tonight we had a bottle of 1995 Johanneshof Reinisch Chardonnay from Thermenregion, Austria.

I got this wine for my birthday in 1999 and we finally decided to open it after dinner tonight. It's honey-colored, and almost as thick, and as soon as we poured the glasses we could smell the caramel, treacle, burnt sugar, mixed in with dried fruit and unexpected interlopers like old, soft cheese (these are good, if that's not obvious). Finally getting the courage to actually drink the stuff after about five minutes of swirling it around in our glasses, there was even more. It's as thick as honey, an appropriate consistency for anointing the next monarch, with more and more of the tart dried-apricot fruit (actually, more of the apricot "fruit leather" on which I was happily raised) up front, thick and chewey, better than cough syrup laced with your favorite psychoactive substance, lingering in your mouth with the sugary sweetness and a hint of bitterness in the background reminding you this is for adults.

Remarkable!