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Tonight: Blow-Up.

Beatles for Sale

It was Christmas with the Beatles, as I snagged the last two tickets to Cirque du Soleil’s LOVE at the Mirage. That’s 26 Beatles hits mashed up a bit and set to fantastical 360-degree theatrics from the air, below ground, and in one number—covering you with a great white sheet in what must be the largest slumber party in Vegas.

The album begins with the twittering of birds from “Across the Universe” (Past Masters, Vol. 2 version) which then gives way to the a cappella “Because.” We hear the opening chord to “A Hard Day’s Night” followed by Ringo’s drum solo in “The End” which leads into “Get Back.” Critics and fans alike have already roasted the album, released last month, calling it a marketing gimmick for a bland album.

But I appreciate the details. That is, I think I disagree. Here’s what I like:

• The end of “Eleanor Rigby” fading into a beautiful “Julia” transition.
• “Gnik Nus” is the cymbal portion of “Sun King” played backwards; I can’t think of a finer set up for “Something,” one of my favorites. More on this later.
• “Strawberry Fields Forever” begins with inverted lyrics: “No one, I think, is in my tree/I mean it must be high or low.” This changes everything. (I confess that for many years, I misunderstood these lyrics to be: “No one, I think, is in matry. I mean it must be higher love.”—with “matry” being Brit slang for “matrimony.”)
• The George Harrison “Within You Without You” mashed with “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the bed sheet number; if you see the show, you will never forget this song. And you will want to get up and dance.
• The start of “Octopus’s Garden” has the comfort of childhood or freshly baked bread.
• The new recording of strings for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

The album splices and dices; it rearranges; it speeds things up; it slows things down; it reverses tracks and doubles back; it mixes disparate elements and creates something new. It’s not a Revolution, but it follows the Beatles tradition. And frankly, I don’t care to have Dangermouse or the like mucking things up.

The strip

Entrance to the theater

Footsteps in the hallway (lifted from Flickr)

Now, about the show. I struck up a conversation with the Ukrainian man to my left. He rattled off half a dozen Cirque shows he had seen. I raised an eyebrow in the artificial twilight, but continued to ask questions, fascinated by people with a passion for anything. Soon I had a rough sketch of his life story: he resides in the San Francisco Bay area; he works in a military capacity and is thus a global trekker; he became a U.S. citizen about 15 years ago and has raised his children to speak Ukrainian and English fluently; he was born in 1959 and knows all the Beatles songs; he can say five phrases in Japanese proudly, although not well.

He offered me a swig of scotch from his flask. I laughed with heartfelt amusement and almost accepted. When one looks broadly—especially in Vegas, with its penchant for debauchery and idiocy—he or she often walks away disappointed. But on a micro level, people are grand on the most unimaginable scales.

The lights dimmed. The show starts off with four semi-transparent screens dividing the circular theater into sections and showing projections of clouds against blue sky.

The wall screens then show a Mary Poppins-like rooftop silhouette of London with a caption that reads “Beatles Performance: London Rooftop, 1969” synchronized with the familiar “Hard Day’s Night” opening chord. The four screens project silhouettes of each member of the Fab Four and suddenly drop to the floor. All lights fall onto center stage, where there’s a concert scene happening on a rooftop that emerges from the floor.

I won’t give you the play-by-play, but imagine lots of shifting stage parts, things falling from the sky and sinking into the floor, bendy people on ropes, and colorful costumes.

Their interpretation of “Something” was very simple. A shirtless man flounced around on center stage as four women in white glided through the air on wires, producing a multi-dimensional ballet. A dizzying Twilight Zone black-and-white lined pattern moved on the screens. I don’t think it worked.

Many Beatles songs seem so simple and straightforward, but interpretations change as life moves forward. I used to focus on the song’s romantic notion of a singular experience, the mythical “One.” But it’s the refrain that has the emphasis, and rightly so. The lines “You’re asking me will my love grow/I don’t know, I don’t know/You stick around now, it may show/I don’t know, I don’t know” add complexity. Amongst these bald declarations of love, it’s the uncertainty and the impossibility of ever getting to truly know someone that offer balance and frisson to any union. The words are lucid, inscrutable, and poignant all at once.

By the time “Strawberry Fields Forever” took the stage in the form of a piano containing liquid soap, I found myself confusedly wiping away a tear. But it wasn’t for long, because the bed sheet number was about to begin. A child on a bed appears on stage, and several friends join him. The bed begins to rise in the air as a sheet underneath descends. As the sitar rock music crescendos, the sheet grows exponentially until the entire audience on the lower floor is covered by a rippling white mass. The bed rises to the ceiling showered in blue lights as acrobats dangle in the air, evoking an Arabian Nights suspense. As the song ends, the bed floats back down to earth and disappears into an abyss. The sheet follows in a swirling whirlpool of liquid white, revealing a stunned audience—row by row—until it, too, follows the bed into the netherworld.

One of the most powerful performances accompanies “A Day in the Life” near the end of the show. Its placement after the gentle strings of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” provides brilliant build up to the haunting soundscape that is the hallmark of this song. (To this day, the only song that comes close to this beautiful confusion is Radiohead’s “How to Disappear Completely.”) A woman in red, who made a brief appearance earlier, returns. We see a pieced-together Volkswagen Beetle enter from the side. The woman glides through the air in its direction and the Beetle’s discrete parts separate as if in a car crash shown in slow motion. The lights flicker, the music surrounds us through the speakers in the seats, and we’re left with a spectacle on stage that must be witnessed in person.

The show is called “Love,” and it ends on that theme. The screens flashed clips of the Beatles in their different phases: the mod haircuts, the shaggy anti-war postures, the colorful Sgt. Pepper’s days. The huge cast, decked out in full regalia, danced on stage, but everyone watched the screens in quiet rapture. The album ends as unassumingly as it begins, with the sounds of a show wrapping up, and the words “This is Johnny Rhythm, saying goodnight to ye’s all and God bless ye’s.”

A show like this is ultimately doomed, though. If it fails, it angers loyal fans and makes no money. And if it succeeds, the best it can do is leave you wanting the real thing.

The Art of Gaman

The ceiling of the Bellagio Hotel lobby, Las Vegas

Cranberries suspended in water at the Bellagio, Las Vegas

The Japanese have names for concepts that do not exist in the West. One of them is called gaman. In the simplest terms, it means enduring and tolerating the unbearable with strength and dignity. Think World War II internment camps. Think of the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team. Think of the eerie silence amongst the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors in the aftermath of the atomic bombings. That’s gaman.

My great aunt and uncle celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary here in Vegas. Everyone wanted to know the key to a lasting, happy marriage. My 83-year-old great uncle, a veteran of the 442^nd, cited trust, compromise, love, good communication, and above all, respect.

December 22, 1956

Then my great aunt made a case for gaman. In the 1950s, women exercised gaman for their shogun husbands. Today, people are unwilling to endure even moderate discomfort and disquietude—not a winning formula for successful relationships, which all require work. She then described the evolving concept of gaman for modern times, one in which both partners exercise patience and endurance.

It’s easy to argue that they grew up in a simpler time with limited choices and lower expectations. But with divorce so prevalent and people searching for answers (note this New York Times Most Frequently E-Mailed article), to whom else should we go for advice? Is it a random self-help author or our group of peers, tainted by collective, desultory experiences? Or is it the couple celebrating a golden wedding anniversary?

Choked up with emotion, my great uncle said, “When the game is on the line, Alice is always there.”

I choose gaman.

The Ashes

All is lost for England in the current series of the Ashes. I like cricket for the outfits. I saw a pick-up game in London last year and stood mesmerized by men dressed in pristine white dotting the parched field. White against green means classic summer: fresh-cut grass below white clouds.


The ashes of 2006 are fresh and fertile. I am looking forward to 2007. I feel rushes of emotion and positive energy that cannot be contained. It has been a year of change and growth. It reminds me of a line from one of my favorite poems:

(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

This morning the man sitting across from me on the subway smiled at me—not in a creepy way. Because I insulate myself against the masses with my iPod, he actually waved his hand slightly to get my attention. He wore a look of profound curiosity. I smiled back.

Afterwards, I looked through stacks of photography books and remembered the Rijksmuseum. Then I had a three-hour lunch:

• Goat cheese profiteroles
• Puréed pear and parsnip soup with walnuts (the perfect blend of sweet and salty)
  
• Mussels in a shallot, parsley, and white wine broth + frites
• Chopped salad with beets!
• Chocolate eclair + cappuccino

On the agenda for Vegas and LA:

• Reading on the beach (a linguistics book for starters, and then maxing out my mum's library card)
• Yoga in Santa Monica
• Drinking tea
• Picking fruit from the garden
• Hanging at the Getty
  
• Taking hot baths and reading in the tub
• Writing my "letter of intent"
• Driving down the 405 whilst blasting KCRW
  
• Writing a short story (fiction)
  

On New Year's Eve, you can find me on my dad's comfortable chair in front of the plasma TV watching an old Italian or French film whilst drinking sparkling apple cider.

Sunday Soccer Sunday

I worshipped in the House of Soccer on Sunday. We discussed team psychology and made comparisons to the business world over goat cheese, calamari salad, and coconut flan. We then topped it all off with mulled wine whilst singing lyrics from Queen, the Eagles, and Christmas carols with a bunch of drunk people at the next table. 'Tis the season.

And bend it like Essien: ridiculous goal from a thrilling game! I was rooting against Chelsea and for the Gunners, but one can't deny such a beautiful strike.