Fruits of Patience

While the fall term was establishing itself in its frantic rhythms, and I was feeling more of a machine than a ghost, Stratford Ontario offered me the marvellous opportunity to experience two Shakespeare Classics again, and taste life's topsy-turviness from the comic and the tragic perspective: Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. With all due respect to living the present moment and taking a delight in doing so, the acting was mostly disappointing, but I was motivated to watch some good, older performances with actors and actresses who were acting well instead of shouting lots. So all's well that ends well: Stratford was a (good) means to further good ends. Admittedly it is extremely daring and challenging to stage such classics. But why such a haste to stage Shakespeare? Why, for instance, turn a forty-year old actor into a Lear some years ago? Why such a rush, I am wondering.

And then European beauty entered (or in this case rather flooded) the scene in deed as beauty often does, seemingly suddenly, with a  film masterpiece and love letter to Van Gogh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8xcLdOjX6w

As for now, I am pleasantly anticipating some mesmerizing acting (one does not need more than two minutes to say that), King Lear, by Royal Shakespeare Company with Antony Sher in NYC next year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW4bEi1_RdQ

While the term is coming to its end, I am working on Aristotle on Plato on pleasure (or how one becomes his own man by listening to another man), and, what a delight, on French, among other, much more important wonders. A couple of students amazed me. I am meeting and working with them so that the next steps are taken. I screened Malick's The Knight of Cups; perhaps Kurosawa's Idiot will follow.

PS: Three Women at the Spring, Picasso, and "a line going for a walk" (Klee's definition of drawing), or else, Portrait of an Equilibrist, Klee, MoMA NYC)

PPS: Avant-garde is alive, and not only to be found in museums. See, for instance, how a young Greek artist, Fikos, marries byzantine art and ancient Greek motives with street art, which he calls "contemporary byzantine art":

His Earth and Sky

(for more consider: http://fikos.gr/portfolio/?lang=en)