#the general idea seems to be that it’s a don juan reference and because don juan was all about the women. that means eddie will be too?

[mishtershpock]

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[dross-the-fish]

What do you think Erik's past was with women, when it comes to dating and women. I'd like to know what your take is.

"dating" is probably not the word I'd use. Delving into the text of the book there are two parts that stick out to me as indicating that Erik may have a history with women other than Christine this segment here from the scene at Apollo's Lyre where Christine is recounting events to Raoul "You wanted to know what I looked like! Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a very good-looking fellow, eh? … When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me for ever. I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!' And, drawing himself up to his full height, with his hand on his hip, wagging the hideous thing that was his head on his shoulders, he roared, 'Look at me! I AM DON JUAN TRIUMPHANT!' And, when I turned away my head and begged for mercy, he drew it to him, brutally, twisting his dead fingers into my hair." Seems to indicate that this kind of thing has happened before. It is possible Erik is speaking generally and it's not definitive proof but it is interesting, the verbiage he uses.

And this scene towards the end of the book when he has Raoul and the Persian in his torture chamber

"What are you running away for?" asked the furious voice, which had followed her. "Give me back my bag, will you? Don't you know that it is the bag of life and death?"

"Listen to me, Erik," sighed the girl. "As it is settled that we are to live together ... what difference can it make to you?"

"You know there are only two keys in it," said the monster. "What do you want to do?"

"I want to look at this room which I have never seen and which you have always kept from me ... It's woman's curiosity!" she said, in a tone which she tried to render playful.

But the trick was too childish for Erik to be taken in by it.

"I don't like curious women," he retorted, "and you had better remember the story of BLUE-BEARD and be careful ... Come, give me back my bag! ... Give me back my bag! ... Leave the key alone, will you, you inquisitive little thing?"

And he chuckled, while Christine gave a cry of pain. Erik had evidently recovered the bag from her." He says he doesn't like "curious women" and makes a reference to Blue Beard, which is a fairytale about a serial killer who murders his wives. There's a scene in Blue Beard where the most recent wife discovers a room with the bodies of his previous wives. The first quote could be dismissed but this is the second time Erik has indicated a dislike for curious women. Erik's lair is canonically full of traps and features a very cruel torture chamber. By evoking the image of Blue Beard in particular the narrative seems to be further implying that Erik does have some history of women and not a pleasant one. It's possible that Erik is just trying to scare Christine out of looking in the room but it's equally likely that it's not an idle threat. He's shown that he's not above putting hands on Christine and treating her roughly despite his claims to love her. I have a personal theory that Christine is not the first but Erik knows she is going to be the last. I've always kind of run on the idea that throughout the book Erik is aware his health is failing and the clock is winding down for him and that's why Christine is different, because she's his last chance and in the end she does give him, not a living bride, but something much more needed: redemption and forgiveness from someone he's harmed. Proof that he's not unworthy of human compassion. A lot of people in the Phandom don't seem to recognize how dark of a character Erik is. I find him legitimately scary as much as I also find him sympathetic and I think he is fascinating in part because there is something genuinely terrifying about him that tickles my love for horror stories. I feel like it's vague enough that you can leave it up to interpretation, so if you don't really like the idea that he's had women in his past that he ended up killing you can chalk it up to Erik just trying to frighten Christine into compliance but I think it's interesting to look at the darker takes and speculate about the skeletons in his closet.

[contrabassconversations]

Turbocharge your audition skills with the San Francisco Academy Orchestra

videos, photos, and more available here

For classical musicians, learning how to audition effectively is critical. So much is riding on the line when you take an audition.

You’ve spent months preparing the music.

You’ve booked a flight and hotel, turned down gigs. You’ve invested an incredible amount of time and emotional energy into this event.

Then what happens? For so many musicians, they get nervous, flub a couple of notes, and then watch in panic as everything spirals downhill. Finding ways to simulate the audition experience is key to developing these skills.

In my 2016 book Winning the Audition, I took advice from over two dozen professional orchestra musicians and wove it into a book that covered practice techniques, mindset, overcoming adversity, and other key skills.

More recently, I had the pleasure of being a “fly on the wall” for one of the San Francisco Academy Orchestra’s monthly mock auditions. This is a super-cool part of an innovative new program, and it is a great new way for people on the verge of a career to get that “final finish” to make it into a professional orchestra job.

About the San Francisco Academy Orchestra Program

This string-focused orchestral training program puts emerging professionals alongside San Francisco Symphony members, rehearsing and performing side-by-side throughout the year. This program was launched by Andrei Gorbatenko in 2000 and features faculty members from the San Francisco Symphony and Opera as well as various guest artists.

More recently, the Academy also launched an intensive, one-year Artist Diploma Fellowship that focuses on developing those skills critical to orchestral performance. The program offers weekly lessons, group excerpt classes, master classes, and mock auditions in addition to the side-by-side rehearsal and performing with San Francisco Symphony members.

A Look Inside the Mock Audition Process

I arrived a half-hour early for the Academy’s December 2019 mock audition and sat down with mock audition coordinator Joy Fellows. Joy is a violist in the San Francisco Opera as well as the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. She also teaches viola through the Academy. Prior to that, Joy was a member of the Saint Louis Symphony and the Indianapolis Symphony.

Why Mock Auditions Help

Joy and I chatted about auditions in general and developing the process of centering, a concept popularized in the orchestral world by performance coach Don Greene. Deliberate practice toward centering to center yourself in the moment to accomplish the task at hand is key.

Dealing with the stress of an audition experience is a challenge for sure. Everyone has slightly different mechanisms for coping with these moments. Unfortunately, there isn’t one “magic bullet” that will universally address the panicky feeling surrounding an audition.

For more people, it’s eating a banana before the audition. Others moderate their caffeine intake, and some incorporate beta blocker medication.

Everybody is slightly different, and playing mock auditions is a great way to “practice the audition” and learn how to cope with these audition-specific challenges.

Common Audition Preparation Mistakes

Not having truly practiced the entire audition list is one of the most common preparation missteps that Joy has observed. Getting every excerpt to the same level is critical for an audition. Often, a player may focus so much on one of the more unfamiliar or challenging excerpts that they neglect the rest of the list.

Time management, planning, and being really organized and specific about your preparation will help tremendously with moving all of the excerpts to where they need to be in terms of preparation.

Recording yourself is an essential tool for audition preparation. For Joy, she would start recording herself every few days about three weeks prior to the audition. She would then listen back and take a lot of notes on how things were going and what work needed to be done next.

Taking notes like this is great because it reveals what really needs work. Focusing on just those spots identified in the last recording ensures that the focus is being directed toward what actually needs to get done.

This kind of preparation is great for calming the nerves. Because you’ve put so much thought and effort into what you’re doing, you’re less likely to be distracted in the audition itself.

Ideally, Joy wants to be performing the whole list for a variety of different people about a week before the audition. Family, friends, and colleagues are all great candidates for this. The experience of playing an audition list in front of another human is incredibly powerful, and most audition winners credit this as on off the keys to their audition success.

The goal is to get your worst possible performance and your best possible performance as close to each other as possible. Los Angeles Philharmonic bassist David Allen Moore refers to this as “your floor and your ceiling.” In audition preparation, we aim to raise our floor as close as possible to the level of our ceiling.

The Structure of the San Francisco Academy Orchestra Auditions

Mock auditions for the San Francisco Academy Orchestra are held at the Drew School in San Francisco. This private school in San Francisco‘s Pacific Heights neighborhood has a great auditorium and numerous warm-up rooms located below it.

The screen is set up across the stage, with mock audition “candidates” entering from a separate door on the left. The mock auditioners are divided into two rounds of A and B groups, and one group warms up as the other listens and writes comments.

I floated behind both sides of the screen, checking out the experience from both the committee and player perspective. It was great to see how different people warmed up and conducted themselves during the mock audition.

  Several people were playing off of an iPad Pro, which I’ve also embraced as my music reading device. Others had a stack of parts and were jotting down notes and rearranging the music for their mock round.

Each candidate played a series of 4-5 short excerpts from the standard audition repertoire. Though nerves play a role in pretty much every actual or mock audition, all the candidates seemed quite composed. This is a good indication of the positive effect that doing regular mock auditions has on these artist diploma students.

There’s also tremendous benefit in listening to and receiving comments from musicians that don’t play your instrument. Violinists listen differently than bassists, for example—and vice versa.

Everybody behind the screen, including both mock auditioners and faculty members like Joy and Andrei, took notes. Everybody put their notes into piles for each candidate at the conclusion of each round.

The whole process was professional, seamless, and well-executed. I wish I had been put through a similar process back when I was studying!

Academy Members are Winning Auditions

After the mock audition, we all headed over to Andrei’s place for their annual holiday party. It was a ton of fun and great way for faculty and fellows to relax and spend time together.

I chatted with Andrei about the origins of the academy and the more recent development of its artist diploma program.

For nearly twenty years, the Academy program has given young professional musicians to work alongside members of the San Francisco Symphony.

Six years ago, former San Francisco Symphony Assistant Principal Viola Don Ehrlich and Andrei came up with the idea for the Artist Diploma program. This program serves as a response to the ever-increasing music tuition costs, this program is designed to be efficient and focus on the essential skills for obtaining employment in an orchestra.

The program consists of: weekly lessons group excerpt classes master classes mock auditions side-by-side rehearsal and performing with San Francisco Symphony members

The results have been remarkable.

Academy Fellows have recently won auditions or have been awarded contracts with the following orchestras:

Pittsburgh Symphony Dallas Symphony Rochester Philharmonic St. Louis Symphony Calgary Philharmonic Annapolis Symphony Philharmonia Baroque Austin Symphony Santa Barbara Symphony California Symphony Santa Cruz Symphony Berkeley Symphony Monterey Symphony Oakland Symphony Marin Symphony Santa Rosa Symphony Symphony Silicon Valley Stockton Symphony Sacramento Philharmonic San Jose Chamber Orchestra

Many of them have also been called to sub in the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet Orchestras.

Faculty

In addition to Andrei, the Academy the faculty consists of:

Dan Carlson, violin David Chernyavsky, violin Melissa Kleinbart, violin Matthew Young, viola Joy Fellows, viola Amos Yang, cello Charles Chandler, bass

Auditioning From the Violinist Perspective

I also spoke with San Francisco Symphony violinist and Academy teacher David Chernyavsky about the program while at the holiday party. David moved to the Bay Area in 2009 and has been involved with the Academy for the last decade.

David works on a weekly basis with the Academy fellows in the Artist Diploma Program, concentrating on the audition repertoire needed to prepare them for real-life auditions.

David has observed that, surprisingly, many string players leaving school have not focused enough on orchestral repertoire and training for taking auditions.

During the past few decades in the United States, the requirements to get a job have shifted more toward successful execution of orchestral excerpts. Before that, there was more of an emphasis on solo repertoire. For example, auditions in the 1960s might have consisted of a concerto movement and some orchestral sightreading. This is quite a different setup compared to today’s audition process.

There are multiple levels on which people are listening to excerpts. Take the first page of the violin part of Don Juan, for example. The challenge is that this is an orchestral part, so you have to keep in mind that you have to play it as if you were in the first violin section. This means that you cannot play too virtuosically. You have to play more rhythmically.

On the other hand, you have to sound good playing an orchestral part alone. In as section, you are playing with up to 20 other people, while in an audition you are playing this tutti part as a solo instrument.

The main objective is to not rush and have a strong sense of rhythm and tempo.

Executing a Mozart concerto is a different skill set. David likes to tell his students to imagine singing it, or to imagine a soprano singer singing this music. A lot of people try to play Mozart concerti with short articulations, making a lot of accents and with a dry approach.

David finds Mozart concerti to be much more appealing with a song like approach to the line and phrasing. This can be a bit counterintuitive due to all the articulations in the part, but in the end it sounds more flowing and cohesive with a songlike approach.

Charles Chandler on the Academy experience

San Francisco Symphony bassist Charles Chandler and I chatted about the San Francisco Academy experience in our 2017 interview. Here’s Charles on his experience working with the Academy students:

“It’s mostly graduate students, and it’s a program that costs a lot less than going to a conservatory. You have an experience of playing in orchestra, but most importantly take lessons, and actually all of the teachers are members of the San Francisco Symphony there.

You get to work with them on a one-on-one basis, and in a orchestra class setting as well. it’s great—it’s really great. I really enjoy it. The students have all been fantastic players and students, and I feel like I’ve learned a whole lot from them, frankly!”

Thoughts from the students

Finally, I chatted with current San Francisco Academy Orchestra students Michael Minor and Yu Chen Liu.

Prior to her time with the Academy Orchestra, Yu Chen Liu attended the San Francisco Conservatory, where she studied with Scott Pingel for her master’s degree. Yu Chen loves the city of San Francisco: the people, the lifestyle, and the weather. She has gotten a lot of the monthly mock auditions (this was her 12th for the program), the studio classes, and the orchestral experience.

Mock auditions are one of Yu Chen’s favorite aspects of the program. She records herself every time, and she can hear the improvement from audition to audition each time she listens to the recording. Each time, she can hear herself getting better, not only technically, but also in how she reacts to the pressures of the mock audition experience.

Michael Minor is another former San Francisco Conservatory student, and he’s enjoying the training he’s getting with Charles and the warm, open approach he takes to music making. Getting to play with the Academy Orchestra is an inspiring experience, and having Andrei, a fellow bass player, as a conductor has been a rewarding experience.

Mock auditions are also a favorite part of the program for Michael. Playing in front of peers can be a scary experience, and these regularly scheduled mock auditions go a long way toward normalizing this process.

Learn more about the Academy

Andrei spends much of the academic year touring the United States, listening to auditions for the Academy, working with university ensembles and speaking with students.

Visit the San Francisco Academy website for more information, and follow along with them on Facebook for the latest updates.

Check out this episode!

[emmagreen1220-blog]

New Post has been published on Literary Techniques

New Post has been published on https://literarytechniques.org/motif-vs-theme/

Motif vs. Theme

Motif is a recurring element (a symbol, a feature, an expression, a concept) which, if used throughout a single work, suggests its theme (also leitmotif), and, if used across many texts, communicates a common topic of an almost archetypal nature (topos). Theme, on the other hand, is the main idea/subject matter that a literary work treats, or, put even more straightforward, the answer to the question “what is this work about?”

Whatever the subject of repetition, motifs are more often than not bound to the theme of the work, most of them implicitly hinting at it. Interpreted in this context, they are much more ambiguous—and grasped much more intuitively—than symbols that unequivocally stand for something else which is not necessarily the theme.

Throughout history, the words “motif,” “leitmotif,” “theme,” “topic,” “topos,” “symbol” and a few others, have been used interchangeably to describe many similar and related concepts. That’s why it is often difficult to say where the definition of either of them ends and the definition of a related term begins; which is why it should be noted from the start that it is neither a mistake to say that “many of Shakespeare’s sonnets are variations of the common memento mori motif” nor it is an exaggeration to claim that “many of Shakespeare’s sonnets focus on the theme of the passing of time.”

In other words, most distinctions between the terms “motif” and “theme” are tentative—see the definitions section below—and ours can’t be any different; but it is one which, if only because of its simplicity, is more generally accepted in primers and schoolbooks.

Definitions: Motif, Leitmotif, and Theme

As we said above, the words “motif” and “theme” are often used interchangeably, which means that it is not a rare occurrence for a literary dictionary to list the definitions of both under one entry; this is further complicated by the word leitmotif which is often treated as a more modern term for “motif” (see the section below). To demonstrate this Babel of meanings, we selected a plethora of definitions from many compendiums of knowledge (glossaries, dictionaries, encyclopedias); we present them in the table below. We’ll try to make sense of them in the other two sections

SOURCE MOTIF LEITMOTIF THEME Joseph T. Shipley, Dictionary of World Literary Terms (1970) “a word or pattern of thought that recurs in a similar situation, or to evoke similar mood, within a work or in various works of a genre.” “an expression that as a unit bears a particular significance, e.g., the Homeric epithet, the folktale repetition.” “the general topic, of which the particular story is an illustration.” Arnold Lazarus and H. Wendell Smith, A Glossary of Literature and Composition (1973) “a recurring symbol, expression, or feature (e.g., the love potion).” / 1. “a unifying idea, motif, or archetypal experience in a literary work.” 2. “the unifying statement, expressed or implied, in a literary work.” H. L. Yelland, S. C. Jones, and K. S. W. Easton, A Handbook of Literary Terms (1983) “a recurring theme or basic idea.” / “the central thought in a literary work.” Jack Myers and Michael Simms, Longman Dictionary and Handbook of Poetry (1985) “also called ‘topos;’ a theme, device, event, or character that is developed through nuance and repetition in a work.” [e.g., ubi sunt and carpe diem formulas, stock character motifs] “indicating a theme associated throughout a work with a particular person, situation, or sentiment.” “the paraphrasable main idea(s) of a piece of literature, that is, what the work is about.” Northrop Frye, Sheridan Baker, and George Perkins, The Harper Handbook to Literature (1985) 1. “a recurrent thematic element—word, image, symbol, object, phrase, action.” 2. “a conventional incident, situation, or device” [e.g., the excruciating riddle] “a repeated phrase, word, or theme running through and unifying a novel or play.” “a central idea.” Katie Wales, A Dictionary of Stylistics (1990) 1. “the simplest narrative thematic units in folk-tales and stories.” 2. “a synonym for leitmotif: a recurrent theme or idea in a text or group of texts.” “the use of repeated […] phrases; in a looser sense it is often used, like motif, to mean recurring or favorite themes throughout an author’s oeuvre.” “the ‘point’ of a literary work, its central idea, which we infer from our interpretation of the plot, imagery and symbolism, etc.” Kathleen Morner and Ralph Rausch, NTC’s Dictionary of Literary Terms (1991) “a recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation that appears in various works [a recurrent theme] or throughout the same work [sometimes leitmotif].” “the repetition of a significant word, phrase, theme, or image throughout a novel or play, which functions as a unifying element.” “the central or dominating idea, the ‘message,’ implicit in a work.” Chris Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (2001) “a situation, incident, idea, image, or character-type that is found in many different literary works, folktales, or myths; or any element of a work that is elaborated into a more general theme[…]within a single work, it is more commonly referred to as a leitmotif.” “a frequently repeated phrase, image, symbol, or situation in a literary work, the recurrence of which usually indicates or supports a theme.” “a salient abstract idea that emerges from a literary work’s treatment of its subject-matter; or a topic recurring in a number of literary works.” Edward Quinn, A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms (2006) “an element that appears in a number of literary works. It differs from a theme, which it closely resembles, in that it is a concrete example of a theme.” “a phrase or image that suggests a particular theme.” “A significant idea in a literary text, sometimes used interchangeably with motif.” Peter Auger, The Anthem Dictionary of Literary Terms and Theory (2010) “a recurring element within or between artistic works”: 1. “a basic means of shaping meaning within a work through repetition which hints at an overall theme” (“similar in meaning to leitmotif”) 2. “intertextual reappearance of elements” (“topoi”) “a prominent idea, character, image or situation that recurs throughout a work, or an author’s works.” “an abstract idea that seems central to a literary work’s design; a work’s structure and imagery (motifs) appear to support the theme.” M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (2012) “a conspicuous element, such as a type of incident, device, reference, or formula, which occurs frequently in works of literature[…] an older term for recurrent poetic concepts or formulas is the topos.” “the term ‘motif,’ or else the German leitmotif (a guiding motif) is also applied to the frequent repetition within a single work of a significant verbal or musical phrase, or set description, or complex of images.” “sometimes used interchangeably with ‘motif,’ [but] more usefully applied to a general concept or doctrine, whether implicit or asserted, which an imaginative work is designed to incorporate and make persuasive to the reader.”

Comparisons: Motif vs. Theme

Various Names in Different Literary Contexts

As one can deduct from the definitions above, sometimes even great literary scholars have problems differentiating between motifs and themes. To make matters even worse, each of these terms is considered—by different authors—synonymous with at least a few other terms used in similar contexts. Here’s an overview of this cacophony of terms and concepts:

  IN A SINGLE WORK ACROSS MANY WORKS   Name Example Term Example MOTIF leitmotif, leading motif, central motif a repeated reference (rings and arches in D. H. Lawrence’s Rainbow) or an expression (“So, it goes” in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five) literary topos / topoi ubi sunt, memento mori, carpe diem… common symbols cross, dove, love potion stock characters; folk-motifs miles gloriosus; the beauty and the beast THEME theme, topic, subject matter Christian redemption, The American Dream perennial theme Death, Love archetype the prostitute with a golden heart, the divine teacher, Don Juan motif see the first row

The comprehensive table above can be simplified in this circular manner:

  IN A SINGLE WORK ACROSS LITERARY WORKS MOTIF Leitmotif Topos THEME Theme Motif

So, in other words, when a motif starts reappearing across numerous literary works, it becomes a general, almost conventional, theme, i.e., a “topos.” If, however, we’re dealing with a recurrent element within a single work, then we’re actually talking about “leitmotifs,” constitutive elements of a certain idea, meaningful patterns which are suggestive of a certain mood or atmosphere or, else, hint at the larger theme of a work. Let’s try and further elaborate on these two meanings of the word “motif.”

Internal Distinctions: Two Types of Motifs

Topoi: Traditional Understanding of Motifs

Traditionally, the word “motif” has been understood in a rather general manner, i.e., as a synonym for a “commonplace topic,” or, to use a Greek term, a topos (topoi in plural). As such, motifs have been around since the earliest days of writing, and many of them are being constantly revisited and reworked with regards to different circumstances, occasions, or needs.

In cases such as these, motifs can sometimes be almost indistinguishable from themes. For example, both Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” are variations of the same carpe diem (“seize the day”) motif, but this is also very much their central theme (see our Examples of Motif in Literature).

Other traditional motifs often revisited by poets and authors are, say, the motif of the perfect place (Arcadia, Eden, Utopia, El-Dorado, Shangri-La…), the motif of the womanizer (Casanova, Don Juan, Lothario…), or the motif of the (hero’s) journey. Each of these three motifs has served as the premise for numerous wildly different works written by thousands of dissimilar authors.

For reasons such as this, it is sometimes convenient to place all these writings into one class and to speak of the carpe diem genre or the utopian/dystopian genre. In folkloristics, in fact, there exists a wide-ranging classification, called the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Motif-Index, which lists, in a nested manner, all variations of all traditional motifs found in world folklore. We mention one in our main Motif article, under the section “Songs with Motifs.”

Leitmotifs: Modern Reinterpretation of Motifs

In modern literary studies, motifs are usually understood much more strictly and are used in a much more different manner than traditional topoi are by writers. To make a distinction, some authors use the term leitmotif for this modern meaning of the word “motif.”

Musical Origin of the Term “Leitmotif”

The term leitmotif comes from music and is German in origin. It means “leading (guiding) motive” and was coined by Hans von Wolzogen to refer to a musical theme—repeated orchestral phrases—which evokes and/or can be identified with a specific character, situation, object, or emotion. Wolzogen used and developed the term with a specific reference to the operas of Richard Wagner, in which there are hundreds of leitmotifs, most of them related to a specific character or a situation.

To understand the musical meaning of the word leitmotif better, think of the ominous music which suggests an imminent shark attack in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, or the sound of heavy breathing which indicates the presence of killer Michael Myers in John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Literary Use of “Leitmotifs”

First applied by the English physician Havelock Ellis in 1896 to the work of Émile Zola, the term leitmotif assumed a similar meaning in literature: a reminder of continuity which hints at the general theme of a work. Modernist authors consciously appropriated this device, especially since while composing their experimental works, they stopped relying on conventional narrative concepts such as plot, characters, story or symbols.  As a result, they had to use something different to create internal cohesion within their texts, “economically to build a unified work.” And they found that something in the idea of the recurring motif—or, more precisely, the leitmotif.

In this case, motifs are unifying elements, and they merely point to a theme; however, they are very different from it. For example, flying is an essential motif in Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel, Song of Solomon, but the themes the novel explores have nothing to do with planes or birds, but, among other things, with one’s search for his/her own identity beyond the shackles of his immediate reality.

Motif vs. Theme: General Distinctions

“Motif and theme are two different things,” writes the great German scholar Ernst Robert Curtius in an essay on Hermann Hesse, “and critics would do well to distinguish between them.” But, unfortunately, due to the confusion over what exactly motif is, they haven’t. Curtius himself doesn’t offer particularly clear distinction, but he does well when he compares the motif to a plant: “it unfolds, forms nodes, branches out, puts forth leaves, buds, fruit.” In this analogy, the theme is something both more abstract and more straightforward, such as the Latin name of this plant or its place in a taxonomic table; often, the motif is what makes the theme tangible by adorning it with mood, ambiance, and overall atmosphere.

In the table below, we’ve tried summarizing the differences between this modern understanding of the word “(leit)motif” and the usual definitions of a “theme.” Hopefully, it can help you distinguish the terms “motif” and “theme” better in cases when you’re dealing with and analyzing a single work.

TYPE (LEIT)MOTIF THEME Element Recurring symbol, object, phrase, idea, situation Central idea; the subject-matter Size A simple, Indivisible element; (an atomic thematic element) A dividable union of elements (a molecule of motifs, symbols, characters, relations, etc.) Presence Local General Visibility Concrete, tangible, directly expressed, e.g., the rain in Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms or the phrase “To Moscow” in Chekhov’s Three Sisters Abstract, outside the text, indirectly expressed through motifs, images, characters, actions, symbols, etc. Perceptibility Intuitively grasped through reading Can be rationally deduced through interpretation Function motifs can suggest some atmosphere (e.g., the color red and darkness in Macbeth), mood (e.g., the breaking of string in Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard), hint at a theme (e.g., mongooses in Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) or contribute to the unification of a literary work (e.g., periodic striking of clocks in Mrs. Dalloway) the theme is what the writer wanted to say with his story, characters, motifs, etc.; it is not something he uses to say something; it is what he says by using something else Communicability Can’t be rephrased or summarized; e.g. “the motif of the green light in Great Gatsby” Can be paraphrased and recapitulated; e.g. “the theme of Hamlet is the conflict between human indecisiveness and duty” (this, of course, is not the only way to summarize the theme in Hamlet, neither the only theme for that matter) Commonness Usually more unique and more personalized; e.g., slippers and rackets in Nabokov’s Lolita A single theme can be reworked numerous times in thousands of different ways

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Artists Sift Through Archives for Memories of Miami

MemoryLab installation view (all photos by Barron Sherer unless otherwise noted; all work sources courtesy the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives at Miami Dade College, HistoryMiami Museum, South Florida)

Juan Maristany’s “Untitled,” a two-channel video installation of archived home videos, is currently projected across a 32-foot-long wall on the second floor of the HistoryMiami Museum. The wall is curved, bending to match the gaze of the eye and the flow of a walk around its length. “Untitled” is part of MemoryLab, an exhibition curated by Kevin Arrow and Barron Sherer of Obsolete Media Miami. The 16 featured artists/collectives (all of whom have ties to Miami, but currently live scattered throughout the country) were invited to explore the archives of both HistoryMiami — dating back 10,000 years — and the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives. The artists searched through home videos, letters, documents, and images, finding physical ephemera and strange histories with which to create new work.

Each of Maristany’s found images or looped clips is visible only long enough to briefly imprint themselves the brain; then, they fade, dissipating into ocean waves or smooth blackness. In one shot, there’s an unmoving pistachio-colored house, single-storied, low-roofed, and blanketed with palms. It’s unclear when the video was taken, but it’s a familiar, timeless scene to anyone who’s grown up in South Florida: the intrinsically cozy quality of a subtropical landscape, homes ostensibly protected by the dense flora surrounding them.

Juan Maristany, “Untitled” (2017), two-channel video installation / projection mapped, 20 x 32 feet

What does memory look like? Don Arnold and Richard Roberts, two researchers at the University of Southern California, engineered small probes to light up the synapses of a living neuron in real time. They discovered that when new memories are formed, the synapses that appear as bright spots along the neuron’s branches (dendrites) change shape. Memory, then, looks like literal shifting patches of light, given the right conditions. And what of Florida’s memory? Does it, too, look like scattered patches of light?

Miami’s reputation — a long history of not caring much for its history — is unfair; consider efforts like the Florida Memory Project, or Obsolete Media Miami itself. The entirety of Florida has a complicated history, of diaspora and weird ecologies and “only in Florida” tales, and the future of South Florida specifically is equally complex, threatened with sea-level rise and the questionable ethics of its cities’ council members. All histories are multifaceted, contingent on who’s telling it, and that’s maddeningly clear here. In their examination of Miami’s history, the artists in MemoryLab are essentially communicating the city’s present and future, because life is too cyclical to keep it all separated.

Julie Kahn, “DEPOST (trading post)” (2017), Spanish-American war Cigarette trading cards, artist trading cards, Seminole trade objects, trade objects from Havana Biennial & Art Basel Miami Beach, audio, video, dimensions variable

Glowing like a bright synapse at the exhibition’s entrance is an installation by Domingo Castillo, who placed on a wall several maquettes depicting various developments throughout Miami. In the wall’s center are four videos displaying, in juxtaposition, the policing of Miami’s neighborhoods and Getty images of plastered shots of high-rises and birds soaring over an Atlantic Ocean intended for the rich. The piece has an accompanying reader titled “Yesterdays, Tomorrow, Today,” a 245-page document including the W.A.G.E. manifesto and essays like Paul S. George’s “Policing Miami’s Black Community” and Raymond A. Mohl’s “The Interstates and the Cities: Highways, Housing, and the Freeway Revolt.” Mohl writes, “In Miami, Florida, state highway planners and local officials deliberately routed Interstate-95 directly through the inner-city black community of Overtown…Even before the expressway was built…some in Miami’s white and black press asked: ‘What about the Negroes uprooted by the Expressway?’” Even without the dense reader — which you must ask for at the museum’s front desk — the dichotomy of the images provides enough unsettling context.

Racial exclusion and xenophobia are examined in “Passing Through,” an interactive piece by Elia Khalaf, who sourced home videos of a Cuban family in exile, letters from a mother to her immigrant child, and photographs of a tourist in Lebanon (Khalaf is Lebanese). These are placed along a wall designed to look like a television. The opposite side is grid-patterned, with each square left blank for museum visitors to write their own notes, working in collaboration with Khalaf to piece together a fragmented history. “We built Miami,” says one; “we were all immigrants once,” reads another. Khalaf’s accompanying text for the piece reads: “In fear of conflict between Christians and Muslims, the end of the Lebanese Civil War resulted in government-mandated censorship barring any mention of the atrocities that occurred within the country between 1970 and 1991. This state of forced amnesia leaves the writing of history to me.” All of us with diaspora in our blood understand what it means to occupy this space, of reimagining your own history, of writing yourself into a narrative that sometimes excludes you.

Elia Khalaf, “Passing Through” (2017), digital illustration, film, photography, 8 x 9 feet

In “Untitled (We will settle for a place among the pines and the palms; a city without walls),” Adler Guerrier touches on the idea of diaspora too, his images (both color and scanned black-and-white) of Florida’s plant life acting as backdrop to a small TV showcasing found footage. They’re mostly news reels from 1980 to 1984, showcasing local Floridian reactions to Cuban and Haitian immigrants — one segment features a doctor explaining that, despite a pervasive fear of Haitian refugees bringing AIDS to the US, it is not logical to designate a group of people as being a carrier of disease; another section discusses, pejoratively, the Miami-Dade public school system’s leniency in allowing teens who “can’t speak English” to graduate. But Guerrier, who was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, tells me he does not want to simply highlight the negative backlash with this work, which is also about “the magnetism Miami had to waves of refugees. These Haitians and Cubans, they knew, ‘This is a place we want to be.’”

Shahreyar Ataie, “Lipstick Aviators” (2017), mixed media, dimensions variable

The duo Archival Feedback (T. Wheeler Castillo and Emile Milgrim) captures this magnetism by exploring the peculiar aural landscape of Florida via fieldwork and research. Their three “Audiographs,” displayed in a vitrine with headphones for listening, are made of polycarbonate, a material resistant to humidity. “Star Factory” draws upon sounds from the Miami Museum of Science and Space Transit Planetarium, whereas “Sounding the Bay” traces Biscayne Bay through hydrophone recordings — you can hear the gurgling of fish and the sound of cars driving above — and, most fascinatingly, there is “Greater Miami 1934,” which translates an old map into electronic sounds — the map is played like music.

Alliance of the Southern Triangle A.S.T. (Diann Bauer, Felice Grodin, Patricia Margarita Hernandez and Elite Kedan), “Landscape (Test Patterns for Future Positions)” (2017), video projection and monitor installation; three-channel video (color, sound), MDF set

Willie Avendano’s Invitation Suites, two sets of videos comprised of dreamy archival footage — a baby’s birthday party, a carnival ride — use data sequencing to repeat and dissolve the images over and over, mimicking the way memories feel inherently chaotic. (Full disclosure: Avendano is a friend.) Only real memory recall is more faulty. MemoryLab restrings memories like Christmas lights and data, and we begin to process them like dreams. These realities are composites of so many others, and as such do not really exist, yet we feel, hear, and experience them.

In fact, some of the works seem premonitory, and if so, they might come to fruition and imprint themselves on our memories in a much more deliberate way. In “Landscape (Test Patterns for Future Positions),” a video by the Alliance of the Southern Triangle (Diann Bauer, Felice Grodin, Patricia Margarita Hernandez, and Elite Kedan), weather maps and hurricane-tracking agents become a composite model of everything we can only try to understand about climate change, or weather in general. Foretelling sea-level rise or a hurricane’s power are ultimately abstractions, not yet added to our history, though their exigencies feel real enough to reach.

Jamilah Sabur, “A point at zenith: Become a body with organs and smell the flowers” (2017), three-channel video with hyper-directional sound, dimensions variable

Jamilah Sabur’s installation, “A point at zenith: Become a body with organs and smell the Flowers,” was the last one I explored, and the only one in which I was able to experience in utmost silence. One enters into a room fully projected with a green grid, watching a video in which Sabur is dressed as a jockey wearing a gas mask, trapped in a jai alai court on an upper floor of an abandoned building. This building, explains the piece’s accompanying text, stands at the corner of NE 2nd Ave and 50th St in Little Haiti: a current point of contention due to its impending, expensive development. Here, we have both the fate of a problematic situation and a reference to something that feels decisively Floridian (jai alai originated in Basque, but remains popular in South Florida), a fictional character stuck between the two. As Sabur explained to me, “I imagine that the building is surrounded by toxic air.” This is possible, maybe probable, but we try to reimagine a better outcome for Florida, over and over and over.

MemoryLab continues at the HistoryMiami Museum (101 W Flagler St, Miami) through April 16.

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