Babooshka dolls and Franz Kafka in Prague

Posted on July 13, 2008 by Michele

You would think Prague is all about Kafka, Mucha and Dvorak but it’s really about these dolls – the Babooshka dolls are everywhere in Praha:

I would like to share my last trip to this beautiful city with you. I stayed in this fabulous hotel where everything but the view to the river was red (my favorite color)

these exquisite chandeliers are the pride and joy of the Czech Republic.

this is the view from my room:

and this one

Just look at Frank Gehry‘s edifice in the middle of these gorgeous buildings set on the shore of a shallow branch of the Vltava river – these tiny pictures are really not doing it justice.

First the sun was shining,

then it was raining like hell,

and then this amazing double rainbow; talking about a room with a view…

Prague is a city of posters,

and the capital of caryatids! Paris will never get close to these gorgeous men and women.

these two weren’t talking to each other:

but these two were – for an eternity.

I woke up at 6 in the morning and took the tramway to Charles bridge – the only time in the day that it’s a bit quiet. Cities are majestic in the morning blue hour.

The astronomical clock is the main tourist attraction.

Speaking of Kafka, he’s omnipresent:

and here and everywhere…

Beautiful city/people/pastries/absinthe (I brought some mean ones back to L.A.)

All and all, the Czech republic has shown gargantuan progress in a few years since the fall of communism – if only it stayed as inexpensive as the first time I visited…

“A book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us” Franz Kafka

A night with some dry drunk Persians

Posted on July 6, 2008 by Michele

I got drunk on music at Frank Gehry’s last night along with two thousand other people. Even though independence day usually is accompanied by the two Adamses – Samuel (the beer), and John (the second president) – this year was different.

It was amazing : an Iranian music ensemble called “Mastan” or the drunks, with its director/vocalist, Parvaz Homaye, performed at Walt Disney music hall. The astonishing thing is that this group lives and performs in Iran and has chosen a name and lyrics laced with wine/intoxication/breaking repentance/dissent/hope… The young vocalist actually played on two big jugs – khomreh – that begged to be full of wine like Jesus’ in the marriage of cana!

How the mullahs managed to asphyxiate 70 million people by depriving them of music and wine is beyond my comprehension… Just look at these paintings: where there is music, there is wine. The concert last night proved that if you take the wine out of a Persian’s life, he’ll continue to sing about it! Move your mouse on the images to see a description of the paintings and the year they were created.

These instruments have not changed in centuries but the music has evolved. I love this painting of Kamancheh (upright fiddle), tar and daf:

This gorgeous painting in a palace in Isfahan from around 1670:

Last but not least is this funny looking dude playing a lute:

Passionate improvisation is the basis of Persian classical music. Watch this clip to see some hard core first-rate Persian musicians – Kayhan Kalhor on kemancheh (spike fiddle), Hussein Alizadeh on tar (lute), Shajarian on vocals, and his son on tombak (hand drum) – warning to the uninitiate: there is heavy duty yodeling! I couldn’t resist adding these pictures of the great Kalhor playing and Yo-Yo Ma watching – they collaborated on the Silk Road Project:

Watch the Mastan here – they will be performing in San Francisco, San Diego and Washington D.C. this July.

صبح است ساقیا قدحی پرشراب کن
دور فلک درنگ ندارد شتاب کن
زان پیشتر که عالم فانی شود خراب
ما را ز جام باده گلگون خراب کن

حافظ

Red suede shoes

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Michele

It’s been a busy tough week so that’s all I have to share:

The card is from yet another under-represented French artist: Cécile Veilhan. This particular work of hers is called un printemps abricot or an apricot spring. I have most of her work but she’s still a second to my favorite, Gaelle Boissonnard…

Exploration of the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.

Gerd Muller…Where are you?

Posted on June 22, 2008 by Michele

Gerd Muller…Where are you? Beckenbauer, Pelé, Jairzinho, Eusébio, George Best, Gordon Banks, the Charlton brothers and captain Cruijff…These were my childhood heroes and I miss them; I got hooked watching the 1970 anf 1974 world cups with my dad in Tehran like most soccer crazy Persians (well maybe not the mullahs). Number 13, 10 and 7 were sacred numbers…

Watching Euro 2008, I am constantly reminded of these great champions I admired as a little girl. I felt nostalgic today and put together these images just to have these guys in the same place one more time – even if it’s only in my blog.

I knew der Kaiser since he was a mere prinz beckenbauer (above)!

I don’t understand/like baseball and American football is only tolerated when USC is playing but soccer stays close to my heart…There is a hierarchy of course like in any sport: we have princes and kings, Brazilian Gods and black pearls and panthers, even a black spider (the Russian Yashin)!

There is hand of God (Maradona) and real God (Pele):

There was Jairzinho,

The Charlton brothers,

The beatle George best,

Eusébio,

The great Platini (aka the sun king in cleats):

Watching today’s players is exciting but they come and go or become media’s pretty boys while bending it like you know who…

My favorite team is Germany (after Brazil of course) – I don’t like the cheating Italians/Argentines – the British exasperate me with great national clubs but poor national teams and the French are annoying with their inconsistencies – I like great soccer and whoever plays best is my champion.

Beckenbauer and Muller are mere children in the above picture. It took hours to put these images together but it was a labor of love…

Delahaye, Hispano Suiza, Kurtis 500, Bentley, Ferrari, Bugatti

Posted on June 16, 2008 by Michele

With these shameless gas prices, it’s less painful to look at cars than driving them. I went to an auto show today and two hours and 100 pictures later, I was about to over-dose on beautiful antique cars, gorgeous vintage sports cars and even the vulgar Ferraris and Maseratis…

I’ve never seen so many shades of red outside the cosmetic counter’s lipstick section! A good name for a shade of lipstick would be a “Ferrari red” – a “Corvette carmine” for a nail polish:

Amazing tires:

Lovely 1956 Chevrolet Bel Airs:

Great interiors and fins:

It was Rolls Royce galore in Rodeo Drive today but that will be for another post.

This 1938 Dubonnet Hispano Suiza is out of this world:

or this Delahaye:

To see more about fast cars, go here. Happy Father’s Day!

May means purple rain in Los Angeles

Posted on June 9, 2008 by Michele

It rains purple in Los Angeles every May.

Beautiful Jacarandas in full bloom line some streets in Los Angeles and Buenos Aires.

The streets are quiet on sunday afternoons so I went out to take some pictures of the Jacarandas in full bloom.

In some streets (like Whittier in Beverly Hills), they line both sides of the road and their branches meet making a beautiful violet tunnel.

You can enjoy these trees in their full purple glory for a couple of months provided you never park your car in the purple rain of blossoms under the trees; it gets pretty sticky…

Of course these are not the only stunning purples. There are zillions of Bougainvilleas (paper flower):

or these gorgeous purple wreath bushes:

Their deep lavender color is breathtaking to look at.

Of course all I wanted to do today was to talk about a picture I really like: Obama’s tattered shoes but the purple rain kept falling…

Do you think he would want to march on Iran like McCain and Clinton promised to do? with these shoes?

Thanks to Evelyn, Ali and Jim’s comments, we know that this is not the first time that we are seeing the soles of a presidential candidate.

A Persian in Venice

Posted on June 2, 2008 by Michele

My smile got bigger and bigger as I continued listening to Professor Riccardo Zipoli talking about Iran in his near perfect Persian; but then I got a bit frustrated remembering that in spite of speaking three languages myself, I have to applaud every non-Persian who can say 4 words in my mother tongue! Listen to him talk here to see what I mean by Zipoli’s flawless Persian.

These two pictures are from the Professor’s huge archive. He has a soft spot for the rural landscape/people of Iran.

Born near Florence, teaching in Venice, reciting Sohrab Sepehri better than most of the natives has endeared Zipoli to Persians. I particularly like his Tree series. You can find more of his pictures on his site.

Looking at these images made me nostalgic so I went to look for some pictures from my last trip to Iran about 14 years ago. Here is one of my favorites from the Shah’s Mosque in Isfahan, a marvel of Safavid art. I still remember my awe in front of all these magnificent architectural wonders.

“If you come to visit me
Come gently and slowly lest the fragile china
Of my solitude cracks”
به سراغ من اگر مي‌آييد،
نرم و آهسته بياييد، مبادا كه ترك بردارد
چيني نازك تنهايي من
“Si vous venez m’y chercher,
Venez-vous-en donc lentement et doucement
De crainte que ne se raye
La porcelaine de ma solitude.” Sohrab Sepehri

And for all of you people who are still looking for a Persian in Venice, I am sharing this picture I took some years ago.

Warm, sunny nights – cool, cloudy days

Posted on May 25, 2008 by Michele

I love California’s warm summer nights and winter days. If I could have a custom made climate, I would ask for warm summer nights of Los Angeles infused with the scent of jasmine and orange blossoms and cool, cloudy winter days.

In other words I would take the best of both seasons. With the way the “custom made” world is progressing, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days my wish comes true.

I took these pictures in a small hotel in Paris with these typical windows with fake Parisian balconies and cheap curtains. It was magical though – something in the quiet of a curtain’s movement in the breeze reminds us of less noisy times, less hurried lives, less superficial connections…

It’s highly unusual for me to add something to a post once it’s been published but Marie-ancolie romanet, my photographer friend, asked me to add this picture of hers that goes with her comments. Check out her site, she has superb images…

Beautiful naked bodies

Posted on May 12, 2008 by Michele

I saw these naked bodies last week in the science museum. I’ve been trying to see this exhibition for a long time. Gunther von Hagens‘ lifetime work is awe inspiring to say the least.

It’s all about real human bodies preserved through Plastination. It takes more than 1500 hours of work to transform a corps into a plastinate – the near perfect representation of a once living human body. It’s interesting to see how each body has it own unique features, even on the inside.

We usually forget that beneath even the most beautiful bodys’ skin lies a skeleton, muscles, several feet of intestines and lots of other goodies!

This whole experience reminded me of a great rainy day last year when I visited the small Dupuytren museum in the school of medicine in Paris. Just look at the skull of this man hit by a rifle stick in 1807 – he died after two days.

And if you are (unlike me) into mythology, you may enjoy seeing a real Kyklōps (cyclops). After being exposed to all of the above, I listened today to my favorite podcast about the history of Brain.

I am not all flowers and poetry after all, am I?

To see more of the beautiful Joey House go to my post sex, sex, sex here.

added on September 15th 2009:

I have thousands of visitors to this post; can somebody please let me know, who/what is sending you here aside the hunt for beautiful naked bodies?

Rufus Cappadocia, not your father’s cellist.

Posted on May 5, 2008 by Michele

Listening to Rufus Cappadocia the other day on NPR, I almost had an accident! I seldom get excited about “fusion/cross-cultural music” but the more I listened to it, the bigger the smile got on my face. Just watch this clip to see what I got all excited about.

I liked what I heard so much that I made several images out of the few pictures I could find of him online. Rufus is a New York-based cellist and composer, a multilingual musician, a world music traveler, having studied and performed in a variety of traditions from American blues, folk and jazz to Spanish flamenco, Haitian vodou drumming and various styles from the Balkans, the Middle East and India. Reminding me that his last name, Cappadocia, is where Rumi lived, Rufus told me about his work with Rumi’s poetry and Vishal Vaid, the extraordinary Ghazal vocalist.

His CD sold out after the NPR piece but it will be in stock this week – it’s also available on iTunes. A modified cello has given him the flexibility to play in many settings with other musicians. Rufus is playing on May 18th in Oakland with Stellamara. Check it out if you live in the area.

The real magician is the one who puts Jimmy Hendrix and classical Persian music together…

Michele Roohani

“Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult.”