2002 January

The Art Oasis

The high-quality exhibit Contemporary Artists of Ann Arbor at the Art Oasis on Main Street tempted me to take one of the classes held in the studio space behind the gallery. If I did, I realized, some of my fellow students would...

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Doc Watson

"Oh, I have seen the David," sings Guy Clark. "Seen the Mona Lisa, too. And I have heard Doc Watson sing 'Columbus Stockade Blues.' " My own favorite Doc Watson moment is more modest. It came the last...

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Germany versus France

What do you get when you cross a metaphysically inclined German tough guy with a liberté et égalité French orchestra? Beautiful music? Maybe. Maybe not. Christoph Eschenbach is the metaphysically inclined German tough guy....

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Timothy Liu

Early in Burnt Offerings, his second collection of poetry, Timothy Liu writes: “All my life / the sound I’ve been trying to hear is the sound / of my own voice.” It is perhaps too easy to put that as a kind of...

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The Starlight Drifters

A few days after George Harrison’s funeral I saw the Starlight Drifters at the Tap Room in Ypsilanti, and it was, believe me, very easy to imagine a world in which the Beatles had never existed, despite being told...

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