Following
the trail of bass players from Wilbur Ware, to Sam Jones and on today to Mr.
Buster Williams, who was born in Camden New Jersey two days before my own
birthday, in 1942. I’ve got on a
tune that is just about as gentle as I can take, “Betcha By Golly Wow” from his
1980 release “Dreams Come True.”
He’s stroking with a bow and it sounds beautiful. The following tune, is finger picked, a
straight up driving version of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” that could be useful as I punch
my way through this Monday. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buster_Williams
One project for this blog is to have a look at some of the pieces
I have hanging on my wall and try to reckon with them. You put things up, they stay there and
you walk past them all the time.
Guests come and very rarely someone asks and you say “ah yes, this is .
. . “ whatever it is, if you can properly recall. To-date I think I’ve managed to discuss two pieces: a copy I
have from the Palace Museum in Taipei of Zhao Mengfu’s "Autumn Colors at Qiao
and Hua Mountains", which is set in Shandong. The other that I recall is the little poster of the Greek
Isle of Hydra I have up done by Periklis Byzantios.
When you walk in our front door there is an eighteenth
century European map of the province of Shandong. This is the turf that my wife hails from and with
ninety-eight million people and a history as old as Egypt, there is plenty to
keep one occupied, should it fall into your gaze. I bought the map I have in Hong Kong eight years or so,
ago. John Wattis and his wife
Vicky have a wonderful store, right off the escalator there on Hollywood Road
in Hong Kong. I’ve bought a few
things from them over the years. I
just went over and looked at it and John had written on the back “Du Halde
1735.” http://www.wattis.com.hk/gallery/maps/20/
If you look the gentleman up, as I just did, you find that Jean-Baptiste
Du Halde, was a French Jesuit who was born in Paris on 1 February 1674 and died
18 August 1743. Though he never
traveled to China, he wrote, what was at the time the definitive European look
at the empire: “The General
History of China Containing a Geographical, Historical, Chronological,
Political and Physical Description of the Empire of China, Chinese-Tartary,
Corea, and Thibet; Including an Exact and Particular Account of Their Customs,
Manners, Ceremonies, Religion, Arts, and Sciences : The Whole Adorn'd with
Curious Maps, and Variety of Copper-Plates.” Pithy title.
Mine, was one of the 42 maps, within. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Du_Halde
Now I don’t suspect that the piece I have hanging on my wall
was one that Du Halde himself ever physically drafted with his own hands. But I do believe it was a print from
that time. The map itself is
gorgeous and though the Romanizations are a different from those commonly used
today, “Province De Chan-Tong” it is still easy enough to place some timeless
Chinese names of villages and towns.
The city of note, closest to my wife’s home town, Binzhou, stands out in
bold with a small red city symbol besides it as “Pin-tcheou.” A good reminder that the proper
pronunciation of the city I live in is neither Bei Jing, or is it Pei King but
actually something in between them both.
The book itself became standard in the libraries across
Europe and sparked interest in China at time of the chinoiserie of that period,
when Europe was benignly fascinated by a China it didn’t understand and still
could not easily access. Within a
hundred years, the fascination would turn to disdain and opportunism. Europe’s blessing and curse was it’s
underlying understanding of itself as peripheral for so much of its history,
before it could imagine itself the center. Peripheral to Rome, and Jerusalem, and Constantinople. Curiosity and a conviction to convert
lead Du Halde to devote his work to a far away place that he’d never have the
chance to visit. A 好奇上衣[1] mind of the Enlightenment. Who
in China, at that time, cared to map anything beyond the world it knew and might still safely assume, was the center?
[1]
hàoqíshàngyì: liking what odd,
interested in what is different (idiom); curious about the exotic / inquisitive
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