Buena Vista Social Club

Guitarist Ry Cooder combed the streets of Havana in 1998 to find Cuba's foremost folk musicians--many now in their 90's. Director Wim Wenders captures the musicians reminiscing about growing up on the streets of Cuba in the early days of the 20th century.

Footage of the musicians walking around the streets of present-day Havana and their much acclaimed concerts in London and at New York's Carnegie Hall in the late 90's.

The video gives a candid glimpse of what Havana looks like today.

The film begins with shots of two rare photographs of Fidel Castro and Che Guevera playing golf together in the 1950's.

Someone off-screen asks the musician who owns the photos: "Who won?"

The musician answered, "Fidel."

Then he laughed.  "Che let Fidel win . . . " 

Milan Kundera

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come . .  .

There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison.  We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No "sketch" is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of  something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

Einmal ist keinmal. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all."

                                                                                      The Unbearable Lightness of Being

                                                                                     Milan Kundera

Kavalier and Clay

I just finished listening to Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.

Loved it.  

Josef Kavalier is whisked away from his family in Holocaust Poland to America in Houdiniesque fashion and ends up sharing a bed with his cousin Sammy in his aunt's Brooklyn apartment . 

Together they plot their rise to fame and financial fortune in the comic book empire of Gotham City.

Yiddish humor, a love story and an inside view of the comic book industry--the birth of  Superman and Batman and Robin--and life in New York City during the late 30's and 40's during the outbreak of WWII.  What's not to like?

I got introduced to Chabon by reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (read "Jewish Mafia") and was eager for more.

It's easy to see why this one got a Pulitzer.

Looking forward to "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" . . .