Hysterically Entertaining

Hysterical yawning

Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpêtrière by Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot.
Salpetriere was a major psychiatric hospital in Paris, a former dumping ground for women diagnosed as "hysterical"

Polaire, one of the most famous of the "epileptic" performers.
image from Polaire 1900

Cafe Concert performer Paulus is credited with bringing a frenetic, grimacing gesticulation to the stage in 1871.
He imitated "invalids and limping women." Another singer recalled, "The excited stamping of epileptic choreography" caught on.

In 1905, 21 American patients' seizures were filmed—called ”epilepsy biographs”— by the
American Mutoscope and Biograph company

documentary images, Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpêtrière
by Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot

Edgar Degas, At the Cafe Concert: The Song of the Dog, 1875-77

Thérésa, a popular 19th century gommeuse

"idiot" comic Dranem, 1905

The maniacal British acrobatic troupe the Hanlon-Lees, c. 1878. Bibliotheque Nationale

 It is certain that today, primarily in cities, hysteria is the illness in vogue. It is everywhere."
— Dr. Paul-Max Simon, 1881

Progress and fashion have just given us a new way to go nuts. It replaces snobbery, the races and the occult... It’s neurasthenia. All the world has it my friends.—the song “Neurasthenia,” 1906

A good half of the hit songs of [today] belong to the jiggling pit of Charcot...
they have gesticulatory hysteria—critic Georges Montorgeuil, 1896*

Polaire! The agitating and agitated Polaire! ...What a devilish mimic, what a coffee-grinder and what a belly-dancer!  ...Polaire skips, flutters, wriggles, arches from the hips, the back, the belly,
mimes every kind of shock, twists, coils, rears, twirls... trembling like a stuck wasp, miaows,
faints to what music and what words! The house, frozen with stupor, forgets to applaud.
—Jean Lorrain Decadent novelist and critic

When I first researched and posted about the early 20th century cabaret performer Polaire, I came across the description gommeuse epileptique. Lazily, I relied on Google translate to elucidate. It spit forth "gummy epileptic" which didnt help much, so I was amused and left it at that. It wasnt until a recent commenter tipped me off to a wonderful book that explained that peculiar phrase and revealed that "epilectic singers" were an entire genre of entertainment in late 19th and early 20th century France. Why the French Love Jerry Lewis: From Cabaret to Early Cinemaby Rae Beth Gordon is not so much about Jerry Lewis as it is a fascinating interdisciplinary study of the intersection of early French mass entertainment and psychiatric pathology. I especially love 'rogue' scholarship which brings together unlikely academic bedfellows and Gordon doe not disappoint. She juggles mesmerism, somnabulism, music hall entertainment, high brow/low brow divide in culture, Darwin, Nordau's theory of degeneration, "savages", Georges Melies’ films, and mental illness. All this before she even gets to Jerry Lewis.

The book discusses a particular kind of performance which first appeared in the music halls of France in the 1870s and 80s. It was a comedic style characterized by frenetic movements, tics, facial grimaces, and other bizarre behavior that, Gordon asserts, mimicked various nervous disorders such as hysteria, epilepsy, and Tourette's Syndrome beginning to get coverage in the popular press. It was just at this time that modern psychiatry and neurological study were emerging. Hysteria and later neurasthenia were the focus of professional and public attention alike. Jean-Martin Charcot, dubbed the Napoleon of Neuroses, was instrumental in the popularization (or “vulgarization”) of hysteria. The foremost French neurologist of his day and a professor of anatomical pathology, Charcot used photography for the classification and diagnosis of hysteria and published the widely circulated Photographic Iconography of the Salpêtrière (1876-80) and the New Iconography of the Salpetriere (1888—1918). Referring to the Salpetriere, a hospital in the middle of Paris which confined 4000 women as incurable or insane, Charcot stated he was "in possession of a kind of museum of living pathology whose holdings were virtually inexhaustible.” He opened the doors of that museum to Paris and put on demonstrations, allowing the spectacle of illness to seep into into the public psyche and vernacular. (It is also of interest that a noted experimental psychologist, Alfred Binet, wrote for the Grand Guignol Theater—which deserves a post of its own.)

The French public was fascinated and entertained by watching pathology as spectacle in both the (medical) amphitheater and at the theater. (After all, it was only a step removed from the earlier, well-established bourgeois pass time of touring insane asylums.) For the high brow—Flaubert, Maupassant, the Goncourt brothers, Huysmans, and Jarry all published works relating to hysteria or neurasthenia— to the lowest common thrill-seeker these nervous diseases and the shocks of psychiatric treatment became short hand for the notion of “modernity,” a motif later picked up by Dada and the Surrealists.//

It seems to me that in America anything similar to this style would be black entertainment—ragtime, cakewalks, jazz—and the dance crazes of the teens—the Grizzly Bear, Turkey Trot. Although Gordon doesnt discuss her, the book explains why the French would go wild for Josephine Baker.


*Songs such as “Too Nervous,” “Tata's Tic,” “La Parisienne Epileptique,” and “I’m a Neurasthenic.”

Pill Heds

I've been thinking about drugs names. I don't think I'm alone in my occasional scrutiny of these mysterious, often ridiculous, sometimes brilliant confabulations. (The pharmaceutical business spends a good chunk of their budget on branding and naming and I think this tangential element of design justifies my assessing the results, no? I'm not going into the logo design here, but see this amusing step by step "review" of Ablixa.)

Huge potential money-makers like psychopharmacological agents and erectile dysfunction buttresses have particularly high stakes in naming and design. According to Medscape the cost in 2001 of consultation on naming alone ranged from $100,000 to $700,000. Elsewhere I read the numbers are "easily" $500,000 up to a couple million.

Each drug receives 3 names:
• the chemical name—usually a string of prefixes, numbers and a lot of "ethyls" and "phenyls"
• the International Nonproprietary Name (INN, also known as the generic name)— these names are created from a standardized group of "stem" components which represent different classes of drugs (eg. anti-inflammatories, antidepressants)
• the brand name

here's an example:

• chemical name — 7-chloro-1,3-dihydro-1 methyl-5-phenyl-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one
• generic name — diazepam (-azepam is used for many antianxiety agents)
• brand name — Valium

Names have to be memorable, convey something medicinal and curative, not interfere with international marketing (ie. should not sound like "bad luck" in Chinese) and not be too similar to something already out there. This last criterion is not only for marketing purposes— the FDA evidently rejects 4 out of 10 names so as to not create confusion and possible medical disasters (for instance Celexa vs Celebrex).

Going through what must surely be a gauntlet of committee presentations and focus-grouping, how on earth do names like Xalkori and Xofigo see the light of day? The New York Times noted that "drug makers have favorite letters, and they run the gamut from X to Z." They quoted James Dettore of Brand Institute and explained;

"the letters X, Z, C and D, according to ...  "phonologics," subliminally indicate that a drug is powerful. "The harder the tonality of the name, the more efficacious the product in the mind of the physician and the end user," he said." 

 According to Slate, though, there might just be a computer algorithm behind all those Xs:

During tough financial times... many drug manufacturers skip human consultants and use computerized algorithmic name generators because they just want something that will get quick approval from the FDA and don’t care how ridiculous the name looks or sounds. //

My not-so-empirical approach to looking at drug names
the word-- how does it sound? how does it look?, associative images–– what does it sound like? what does it bring to mind?, appropriateness–— how well does the name work for what the drug does?

Successes:
Ambien—pretty good at conveying a zoned-out calm, perhaps a little too techno
Zoloft—  its propping you up, get it?--holding you zoloft
Viagra— brilliant— it's vigorous, it's vital, it's Niagra Falls for chrissakes
Abilify— "this antidepressant has abilified me to be functional!"
Keppra— Strangely elegant and aloof, like the name of an ancient Egyptian deity. Not bad for an anti convulsant

The not-so-greats:
Vioxx— a vanquished Transformers villain— anti-inflammatory now off the market
Viibryd—looking like something you'd find at IKEA (thanks Andrew) this antidepressant doesn't even have an aspirational quality. plus the sound of it seems a bit too manic for a mood stabilizer
Coumadin—a blood thinner that sounds like a mid-level bureaucratic title of the Ottoman Empire; its generic name, warfarin, sounds like a strategic conflict board game
Effexor— this antidepressant reminds me of Gigantor, Space Age Robot
Aubagio— sounds to me like an Italian restaurant you'd find on Staten Island, odd association for drug to treat multiple sclerosis
Stalevo— treats Parkinsons disease but looks like it's a city in Serbia
Simponi Aria— is it part of an Italian opera? an obscure part of the brain (see Wernicke’s area)? No it treats rheumatoid arthritis. Perhaps it leaves you singing.

Fails:
Fungizone— targets potentially fatal fungal infections; the name sounds appropriate in a blatant ham-fisted way, but I would not like to tell people I was on it.
Latuda—an antidepressant that seems more like a vulnerable area of the lower back; see  "phonologics"mentioned above—this drug doesn't sound man enough to make me happy
Lamictal— looks like a term for a pus-forming condition—not so good for a mood stabilizer/anti convulsant
Zortress—suppresses the immune system but sounds like a 1980s video game
Zingo— just completely wrong

Cloisters and Cardiff

Janet Cardiff's 40 part Motet closed this past weekend at the Cloisters. The installation was crowded but the piece still effective. The vocal work at its center is called Spem in Alium or “Hope in any Other” by Thomas Tallis, composed c 1570 for eight choirs of 5 voices. It was written as a progression of voices— sometimes singing in unison, sometimes in call and response. Cardiff's piece, as you may know, consisted of 40 freestanding speakers, each approximately six feet tall, set up around the Cloisters’ Fuentiduena chapel. Each speaker projects an individual voice, (the 40 were recorded separately) so that as you move around the space you experience each voice intimately. You are at the center as the music is projected back and forth across the space.

The Cloisters itself— a faux medieval abbey which houses much of the Metropolitan Museum's medieval collection—can strike one as characteristically American. If you think too long on its conception it can color your visit, or at least it did mine: rich diletante (George Grey Bernard) collects bits and pieces of medieval architectural details from around Europe and imports them here; a medieval pastiche financed by another rich American (John D Rockefeller) is constructed to house them; land both immediately surrounding the complex as well as across the river along the New Jersey palisades is bought up to preserve the view. A testament to American wealth and cultural boldness— buying up history wholesale and bringing it home. Thus the Fuentiduena chapel is actually an apse from one location, statuary from another, and a fresco from yet another, inserted into a "chapel" built in 1938. Throughout the building there are door frames from France housed with pillars from Spain flanking rooms made from Netherlandish accoutrements. Still, I dont really mean to criticize. Its a lovely haven in Manhattan and the gardens with researched, period-appropriate plantings are wonderful in and of themselves.

documenting the light

light patterns filtered through distorted old glass panes in my apartment.
This looks slightly diseased in a still image. See video below

 
I find the light effects kind of mesmerizing.
Music: Brooklyn musician Jonas Asher aka Grasslung– Too Tired to Remember

the slightly watery view through 125+ year old glass.

particularly hectic light effect on a mirror frame
Music: Yo La Tengo —Dont Have to be So Sad

I've always thought the light in my apartment pretty special. It's not wildly bright but rather has a progressive luminosity that makes its way around the (small) space from NE to SW over the course of the day. Its varied intensities from indirect sunrise glow to full late afternoon radiance are something I've never tired of. The apartment is the front of a corner brownstone so I have 2-1/2 exposures: front, side, and the projecting bay window giving me a partial additional angle East. The windows are all original, c.1885, and the glass is noticeably distorted. Ripples, slumps and tiny pinhead bubbles in the panes subtly alter the view so that everything appears slightly underwater. These imperfections also goad the light coming in into sporadic dancing fits on the walls and ceiling. I decided, after 17 years in the space, to finally document the light. So indulge me.

Addendum: I noticed someone linked to me from an Old House forum. Homeowners and renovators: I *love* my old windows. The side panes on the bay window are curved glass; the center panel is extra wide. The frames are unpainted, original finished wood– in bad shape. But even though they're literally crumbling in places, they work incredibly smoothly on weighted chains. Bottom and top panes can literally be lifted and lowered with 2 fingers.

age 12-14: a playlist

REPOST with updates:
In a burst of self-revelatory earnestness I will begin by admitting that until very recently I didn't listen to music that often. I'm not sure why. Many people come home at the end of a day and reflexively turn on the stereo (or load the files), I turn on the tv or look at my email in silence. Occasionally I'd get in a phase where I'd check out some new jangly, folky noodlings online... but then that passed. But lately I've been thinking about songs I haven't heard in years...

There was a certain span of time–junior high/high school–when music was more than important to me, it was desperately critical. It was one of the first ways I found to define myself. From the day I brought a Sex Pistols fan magazine with me to 7th grade English class I discovered I was not like everybody else. Not in a “shocking” Heather Has Two Mommies way, or in an obvious Black Boy way, but, in that Bay City Rollers moment of a tiny private school in an upper middle class neighborhood in a stultifying outer borough, I felt undeniably 'other'. I may not have looked all that different (this was before I cut my hair and discovered black, a go-to color for the next 25 years or so) but this studious only child of two teachers from Queens identified with rebellion in Thatcherite England! I understood 'the dole' and 'council housing' — literally, if not socio-economically. I wanted spikey hair and bondage pants and Doc Martens. Even if I hadn't been completely at a loss as to where one would find bondage pants in Forest Hills in 1979, they would likely have caused a problem with the dress code at my school. America didn't understand me! and Queens was beyond the borders of civilization. I didn't belong here. I developed a barely concealed disdain for, and dismay at, all that was around me.
I cherish that and carry it with me to this day.

I spent a while unearthing the songs that meant something when I was (I am convinced) the only kid in Kew Gardens, Queens, listening to, in no particular order:

Wire Dot Dash  (audio only)
I utterly fell in love with this singer's voice

Wire Map Ref 41°N 93°W (audio only)

Sex Pistols Sod Save the Queen
Rotten was a brilliantly drawn character– feral, Dickensian. I never got tired of him.

 
Sex Pistols Holidays in the Sun
Trying to find really decent footage of them is like looking for videos of Big Foot.
Live in Dallas 1978.


 
Stiff Little Fingers Alternative Ulster
Never got into the band, just loved this song. Music to kick chairs by. 
 
Gang of Four Damaged Goods   (audio only)
Essence Rare is better but I couldn't find a clip. Though they're British, their sound, in retrospect, reminds me of NY art scene music.

Clash Tommy Gun (audio only)
this is where I came in-- second album. Then I got the first, both US and UK versions. I stopped with London Calling.

 
The Undertones Jimmy, Jimmy 
I saw them when they opened for the Clash at the Palladium, when this cover photo was taken. Impressed? I had to go with my 20-something year old cousin as a chaperone because nobody I knew was interested...

Undertones Jump Boys (audio only)

waking words, part II

Today I awoke saying the words "the cinnamon and blood"... 
...?
"Cutting, peeling away"— thats where I'm going to go with the interpretation... Discuss.

I have a definite but very sporadic history of waking up saying something out loud. Last time I wrote about this I had said the words "four out of five birds use wings". (see below)

One time a few years ago I had an early morning coinage— the annoying compound word “lipsmitten.” Spelling, pronunciation, meaning was clear to me: One word. Lipsmitten. It meant enjoying the sound of a word, independent and regardless of its meaning. Ironically, I have to say I didnt like the sound or the look of "lipsmitten"; I had disappointed myself. It's "clever" in an obvious, facile way. The word "smitten" is irritating, and the assonance of the i's is dopey. The most intriguing aspect to me about the incident was the sense that "lipsmitten" sounded like a translation into English of a foreign term. As if English were my second (dreaming) language. Perhaps a clue is that I have always loved the peculiar specificity of German terms for nuanced psychological states and philosophical dilemma. 'Lipsmitten' sounds German to me (audio: "lip • shmitt'n") and although I dont know any German, perhaps I made my own translation.

Images: "Blood"-a photo I swiped from somewhere years ago without proper attribution. Sorry if it is yours; cinnamon cutting, Science Photo Library; cinnamon tree by wonk gone wild; cinnamon bark; Dodo skeleton, Michael Sporn; Clairvoyance Rene Magritte self-portrait, 1936; Cassowary Jean-Baptiste Oudry, 1745; Young Girl Eating a Bird Magritte, 1927

Hands off my Red Royal Limbertwig

Pomona Britannica ; or, A collection of the most esteemed fruits...with the blossoms and leaves... (1812)

A repost with updates
A highly subjective sampling of some of the more intriguing names
bestowed on the apple:

Red Astrachan, Beautiful Arcade, Bigg's Nonsuch, Bismark, Bottle Green, Bramley's Seedling,
Bulmer's Norman, Calville Rouge d'Automne, Chisel Jersey, Cockagee, Coe's Golden Drop,
Cole's Quince, Cox's Orange Pippin,
Devonshire Quarrenden, Doctor Matthews, Dolgo Crab, Double Red Jonathan,
Edith Smith, Egremont Russet, Ellison's Orange, Esopus Spitzenburg, Etter's Gold,
Five Crown Pippin, Fortune, Foxwhelp, Frauen Rotacher,
Geeveston Fanny, Gravenstein, Gray Stark, Green Sweet,
Horneburger Pancake, Horse, Hubbardston Nonesuch,
Idaho Spur, July Red,
Keswick Codlin, Kidd's Orange Red, Kirk's Scarlet Admirable, Knobbed Russet,
Lamb Abbey Pearmain, Lehigh Greening, Lombart's Calville, Lydia's Red Gala,
Mincham's crab,
Newell's Late Orange, Newton's Wonder, Old Nonpareil, Perrine Transparent, Plum Crabbie,
Queen Cox,
Red Royal Limbertwig, Rubinola, Runkel,Saint Germain, Striped Beefing, Sullenworth Rennet,
Tompkin's King, Tydeman's Late Orange,
Virginia Greening,
Walter Pease, Watkin's Large Dumpling, Wealthy, Winterstein, Yellow Tremlett’s, York Imperial,
Zabergau Reinette

Codling An immature or green apple. Pippin A seedling apple. From the old French 'pepin' meaning seed. Russet The word means red, but the term here refers to the texture of the apple skins–from 'russet coat' the dull red/brown wool coats of peasants.

costermonger– In Britain, a street seller of fruit and vegetables, originally from "costard seller." Costard, which was a family of large British cooking apples popular as far back as the 13th century, became a slang term for 'head' by Shakespeare's time.

Apples of Sodom was a term I'd never heard before. The fruit of trees reputed to grow on the shores of the Dead Sea which, while lovely on the outside, are full of ashes within. Josephus, Strabo, and Tacitus evidently refer to them. Like an apple of Sodom signifies disappointment and disillusion.

Images from NYPL Digital Gallery and Mary Evans Picture Library

can you hear me now?

Oh, it's taking me forever to write my next post!
In the mean time, a repost, with updates:
Recently I said to a friend that I found the recorded subway stop voices disappointing. Granted, the announcements are audible and intelligible but still. The hyper-enunciating, the shaky emphasis: these are not New York voices! Each time the "Q" and "B" woman in Brooklyn swallows "'DEE-kulb' Avenue" I grit my teeth. (It's "de-KALB" or "DEE-KALB" for emphasis.) Its like the staff of some mid-West hotel got into the control room. Keep local color in NYC!

Does anyone remember when taxis started playing announcements in the mid-nineties? The very first debut recording of these was in circulation for only a few months but it was a doozy. It incorporated a voice of such stupendous color, such unaffected Outer Boroughness, such unintended hilarity that it is seared into my brain. (I regret there isnt an audio file I could find):

"Please make shoo-aw ta take awl of yaw belawngings, and dohn fuget to get a receipt frum tha dry-vuh."

The woman behind the voice (a secretary at the place that made taxi meters) was pressed into service in a move of stunning naivete and sheer serendipitous brilliance. She became a brief pre-social media celebrity. If that happened today she'd have fan pages, followers and a reality series contract. //

I was barely reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about cell phone problems when, in a section about sound quality, I came across the intriguing term “Harvard sentences.” Evidently cellular systems engineers actually travel around the country testing signal quality-- somewhat like the familiar Verizon "can you hear me now" guy-- by sending out aural snippets known as Harvard sentences:

a collection of phonetically balanced sentences that measure a large range of different qualities in the human voice. These were originally published in 1969 as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers recommended practice for speech quality measurements.

The sentences go a little something like this (in random selection):

"She has a smart way of wearing clothing. These days a leg of chicken is a rare dish. Cars and buses stalled in snow drifts. Both lost their lives in the raging storm. The pencils have all been used. The stale smell of old beer lingers. The beetle droned in the hot June sun. A gold ring will please most any girl. When the frost has come it is time for turkey..."

Sort of open-mic beatnik free verse, no? I have the mental image of someone in a fluorescent-lit cubicle reciting all 200 sentences with overly precise diction into a large reel to reel tape recorder. No indication as to how they were named but I would guess Harvard is the stand-in for the concept of a precise ideal.

So I started thinking about pronunciation and the classic tone and phrasing found in movies and newsreels of the 1930s and 40s. Listen to Katherine Hepburn, William Powell, Cary Grant, and notably, FDR whose "fear" was rendered as "fee-ah." Where did that manner came from, and more importantly, where did it go? I've found that what I've been talking about here is called "Mid-Atlantic English" according to wikipedia:

a style of speech formerly cultivated by actors for use in theatre, and by news announcers...institutions cultivated a norm influenced by the Received Pronunciation of southern England as an international norm of English pronunciation. According to William Labov, the teaching of this pronunciation declined sharply after the end of World War II.

It's a little New England, a little gin & tonic at the yacht races, with a dash of "thee-ay-tuh."

Little Edie Beale in Grey Gardens and any appearance by William F Buckley were probably the last times I heard a version of this pronunciation. And what about its socio-economic and narrative opposite, the Toity-toid an' Toid /James Cagney New York Gangsterese? Hearing them creates as much a sense of temporal distance ("This is not now, I'm listening and watching something from the past") as the b/w of old footage or the style of period clothes...///

Amazing sound resource here
A civil war soldier remembers his experience on the morning Abraham Lincoln died.

Everybody Apache Dance

Apache dancers, c. late 1920s?

This couple look really hard core. I'm guessing early 1950s but I could be wrong.
Above and top from French CanCan

"Prada Candy....pure pleasure wrapped in impulsive charm... a new facet of femininity
where more is more and excess is everything."
She's doing the Apache Dance.

You can see how they filmed the commercial here

Le Bateau Lavoir, a ramshackle area in Montmartre, 1900——> Apache territory!

"The Apache is the plague of Paris", 1907

Krazy Kat as an Apache dancer, 1930.
watch the cartoon at Uncle John's Crazy Town

Apaches, 1911

 "A Tough Dance"-- 1902

 La Danse Apache - Alexis Et Dorrano 1934

Prada's got a new perfume: Candy. Normally I wouldn't rush to post about that but when I heard they'd hired gnomish photographer-director Jean Paul Goude to create an over-the-top visual match for the perfume's "excess is everything" PR I thought I'd investigate. (I liked some of his work with Grace Jones and loved that iconic Chanel Egoiste commercial....) In the new video, a French ingenue music student jumps her piano teacher and launches into an exuberant terpsichorean frolic. The acrobatic dance sequence is a revival of the Apache Dance.

Pronounced “ah-PAHSH” (remember, it's French!) the Apaches were a late 19th century Parisian street gang—or rather, they were reputed to be "as violent as wild Apaches" and they thought that sounded pretty good and the name stuck. Later, "Apache" became a general reference term for a thug or a pimp. The Apache Dance—became popular just after the turn of the century. By 1908 they were doing it on stage at the Moulin Rouge (it was revived and adapted in movies and by teens up through the 1950s). Part tango, part stage combat—the original Apache Dance fit in perfectly with the other "rough" and "degenerate" dances so popular in those years: Grizzly Bear, Turkey Trot, Boston Dip. The whole schtick is that it mimicks a violent encounter between pimp and prostitute: he "slaps" her, tosses her around, and drags her by the hair. Actually, it all sounds rather like an old Snoop Dogg video...