Radio Tania

From one Thought to Another

This weekend, I went to the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park, a building designed by Herzog and de Meuron that is changing color over time. I went with my Mom and Grandma, a tradition we seem to be creating, weekend excursions together to places we enjoy. Last week was Half Moon Bay, this week, the museum. We went there to see the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit, be all girly and decide which outfit we would most want to wear (I chose a brown dress). While there, we saw the work of artist Maya Lin. I had the opportunity to interview her but turned it down. When I saw her extraordinary work, I regretted that choice. She creates landscapes from plywood, almost as if she has filled The Grand Canyon with carefully carved birch wood. Some pieces could be held in our arms, others were massive. My Grandma particularly liked the work and I trust her opinion, especially given that she was impressed by contemporary art. She is an artist in her own right and her painting hangs on my bedroom wall. The Lin pieces reminded me of another artist who depicts landscapes, these being real and, according to him, manufactured ones. That's Edward Burtynsky and I interviewed him earlier this year. You can find that here. I then remembered another interviewee that inspired me—Jennifer Fox—who traversed the landscape of this world asking women about being women in Flying: Confessions of  Free Woman. Here's that interview. The idea of landscapes just leads to so much! (Oh, and what inspired this whole posting was the bottom image that I saw on one of my favorite sites.)

The Changing Face of Retail

I live in San Francisco and today, while walking on Fillmore Street, I noticed how many stores were either having massive sales or had just closed down all together. What brought me to that area was The Storeroom, a pop-up department store curated by CITIZEN: Citizen (which is owned by someone I respect very much). For five weeks, The Storeroom will bring together brands that they believe are interesting, engaging and beautiful and offer their products at a remarkable value. It's a sign of the times, no doubt, but it also raises the issue of what we value, how we value it, the ways that is reflected in retail and how it is evolving as our economy changes and we are asked to be more creative. Unconventional retail spaces is hardly a novel concept. Take for instance, The Wrong Store or The Pirate Store or The World's Smallest Department Store. All of these and many more play with our notions of consumerism and remind us of our habits of consumption. But for now, we can just have fun with it all, explore the ways creativity seeps itself into everything and experience The Storeroom.

Fiction, Fantasy and the Power of Film

This past year, I have had the honor of interviewing some extraordinary filmmakers, all of whom navigate this fine line between fact and fiction. Maybe all filmmakers do that (now that I think about it!) but it seemed to come up over and over again. Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, NY moved me to tears (honestly). And Steve Buscemi's Interview really got under my skin. John Waters' Pink Flamingos simply shocked me. Today, I had a lovely conversation with Laurent Cantet who made The Class, a film that looks at the racially diverse, inner city classroom in Paris and the clashes that arise amongst students and with the teacher. Speaking with Cantet reminded me of the work of Frederick Wiseman, who made a cinema verité documentary called High School in the 70s. I also interviewed Frederick Wiseman early on when I still worked at WBAI. He had just made a film in Paris, so maybe everything comes together full circle.

 

 

 

 

The History of Strangers

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Katy Grannan. More on this later but here are some images from the series she has created since her move out west. She has a show coming up in London and I wrote about her work for The Times in the UK.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

In July, I had the honor of interviewing His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with acclaimed scientist Dr. Paul Ekman. Dr. Ekman traveled the world, observing facial expressions and discovered several things—facial expressions are universal, our face reflects our emotions with tiny little muscles, those tiny little muscles also stimulate emotions. That's why in India, they have places devoted to laughing because even if you're feeling down, the act of laughing stimulates chemicals in your body that bring about joy. Ekman and the Dalai Lama wrote a book together and it was for this reason, the release of the book, that the interview opportunity came about. I flew to Bethlehem, PA to do the interview. The Dalai Lama was speaking for five days there and people had come from all over the country to hear him. If you would like to hear some tape of the people that had come to see him, click here. To hear the interview, click here and to hear the piece for Weekend America, go here.

Enough Said

A legend

A few years ago, I had the honor of spending the day with Studs Terkel, a journalist that I deeply admire. At the time, I was an editor at a publishing company called Seven Stories Press and Studs Terkel had come to New York for several interviews. I was his escort through different parts of the city and was too shy to ask him questions about his life. He was older now and his wife had just passed away. He kept on calling me "kid!" which I really liked and he wore a bright red sweater and still had the smile of a curious young man. He died a little over a week ago at the age of 96 and when I heard that he was no longer physically on this earth, I truly felt a great person was lost. Terkel published several books including Working and had a radio show in Chicago for 45 years. Listen to some of his recordings, here are some special ones on The Depression that aired last week on This American Life.

 

It's been a long ride

It has been so long since I have written on this blog and the whole world of blogging has changed in that time. A lot has happened that I would love to share, both with people I have interviewed and various things I have seen that have been utterly inspiring.  So this small post is to say, thank you for visiting the blog, please send your comments and if there is anything you would like to contribute, drop me a line.