Simon Gardiner’s architectural photography presents the city–usually Paris or New York–as a complete, totalizing environment, unroofed by the expanse of the sky, but rather, turned on itself and rotated at angles. The results vary from vortographs, kaleidoscopic compositions wherein the subjects are reflected and arranged in triangular or multilayered arrangements, to simple, yet highly disorienting fabricated symmetries. More after the break.
Through simple manipulations, Gardiner creates new cities of infinite expansion, where space has been ostensibly dominated. They resemble the vertigo-inducing urban spaces in the movie Inception, where the laws of physics are absorbed and manipulated by the whimsies of the human dream psyche. Yet whereas the film’s transformation of Paris, for example, was all spectacle, while acting more or less as a plot device, Gardiner’s images are not afforded the luxury of motion, and thus, become somewhat more believable. They are snapshots of everyday life, in a new schizophrenic world of complete freedom and under total control, where utilitarian functions are rendered irrelevant (plumbing in the sky?) and individual freedoms are gradually eclipsed by the vanishing point.
A woman walks past the paintings ‘White Square’ and ‘Black Square’ by the artist Ellsworth Kelly from 1953 during a press conference at the House der Kunst (House of Arts) in Munich. Kelly is considered to be one of the most important contemporary US artists and two large exhibitions are therefore devoted to his work in Munich. EPA/FRANK LEONHARDT. … More
A genuine style authority, our 13 city-regional magazines cover the finest in dining, nightlife, design and travel as well as the most cutting-edge and trendsetting local and international fashions.
Dear God, you made many, many poor people. I realize, of course, that
It’s no great shame to be poor but it’s no great honor, either. So what would have
Been the difference if I had a small fortune?
If I were a rich man
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
All day long I’d biddy-biddy-bum
If I were a wealthy man
I wouldn’t have to work hard
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
If I were a biddy-biddy rich
Daidle deedle daidle daidle man
I’d build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen
Right in the middle of the town
A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below
There would be one long staircase just going up
And one even longer coming down
And one more leading nowhere, just for show
I’d fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese
And ducks for the town to see and hear
Squawking just as noisily as they can
And each loud “pa-pa-geeee! pa-pa-gaack! pa-pa-geeee! pa-pa-gaack!”
Would land like a trumpet on the ear
As if to say, “Here lives a wealthy man.”
Oy
If I were a rich man
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
All day long I’d biddy-biddy-bum
If I were a wealthy man
I wouldn’t have to work hard
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
If I were a biddy-biddy rich
Daidle deedle daidle daidle man
I see my wife, my Golde, looking like a rich man’s wife
With a proper double chin
Supervising meals to her heart’s delight
I see her putting on airs and strutting like a peacock Oy! What a happy mood she’s in
Screaming at the servants day and night
The most important men in town will come to fawn on me–
They will ask me to advise them
Like a Solomon the Wise–
“If you please, Reb Tevye?”–
“Pardon me, Reb Tevye?”–
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi’s eyes–
Ya va voy, ya va voy voy vum
And it won’t make one bit of difference
If I answer right or wrong–
When you’re rich, they think you really know
If I were rich, I’d have the time that I lack
To sit in the synagogue and pray
And maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall
And I’d discuss the learned books with the holy men
Seven hours every day–
That would be the sweetest thing of all
Oy
If I were a rich man
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
All day long I’d biddy-biddy-bum
If I were a wealthy man
I wouldn’t have to work hard
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
Lord who made the lion and the lamb
You decreed I should be what I am–
Would it spoil some vast, eternal plan
If I were a wealthy man
The title is inspired by a 1902 monologue by Sholem Aleichem in Yiddish, Ven ikh bin Rothschild (If I were Rothschild), a reference to the wealth of the Rothschild family, although the content is quite different. The lyric is based in part on passages from Sholem Aleichem’s 1899 short story “The Bubble Bursts.” Both stories appeared in English in the 1949 collection of stories Tevye’s Daughters.
The song is broken into four verses, with a bridge between the third and fourth and a chorus sung at the beginning of the song, and after the second and fourth verses.
Musically, it is written in a Jewish Klezmer style.
Through the first two verses, Tevye dreams of the material comforts that wealth would bring him. Sung boisterously and comedically, Tevye first considers the enormous house he would buy and the needless luxuries he would fill it with, including a third staircase “leading nowhere, just for show,” then the poultry he would buy to fill his yard.
Tevye switches his attention to the luxuries in which he would shower his wife, Golde, in the third verse. He talks of servants to alleviate her workload, fancy clothes for her pleasure, and mountains of food. The song is sung in the same boisterous, comedic style.
The music and vocals intensify during the bridge, when Tevye starts lamenting his place in the community as a lowly milkman, and considers the esteem and importance that wealth would bring him.
In the final verse, Tevye softens as he further considers his devotion to God. He expresses his sorrow that the long working hours he keeps prevents him from spending as much time in the synagogue as he would like, and how wealth would allow him to spend less time working and more time praying and studying Torah.
A repeated phrase throughout the song, “all day long I’d bidi-bidi-bum,” is often misunderstood to refer to Tevye’s desire not to have to work. However, the phrase “bidi-bidi-bum” is a reference to the practice of Jewish prayer, in particular davening.
Cover versions and translations
The Hebrew version lyrics (first released in 1965) are taken directly from the original Sholem Aleichem story. The title and chorus are “לו הייתי רוטשילד” Lu hayiti Rotshild: ‘If I were Rothschild’.
In 1967, Herschel Bernardi charted with his version (Billboard “Bubbling Under The Top 100″, Record World “Non-Rock” surveys).
In 1968, the song was covered in French: “Ah! Si j’étais riche,” by Ivan Rebroff, and “Si j’avais des millions,” with lyrics by Charles Aznavour and sung by Dalida.
In 1970, Romanian rockbandMondial released a cover of the song on an EP featuring singerGică Petrescu, together with “The Impossible Dream” (previously recorded by Jack Jones in 1966) and another two covers. Only the chorus and first couplet can be heard on this recording, mainly because of the timing limitations a single disc carries.
In 1970, Turkish version Ah Bir Zengin Olsam lyrics written by “Y. Taşer” and performed by Tanju Okan.
In the 1980s Frankie Vaughan recorded his version for his album Love Hits and High Kicks.
Excerpt: Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke was a great poet who had a correspondence over the course of several years with Franz Xaver Kappus, the “young poet” to whom Rilke became a mentor.
Worpswede, near Bremen, Germany
July 16th, 1903
. . . Very dear Mr. Kappus: I have left a letter from you long unanswered, not that I had forgotten it—on the contrary: . . . When I read it, as now, . . . I am touched by your beautiful concern about life, more even than I had felt it [when I first read your letter] in Paris . . . Here, where an immense country lies about me, over which the winds pass coming from the seas, here I feel that no human being anywhere can answer for you those questions and feelings that deep within them have a life of their own; for even the best err in words when they are meant to mean most delicate and almost inexpressible things . . . You are so young,1 so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
The word “philosophy” comes from ancient Greek roots meaning the love (philo) of knowledge or wisdom (sophia). In this letter Rilke suggests that philosophy is also a love of the questions themselves.
Rilke was a great believer in patience, in not rushing natural processes, which can only bear their fruit in their own time. Here he sees spiritual searching as a kind of natural process, which begins with certain deeply felt questions that “have a life of their own” and must not be rushed to answers. If a question has come to us from an honest perplexity and desire to understand, then that question itself is already a great achievement, and Rilke suggests we cherish it. If we are “living” the question, not just as an intellectual problem or puzzle that we are curious to solve, but as something that truly matters to us, then we are already on the road to understanding.
Philosophy may seem to be an endless series of questions, with each suggested answer leading only to more questions. Rilke invites us to see this not as a problem, but as a deep necessity of life, since “no human being anywhere can answer for you” those ultimate questions of life. Even if you could be led right to an answer, still it would not do you any good, and it would not be your answer, unless you could see it with your own eyes–answers “cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.”2 So until the time when we are ready to find an answer ourselves, the best we can do is to contemplate the question.
One of the greatest philosophers of Western thought, Socrates himself, famously claimed to never have reached any answers at all. Perhaps all he ever had were the questions. But to ask the big questions of life, to truly grapple with them, this is already to be a philosopher and to have deepened one’s experience of life.
by 
