October 25, 2016 edition

I don't understand Bob Dylan. Maybe that's how it should be: something that fascinates is something that does not have to be, or cannot be, understood. I read Dylan's book of poetry, Tarantula, which he wrote in 1966 when he was twenty-five. In it, words move not like letters, not like vessels of meaning, but as sound, in their repetition, consonants, emphasis, and syllable length:
mother say go in That direction & please
do the greatest deed of all time & say i say
mother but it's already been done & she say
well what else is there for you to do & i say
i dont know mother, but i'm not going in That
directioni'm going in that direction & she
say ok but where will you be & i say i dont
know mother but i'm not tom joad & she say
all right then i am not your mother

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More Sidelines articles in other editions

October 18, 2016 edition

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October 11, 2016 edition

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October 4, 2016 edition

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September 27, 2016 edition

Jakarta has a long history, but does it have nostalgia? The city moves forward at an increasing pace; at the same time, fewer and fewer residents look at old photos as part of the story of their lives. In Jakarta, generations, buildings and maps keep on changing.
We have our poet Chairil Anwar (and perhaps he is the only one) who briefly sketched a scene of modern Jakarta in the late 1940sthe Capitol theater screening American films, youth riding the tram from Kotabut no one looks back at what is left behind. Sadly or not.

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September 20, 2016 edition

What was it about Picasso? Or Sudjojono? Some time in the early 1950s, when Sudjojono was not yet 40, he decided to do something unusual: He and other artists rode their motorbikes from Yogya to Jakarta. Their aim was to convince President Sukarno to agree to the idea of Sticusa, the Dutch foundation for cultural cooperation, to mount a large exhibition of 20th-century European painters: Picasso, Matisse, Braque.
I found this story in the account of Willem Mooijman who was working at Sticusa at the time, as retold in an interesting book about the history of art and culture in Indonesia between 1950 and 1965, Heirs to World Culture, edited by Jennifer Lindsay and Maya H.T. Liem.

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September 13, 2016 edition

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