Take This Waltz, Sarah Polley (2012)

A tale of imperfect romance, Take This Waltz features characters who bare their insecurities, both bravely and embarrassingly. Michelle Williams plays the lead role as Margot, a woman with vague aspirations of being a writer, who has been married to Lou (Seth Rogen) for five years. While Lou devotes his energy to experimenting with chicken recipes for his cookbook Tastes Like Chicken, Margot has free time to pursue distractions and stumble through her complicated network of emotions.

Each scene can be assessed by a whirlwind of expressions on Margot's face. There's a chance she'll maintain fragile composure, crumble behind quivering lips, or surrender to a fit of carefree grins. In any case, Williams can be credited for a flawless display of Margot's nervousness and vulnerability.

Some situational elements seem unreal, like the premise for Margot meeting her enticing neighbor Daniel (Luke Kirby). They each take a trip to the same historic site in Nova Scotia alone, they sit next to each other on the plane ride back to Toronto, and when they take a taxi together they learn they live across the street from one another. Of course it could happen, and that's a very romantic way to set up a love story, but a simultaneous trip to Nova Scotia seems over the top. Anyway, that is the catalyst for Margot's craving new romance, which defies her marriage with the trustworthy Lou.

The script dabbles with playful humor between husband and wife, explicit sex talk between strangers who fantasize about being lovers, confessions of fears, and comments about getting old, overcoming addiction, or giving into indulgence. At moments, the acting is so loaded with expressive body language that no dialogue is necessary. While Take This Waltz touches on serious issues through dialogue, it more beautifully displays how these issues mark people's lives with a plot that's driven by emotions, which lead to actions that have consequences.

The movie is shot in a way that emphasizes actors' movements and expressions, enhancing the story with a depth that too much dialogue would bog down. The camera shifts from Margot's face to her feet while she makes blueberry muffins, the camera rests just far enough from Margot's face to catch every goodbye hug and kiss she gives her in-laws in a flurry as they shuffle out the door, and the camera spies on Margot and Daniel during an intoxicating carnival ride of momentary euphoria before abrupt silence, stillness, and florescent lighting coldly force them back to reality.

Take This Waltz is a love story without a definite protagonist. The story's substance comes from the uncertainty people face when they're emotionally conflicted. Despite a few overly romanticized moments, the movie resonates with anyone who has been surprised by his or her own emotions and felt it took courage to act on them.

Man and Nature, a Timeless Matter of Toil

The multifaceted relationship between man and his natural environment sparks discussions among everyone from artists and farmers to fishermen and scientists. Partaking in the sensory delight of fruit, or intensely debating over the use of natural resources, man's interactions with nature range from personal to political.

An act as ordinary as peering into the horizon inspires awe, so it's no wonder that the relationship between man and nature has been a timeless source of contemplation, evident in our agricultural practices, art, literature, philosophies, religions, and more.

In the Carnegie Museum of Art's exhibit Natural History, on display in the Forum Gallery until October 14, a small collection of works by international artists invites visitors to explore ideas concerning man as an inhabitant and appreciator of Earth.

The text on the gallery's exterior wall describes the artworks as "reveling in contradiction and complexity while nonetheless aiming for different kinds of truths, representations, and wonder." This offers a nice introduction to one room that approaches a subject so large it seems unapproachable. American Rachel Harrison's limestone green sculpture Utopia (2002) emulates this feeling with precision. A porcelain figurine confronts a giant cavernous entity, appearing to represent Mother Nature, which not only holds the figurine as to be of support, but also boldly marks its power over the figurine through its inherent advantage of size. What shelters man can also endanger man.

Gelatin silver prints by American photographer John Divola are both honest and surreal, displaying grainy, black and white images of majestic west coast landscapes evidently impacted by humans. In an artist statement, Divola writes, "While the literal subject of [The Four Landscapes (1992)] is California, its figurative subject is the psychological location of the natural from the vantage point of the cultural."

Next to Divola's photography rests German Florian Maier-Aichen's Untitled (2005), a chromogenic print. Maier-Aichen cleverly uses the medium to challenge what it represents. Does photography communicate truth? An ominously dark body of water rests aside the unreal red of Los Angeles' coastline, and a deep turquoise shroud of sky hovers over the whitewashed horizon. Through digital manipulation, Maier-Aichen dramatizes the naturally angular coastline into a luminous composition, like an inhabited red Mars (if it had beaches).

Other displays, such as 45 wooden boxes stretched across a wall, two videos of a cat and dog, and white pails containing castings of grass, are less astonishing but still thought-provoking. Don't miss two works that border the exterior wall and could be carelessly overlooked: Brazilian Beatriz Milhazes' Nazareth das Farinhas (2002), an acrylic burst of floral patterns on canvas, and American Mel Bochner's Measurement: Plant (Palm) (1969), an ode to man's desire to understand and document the physical development of a naturally occurring life form.

All artworks in Natural History are part of the museum's permanent collection. Centered around an inexhaustible, classic theme, the exhibit enables viewers to interpret some modes through which artists represent their surroundings, encouraging them to think about their own surroundings a little more.

Bloomfield's Box Heart features Keith Garubba

The Living Rose Window:

Printmaking on Paper and Glass by Keith Garubba

July 24 - August 18

In his printmaking, Keith Garubba explores relationships between architecture and biology, which he describes more simply as the things we make and the things we're made of. "I always feel like maybe we're trying to recreate ourselves in our artwork," he says, "and asking what it is to be human."

He titles his pieces after biological processes, which offer crucial insight to the artworks. The piece below, for example, is titled Angiogenesis, a term for the development of new blood vessels; in some cases, these new vessels provide nutrients for cancerous tissue. Even if you're unfamiliar with the terminology, compositional elements like line and color portray a sense of movement, as though some type of process is occurring.

Angiogenesis, Silkscreen and Collagraph

Whether it's the background of acrylic wash, the transition from crisp to faint colors, or the curling passages of inked string, Garubba's artworks evoke movement and spontaneity. Nearly symmetrical images of rose windows and biohazard symbols boldly mark Garubba's works as well. Spontaneity and symmetry then combine to create aesthetic balance within each composition.

Garubba's printmaking is a process of layers. He can typically complete pieces on paper in four layers, and his glassworks require more. A majority of the artworks displayed in The Living Rose Window are silkscreen and collagraph printing on paper. Some, however, are glassworks, which involve a more complicated process of silkscreening high fire enamels on glass and then kiln-firing to fuse the glass.

 Wake 2, Silkscreened Enamels Fused on Glass

In the quaint setting of Box Heart Gallery's furnished space, Garubba's works feel at home, where they provide a dynamic juxtaposition of our given bodies and the spaces we build to house them.

Kudos to the cat burglar and Catwoman, who win over unlikely hearts

A Cat in Paris (2010), Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol

The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Christopher Nolan

 

A black cat accompanies a jewel thief on his late night escapades in A Cat in Paris. Coincidentally, this animated French feature meets its U.S. debut during the release of The Dark Knight Rises, which stars Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and jewel thief.

*But wait, as the curious 'burgh-lar, am I no longer allowed to believe in coincidence?

Consider another similarity/coincidence. Viewers of A Cat in Paris initially wonder, "Is the cat burglar a 'good guy'? He seems kind, but he's a burglar after all!" And viewers of The Dark Knight Rises might not understand their feelings towards Catwoman at first. "She's got badass moves, but does that justify stealing from Batman? She even sold his fingerprints!"

*If I believe in these coincidences, I might have to throw my pen and notebook off a bridge.

*So be it, as long as a lair awaits.

But in all seriousness...

ACiP: The cat burglar saves a girl from a gang leader who killed the girl's father a few years ago. Then the cat burglar woos the girl's mother, who, as a detective, was his opposition in the whole burglarizing-people-by-night gig, right?

tDKR: Catwoman compromises Batman's security by doing a job for an accomplice of Bane, the villain. Then Batman wins her over with his heroism, she saves his life, and they flee to Florence together. Enemies-turned-lovers, right?

At any rate, both movies are captivating in very different ways. It's thrilling to recognize Pittsburgh's own Downtown and Oakland interspersed with views of Bedfordshire, Glasgow, India, Los Angeles, New York, and Newark in The Dark Knight Rises. "They were here!" And we can't overlook that, for 2h 45m, the movie moves along stealthily, without hesitation, with brilliance in fact.

I am going out on a limb when I compare an animation with a budget of five million euros to an Imax blockbuster with a budget of 250 million dollars, but they share some basic plot elements, and they equally excite the imagination. Since far fewer people will probably see A Cat in Paris, its merit is worth describing. Radiant colors, a gentle pulse of light against shadow, and the characters' absurdly tiny feet distinguish the animation. The enticing soundtrack elevates the air of mystery as the cat burglar leaps among Paris rooftops, and playful references to movies like Reservoir Dogs and King Kong add the right dash of comedy to an animation full of thievery.

There is no competition between the two movies; I just couldn't overlook the similarities when I saw The Dark Knight Rises Friday and A Cat in Paris Saturday. Both are magnificent. The Dark Knight Rises will grip you with its suspenseful edge and make you gasp while Heinz Field explodes under Gotham City athletes. A Cat in Paris will delight you with its silly treatment of burglars, gangs, and police officials. And you'll marvel at the animated version of night vision, which enables the cat burglar to perform his wittiest trick.

*Parts of this post will be best understood if you have seen The Dark Knight Rises.

Thanks to PNME, July is a good month for contemporary live music

Every July, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble offers a concert series of contemporary music written by a majority of living composers. Seven members comprise PNME: Sean Connors (percussion), Lindsey Goodman (flute), Timothy Jones (bass-baritone vocals), Norbert Lewandowski (cello), Bobby Mitchell (piano), Kevin Schempf (clarinet), and Nathalie Shaw (violin). Under Artistic Director Kevin Noe since 2000, the ensemble annually performs at City Theatre in the South Side.

PNME offers two performances of each program on consecutive Friday and Saturday evenings. Programs vary from simply melodious to conceptually stimulating to amusingly theatrical. This weekend's program opens with a solo performance by Connors in The Anvil Chorus (1991), composed by Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang. It also features a dynamic trio Triple Crown (2009), composed by PNME's own founder David Stock. PNME also performs a mesmerizing quartet, The Life of Birds (2008), composed by Mason Bates, who was selected as Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's 2012-2013 Composer of the Year.

PNME performances prove to be not only musically exciting but also visually thoughtful. Take The Anvil Chorus. After the spoken introduction by Noe, Connors unexpectedly appears like a floating apparition on a lift against the stage's back wall. This simple feat of clever placement and lighting already heightens entertainment. The piece begins with a loose rhythm of abrasive clangs but develops into a percussive melody that convinces the audience to understand the instrumentation. People in the audience absentmindedly nod their heads or tap their feet, an indication of a successful performance.

In Triple Crown, Connors, Lewandowski, and Mitchell have a more traditional stage presence. Lewandowski sits centered with his cello, and the two larger instruments are on either side of him. There are three parts to the piece. In the first, dramatic downbeats give way to eerie trills. The second part sounds like a tango in andante, with the combination of each musician's movements creating the visual effect of a dance. Although separated from one another by space, each musician, involved with his own instrument, shows the audience how individual efforts result in music that requires a collective effort. Finally, the third part of Triple Crown evokes a distinct personality from each instrument, which is mildly reminiscent of Camille Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals (1886).

  
The Life of Birds is the highlight of this program. The violin, cello, flute, and clarinet quartet gloriously captures the notion of fluttering and singing birds. Put simply, it's a delightful piece that the members of PNME play flawlessly. Other numbers include Quicksilver (1992) by Randall Woolf, Klingende Buchstaben (1998) by Alfred Schnittke, and Silences (2004/2012) by Jeffrey Nytch. Attending at least one PNME performance is every bit worth two hours of a summer evening. Through varied programs comprised of contemporary compositions, the ensemble is sure to keep even regular attendees on their toes.

ToonSeum Does Injustice to Care Bears

There are only three museums dedicated to cartoon art in America. California has two, and Pennsylvania has one. ToonSeum: Pittsburgh Museum of Cartoon Art was originally part of the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh in 2007. In 2009, it moved to its current location in the Cultural District downtown.

The ToonSeum is now hosting Care Bears: 30 Years of Caring... and Hugs through August 26. The Care Bears debuted on greeting cards by American Greetings Corporation in 1982, so 2012 marks their 30th birthday. The lovable characters embody different emotions and have personalized symbols called belly badges. Grams Bear's belly badge, for instance, is a pink rose with a yellow bow.

The 80s were a big time for the Care Bears. Various toys, a television series, and three movies brought these cuddly creatures from the far clouds of Care-A-Lot into the homes of millions. Unfortunately, the ToonSeum's exhibit fails to cover Care Bear history or inform its audience about the creators. One of the museum's staff members states that American Greetings Corporation is secretive about its artists, yet the fact that Elena Kucharik was the lead artist and developer of the Care Bears is no secret. Her signature appears on several of the illustrations, and other signatures include Colton and Mead. Their full names, however, did not turn up in internet searches.

Not a single item in the exhibit has an object label. Even if American Greetings Corporation is not willing to disclose the full names of its artists, the museum should be responsible for labeling items to the best of its ability and informing the audience about what is in front of them. The ToonSeum also claims that the exhibit is friendly to those of all ages. Judging by the subject matter, that's true. It speaks to adults who grew up with the characters and to children who can view the new show Care Bears: Welcome to Care-A-Lot on The Hub TV Network.

However, all illustrations and animation stills hang at a level comfortable for adult viewers. Only two glass cases of a plush Tenderheart teddy bear and an assortment of Care Bear toys meet the eyes of children. If this exhibit is meant to speak to both children and adults, object labels should inform a mature audience, and images should be easily visible to children.

It is exciting to get a glimpse of original illustrations and animation stills, but it is also disappointing to leave an exhibit feeling the need to do more research because the museum neglected critical information. What are the different media used by illustrators? Some look like watercolor, others marker. What movies are the animation stills from? Failure to display this information isn't due to American Greetings Corporation's secrecy. The ToonSeum should simply take more care to present this work in a professional way, especially for the integrity of these lovable bears who care so much.

All images copyright American Greetings 2012.

Kishorit: A creative kibbutz

Fabric of Life: Wall Hangings

While walking through the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh's Irene Kaufmann Building, you simply can't miss Fabric of Life: Wall Hangings. On display in the Fine Perlow Weis Gallery, which is essentially a large room in the middle of the building, the wall hangings become part of the community space, livening the walls with blocks of colorful collages.

Untitled, Nir Yaron

Stitched from various cuts of fabric, each of the 14 untitled wall hangings has its own personality. The creators' choices of color, print, texture, and stitched detail are distinct from one work to the next.

Untitled, Sigal Rachamim

Each textile was made by a member of Kishorit, a kibbutz (Hebrew for "communal settlement") in Israel that facilitates self-sufficiency for those with physical, emotional, and mental challenges. Living at Kishorit enables its 140 members to maximize their independence and work together with staff to maintain a stable community. Kishorit's efforts are visible in the greater Israeli community too. They sell organic eggs, vegetables, and milk from their farms, and they sell toys from their factory called Pasteltoys.

This is the first time the Kishorit wall hangings have been exhibited in the United States, and they will be for sale. All wall hangings are priced at $1,100 with proceeds benefiting Kishorit. Fabric of Life: Wall Hangings is on display at the JCC through July 27.

Courteous on S Mathilda

A considerate stenciled warning.

Pittsburgh could use more of them.

Currently at CMoA: Not far from the norm [collection] but [entirely] worth your while

Impressionism in a New Light: From Monet to Stieglitz 

May 12 - August 26

The title of the show rings true; even though Impressionism influenced Pictorialist photography, it is rare to see Impressionist paintings displayed alongside the photographs of the same period. Organized by Amanda Zehnder, associate curator of fine arts, and Linda Benedict-Jones, curator of photography, the exhibit showcases much of the museum's own collection in a new way, encouraging visitors to look broadly at visual art produced around the turn of the 20th century.

While the first Impressionist exhibition was in 1874, Pictorialism developed later, in the 1890s. Pictorialists held that photography was more than a mechanical way to document the world; carefully photographing subjects to produce different visual effects required creative methods and artistry.

The Impressionists' ability to capture a sketchy glimpse of an image influenced photographers to exercise the camera lens and create slightly out of focus images. The gently blurred lines of Pictorialism lend a dreamy appearance to the photography and imitate Impressionist works.

Compare the photograph The Kiss (1904), by Clarence H. White, on loan from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with an etching The Coiffure (1890-91), by Mary Cassatt. The care taken to produce these delicate images enhances the femininity of the subjects. As Cassatt's work emulates contemporaneous Japanese prints, it is evident that American and European artists found inspiration in the different art they were exposed to.

Impressionism in a New Light is distributed among three galleries. The second is where side by side comparisons of Pictorialist photography with Impressionist etchings or paintings like the one above can be found. The first room, however, introduces the audience to the exhibition by featuring mostly Impressionist paintings and some published criticism dating from the first Impressionist exhibitions in Paris. This witty display of what are now considered masterpieces, paired with disapproving commentary from notable critics of the time, places the visitor into the haughty Paris art scene at the end of the 19th century.

The careful organization of artworks in the first gallery, along with informative wall texts, provide insight to the works as well as the artists. Take for example three paintings of similar subject matter that, when placed next to each other, encourage a conversation about three artists at different stages in their careers.

Paul Cézanne's Rocks at the Seashore (1865-66), with its frustrated blocks of thick paint, is a perfect demonstration from his early career of what would prove to be his lifelong obsession over line and composition. Eugène Boudin's articulate strokes in The Port of Trouville (1882), from his later career, exemplify his polished success as one of the first "en plein air" painters, meaning he painted outside, directly from nature. Finally, the shimmering pastels in Cliffs near Dieppe (1882) by Claude Monet, a student of Boudin, signify the maturing artist as he discovered his niche.

This thoughtful progression from one painting to the next enhances the viewer's experience. By displaying much of its own collection in a new way, the Carnegie Museum of Art is not only reminding visitors that it has a rich collection but is also educating them about the art and artists in an engaging way. Vibrant paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, and Paul Gaugin, along with sensational black and white photographs by Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, and others, encapsulate how visual art progressed in an era when cameras were a relatively new tool, forcing people to see things as they never had before.

The third room of the exhibition, opening up to the expanse of Monet's Water Lillies (c. 1915-26), offers a final take on Impressionism and Pictorialism. A few photographs hang on opposing walls, but Monet's work undoubtedly dominates the gallery space. Lastly, take a minute to watch a looped excerpt from Sacha Guitry's film Ceux de chez nous (c. 1915), which shows the master at work in his Giverny gardens.

A Trip to the Moon (1902), George Méliès / The Extraordinary Voyage (2011), Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange

George Méliès (1861-1938), a contemporary of Auguste and Louis Lumière,

created the first international hit in motion picture history in 1902.
For this film, he conceived an outlandish scenario,
that man would travel to the moon...

With the mind of a practiced magician, Méliès was quick to pick up on the visual tricks he could play with a camera. In only his first year of experimenting with film in 1896, he used stop motion and substitution to produce special effects in which images vanished or duplicated from one frame to the next. This technique can be seen in his early work such as The Four Troublesome Heads (1898):

His choreographed antics transferred theatrics to silent film, making Méliès the father of cinematic showmanship.

As the process of early filmmaking required natural light, Méliès built a studio of glass in Montreuil-sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris. He hand painted his sets, dressed actors and actresses in fanciful costume, and filmed from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., when there was enough daylight.

It was in this studio in 1902 where Méliès created A Trip to the Moon, 16 minutes of fantasy film in which Professor Barbenfouillis, head of the Institute of Incoherent Astronomy, decides that his crew will voyage to the moon in a craft resembling a giant bullet.

Inspired by two novels, Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and H.G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon (1901), A Trip to the Moon was by far the most imaginative film production to date. Méliès followed a new trend and had all 13,375 black and white frames hand painted in color. Bright colors added even more zest to the already charming tale.

Two of the most strikingly vibrant images are while the crew is on the moon, encountering plant and extraterrestrial life (left), and when the vessel descends into the ocean upon its return to Earth (right).

Although A Trip to the Moon achieved worldwide renown, the film was extensively pirated and plagiarized in America, and Méliès received insufficient recognition for his masterpiece. To prevent further piracy of his work, Méliès opened the Star Film Agency in New York City in 1903. A Trip to the Moon, however, would turn out to be his most acclaimed film, and his efforts were too late.

Méliès continued to produce films, but his style eventually became outdated. He reached an ultimate low in 1923 when he burned 500 of his own film negatives, and suddenly the majority of his work had vanished.

Over time, it's easier to forget about someone, no matter how innovative, when little remains to spark the memories. A color version of A Trip to the Moon was thought to be lost forever. Then, in 1993, a copy was found in Barcelona. The nitrate film sock was considerably decomposed, but filmmaker and restoration expert Serge Bromberg was dedicated to carefully unraveling it and photographing each individual frame.

Eight years went by before technology would permit further restoration of the colored images. In 2010, the restoration project was finally launched at Technicolor Los Angeles. Frames from a black and white version were used for reference and as replacements for any partially or completely damaged colored frames. With the help of digital color replication, Méliès' enchanting excursion was reincarnated in color and debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2011.

Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange chronicle Méliès' career and the pursuit to restore A Trip to the Moon in the documentary An Extraordinary Voyage. Granting new life to Méliès' work a century after its creation is indeed extraordinary, when the vibrant motion picture was thought to be lost forever. A new soundtrack by the French band Air accompanies the restored version.
 

Keyhole (2012), Guy Maddin

In Keyhole, Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin explores the fractured memory of Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric), a gangster returning home after being away for years. While the premise broadly resembles Homer’s Odyssey, the style is noir, and the absurd plot is on par with those by filmmaker David Lynch. It’s a convoluted tale of a man who must face past baggage before reuniting with his wife.

Ulysses arrives home carrying a teenaged girl Denny who just drowned. He’s accompanied by Manners, his own son whom he doesn’t recognize and seems to have taken as hostage. Upon meeting his gang in the living room, Ulysses orders them to line up along the wall; those who are alive must face him, and those who are dead must face the wall. Two men who face the wall are sent out of the house.

Three more deaths occur before Ulysses journeys through the house. One gang member dies from direct contact with a speechless woman who scrubs the floor and turns out to be a ghost. Another, Big Ed, is executed by a pedal-powered electric chair. Then Heatly, Ulysses’ beloved adopted son who apparently killed one of Ulysses’ biological sons, dies from a wound. All three bodies are dumped into the bog outside the house.

Finally, Ulysses begins his quest through the ghost-ridden house to his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rosellini) in her upstairs bedroom. Her father, naked and chained to her bed, partly narrates the film, encouraging Ulysses, “Remember, remember.” Room by room, Ulysses peers into keyholes and recalls his experiences in the house. Ulysses admits to himself, “So many locked doors, and they all have to be opened.”

Different rooms harbor memories of humor, disturbance, and sentiment that enable Ulysses to reconnect with his family. A peculiar trait about each of his sons is revealed. Bruce, the eldest, was always shaking Yahtzee dice, Ned was always drinking a glass of milk, and Manners was an inventor, always looking for a practical use in his gadgets.

Throughout his journey, there is plenty of plot confusion and uncertainty about who is alive and who is dead. At one point, Hyacinth files away at her father’s chain to free him, and he, a ghost, disappears.

The picture is consistently stark with black and white contrast as bright lights shine on characters whose shadows play visually striking roles. The soundtrack meshes with harsh images when horns warn of horror, a piano hounds in dissonance, or the drone of strings echoes a moment of absurdity. Maddin hails composer Jason Staczek for creating “a score that seems to take turns with the images to motivate and even create each other.”

Keyhole, a surreal journey into Ulysses’ turmoil, is a challenge to follow but a gem in the realm of unsettling and bizarre film. In an interview with Sam Adams from the A.V. Club, Maddin summarizes his intentions for the movie: “I set out over-ambitiously to make a movie that was about, well, the ghosts we all converse with constantly and who in our absence even converse amongst themselves. And then I wanted—and this is where I fell short, I think—but I wanted to really make a movie about our living space and the way we all feel about certain rooms... I don’t think I achieved that with this movie, but I think it’s always interesting to set really lofty goals for yourself and then fail better, as Beckett said.”