People are encouraged to approve the habit of 'finishing' the uncompleted work of a dead artist, writer, composer.
I don't like it. I can feel the money equation going on behind and under the lofty words always used when defending the new enterprise--
"We're offering this to you, the gullible public, in the hopes you will give up mourning and invest, once again, in something that resembles what your favorite could have written, composed or built.
Trust us. This project is being handled with the utmost sensitivity."
That last phrase is always my favorite. "Trust me, Junior, this spanking is being delivered with the utmost sensitivity."
So what do we get? Almost as good? Sort of like what he/she had in mind? A hybrid Mozart, a new and improved 'Gone with the Wind'?
This tap dance is happening again. And lo and behold, I am about to experience a personal miracle. Because this time they actually have a good idea, a workable plan.
Because this time, the geniuses on high have joined Brian Wilson of 'Pet Sounds', and George Gershwin of 'Rhapsody in Blue'. Should I repeat that?
This smells of genius!
I ADORE George Gershwin. My 'Rhapsody in Blue' is worn to a nub. And I spent many a happy midnight hour, nestling with my boyfriend in his Volkswagen beetle to the tunes of the Beach Boys...way back, you know, then. Somehow I think this is gonna work.
It's a kind of insane piece of candy, a new and improved cabaret or super sophisticated application for iphone. Both men were so a part of their times. So a defining voice of their times. Such gifted men.
Wilson has been through a lot and seems to have emerged as a kind of older, wiser...I don't know...former Beach Boy? Whom we don't call Boy anymore. It seems he always loved Gershwin...(oh Brian, if only I'd known, you might have been my favorite Beach Boy)...and appears to be thrilled with the project.
It has also been pointed out this is a first in that the artist chosen to do the finishing of the dead great's work, is of equal stature himself.
So, all I can say is that I'll be keeping an eagle eye on the proceedings. But this time, I am actually looking forward to the result, rather than cringing.
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