Eitan Detective
We go to Emily's birthday party last night. Before dinner she hosts a "salon," asking five or six guests to present their expertise. Sonnet talks about 80s fashion, which is her planned next exhibition for 2012. I rarely get to see her in action and she is terrific - poised, comfortable and in control of her subject matter. I think of the ladies in Bronxville for some reason. The other speakers are equally remarkable: one guy describes his energy independent 9X9 meter eco-units which will one day soon be shipped around the world; another fellow who designed Trafalgar Square with Sir Richard Rogers. A famous writer reads a birthday poem while a neural scientist talks about the concept of 'home.' Concluding is Seraphine, a violinist for the London Philharmonic, who performs a melancholic tune of a man leaving home in Scotland. I talk to Seraphine afterwards - she grew up in St John's Wood before Oxford, when she met Emily. Seraphine's parents encouraged her talent from an early age and it has taken her around the world: she returned last week from Tokyo where, she notes, the Japanese attentive and appreciative of her craft. I ask if she is nervous before a performance? but she views it as any job, no sweat. It is what she does.
Sonnet meets the European Editor for Wired Magazine who refuses to sign up for Facebook. He is a gadget guy, he tells her. There is a new media element to the scene which is not surprising since Emily's husband James once at Yahoo and then part of the founding management of Skype and now responsible for Condé Nast's digital strategy. Condé publishes 85 magazines (including Wired). James sits on the main board with S.I. Newhouse Jr and is the youngest guy by ten years. Our mutual friend Nick Denton, founder of blog empire Gawker Media, profiled in this week's New Yorker magazine.
Sonnet wears her red dress and black pumps and we make scrambled eggs at midnight.
"A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate" ("aut delectare aut prodesse est"). Salons, commonly associated with French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th century and 18th centuries, were carried on until quite recently, in urban settings, among like-minded people."
--Wiki
