"Time was with most of us, when Christmas Day, encircling all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and everyone round the Christmas fire, and make the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete."

Charles Dickens

the sounds of travis

Taxi Driver was just on regular old-fashioned network television here...an odd thing to be watching on a Saturday afternoon while making out gift shopping lists with all kinds of Christmas commercials interspersed. My college boyfriend owned the soundtrack to Taxi Driver and we used to listen to it often, and since Robert DeNiro's voiceover is included, I now have the freakish ability to talk along with the movie while Travis is making all his vigilante plans. And not just everybody's favorite Are you talking to ME? but things like The days move along with regularity, then suddenly there is change and From now on it'll be total organization...every muscle must be tight.

Bernard Herrmann, the genius who came up with the music for Psycho and Vertigo and so many other film classics, scored Taxi Driver and apparently died right after it was recorded. It has the well-known plaintive saxophone, but there are also these great menacing horns and weird waves of harp rippling through the background. All together it has a prowling, unsettled sound, which is perfect. (Click here for excerpts.) Once you listen to the soundtrack separately from the movie, you tend to get a better appreciation for the whole mood and message behind it, because what could have been just a cheesy 1970s backdrop is instead as integral as the action on camera itself.

olga and rufino

I'm always interested in the muse behind the artist, so I was curious about Olga Tamayo, longtime wife of Rufino. This picture shows her literally behind him and almost blurred into an outline, but the following from the Santa Barbara Museum fills in what the photo obscures:

In 1933, Tamayo completed his first successful mural commission, a series of wall paintings in the entry stairwell of the Escuela Nacional de Musíca (National School of Music). It was while painting this mural that he met Olga Flores Rivas, a piano student at the school. Shortly thereafter...he pursued a whirlwind romance with Olga. After a three-month courtship and upon Olga’s proposal, the couple married on February 3, 1934. Although a talented musician with a budding performing career, Olga abandoned her musical pursuits to devote her efforts to promoting Tamayo’s career and managing their finances. For Tamayo, Olga became a lifelong muse—over his seven-decade career, he drew and painted many portraits of her.

The couple moved from Mexico to New York to Paris then back to Mexico, creating artwork, collecting artwork, and no doubt enjoying a very interesting life. Rufino Tamayo died in 1991, while Olga--still a few steps behind--followed him two years later.