The Flatland Chronicles

A COMPENDIUM OF VALUABLE MISCELLANY

WELCOME TO THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES.  

This blog is my main blog, where I track my daily experience and make a space for things I've found or found out.

This blog is one "sub-weblog" of  The Flatland Almanack.

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Soundtracks of My Life: The Doll Song & Related Weirdness from 'The Tales of Hoffman'

I love Tales of Hoffman---one of the few operas I've actually performed (or participated in as a member of the chorus)---and so I've already posted about it twice:  the first time, about the sometimes-omitted 'Giulietta's Tale' (decadent Venetian courtesan); the second, about Hoffman's gender-bending Muse-disguised-as-man sidekick, Nicklaus[se].  Because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say, I decided to wait a bit before writing about the first act, or posting any videos.

The story begins with the writer  Hoffman---accompanied by his sidekick Nicklausse--- hanging out in a bar with a lot of German students, all bent on getting as drunk as possible.  After a drinking song, and one absurd story about a dwarf called Kleinzach, Hoffman begins ranting (he does that a lot) about the beautiful singer, Stella, with whom both he and his rival Count Lindorf are in love.  One of the students has the temerity to mention that after all, they have their loves too.  Hoffman responds by dissing the ladies:  one of them, Gretchen, as an inert puppet with a heart of ice.  It's part of the lead-in to the stories of his loves, the first of whom is---guess what---an inert doll with a heart of ice. 

Starving Elephant Artisans (Elephants that Can---and Do---Paint)

Here is a wonderful and very touching video of elephants painting.  Yes, painting.   Apparently they like to.  The organization that posted the video writes:

Can your elephant paint? Watch this elephant, rescued from abusive treatment in Burma, now paint an amazing self portrait. You'll be amazed at how his talent unfolds.

So touched by their horrific backgrounds and loving personalities, ExoticWorldGifts.com now supports, "Starving Elephant Artisans" by selling their paintings so they can continue to have a new life in Thailand.  (ExoticWorldGifts)

It isn't a hoax or anything.  There are a number of videos posted of these painting elephants.

Soundtracks of My Life: Operatic Gender-Benders: Nicklausse & Prince Orlofsky!

Some of the best rolls for mezzos and contraltos involve playing snide young men.  Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, for example; Nicklausse in Hoffman.  As a 16-18 year old, I naturally imagined myself playing only the really glamorous roles:  Carmen; or Giulietta.  Mezzo-sopranos can, and do, sing those roles.

But that doesn't mean I wasn't fascinated watching Hoffman's Muse appear as his wise-ass sidekick Nicklausse.  Or by the very special views which Prince Orlofsky expresses on the subject of hospitality.

Here are some stellar performances.

Soundtracks of My Death: From Mendelssohn's Elijah: "Then Shall the Righteous..."

This has always been one of my favorite arias from Mendelssohn's Elijah.  As a young aspiring singer some thirty years ago, I wanted to sing it myself and I often used to try.   Alas, I was a rather weak mezzo-soprano and couldn't nail the high notes.  I usually don't find I am drawn to this sort of religious theme or anthem, but it's Mendelssohn, and it really is uplifting, even if you don't (and, though a certified God-botherer, I do not) believe in a conventional heaven or heavenly realm.

If I were to die, as of course I someday will, I would want this song performed or played----a recording would be fine----at my memorial service, just to remind people that death is just a transition and that you might as well assume that it is a joyful one.  I don't see myself as 'righteous' especially, but I've got to believe based on the available evidence that God actually has fairly low standards.  I'm thinking the bar has got to be pretty low.

The Soundtracks of My Life---Mozart Requiem: "Domine Jesu"; The Messiah: "And He Shall Purify"; Elijah: "Lord, Bow Thine Ear to Our Prayer"

Back in my younger days, I performed both these oratorios---not as a principal of course; I didn't have that sort of talent.  But I did love singing in the chorus, even though my music reading skills were set at "illiterate" and I often had to just mouth the words.  My ear wasn't that reliable either.  Even so, I fondly imagined that it would all eventually come to me.  It didn't, which is just as well, as I only ever had a passable voice. 

I always seem to favor the songs that aren't quite so widely loved as the usual standards.  Hearing these really took me back.

Pictures from the Earth: Judy Malley--Nova Scotia | Used by Permission

I've never visited Nova Scotia, but it's one of the places I aspire to see before I die.  Photographer Judy Malley has provided me with such a comprehensive glimpse of its many beauties.

All her Nova Scotia photographs just pulled me right in---it took me forever to choose which ones to use because there were so many that moved me. 

The ones I picked are magnificent, but you can click on her Flickr photostream and see many more equally so.  .

 

Soundtracks of My Life: "Helas, mon coeur s'egare encore' (Les Contes d'Hoffman)

During my operatic phase (when I was in my mid to late teens), I attended a six-week opera workshop where we performed Hoffman.   It's an opera guaranteed to have tremendous appeal to any neurotic teen-aged girl such as I was:  the story of besotted writer whose angry and neglected muse takes revenge on him by afflicting him with jealousy against a rival and then---at the crucial moment---leaves him so drunk that the rival's triumph is assured.

His lover is a beautiful opera singer (Stella) who knows just how to mistreat an annoyingly impoverished romantic poet, with nothing to offer but his obsession.  The story opens at a tavern, where Hoffman gathers with a group of hard-drinking university students (that hasn't changed since Offenbach's day).  Urged by his posse to tell them the story of his past loves, he tells them three:  the first, a funny story of a man who falls in love with a mechanical doll (that's right: a mechanical doll); the second, a melodramatic story of man who falls in love with a jewelry-craving soul-stealing courtesan who is enslaved by a giant diamond and an vil magician; and the third, a dark and disturbing story of a man who falls in love with a good and virtuous but sickly (and doomed) singer.   (Offenbach had the last two scenes reversed, but I prefer to have the tragic story last.)

The first two women are heartless (the first literally; the second metaphorically); the third has heart problems in the more literal sense. 

In each story, the course of the hero's love is doomed from the start by, interfered with, and ultimately defeated by the evil machinations of a villain who is in each instance the doppelganger of his rival, Count Lindorf.  Naturally, the leading characters in each story are played by Hoffman, his Muse (who appears as his sidekick, Nicklausse), the beautiful object of his desire, and his rival.   Each story becomes darker and more somber and more heart-breaking than the one before.

The play ends with Hoffman dead drunk at his table.  The love interest cruises by on the arm of the successful rival and flings a rose at him.  Nobody's happy about this except the triumphant Muse.  Enough with the mooning around after looooooove; he's a poet; he should work it all out in poetry. 

Soundtracks of My Life: Melanie Safka

When I was in college, Melanie was my favorite singer.  Later, the Grateful Dead and Jethro Tull edged her out, but in college---when I was studying to be a singer myself---I liked songs I could sing myself.

Yeah, she rocked my world.  She was so part and parcel of the hippie-fringy-antiwar movement that I find myself gravitating back to her in this renewal of an old national nightmare.    I posted 'Lay Down,' which I'd have to call her greatest song, here.  I never cared for the other ones most people knew ("Brand New Key," "Look What They've Done to My Song," "Peace Will Come," and "Beautiful People.")

She has a fairly distinguished history for a singer none of my young friends seem to have heard of.

[S]he was booked as the first solo pop/rock artist ever to appear at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, the Sydney Opera House, and in the General Assembly of the United Nations, where delegates greeted her performances with standing ovations. The top television hosts of the time -- Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett -- battled to book her. (After her stunning performance on his show, Sullivan goggled that he had not seen such a "dedicated and responsive audience since Elvis Presley.")

Accolades rolled in, from critics ("Melanie's cult has long been famous, but it's a cult that's responding to something genuine and powerful -- which is maybe another way of saying that this writer counts himself as part of the cult too," wrote John Rockwell in The New York Times) as well as peers ("Melanie," insisted jazz piano virtuoso Roger Kellaway, "is extraordinary to the point that she could be sitting in front of us in this room and sing something like 'Momma Momma' right to us, and it would just go right through your entire being.")

In the years that followed Melanie continued to record, continued to tour. UNICEF made her its spokesperson; Jimi Hendrix's father introduced her to the multitude assembled for the twentieth anniversary of Woodstock. Her records continued to sell -- more than eighty million to date. She's had her songs covered by singers as diverse as Cher, Dolly Parton, and Macy Gray. She's raised a family, won an Emmy, opened a restaurant, written a musical about Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane…

She has, in short, lived a rare life. But all of it was just a prelude to what's about to come.  (official website)

Just hearing these old songs causes a resurgence and unspooling of vague daydreams from my younger days.  I didn't know what they meant then and I don't know now.  Whatever they were about, they didn't come to pass as I expected.  But I still have hope. 

And I feel like Melanie's time is coming again, if it hasn't already.  Will we see a renaissance of the antiwar movement?  Will the kids out there unplug long enough to resist?   Let's make the present different again.

A Depressed Canadian Duck by Judy Malley

"I dunno, it just doesn't seem worth the effort of coming back here every summer.  I look forward to it all winter and it never lives up to expectation, you know? No, it never does.  Every day, it's just pandering to tourists for bits of bread, sucking up pond scum, and then there's all the quacking---my God, the frickin' quacking!  I'm thinking of staying in Florida permanently, maybe Key West.  Gonna hang out on the beach with the gulls---maybe, like, get a tattoo: "Born to be aquatic."   I dunno, man.  I dunno."

Cat Chat

Who says cats don't talk? 

Tortoise with Orange: The Movie

You can see his little tongue!:

Soundtracks of My Life: "What Will We Do with a Drunken Sailor?"

My previous, and late, husband Don, who spent years and years in the British Merchant Marines, used to sing this traditional folk song song---generally with substitute words made up for the occasion.  I've heard a million different sets of words.  Shortly after I heard it for the first time, I went through a period when I couldn't get away from it.   Even the Animaniacs, which I used to watch with my stepchildren, had a version.

I decided to collect a few different versions of it here, in his honor. 

Sir Ian McKellen in Extras: Acting Secrets of One of the World's Greatest!

This is my favorite scene, bar none, from Extras.  It's Ricky Gervais (as Andy Millman) and Sir Ian McKellern as himself!

Learn the secrets of the great Sir Ian McKellen's greatness!  Hear him speak Gandalf's greatest line!

Watch him school Ricky Gervais's character on the most subtle tricks of the trade.  Watch Gervais (as Andy Millman) struggle to prevent his trademark inscrutability from giving way to slack-jawed incredulity.  Watch him fail to conceal his alarm and consternation (always signalled by the trademark blinking and mouth-breathing)!

T13 #14 | Pictures from the Earth: Broken Hearts for Every Situation (13)

Not only love can break one.  Losing a friend,  losing a pet, losing a job, or losing hope can do it too.  As Paul Simon so rightly said:  "Losing love is like a window in your heart/Everybody sees you're blown apart/Everybody hears the wind blow...." Yes, they do.

These Flickr photographers have made art of the broken heart.  There's a strange beauty in the brokenness portrayed in each of these photographs.

They all look painful though, don't they?  Yes, they all look painful:  torn asunder, shattered, cut in two, crumbling, dripping, cracked, broken in half,  punctured,  ripped,  bruised,  riven, shredded, or torn. 

How does your heart look when it breaks, or does it just depend? 

Soundtracks of My Life: The Seguedilla (Carmen)

When I was about 15, I spent a summer at a well-known music camp where I participated in a number of operas, one of them Bizet's "Carmen."  (I've already written about this here.)  And while I naturally loved all the better known arias and songs from 'Carmen,' my favorite was probably "The Seguedilla," the song she uses to seduce Don Jose (a soldier who is supposed to be guarding the sexy miscreant).  I've really enjoyed watching---and of course, hearing--- this version by gorgeous mezzo-soprano Jessie Raven.  I thought it would be only right to share.

Soundtracks of My Life: Classic Songs of the Vietnam Era

I posted this at Buck Naked Politics for a Thursday 13.  It's so personal to me that I thought I'd cross-post it here.

You Tube is such a wonderful thing.    This is the sound of war, resistance, and a transient transcendence.  In those days everything had a rainbow aura around it, even blood and death and the seemingly endless grind of my generation's war.  We thought that things were changing and that we could be the agents of change.  You can hear in the voices that these singers thought what they were saying meant something that transcended the merely personal.  Meet the old boss just like the new boss, and the people who we thought were leading us into a new age.   

Soundtracks of My Life: My Dad's Ultimate Party Song

When you reach my age and stage of life, you'll have accumulated a certain set of songs that you don't actually like, but that feel like part of you because your parents did.  Maybe for you it's---say---Bruce Springsteen or Abba.  As my dad was born in 1926, I heard a lot of really good music:  authentic vintage jazz, big band, and so on; some musicals I quite liked and still like; and a whole lot of crap that just seemed to quaint for words. 

I was reminded of this one while looking for the preceding recording by Mario Lanza (Recondite Armonia from Tosca by way of the film The Great Caruso).

More Soundtracks of My Life: 'Strange Harmony of Contrasts' (Tosca)

Here's another song from an opera---Puccini this time----that I fell in love with as a teen-ager.   While I was much too much a product of the seventies to see the famous sexual appeal of Mario Lanza (who flourished earlier), my dad had the album "The Great Caruso" and I played this song incessantly on my Seventies style "hi fi" till the grooves were quite worn down. 

Loss, Grief, & Cet.

With one parent(-in-law) still ailing in hospital and the other freshly released following a cracked rib, I have been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster.  I've also been up to my ears in my work, which when on, is really, really on and really labor-intensive.  ]

But I didn't feel like posting anyway.  I read, and also much admire, a number of blogs whose writers confide their deepest emotions to the internet, but I can't do that.  For one thing, my emotions really just aren't that deep.  They used to be as deep as anyone's, but after one awful thing and another happened to me a few years ago, I made the decision that I couldn't afford anymore to have feelings about everything.  To quote a character from one of my favorite Salinger stories, I don't see what they're good for, emotions.  All they do is make it harder to cope.

I will share that I've recently experienced a rupture in a long-standing friendship---not my fault or the friend's, just the effect of time and distance---and that I have been 'grieving' about that in a subdued, dry-eyed fashion.  At one point in my life I'd have cried and cried.  But one thing middle-age does do for you is make you realize the pointlessness of tears except as a sort of pressure-release device.  Sometimes I cry when I'm very, very angry or very, very anxious or very, very frustrated.  I rarely cry at all when I'm sad.  I sit and stare at the floor.

There it is.  You just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and hang on to what you can. 

Boemerang: Laughter Kills the Talk Show Career

I admit it:  I thought this sketch was real when I watched it on YouTube.  Thank God for Wikipedia.  Apparently, it's from a Flemish television show called "In De Gloria." According to Wikipedia. "In De Gloria was a satire on reality television and human interest programs featuring ordinary people, portrayed by the cast."  Man, I need to watch more Flemish comedy.

In this sketch a TV presenter is looking back on the episode that caused him to be fired.  The presenter, Eric Hartman (played by Tom Van Dyck), interviews a man whose vocal cords have been damaged during a tonsillectomy so that he sounds as if he's been inhaling helium.  The presenter lets out one startled chuckle, then---after an awkward apology---is completely unable to control himself.  He laughs and laughs and laughs while the audience stares at him stonily.  It's like being inside someone's anxiety nightmare, only funny.  Yes, I laughed and laughed and laughed.   I felt bad about it, but I laughed anyway.   And that's when I thought it was real.

But I wasn't the only one.  According to Wikipedia, "The clip is often mistaken for being real, and was showcased on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Star Channel news as being so."  I'm glad it isn't real.  I don't feel so bad about laughing till I fell off the couch now I know I was supposed to.   I suppose what Colette said was true:  we are each of us innately hostile to our kind.