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: "Che Fiero Costume"

I always loved this impassioned complaint--by Giovanni Legrenzi---back when I was studying music.  It's a rebuke to Cupid for the pain and unhappiness he causes---though he's just a baby still on his mother's milk.   It's an exciting song. 

It reminds me of a young tenor on whom I had a crush at opera camp.  He was so, so gay----but he didn't know it, and neither did I.    He had a magnificent voice even though he was only 18 (about 10 years from the voice's prime).   

Looking through the various renditions on You Tube, this is the one I liked best.This guy is really good. 

My music teacher thought it was a "man's song," so wouldn't let me perform it.  So I have a version by a soprano just to show....too late, alas!

Soundtracks of My Life: "Intorno All'Idol Mio"

This song by baroque composer Antonio Cesti (from Orontea)  is performed here by the extremely lovely Cecilia Bartoli.  I used to perform it back when I was studying music (though it goes without saying---not like this.   I was really pleased to find it.  I always imagined I'd never hear any of these songs again.   

Ricky Gervais & Gordon Ramsay

Ricky Gervais shares marketing tips for a candy bar called 'Plopp,' a 'cock-flavoured bouillon,' and a vodka called 'Spunk.'

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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. 

A Beetle-Browed Bunny Rebukes the Internets

The large, cross bunny whose portrait appears below was featured here at Cute Overload. Normally I would just link to the picture, but this time I  had to have the bunny (generously made available to all  via Creative Commons) at my very own blog.  I would like a giant poster-sized version of this bunny to put on my office door on days when I don't want to be disturbed.

THE DISAPPROVING BUNNY:

T13 # 13 | Pictures from the Earth: Landscapes & Cityscapes by Patrick Boury

Fellow Thirteeners, my spouse and I are not fans of the day, which is either year round or nothing at all. My husband, Nicholas, averred that if there was going to be a list of 13 things I'm fond of about him circulated on the internet, he'd prefer to write them himself.

Instead, consider the following my Valentine's Day gift to you.  Many of you know one thing I love is photography.

<Click the image to go to the Thursday 13 website.  (Join us!)

Magical Glass---The Art of Dale Chihuly | Link of the Day

A Florida photographer and blogger whose work I've much admired---and much used---turned me on to Dale Chihuly.   How had I not known about Chihuly?  You know how I love glass, light, and color, so how? 

This is the sort of art that doesn't require any more words.  Click here, wait, watch, and adore.... Breathtaking. 

The Mean Kitty Song | "Hey, Little Sparta"

This is a work of sheer genius:

Be sure to check out the lyrics.   

The author, Mr. Safety, says:

If you have a cat, I'm sure you can relate, lol. I originally wrote the song because I didn't want to do a simple talking blog about my Sparta's little biting problem.... BTW, trying to get a cat to perform for a music video... nearly impossible!   Thanks for watching .

Mr. Safety rescued Sparta.

T13 #12 | Pictures from the (Virtual) Earth: Thirteen Landscapes

  Hi, everyone.  If you leave a comment on these magnificent virtual landscapes, I will give you a link back to your blog.  The people who created them were kind enough to share them and I took a lot of trouble over selecting them!  :)

If you enjoyed them, please say!

If you're new to the meme,Get the Thursday Thirteen code here! The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday.   It's SO MUCH FUN!

 

"Whatever Bubbles Bubbles Up....": Greatest Music Video EVER? (Directed by Michel Gondry)

I probably haven't mentioned several thousand times, but I am not a fan of music videos---I mean the contrived sort you see on video stations-- in general.  In general, as I've said, they tend more often than not to ruin the song for me.  They're never quite what I imagined.  Sometimes the director's sense of whimsy ruins the song forever.  At You Tube, Cap'n Fix comments:

An excellent music video that aired briefly on MTV in 1994 and soon became largely forgotten. This one was filmed in B&W to produce an old-timey ambience that works very well with the ragtime sound. Pay close attention to the continuity. The whole video was filmed with a steadycam, in one continuous shot...an unbelievably difficult task that only someone like Michel Gondry could pull off. This catchy vid is no longer in production and a rare treat to find, wherever it happens to bubble up ;-)

Seriously, isn't this fusion of rap and vintage jazz amazing?  And is this not a perfect wedding of music with imagery?  Nicholas, who doesn't like any music that wasn't recorded during a very narrow period, was impressed by the video.  But of course:  Michel Gondry.

I saw it in 1994 and have never, ever forgotten it.  I was thrilled to find it.  It should never be lost or forgotten!  And here it is: 

Bessie Tucker: Twenties Barrelhouse Blues

Courtesy of the indispensable Yazoo Records, I first heard Bessie Tucker sing "Fort Worth and Denver Blues (click here for a sample)."  Here voice blew me away.  Astonishing....  Who is she, you might wonder?

Very little is known of the classic blues belter Bessie Tucker, a product of the folk and field holler vocal traditions of her native East Texas region. A woman whose petite frame belied the earthy power of her voice, her legend is largely founded on a bawdy 1928 Memphis session for the Victor label on which she was accompanied by pianist K.D. Johnson; the date yielded her best-known track, "Penitentiary" (sung in honor of an institution to which she was reportedly no stranger). A 1929 date followed, at which time Tucker disappeared from performing, apparently for good; no data exists on the later events of her life. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide (Answers.com)

One more Species Says Good-bye: Watch It Happen

Many people don't realize that we are in the midst of a massive species die-off.  The loss of species diversity may ultimately be more of a threat to the eco-net than global warming.  In the meantime, we're losing so many of the animal  people who share the planet with us.  One reason I miss Steve Irwin so much was because of his optimism:  his conviction that you could change things on a large scale by working locally.

Heart-breaking, this is.  From Celsias ("Cooling the Planet One Project at a Time"). 

[W]e hear of the demise of various species often now, yet for most of us, it falls into a part of our mind relegated for things that are either not relevant to us, or to that area in our brain where we store thoughts we don’t know how to deal with, or that we decide are not our problem. There’s no heartbreak, no tears, no wave goodbye. We’re detached, separate, unfeeling.

Today the BBC ran an article on the Panamanian Golden Frog (technically it’s a toad, but let’s not split hairs). It’s an amazing piece of footage of the final wave goodbye (literally and figuratively) of a beautiful creature few ever came to know. Watch the clip.

The whole species is now extinct in Panama - this was one of the last remaining populations. Its final wave was in our programme. — BBC

Sea Turtle Swimming

From Sipadan Island (Malaysia):  Just a beautiful and touching sight....and sounds as well:  gurgling water and turtle breaths.  How lovely.

DAMN, that's cute (a CO Update) (Link o' the Day!)

First of all, you need to check out Cute Overload's "Best of 2007" posting.  How did I miss this?  It starts with the cutest birdie on the wing shot ever. 

Latest CO favorites:

Red Paaaaandaaaaaaa COMING TO GET YOU  ("What's that?" my husband asked.   Whatever: it's so darn cute it'll make your eyes water)

I Hate My Squirrel Boss

A Check List (tiny circular pup)

Full and Total Sproing-a-tude (Hover Pup)

Can't Wait for the Movie (thumb-sized baby tamarin monkeys)

Kitty Monkey Dog Bear? (strangest looking cute animal ever, like something from an animated series, but REAL)

Emo Zebdonk (a literal half-zebra)

"That seal will laugh at anything"

Moby Dick & Sidekick, the seal  (Really:  a seal grooms a white whale)

Fats Waller: "Ain't Misbehavin'"

Fats Waller, one of my husband's heroes, just before he died (1943) at the age of 39.  He died of pneumonia on a train.  Fats Waller plus a lovely singer named Myra Johnson in a mock catfight; what could be better?   I couldn't find out much about Myra Johnson, beyond the fact (I got this from a book of my jazz-loving husband's) that she recorded with Boyd Senter and his band in 1938.  She recorded two sides.  That's all I could learn.. 

Anyway, here's one of the great jazz classics:

I couldn't love this video any more than I do.  I hope that the current generation of African-Americans will rediscover this irreplaceable and revered musical heritage soon, soon, soon.  Such elan, my God.  Bring back the Delta blues and authentic jazz, 21st Century style!

I'm doing my part to spread the love.

Enigma's Tribute to Callas (and More)

Back in the early Nineties, everyone was listening to Michael Cretu's Enigma.  I started thinking of them while viewing/listening to all of Callas I could find on You Tube.

As so often is the case, the video for "Callas Went Away" doesn't match up at all well with the images that the music put in my head.  You may feel differently. 

I do love the way they've worked Callas's voice into the song itself (an aria from Werther, which sounds completely different against this background music.)...Anyway, I had the image whenever I listened to it of her driving off in her carriage (because of the hoof sounds) while, say, petals blew in the wind.  You know, all pink, white, rose, red, and gold infusing heavenly blue: a metaphor for the death of a great diva.  This is quite different from what I imagined.

"Callas Went Away" isn't the best known song on the album:  I suspect  "Mea Culpa" and "The Principles of Lust" are better known, not to mention Sadeness.  Both helped bring about a revival of interest in Gregorian Chanting.  (But it's just not the same without the background effects of Enigma...)

This band's definitely worth looking into if you're too young (or too old) to remember when their music was everywhere.  I recommend pouring a glass of wine and listening to the entire album in a darkened room.

A Contemporary Tribute to the Memphis Jug Band

Man, I love the Memphis Jug Band.  And thanks to the wondrous Yazoo Records I was able to buy a recording of their music.

One of my friends who claims to be able to do "past lives" readings says I was African-American back in the days of the early Twentieth Century.  Maybe it's so because nothing gives me the faux (or are they?) flashbacks known as deja vu like the real, raw musical stylings of the gutbucket/barrelhouse period.  I'm talking about early blues, not jazz.  It's exactly the combination of diffidence and detachment, of moan and resignation that hits me where I live, as they used to say. 

Love Yazoo.  Love it. 

And I really enjoy this---a contemporary tribute by  a band called Snakehead Run to the original Memphis players' "KC Moan", though without jugs and washboards, alas:

Soundtracks of My Life: "Rustic Chivalry" (& the World's Most Passionate Love Song)

I was fortunate enough to find my favorite version of "The Siciliano" from Macagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" on YouTube (below).  Maybe because the first version I ever heard featured Franco Corelli, I've never been able to love any other the same way.  I think it was in a set of opera records (Italian) my father bought me for Christmas.  I was at the age to fall in love with this opera (a gritty "verismo" piece which my snobbier friends nevertheless call "smarmy.")   And the very first time I heard this song---I was fifteen, so it was 35 years ago and yet I remember it plainly---I was hooked. 

I had an image of a young man---face in shadow----playing the guitar under massive trees and a violet sky.  Fifteen, of course, is a sort of sexual turning point for a young girl.  Perhaps part of the trouble I had settling down in my younger days is that what I really wanted was someone who would break my heart by sitting under the trees singing about another woman.  Perhaps it's unfortunate that the most impassioned love song I'd ever heard was being sung by a man who had abandoned his pregnant girlfriend to start up a liaison with a married ex.

Strangely, no one else reacted to the song the same way.  "Nice," said my father politely.  "Mmmph," said my mom (who didn't care for opera).  That was seventies; none of my friends got it; they were mystified why I liked listening to opera at all when there was so much great rock music out there (there was, and I loved it too).

I remain surprised that this hasn't been "arranged" for today's youngsters.  Whenever anyone talks about a "haunting" melody, I flash back on the Siciliano.

The words are as follows:

Animal People: A Bear Called "Flocke"

Apparently this little baby had to be removed from his mother lest she---like another polar bear---eat him.  At first, the zoo said they wouldn't intervene (which certain stony-hearted animal "rights" activists say is the right thing to do, I know).  I don't care.  Every furry, squawky (who knew baby bears squawk?) little life saved is another light against the impending darkness, I saw.  I don't care I don't care I don't care.  Look at this.  Is she not precious in every sense?

 

A bear called "Flocke":

It's more important now than ever before---with the massive species die-off now occurring---for human beings to learn to love the other types of people who share our world.  (Whatever people said about Steve Irwin's tactics, and whatever the individual animals (briefly) thought about it, he made people see something very few could see before he came along:  the beauty of snakes, crocs, alligators, and their relatives.  I'm sorry; I don't mean to bring him into everything, but what a loss he was and is.)

Anyway, if a few contrary to nature  (which I don't believe) friendships between human and animal are what it takes, then that is what it takes.   Increasing the amount of love in the world can't be bad. 

Iconic Carmens: A Study in Variations on a Theme

I'm not comparing the technical proficiency of these singers and do not intend to comment.  Everyone has an iconic Carmen.  These are some different conceptions of her.  Back in the day when I hoped to make myself a singer, I wanted so badly to grow up to be her.  I had the idea of playing her with wit rather than the smouldering, half-threatening seductiveness that is usually her lot.

However, speaking of seductive....opera doesn't get any grander than this:  Callas singing anything at all.  I not only love her voice; I love the way her face changes into Carmen's the minute she starts singing.  But her voice is not the voice of the True Carmen as I secretly conceive her.  Callas's voice is too pure, like liquid light.  I admit that she really puts across the sexual intensity.  I don't know.  It's pretty damn compelling.

Carmen's ought to be rich and rough, like certain types of red wine.  She's a virago.  She's got an almost masculine sensuality.  That's why poor Don Jose has no chance against alpha dog Escamillo, the bullfighter.

Frankly, Lori-Kaye Miller's voice is more in line with my idea of Carmen's.  I like a lot more mezzo in Carmen's soprano.  And there's that slightly ragged edge.  Je l'adore!!!

On the other hand, here's a very seductive version featuring Julia Migenes, though (speaking as a mere viewer of this one scene), I'd prefer a more highly-colored set.  This is like Carmen as imagined by Miles Crane: all beige everywhere:  ecru, wheat, ivory, etc. etc.  Meh. 

Romanian soprano Angele Gheorghia sings it.  She's extremely beautiful in that "old Hollywood"  way.  It's not because she's Romanian, but something about her hungry expression as she sings that suggests to me a new permutation on an old theme:  Vampire Carmen.  That would be awesome....Say she first turns Don Jose into a vampire and then he stakes her at the end.... Anyway, a beautiful voice and a beautiful singer and another great version.

Random Link O' the Day: FilterMusic.com (Internet Radio)

I know there are a lot of music resources out there, but this site's really good....See it now.   I like listening to jazz as background when I work and this is a great selection....

Link of the Day: Olga's Online Art Museum (& Some Paintings by Poussin)

If you're extremely interested in art, you presumably already know about Olga's Gallery, one of the web's largest and most accessible collections.  I've been going there for years whenever I felt the need, as I sometimes do, to look at paintings, or whenever I need to follow up a reference to a particular work of art.  You can search by artist, country, movement, or name. 

Clicking this link will take you to the gallery for Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), one of my favorite painters.   Clicking this one will take you to Nicolas Poussin's dark and enigmatic scene from Christ's last supper (The Eucharist, painted in 1647), my very favorite.  I love the expression on young John's (I assume it is young John's) face. 

Pictures from the Earth: "Aurora Borealis"

I have never been far enough north to see the aurora borealis, but I found some amazing photographs on Flickr (made available, of course, through the generous people who contribute to Creative Commons). 

It was very difficult to choose, so I decided to go for variety of color and landscape. 

The Animaniacs Perform "The HMS Yakko"

The Animaniacs perform some of Gilbert & Sullivan's Greatest Hits; a new generation learns an updated version of "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" (which Aaron Sorkin subsequenty attempted with considerably less success)...I am as certain as I can be after a gap of many years that the wee, belligerent pirate is directly based on one of the illustration's to one of Gilbert's poems.  "Though I be a pirate swine, still I have to draw the line/And I will not push you overboard!"  Can I hear you say, "Arrr!!"?

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Sings Mozart

In my younger days, I studied music and specifically capital-V Voice.  Yes, my friends, at the age of 15, while other girls dreamed of being rock stars (not too many credible women back in those days except Janis, who was already long gone), I wanted to be Beverly Sills.  Alas, I lacked only the voice and the ear.  I wasn't even, I'm afraid, a particularly gifted amateur.  Even so, it was a very good thing for me since I learned what kids today seem not to be taught:  aspiration and enthusiasm and even discipline are no substitute for talent.  Over and over I saw others more gifted than I win the competitions, the important roles in performances, and the big solos.  I can't think of any better training for life than successive demanding and disappointing auditions with judges generally more tactful but no less ruthless than, say, the infamous Simon Cowell (who---I confess---I've seen in action only once, and by accident). 

I got a lot out of it.  Through my adolescent ventures into territory where I simply didn't have the talent to stake a claim, I learned the  joysof participating in the production of a great work of art and also the relief of letting go of the desire to be center stage. 

Teh Silly: Cats in a Music Store

I just wish there were more, like a cat listening to the Grateful Dead or to show tunes or vintage jazz.  Check it out.  But in case you're a Very Serious Person, I am warning you:  it is very silly indeed.

The Tragedy of the Commons

Creative Commons licensing, in case you don't know, is a permission granted by the owner of a work to allow third parties to make restricted use of the work without prior permission.  That's basically the point of it.  All of them want credit (attribution); some wish to restrict users from changing the work; and others want third party uses to be limited to noncommercial ones.  But the point of the CC license is to say, "You are authorized to use this image on the stated terms."

The Creative Commons license (incorporated by Flickr for the benefit of its users) is a brilliant idea, but one which could perhaps be more effectively executed.  Having used it myself in creating my own Flickr page.,  I can see how some people might find it confusing.  Which is a shame because, as I said:  brilliant concept.

Recently I began putting together my "Pictures from the Earth" series to show-case particularly beautiful Creative Commons photos.  (It is more work than you might think to find, say, the very best CC photos representing the theme glass bottles or "closed for the season.")  "Floridiana Gloriana" as it is evolving is a similar undertaking, in which I was hoping to gather together CC photographs that best reflect the Florida I know and love (and that we keep hidden from tourists).

Blogcombing "A Gentleman's Domain": The Heartbreak of Rodent Rejection

If you want to know why I'm depressed, it's because my hamster hates me.  Yes; I said it.  She HATES me.  Nicholas, my husband, explains:

We have a hamster.....  I didn’t want one, but after ceaseless bullying from my wife, and my daughter who was visiting, I caved in and they chose a Chinese dwarf hamster.  My wife was delighted.  It turns out that the hamster can’t stand my wife, who loves her, and any attempt at contact is met with full frontal attack and vicious use of her front teeth. On the other hand I, who never wanted her at all, am adored and trusted. She will take food from my fingers and lets me stroke her. My wife, meanwhile, has to suffer the trauma of rodent rejection.  (Read more of "Pet Pleasures")

Pictures from the Earth: "Cascade Mountain Range Volcanoes"

I've always been fascinated by the Pacific Northwest, but it's a long, long way away from Gainesville Florida, and when I have money to travel, it's usually got to be eastward to my husband's family home in Britain (not that I'm complaining about that).

At The Happy Wonderer, there is a marvelous photo-essay on the volcanoes of the Cascade Mountain Range I immediately decided to scoop up and add to my list of photos other people have made of things earthly and wonderful. 
The photos are from along the I-5 from Washington State (only an easterner would feel it necessary to qualify this, I'm told) to California.  "It's amazing to think that these peaks are all volcanoes," she says.

Go here to look and learn....

"Oh Lady" (Why You Need to Buy The Animaniacs Boxed Set Even Though You're a Grown-Up)

CROSS-POSTED TO JUST EAT THE DAMN PEACH.  I have said before how I love The Animaniacs (here and here, in fact).   Spielberg, is of course, a genius.  And speaking of geniuses, here is one of my all-time favorite clips, from the episode called "The Genius."  This is one of at least two episodes in which Spielberg goes after Jerry Lewis.  Here's Jerry Lewis ("The Genius") trying to teach the Warner kids how to do comedy.  But the Warner kids already know comedy.

Here's a little summary of the show that explains its appeal to adults:

Pictures from the Earth--"Closed for Winter"

My husband suggested the idea behind this photo essay. I asked him to suggest a subject and---it being a grey and melancholy day (we do have them in Florida)---he came up with the theme. I was concerned that I wouldn't find enough Creative Commons photographs on the theme, but honestly I was spoiled for choice, and it was extremely hard to choose.  But after looking through many, many, many, I decided that these beautiful images were the most evocative and diverse.