It’s been a while…I have not been so overwhelmed with a collection like I was with Lelutka’s. Not a surprise? There were a couple of things that made this sunday, an epic fashion day.  From the background music (which was perfect), the organization (which was flawless), the detail of making the guests dress in same outfit (decreasing the lag and suiting the mood of the show), to the models structing their way down the runway, and letting us (poor slow rezzers) see the details of each outfit, and of course the whole Lelutka collection. Adding to all this, I was thrilled to see a good friend (anya ohmai) doing an amazing collab with LeLutka and being able to show (to a wider clientele) her awesome skills and creativity! What a breathe of fresh air there!..I was especially surprised with the attention on the details of each outfit. The harnesses, the shown skirt cages, neck pieces, corsets! Details that made this collection rarely unique, from all I’ve seen so far in sl. From ancient roman inspiration  (in metal torso and helmet coverages but without the obvious drapping inspiration) , to victorian details like corsets and lace and inspirations like alexander mcqueen’s aw 09, and even more futuristic cyborg-ish details or the balmain shoulders… Lelutka’s collection incorporated all the ‘rl trends’, feathers, metal, fringes, spikes, lace, flower prints, nude tones, shoulder pads, not so understated accessories, in one concize collection. The best part of this, is knowing, it can all be mixed and matched and worn in a more ‘day to day’ basics or (and) by any kind style we’re into. Try it, have fun. <3 Uma

Distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December…

Skin, Hair and clothes by [LeLutka]

Listening to Lamb ‘Gorecki’

Tonight I found my Myspace page, I had forgotten about it. Last logged on early 2007. Created – god knows.

What an absolute mess. That website looks like someone projectile vomited over the screen.

Embarrassingly, almost, I read my profile. It’s funny how some things change so much yet some things always seem to stay the same. So many things I had forgotten about, so many things I STILL haven’t done, many I have and some things I have absolutely no interest in. AT ALL. I do not know what I was thinking but this is not a bad thing.

It’s kind of cool and bizarre to look back on, almost like reading a page of an old diary – which I have done recently mind you. Wow that was a REAL shock to the system. Diaries apon diaries, some cool art. Enlightening all the same in many ways. Well, not really like Myspace at all now I think about it. I never get too deep in public, quite the opposite most likely.

A snippet of what still remains mostly the same from years ago yet has progressed or morphed slightly, generally just the more simple things. Well, the really simple things. The rest is even more boring and too embarrassing:

“I’m feisty, fiery, passionate, alpha & smart, yet chilled, sometimes shy & ditsy. I have 6 brothers, i’m a bit of a tomboy at heart. I like to playfight, someone usually gets hurt. I’m easy going, down to earth but lots of fun. I’m a slight health nut but nothing too over the top – a pseudo dietitian. Pearl Jam soothes my soul. The beach in summer at night time is one of my favorite things. I love black on white, white on black, a touch of red or green. I’m attracted to green : food, clothing, deco, plants, you name it – apple is my current signature scent. Helping and watching plants grow, grafting cacti, Duvel, my friends and all the gay boys, red wine, martinis, UK Garage, lots of jazz, deep house, dirty house, anything but hard house, music that reminds me of growing up, clothing, architecture, parcels, chambord oh sweet chambord, raspberry, cooking, cashews, op shopping and garage saling, the energy burst after exercise, violins, basil, dry humour, dark hair, hot scents.

I want more tattoos but I need to fix the almost preteen giant fuck ups first. I like piercings, I have a fair few but they’re modest. I’ll finally be studying health science soon, atm i’m working and having lots of fun, procrastinating you might say. It’s been a career. I want to become an interior designer.. I think? I want to become a dietitian.. I think? I’ve got lots of ideas, too many ideas. I want to do so many things but no strong desire to do one thing alone, I want to be in so many places at once. I want to travel to Africa and Asia and India and and and.. well everywhere to photograph children and families. I want to capture peoples souls, everywhere. I can’t take photos to save my life though. I am way too spontaneous for my own good, it gets me into trouble. I’m always changing my mind. ONE thing I know is I do not want children till i’m 35. Yep.

One day I want to own a second hand boutique as something like a hobby but I want a nursery for the same thing. I think it’s too early to be considering retirement plans. Sometimes I think being around in female discriminative times had a couple of positives, like cutting all the career procrastination? No, God that sounds awful.”

That will do.. I never was good with paragraphs and have always rambled about NOTHING.

Reading back on PM’s almost made me want to vomit over my already seemingly barfed on screen. Kind of like this badly written post :p

So much stays the same but I have worked out so many things and lost so much doubt about myself. I hadn’t really though about this before reading some of the other stuff I wrote. Time is a wonderful thing. The part about photography made me smile, it seemed ridiculous to me always to the point I refused to pick up a camera. Now it’s just a really fun hobby i’d like to use one day. A lot though, some above and some left un-pasted – made me feel like I have wasted so much time thinking and not acting. Thankfully I have finally been acting recently on a few things so i’m not beating myself up like I would have a year ago.

I know more about what I want, that’s the most important thing, right? I know myself better. That was the enlightening part.

The first two things on my page are these two youtube links, they are still two of my favorite songs. Thought i’d share <3

That’s not the best copy of Evenflow i’ve ever heard :S

Zo handig! Een app die alle liedjes herkent aan de hand van een paar tonen dat het opvangt. Hoe het juist in elkaar zit en hoe het mogelijk is om aan de hand van een paar tonen een liedje te herkennen blijft me een raadsel. Maar het is gewoon een super app.

In tussentijd heb ik al een vrij lang lijstje met liedjes die ik “Shazam”. Wat opvallend is, is dat ik meerdere keren hetzelfde liedje Shazam.

Dit is er zo eentje

Here’s a different perspective. In the hours and days that followed the horrific events of September 11, 2001, radio programmer listserves were jammed with the same single question that prompted similar urgent flurries of e-mails and phone calls among concerned colleagues internationally. We reached out for each other’s suggestions and insights on how to ‘get it right’ for our listeners.

As you listen to the radio in a time of unusual or extreme world events, you may not realize how much furious activity is happening on the working end of your radio to make it the best, most thoughtfully-created experience possible for you and everyone else in the audience. That’s just as it should be. You shouldn’t have to think about those things, that’s why we’re here.

When the world outside is suffering as it was that day in a conflicted mix of disbelief, disenchantment, raging anger, calls for retribution, and utter, inconsolable grief – it does call into question how any communication service can best respond to external events and serve its listeners. Arts-focused organizations, like music radio stations, take that concern a little further to see how they can possibly offer beauty and expressions of human achievement that transcend the awfulness to offer messages of hope and assuage the pain.

The single question on all of our minds that day was, “what are you playing”?

At the time I was working as a classical radio station music director in Southern California, and on September 11th alone – not to mention the many days that followed – I remember talking to friends and fellow programmers in places as far away as Minnesota, North Carolina, London, NY City, Colorado, and Alabama. Amid the more appropriate, if predictable, suggestions like Barber’s Adagio, Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus and Lacrimosa, and Strauss’ Metamorphosen, came more unusual choices like Gorecki’s Symphony #3 (“Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”), Liszt’s ruminating Les Funerailles, and  and Puccini’s somber Crisantememi.

Personally, I always find that Dvorak’s Symphony #9 (“From the New World”) hits all the right chords of hope, solace, and forward-looking optimism that offer comfort in tough times. In fact I went home from work early that afternoon and laid on the floor near the stereo, closed my eyes and listened to all 9 recordings of that piece I owned, one after another. And Coltrane’s A Love Supreme lived in my car stereo for several weeks. That’s all I wanted to hear. It helped.

"In Paradisum" from Fauré's Requiem manuscript

Of all the suggestions and ideas that came from those conversations, only one piece of music was unanimously agreed upon as having just the right sound and feel for an occasion like the aftermath of September 11th. It was the Requiem, by Gabriel Fauré.

In many ways it is a conventional setting of the traditional Latin requiem mass…except that Faure omits the fiery Dies Irae (“Day of Wrath”)/Lacrimosa sequence, and ends the work with the upifting Libera Me and In Paradisum – texts taken from the burial ceremony, not typically incorporated into the Mass itself. This is a Requiem about transcending into the light of afterlife and solace, not dwelling in the dark discontent of grief and loss and unreconciled faith.

This evening the Burlington Choral Society performs Fauré’s serene Requiem as the centerpiece of their annual fall concert, in a program that also includes Bach’s Wachet, auf! Cantata #140 and another of Fauré’s lovely choral favorites, his student composition the Cantique de Jean Racine.

Life is challenging. Take a deep breath and allow yourself to be transported to a place of deep peace and beauty for a couple of hours. In Paridisum, indeed. There is nothing like the Fauré Requiem.

The program starts at 7:30 this evening, at the North Avenue Alliance Church (901 North Avenue) in  Burlington.

Just a quick update on my last post on the music of World of Warcraft. In a comment (the only one…) Mann said that his favorite music in the game is the Azuremyst Isle theme. I just checked it and it actually is very enjoyable and very soothing. The oboe (clarinet too?) and harp theme is very tuned to the surroundings and my dirty undead warlock’s Karma almost got cleansed by it! I had to go pay Prophet Velen an extremely short visit in order to get back to the dark side.

and I totally pwned him!

That got me thinking about the music in the older regions of Azeroth and, then, I remembered my first steps as a Blood Elf on Sunstrider Isle, in Eversong Woods and in Ghostlands. I had forgotten about it but those zones have some of the best theme music in the game. The cello dominating the soundtrack is, obviously, dear to my heart as I’ve been playing the damn thing since I was eight.

That soundtrack came out with Burning Crusade and was written by Russel Brower, Derek Duke and Matt Uelmen. Besides the obvious graphical overhaul since the launch of vanilla WoW, you can definitely tell that Blizzard has paid a lot of attention to the mood and feel of those new zones. The Blood Elves and Draenei starting zones have awesome soundtracks and the whole music of Northrend is some of the best written for a computer game in my opinion.

It’s a funny thing, the cello. Most people just know it’s some kind of big violin but most of them have been affected by it at some level. Whenever you watch a movie and the general mood seems to switch to melancholy/nostalgia, listen carefully to the music. Chances are that a cello took over the score. I read once that the cello had such a profound effect on human emotions because it was the one instrument whose frequencies resonated the most with the human voice. I have to say that listening to Teodora Miteva play the Kol Nidrei by Max Bruch, automatically brings tears in my eyes… and I’m a tough cookie when it comes to letting my emotions seep through!

Me no shed tears

Talking about tear jerking music, Symphony No.3 by Gorecki is absolutely amazing. I can only listen to it on sunny days or when I’m high on serotonin… It was first played in a church in Warsaw to commemorate the atrocities committed by the nazys during world war II. It’s heartwrenching as it is but when you know that the lyrics for the second movement are based on words that were scribbled by a woman on a Gestapo cell wall, it’s, well, too much for words really.

One last thing about the resonance of instruments with humans. In the song Jenny Wren by Paul Mc Cartney, he used an instrument called Duduk. It’s a traditionnal middle and eastern Europe flute thingy and when I first heard it, I couldn’t tell if that was someone’s voice or something else.

Listen to it and tell me that’s not one of the prettiest instruments you’ve ever heard, after the cello…

The kids love it when I pull out my guitar while they're playing Guitar Hero

In mod bizar melodiile astea nu imi amintesc de vreo persoana iubita, ci de o prietena… o prietena draga, din liceu, cu care ar fi trebuit sa locuiesc in primul an din facultate, in loc sa stau printre straini. Dar viata ne-a purtat pe cai diferite, in orase diferite…

Am 03.10.09, der ja dieses Jahr unpraktischerweise auf einen Samstag gefallen ist, mache ich mich aus dem bergischen Land auf in die charmante Kleinstadt Bocholt, nahe der holländischen Grenze. Meine Freundin singt dort seit einiger Zeit in einem guten Chor, von dem sie ziemlich begeistert ist. Ehrensache, dass wir zum Konzert fahren um sie zu unterstützen, wir sind natürlich auch neugierig, auf den Chor, den Chorleiter Max Kuon, die Literatur und die Sängerschar.

Wenn man moderne Literatur singt, warum muss man sich immer dafür entschuldigen? Meine Freundin kündigt das Ganze im Vorfeld etwas negativ als eine Kitschorgie (das sind meine eigenen Worte) an und auch der  Vorredner, der die Konzerteinführung hält, möchte dem Publikum die Angst vor einem im Kopf verhafteten atonalen Desaster nehmen. Dabei ist gerade moderne Chorliteratur oft sehr bereichernd und öffnet neue Türen für das Altbekannte.

Englischer Komponist John Rutter in 2006

Der Hauptschwerpunkt liegt auf John Rutter, der mit Stücken aus dem Magnificat, Gloria , Requiem und dem Psalmfest vertreten ist. Rutter wurde 1945 geboren und wenn man Wikipedia Glauben schenken darf, lebt er auch noch. Er sieht so ein bisschen aus wie Kurt Masur nur ohne Bart aber mit Ganzkörperbrille. Selbst wenn man ihm vorwirft, Kaufhausmusik gemacht zu haben, auf diese geistlichen Gesänge mit Klavierbegleitung trifft das auf keinen Fall zu. Es ist rythmisch absolut anspruchsvoll und verlangt konsequentes Durchzählen.  Der Chor, der Kammerchor Westfalen (warum haben gute Chöre immer so nichtssagende Namen?) ist wirklich eine Klasse für sich, er klingt sehr homogen, reagiert gekonnt auf das präzise Dirigat von Max Kuon und ist immer präsent. Die Sänger sind erfahren, ein das Alter betreffend recht gemischter Haufe. Lediglich in schwindelerregender Höhe hört man im Sopran mal einen Hauch von Giesskanne (schepper). Besonders genossen habe ich die wahnsinnig spannungsgeladenen Pianissimo-Stellen, die einfach fantastisch diszipliniert und schwergewichtig waren. Im Piano offenbart sich halt die wahre Qualität.

Die Stücke aus dem Requiem sind zuckersüß und haben nichts von der Finsternis anderer Vertonungen, sondern ihr zarter Lichtglanz ist ein freudiges Loslassen der Seele in die andere Welt, während man selbst im Diesseits auf ihr Wohlergehen ein leckeres Sektchen trinkt und Streuselkuchen isst. Was mag Herr Kuon dabei empfunden haben, er, der selbst eine schwere Erkrankung hinter sich gelassen hat?

Die anderen Stücke der anderen Kollegen wie Ravel, Fauré, Langlais und Whitlock, versprühen eine ähnliche Stimmung wie Rutter, bedienen sich aber weniger Divertiermelodien, sondern verwenden Stilelemente vergangener Epochen und beschwören so eine Art modernen Mystizismus herauf. Absoluter Höhepunkt ist auch leider das letzte Stück, “Totus tuus” von Górecki. Der Chor trägt das Stück in 2 aneinander gereihten Zirkeln ähnlich einer 8 vor, oder sollte diese Aufstellung das mathematische “Unendlichkeitszeichen” symbolisieren? Draußen stürmt es, während die getragenen Klänge und die Rufe nach Maria in der warm erleuchteten, modernen Kirche St. Paul mit der Stille verschmelzen und das wohlige Gefühl vermitteln, dass man im Herbst angekommen ist.

Dass die Bedenken am Anfang für diese Musik überflüssig waren, zeigt der begeisterte Applaus für ein ungeheuer berührendes und persönliches Konzert. Wir sind froh, in Bocholt dabei gewesen zu sein, anstatt in Saarbrücken oder am Brandenburger Tor.

Liebe Grüße Claudia

Für weitere Infos: www.kammerchor-westfalen.de

I’ve got a little back book with my poems in

If I should die this very moment

Some say she was saintly, to some she was a swinger

I’m not sleepy and there’s no place I’m going to

            It’s a hard choice: Watch Carl Theodor Dreyer’s cinematic masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc, in total silence, or with Richard Einhorn’s 1994 cantata Voices of Light, which was inspired by the film and is now included as an optional soundtrack on the Criterion Collection DVD. I’m not a big fan of those hyper-intense, minimalist-inspired, long-winded forays into spirituality that were so popular in the 1990s, but I wasn’t feeling very disciplined either, and it’s hard work watching a film in a total silence. So I chose Dreyer with Einhorn over the mute play of Dreyer’s stark study of warts, wrinkles and bodily fluids.

            Einhorn’s music feels like it was whipped up by folks in the marketing department of the old Sony Classical company. It was composed shortly after the release of a wildly popular 1992 recording of Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3, which introduced so-called sacred minimalism to a wide audience. Einhorn wrote his oratorio to feature prominently Anonymous 4, a women’s vocal quartet that was another fashionable sound of the mid-90s, when souls newly liberated from the fear of Cold War annihilation sought refuge in mass-produced spiritual balms and escapes. Anonymous 4, which burst onto the scene in 1993 with a best-selling recording called “An English Ladymass,” gave Einhorn’s oratorio an instantly ethereal, otherworldly texture throughout much of its hour and twenty minutes of repetitive modal singing, slow moving harmonies and insistent and hypnotic off-beat rhythmic figures. They lent a veneer of authenticity to the composer’s  exercise in faux-medievalism, which borrowed in spirit from Orff’s Carmina Burana without ever attaining that piece’s crude power.

            In 2001, I reviewed the oratorio (at the Kennedy Center) performed in concert with a screening of the Dreyer. The Einhorn was not particularly noisome but not very good either.  Now music and film have been paired on the Criterion Collection DVD, which raises to a whole new level the question of the oratorio’s suitability to accompany this exceptionally powerful film. We live in a society that self-educates, and DVDs are an essential and vital part of that process for many cineastes. But people new to Dreyer might be misled into thinking that this pairing is both historically sanctioned and commensurate with the genius of Dreyer’s film. Neither is true.

            Minimalism is a fast and easy solution to the silent film music problem, filling the creepy aural void without saying too much in particular. So long as the composer occasionally changes harmonies or textures in synch with the film, the style works well, unobtrusive but not accidentally related to the action of the film. Einhorn’s music, composed in large, bland arcs of repeating patterns, does that.

            But it fails to support or underscore the power of Dreyer’s vision which dissects human cruelty and suffering through intense close-ups, while  suggesting the inevitability and ecstatic acceptance of religious martyrdom on the part of Joan. Dreyer’s vision is intensely physical and spiritual at the same time. The knock-off chant forms and two-note descending melodic fragments that Einhorn employs ad nauseam aren’t believable on a religious, spiritual or historical level, and they are too blunt and slow moving to respond to Dreyer’s excoriating magnification of the real, and his often-expressionist camera movement. If ever a film called out for a score of electric intensity, atonal if necessary, it is The Passion of Joan of Arc. Of course it would have been torture for Anton Webern to write film music, and he wasn’t exactly a master of long-form composition. But Dreyer’s film is Webernian in its combination of sparse imagery and architecture, its intense fidelity to an uncompromising process and its explosive psychological ruptures.

            Of course, maybe I’m not being fair to Einhorn and over praising Dreyer. When Dreyer’s camera isn’t focused squarely on the  furrowed and wart-bestrewn face of one of his subjects, it is moving in a slow series of diagonals. Joan is constantly looking up and out of the frame in exactly the same direction a figure in a Baroque painting would look up at a dove in the sky or a saint in the background, through a strong formal play of angled lines. Is the filmmaker borrowing as bluntly from the tricks of earlier painting as Einhorn borrows from an earlier language of music?

            If so, Dreyer does more with his borrowing than Einhorn does. And in his importation of these diagonal lines into film there is at least an act of formal innovation, an interpretation from one art form to another. Einhorn doesn’t add much to the music he appropriates, other than organize it in repetitive blocks. Without Dreyer’s imagery, Einhorn’s music quickly becomes boring and meaningless. And even when seen with Dreyer’s film, the music drones on in its own, separate universe, not even dimly aware of the power of what it is ostensibly supporting.

When I did the CAC’s Men’s Rites of Passage last August, there was a handful of  really important music that was either used in the rituals, or else kept springing to mind from my personal CD collection. As I’m re-doing my private devotional mix-CD (original got scratched) I thought I’d go public and let y’all in on what’s on it.

The centerpiece is a classical work from of one of the earlier rituals at the event, a grief ritual, was Polish composer Henryk Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony (aka Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). Composed in part as a memorial to the many young men who died in WWII, either Polish or otherwise, this evocative work builds to some powerful crescendos.

Second up on the CD, a new addition to the earlier CD that I scratched, is the Finale to Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. Ever since college, this entire work has been my own private version of headbanging music, inspirational, emotional and just downright fun. I put just the Finale on, only because I need room for the rock and folk songs that also have meaning to me as I try to understand how to enter into that “beginner’s mind”, that monkishly prayerful headspace, which came so consistently when I was on the “confront” (the opposite of a retreat).

First on that non-classical list, another one that Father Rohr used to great effect in one of the rituals, is Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem. The most famous line from this song is probably “There is a crack in everything… that’s how the light gets in.” Cohen had been a fave of mine for years, but I had not listened closely to this song until last year. He’s a great writer for contemplatives, with a Buddhist/Jewish angle, but seems to have great respect for Jesus and New Testament imagery also.

Next up, a trio of songs by Bruce Cockburn, my “spiritual director” for the week that I spent in the woods being initiated (btw, that’s two Canadians in a row, for those of you keeping score) . Snippets of his songs are always popping up in my brain as I go through life, but these three took on greater importance when I started the men’s work.

a) Get Up Jonah (from The Charity of Night) – a hard-rockin’ call for the reluctant prophet to get it together and come straighten us all out. Also a call for me to get off my ass and find the courage to speak up about what’s gone wrong in our world.

b) Closer to the Light (from Dart to the Heart) – a grief-induced tribute to Cockburn’s friend and fellow songwriter Mark Heard… who’s right up there on my “old school” list with Cockburn, Cohen, Townshend, Dylan, Springsteen, Van Morrison, James Taylor, Paul Simon, Lennon/McCartney and Peter Gabriel (most of whom I had no room for on this disc. And I haven’t even gotten to the women yet…)

c) Open (from You’ve Never Seen Everything) – a cheerful, honest appraisal by a middle-aged man stating that he’s enjoyed walking (or stumbling) down some pretty odd paths, led by God, and he’s looking forward to finishing the journey in an equally colorful way.

Last on the disc, a dark horse entry by a woman, trying to connect the spiritual sensibilities of the 13th century Sufi poet Hafiz and the mindset of Jesus when he walked the earth. That would be Rickie Lee Jones, on the little-known album The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard, one of the more unique projects of the past decade. The song I chose was Nobody Knows My Name, a mostly improvised, chant-like thing based on Lee Cantelon’s book The Words (as in the words of Jesus) that reaches into some new territory  musically, lyrically, even theologically. I have not picked up the book yet, but her interpretation of some of its themes is a jazzy, folky, very postmodern (and yet sort of orthodox) perspective on what the gospels might mean to people who work at diners and text their friends on a Sidekick or Blackberry.

And that’s it. That’s all I had room for. A first-person narrative sung by Jesus, in the guise of a 21st century woman, gets the last word. If I had room on a standard CD-R, I would put John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme into the mix to wrap things up. Guess I’ll just have to reload to hear that one.

And as a bonus for you dads out there, here’s a link to a slightly silly, mostly great song called Father’s Day by a New York fratboy band called Guyz Nite. To paraphrase Ted (or was it Bill?): Be excellent to yourselves and one one another, gentlemen!

It was very summery in the earlier part of last week, although as it happens it wasn’t going to last. On Monday Tallulah was in the office. I was standing in the kitchen at the photocopier wondering if I should ask Eric to brush up all the sand when I heard a soprano voice in the corridor singing ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.’

I come home in the morning light
My mother says when you gonna live your life right
Oh mother dear we’re not the fortunate ones
And girls they wanna have fun
Oh girls just wanna have fun

It was Tallulah. As she passed the kitchen door she glanced in. When she saw me she came in to say hello. Or rather she slinked in. There is something strangely lithe and feline about Tallulah sometimes. Her red hair was tied back in a thin turquoise scarf. She was wearing long silver earrings, a tiny crescent moon at the end of each one.

Tallulah told me that Jack and Owen had almost come to blows at a meeting of the Keats appreciation group a few days earlier. It seems they’d been arguing about Lauren Laverne’s rendition of “the golden pen poem”, as Tallulah called it.

‘Owen felt that Laverne’s reading was disrespectful and impertinent,’ Tallulah said. ‘Jack sniggered at him and accused him of being elitist. Of course Jack didn’t quite put it like that. He suggested to Owen that only a stuck up little twerp who had his head up his own backside could think like that. Owen retaliated by calling Jack “slack and totally without scruples” and said Jack was “lacking a robust sense of the true meaning and value of poetry”. Jack guffawed and suggested the real problem was that Owen had the hots for Laverne but was in denial about it, denial that he was converting into denial about the quality of her rendering of the poem. Jack said Owen would never admit the beauty of Laverne’s reading of the poem until he admitted the beauty of Laverne herself. You should have been there. It was bloody hilarious.’

‘It sounds like it,’ I said. ‘And so Jack nearly hit Owen, did he?’

‘Yes, it’s worrying. Jack’s needs to watch himself. When Owen retaliated by called him degenerate and disrespectful to women, Jack got up, swaggered over to him, poked him on the brow with his index finger and asked him what he was going to do about it.’

I laughed. ‘What did Owen do?’ I said.

‘He trembled!’ Tallulah laughed. ‘What do you think he did? He trembled, picked up his carrier bag of seasonal vegetables and went off to catch the next bus back home to Heidi.’

‘Sounds like Lauren’s really put the cat among the pigeons among the Keats aficionados, eh?’

‘Yeah,’ Tallulah said. ‘But it’s Jack I worry about. I’d hate to see him do something he’d regret.’

‘Bloody hell, Tallulah, since when did you ever care about what happens to Jack? Last time you spoke to me about him you didn’t give him the lickings of a dog.’

‘Didn’t I? Really? How odd. I’m really very fond of Jack.’

Tallulah looked at me with a wide-eyed, innocent expression. It was an expression Laverne herself sometimes wears. I laughed. She laughed too.

‘Hey, do you know he’s taken to wearing a cowboy hat now?’ she said. ‘Well, a sort of Fedora, I guess.’

‘Is it black?’ I asked.

‘Yep,’ Tallulah said. ‘Black as your hat. Black as a spider. Black as night.’

The Good Doctor Sticks also came over last week. We had a session about the Electronic Assessment Module, which he continues to see as the future of social work, and then moved on the other matters.  He had an idea he wanted to pitch.

‘In The Observer this week it said that there were eight hundred Brits on waiting lists for Swiss euthanasia clinics,’ he said. ‘This is a clear case of demand without supply. Where’s there’s need, there’s opportunity. This is the fundamental principle of the market economy. And the government’s not about to make euthanasia legal over here any time soon – except in Gordon’s case as a one off, of course – and even if they did the money’s not there to fund the service from the public purse, so the market will need to fill the gap. I’m looking to pull together some interested people from various disciplines to begin to put together a package and come up with a business plan. Needless to say you, my friend, were one of the first people that came to mind.’

‘Thanks, Sticks,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘I’m flattered. So how do you see this working, exactly?’

‘Okay, our company will essentially operate in a specialised area which combines the expertise of social care professionals, counsellors and medical practitioners of various kinds with other areas of expertise, such as those of the travel and package short-break holiday providers, the leisure industry, the undertaking profession and funeral services.  The basic idea is that we will put together complete packages in Switzerland for those who wish to end their lives by euthanasia.  We will provide a complete service – transport, accommodation, nursing and medical care, return of the body, funeral services and so on.  But within that service we will offer a bespoke end of life experience for every client and their family.  We will set up a centre in Switzerland where a dying person and their loved ones can spend the client’s final days together. We will offer privacy and five star care. But more than that, we will tailor the whole package around the dying person’s wishes and desires. They will eat the foods  they love, listen to the music they love, see DVD’s of their favourite films or those they’d always wanted to see but missed, have their favourite books and poems read to them, and so on. The family would have a suite with all the amenities they desired and a top notch twenty four hour global care and hospitality package. We’d ensure that we met their every demand. For example if they loved Bartok, they could listen to him all they wished. We might even be able to get a string quartet to play for them.  If they liked Chas and Dave or ragtime, we’d ensure that it was available for them. Rap music, hip-hop, madrigals or Welsh male voice choirs. Whatever they wanted to hear before they left this world, we would ensure they heard it. Similarly with films. If they wanted Close Encounters of the Third Kind they would have it. Plasma screen, wraparound sound, Dolby stereo – the works. Similarly if they wanted The Swimmer or The Masque of the Red Death or The Snowman. And the same with food. If they wanted caviar they would get it. If they wanted cheese and onion pasty and mushy peas they’d get them. Top quality ingredients, cordon bleu chefs. On their final day, which I see as usually being a Sunday, the dying person would have a final evening meal – a Last Supper , if you will – after which they’d retire to their bed to begin their final journey.  At this point the music of their choice would begin to play, and again it could be anything they wanted, from Gorecki’s Third to something like K. C. and The Sunshine Band’s sublime and immortal “That’s the Way I Like It”, uh huh, uh huh. The latter would be my personal choice, of course. We’d want to make dying an unforgettable experience, if you’ll excuse the paradox.’

I nodded slowly. ’You don’t see this as at all cynical, do you?’ I said. ‘The exploitation of desperate and vulnerable people?’

‘I don’t’ Sticks replied. ‘Not at all. Don’t forget, my friend, better the good guys provide these services than let them fall into the hands of the bad guys.’

‘So if good guys do bad things does it make those things good?’ I asked. ‘Or does it not just make the good guys bad?’

‘You think too much, my friend,’ Sticks said, his affable smile rising like a brand new day across his face. ‘The key issue here is need and ensuring that need is met. That’s the business we’re in. We need to see that the market is the future for all areas of social care. There’s no shame in it my friend, no disgrace.  So, are you interested?   Do you want to hear more?’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Go ahead, shoot.’

‘Okay, here’s how I see it. In addition to the Your Final Days centre in Switzerland, we’d need a support, preparation and after-care service in the UK. That’s where you’d come in.  But more importantly we’d need our own aeroplane specially equipped to transport the dying person and their family to Geneva, or wherever. It would be a unique aeroplane for a unique journey, the Final Journey, a journey the dying person will only take once.’

‘So what will you call your aeroplane?’ I said, ‘EuthanAire?’

‘That’s good,’ Sticks chuckled. ‘I like its phonic ambiguities. It sounds like “you thin air”, where the status of “thin” is uncertain. Is it a verb or is it an adjective?  But either way it speaks of the ephemeral, transitory nature of our corporeal selves, does it not?  And the word also evokes the phrase “youth in air”, which is also helpful in reminding us that we all grow old and that death is inevitable, that being young is as fragile as a perfume on the wind. It isn’t the name I have in mind but it’s an interesting suggestion.’

‘No, Sticks, it wasn’t a suggestion: it was a joke.’

‘Of course it was’ he said. ‘But an interesting joke, yes?  However, the aeroplane I have in mind will be completely black, black wings, black from nose to tail fin. But inside it will be lined with white satin and all the furnishings – the seats, the couches and beds, the curtains, the carpets and the drinks trolley – will be gleaming, clean and white and lovely white lights will light every corner of the cabin space.  And the cabin staff will be dressed all in white too. It’s like a metaphor for death itself, you see. From the outside it looks dark and forbidding and inscrutable. The dying person wonders what it’s like inside.  But his or her final flight shows them that inside the black aeroplane it is peaceful and serene and that everything shines like snow.  This is how the Final Flight of life will be for our clients. They will ascend above the Earth and make the passage to Switzerland in the black aeroplane. That will be the name of our company, Black Aeroplane Enterprises.  I like to think that in time the phrase “it’s time to take the black aeroplane” will become an everyday figure of speech for dying, in much the same way as shuffling off the mortal coil and popping one’s clogs are now. And the advertising material is there already: take the black aeroplane and make dying an unforgettable experience. What do you think? Do you like what you’re hearing, my friend?’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ I said. ‘But do you think it’ll ever get off the ground?’

‘A black aeroplane is no heavier than a silver one,’ Sticks quipped. ‘I am anticipating no special difficulties with gravity.’

‘But what about if it’s made illegal to offer such packages. Or what if they liked their last weekend so much they decided they didn’t want to die after all?  Or what if euthanasia’s made legal in the UK and service providers are popping up everywhere?’

‘If the dying person were to decide they wished to remain with us they could return to the UK alive with their loved ones on the same flight that would have taken their body home.  Furthermore they will be offered a fifteen percent discount on a future booking if they make this within twelve months of that date.  If euthanasia is made legal in the UK I already have a plan to capture the market with a chain of high street branches aimed at providing a sensitive high quality service for the volume market. I’ll call these Last Stop Shops, which is rather clever, don’t you think?’

I shrugged. I sometimes think Sticks is on something – like another planet, for example. However, he’s regarded in the Directorate as our key ‘blue sky thinker’ and as a man whose views you should never dismiss.  Some say he sees the order of future where others can see only chaos.

‘You should be on The Apprentice, Sticks,’ I said. ‘Alan Sugar would be bowled over by someone like you.’

‘You think so? ‘ Sticks smiled, a slow, deeply self-satisfied smile, almost the smile of a cat. ‘Well, I’ll take that in the spirit I think it’s intended, my friend. Thank you. Yes, I can see it too: “Sticks: you’re hired!” Ha ha. And so what’s your answer, then? Do you want to be in my project group? Yes or no?’

I rubbed my jaw. ’Let me think about it,’ I said.

‘Fair enough. I’ll give you a bell next week. But remember, if the good guys don’t do it, the bad guys will.’

I love the way there’s so much greenery and light at this time of the year and how it all seems so irrepressible and profligate. I drove along Renwick Road that evening in slightly luminous marbled-pebble light. I passed Ronnie Campbell’s office at the corner of Claremont Terrace. It’s funny how meretricious and unfashionable the yellow and red of Labour looks now (no doubt a rebranding now awaits us in the not too distant future). Less than half a mile by Jag from his big house on Marine Terrace, Ronnie’s shabby office, an old brown corner shop – inscrutable and uninviting and which never looks likes it’s open – seems a metonym for his shoddy worn-out party, a metaphor for the way our representatives weigh the needs of the people against their own needs. I slid around Broadway Circle past the bow-windowed pre-war semis – solid, secure, desirable – and noticed in gardens the yellow tongues of the laburnum lolling in vague, soft shadows. I remembered that when I was a kid I thought these houses were really posh and that they belonged to rich people, people from a different world to me.

When I got home Margaret was sitting at the kitchen table doing a new jigsaw. It was a picture of a steamroller, a green Aveling and Porter. There was also a large jagged crystal on the bench beside the kettle.

‘Have you seen Brenda?’ I said.

‘I have,’ Margaret replied.

‘And how was Bowness?’

‘Bowness was good, I think. Tristan perhaps a little less good.’

‘Oh?’

‘Oh, indeed. The man doesn’t know how close he is to being given his marching orders. I mean, he’s so insensitive he even asked Brenda to marry him one night! Marry him, you know! Marry him! What is it about hanging from a thread that the man doesn’t understand?’

‘Tristan asked Brenda to marry him?!’ I said, genuinely surprised. ‘Nah, surely not. Are you sure Brenda’s not just pulling your leg?’

‘Brenda does not pull anyone’s leg,’ Margaret replied, very earnestly. ‘What she told me was the truth, I’m sure of that. They were sitting at a window seat in an Italian restaurant called Rumours, which is apparently at the bottom of the hill opposite St Martin’s church. Do you know it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do. They do a good garlic bread.’

‘They’d just come back from a cruise on Windermere. It was a lovely evening and the sun was shining on her face. Out of the blue Tristan asked her to marry him, but, and here’s the cherry on the cake, he wouldn’t be able to buy her an engagement ring until business picked up! Brenda says she was absolutely gobsmacked. She felt it was as if he wanted her on the cheap.’

‘So did she say no?’

‘No, she didn’t know what to say. She said she just leaned over, kissed his cheek once and asked if she could have another glass of wine.’

‘Wasn’t she flattered?’ I asked. ‘I mean, it isn’t every day a woman gets a proposal of marriage, is it?’

‘No, she wasn’t flattered. She felt she was being manipulated. She felt she’d been defiled.’

‘Defiled?’

‘Yes, defiled. That’s the word she used. She felt she’d been defiled.’

At that point De Kooning, who until then had been sitting benignly on the kitchen table, took it into his head to steal a piece of Margaret’s new jigsaw. He knocked it on to the floor with his paw, jumped down, picked it up in his mouth and ran away with it, out through the conservatory into the garden.

‘Which piece has he got?’ Margaret asked.

I looked at her and shrugged. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘The one that fits the hole that’s still there when you’re finished, I guess.’

Margaret shook her head in dismay. I turned on the oven and got a pizza out of the freezer. I made myself a cappuccino and sat in the conservatory waiting for De Kooning’s return. It crossed my mind that the piece of music I’d want to play while I lay dying in Switzerland would be Dvorak’s cello concerto.

.

A drizzling and cold Swedish summer morning, a bunch of brave sustainable challenger gathered at Globe Forum 2009, to discuss and move forward on the topic “Business Innovation for Sustainable Growth”.

cult_by serena mazzotta

musica per il Sogno:

Patricia (tema da La dolce Vita di Federico Fellini)_Nino Rota
La televendita_Eterno/Innocenti
Tema dei Burocrati_Eterno/Innocenti
Tema di Sigismondo_Eterno/Innocenti
Cantando sotto la luna_Ernesto Bonino
For You Ann Lill Op.58_Henryk M. Gorecki

Recently, I’ve been listening a lot to the magnificent soprano voice of of Dawn Upshaw.

Although I live in Italy, opera is one musical genre I usually give a wide berth to but Upshaw is a singer who makes me think I’m missing something.

Actually, she’s not your common or garden opera singer. For one thing she looks more homely than diva-esque. For another, she’s as comfortable performing  popular show tunes  as contemporary classics.

Apparently she didn’t properly encounter classical music until she went to college.  Her parents were active in the civil rights movement and were lovers of folk music so she grew up listening to Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez + Peter,Paul & Mary.  Later she became a fan of Joni Mitchell and musicals.  This background helps explain her openness to all musical styles.

The extraordinary range of Upshaw’s voice can best be heard on  “Ayre”(pronounced I-ree)  a song cycle by the Argentinean-born composer Osvaldo Golijov released in 2005.  Alex Ross, writing in The New Yorker describes this well :  “Dawn Upshaw, the soprano, delivers an electrifying performance in which she assumes a half-dozen vocal guises. Early in the record she makes a hairpin turn from a fragile, softly glowing Sephardic song entitled “Una Madre Comió Asado” to a bloodcurdling Sardinian number entitled “Tancas Serradas a Muru”—I had to double-check the credits to make sure that Upshaw was still the singer. If a modern classical work could ever crack the Top 40, this is it: Golijov has created a new beast, of bastard parentage and glorious plumage.”

Upshaw has since collaborated in the equally mind blowing Golijov opera Ainadama (Fountain of Tears)  about the life and murder of Spanish poet  Federico García Lorca seen from the perspective of  actress Margarita Xirgu (Upshaw’s role).

She has also performed in works by Gerswin and John Adams but it is still her performance on the  1993 recording of Henryk Górecki’s  Symphony No.3 -  Symphony of Sorrowful Songs  (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych) that stands out  – one of the most profoundly moving pieces of music ever recorded.

I first came across this on the soundtrack to Peter Weir’s movie ‘Fearless’.  There it was used in the  scenes of a plane crash. Subsequently it has been used in the funeral scene of  Come Dio Comanda and a death bed scene of HBO drama ‘Wit’ . Wiki tells me that  British industrial  group Test Dept also used it as a backdrop for video collages.

The fact that it is sung in Polish does not diminish its impact.   The first part is based on a 15th century prayer (“My son, my chosen and beloved, share your wounds with your mother”), the second takes its text from a prayer inscribed by an 18 year old woman on the cell of the Gestapo HQ in 1944 (“No mother do not weep, most chaste Queen of Heaven, support me always”) while the final movement uses a Folk song in the dialect of the Opole region – a lament of a mother for her dead son (“Perhaps the poor child lies in a rough ditch and instead he could have been lying in his warm bed”) .

A towering piece of music matched by a magical voice for our times.

Jeden z wielu portretów kompozytora autorstwa Witkacego

Z tego co wiem, Karol Szymanowski raczej nie był wzorowym katolikiem – miejsce w piekle powinien mieć wręcz zapewnione. Chyba, że na Sądzie Ostatecznym wzięte zostanie pod uwagę jego niesamowite Stabat Mater (1926).

W odróżnieniu od wcześniejszych dzieł o tym tytule, Stabat Mater Szymanowskiego wykorzystuje polski przekład średniowiecznego łacińskiego  tekstu. Słowa te kompozytor ubrał w fantastyczną muzykę w stylu, hm, impresjonistyczno-ascetycznym (wiem, że to się wzajemnie wyklucza). Otrzymaliśmy coś rzadkiego, bo utwór po polsku, a klasy światowej. Warto się zainteresować, bo na następny taki fenomen musieliśmy czekać do roku 1993, kiedy Edyta Górniak zdobyła zaszczytny srebrny medal  w konkursie Eurowizji pieśnią To nie ja byłam Ewą o podobnej zresztą, religijnej tematyce.

Tak na serio, to rok 1993 faktycznie był dobry dla polskiej muzyki – wtedy to (z dwudziestoletnim opóźnieniem), cały świat usłyszał Symfonię pieśni żałosnych Góreckiego, notabene zainspirowaną m. in. omawianym tu Stabat Mater. Karola Szymanowskiego zaś polecam każdemu, komu w ogólniaku podobała się Młoda Polska. Mrocznie, tajemniczo, ludowo. Oto początek Stabat Mater - Stała matka bolejąca. Śpiewa sopranistka Elżbieta Szmytka, a City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra przewodzi najbardziej znany dyrygent naszych czasów, a jednocześnie wielki promotor twórczości Szymanowskiego, Sir Simon Rattle:

Hace nada me he quedado un tanto perpleja con el anuncio promocional que salió por la tele de este nuevo juego de la longeva saga Tomb Raider. Vi con gran curiosidad que en él como música de fondo salía una canción de Lamb que me encanta y pocas veces he oído fuera de casa, a diferencia de otras, como Gabriel.

He buscado el trailer en YouTube y al encontrarlo me quedé fascinada, y sinceramente, me están entrando unas ganas de jugarlo tremendas, cosa que hasta el momento nunca he hecho en serio.

La verdad es que la canción me encanta, así que ya puestos, la compartiré con todos vosotros,

Lamb – Gorecki

Enjoy.

[direktlink]

I love you, Cabs. I’ll see you again. In some other time, some other place. In some universe that is yet to be revealed. And maybe then things would be different.

I know you don’t believe me yet, like you didn’t when I told you (and everybody else) that I was gonna quit, or at least cut-down on my smoking.

But this is what I have to do now, and I think I’m gonna need my smokes

I’m scared that we may never get to that elsewhere. That I would wake up one morning in the not so distant future and remember you–that it’s you, always and only been you, and then see your happy family on facebook whilst I still live alone in my hip apartment. Or worse, that after that I’d go straight to the kitchen and prepare breakfast for my husband and kids. But I’d like to believe that that time won’t come. That if and when it does happen it only means that we were never really meant to get to that elsewhere, and that I’d be alright with that. And maybe I can look back and just say, “ooh I was 23. So young and so crazy.” But really, is 23 still young? Most of my friends’ parents got married before they hit 23. Well yeah, years go by so quickly and they don’t call the 20s the “best years of my life” for nothing.

Therefore, henceforth, consequently, my fear is actually legitimate. But then I can go existentialist about it and say everything that will happen is a result of my future present decisions and that my fear will only be real if I let it.

“Don’t make an intellectual decision, it’ll be wrong. Just go.”

I love you and I want to say it over and over and over. For the times I wanted to but didn’t. For the times I wished you’d look me back in the eye and tell me you felt the same. For the children I dreamt of having with you. For the cities–real and imagined–I wanted us to experience. For all the days when we could’ve just lied around poking each other’s belly button. For the risks we were all too willing to take. And for those more important ones that we didn’t.

For the hope of finding you again, in that place in time where you are ready and willing.

You were worth each vein and fiber of sin. But to sin is not a way to love.

And to love you now is to turn around and walk away. And if I didn’t love you enough I would’ve stayed. And it’s so right that I’m surprisingly more happy than sad. (This time I don’t lose you, I just let myself go.)

And now I wonder if someone will ever stumble upon this blog, or that if anyone would ever want to endure reading the whole thing. But then again I’m doing this for me so why bother.

Anyway, I thought of that because I feel really sappy at the moment, still overwhelmed by everything that I’m about to post another Lamb song. My Aaron song. And it being Lamb’s really, makes it NOT sappy.

Gorecki

if i should die this very moment
i wouldn’t fear
for i’ve never known completeness
like being here
wrapped in the warmth of you
loving every breath of you
still my heart this moment
or it might burst

could we stay right here
’til the end of time, ’til the earth stops turning
wanna love you ’til the seas run dry
i’ve found the one i’ve waited for

all this time i’ve loved you
and never known your face
all this time i’ve missed you
and searched this human race
here is true peace
here my heart knows calm
safe in your soul
bathed in your sighs
wanna stay right here
’til the end of time, ’til the earth stops turning
gonna love you ’til the seas run dry
i’ve found the one i’ve waited for
the one i’ve waited for

all i’ve known
all i’ve done
all i’ve felt was leading to this
all i’ve known
all i’ve done
all i’ve felt was leading to this
wanna stay right here
’til the end of time, ’til the earth stops turning
gonna love you ’til the seas run dry
i’ve found the one i’ve waited for
the one i’ve waited for

wanna stay right here
’til the end of time, ’til the earth stops turning
gonna love you ’til the seas run dry
i’ve found the one i’ve waited for
the one i’ve waited for

the one i’ve waited for…

Roland Dahinden

Flying White (Mode 2005)

http://www.mediafire.com/?ab7zjyajcem

I get positively tongue-tied when discussing classical music since I lack the context, background knowledge and musical vocabulary to do it any justice. I’ve always been a dilettante and a casual observer of classical music and have usually gravitated towards the repetitive minimalism of Steve Reich and the apocalyptic sounds of Gorecki, Penderecki and Ligeti. That’s kind of where my knowledge ends, so I cannot tell you who or what has influenced Roland Dahinden to compose such crushing compositions, but I can tell you that I am kind of obsessed with Flying White.

Roland Dahinden is a Swiss composer and trombonist who studied under Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton. In addition, John Cage and Pauline Oliveros have composed works for him to premiere. I guess Flying White does owe a bit to the drones and minimalism of Oliveros and Lucier, but it is also its own peculiar beast. Many of you will find Flying White to be a never ending parade of gently scraped strings and rumbling, but this isn’t for everyone. It is kind of a difficult listen in that each composition seems to bleed into the next resulting in a woozy and eerie atmosphere reminiscent of Artemiev’s soundtrack for Solaris. However, it definitely sets a mood, albeit a very uneasy and paranoid one. Flying White kind of reminds me of rough waters. Short swells of sounds that are immediately interrupted by something more unsettling that point to trouble ahead. There is no climax, only a constant build that is repeatedly interrupted before it can ever approach a climax. It is an exercise in frustration, but a gorgeous one at that.

 
Symphony No. 3