Henry Purcell is a Grandaddy in the world of early music. There are a couple of Big Names that most people who are into music, but not early music, have heard of, and Purcell is always one of them. He lived in the late 17th century, and was right on the border, getting baroque music started in England. He wrote the first English chamber opera, Dido and Aeneas, and wrote enough sacred music to fill about a hundred recordings. He's influenced everyone from Elgar to Pete Townsend of The Who, who said that his harmonies are based on Purcell's.
This week I've been listening to A Purcell Collection from Voces8, a vocal group based in the UK that has a recording contract with Decca, and must receive the award for the Bass with the Most Unique Name in the world: Dingle Yandell. Seriously, his parents thought that was a good name. Who names their kid Dingle? But I digress. The guy's super-cute, and he can sing, so who care's what he's called?
I like Voces8 a lot (though sometimes I call them V8 and pretend they're vegetable juice). Their new album is called Eventide, and has more modern music on it, but lately I've been in a Purcell mood, and this album from 2013 does it for me. It was a Classic FM "Choice for the Curious" pick, so if you're curious, have a listen (and then download the album on itunes. If you're into this stuff, it will be on regular rotation, I promise).
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Old Music Thursday: Ensemble Cinquencento and the Hapsburgs
If any of you are into early music, and you have sirius radio, there is a wonderful program, which I'm sure I must have mentioned before, called The Millennium of music, on Symphony Hall, channel 76, at 11am eastern/8am pacific on Sunday mornings. I generally catch it when I'm on my way to the lake. The host, Robert Aubry Davis, has a wonderful voice and a passion for early choral music (he started a channel on XM called Vox, which was cancelled when Sirius bought XM - their loss). I always learn something new on his program, or discover a new composer to start a love affair with.
This week the program was on the Ensemble Cinquencento, and their new album, Amorosi Pensieri. They are a German group who have focused largely on sacred music of the Renaissance, but with this new album, they are turning towards more secular music from the Hapsburg Court.
The Hapsburg Monarchy ruled the area around what we would think of as Germany or Austria from the end of the 13th century until WWI ended, which is an amazing lineage. But their heyday was in the Renaissance, when they were often elected to be the Holy Roman Empires, and they had a vibrant court in Vienna and Prague, and they were everywhere; taking turns ruling Spain, the Low Countries, you name it. They were the major force of the Renaissance, and they had a court that matched their vibrancy, supporting dozens of composers and artists.
If you're interested in this kind of music, Hyperion, a label out of the UK, has an amazing selection, which is now available via download. This particular album is here: http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/find.asp?f=Amorosi+Pensieri&vw=dc
Or, you can get a taste of the music with this complete album of Philippus de Monte, a famous sacred and secular composer who was a shining star of the Hapsburg empire. I'll definitely be adding these albums to my playlists.
The Hapsburg Monarchy ruled the area around what we would think of as Germany or Austria from the end of the 13th century until WWI ended, which is an amazing lineage. But their heyday was in the Renaissance, when they were often elected to be the Holy Roman Empires, and they had a vibrant court in Vienna and Prague, and they were everywhere; taking turns ruling Spain, the Low Countries, you name it. They were the major force of the Renaissance, and they had a court that matched their vibrancy, supporting dozens of composers and artists.
If you're interested in this kind of music, Hyperion, a label out of the UK, has an amazing selection, which is now available via download. This particular album is here: http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/find.asp?f=Amorosi+Pensieri&vw=dc
Or, you can get a taste of the music with this complete album of Philippus de Monte, a famous sacred and secular composer who was a shining star of the Hapsburg empire. I'll definitely be adding these albums to my playlists.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Old Music Thursday: The Fasch's
Everyone who has studied even a smidgen of music has heard about the Bach clan. Johann Sebastian and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel (known as C.P.E. to increase his street cred). There's also the Strauss's, another prolific musical family. One lesser known family of musical note (ha ha, note, get it?) are the Fasch's.
Johann Friedrich was born in 1688 in Buttelstedt Germany. He studied in Leipzig (where the great Johann Sebastian was working, too, and, incidentally, the hometown of my dad) and wrote a prolific amount of concertos, cantatas and symphonies. The music he wrote was never printed in his lifetime, and he's largely forgotten today, though at the time he was highly regarded by his contemporaries. Johann Sebastian Bach actually made copies of some of his manuscripts to preserve and study them.
His most popular youtube offering is his trumpet concerto, below, which seems to show up on any anthology of trumpet music produced. There was a great album from 2013, Overtures in G Minor, D Minor and G Major, with Paul Dombrecht on oboe, that was all Fasch. Incidentally, this group is becoming a favorite of mine for all their early music recordings.
https://play.spotify.com/album/3zXQXQSItExg1zVVydwfW4
He also appears with one of my other favorites, Telemann, in a lot of Baroque anthologies.
Like the Bach's he gave birth to a musical son, Carl Friedrich Christian who was born when his dad was almost 50, and founded the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, which still exists today as a musical society (which Mendelssohn apparently wanted to become the director of in later years).
So the next time you're at a dinner party and some classical music snob is going on about the talent of the Bach family, you can come right back at them with the talent of the usually-overlooked Fasch's.
Johann Friedrich was born in 1688 in Buttelstedt Germany. He studied in Leipzig (where the great Johann Sebastian was working, too, and, incidentally, the hometown of my dad) and wrote a prolific amount of concertos, cantatas and symphonies. The music he wrote was never printed in his lifetime, and he's largely forgotten today, though at the time he was highly regarded by his contemporaries. Johann Sebastian Bach actually made copies of some of his manuscripts to preserve and study them.
His most popular youtube offering is his trumpet concerto, below, which seems to show up on any anthology of trumpet music produced. There was a great album from 2013, Overtures in G Minor, D Minor and G Major, with Paul Dombrecht on oboe, that was all Fasch. Incidentally, this group is becoming a favorite of mine for all their early music recordings.
https://play.spotify.com/album/3zXQXQSItExg1zVVydwfW4
He also appears with one of my other favorites, Telemann, in a lot of Baroque anthologies.
Like the Bach's he gave birth to a musical son, Carl Friedrich Christian who was born when his dad was almost 50, and founded the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, which still exists today as a musical society (which Mendelssohn apparently wanted to become the director of in later years).
So the next time you're at a dinner party and some classical music snob is going on about the talent of the Bach family, you can come right back at them with the talent of the usually-overlooked Fasch's.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Flashback
When I was 13, I was in love. I spent the summer fantasizing about my beloved, I wrote letters I would never send him, I talked about him to my mom, and I dreamed about marrying him and having lots of babies with him. His name was Donnie Wahlberg, and I just realized that I spent all summer 25 years ago with the TV glued to MTV so that when this song came on (this was when MTV played music) I could run into the living room and do the "hangin' tough" arm-swing.
They played at the York Fair that fall, 8th grade, and FM97 announced a contest. The best sign that read, "NKOTB and FM97 are the best!" would get to go backstage. I worked for hours and hours and hours on my banner. I hung it up hopefully before and after the concert. I didn't get chosen, which is probably part of the reason I'm not Heather Wahlberg right now.
But I did pass a carefully folded love note to a security guard and asked him to give it to Donnie. I'm sure he did, and to this day, Donnie lives in regret that he couldn't marry the girl who, in poetic bubble letters on pink paper, promised to love him forever, because his flight was leaving and he had to get to a show in some other podunk fair in a place like Zanesville Ohio. And now he's getting married to Jennie McCarthey. Oh well. Life goes on.
Donnie, there's still a piece of my 13 year old heart that will always be yours. Just so you know. I can't wait to see who Hannah is crushing on when she's 13. And to show her this and make her laugh at her dorky mom.
They played at the York Fair that fall, 8th grade, and FM97 announced a contest. The best sign that read, "NKOTB and FM97 are the best!" would get to go backstage. I worked for hours and hours and hours on my banner. I hung it up hopefully before and after the concert. I didn't get chosen, which is probably part of the reason I'm not Heather Wahlberg right now.
But I did pass a carefully folded love note to a security guard and asked him to give it to Donnie. I'm sure he did, and to this day, Donnie lives in regret that he couldn't marry the girl who, in poetic bubble letters on pink paper, promised to love him forever, because his flight was leaving and he had to get to a show in some other podunk fair in a place like Zanesville Ohio. And now he's getting married to Jennie McCarthey. Oh well. Life goes on.
Donnie, there's still a piece of my 13 year old heart that will always be yours. Just so you know. I can't wait to see who Hannah is crushing on when she's 13. And to show her this and make her laugh at her dorky mom.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Old Music Sunday: Christopher Simpson
I'm a big fan of baroque music that doesn't require a lot of thought and concentration. The equivalent of somebody like, say, James Taylor. He's soothing, and nice to have on while you're reading or something, because he isn't very demanding. He's going to Carolina and you don't need to know much else other than that.
Composers like Telemann are the same for me. They don't demand a lot of attention, they are soothing, they give me some nice background noise that helps me concentrate, but they aren't distracting. Bach cello suites incidentally, have the opposite effect. There's no way one can concentrate on anything else while they're listening to a cello suite. I know this to be true because I'm experiencing it right now. Let's just all pause and enjoy some Bach before we move on, shall we?
Ok, now that that's out of the way...
There are a handful of other composers who are pleasant and - dare I say, nice? - to have on when I don't want to pay attention to them, but still want something on that's not too distracting. Kind of like some of the baroque ornamentation around rooms in that when you first notice it, it's striking, but after a while it all starts to look alike, and while it sort of adds to the decoration, it kind of blends into the scenery after a while.
My new favorite composer like this is Christopher Simpson, which is a strikingly modern name. He was born around 1602 in Yorkshire. His father was a closet Catholic who ran a Catholic theater company (it was dangerous to be a Catholic sympathizer in 1606, but I can imagine that managing a Catholic theater company would be even worse).
He fought in the English Civil War, on the Royalist side, and, surviving the Siege of York, wound up as a tutor to the son of a wealthy family, and started composing. Most of his surviving work is for viol; he also wrote several books about viol technique, which saw a revival of readership as early music grew in popularity recently. Here's a playlist on youtube of Christopher Simpson music; and I highly recommend it for whenever you've got some concentrating to do, and want something not too taxing or distracting on in the background.
Composers like Telemann are the same for me. They don't demand a lot of attention, they are soothing, they give me some nice background noise that helps me concentrate, but they aren't distracting. Bach cello suites incidentally, have the opposite effect. There's no way one can concentrate on anything else while they're listening to a cello suite. I know this to be true because I'm experiencing it right now. Let's just all pause and enjoy some Bach before we move on, shall we?
Ok, now that that's out of the way...
There are a handful of other composers who are pleasant and - dare I say, nice? - to have on when I don't want to pay attention to them, but still want something on that's not too distracting. Kind of like some of the baroque ornamentation around rooms in that when you first notice it, it's striking, but after a while it all starts to look alike, and while it sort of adds to the decoration, it kind of blends into the scenery after a while.
My new favorite composer like this is Christopher Simpson, which is a strikingly modern name. He was born around 1602 in Yorkshire. His father was a closet Catholic who ran a Catholic theater company (it was dangerous to be a Catholic sympathizer in 1606, but I can imagine that managing a Catholic theater company would be even worse).
He fought in the English Civil War, on the Royalist side, and, surviving the Siege of York, wound up as a tutor to the son of a wealthy family, and started composing. Most of his surviving work is for viol; he also wrote several books about viol technique, which saw a revival of readership as early music grew in popularity recently. Here's a playlist on youtube of Christopher Simpson music; and I highly recommend it for whenever you've got some concentrating to do, and want something not too taxing or distracting on in the background.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Old Music Friday
I wish I could say that when I'm in the car I only ever listen to Sirius channel 76 - Symphony Hall - and never ever listened to Hits 1 with Nicole and the Morning Mashup (and I wish I could say that I didn't know that Nicole just had a baby, or that I was more familiar with the saga in the Ukraine than with Sypder Harrison's voice...).
But I digress...
Anyway, a few days ago I was sitting on the 210 freeway, and switched over to Symphony Hall where they were doing their regular Baroque show, and I was happy to hear music by two baroque English composers I hadn't known before.
Matthew Locke (https://play.spotify.com/search/matthew%20locke) was born around 1621 and trained in the choir of Exeter Cathedral under the direction of Edward Gibbons (brother to Orlando, one of the Renaissance Grandaddies). He was buddies with Orlando's son, Christopher, and partnered with him to write the score to Cupid and Death, a masque by James Shirley, and their score is the only surviving soundtrack for a dramatic work from that era. In 1673 he published a treatise on music theory, Melothesia, and in the introduction he was credited as being the "Composer in Ordinary to His Majesty, and organist of her Majesty's chapel" He was also Composer of Wind Music and Composer for Violins (he was succeeded in office by Purcell).
Christopher Simpson (https://play.spotify.com/search/christopher%20simpson) was born around 1602 in Yorkshire, and was the son of a Catholic theater manager. He fought in the English Civil War on the Royalist side, and then became a music tutor.
He's most famous for his music for viols, having written several books on how to play, and all his surviving works are for the viol or a viol ensemble. The viol or viola da gamba looked like a modern day cello, but had six strings rather than four, was tuned in fourths with a third in the middle like a lute, rather than in fifths, had frets, and several other differences)
Both of these composers are going into heavy rotation on Spotify for me.
But I digress...
Anyway, a few days ago I was sitting on the 210 freeway, and switched over to Symphony Hall where they were doing their regular Baroque show, and I was happy to hear music by two baroque English composers I hadn't known before.
Matthew Locke (https://play.spotify.com/search/matthew%20locke) was born around 1621 and trained in the choir of Exeter Cathedral under the direction of Edward Gibbons (brother to Orlando, one of the Renaissance Grandaddies). He was buddies with Orlando's son, Christopher, and partnered with him to write the score to Cupid and Death, a masque by James Shirley, and their score is the only surviving soundtrack for a dramatic work from that era. In 1673 he published a treatise on music theory, Melothesia, and in the introduction he was credited as being the "Composer in Ordinary to His Majesty, and organist of her Majesty's chapel" He was also Composer of Wind Music and Composer for Violins (he was succeeded in office by Purcell).
Christopher Simpson (https://play.spotify.com/search/christopher%20simpson) was born around 1602 in Yorkshire, and was the son of a Catholic theater manager. He fought in the English Civil War on the Royalist side, and then became a music tutor.
He's most famous for his music for viols, having written several books on how to play, and all his surviving works are for the viol or a viol ensemble. The viol or viola da gamba looked like a modern day cello, but had six strings rather than four, was tuned in fourths with a third in the middle like a lute, rather than in fifths, had frets, and several other differences)
Both of these composers are going into heavy rotation on Spotify for me.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Old Music Tuesday, Lent Edition: Palestrina 3, The Sixteen
I'm sitting at home nursing a cold, the last of the three of us to catch it. Being sick with a kid is infinitely worse than being sick on your own. Because when the kid is awake, you're awake. And not only are you awake, but you're also keeping them company, entertaining them, feeding them, changing their diapers, and worrying about how sick they are, and if they're turning a weird shade of gray. Plus you get to buy (and use) something called - I'm not making this up - a Snotsucker. Anyway, I digress.
I haven't done much on Old Music lately, and I think a great way to remedy that is with The Sixteen's Palestrina albums. Palestrina is the granddaddy of early music. He got this title by being a prolific composer of amazing liturgical music throughout the 16th century, but it also helped that he lived until he was almost 70.
The Sixteen have several albums of Palestrina's music out, and this one is specifically music for Lent and Easter. It opens with an 8 part Stabat Mater, which would have been sung at the beginning of Holy Week. The Stabat Mater is one of the most interesting parts of liturgy for me. It literally translates to the Sorrows of Mary, and depicts Mary's sorrow at watching her son being crucified. The opening words, "Stabat Mater dolorosa" mean the sorrowful mother stood, and it goes on from there, meditating on the pain that Mary felt watching her son on the cross. Sometimes it seems morbid to me to think that most of the Western world (and much of the rest of the world) is based on a religion where the holiest week in the liturgical year starts with a mother watching her son die.
But then I think about these beautiful motets, and about how the greater message is that God understands the suffering of humanity. Until very recently life for most people was hard. Like, "I'm really hungry and who knows whether I'll be able to eat and I've had to go through hard labors four times because there's no such thing as reliable birth control, and I'll probably have to again and chances are if I do, I'll probably die, because women die in childbirth all the freaking time, and probably at least two of my kids won't make it to adulthood anyway, and oh yeah, the plague is coming back, and there's probably going to be another war soon because it's been fifteen years and the king is getting antsy, so, you know, that will f*ck up my life to no end, but there's nothing I can do about it, and my clothes are so freaking itchy because they're just homespun and feel like sandpaper, and yeah, have I mentioned that I'm hungry," kind of hard.
Of course I'm sure most people didn't really think about it. Just like I'm sure that in five hundred years people will talk about how hard life in the 21st century was, when people had to cook their food, or diet to lose weight, or go to Target to go shopping, or something. It's how life was, you didn't know any different, you didn't know it was even possible for clothes to not itch, and so you just went on about your business, burying your children and grieving for those who died in the plague as best you could, and knowing that your time was probably going to come sooner rather than later, and scratching your back a lot.
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| Denise Poncher Before a Vision of Death |
These kinds of motets, like the Stabat Mater, were part of that meditation, showing that God knew and understood our pain, and that even the Holy Saints and the mother of Christ knew what it meant to watch a child die.
They are incredibly moving to listen to with that context, and especially then followed up by the music from the rest of Holy Week, which celebrates the Resurrection, and reminds people that there is salvation available and an eternity of goodness, where the plague and medieval warfare can't touch them.
Additionally, by the time Palestrina was writing, there was another force at play in the Catholic church - the Counter Reformation. The Reformation started when Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the All Saint's Church in Wittenberg in 1517. At first Rome was like, "yeah, whatevs; so some guy in Germany has a stick up his ass. We're Rome, we don't care." But then England got in on it, and so did most of Northern Europe, and before you know it the Pope is feeling just a tad bit threatened.
And thus comes along the Counter Reformation, the Council of Trent, and the re-branding of the Catholic church as a little less into usury, bribery, and canoodling with one's daughters (along with a giant FU to the reformers through a not-so-nice Inquisition). Thanks in part to the long-living Palestrina, the Roman church was able to do all this with a great soundtrack.
It's good music to listen to while going through my own trials and tribulations in this sick-house (though I have NyQuil, and our colds aren't life threatening!).
Spotify Link:
The Sixteen – Palestrina Volume 3
Amazon Link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ABQM4PW?ie=UTF8&tag=wfipubradfroi-20
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Old Music Sunday
Yeah, pumping while driving has been a lifesaver for our mobility.
Now, most every Sunday we go out to museums and look at art, or other interesting stuff. Hannah's become a fan of Picasso. She likes the bright colors and strong lines.
Today we went to the California Science Center, and I've discovered that Hannah digs science. I wasn't sure how much she'd enjoy it, given that she couldn't play with the exhibits yet, but she officially loved it. I had to carry her around the entire time, while pushing the stroller, because any time I put her down and she couldn't see, she screamed at me. She enjoyed all the bright lights, and I think she liked watching the big kids play with things like building arches, or making vibrations. I can't wait to go back with her when she's a little older and can interact with things. So my kid might be a scientist. Who knew?
Along the drive we listened to the new album by The Hilliard Ensemble, Il Cor Tristo. The Hilliard Ensemble was started in the mid-70's, and their work is generally really scholarly and keeping to the original as much as possible. They don't go in for a lot of hokey crowd-pleasers like some early music groups/a capella ensembles (who shall remain nameless) (yeah, I'm looking at you King's Singers) (but I still love you. It makes you accessible) (like, to dimwitted teenagers like I was) (plus, you're all so cute).
Anyway, this album features Jacques Arcadelt (a prolific madrigal composer) and Bernardo Pisano (who, outside of being a composer, is notable because he was very unlucky politically - he was accused of being a spy for the papacy and tortured), both setting the poetry of Petrarch to music. Something that kind of blows my mind is that when this music was being composed, Petrarch was already close to 150 years old. I tend to lump things together as "the past" and just think, "oh, it was all medieval" yada yada. But Petrarch was already historical when these composers were setting his poetry to music. That kind of blows my mind.
The album also features some Dante set by a contemporary composer, Roger Marsh. The juxtaposition of the ancient music with contemporary works well.
Here's a clip of The Hilliards singing some Lassus, which is along the lines of what the new album sounds like.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Old Music Sunday
One of my favorite early music groups is Stile Antico, a polyphonic vocal ensemble founded in 2001. They have a new album out, The Phoenix Rising, which is getting a lot of regular rotation on Spotify lately. The first song on the album is Byrd's Ave Verum Corpus, which is one of the first pieces of Renaissance music that ever called to me, and is a big part of the reason why I love early music so much.
William Byrd was a composer living during Elizabethan England. He was a Catholic composer, living under a Protestant Queen. And it wasn't just that. It was that for the past 50 years, England had been schizophrenic with regards to religion. Henry VIII, Elizabeth's father, was awarded the title Defender of the Faith from the Pope for a treatise he wrote bashing Martin Luther, just a few years before he decided that the Pope was a waste of time, and he was going to take some of these new Protestant ideas to justify himself being the head of the Church in England and get himself a quickie divorce. But Henry didn't completely embrace Protestantism. He just wanted to be the head of the Church. Protestants (heretics) were still regularly tortured and burned.
His son, Edward, was a child when he was crowned, and so relied heavily on his advisers, who were largely Protestant. So England officially becomes Protestant, and the Catholics go underground. The Protestants have a party, and there is much rejoicing (to quote Monty Python).
Then Edward dies. Next up to bat comes Mary I. Aka Bloody Mary. Her mother was Katherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife, who was a devout Catholic. She's got a chip on her shoulder the size of Texas on behalf of her mother. So guess who's not rejoicing anymore? That's right, the Protestants. They take the place of the Catholics, who had been underground, and go underground themselves. Maybe they just swap houses. Who knows. Anyway, now the Catholics are doing the rejoicing.
Then, a few years later, Mary dies. Oops. Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn's daughter (the second wife, for whom Henry excommunicated himself in the first place), comes up to the plate. Pretty much by this point she's just pissed off at religion in general. She makes a big deal about not putting windows into men's souls, yada yada. But guess who rises in her court? The Protestants. Guess who ain't so popular? The Catholics. Within a lifetime, a Catholic could have gone from being the only religion around (universal - catholic with a small c), to kinda hiding, to seriously hiding, to coming back out, and then having to go back into hiding.
So, that leads us to Byrd.
Byrd was a Catholic. The Ave Verum Corpus is a Eucharistic hymn that translates to "Hail true Body" and starting in the middle ages was sung when the host was elevated (representing the true body of Christ descending to the bread).
A big debate in Renaissance England was whether the Communion bread actually seriously turned into Jesus, or whether it was representative. People died because they believed that the bread really was Jesus. Or wasn't. Lots of people. Burned. Fire creeping up piles straw to where they were bound to a pole, and biting at their feet while smoke swirled around them, slowly scorching their skin until eventually the pain got to be too much to bear and they would mercifully pass out (unless they were lucky enough to have a friend who could provide them a little bit of gunpowder, so they would go faster).
Because they believed the bread turned into Jesus. Or didn't.
So to write a piece about the True Body of Christ during this clusterf*ck of a period was taking a risk. And it doesn't take a lot of imagination to hear the longing, the yearning, the prayer for humanity to chill out about what people believe one way or the other.
Take a listen: (This isn't Stile Antico - I think it's the Tallis Scholars)
Hear it? This is more than a Eucharistic prayer. This is more than the words - O sweet Jesus, O pious Jesus, O Jesus son of Mary, have mercy on me. This is a prayer for Jesus to have mercy on all of us, for what we do to each other in His name. It's just as relevant now as it was then. It's the most longing musical prayer to God that I've ever heard, and even now, after listening to it for 20 years, it still speaks to me.
Now, back to Stile Antico. They're awesome. See their NPR Tiny Desk Concert below, which is also Byrd, but much more happy music.
If you're into this stuff, you can't go wrong with their albums.
William Byrd was a composer living during Elizabethan England. He was a Catholic composer, living under a Protestant Queen. And it wasn't just that. It was that for the past 50 years, England had been schizophrenic with regards to religion. Henry VIII, Elizabeth's father, was awarded the title Defender of the Faith from the Pope for a treatise he wrote bashing Martin Luther, just a few years before he decided that the Pope was a waste of time, and he was going to take some of these new Protestant ideas to justify himself being the head of the Church in England and get himself a quickie divorce. But Henry didn't completely embrace Protestantism. He just wanted to be the head of the Church. Protestants (heretics) were still regularly tortured and burned.
His son, Edward, was a child when he was crowned, and so relied heavily on his advisers, who were largely Protestant. So England officially becomes Protestant, and the Catholics go underground. The Protestants have a party, and there is much rejoicing (to quote Monty Python).
Then Edward dies. Next up to bat comes Mary I. Aka Bloody Mary. Her mother was Katherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife, who was a devout Catholic. She's got a chip on her shoulder the size of Texas on behalf of her mother. So guess who's not rejoicing anymore? That's right, the Protestants. They take the place of the Catholics, who had been underground, and go underground themselves. Maybe they just swap houses. Who knows. Anyway, now the Catholics are doing the rejoicing.
Then, a few years later, Mary dies. Oops. Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn's daughter (the second wife, for whom Henry excommunicated himself in the first place), comes up to the plate. Pretty much by this point she's just pissed off at religion in general. She makes a big deal about not putting windows into men's souls, yada yada. But guess who rises in her court? The Protestants. Guess who ain't so popular? The Catholics. Within a lifetime, a Catholic could have gone from being the only religion around (universal - catholic with a small c), to kinda hiding, to seriously hiding, to coming back out, and then having to go back into hiding.
So, that leads us to Byrd.
Byrd was a Catholic. The Ave Verum Corpus is a Eucharistic hymn that translates to "Hail true Body" and starting in the middle ages was sung when the host was elevated (representing the true body of Christ descending to the bread).
A big debate in Renaissance England was whether the Communion bread actually seriously turned into Jesus, or whether it was representative. People died because they believed that the bread really was Jesus. Or wasn't. Lots of people. Burned. Fire creeping up piles straw to where they were bound to a pole, and biting at their feet while smoke swirled around them, slowly scorching their skin until eventually the pain got to be too much to bear and they would mercifully pass out (unless they were lucky enough to have a friend who could provide them a little bit of gunpowder, so they would go faster).
Because they believed the bread turned into Jesus. Or didn't.
So to write a piece about the True Body of Christ during this clusterf*ck of a period was taking a risk. And it doesn't take a lot of imagination to hear the longing, the yearning, the prayer for humanity to chill out about what people believe one way or the other.
Take a listen: (This isn't Stile Antico - I think it's the Tallis Scholars)
Hear it? This is more than a Eucharistic prayer. This is more than the words - O sweet Jesus, O pious Jesus, O Jesus son of Mary, have mercy on me. This is a prayer for Jesus to have mercy on all of us, for what we do to each other in His name. It's just as relevant now as it was then. It's the most longing musical prayer to God that I've ever heard, and even now, after listening to it for 20 years, it still speaks to me.
Now, back to Stile Antico. They're awesome. See their NPR Tiny Desk Concert below, which is also Byrd, but much more happy music.
If you're into this stuff, you can't go wrong with their albums.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Diabolus in Musica
So the other night I went to a LA Chamber Orchestra talk on the history of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto, a work that is famous for throwing out the rulebook of the concerto form (and also having some bits that sound so much like Chopin, it's eerie).
The conductor mentioned a term I hadn't heard before - Diabolus in Musica (The Devil in Music)- a medieval term that was given to the tritone, an interval that was deemed so dangerous, people thought it conjured up the devil. It's the interval of three whole tones dividing an octave, so a C natural to an F#, for example, and it was expressly forbidden in church music according to cannon law.
It's also an augmented 4th, which is the interval between the first two notes in "Maria" from West Side Story. It longs to be resolved. Can you imagine the Ma-Ri without the A at the end of it? It's desperate for a resolution. So having it just hanging there seems unnatural and sinister.
From an article in Token Rock:
http://www.tokenrock.com/secret_resonance/tritone_interval.php
Some say the tritone represents the Devil because it is a dissonant interval with an irreconcilable split ratio of 7:5 (augmented 4th) or 10:7 (diminished 5th) as found in meantone temperament. But dissonance cannot be the only reason. The tritone is not much (if any) more dissonant sounding than the intervals of a minor 2nd or major 7th and no one thinks they are devilish. They're not even naughty.
Some say it was the Devil in music because the tritone is so close to the interval of a perfect 5th that two monks could too easily sing dissonantly as they tried to chant in pure parallel 5ths. But this cannot be the only reason because when they sang out of tune anywhere else, those wrong intervals weren't the Devil. They were just out of tune.
---
It received a revival in popularity during the 19th century, and the second movement of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto uses it liberally, as it supposedly tells the story of Orpheus going down into Hades to tame the devil. Interestingly, a lot of heavy metal bands use it now. Slayer actually has an album entitled "Diabolus in Musica," paying homage to the tritone.
The whole thing really interests me - that just a few hundred years ago people actually thought that the devil could live in music, and be summoned by an interval. We think we're so clever now, but how many of us still freak out over Ouija boards, or tarot cards? I wonder whether, in five hundred years, someone will bring up card games, and say, "and even into the 21st century, many people still believed that tarot cards had some type of power to summon the devil or spirits." Our brains are so funny.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Old Music Thursday
So I'm really into Early Music, right? Like, the stuff before Bach. And the other weekend I found a new radio show on Sirius (we got it in our new car, a Ford C-Max hybrid - yes, I drive a hybrid, don't start) called The Millennium of Music. A whole hour of Josquin - bliss! My staple for finding new/old music up until now has been the Harmonia Early Music Podcast that I get on itunes, but it's only like 10 minutes a week, which is enough for them to talk about 2, maybe 3 new releases.
My new favorite album, since hearing about it on Harmonia this week, is Arias for Guadagni: The First Modern Castrato. So this is interesting because Gaetano Guadagni, the mezzo-soprano male singer for whom Handel wrote the arias, was an Italian who met Handel in London, where he had arrived as part of a traveling circus. His family was musical, and it seems that they made an informed decision to have him undergo the operation that would have him be able to sing the mezzo-soprano pieces.
Guadagni showed up in London and, through connections, was able to meet Handel, who fell in love with his voice, and wrote several arias from the Messiah for him. It was in London that he became well known, and became what we would think of as a modern actor/opera singer. He wouldn't interrupt his performances for encores or applause, which audiences thought was rude, but was just the actor trying to portray the role authentically. He played his role in Orfeo repeatedly, which was also unusual in a time when actors would rarely reprise a role for a second season. He was "difficult" to work with for managers, and he got upset when composers (like Gluck) didn't cater to the personality of his voice, and his special techniques. He was also caught in bed with other men's wives, which, considering he was, you know, castrated, would seem to support the rumor that castrati had some kind of sexual prowess.
Anyway, these days the roles are sung by counter-tenors, who have all their parts and were never operated on. They simply train their voices to be able to hit the high notes. Which is just slightly more boring, but probably a lot healthier and more hygienic than things were in the 18th century.
Guadagni showed up in London and, through connections, was able to meet Handel, who fell in love with his voice, and wrote several arias from the Messiah for him. It was in London that he became well known, and became what we would think of as a modern actor/opera singer. He wouldn't interrupt his performances for encores or applause, which audiences thought was rude, but was just the actor trying to portray the role authentically. He played his role in Orfeo repeatedly, which was also unusual in a time when actors would rarely reprise a role for a second season. He was "difficult" to work with for managers, and he got upset when composers (like Gluck) didn't cater to the personality of his voice, and his special techniques. He was also caught in bed with other men's wives, which, considering he was, you know, castrated, would seem to support the rumor that castrati had some kind of sexual prowess.
Anyway, these days the roles are sung by counter-tenors, who have all their parts and were never operated on. They simply train their voices to be able to hit the high notes. Which is just slightly more boring, but probably a lot healthier and more hygienic than things were in the 18th century.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Last night I was out until 4am. This is not a sentence that regularly crosses my lips, and on the rare occasions when it does, a new Harry Potter midnight release generally plays a part. But nope, last night I was drinking jack and coke and rocking out to a punk band in Santa Barbara, without a Horcrux in sight. And you know what? I am no longer 25. Just in case I had any doubts, I have been made acutely aware today that 25 was a full decade ago. You know what else? Crazy people sure do love me. I must be wearing some kind of perfume: eau de crazy. I'm not surprised anymore when random people will come up to me in the grocery store and start telling me all their crazy stories. That happens regularly enough that I expect it now. But I don't expect it to happen at a punk concert, when I'm half drunk.
So the fun starts off when we're waiting outside for the Velvet Rose to open. Doors for Lagwagon open at 8, the poster says. It's 8:30. No open doors. And I'm freezing my trendy butt off, getting crotchety and frustrated because in my day, when a poster said the doors would open at 8, the doors would open at 8, dammit. And we'd walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways.
A homeless guy walks past the line of us, asking if anyone has a quarter. When someone gives him a quarter, he then take a play out of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying and tries to flip it for a profit. Only he must have missed a few days of that lesson because his offer isn't at all favorable to himself. He offers $2 to anyone for a cigarette. It goes from, "does anybody have a quarter," to "i'll give anybody $2 for one cigarette." The 7-11 was selling packs for like $4, so if he could have saved up a bit more, he'd have been able to really be set, but I guess that's how the rich get richer and the poor get lung cancer.
Anyway, so the doors open at 9, and I immediately hit the bar. It's been a long time since I've been drunk, what with trying to get preggo, and having a husband who goes to AA. He's going to drive home, he's cool with me drinking, so jack and coke it is. Only thing is, I forgot that I'm not 25 anymore. There was a time when I could pound those things. But my head started spinning on the first sip. Well, I'm a cheap date, I think to myself, and follow my hubby up to the balcony, staggering along the way, marveling at how the disco balls are so shiny.
You know what one of my favorite things to do is? Ok, before I say, you have to promise not to judge me. Because I don't get out much. So humor me.
One of my favorite things in the world is peeing when I'm drunk.
You know why?
Because:
1) You're generally in a club where there is loud music, and you go into the bathroom and it's nice and quiet, though you can still hear muffled club noise.
2) You sit down on the seat and everything slows down for a second. It was all spinny before, and now it's just like, "woah. I'm in my own little cubicle, and it's all in slow motion."
3) Generally it's warmer in the bathrooms.
4) There's usually makeup in club bathrooms, and it's fun to play with makeup when you're drunk.
Ok, so I had my fun drunk-bathroom time, and I'm standing on the balcony watching the bands, when this crazy lady comes up and asks me if it's ok to smoke pot up on the balcony. Then she says, "well, not legally, I mean, but do you think it's ok?" I tell her that the security guards have been coming around every 10 minutes or so, so if she can do it quick, she's probably ok. She says, "ok. Do you have any?" I didn't, much to her disappointment.
Then I turn around and some older guy wearing a Lagwagon shirt is going around asking everybody who they're there to see. Everybody looks at him like he's nuts, because he's wearing a freaking Lagwagon shirt, but we humor him. "Lagwagon," we say. He goes on to the next person. Then he circles back around and pokes me on the shoulder. "I'll give you $20 for your chair." There had been a bar stool behind me, which I wasn't using. I was like, "you can just take it," because I feel weird selling stuff that's not mine. "I don't take anything for free," he says, and pushes a $20 bill into my hand.
Damn, I just sold something that wasn't mine in the first place. I wonder if this is how Mitt Romney feels when he leverages companies he doesn't own, and then sells them for a profit to pay his investors. Man, I should be a hedge fund manager, I think. I clearly have a knack for it. Anyway, his $20 bought me another round of drinks, and I spent the next hour spacing out.
Then my Drunk Inner Nerd came out.
When I went to my Sr Prom, it happened to be timed to be the week before all the AP tests, right? So I thought nothing of having a bunch of flashcards stashed in my beaded clutch to study during the down times, like waiting in line to get pictures taken, right? Makes perfect sense to me.
So I'm always prepared with a book or flashcards or anything else that will make my Inner Nerd happy. I leaned against the back wall, pulled up my kindle app, and read The Spectator, a British news and politics magazine. Specifically, I read an article on Rupert Murdoch's new Sunday newspaper he just started; the Sunday Sun. And I read about the LibDem/Tory coalition government falling apart. In a club, with really loud punk music blaring. You know how people say that when you get drunk you just become more like who you really are, because your inhibitions are down? Well, I clearly am one hell of a nerd, then.
Oh, and then I started postulating on the social implications of a mosh pit; the primal urges that a mosh pit satisfied, and what type of person is drawn to a mosh pit in general. I wasn't talking to anybody in particular. I was just talking about it to whoever would listen.
Then, because I'm not 25 anymore, I start to pass out. I nap right there, leaning on J's shoulder. I'm going to start a new trend. Napping in clubs. You know how in New York there was that restaurant called Bed that served you dinner on a bed? I'm going to start a new club: Nap. For people over 30. It will feature live music by bands popular when we were teenagers, and after every few songs, the mosh pit will be replaced by a big comfy bed with lots of pillows and comforters. Girls will remove their uncomfortable shoes, and you will be able to buy pajamas if you want. Everyone will curl up and cuddle with each other for 20 minutes while the bartenders clean up and restock the bar; and the band, seeing as how they are older too, will join in and we'll all nap together. Then we'll get back up, the girls will have fun time in the bathroom while the boys buy us drinks, the mosh pit will resume, and everyone will play and dance and rock out for another 20 minutes. We'll do this until approximately 1am, because no one should be up after 1am, unless they have insomnia.
Oh, and I'm so proud of myself because I avoided the greasy pizza they were serving to all the drunk people, though I pined and longed for it all night. It looked so disgusting, the ex-frozen pizza swirling around under the heat lamp, the cheap cheese glooping up and dripping down the sides, the grease wanting to be shot directly into my veins to soak up the alcohol. But I stayed strong, and just ate a Power Bar on the way home. Yay for willpower, even in the face of total impairment.
So the fun starts off when we're waiting outside for the Velvet Rose to open. Doors for Lagwagon open at 8, the poster says. It's 8:30. No open doors. And I'm freezing my trendy butt off, getting crotchety and frustrated because in my day, when a poster said the doors would open at 8, the doors would open at 8, dammit. And we'd walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways.
A homeless guy walks past the line of us, asking if anyone has a quarter. When someone gives him a quarter, he then take a play out of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying and tries to flip it for a profit. Only he must have missed a few days of that lesson because his offer isn't at all favorable to himself. He offers $2 to anyone for a cigarette. It goes from, "does anybody have a quarter," to "i'll give anybody $2 for one cigarette." The 7-11 was selling packs for like $4, so if he could have saved up a bit more, he'd have been able to really be set, but I guess that's how the rich get richer and the poor get lung cancer.
Anyway, so the doors open at 9, and I immediately hit the bar. It's been a long time since I've been drunk, what with trying to get preggo, and having a husband who goes to AA. He's going to drive home, he's cool with me drinking, so jack and coke it is. Only thing is, I forgot that I'm not 25 anymore. There was a time when I could pound those things. But my head started spinning on the first sip. Well, I'm a cheap date, I think to myself, and follow my hubby up to the balcony, staggering along the way, marveling at how the disco balls are so shiny.
You know what one of my favorite things to do is? Ok, before I say, you have to promise not to judge me. Because I don't get out much. So humor me.
One of my favorite things in the world is peeing when I'm drunk.
You know why?
Because:
1) You're generally in a club where there is loud music, and you go into the bathroom and it's nice and quiet, though you can still hear muffled club noise.
2) You sit down on the seat and everything slows down for a second. It was all spinny before, and now it's just like, "woah. I'm in my own little cubicle, and it's all in slow motion."
3) Generally it's warmer in the bathrooms.
4) There's usually makeup in club bathrooms, and it's fun to play with makeup when you're drunk.
Ok, so I had my fun drunk-bathroom time, and I'm standing on the balcony watching the bands, when this crazy lady comes up and asks me if it's ok to smoke pot up on the balcony. Then she says, "well, not legally, I mean, but do you think it's ok?" I tell her that the security guards have been coming around every 10 minutes or so, so if she can do it quick, she's probably ok. She says, "ok. Do you have any?" I didn't, much to her disappointment.
Then I turn around and some older guy wearing a Lagwagon shirt is going around asking everybody who they're there to see. Everybody looks at him like he's nuts, because he's wearing a freaking Lagwagon shirt, but we humor him. "Lagwagon," we say. He goes on to the next person. Then he circles back around and pokes me on the shoulder. "I'll give you $20 for your chair." There had been a bar stool behind me, which I wasn't using. I was like, "you can just take it," because I feel weird selling stuff that's not mine. "I don't take anything for free," he says, and pushes a $20 bill into my hand.
Damn, I just sold something that wasn't mine in the first place. I wonder if this is how Mitt Romney feels when he leverages companies he doesn't own, and then sells them for a profit to pay his investors. Man, I should be a hedge fund manager, I think. I clearly have a knack for it. Anyway, his $20 bought me another round of drinks, and I spent the next hour spacing out.
Then my Drunk Inner Nerd came out.
When I went to my Sr Prom, it happened to be timed to be the week before all the AP tests, right? So I thought nothing of having a bunch of flashcards stashed in my beaded clutch to study during the down times, like waiting in line to get pictures taken, right? Makes perfect sense to me.
So I'm always prepared with a book or flashcards or anything else that will make my Inner Nerd happy. I leaned against the back wall, pulled up my kindle app, and read The Spectator, a British news and politics magazine. Specifically, I read an article on Rupert Murdoch's new Sunday newspaper he just started; the Sunday Sun. And I read about the LibDem/Tory coalition government falling apart. In a club, with really loud punk music blaring. You know how people say that when you get drunk you just become more like who you really are, because your inhibitions are down? Well, I clearly am one hell of a nerd, then.
Oh, and then I started postulating on the social implications of a mosh pit; the primal urges that a mosh pit satisfied, and what type of person is drawn to a mosh pit in general. I wasn't talking to anybody in particular. I was just talking about it to whoever would listen.
Then, because I'm not 25 anymore, I start to pass out. I nap right there, leaning on J's shoulder. I'm going to start a new trend. Napping in clubs. You know how in New York there was that restaurant called Bed that served you dinner on a bed? I'm going to start a new club: Nap. For people over 30. It will feature live music by bands popular when we were teenagers, and after every few songs, the mosh pit will be replaced by a big comfy bed with lots of pillows and comforters. Girls will remove their uncomfortable shoes, and you will be able to buy pajamas if you want. Everyone will curl up and cuddle with each other for 20 minutes while the bartenders clean up and restock the bar; and the band, seeing as how they are older too, will join in and we'll all nap together. Then we'll get back up, the girls will have fun time in the bathroom while the boys buy us drinks, the mosh pit will resume, and everyone will play and dance and rock out for another 20 minutes. We'll do this until approximately 1am, because no one should be up after 1am, unless they have insomnia.
Oh, and I'm so proud of myself because I avoided the greasy pizza they were serving to all the drunk people, though I pined and longed for it all night. It looked so disgusting, the ex-frozen pizza swirling around under the heat lamp, the cheap cheese glooping up and dripping down the sides, the grease wanting to be shot directly into my veins to soak up the alcohol. But I stayed strong, and just ate a Power Bar on the way home. Yay for willpower, even in the face of total impairment.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
An awesome way to spend a Saturday
Last Saturday I was in San Francisco singing the choruses of the St. Matthew Passion.
If you don't know it, you must start this video while you finish the rest of this post:
It's awesome stuff! Really gets the blood pumping.
Every year the American Bach Soloists put on a free choral workshop. They always pick music that has something to do with their current season (they're doing the St. Matthew Passion at the end of February), you sign up in advance, they email you the music, and then you get to spend six hours singing Bach in a gorgeous church with 250 other people. Their Director/Founder is awesome, PLUS he's from Pennsylvania (like me), so I bonded with him talking about pretzels. What more can you ask for?
Also, I have to give a shoutout to my 4square app because it helped me find a really good sandwich place in Little Saigon. And the tips even warned me that the proprietors didn't speak much English. Another win for social media!
If you don't know it, you must start this video while you finish the rest of this post:
It's awesome stuff! Really gets the blood pumping.
Every year the American Bach Soloists put on a free choral workshop. They always pick music that has something to do with their current season (they're doing the St. Matthew Passion at the end of February), you sign up in advance, they email you the music, and then you get to spend six hours singing Bach in a gorgeous church with 250 other people. Their Director/Founder is awesome, PLUS he's from Pennsylvania (like me), so I bonded with him talking about pretzels. What more can you ask for?
 |
| The organ of the church where we sang |
And you know what I love? I love that the San Jose airport has a meditation room. Every airport needs a meditation room, as I first discovered last spring when I was in a rental car shuttle in Oakland and saw a baby who was exactly the same age that Baby T would have been, and when I got off that shuttle at the airport, all I wanted to do was go somewhere quiet to cry, away from the Auntie Anne's and the magazine stores. I went to the end of the airport, to the furthest gate, buried my head under my jacket, and cried until it was time to board the plane. I thought then that every airport needs a quiet place for people, and San Jose has one. Even though it's a little further from my office than Oakland, I'm going to fly there from now on. Plus, you can get to the car rental area without having to take a bus now. Rock on, San Jose.
Hey, I'm starting my weight loss journey again. I kind of hit a plateau and quit there for a little bit, but not anymore. We're taking a little more time off before we try to get pregnant, and I'm going to use that time to lose another 20 pounds. I was reading Fitness magazine yesterday, and there was this bit about how, if you spread out small treats, you don't feel the need to binge. That makes sense to me, I think. Then I read the example: "have a few squares of dark chocolate every other day, to stay satisfied," they say. Seriously? How big are these squares?? You think a few damn squares of dark chocolate every other day are going to keep me from going on a binge? My God. Who are these people who are satisfied with a few squares of dark chocolate every other day, and what do I have to do to become one? Do people like that even exist? Or is it an urban myth, perpetuated by Fitness Magazine, to make me feel bad about myself because I gotsta have me my Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches? Seriously, do a few squares of dark chocolate every other day even count as a sweet? Isn't that, like, your daily requirement of dark chocolate antioxidants?
Anyway, I'm down 1.4 pounds so far this week. Go me. Yay cabbage. The other day my afternoon snack was beets. I'm not kidding. Beets. But then I step on the scale and it's down 1.4 pounds, and I think, Ok, I can sacrifice some cake for beets, I suppose.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
More of The Artists Way
Ok guys, so I know I've been crappy at blogging lately. But, you see, there's just been so much living going on in my life, that I'm having a hard time finding the time to blog about it. Which is a good thing, really.
First off, I joined a choir. A good choir, not an old-lady-church-choir (no offense to old-lady-church-choirs). For almost three hours a week I get to bask in the bliss of Vivaldi, and it's awesome.
Second, I'm doing The Artists Way again. Despite my best efforts, some day I'm going to finish this damn book. I've had it since 1996. Seriously. 1996. But I'm slogging through it. This week's main task is Reading Deprivation. No reading all week. But since the book dates from 1992, before the internet and email was really a big thing, I'm changing the rules a little bit. The whole point of the exercise is to clear out all the extraneous noise and chatter in your head, and give you room to create something. Julia Cameron says that many blocked creatives are voracious readers because they use other people's words and creations to numb themselves and distract themselves from what they would really like to create. That struck a chord with me, since I am a voracious reader myself, and it's probably for those reasons.
But not reading at all? What about my work email? And what about my audiobooks on my walk around the lake. Are they ok?
I found this post with updated rules for the Week 4 task in the 21st Century, and I'm going to try to abide by them. I'm also going to avoid TV. I will allow myself my audiobooks while I'm at the lake walking. I will allow myself work email, but not on a steady stream, the way it generally is now. I will check it three times a day, and respond then as needed. I won't waste time on facebook/twitter reading stupid posts conjecturing the status of the Kutcher/Moore relationship. I will not go to the Huffington Post. I won't watch The Daily Show.
I will, however, write in my journal, work on my book, and go on my Artist Date.
The only thing I'm worried about is that I'm meant to have Jury Duty on Tuesday. Ok, so listen, Tuesday has to be a giveaway day for me. Jury duty trumps Julia Cameron, no? What would I do if I didn't read? Sit and talk to people, I guess. Write.
Good grief. Ok, I will attempt to do my best to avoid reading this week, even with Jury Duty. But I have to realign my whole sense of purpose now - I had been looking forward to spending the day reading in a nice quiet spot. But now I will have to look forward to spending the day talking to new people, looking at the wall, and listening to the voice inside my head. Maybe I should just write out my inner conversation all day...
I don't know. We'll see how this goes. I'm skeptical.
First off, I joined a choir. A good choir, not an old-lady-church-choir (no offense to old-lady-church-choirs). For almost three hours a week I get to bask in the bliss of Vivaldi, and it's awesome.
Second, I'm doing The Artists Way again. Despite my best efforts, some day I'm going to finish this damn book. I've had it since 1996. Seriously. 1996. But I'm slogging through it. This week's main task is Reading Deprivation. No reading all week. But since the book dates from 1992, before the internet and email was really a big thing, I'm changing the rules a little bit. The whole point of the exercise is to clear out all the extraneous noise and chatter in your head, and give you room to create something. Julia Cameron says that many blocked creatives are voracious readers because they use other people's words and creations to numb themselves and distract themselves from what they would really like to create. That struck a chord with me, since I am a voracious reader myself, and it's probably for those reasons.
But not reading at all? What about my work email? And what about my audiobooks on my walk around the lake. Are they ok?
I found this post with updated rules for the Week 4 task in the 21st Century, and I'm going to try to abide by them. I'm also going to avoid TV. I will allow myself my audiobooks while I'm at the lake walking. I will allow myself work email, but not on a steady stream, the way it generally is now. I will check it three times a day, and respond then as needed. I won't waste time on facebook/twitter reading stupid posts conjecturing the status of the Kutcher/Moore relationship. I will not go to the Huffington Post. I won't watch The Daily Show.
I will, however, write in my journal, work on my book, and go on my Artist Date.
The only thing I'm worried about is that I'm meant to have Jury Duty on Tuesday. Ok, so listen, Tuesday has to be a giveaway day for me. Jury duty trumps Julia Cameron, no? What would I do if I didn't read? Sit and talk to people, I guess. Write.
Good grief. Ok, I will attempt to do my best to avoid reading this week, even with Jury Duty. But I have to realign my whole sense of purpose now - I had been looking forward to spending the day reading in a nice quiet spot. But now I will have to look forward to spending the day talking to new people, looking at the wall, and listening to the voice inside my head. Maybe I should just write out my inner conversation all day...
I don't know. We'll see how this goes. I'm skeptical.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
the present
After having seen Joshua Bell last week, I was reminded why I was totally crushing on him in 2001. But that's not what this is about. That's just the prologue. It just explains why I've been reading a lot of stuff on the interwebs about him. And I came across something I have to share.
In 2007 the Washington Post did a study. The study consisted of taking Joshua Bell, one of the world's greatest violinists, had him play some amazing (and amazingly difficult) classical music in a Washington DC Metro stop at rush hour. They dressed him up in normal street clothes, put a baseball cap on him, threw a few dollars and change into his violin case, and waited to see who would notice.
This is what happened:
At first, the Washington Post was worried about crowd control. In a city as sophisticated as DC, they thought, someone would surely notice him. Flashbulbs would go off. Things would escalate. The National Guard would arrive. There would be teargas.
Over 11000 people passed right by him in the 45 minutes he played. One person recognized him. She wasn't a violinist, and she didn't know classical music that well, but she had been at a previous concert of his.
The Washington Post interviewed people afterwards about whether they noticed him, whether they stopped, and why. The article is a fascinating study in psychology. The Post wrote down names and numbers of people who were willing to talk with them about "their commute" for an article. Later on, when reporters called the commuters, they asked whether anything interesting had happened that morning. One man said that he had seen a superb violinist, but he hadn't recognized Joshua Bell, even though he was a fan.
The reporters told the commuters what had actually happened, and why they were actually being interviewed, and most of them were disappointed that they hadn't realized just who they were walking past.
One man remembers all the lottery numbers he played that day, but he can't remember that he was 4 feet away from a virtuoso. One guy took no notice of him at all because he had earbuds in, listening to his ipod.
"For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.
The song that Calvin Myint was listening to was "Just Like Heaven," by the British rock band The Cure. It's a terrific song, actually. The meaning is a little opaque, and the Web is filled with earnest efforts to deconstruct it. Many are far-fetched, but some are right on point: It's about a tragic emotional disconnect. A man has found the woman of his dreams but can't express the depth of his feeling for her until she's gone. It's about failing to see the beauty of what's plainly in front of your eyes."
I'm fascinated by this experiment. Not just because of all the normal lessons (ie, pay attention to what's going on around you because you never know what you're going to see) but all the subtle stuff. The preparation that went into the experiment, and the things that were going on in the heads of the people who stopped (and didn't stop).
When I was younger, I used to annoy my dad by asking him why he bought what he did. He got a new toothbrush, and I was fascinated by what it was that made him decide on the one he finally got. I mean, if you look in the toothbrush aisle, there are, like, at least 50 you can choose from. I wanted to know what it was about the one he chose that made it the one. Was it the price? The color? The bristles? What?! He never would answer me. He'd just say, "I liked it." Yes, but *why*?
This article starts probing that part of people's brains to find out why they did or didn't stop and listen. Why they did or didn't give money. It's blowing my mind.
If I saw Joshua Bell play in a metro station, I'd totally faint. I'm going to have to keep a lookout now that I know he's prone to such antics. But I wonder what else I could miss because I'm so busy watching out for Joshua Bell. I could miss something equally amazing. Oh man, it's too late to be thinking about all this. It's making my head spin.
The lesson, I guess, is that you pay attention to what's in front of you, because that's all there is, really, to pay attention to.
In 2007 the Washington Post did a study. The study consisted of taking Joshua Bell, one of the world's greatest violinists, had him play some amazing (and amazingly difficult) classical music in a Washington DC Metro stop at rush hour. They dressed him up in normal street clothes, put a baseball cap on him, threw a few dollars and change into his violin case, and waited to see who would notice.
This is what happened:
At first, the Washington Post was worried about crowd control. In a city as sophisticated as DC, they thought, someone would surely notice him. Flashbulbs would go off. Things would escalate. The National Guard would arrive. There would be teargas.
Over 11000 people passed right by him in the 45 minutes he played. One person recognized him. She wasn't a violinist, and she didn't know classical music that well, but she had been at a previous concert of his.
The Washington Post interviewed people afterwards about whether they noticed him, whether they stopped, and why. The article is a fascinating study in psychology. The Post wrote down names and numbers of people who were willing to talk with them about "their commute" for an article. Later on, when reporters called the commuters, they asked whether anything interesting had happened that morning. One man said that he had seen a superb violinist, but he hadn't recognized Joshua Bell, even though he was a fan.
The reporters told the commuters what had actually happened, and why they were actually being interviewed, and most of them were disappointed that they hadn't realized just who they were walking past.
One man remembers all the lottery numbers he played that day, but he can't remember that he was 4 feet away from a virtuoso. One guy took no notice of him at all because he had earbuds in, listening to his ipod.
"For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.
The song that Calvin Myint was listening to was "Just Like Heaven," by the British rock band The Cure. It's a terrific song, actually. The meaning is a little opaque, and the Web is filled with earnest efforts to deconstruct it. Many are far-fetched, but some are right on point: It's about a tragic emotional disconnect. A man has found the woman of his dreams but can't express the depth of his feeling for her until she's gone. It's about failing to see the beauty of what's plainly in front of your eyes."
I'm fascinated by this experiment. Not just because of all the normal lessons (ie, pay attention to what's going on around you because you never know what you're going to see) but all the subtle stuff. The preparation that went into the experiment, and the things that were going on in the heads of the people who stopped (and didn't stop).
When I was younger, I used to annoy my dad by asking him why he bought what he did. He got a new toothbrush, and I was fascinated by what it was that made him decide on the one he finally got. I mean, if you look in the toothbrush aisle, there are, like, at least 50 you can choose from. I wanted to know what it was about the one he chose that made it the one. Was it the price? The color? The bristles? What?! He never would answer me. He'd just say, "I liked it." Yes, but *why*?
This article starts probing that part of people's brains to find out why they did or didn't stop and listen. Why they did or didn't give money. It's blowing my mind.
If I saw Joshua Bell play in a metro station, I'd totally faint. I'm going to have to keep a lookout now that I know he's prone to such antics. But I wonder what else I could miss because I'm so busy watching out for Joshua Bell. I could miss something equally amazing. Oh man, it's too late to be thinking about all this. It's making my head spin.
The lesson, I guess, is that you pay attention to what's in front of you, because that's all there is, really, to pay attention to.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
the best facebook posting ever
Ten years ago, I saw Joshua Bell at the Wigmore Hall in London when my violin teacher Mark was playing the bassoon in a quintet with him. I know, it's all very confusing. Along the way, I got lost, and talked to a friendly-looking man, Oliver, asking him if he could tell me where the Wigmore Hall was. Turns out, he was going there too, and we became instant friends, even more so when he stepped in a puddle and splashed my shoes. Or maybe I splashed him. I forget, but I remember someone had splashed someone else. There was definitely splashing involved.
Oliver and I exchanged numbers, and met up several times within the next few weeks, and he became one of my bestest friends. After the concert, I went to Wagamama's with Mark, and sat across the table from Joshua Bell, and watched him slurp noodles. I've never seen someone look so good while they slurp udon.
So fast forward six years, and Oliver is in Santa Monica visiting his cousin, and I'm supposed to go see him, but something happens and I lame-flake-out on him. I think I was tired, or something equally inexcusable. Oliver and I stop facebooking, and stop chatting, and that's just it. We both feel weird, and I feel ashamed, and as far as we're both concerned, that's it, friendship over.
Today I posted on facebook that I'm going to see Joshua Bell tonight at the Hollywood Bowl, and how it's crazy that it was 10 years ago that I first saw him when Mark was playing, and that's the night I met Oliver. Not three minutes later, an IM comes up from Oliver, and he's apologizing, and I'm apologizing, and we're both apologizing, and before you know it, we've set up a time to skype this weekend. We're each going to have a glass of wine, and pretend that we're in a wine bar in London (he's in Thailand now, and I'm in California), and we're going to have a good old-fashioned gossip.
I'm so excited. Yay for fabulous facebook posts. And Yay for Joshua Bell being the restorer of friendships. I had to email him to tell him about the byproduct of his musical career. I hope it makes him smile.
Oliver and I exchanged numbers, and met up several times within the next few weeks, and he became one of my bestest friends. After the concert, I went to Wagamama's with Mark, and sat across the table from Joshua Bell, and watched him slurp noodles. I've never seen someone look so good while they slurp udon.
So fast forward six years, and Oliver is in Santa Monica visiting his cousin, and I'm supposed to go see him, but something happens and I lame-flake-out on him. I think I was tired, or something equally inexcusable. Oliver and I stop facebooking, and stop chatting, and that's just it. We both feel weird, and I feel ashamed, and as far as we're both concerned, that's it, friendship over.
Today I posted on facebook that I'm going to see Joshua Bell tonight at the Hollywood Bowl, and how it's crazy that it was 10 years ago that I first saw him when Mark was playing, and that's the night I met Oliver. Not three minutes later, an IM comes up from Oliver, and he's apologizing, and I'm apologizing, and we're both apologizing, and before you know it, we've set up a time to skype this weekend. We're each going to have a glass of wine, and pretend that we're in a wine bar in London (he's in Thailand now, and I'm in California), and we're going to have a good old-fashioned gossip.
I'm so excited. Yay for fabulous facebook posts. And Yay for Joshua Bell being the restorer of friendships. I had to email him to tell him about the byproduct of his musical career. I hope it makes him smile.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
The Music Wayback Machine: 1999
I've been playing around on Spotify, using the Billboard charts to make playlists of different years. Here's one from one of my favorite years, 1999, when I was 23: http://open.spotify.com/user/hteysko/playlist/46OKyZBEVMvR3fY2QtBWX0
Let me tell you about the coolness of my life at 23.
First off, in the spring of that year, I broke up with my longtime boyfriend Mark. We wound up breaking up several times before it finally took. He was a good guy, I'm sure he still is. It's just that, you know, I was 23 and I'd known him since I was 19, and life is too short to not spend your 20's doing crazy stuff that will make your grandkids cringe someday.
So that summer I moved to LA and lived in Koreatown, at 426 S. New Hampshire Ave, in this cool art-deco building from the 20's. It's where I spent the year before moving to London when I was 24, and that year will always be one of my favorites. My apartment had a fold-in-the-wall murphy bed, big windows with bars on (I'd hang plants from them), and a tiny kitchen with a tall ceiling. I was too broke to have a mattress when I first moved there, but after I found a job at a headhunting firm in LA, I saved up, and around October I had enough for a mattress.
On the day it was delivered, I woke up early and rode the bus (oh yeah, I didn't have a car) to the kmart on third (where The Grove is now) and bought a full bed set with a comforter, that I still sleep with to this day. I waited in the lobby for the mattress because my building was so ghetto that none of the buzzers worked. And once it was delivered, I walked to the Chinese place on the corner and got dinner, made up the bed, and spent the evening watching football and eating dinner in bed. Life was blissful.
(Here's a funny story - in the summer of 2005, before I met J, I went on a blind date with a guy who lived in that same building. It was too random for words. There are thousands of apartment buildings in LA and I wind up on a blind date with a guy who lives in the one I lived in five years before? Too strange. It kind of creeped me out, but I still went upstairs to his apartment anyway because I just had to get inside the building and see whether they'd changed the carpet. Plus he had a cute cat and I'm a sucker for cute cats.)
So anyway, there I am in my little studio apartment (which I really adored. I've never had an apartment I loved as much as that place) with the fold in the wall bed, and a mini-refrigerator because the big one that came with the place didn't work, and the building management never fixed it. Since I didn't have a car, I walked around with a fold-up grandma cart and took the bus to Trader Joe's, and I learned how to cook chicken.
There was an earthquake that fall that was strong enough to wake me up in the middle of the night. I was dreaming that a monster was shaking the bars on my windows, and I was pissed off at him for that. Then I woke up and realized it was an earthquake and ran to the doorway, but by then it was over. I woke my parents in Pennsylvania up in the middle of the night, though, to tell them I was ok in case it was on the news or something. They weren't impressed.
Blink 182 got popular with What's My Age Again, which coincidentally had lyrics in it about being 23, which I took as some kind of sign. Of what, I'm not sure.
I went on a couple of Very Bad Dates. With one guy, we had a good first date, and then he wanted me to come out and see him the next night, but it was late, and I was going to have to take, like, four buses to get to the Valley, and I was lazy and didn't care that much, so I wound up not going and falling asleep without calling him instead. He freaked out and called the police, reporting me missing, and they came banging on my door at 4am. Listen, I'm sorry I stood you up, whatever your name was, and I guess it was sweet of you to not want me to be dead somewhere, but had the thought not occurred to you that I was standing you up? Really?
Speaking of dating, I was so bad at it, that when a guy didn't call me back after I'd left him like, five messages, I assumed that he must have lost my number and I called him at work to give it to him. Seriously. Such a bad move. I'm glad that somewhere along the line I finally learned how to play it cool and not wear my heart on my sleeve. So that six years later, when J and I were on our third or fourth date, he was talking to somebody else and referred to me as his girlfriend, and I completely ignored it. And then a couple of hours later, at the end of the date, I quickly said, "I'm glad you called me your girlfriend," and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, and then walked out the door. It was the smoothest move I've ever pulled off, and he said that it was one of the things that officially hooked him.
And now, just an hour ago, he burped in my ear. I asked him why he did something so gross, and he said, "so your brain could smell my dinner."
We sure know how to be classy.
Let me tell you about the coolness of my life at 23.
First off, in the spring of that year, I broke up with my longtime boyfriend Mark. We wound up breaking up several times before it finally took. He was a good guy, I'm sure he still is. It's just that, you know, I was 23 and I'd known him since I was 19, and life is too short to not spend your 20's doing crazy stuff that will make your grandkids cringe someday.
So that summer I moved to LA and lived in Koreatown, at 426 S. New Hampshire Ave, in this cool art-deco building from the 20's. It's where I spent the year before moving to London when I was 24, and that year will always be one of my favorites. My apartment had a fold-in-the-wall murphy bed, big windows with bars on (I'd hang plants from them), and a tiny kitchen with a tall ceiling. I was too broke to have a mattress when I first moved there, but after I found a job at a headhunting firm in LA, I saved up, and around October I had enough for a mattress.
On the day it was delivered, I woke up early and rode the bus (oh yeah, I didn't have a car) to the kmart on third (where The Grove is now) and bought a full bed set with a comforter, that I still sleep with to this day. I waited in the lobby for the mattress because my building was so ghetto that none of the buzzers worked. And once it was delivered, I walked to the Chinese place on the corner and got dinner, made up the bed, and spent the evening watching football and eating dinner in bed. Life was blissful.
(Here's a funny story - in the summer of 2005, before I met J, I went on a blind date with a guy who lived in that same building. It was too random for words. There are thousands of apartment buildings in LA and I wind up on a blind date with a guy who lives in the one I lived in five years before? Too strange. It kind of creeped me out, but I still went upstairs to his apartment anyway because I just had to get inside the building and see whether they'd changed the carpet. Plus he had a cute cat and I'm a sucker for cute cats.)
So anyway, there I am in my little studio apartment (which I really adored. I've never had an apartment I loved as much as that place) with the fold in the wall bed, and a mini-refrigerator because the big one that came with the place didn't work, and the building management never fixed it. Since I didn't have a car, I walked around with a fold-up grandma cart and took the bus to Trader Joe's, and I learned how to cook chicken.
There was an earthquake that fall that was strong enough to wake me up in the middle of the night. I was dreaming that a monster was shaking the bars on my windows, and I was pissed off at him for that. Then I woke up and realized it was an earthquake and ran to the doorway, but by then it was over. I woke my parents in Pennsylvania up in the middle of the night, though, to tell them I was ok in case it was on the news or something. They weren't impressed.
Blink 182 got popular with What's My Age Again, which coincidentally had lyrics in it about being 23, which I took as some kind of sign. Of what, I'm not sure.
I went on a couple of Very Bad Dates. With one guy, we had a good first date, and then he wanted me to come out and see him the next night, but it was late, and I was going to have to take, like, four buses to get to the Valley, and I was lazy and didn't care that much, so I wound up not going and falling asleep without calling him instead. He freaked out and called the police, reporting me missing, and they came banging on my door at 4am. Listen, I'm sorry I stood you up, whatever your name was, and I guess it was sweet of you to not want me to be dead somewhere, but had the thought not occurred to you that I was standing you up? Really?
Speaking of dating, I was so bad at it, that when a guy didn't call me back after I'd left him like, five messages, I assumed that he must have lost my number and I called him at work to give it to him. Seriously. Such a bad move. I'm glad that somewhere along the line I finally learned how to play it cool and not wear my heart on my sleeve. So that six years later, when J and I were on our third or fourth date, he was talking to somebody else and referred to me as his girlfriend, and I completely ignored it. And then a couple of hours later, at the end of the date, I quickly said, "I'm glad you called me your girlfriend," and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, and then walked out the door. It was the smoothest move I've ever pulled off, and he said that it was one of the things that officially hooked him.
And now, just an hour ago, he burped in my ear. I asked him why he did something so gross, and he said, "so your brain could smell my dinner."
We sure know how to be classy.
Friday, June 24, 2011
In the world of Small Things That Make You Happy: I've finally got my Girly/Dido station on Pandora exactly to my liking. It's taken nearly three years of tweaking, but I realized tonight that I didn't click "dislike" once in nearly two hours of listening. I am happily bopping around now listening to The Cranberries, and remembering college, and thinking that maybe I have a paper due tomorrow, but then realizing that I don't, and then I feel relieved.
So something new I did today was wear my sunglasses inside, all day. I am having a hard time this weekend, if you hadn't noticed from yesterday's post, and I didn't really feel like facing people. When I went into the convention center, I was hit in the face with 25,000 shiny happy people/librarians, and I wanted to hide from all the festivities. Plus, there was free food, and nothing gets librarians on city-budgets excited like free food. I was early for my first meeting, and wanted to sit somewhere quiet and read, but I couldn't get away from it all, so I decided to put in my headphones, and put on my sunglasses, and it really was like being in my own little cocoon of a world. I had Bob Seger on (Roll me Away is one of the greatest road-trip songs ever) reminding me that I've been running against the wind, and the world was a nice shade of muted pastel blue, and no one smiled an annoying bright smile at me, and I didn't care how aloof I looked. Damn, it was fun.
The only funny thing was when I accidentally walked into a wall because, in all my aloofness, I wasn't paying attention. Whatever. I'm a klutz, but I'm an aloof klutz.
Seriously, I'm going to do this Sunglasses Inside thing all the time when I don't feel like facing people. It's such a good trick, I don't know why I didn't think of it before.
The only other time I've work sunglasses a lot (other than, you know, like in the car driving, and on the beach, and obvious stuff like that) was when I was 17 on a school trip in Europe, and I discovered alcohol. There were a whole bunch of us from different schools and I made friends with this guy Craig, who was gorgeous. He was subsequently my "date" to the senior prom. "date" being in "quotes" because he was gay. But he was from another school, and pretended that he was my boyfriend really well, and picked me up in a red porsche, so I was stoked. Besides, I'm a nerd and spent most of the prom studying my flashcards for all my AP tests that were going on the next week. Yep, you read that right. In my tiny little beaded purse, I had stashed a set of flashcards on the French Revolution, and an extra lipstick. I rock like that.
Anyway, Craig was gorgeous. And there was this other gorgeous girl - I forget her name, but let's call her Kristen, because in my high school Kristen's were all really pretty. So Kristen was tall and model-gorgeous, and I think she didn't realize that Craig was gay, but she probably figured that they should be together because the two gorgeous people are always together, right? But Craig had already told me he was gay, and he and I spent all the bus-rides sitting together listening to Andrew Lloyd Weber soundtracks, so we were already tight. So Gorgeous Girl - Kristen - was super-friendly with me, cuz I think she thought maybe I would somehow be an "in" to Craig. So it was the three of us, together. The two model-gorgeous people and me, drinking champagne with diet coke (yes, you read that right. Champagne with diet coke. Don't ask).
Actually, I might just be inventing all that in my head. The motive, I mean. I just know that it was model-Kristen and Craig and me and I was really drunk for the first time in my life, and discovering the deliciousness of being slightly out of your head, and then having bloodshot eyes the next morning.
Hence the sunglasses, which never came off, the entire trip.
Speaking of being drunk, you know what one of my favorite feelings in the world is? You know when you're out at a club, and you get really drunk, and the music is throbbing and pulsing, and you're dancing, and you're sweating, and you're laughing and giddy, and the room is sort of spinning, but it's all kind of fun and crazy, and only slightly woozy? And then you go to the bathroom. And you're in the stall and you're peeing, and for the first time it's like, kind of quiet, except you can still hear the beat thumping around, and you're like, "Ahhhh, this peeing feels really good. Man, I'm hungry. What's going on? Did I just make out with that guy out there? What was his name? Or was it a girl? Huh? Who's calling me? What phone number is this written on my hand? Damn, I'm still peeing. Oh man, this is taking forever. I'm just going to rest my head against the wall here..."
I LOVE that feeling. Like, totally love it. I'd go out clubbing every night (if it wasn't so tiring - seeing as how I'm not 23 anymore) just to get the peeing-while-drunk feeling.
This has been random, hasn't it?
So something new I did today was wear my sunglasses inside, all day. I am having a hard time this weekend, if you hadn't noticed from yesterday's post, and I didn't really feel like facing people. When I went into the convention center, I was hit in the face with 25,000 shiny happy people/librarians, and I wanted to hide from all the festivities. Plus, there was free food, and nothing gets librarians on city-budgets excited like free food. I was early for my first meeting, and wanted to sit somewhere quiet and read, but I couldn't get away from it all, so I decided to put in my headphones, and put on my sunglasses, and it really was like being in my own little cocoon of a world. I had Bob Seger on (Roll me Away is one of the greatest road-trip songs ever) reminding me that I've been running against the wind, and the world was a nice shade of muted pastel blue, and no one smiled an annoying bright smile at me, and I didn't care how aloof I looked. Damn, it was fun.
The only funny thing was when I accidentally walked into a wall because, in all my aloofness, I wasn't paying attention. Whatever. I'm a klutz, but I'm an aloof klutz.
Seriously, I'm going to do this Sunglasses Inside thing all the time when I don't feel like facing people. It's such a good trick, I don't know why I didn't think of it before.
The only other time I've work sunglasses a lot (other than, you know, like in the car driving, and on the beach, and obvious stuff like that) was when I was 17 on a school trip in Europe, and I discovered alcohol. There were a whole bunch of us from different schools and I made friends with this guy Craig, who was gorgeous. He was subsequently my "date" to the senior prom. "date" being in "quotes" because he was gay. But he was from another school, and pretended that he was my boyfriend really well, and picked me up in a red porsche, so I was stoked. Besides, I'm a nerd and spent most of the prom studying my flashcards for all my AP tests that were going on the next week. Yep, you read that right. In my tiny little beaded purse, I had stashed a set of flashcards on the French Revolution, and an extra lipstick. I rock like that.
Anyway, Craig was gorgeous. And there was this other gorgeous girl - I forget her name, but let's call her Kristen, because in my high school Kristen's were all really pretty. So Kristen was tall and model-gorgeous, and I think she didn't realize that Craig was gay, but she probably figured that they should be together because the two gorgeous people are always together, right? But Craig had already told me he was gay, and he and I spent all the bus-rides sitting together listening to Andrew Lloyd Weber soundtracks, so we were already tight. So Gorgeous Girl - Kristen - was super-friendly with me, cuz I think she thought maybe I would somehow be an "in" to Craig. So it was the three of us, together. The two model-gorgeous people and me, drinking champagne with diet coke (yes, you read that right. Champagne with diet coke. Don't ask).
Actually, I might just be inventing all that in my head. The motive, I mean. I just know that it was model-Kristen and Craig and me and I was really drunk for the first time in my life, and discovering the deliciousness of being slightly out of your head, and then having bloodshot eyes the next morning.
Hence the sunglasses, which never came off, the entire trip.
Speaking of being drunk, you know what one of my favorite feelings in the world is? You know when you're out at a club, and you get really drunk, and the music is throbbing and pulsing, and you're dancing, and you're sweating, and you're laughing and giddy, and the room is sort of spinning, but it's all kind of fun and crazy, and only slightly woozy? And then you go to the bathroom. And you're in the stall and you're peeing, and for the first time it's like, kind of quiet, except you can still hear the beat thumping around, and you're like, "Ahhhh, this peeing feels really good. Man, I'm hungry. What's going on? Did I just make out with that guy out there? What was his name? Or was it a girl? Huh? Who's calling me? What phone number is this written on my hand? Damn, I'm still peeing. Oh man, this is taking forever. I'm just going to rest my head against the wall here..."
I LOVE that feeling. Like, totally love it. I'd go out clubbing every night (if it wasn't so tiring - seeing as how I'm not 23 anymore) just to get the peeing-while-drunk feeling.
This has been random, hasn't it?
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
My Six Degrees with the Royal Wedding
There are plenty of other blogs out there that are gushing about Kate's dress, and Wills' handsomeness, so I'm not going to do that. What I'm going to do is share with you my three, albeit very faint, connections to the Royal Wedding.
1. Westminster Abbey. Ok, so I know that it's been there for a thousand years, so plenty of people have a connection via Westminster Abbey, but not all of them like mine. I'm one of the relatively few people through the ages who have actually attended regular services there. I had my own seat in the choir at the weekday 5pm Evensong services, and everything. And man, would I feel smug, walking up on Sunday afternoons at 2:45, breezing past all the American tourists, and having the Priest recognize me, and move aside to let me in. Then I'd, you know, look at the chair where all the monarchs since William the Conquerer had been crowned, and I wouldn't feel quite so smug anymore.
2. Grace, the Ear-Covering Bridesmaid: So my friend Anna Louisa posted on Facebook that she went to school with Grace's mom, and was saluting her for raising such a self-expressed daughter. Therefore, by my calculation, I'm like 3 degrees away from Prince William. Anna Louisa - Grace's mom - Prince William (who is Grace's Godfather).
3. John Rutter (who composed the Anthem that the Abbey Dean commissioned for the wedding, This is the Day): In case you've never heard of him before now, he's a brilliant choral composer, based in Cambridge, I think. I'm pretty sure I've posted music of his before, because I just adore him. And I got the chance to be a groupie to him in 2001 when I went to the Association of British Choral Director's annual meeting (three days of singing and conducting! Be still my heart!). He was going to be doing a clinic, and I ran into him in a hallway. Literally. I had my head down in the program, trying to figure out where I was going, and I think he had his head down, probably composing something. I was groupie-speechless and managed a quick, "I love your work" before scurrying along, kicking myself for not thinking of anything more clever to say.
On the topic of John Rutter, you've gotta check out his Requiem. It's all on youtube in parts, posted by @MonteverdiChor. I'm posting the Angus Dei and The Lord is My Shepherd here. It's juicy. Me likey.
1. Westminster Abbey. Ok, so I know that it's been there for a thousand years, so plenty of people have a connection via Westminster Abbey, but not all of them like mine. I'm one of the relatively few people through the ages who have actually attended regular services there. I had my own seat in the choir at the weekday 5pm Evensong services, and everything. And man, would I feel smug, walking up on Sunday afternoons at 2:45, breezing past all the American tourists, and having the Priest recognize me, and move aside to let me in. Then I'd, you know, look at the chair where all the monarchs since William the Conquerer had been crowned, and I wouldn't feel quite so smug anymore.
2. Grace, the Ear-Covering Bridesmaid: So my friend Anna Louisa posted on Facebook that she went to school with Grace's mom, and was saluting her for raising such a self-expressed daughter. Therefore, by my calculation, I'm like 3 degrees away from Prince William. Anna Louisa - Grace's mom - Prince William (who is Grace's Godfather).
3. John Rutter (who composed the Anthem that the Abbey Dean commissioned for the wedding, This is the Day): In case you've never heard of him before now, he's a brilliant choral composer, based in Cambridge, I think. I'm pretty sure I've posted music of his before, because I just adore him. And I got the chance to be a groupie to him in 2001 when I went to the Association of British Choral Director's annual meeting (three days of singing and conducting! Be still my heart!). He was going to be doing a clinic, and I ran into him in a hallway. Literally. I had my head down in the program, trying to figure out where I was going, and I think he had his head down, probably composing something. I was groupie-speechless and managed a quick, "I love your work" before scurrying along, kicking myself for not thinking of anything more clever to say.
On the topic of John Rutter, you've gotta check out his Requiem. It's all on youtube in parts, posted by @MonteverdiChor. I'm posting the Angus Dei and The Lord is My Shepherd here. It's juicy. Me likey.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Save CJ Fam
So I always spend part of every afternoon dealing with my self-diagnosed ADD and indulging in Internet Crap. And because I'm friends with a 13 year old boy on Facebook (Mars, my cousin through my stepmother) I stay hip on what the kids these days are doing. So I've been hip to Rebecca Black for a few weeks now, because he keeps posting the video and commenting about how much he hates it (thus increasing her youtube views to an even more astronomical number).
In case you've been hanging out on a boat for the past month, Rebecca Black is a client of Ark Music Factory, a company that, for $2000, will write you a pop song, make you a video, and raise your hopes of becoming a pop star via the internet, however they won't pay for your years of therapy once you realize that you probably won't become the next Britney Spears. She sings a terrible song called "Friday," the only unique feature of which is how she pronounces it with three syllables (Fri-eee-day). Well, that's not entirely true. The other unique feature of this song is its ability to get inside your brain and eat all the other music you've been listening to all day, and then it will repeat itself over and over again until you want to stick your head on an anvil and knock yourself silly.
In last week's InfoMania, Sergio did a White Hot Top Five dedicated to the other stars (aka kids with rich parents) of the Ark Music catalog. They were all Disney-wannabees, with the exception of CJ Fam, a firecracker 4'1" 53-pound (according to her profile on the Actors Pages, which, creepily features a picture of her posing at the beach in a bathing suit) blond-haired Annie lookalike who strikes me as being about as annoying as the giant splinter I got caught under my thumbnail when I was cleaning the deck the other morning.
But since she's only, like, 8, I blame her parents. Probably her overbearing mom who always wanted to be a star herself, but wound up getting pregnant and marrying her high school boyfriend and staying in Dumbf*ck, Nebraska until she had a midlife crisis and packed her youngest daughter, and greatest hope for stardom into the Ford and drove to LA where, rather than prostitute herself and her Baby Girl on Sunset and Highland, she decided to sign her up with ARK instead.
Actually I made all that up. I think she's from Florida.
But I do think her mom is to blame because when you click on her youtube profile, the first link is a montage featuring the Beatles' Help to get her "fans" (aka 6 year old girls who shouldn't be on the internet in the first place anyway) riled up to view her videos as many times as Rebecca Black's, in a "Showdown" so that she can get signed by Ryan Seacrest, too.
Listen Overbearing Mom: I could ignore the fact that you let your Baby Girl sing Lady Gaga songs with lyrics about being too drunk to text while she's dressed like a hooker. I could ignore the fact that you are pitting her against Rebecca Black in a weird Showdown that evokes images of John Wayne and fake gun battles, thus creating a scarcity conversation in her developing brain so she'll probably be super-competitive with everybody her whole life ("There's not enough success for everyone, and Rebecca Black is getting it, that tramp, so therefore we need to have a Showdown"). I can even forgive you trying to vicariously live your dream through your daughter, and turning her into a little brat that everybody's going to want to beat up and no guy will ask to the prom, in ten years, because she's so annoying.
Even though children's services might come knocking at your door, I can even overlook you allowing your 8 year old to be eroticized in a world of internet porn (see above-mentioned bathing suit photo, and this gem):
It's no worse than pageant moms do all over the country.
But. I. Can. NOT. Forgive. The. Blasphemic. Use. Of. The. Beatles. In. Supporting. This. Endeavor.
When will the madness end? Can't Yoko Ono sue somebody over this?
Remember like 13 years ago when we were all up in arms over Britney Spears looking too hot in her first video? I know, our precious little CJ Fam wasn't even born yet, and her super-hit, the oxymoronically-named single, "Ordinary Popstar" (I refuse to link to it because I don't want to contribute to the Rebecca Black Showdown) was still years away from being conceived, but I remember that time. I remember people freaking out over Brit wearing a Catholic uniform and doing some dirty-dancing moves next to a locker, which, incidentally looks like the dancing they did in movies from the 50's compared to what our CJ is doing.
My dad likes to say that things in the 50's were better, and more innocent. And I'm always like, "yeah, Dad, you're just looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. It wasn't so great if you were black. Or a woman. Or, you know, not Beaver Cleaver or Donna Reed." We've had arguments about this since I was 16. But I'm starting to think that my dad could be right. Maybe we are going down the slippery slope. Maybe pole-dancing in gym class is coming next?
(Then again, even being Beaver Cleaver wasn't able to save Jerry Mathers from looking like a dope all his life, which is really apropos of nothing, but needs to be said because I found this picture):
So, maybe Eddie Haskell should win a couple of rounds, you know? Just to even things out. Make The Beav look a little less dopey/strung out.
And maybe it wasn't the end of the world when Brit did her thing with her pigtails flying around.
But this CJ Fam thing, it's just out of control. If it can help her get back to being an Ordinary Girl (and not an Ordinary Popstar) then I will continue to click Rebecca Black's video day and night, bravely facing the teasing of my husband for continuing to sing the offending song even when I know it gives him a migraine, and I will selflessly help her decide whether she wants to party in the front or the back seat on the weekend, and do whatever I can so that she wins this Showdown, and CJ Fam can get back to school and maybe get some guidance counselling or some education in something other than Being a Pop Star 101. Because Rebecca Black doesn't strike me as a crazy chick whose life will be destroyed if she gets some early success. I'm worried that if CJ Fam gets big-time attention, she'll wind up being the next Lindsay Lohan, only worse because Lindsay Lohan is really talented and it still couldn't save her.
And lastly, will somebody please kill whatever it is that keeps attacking her legs in her video?
Thank you.
In case you've been hanging out on a boat for the past month, Rebecca Black is a client of Ark Music Factory, a company that, for $2000, will write you a pop song, make you a video, and raise your hopes of becoming a pop star via the internet, however they won't pay for your years of therapy once you realize that you probably won't become the next Britney Spears. She sings a terrible song called "Friday," the only unique feature of which is how she pronounces it with three syllables (Fri-eee-day). Well, that's not entirely true. The other unique feature of this song is its ability to get inside your brain and eat all the other music you've been listening to all day, and then it will repeat itself over and over again until you want to stick your head on an anvil and knock yourself silly.
In last week's InfoMania, Sergio did a White Hot Top Five dedicated to the other stars (aka kids with rich parents) of the Ark Music catalog. They were all Disney-wannabees, with the exception of CJ Fam, a firecracker 4'1" 53-pound (according to her profile on the Actors Pages, which, creepily features a picture of her posing at the beach in a bathing suit) blond-haired Annie lookalike who strikes me as being about as annoying as the giant splinter I got caught under my thumbnail when I was cleaning the deck the other morning.
But since she's only, like, 8, I blame her parents. Probably her overbearing mom who always wanted to be a star herself, but wound up getting pregnant and marrying her high school boyfriend and staying in Dumbf*ck, Nebraska until she had a midlife crisis and packed her youngest daughter, and greatest hope for stardom into the Ford and drove to LA where, rather than prostitute herself and her Baby Girl on Sunset and Highland, she decided to sign her up with ARK instead.
Actually I made all that up. I think she's from Florida.
But I do think her mom is to blame because when you click on her youtube profile, the first link is a montage featuring the Beatles' Help to get her "fans" (aka 6 year old girls who shouldn't be on the internet in the first place anyway) riled up to view her videos as many times as Rebecca Black's, in a "Showdown" so that she can get signed by Ryan Seacrest, too.
Listen Overbearing Mom: I could ignore the fact that you let your Baby Girl sing Lady Gaga songs with lyrics about being too drunk to text while she's dressed like a hooker. I could ignore the fact that you are pitting her against Rebecca Black in a weird Showdown that evokes images of John Wayne and fake gun battles, thus creating a scarcity conversation in her developing brain so she'll probably be super-competitive with everybody her whole life ("There's not enough success for everyone, and Rebecca Black is getting it, that tramp, so therefore we need to have a Showdown"). I can even forgive you trying to vicariously live your dream through your daughter, and turning her into a little brat that everybody's going to want to beat up and no guy will ask to the prom, in ten years, because she's so annoying.
Even though children's services might come knocking at your door, I can even overlook you allowing your 8 year old to be eroticized in a world of internet porn (see above-mentioned bathing suit photo, and this gem):
It's no worse than pageant moms do all over the country.
But. I. Can. NOT. Forgive. The. Blasphemic. Use. Of. The. Beatles. In. Supporting. This. Endeavor.
When will the madness end? Can't Yoko Ono sue somebody over this?
Remember like 13 years ago when we were all up in arms over Britney Spears looking too hot in her first video? I know, our precious little CJ Fam wasn't even born yet, and her super-hit, the oxymoronically-named single, "Ordinary Popstar" (I refuse to link to it because I don't want to contribute to the Rebecca Black Showdown) was still years away from being conceived, but I remember that time. I remember people freaking out over Brit wearing a Catholic uniform and doing some dirty-dancing moves next to a locker, which, incidentally looks like the dancing they did in movies from the 50's compared to what our CJ is doing.
My dad likes to say that things in the 50's were better, and more innocent. And I'm always like, "yeah, Dad, you're just looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. It wasn't so great if you were black. Or a woman. Or, you know, not Beaver Cleaver or Donna Reed." We've had arguments about this since I was 16. But I'm starting to think that my dad could be right. Maybe we are going down the slippery slope. Maybe pole-dancing in gym class is coming next?
(Then again, even being Beaver Cleaver wasn't able to save Jerry Mathers from looking like a dope all his life, which is really apropos of nothing, but needs to be said because I found this picture):
So, maybe Eddie Haskell should win a couple of rounds, you know? Just to even things out. Make The Beav look a little less dopey/strung out.
And maybe it wasn't the end of the world when Brit did her thing with her pigtails flying around.
But this CJ Fam thing, it's just out of control. If it can help her get back to being an Ordinary Girl (and not an Ordinary Popstar) then I will continue to click Rebecca Black's video day and night, bravely facing the teasing of my husband for continuing to sing the offending song even when I know it gives him a migraine, and I will selflessly help her decide whether she wants to party in the front or the back seat on the weekend, and do whatever I can so that she wins this Showdown, and CJ Fam can get back to school and maybe get some guidance counselling or some education in something other than Being a Pop Star 101. Because Rebecca Black doesn't strike me as a crazy chick whose life will be destroyed if she gets some early success. I'm worried that if CJ Fam gets big-time attention, she'll wind up being the next Lindsay Lohan, only worse because Lindsay Lohan is really talented and it still couldn't save her.
And lastly, will somebody please kill whatever it is that keeps attacking her legs in her video?
Thank you.
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