Grapes 2.0

Probability

2010-07-17T15:28:00.001+02:00

If an infinite number of YouTube commenters watched an infinite number of videos, would one of them eventually post something intelligent?

SSC: Hayley

2010-07-04T02:25:00.001+02:00

I’ve mentioned before that my first love was Hayley Mills, and in a way I’m still carrying a torch for her, 40+ years on.

I looked for a photo from that time to illustrate this rather weak SSC, but there were none I would dare to publish. People might get entirely the wrong idea. Just because I’m fixated at a pre-adolescent stage of psycho-sexual attraction doesn’t mean I’m a pervert, officer. She’s ten years older than me. When I fancied her she was well over the age of consent.

Besides, nothing ever happened. I’m not giving up hope, though.

Nurture

2010-06-23T14:10:00.001+02:00

I’ve been reading the story of a boy who grew up an only child, in a household where his parents ignored him, and were indifferent to his concerns. The main emotion they seemed to express was irritation at the way he impinged on their lives.

The boy had no friends: at school he was considered a massive under-achiever, despite being of high intelligence and quick wit. His main interactions, apart from with teachers, were with a bully who beat him mercilessly; and with a girl towards whom he expressed himself in the only way he could: with hostility, aggression and anti-social behaviour. Typical behaviour, in fact, for an abused child, but there was no evidence he was ever actively abused.

Instead, he was ignored. He did what any introspective, isolated child would do: he invented an imaginary friend. His imaginative life became a substitute for the real world, thus exacerbating his isolation. In his daydreams, he’s a spaceman or a dinosaur, both of whom live in a world without (other) humans. His imaginary friend is a wild animal, not a person.

What chance does such a child have? What sort of adult do you suppose this child would grow up into? Perhaps the answer lies here:

click to biggify

Never shall affection die

2010-06-22T21:37:00.001+02:00

Leave Me from Daros Films on Vimeo.

Dear, when I am from thee gone,
Gone are all my joys at once.
I loved thee and thee alone,
In whose love I joyed once.
And although your sight I leave,
Sight wherein my joys do lie,
Till that death do sense bereave,
Never shall affection die.

And the rain runs

2010-06-21T20:40:00.001+02:00

But before going on with such explorations, a return to someone I’ve written about before here. Ilse Weber, a Moravian Jew, musician, writer of songs and plays for children. She was sent to Terezín, or Theresienstadt, and took it upon herself there to play with and for the children. She had two of her own: Tommy was with her in the ghetto, but his older brother Hanus had been sent to Sweden, and was living there in safety.

The song Und der Regen rinnt is about Hanus, far away across the high mountains and the deep sea, where he is spared the sight of sorrow and misery, and never need walk in the “stony alleyways” which perhaps refers to some local feature of Terezín associated with the transports.

Because their paths were not to come together again. Willi, her husband, was selected to be transported to Auschwitz. Ilse elected to go along with him, with Tommy. On arrival, Willi was put to work and Ilse and Tommy were gassed. Willi survived the war, as of course did Hanus.

(Note how sehnsucht returns, and here it definitely does have an object.)

Une der Regen rinnt

Und der Regen rinnt, und der Regen rinnt …

Ich denk im Dunklen an dich, mein Kind.

Hoch sind die Berge und tief ist das Meer,

mein Hertz ist müd und sehnsuchtschweer.

Une der Regen rinnt, und der Regen rinnt …

warom bist du zo fern, mein Kind?

Une der Regen rinnt, und der Regen rinnt …

Gott selbst hat uns getrennt, mein Kind.

Du sollst nicht Leid und Elend sehn,

sollst nicht auf steinigen Gassen gehn.

Une der Regen rinnt, und der Regen rinnt …

Hast du mich nicht vergessen, Kind?

And the rain runs

And the rain runs, and the rain runs …

In the dark I think of you, my child.

High are the mountains and deep is the sea.

My heart is weary and heavy with yearning.

And the rain runs, and the rain runs …

Why are you so far away, my child?

And the rain runs, and the rain runs …

God himself has parted us, my child.

You are not meant to see sorrow and misery;

you are not meant to walk in stony alleyways.

And the rain runs, and the rain runs …

Have you not forgotten me, my child?

You can listen here to the song sung by Anne Sofie Von Otter, whose remarkable story is told at the Grapes 2.0 link above. That recording, together with the words and translations in this post, come from the CD Terezín/Theresienstadt, also featuring Christian Gerhaher and Daniel Hope.

Sehnsucht

2010-06-21T02:01:00.001+02:00

I’ve been considering the mental states of nostalgia, saudade and Sehnsucht, all of which seem to be local versions of various aspects of melancholy. Sehnsucht is the title of a poem by Goethe, set to music by Schubert, which our choir was planning to perform next weekend, which planted the seed in my mind. The poem goes like this:

Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt

Weiß, was ich leide!

Allein und abgetrennt

Von aller Freude,

Seh ich ans Firmament

Nach jener Seite.

Ach! der mich liebt und kennt,

Ist in der Weite.

Es schwindelt mir, es brennt

Mein Eingeweide.

Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt

Weiß, was ich leide!

In English:

Only one who knows this longing

Understands what I suffer!

Alone and separated

From all joy,

I look to the vast horizon

On every side.

Oh! He who loves and knows me,

Is far away.

I feel dizzy, and it burns

my insides.

Only one who knows this longing

Understands what I suffer!

Goethe’s idea that nobody else could know what he’s going through is central to the idea of Sehnsucht. The feeling itself is not, unlike nostalgia, associated with yearning for anything in particular, unless it’s a time before the Sehnsucht came on. It’s an idiopathic condition, in that respect.

Germans even seem to be convinced that only Germans suffer from Sehnsucht, since they’re the only ones who have a word for it. That sounds to me like a version of the old canard about Eskimos and their snow vocabulary, and about as convincing. What’s wrong with the word “yearning”? That’s an emotion that doesn’t require an object, as any teenager knows.

Melancholy itself, in the sense in which we now use it, is also similar to that free-floating form of yearning. So, also, is the Portuguese saudade, which I’ll look at later.

There is also a setting of the Goethe poem by Tchaikovsky, and a piece for piano by Robert Schumann. Here’s a performance of the Schubert setting:

Nostalgia

2010-06-19T17:15:00.001+02:00

Apparently Swiss mercenaries in the 17th and 18th centuries used to miss their homeland so much they often succumbed to a form of homesickness, or nostalgia, which could lead to desertion, disability and even death. To help prevent this happening, they were forbidden from singing songs from home known as Kuhreihen, which although they were simple melodies played by cow-herding Swiss, were so melancholic as to bring the condition on.

The Wikipedia article on nostalgia has a hilarious sentence:

“Cases resulting in death were known and soldiers were sometimes successfully treated by being discharged and sent home.”

One of the few cases in those days where medicine hit the nail on the head, I suspect.

Joker

2010-06-15T23:30:00.001+02:00

This week, it was revealed that Afghanistan is sitting on such a huge pile of mineral wealth it could become “the Saudi Arabia of lithium” – an element expected to play a major role in the development of electric cars.

God certainly is a joker, you have to admit. First he makes Saudi Arabia into the Saudi Arabia of petroleum, then he turns Afghanistan into the Saudi Arabia of lithium.

The one consolation is that there is competition. In an article in the New Yorker back in March, Lawrence Wright wrote about Bolivia, one of South America’s poorest countries, which is sitting on half of the world’s known reserves of lithium (incidentally, a similar amount to Afghanistan, which in March was “unknown reserves”). And what were the people of Bolivia starting to call their country, according to Wright? The Saudi Arabia of lithium, that’s correct.

See the phrase used in this abstract here. Full version only available to subscribers.

Heartache

2010-06-14T17:20:00.002+02:00

The Union of Belgian Optimists held their first-ever congress last week in Brussels. One of the speakers was the cardiologist to the King, Professor Pedro Brugada, who spoke about optimism as an antidote to stress, and all that that entails.

"It's difficult to remain optimistic if you're surrounded by people who see things in black," he said. "That's why I find it important to support movements like this which put optimism into society, and offer a counterweight to the overwhelming melancholy."

It may not occur to him that "overwhelming melancholy" is the only really sane response to the world. It clearly doesn't occur to him that for a melancholic, the presence of an optimist is the very last thing likely to bring relief.

On the other hand, he is a doctor of the heart. He surely must know what he's talking about.

Conspiracy

2010-06-13T00:13:00.002+02:00

Two flavours/scents I can’t abide are cloves, and lavender.

The new toothpaste, Crest, has the distinct flavour of cloves, which is odd as that taste is associated with toothache.

The shower gel, meanwhile, has a nasty, acrid, piercing top-note of lavender.

My bathroom hates me.

UPDATE: It turns out that the active ingredient in clove essential oil is eugenol, and that harsh top note in the lavender fragrance is probably camphor, and both are hepatotoxic, which means they're bad for the liver. So that, boys and girls, is most likely where my dislike for those two compounds derives from. Isn't that interesting?

Ouch

2010-05-23T05:21:00.001+02:00

One of the hottest flames I’ve ever seen, and I was a flame warrior for quite a few years. Not a surprising opinion, but it’s all in the expression.

But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived [Louis Armstrong] by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril.

JazzOasis.com - Pat Metheny on Kenny G

Useless actions

2010-05-23T05:08:00.001+02:00

One thing that divides Man from the animals is our ability to perform useless actions in a graceful and beautiful way. That’s the only explanation for Balanchine, or Van Beethoven, or this bloke fucking about on his bike.

Most of your actions are useless, I suspect. Does it even occur to you to do them gracefully?

Bonne nuit

2010-05-12T00:16:00.002+02:00

In a hotel room too hot, with foamy unsupportive pillows, I dreamed you were gone off with some man who seemed to have enchanted you. You were far from me, and I felt an immeasurable distance between us. I awoke at 4am with a feeling of melancholy, that the last of something had happened, without my awareness.

All of which is true, of course, except that the man in reality is not a sinister figure. He's just a guy. But the distance and the finality are utterly real.

Analyse that, Freud, if you dare.

Destiny

2010-05-06T07:50:00.001+02:00

Bayliss: What if the one true love of your life was an Eskimo, and you lived in Des Moines?

Pembleton: There are a lot of nice girls in Des Moines.

from Homicide: Life on the Street

Up In the Air

2010-05-05T00:26:00.002+02:00

Oh my God, a Hollywood movie that romanticises the sacking of thousands of American workers. You don’t have to be Barbara Ehrenreich to find that utterly repellent.

Recipe

2010-05-04T22:16:00.001+02:00

I’ve figured out what it is that makes George Clooney so sexy.

Fuck you if you think I’m telling.

Viral

2010-05-04T21:44:00.001+02:00

People send you links to videos, thinking they’re the first. But they found the link via someone else. What is wrong with this picture?

I think we need to have badges according to the amount we use the net. Then a badge no. 2 would know not to send me, a badge no. 7, anything at all. Everyone lower than 7 would have to leave me alone, and I’d only have to take links from Sal Towse and Jason Kottke.

(link)

Beard

2010-05-04T19:49:00.001+02:00

One of the main problems about letting your beard grow, is that sooner or later you begin to ingurgitate your own hairs. Unlike other foreign-body hairs, your own seem to be less readily rejected by your body.

I guess this is a problem only men have. I’ve seen old women with facial hair, but none with hair like I’ve grown since last September. Now we know there’s a price to pay.

Bite

2010-05-04T14:34:00.001+02:00

I don’t often look in the mirror, for obvious reasons, but today I happened to catch a glimpse. And found a bite-mark.

No, not a sexy vampirish twin puncture. The imprint of a full set of choppers. Not a bite, a bruise.

Where have I been? And what have you been doing to me?

Horse

2010-05-04T13:02:00.001+02:00

I have a grey horse, who shares my bed with me. He’s about one hand to the shoulder, and in fact you can hold him in one hand. My children gave him to me one Fathers’ Day; they’d been looking for a donkey, my beast of choice, but this would have to suffice. They may have been unsure, or even imagined I wouldn’t spot a ringer.

He’s pretty useless for snuggling (and he’s indifferent to my philosophising and snowman-building) but I keep him in my bed anyway, so that the children will see him from time to time, and know that he’s still close to me.

TIA

2010-05-03T16:40:00.002+02:00

You think you're being polite when at the end of an email you go, "Thanks in advance". In fact you're being insufferably presumptuous. Thanks in advance means, Get it done, bitch.

Whatever happened to "Your humble servant"?

The Lovely Bones

2010-05-02T17:43:00.003+02:00

There's a very effective, Hitchcock-like moment in The Lovely Bones, involving a creaky floorboard, a desperate sister and a serial killer. Watching it, I was not only reminding myself that I already knew the outcome, I was also admiring Hitch's definition of suspense, and director Peter Jackson's willingness to wring every last drop from the scene.

But please OMG, don't hope for anything else from this dreadful, bungled movie.

Alice Sebold's novel may not be great literature, but her description of how a family reacts to the death of one of its members was, for me, utterly convincing, and I've been in the situation. It's terribly hackneyed to claim the film wasn't as good as the book, but all film adaptations are better than this one. It failed not only to capture the narrator, who without spoiling is a murdered girl. It also failed to capture the father, who goes a bit nuts; the mother, who bolts; the sister, who becomes an avenging angel; the brother, who doesn't understand anything, until he does; and the detective, played by Michael Imperioli from The Sopranos, and getting less to do than if he were the guest on an episode of Extras.

Oh yeah, and it fails to develop the Indian boy, the clairvoyant girl, the Indian boy's mother -- all of whom were characters in the book, all well-developed.

How could a film miss so much? Partly it's in the nature of film, as we all know. That doesn't excuse why things went so wrong. Maybe Peter Jackson is just a crap director. He's famous for Lord of the Rings and King Kong. Maybe he's out of his depth when doing things on a human scale.

(Trailer)

I don't believe in miracles

2009-10-04T01:10:00.003+02:00

Colin Blunstone via last.fm

Yes, it has been a while, hasn't it.

I remember I was aware of Rod Argent (Hold Your Head Up, very prog-rock) before I ever heard of Colin Blunstone, his band's vocalist by that time, whose version of Russ Ballard's song I don't Believe in Miracles put Argent out of our minds forever. biggest hit.

Blunstone had, and may well still have, one of the most beautiful male voices in rock music. As a man, as a former vocalist, as a singer still, I can only dream of singing like this. He is, I suppose, a lyric tenor. I think singing the way he does, on a song like this, he reaches far beyond what most operatic tenors ever get to sing.

The lyrics themselves are not much to write home about. The first two lines could hardly be more mundane:

I walk along the road and past your door
Then I remember things you said

The story is a very ordinary one. What matters is what he makes of it. While making it clear she's vanished without trace, he's in no doubt it's because she's no good:

I don't believe in miracles
But I thought you might show your face
Or have the grace to tell me where you are

He then goes on to explain how manipulative she is:

I believe I was your game, your ball (your ball)
If you tossed me up then I would fall
And so you've won again, ah, you win them all

Before making it clear that he's the victim, a knowing victim, and a willing victim after all:

But I believe I'd run to you, if you should call

That is, of you do the research, an unexpectedly common sentiment in pop songs -- much more common, in my experience (though these things are tinted by our own life-experiences) that the view that the victim was somehow a dupe.

That ambivalence continues in the next verse:

I believe that somewhere there's someone
Who's gonna light the way when things go wrong
The bullet that shot me down came from your gun
The words that turned me round were from your song

And that's all. He was treated bad, got dumped, would go back in a heartbeat. I think a lot more pop sings than you think would fit that description.

Here are the full lyrics:

I walk along the road and past your door
Then I remember things you said
I know in time we could've been so much more
But if you wanna come back home, go right ahead

But I don't believe in miracles
I don't believe in miracles
But I thought you might show your face
Or have the grace to tell me where you are

I believe I was your game, your ball (your ball)
If you tossed me up then I would fall
And so you've won again, ah, you win them all
But I believe I'd run to you, if you should call

But I don't believe in miracles (don't believe in miracles)
I don't believe in miracles (don't believe in miracles)
But I thought you might show your face
Or have the grace to tell me where you are (tell me where you are)

I believe that somewhere there's someone
Who's gonna light the way when things go wrong
The bullet that shot me down came from your gun
The words that turned me round were from your song

But I don't believe in miracles (don't believe in miracles)
I don't believe in miracles (don't believe in miracles)
But I thought you might show your face
Or have the grace to tell me where you are (tell me where you are)

But I don't believe in miracles (don't believe in miracles)
I don't believe in miracles (don't believe in miracles)
But I thought you might show your face
Or have the grace to tell me where you are

And the video performance:

It appears Argent and Blunstone are still touring to the faithful. They were once at the top of the pile, and one of them -- Blunstone -- has an unusual talent. You can see the band's performance of their most well-known song here, on the incomparable Old Grey Whistle Test from 1973. The singer here is Russ Ballard, composer of I don't believe, and no mean singer in his own right. So much more of a compliment to Blunstone that he was allowed to sing Ballard's classic.

Short shameful confession

2009-07-18T15:00:00.002+02:00

I've posted the short, shameful confession meme to this blog 20 times. And I'm not particularly ashamed about any of the things I confessed. All the really shameful stuff stays hidden.

Meanwhile this blog has now moved up to third place in a Google Search for "short shameful confession".

Flemish Brabant

2009-06-09T01:29:00.004+02:00

This is one of the best photos I've ever taken.

I got lucky by being in a great Brabant landscape, in the first place, and a heavy rain in the second. Because I only have a point and shoot Cybershot thingy, the way to make a long exposure is to push the film-speed (there is no film, I know, but we can recreate the conditions) down to ASA400. The point of that was to catch something of the rain, but it also had the secondary effect of blurring everything slightly, since the grass was blowing in the wind, and since I was holding a camera no heavier than a slice of toast and honey in my unhandy German bands.

But being in the right place was half the battle. That's what all art is about, after all. That's what you're seeing when the trees in the distance seem to fade away. That's called aerial perspective, and it was an effect artists like Leonardo were at pains to reproduce in works like the Mona Lisa. But in real life, it's all a question of where you're standing. Painters use it to try to fake an effect which our eyes see by themselves.

Click on the image to biggify, and feel free to d/l to zoom right in and get that Impressionist feel, where every plant and nettle looks like a brush-stroke.

And since it's all about photography and painting, I'm dedicating it to nn, snapper of my tattoo ordeal, who has a painting jury later today. G'luck, kid.

Love is everything

2009-06-08T22:11:00.000+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

I suppose it shouldn't, but it surprises me that with the sheer number of songs that are written every year and come to our notice, so few contain a word or a string of words that cause one to pull up short and think, That's exactly the right way to put it or, I never saw it that way before. Oh, I know that's not what people are always looking for, or even ever -- how else to explain prog-rock? But it's what causes a song to get its hooks into my memory.

Having said that, if I were to make a playlist of songs I think worthwhile, they would all be selected on that criterion: that the words say something to me in a new way. And there would be thousands of them. There are an awful lot if you're listening for them, even though as I started out by saying, it's not much more than a drop in the ocean.

I'm busy compiling a post, which will be quite lengthy because filled with quotes, which illustrates this idea within the despised genre of country music, but that's for later. A good example of one that's just plain powerful is Love is Everything by Jane Siberry, a Canadian singer-songwriter who now apparently wants to be known as Issa. She's an intriguing character I'd never heard of, until she was chosen to provide two tracks for the kd lang covers album Hymns of the 49th Parallel, dedicated to Canadian artists. Only Leonard Cohen was as highly-rated, and one of his was Hallelujah, which everyone thinks is a Jeff Buckley number. But I digress.

The lyrics are below. The lines that caught my attention:

Love is everything they said it would be
Love made sweet and sad the same
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You're chickening out aren't you?

The first line is probably the only occurence of that sentiment in popular music, where a singer looks back on a love and finds it good. The second line provides a reason why. But be careful, that line is a twin-edged blade. If sad is the same as sweet, then sweet is also sad. Doesn't that turn out to be the case? It does in hindsight, because any feeling looked back upon, even a sweet one, is now beyond us, lost and gone. The melancholy among us have learned to regard all emotions that way, not solely with hindsight. While the rousing slogan "This too shall pass" is never true for pain, it is always true for pleasure.

In the third line Issa, as she does in the first, takes a cliche and turns it into something else. Love is blind, we say, but love is not blind when it is ending. Any fool can see when, and pinpoint when, the point of no return is reached, even though we never admit it until it's much too late, and until we've lost not only the love we received, but also the love we gave, and all dignity and honour in the interim. There's at least half of the output of all popular musicians and songwriters that's an attempt to deny the obvious, the whole Come Back Baby school of lyrics. Melancholists reject that whole school of thought; acceptance is a large part of melancholy, and what distinguishes it from mere sadness. And this song rejects it, too: Love forgot to make me too blind to see.

There's more of that strain of naked truthfulness at the end of the song, when the lover is asked to look back and make a reckoning of how he/she loved. It's brutally truthful:

And find it in your heart to kneel down and say
I gave my love didn't I?
And I gave it big...sometimes
And I gave it in my own sweet time
I'm just leaving

Lyrics later, but first a performance by Jane Siberry herself, which is new to me. I can see why kd lang would be attracted to the song, which benefits, I'm sorry to say, from not being given the big torch production treatment kd brings to everything.

Here's the whole song:

Love is Everything
Jane Siberry

Maybe it was to learn how to love
Maybe it was to learn how to leave
Maybe it was for the games we played
Maybe it was to learn how to choose
Maybe it was to learn how to lose
Maybe it was for the love we made

Love is everything they said it would be
Love made sweet and sad the same
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You're chickening out aren't you?
You're bangin' on the beach like an old tin drum
I cant wait 'til you make
The whole kingdom come
So I'm leaving

Maybe it was to learn how to fight
Maybe it was for the lesson in pride
Maybe it was the cowboys' ways
Maybe it was to learn not to lie
Maybe it was to learn how to cry
Maybe it was for the love we made

Love is everything they said it would be
Love did not hold back the reins
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You're chickening out aren't you?
You're bangin' on the beach like an old tin drum
I cant wait 'til you make
The whole kingdom come
So I'm leaving

First he turns to you
Then he turns to her
So you try to hurt him back
But it breaks your body down
So you try to love bigger
Bigger still
But it...it's too late

So take a lesson from the strangeness you feel
And know you'll never be the same
And find it in your heart to kneel down and say
I gave my love didn't I?
And I gave it big...sometimes
And I gave it in my own sweet time
I'm just leaving

Love is everything...

A question of gullibility?

2009-06-06T23:54:00.004+02:00

The question of how this:

could ever come to be considered a genuine work by Johannes Vermeer:

is the subject of an outstanding article by Errol Morris in the New York Times blogs, though it's about as far from the usual blog post as Middlemarch is from a Twitter update. Morris bases his story on two books which have appeared in the last year on the case of Han Van Meegeren, who produced the top painting and sold it to Goering as a Vermeer, but not before receiving the authentication of the art establishment of the time.

It's in seven parts, the last of which has just appeared.

Short shameful confession

2009-06-01T17:53:00.001+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

I haven't read a book since February.

Late for the sky

2009-05-31T14:52:00.005+02:00

I took this post down to tinker with it, which means that two comments appear to have vanished. Apologies. I didn't know that would happen. Feel free to comment again, or whatever.

There’s an arrogance that comes with age, that says “to attain my level of wisdom, you need to have walked in my shoes for as long as I have”. I’ve been guilty of it here. It’s the assumption that more experience is better experience; that only a long journey will arrive at a destination. It ignores the fact that journeys short and long are made up of a thousand interim arrivals, and that every road is no more than a long line of destinations.

When this song came up on shuffle play, the first feeling was amusement, because we go back more than 30 years to a time that seemed to me then to be a culmination, and which was in one way at least. Listening to the song all the way through, the old feelings resurfaced from that time, and reminded me that though life does go on in some ways, in others it stops dead-still: when she left and took the baby with her, it was the end of something, and in all the time since, I have not learned any lesson that could add to what I learned then. Age has given me no useful perspective on that time. Experience has taught me nothing about dealing with those feelings. Wisdom is powerless in the face of raw hurt that is only ever buried, but never soothed.

When I was a young man, I was foolish, oafish, careless, thoughtless, hot-headed, wrong-headed, self-centred, oblivious. I still am those things, perhaps to a lesser extent, or in less damaging ways. But I have no grounds for looking down on that younger man. The passage of 30-odd years hasn’t made me any better at “trying to understand how our lives had led us there”.

Here are the lyrics to the song, and then a video of a live performance by Jackson Browne, who looks much older than he did back then (he too was only a boy, what did he know?) but sounds exactly the same.

Late for the Sky

The words had all been spoken
And somehow the feeling still wasn’t right
And still we continued on through the night
Tracing our steps from the beginning
Until they vanished into the air
Trying to understand how our lives has led us there
Looking hard into your eyes
There was nobody I’d ever known
Such an empty surprise to feel so alone
Now for me some words come easy
But I know that they don’t mean that much
Compared with the things that are said when lovers touch
You never knew what I loved in you
I don’t know what you loved in me
Maybe the picture of somebody you were hoping I might be
Awake again I can’t pretend and I know I’m alone
And close to the end of the feeling we’ve known
How long have I been sleeping
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been dreaming I could make it right
If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might
To be the one you need
Awake again I can’t pretend and I know I’m alone
And close to the end of the feeling we’ve known
How long have I been sleeping
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been running for that morning flight
Through the whispered promises and the changing light
Of the bed where we both lie
Late for the sky

About the Banner « Burns Banner

2009-05-14T22:44:00.000+02:00

About the Banner « Burns Banner:
"In partnership with artist Stephen Raw, the Scottish Poetry Library is inviting the Scottish Diaspora and those closer to home, to paint a letter which will go into a ‘BurnsBanner’. Showing two verses of ‘A Man’s a Man for A’ That’, this huge artwork, situated in the centre of Edinburgh, will become a spectacular creation celebrating Robert Burns 250th anniversary. The BurnsBanner is due to be unfurled during the Edinburgh Festival in August 2009 and forms one of the events for ‘Homecoming Scotland’. This project is funded by the Scottish Arts Council."

I don’t want anything to change

2009-04-07T21:49:00.001+02:00

For a few days now I’ve had in my mind the lyric to a touching song sung by Bonnie Raitt, and now this week comes news that throws it all into perspective.

The song was written by Maia Sharp, Liz Rose and Stephanie Chapman, and I can see Bonnie being attracted to it because it expresses something I think you feel as you get older: no more upheavals, let’s just keep things as they are. No matter how unsatisfactory it all may be, at least we know where we are, and we also know by now that the alternative could be a lot worse.

In that sense, we’re all conservatives. The core of the lyric going like this:

I can feel you fading
But until you're gone
I'm taking all the time I can borrow
The getting over is waiting
But I won't move on
And I'm gonna wanna feel the same tomorrow

I know the truth is right outside
But for the moment it's best denied
I don't want anything to change

She’s singing about a love affair, which is what struck a chord. Yes, it’s going to end, we both know that, but I’m going to forget that fact for now and just be in the here and now. Denial is a powerful force.

Then this week those lines acquired a new poignancy for anyone listening to that song from now on. Bonnie’s big brother Steve died, after spending a long time fighting cancer. The story is here. The comments are particularly touching, showing for once someone who was not only reported to have touched a lot of people.

Here’s a video of Bonnie singing the song with Norah Jones:

Nothing lasts for long

2009-03-25T00:06:00.004+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

Some time ago I posted about two versions of Joni Mitchell’s song Both Sides Now, one recorded when she was a slip of a lass, and the other much later, by which time experience had given the song a whole new meaning that, I suggested, the younger Joni could never have even imagined.

There’s a similar youth-age split in the lyrics of the 1982 song Chinese Cafe. Here they are:

Caught in the middle
Carol we're middle class
We're middle aged
We were wild in the old days
Birth of rock 'n' roll days
Now your kids are coming up straight
And my child's a stranger
I bore her
But I could not raise her
Nothing lasts for long
Nothing lasts for long
Nothing lasts for long

Down at the Chinese Cafe
We'd be dreaming on our dimes
We'd be playing "Oh my love, my darling"
One more time

Uranium money
Is booming in the old home town now
It's putting up sleek concrete
Tearing the old landmarks down now
Paving over brave little parks
Ripping off Indian land again
How long how long
Short sighted business men
Ah nothing lasts for long
Nothing lasts for long
Nothing lasts for long

Down at the Chinese Cafe
We'd be dreaming on our dimes
We'd be playing "You give your love so sweetly"
One more time

Christmas is sparkling
Out on Carol's lawn
This girl of my childhood games
With kids nearly grown and gone
Grown so fast
Like the turn of a page
We look like our mothers did now
When we were those kids' age
Nothing lasts for long
Nothing lasts for long
Nothing lasts for long
Down at the Chinese Cafe
We'd be dreaming on our dimes
We'd be playing

"Oh my love, my darling
I've hungered for your touch
A long lonely time
And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
I need your love
I need your love
God speed your love to me"

ETA: An mp3 of the song can be downloaded here.

The recurring phrase Nothing lasts for long appears in two senses. At the end of the second verse, in reference to “short sighted businessmen” it appears to come from the mouth of the young idealist of the first verse. Maybe she’s thinking the short-sighted businessmen won’t last for long, together with the rapacious damage described.

Elsewhere in the song, though, the phrase is one of infinite regret, and the regret for the loss of time is infinite because the loss is: Time doesn’t go anywhere, it just goes. This could only have been written by an older person (at the time of release Joni was, significantly, 39 years old); young people think time is endlessly abundant. That’s why you’ll never get one to show up for an appointment on time. Older people know that it was only moments ago that they too were young, with endlessly abundant time on their hands – looking like their mothers did then.

The two songs referred to within the lyrics express different sentiments to regret. Unchained Melody is from the soundtrack of the film Unchained, in which a prisoner must decide whether to risk all on an escape attempt, or serve the rest of his sentence quietly but continue to be separated from his wife and child. The longing expressed in the lyrics has made it a pop standard: it’s said to be one of the most-covered songs of the 20th century.

Carole King’s Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow is again more of a young woman’s sentiment, while the ironic answer to the question posed is given: Nothing lasts for long.

***

By coincidence, I happened to come across a striking passage on the question of regret, by the Roman historian Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, better known simply as Plutarch. In a letter to his wife Timoxena following the death of their daughter - also called Timoxena – Plutarch counsels her to resist the grief-mongering of the women around her, and has this to say about grief, which is of course the ultimate in regret:

Try also often to carry yourself back in memory to that time when, this little girl not having been then born, we had nothing to charge Fortune with, and to compare that time and this together, as if our circumstances had gone back to what they were then. Otherwise, my dear wife, we shall seem discontented at the birth of our little daughter, if we consider our position before her birth as more perfect. But we ought not to erase from our memory the two years of her life, but to consider them as a time of pleasure giving us gratification and enjoyment, and not to deem the shortness of the blessing as a great evil, nor to be unthankful for what was given us, because Fortune did not give us a longer tenure as we wished.

Nothing lasts for long enough, you might say. But as he advises his wife, which what would probably require a huge effort of the will, she must not grieve overmuch because to do so would be to cheapen the joy the little girl’s presence had brought. Since they were happy before her arrival, they must now also be as happy after her departure, otherwise her presence will have been experienced as a bad thing.

It’s an extraordinary piece of advice, quite compelling on examination, but I shouldn’t think it would be very easy to put into practice. The world is full of advice to look on the bright side, remember the good times, don’t dwell on what might have been, yet the human animal seems bound to suffer regret, because we are the only ones who realise the nature of Time, and the fact that it travels in only one direction: it travels away from us.

The Smiths - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want (Live Version)

2009-03-18T20:40:00.001+01:00

The essence of English melancholy. The first line goes:

Good times for a change

which is a quintessentially English line, because it assumes bad times are the norm. That's why when you ask an English person how they are they'll tell you "mustn't grumble" which is a way of saying they have a lot to grumble about.

Melancholy being the state of feeling sad about something you can't change, Morrissey is the embodiment of English melancholy. At some point I'll get around to explaining why this is a particularly English phenomenon, or at least why it was so able to thrive in England in about the 16th century that we still can't get the impressions of those days out of our minds.

Short shameful confession

2009-03-18T20:03:00.003+01:00

I'd like to hear the lines

Laughing like children
Living like lovers
Rolling like thunder
Under the covers

pronounced by Stewie Griffin.

This post is made slightly less shameful by the fact that the original was not sung by some weird egghead-shaped camp British homunculus, but by Sir Elton John.

Boy(s)

2009-03-11T22:11:00.001+01:00

My thief

2009-03-07T02:38:00.001+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

No sooner had I promised a post on melancholy but shuffle-play threw up a song which on hearing seemed so similar to something Dowland might have written (had he lived 400 years later) that I couldn’t ignore it.

It comes from the album Painted From Memory, a collaboration between Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach. They won’t tell us who wrote words and who music, but in this case I’m in no doubt. Elvis, of course, has since had more experience with Elizabethan works in The Juliet Letters, in which he reworks the Romeo and Juliet story with the Brodsky Quartet.

The things I like about this are the metaphor of the Beloved as a thief, and the concept of “glorious distress” which is very poetic and very Dowland.

The thing I hate is the baby-voiced woman who comes in at the end. WTF is it with that?

Listen to the song here.

My Thief

When I go to sleep, you become my thief
Why don't you steal what you can keep?
But you won't let me be
You break into my dreams
And every day seems different
Sometimes I pretend you'll come back again
And you'll console the heart you stole
Have pity on the man
Who knows that you have gone
And has begun to break down

I feel almost possessed
So long as I don't lose this glorious distress then
You can take all I have left
I know it's over
If you can't be my lover
Be my thief

I'm so drowsy now, I'll unlock the door
What fades in time will hurt much more
So here's that happy scene
Where you come back to me
It's only found in fiction

I feel almost possessed
So long as I don't lose this glorious distress then
You can take all I have left
I know it's over
If you can't be my lover
Be my thief

"I didn't lead you on,
But there will always be
A little larceny in everyone
So hush and don't you cry
I'm trying to be kind
Because I have a perfect alibi"

Words and music by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach.

Think local

2009-03-04T20:04:00.001+01:00

I only had seconds to snap this car pulling away from outside the house.

It’s a real company.

Cloud

2009-03-03T23:38:00.001+01:00

This (taken on Monday) was just the prettiest, fluffiest cloud ever, over the dead industrial wasteland of Groot-Bijgaarden. And the best thing about it is, it looks as if it’s dropping out of the sky. Plop! Right on top of the Corelio Lubyanka.

Now, oh now I needs must part

2009-02-28T21:58:00.005+01:00

Every time I hear one of the songs of John Dowland pop up on my MP3 player, I have the urge to post about him here, just to share the melancholy pleasure with you all. There’s not usually much pleasure in witnessing someone wallow in sorrow, but when it’s done with such poetry as Dowland deploys, it can be a pure joy.

Not that all texts associated with Dowland are definitively attributed to him. Dowland (whose name I insist rhymes with ‘lowland’ although I seem to be in the minority) lived from 1562 to 1626. He served the English ambassador to the French court, then at the Danish court, after which he came back to England in 1606 to become a lutenist at the court of James I (this is all from Wikipedia, but the facts are not in dispute).

He was very popular in his day, for solo songs with lute accompaniment as well as for part-songs, lute works and compositions for consort, or instrumental ensemble. His style was very much melancholic, after the fashion of the day. That fashion, and indeed the whole concept of melancholy, is the subject of a post of its own.

The lyric I’ve chosen encapsulates Dowland’s brand of melancholy well, allowing me to overlook the fact that it may not be his, or may only be partly his, being based on an unknown or anonymous lyricist. I’ve lifted the text from the excellent website maintained by Emily Erutz, where you can see it in its entirety. I’m going to be breaking it up with my own interruptions.

The song takes the form of three sections, each of two verses and a refrain:

Now, oh now I needs must part

Now, oh now I needs must part,
Parting though I absent mourn.
Absence can no joy impart:
Joy once fled cannot return.

The language of melancholy is the language of death, or its metaphor exile. While it’s probable that Dowland’s service took him abroad and away from lady-loves, it’s not really necessary to an understanding of the words to find their biographical referent. To the Lover, as we all know, any separation from the Beloved is an exile, and exile is death.

Also worth noting: on the emotional spectrum of melancholy, there are only two positions: Despair and Joy. A person presenting the signs of melancholy these days would certainly be diagnosed as depressive, and if not, as bipolar. The difference being that for the depressive melancholic, joy exists only in theory.

While I live I needs must love,
Love lives not when Hope is gone.
Now at last Despair doth prove,
Love divided loveth none.

The train of thought goes thus, though it is written in reverse: The Lover is in Despair, because Hope is gone, which has banished Love, and since he must love to live, he needs must part. The parting seems to be a real death, according to that calculus. But really, between a real and a melancholic death, there’s no effective difference.

The urge to capitalise all nouns when writing about this material is, as you can see, hard to resist.

Sad despair doth drive me hence;
This despair unkindness sends.
If that parting be offence,
It is she which then offends.

Unkindness is another vital concept in the melancholy lexicon. It essentially means “failure to requite love”. He’s saying here: I’m going (dying) because she wouldn’t love me back, and if my death bothers you, blame her. That’s quite astonishing to our ears, being somewhere between adolescent and vindictive. I suppose it’s the equivalent of killing himself to teach her a lesson. It may seem strange to find such a raw sentiment referred to by a term as innocuous as “unkindness”. I’ll make a note about kindness later in this post, and point out some rather less innocuous alternatives used.

In the second section, he addresses the Beloved directly:

Dear when I from thee am gone,
Gone are all my joys at once,
I lov'd thee and thee alone,
In whose love I joyed once.

And although your sight I leave,
Sight wherein my joys do lie,
Till that death doth sense bereave,
Never shall affection die.

He’s now making a distinction between being ‘gone’ and death, since presumably she knows he’s not dying, but going back to Copenhagen or wherever his duties take him. This is a fairly straightforward Lover’s declaration: I won’t have any fun while I’m away from you; but I’ll keep on loving you all the same.

He does make it plain, here, that she loved him once, and she may well still do. Perhaps her ‘unkindness’ is in letting him leave.

Sad despair doth drive me hence;
This despair unkindness sends.
If that parting be offence,
It is she which then offends.

In the last section he reminds us (and the Beloved) that parting and death could turn out to be the same thing, finally. This idea, though universal, must have been more weighty in Elizabethan times when a journey to a distant place involved more dangers than now, and in many cases was assumed to be for good. The lovers in Ae Fond Kiss are separated by a sea journey, but it’s taken as read that she is leaving forever. People didn’t just go off to the West Indies and then come back some time later in those days (and that was more than a century and a half after Dowland):

Dear, if I do not return,
Love and I shall die together.
For my absence never mourn
Whom you might have joyed ever;

The last two lines are almost humorous: Don’t cry for me, though it’s all your fault and I might have been so happy. I understand that laughter might be an entirely modern response, however.

Part we must though now I die,
Die I do to part with you.
Him despair doth cause to lie
Who both liv'd and dieth true.

So it’s plain that he’s dying because he’s parting. He was true in life and he’s being true in death, although he’s not actually dying. Despair has made him say so.

Sad despair doth drive me hence;
This despair unkindness sends.
If that parting be offence,
It is she which then offends.

***

ETA: Here's one of the many videos of performances of this song available on YouTube. Most are pretty dismal either in sound or quality. This one has Julian Bream on the lute, although the singer sadly does nothing for me.

A word about unkindness:

The quotation that springs immediately to mind from around the period of Dowland's work comes from Shakespeare, in Hamlet, Act I scene 2.

King:
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—
Hamlet:
A little more than kin, and less than kind.
King:
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Hamlet:
Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun.

Where Hamlet is not only punning on kin and kind but also using the word in a way that means rather more than it would today.

According to the Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearian and Stuart Literature (link: highly recommended), 'kindness' is often used a euphemism for sexual favours, with kind woman a euphemism for 'whore'. That seems to fit better with Dowland's repeated use of the word, since sexual favours are precisely what the Beloved is withholding.

The idea that unkindness means more to him than it does to us is reinforced when we see what else he accuses her of.

O ruthless rigour harder than the rocks,
That both the shepherd kills and his poor flocks.

Burst forth, my tears

Laura, redeem the soul that dies
By fury of thy murd'ring eyes,

Rest awhile, you cruel cares

If you seek to spill me,
Come kiss me, sweet, and kill me.
So shall your heart be eased

Lady, if you so spite me

And so on ...

In the next post I'll be talking about melancholy in general, and the sudden surge of the sentiment across Europe at around the time Dowland was working.

Angel

2009-02-09T23:05:00.001+01:00

La Vie en Rose - Pomplamoose Covers Edith Piaf

2009-01-25T02:59:00.001+01:00

Beautiful.

Pome: I am

2009-01-24T20:38:00.001+01:00

Image by Wonderlane via Flickr

I am

i am with friends i lie.
when i think to
myself, this is starting
to get
on the top layer i tell
him "hello muddy" his
tail wags with might, i love
you even though you
don't seem to make the right
hook-up

she looks so great
but she
doesn't know
forgiveness, her world is just a baseball
bat!
all of your
defenders and still no
penalty you
atempt to save them!

i told you pehaps
it would be spent with
you. tears fall like rain upon the
grass they
floated in the other side of me.
when i see it was fear c is for the
bad times.

you are my
love, will i go? i
hope its love and
joy so that i may have guessed she
is the body?
what am i? a bird soarin the air?
why is
it easy, or a beam.
thats what it is not enough
time, to
truly say,
"i love you"

and her smile
that enlightened every one who
helps me stay safe so when
people start
to hate they are not,
they're there to listen,
you're there to help you
cope.

Poem (including spelling errors) composed by the adolescent angst poetry generator.

Play the Game -- Queen cover by Nataly Dawn

2009-01-21T09:13:00.004+01:00

This girl is unbelievable. I found her by chance, via Graham Linehan's tumbleblog (he of The IT Crowd and Father Ted). She's something very special, mark my words. Very sweet voice, reminiscent of the young Joni Mitchell, and a quirky taste in music. She sings this Queen song as if she wasn't aware how enormous Freddie is, which is great. There's a Queen clip of the same song on YouTube, and as with many Queen songs, you think to yourself, WTF? It simply isn't right that a monster chart-topping band should release such songs, but that was the magic of Freddie, and that's another blog post.

Also on YouTube: covers of Rufus Wainwright and Joni, yes, how could I not love her?

Turns out she used to live in Belgium. I've been in touch for an interview. We'll see. In the meantime, follow the link to her MySpace page where you can d/l free mp3s of her performances.

UPDATE: How could you not love an artist who does this?

To Chloris

2009-01-21T00:11:00.004+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

My breath was taken away today by this song from a CD of songs of the French Belle Epoque, composed by Reynaldo Hahn, who was German-Venezuelan, born in Caracas, but worked in France. He was a great friend of Proust, studied under Massenet and Gounod, made Verlaine weep, and was immortalised in verse by Mallarmé. However his work is strangely old-fashioned, firmly from the school of mélodie at a time when people like Ravel (who was a fellow student) were breaking new ground.

Still, that’s neither here nor there, because what struck me about the song À Chloris were the words. The song has the structure of three statements, each consisting of three lines (the first makes space for a clarification) and all three affirm the wonderful sense that comes of being loved.

The words are not Hahn’s own (he set the words of many poets, among them Hugo and Verlaine, as well as RL Stevenson) but those of Théophile Viau, who lived from 1590-1626. That’s right in the middle of the time when melancholy was all the rage among Europe’s poets and songwriters, if we can imagine such a thing. The great John Dowland, for example, lived from 1563-1626, and is the supreme example of melancholy songs.

Viau’s lyric, however, speaks in another tone entirely. Here’s the French:

S'il est vrai, Chloris, que tu m'aimes,
Mais j'entends, que tu m'aimes bien,
Je ne crois point que les rois mêmes
Aient un bonheur pareil au mien.
Que la mort serait importune
De venir changer ma fortune
A la félicité des cieux!
Tout ce qu'on dit de l'ambroisie
Ne touche point ma fantaisie
Au prix des grâces de tes yeux.

And in English:

If it be true, Chloris, that you love me,
By which I mean, that you like me,
I don't believe even kings
Could know such happiness as mine.
How unwelcome if death
Were to change my current lot
For the joys of heaven!
Whatever they say of ambrosia
It's nothing to the favour
Bestowed by your eyes.

That’s far from melancholia, just a short poem on the joy of being in love. As such, it’s a rarity. As I point it out to you, you’ll think the idea challenging. But try it out for yourself: try to find a poem where the poet is happy about being in love.

There are far fewer than you’d think.

Beethoven sky over Budapest

2009-01-10T12:35:00.001+01:00

Our other Hungarian reader and sometime commenter nn sent these pics:

Hungarian Suicide Song

Josaphat

2009-01-05T20:24:00.001+01:00

Parc Josaphat is not only a city park based on the Josaphat valley in then-Palestine, it’s also an arboretum. I have no idea if these trees are prime specimens, but it intrigues me how their branches grow, almost as if they were life-sized bonsai. In some cases, the perverse pointlessness of the human hand is the only conclusion to be arrived at. And if that makes me a tree-hugging teleologist, so be it.

The bridge over the water is closed while the paths are repaired.

Which is not a barrier to all.

Pictures taken at twilight with flash used to light immediate foreground. That had an effect on the white balance, I think, which is why things look so blue. The flash produced one nice effect and one bizarre effect:

Mad flare of solarisation or something here, looks like a ghost, according to Oscar. The second shot from the top is the same position with no flash. I can’t explain it. Could it be no more than an exhalation before pressing the button?

New Year's honours list

2008-12-31T03:23:00.001+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

Amid the insufferable idiot bloody nonsense of the Queen’s New Year’s honours list, I found this one:

Philicianno Callwood, Proprietor, Foxy's Bar and Restaurant, Entrepreneur and Musician. For serv tourism, Brit Virgin Islands.

So it’s not all bad. If the gaffer of Foxy’s can hook an MBE (shown), there may still be a vestige of merit in the system. Nice one, Phil!

New Year's honours list: Diplomatic service and overseas | UK news | guardian.co.uk

Sport stars lead New Year Honours

Farewell, my friend

2008-12-30T19:27:00.001+01:00

Ilse Weber

As I mentioned in another place, I got for Christmas a CD of music and songs from Terezin, or Theresienstadt, the Nazi concentration camp they’d dolled up as a ghetto to fool the Red Cross. The CD features Anne Sofie von Otter, definitely one of the world’s great mezzos, as well as baritone Christian Gerhaher and violinist Daniel Hope.

So there I am listening to it when suddenly, on track 4, something makes me stop what I’m doing (ironing) and listen closely. It’s not so much the words, since I have only very rudimentary German and tend not to take anything in unless I’m listening consciously to the words. It’s the extremely simple music, and one word: Polentransport. I suppose I wasn’t expecting anything so overt. I thought the songs the inmates had written would all have to have been oblique, allegorical, indirect. I stop and pay attention, and listen to what I can of the words. Here they are:

Ade, Kamerad,
hier teilt sich der Pfad,
denn morgen muss ich fort.
Ich scheide von dir,
man treibt mich von hier,
ich geh mit dem Polentransport.

Du gabst mir oft Mut,
treu warst du und gut,
zum Helfen immer bereit.
Ein Druck deiner Hand
Hat die Sorgen gebannt,
wir truce gemeinsam das Leid.

Ade, Kamerad,
um dich ist es schad,
der Abschied wird mir schwer.
Verlier nicht den Mut,
ich war dir so gut,
jetzt sehn wir uns nimmermehr.

Which I translate as:

Farewell, my friend
This is the parting of the ways,
For tomorrow I must go.
I’m leaving you behind,
They’re taking me away,
I’m going on the Poland transport.

You often gave me strength,
You were loyal and good,
Always ready to help.
The press of your hand
Took cares away
We suffered it all together.

Farewell, my friend,
It’s too bad for you,
But parting will be hard for me.
Don’t lose hope,
You meant so much to me,
Now we’ll never see each other again.

I don’t suppose it could be any more straightforward than that. It’s a song of parting, like Ae Fond Kiss, to which I return again and again, but this time there’s one word which signals that the circumstances are different: Polentransport. That single word tells the whole story.

And here’s the story:

The song was written by Ilse Weber (née Herlinger), born in Moravia in what is now the Czech Republic. As a Jew she was taken, after the Nazis invaded, to Terzin with her husband Willi and her son Tommy, from their home in Prague. An older son, Hanus, had been sent to Sweden via a kindertransport, and escaped the war altogether.

Weber had been a children’s author in Prague before the war, as well as a musician, and the two things come together in the naked simplicity of her words and music in this song and in others she wrote while in Terzin, one of which, Wiegala, was a lullaby.

In 1944 her husband was to be transported to Auschwitz (the Polentransport mentioned in the song) and Weber volunteered herself and Tommy to accompany him, so as to keep the family together. Instead, on arrival at Auschwitz, Tommy and Ilse were immediately separated from Willi, and gassed. Willi lived on for 30 years. Hanus, meanwhile, lived in Stockholm as a journalist, not far from the place where Anne Sofie von Otter grew up, the daughter of a Swedish nobleman and diplomat.

Her story is so incredible I’ll leave it to Norman Lebrecht to tell it here. In short, her father heard the confession on a train of a Nazi officer, and when he passed the information on to his government, they did nothing. A better result might have let the world know a lot earlier about places like Auschwitz, and perhaps Isle and Tommy might not have died.

Since it makes little sense to talk about a song nobody has heard or can hear in full, I’m taking the unusual step of putting an MP3 online for a couple of days only, to allow diligent readers to get the full experience. Check it out here.

Carla Bruni on Late Show w/ David Letterman Nov 18 2008

2008-12-30T02:18:00.002+01:00

One of the main justifications for hating Nicholas Sarkozy, she's not only beautiful and talented, she's also stinking rich. It's just not fair.

Dave is like a drooling schoolboy, like Adrian in the presence of Pandora. He's so affected by her presence he forgets all his jokes about Ze French!

Here she is singing and strumming the geetar. She's also a top model. Makes you want to spit innit.

Hungarian Suicide Song

2008-12-30T00:10:00.001+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

From time to time, while faffing about in YouTube usually, I find myself taking an interest in the various cover versions of well-known songs, starting long ago with all the versions of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, which has now been crowned by none other than Simon Cowell, who made all the finalists in the latest season of the British X-Factor record the song.

You’re taking your life in your hands exploring the many versions that exist of Gloomy Sunday, the song originally known as Szomorú vasárnap, and now widely known as the Hungarian Suicide Song.

Legend has it that the song is closely associated with suicide, and some extremists will even go so far as to promise you too will commit suicide shortly after listening. Well, I’m still here, so maybe there’s not much to that theory.

The composer of the song, Rezső Seress, did in fact kill himself, but he took 35 years to get round to it (the song was set to music in 1933, and he died in 1968) so it’s a little hard to show causation there. Billy McKenzie, meanwhile, the lead singer of Scottish band The Associates, also committed suicide (in 1997) after (15 years after) recording a cover version of the song. As far as the rest of the claims are concerned, we’re dealing with the vaguest of allegations – something the Internet loves more than anything else.

But more of that later. Let’s go back to the start.

Seress, real name Spitzer, was a pianist and composer. If you want more than that on him, you’re going to have to learn Hungarian, because the Magyar page of Wikipedia has a great deal more information than any other. The only other English sources on Google refer to the song, which was written in 1933 at the request of the poet László Jávor, who’s so famous not even Magyar Wikipedia has a page on him.

The Hungarian lyrics go like this:

Szomorú vasárnap száz fehér virággal
Vártalak kedvesem templomi imával
Álmokat kergető vasárnap délelőtt
Bánatom hintaja nélküled visszajött
Azóta szomorú mindig a vasárnap
Könny csak az italom kenyerem a bánat...

Szomorú vasárnap

Utolsó vasárnap kedvesem gyere el
Pap is lesz, koporsó, ravatal, gyászlepel
Akkor is virág vár, virág és - koporsó
Virágos fák alatt utam az utolsó
Nyitva lesz szemem hogy még egyszer lássalak
Ne félj a szememtől holtan is áldalak...

Utolsó vasárnap

Which translated literally look like this:

Gloomy Sunday with a hundred white flowers
I was waiting for you my dearest with a prayer
A Sunday morning, chasing after my dreams
The carriage of my sorrow returned to me without you
It is since then that my Sundays have been forever sad
Tears my only drink, the sorrow my bread...

Gloomy Sunday

This last Sunday, my darling please come to me
There'll be a priest, a coffin, a catafalque and a winding-sheet
There'll be flowers for you, flowers and a coffin
Under the blossoming trees it will be my last journey
My eyes will be open, so that I could see you for a last time
Don't be afraid of my eyes, I'm blessing you even in my death...

The last Sunday

(I’m indebted to the website www.phespirit.info for this information.)

Nota bene those two verses. That’s about to change.

The song first came to prominence in the English-speaking world in 1936, when a translation by Desmond Carter was recorded by Paul Robeson. It looked like this:

Sadly one Sunday I waited and waited
With flowers in my arms for the dream I'd created
I waited 'til dreams, like my heart, were all broken
The flowers were all dead and the words were unspoken
The grief that I knew was beyond all consoling
The beat of my heart was a bell that was tolling

Saddest of Sundays

Then came a Sunday when you came to find me
They bore me to church and I left you behind me
My eyes could not see one I wanted to love me
The earth and the flowers are forever above me
The bell tolled for me and the wind whispered, "Never!"
But you I have loved and I bless you forever

Last of all Sundays

The Carter version takes a few liberties with the original, mainly in the fact that the narrator doesn’t himself die. This version is now only performed, as far as I can make out, by Diamanda Galas.

Then came a new version (we can probably assume that Tin Pan Alley was full of Hungarian emigrés by this time, who would have been familiar with the original) by Sam Lewis. Here’s what Lewis made of the song:

Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless
Dearest the shadows I live with are numberless
Little white flowers will never awaken you
Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you
Angels have no thought of ever returning you
Would they be angry if I thought of joining you?

Gloomy Sunday

Gloomy is Sunday, with shadows I spend it all
My heart and I have decided to end it all
Soon there'll be candles and prayers that are sad I know
Let them not weep let them know that I'm glad to go
Death is no dream for in death I'm caressing you
With the last breath of my soul I'll be blessing you

Gloomy Sunday

Dreaming, I was only dreaming
I wake and I find you asleep in the deep of my heart, here
Darling, I hope that my dream never haunted you
My heart is telling you how much I wanted you

Gloomy Sunday

Lewis, as you can see, has not only retained the idea of the narrator’s own death from the original, he has in fact made it a suicide, which is not openly stated in the original. That line, Would they be angry if I thought of joining you?, was responsible for the song, as sung by Billie Holliday, being banned by the BBC, and is surely behind the legend that has built up around the song ever since.

However, Lewis was also responsible for the atrocity that is the third verse, in which the whole death thing is revealed as a dream, with the beloved restored safe and sound by the lover’s side, and the whole gloomy message no more than a sort of Thanatised expression of longing.

Ghastly as that misrepresentation may be, it’s the version that’s been carried down to today by the likes of Elvis Costello, The Associates, Marianne Faithfull, Sinéad O’Connor, Sarah McLachlan, Bjork, Portishead and Sarah Brightman. The Lewis lyrics, but without the damnable third verse, were also recorded by Lydia Lunch and Gitane Demone. Links in this paragraph lead to YouTube videos of the performers concerned.

The myth of the link to suicides, meanwhile, is dealt with by Snopes here. In all likelihood the song was somehow linked to several suicides (suicides are melodramatic events, let’s face it, and I’m sure less apt lyrics have been quoted by the departed in notes etc) and the legend was carried on in the West, influenced by Hungary’s apparent reputation for a high suicide rate.

I wasn’t aware of that reputation, and so I checked some recent figures, and sure enough Hungary comes fifth in a WHO list, with 26 suicides per 100,000 population in 2005, behind Lithuania, Belarus, Russia and Slovenia. Put another way, that’s about seven suicides a day. That compares to 6.8 in the UK, and 11 in the US. It also compares to 21.1 in Belgium, which translates to seven suicides a day. For a theory as to why Hungary might be more suicidal than other nations, see this article taken from the now-defunct Hungary Report Monthly Digest. Excerpt:

Gloom, depression and suicide seem to be part and parcel of Hungarian culture. "You can hardly meet with a Hungarian who wouldn't have relatives or friends who really committed suicide - it's a kind of national disease, it's a kind of sickness," says Peter Muller, a Hungarian playwright who has written a play about Gloomy Sunday and has studied the suicide phenomenon.

[…]

But the Gloomy Sunday playwright Peter Muller thinks that there is more to the Hungarian gloom that just frustrated aspirations. The real reasons go much deeper, he says. It is essentially a problem of identity. "Somehow the root is missing. We live in a very strange position of the world. We always try to stick to the Western culture, we try to escape from the Eastern mentality and somehow we are in a limbo, we don't belong to anybody, it's a kind of loneliness. We have somehow lost our Oriental roots without finding another one - and if you are in trouble, if your life is difficult it is the root that can save you."

I’ll leave that for any Hungarian readers (I know we have at least one) to comment on.

Zemanta

2008-12-29T21:33:00.001+01:00

I’m informed today by Jure Cuhalev, owner of Zemanta, that this blog has been added to the blogging pool used by Zemanta. Don’t ask me what they saw in it, but from now on users of Zemanta will be offered links to this blog if their posts have any connection with mine. So I’d better get back to making some, hadn’t I?

Zemanta, for those who don’t know of it, is a useful blogging add-on you can use in Firefox or in Windows Live Writer, which I use almost exclusively now, and provides photos, links and related stories depending on what you’re writing about. You can also create a blog-pool of your own to draw from by including the blogs of friends.

I already carry a Zemanta logo whenever I use them for anything, so I won’t need to be plugging them constantly. Thanks to Jure for the honour, which I think it is.

Google Zeitgeist 2008

2008-12-10T21:34:00.001+01:00

How to...

1. how to draw

2. how to kiss

3. how to write

4. how to cook

5. how to tie

6. how to hack

7. how to run

8. how to cite

9. how to paint

10. how to spell

Isn’t it cute that the second most popular how-to question of 2008 was “how to kiss”? There’s obviously hope for the world if people are still willing to learn, if not so much if they need to ask in the first place.

More 2008 search engine zeitgeist at the link.

Google Zeitgeist 2008

Brussels Choral Society - Brahms - Requiem

2008-12-03T22:50:00.003+01:00

70 Greatest Sentences

2008-11-23T01:45:00.001+01:00

Esquire has published a list of the 70 greatest sentences from its 75 years of existence.

Most of them are indifferent as sentences, relying on context. One or two would be meh with a volume of context on either side. The very best is one which everyone thinks he knows:

But at three o'clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn't work--and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Pasting It Together," 1936

That’s profound. Another favourite is profound and important:

Negroes want to be treated like men: a perfectly straightforward statement, containing only seven words. -- James Baldwin, "Fifth Avenue, Uptown," 1960

And this one has no pretensions, but it does have something a great sentence must have -- a sublime economy:

Ah, Brandy, Misty, and Amanda, come out and sit on the veranda. -- Charles P. Pierce, "Two Strokes Back," 1999

Esquire's 70 Greatest Sentences - Esquire

LIFE: is a minestrone

2008-11-22T22:25:00.001+01:00

You could spend decades sifting through the photo archive of Life magazine, which has just been opened up online by Google.

I’ve just picked one for now, of a woman in 1944 mourning the death of her mother in a massacre in her village by the Germans.

LIFE

Butt Bandit caught at last

2008-11-22T21:00:00.001+01:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Police have arrested a man suspected of leaving greasy, graphic imprints on the windows of stores, churches and schools in a small Nebraska town. A 35-year-old man was caught in the act by police early Wednesday morning, Cherry County Attorney Eric Scott said Friday. The man hasn't been charged yet, but authorities believe he is the vandal some townsfolk have dubbed the "Butt Bandit’.

Suspect arrested for greasy imprints in Neb. town

Dickipedia

2008-11-22T15:56:00.001+01:00

Main Page - Dickipedia - A Wiki of Dicks

Random Recipe Generator

2008-11-22T14:36:00.001+01:00

Below is a randomly-generated recipe!

Horseradish Sauce Mille Feuille

Serves 5

You will need:

* 4 oxo cubes

* 2 sheets of ricepaper

* 90ml horseradish sauce

* 60g raisins

Instructions:

1. toast the sheets of ricepaper

2. add one tablespoon of the sheets of ricepaper

3. bring the sheets of ricepaper to the boil

4. defrost the oxo cubes

5. throw the raisins away

6. barbeque the horseradish sauce

7. enjoy

Yum.

Insufficiently delicious? Reload the page for another.

jamesoff.net » Random Recipe Generator

The joke that writes itself

2008-11-22T12:03:00.001+01:00

Beavers back in Britain - CNN.com

Daniel, born September 11

2008-11-18T16:36:00.003+01:00

Daniel was born on September 11, and after the events of that day in 2001, he jokingly complained that his birthday had been ruined forever, because it would always be first and foremost the anniversary of that day.

The problem only came up once, in 2002. Daniel died on 18 November that year, also at the top of a tower-block, when his apartment caught fire. He was 26, and those few days.

It's been six years now, and the hole he left just doesn't get any smaller.

Sprint: Plug into Now.

2008-11-18T01:27:00.000+01:00

This totally rocks.

Sprint: Plug into Now.

pixar piss take

2008-11-18T01:15:00.001+01:00

A message to all Americans

2008-11-17T23:23:00.003+01:00

Image via Wikipedia
Now get off the stage already
All right, enough already, you elected a black man. Can you please take the bouquet, quit bowing and get the fuck off the stage?

Just in case nobody noticed during the apotheosis of the nation that elected Bush twice into the nation that banished all prejudice forever, there are a couple of outstanding issues:

1. Proposition 8 passed in fucking California of all places. So discrimination is not dead, folks. It's not even going down for a count.

2. The death penalty is still exercised in the United States, which ought to be enough to make all right-minded people ashamed of those stars and stripes.

Okay. We're all in love with Obama, too. Imagine having to listen to a man who not only can speak in sentences, but who also has a lovely voice. He's very handsome, as is his wife, and his kids are gorgeous. And his clothes sense is simply to die for, dahling.

But I refer you to point one and point two. And remind you there's work still to do.

The stage-door guy with the cough will show you out.

News from the front, back and sides

2008-11-16T21:20:00.001+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

My hair is getting totally out of control.

There's not much else happening in my life. Nothing that I can post about, at any rate.

Skies without a face

2008-11-15T22:19:00.001+01:00

I’ve posted all my cloud pictures to a web album. You may have seen some of them already. If so, skip over those ones.

Here’s a sample:

Memiary

2008-11-11T20:57:00.002+01:00

Memiary is what happens to a To-Do list when you've To-Done the stuff you had To-Do. It's a brilliant idea: you fill in up to five things you did today, and it's saved for posterity. I don't know about you, but my days are rarely filled with momentous events. But I do, on the other hand, often find myself wondering, when did I send that form off? Did I call that person already or do I still need to? So a searchable database of all the things I've done is a great thing, IMO.

Here's what I did on Saturday, if we're checking:

1.	Updated the website edit
2.	Bought some earrings edit
3.	Dropped into Churchill's edit
4.
5.

What a life I lead, eh? Couldn't even make it to four items, let alone five. Still, it's a lot to remember, or it was.

Eyes without a face

2008-11-09T20:34:00.001+01:00

The result of shooting yourself in a dark room with only a desk-lamp and a Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass to direct the light.

Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now 2000 live

2008-11-06T00:26:00.001+01:00

And this is the version from 2000. See if you can spot the difference.

Joni Mitchell-Both Sides Now (The Johnny Cash Show)

2008-11-06T00:25:00.002+01:00

This is the first of the versions mentioned below. Pretty poor audio, but never mind.

UPDATE: This video is better, sound-wise. It's from 1970. She sounds so nervous. Bless.

Both sides now

2008-11-05T23:41:00.002+01:00

Image via WikipediaAfter the song was brought up by nn, I listened to Both Sides Now, by Joni of course, in its original version from the Clouds album, then the 2000 version from the album Both Sides Now.

What a difference a lifetime can make, not only to Joni's voice, but to the whole tenor of the song. She was about 25 when she wrote it, and just 26 when she recorded it the first time. By the time the latest version comes around, she's 57 and has truly looked at life from both sides.

For me, and for some of you, that song also kinda bookends our lives. I remember it from when Judy Collins had a hit with the single. And now I'm not a million miles away from 57, and I've aged less well than Joni (though I did give up smoking). And I've looked at life from both sides, in a way that sweet girl of 25 could never have imagined.

Some of the most poignant lyrics you'll come across, if not now, then later, when you're 57 yourself:

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say I love you right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living ev'ry day

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

Thanks for the reflection to nn.

The article from Time, linked below, dates from 1969. It's worth reading for its inability to see into the future.

To my American friends

2008-11-04T17:38:00.003+01:00

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeRest assured that as you await the outcome of this historic day, I shall be showing my solidarity with your hopes and aspirations by snoozing in my bed the whole night through, because I have got a stinking cold coming on, and because nothing will be happening anyway until it's the middle of the bloody night here.

I might wake up a bit earlier than usual in the morning, since I'll have crashed out at about 9pm, and then I'll have the opportunity to check in with the BBC and find out whether the world has entered a new era of bright confident morning, or not. If the Sheriff out of Deputy Dawg wins, and his swivel-eyed clotheshorse becomes VP, I shall most likely go back to bed.

Don't let me down.

Worst colouring-in job ever

2008-11-02T22:43:00.000+01:00

Image:HampshireNewForestNationalPark.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Enchanting sea-blue eyes

2008-11-01T23:47:00.002+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been reading more poems by Jo Govaerts, who I posted about here, and who was kind enough to give me one of her earlier collections after reading the poor stab at translation I’d done there.

Then I thought I’d add insult to injury by trying my hand at another one, in which she laments the parting of a sailor, or seaman, which as some of you may know corresponds to a theme of parting, exile and the sea which has been occupying me lately. It also reminds me of the striking iconic image of Meryl Streep used for the film The French Lieutenant's Woman.

The poem is from her collection Waar je naar zit te kijken, published by Kritak in 1994. It should impress even non-Dutch speakers that Herman De Coninck, one of Belgium’s great modern poets, had this to say:

There are few certainties in the world, and especially not in literature, but that Jo Govaerts is at this moment the best poet of her generation, is one such certainty.

What is a girl to do

while her beloved sailor

sails the seven seas?

no money, nothing to eat

she goes to the quay

there

where the waving water reminds her

of the sailing of the ship

the wind in her hair

his last caress, down over her back

where a man on a bench

reading a newspaper, then not reading asks, Miss?

come here and sit by me

you seem so sad, you have

such enchanting sea-blue eyes

©Jo Govaerts

If Sarah Palin was my Mom

2008-11-01T19:48:00.001+01:00

Image via Wikipediasour grapes, if you were born to Sarah Palin, your name would be:
Rot Pipeline Palin

Who knows, Rot Pipeline Palin you just might be president one day!

Try it yourself.

Spotted on Usenet

2008-10-30T20:26:00.002+01:00

In a sig:

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Barbeques on fire by the chalets past the castle headland
I watched the gift shops glitter in the darkness off the Newborough gate
All these moments will be lost in time, like icecream on the beach
Time for tea.

Well, it made me laugh. If you don't get it, I'm not going to explain.

Here's the long version of the original.

Estelle Reiner dies at 94

2008-10-29T10:29:00.000+01:00

One of the all-time great movie punchlines:

Estelle Reiner dies at 94; singer-actress had cameo in son's film 'When Harry Met Sally' - Los Angeles Times

Label fever

2008-10-28T20:02:00.003+01:00

Image by danagraves via FlickrLast night I spent the duration of an entire album ironing some stuff, and cutting the labels out of some T-shirts and jumpers with this sewing-kit sort of tool thingy made for unpicking stitches.

Lately I've become increasingly sensitive to the scratchy feeling labels cause on the back of my neck, which was always one of my sensitive zones, but we won't go into that. I've noticed an increasing tendency for manufacturers, like Columbia for instance, to stop attaching labels altogether, replacing them with printed brand info instead.

I don't think my neck has become more sensitive to scratchy labels. I think it's simply a consequence of ageing, that one is less and and less willing as time goes on to submit to "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to". Where there's nothing to be done, we submit: hence the knees, and the peeing at five ayem. Where there's something to be done, on the other hand, dammit we want it done.

So the labels in my clothing are gone, by my own efforts. I'd like for all of you reading this to keep that in mind, just in case my body should ever turn up in a canal, or a corn-field à la Casino. When you read the news report saying, "All labels appeared to have been carefully cut from his clothing (occasioning the odd hole here and there)" you'll know it was me, and rush to identify me to the authorities.

My body is intended for medical science, and I don't want it mouldering too long in a city morgue, you see. Consider it a public service.

Travelling light

2008-10-26T19:46:00.003+01:00

This is the image produced by a body scanner at an airport, from the German magazine Der Spiegel. Pretty revealing huh.

This is what some minimum-wage rent-a-cop will be leering at as thousands of people go through airport security in the coming holiday season, in spring, and next summer. Here's another one:

The name of the game is security, but as the last seven years of post-9/11 hysteria have taught us, it's no more than security theatre. Members of the public are being forced to submit to increasingly intrusive, increasingly insulting and increasingly stupid procedures, designed to combat a threat that hardly exists, in the name of preventing a problem which requires a completely different solution.

How much longer? What other indignities do they have in mind for us?

And why has nobody yet read 1984, despite my calling for it to be compulsory reading?

My own solution: don't travel by air. I don't need to. I'm due to go to Madrid in March, and I'll be taking the train. Other than that, no plans. My American friends? I won't be seeing anyone any time soon.

That's Alright

2008-10-25T18:49:00.001+02:00

A nice rockin groove, and a video that would make Robert Palmer proud. What more could you ask?

Couldn't have put it better myself

2008-10-24T22:12:00.003+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

Like that grand piazza, which Bernini designed in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, the enormous marble sculptures for which the artist is best known are for all practical purposes untransportable.
What does that leave? As it happens, a significant body of work: especially the portrait busts, a genre in which the young Bernini demonstrated that he was head and shoulders above the competition.

(link)

A Scotsman Who Can't Watch A Movie Without Shouting At ...

2008-10-24T19:33:00.001+02:00

This is totally me.

Domain names

2008-10-20T23:30:00.001+02:00

Image by fmc.nikon.d40 via Flickr

Domainr helps you find a domain name outside the usual .com, .org field, using lesser-known TLDs (like their own .nr).

Which means there are some unexpected results. For instance, sourgrap.es might be available in Spain. Wanna.be is definitely not available in Belgium. Arseband.it might be available, as might fucksta.in.

On a more elevated level, you might try tonybla.ir, or vladput.in, but don’t bother with sarahpal.in or johnmcca.in. oba.ma might be available or it might not. They’re not saying.

Hours of fun for a dreary winter evening.

Domainr, Helping You Explore Top Level Domains

Scab

2008-10-20T19:42:00.001+02:00

Brilliant, and disgusting. Challenge yourself.

X Factor 2008 - Live Show 1: Laura White (HD)

2008-10-19T01:05:00.001+02:00

The next big thing. Wait and see. You heard it here first.

Manatee Squash

2008-10-15T20:19:00.001+02:00

Crumple zone.

Mashup

2008-10-14T17:51:00.002+02:00

Image via WikipediaSomebody had the brilliant idea of illustrating the comedy of Eddie Izzard with some animations done with Lego peeps. What could be more appropriate?

Start here with James Bond, and take it from there.

Zadig

2008-10-13T12:00:00.001+02:00

In Zadig, the Book of Fate, written by Voltaire in 1747, the hero is an admirable man, and adviser to the King of Babylon. The Queen, Astarte, develops a fondness for Zadig, which shocks the loyal man. He confides in his friend Cador, who advises him thus:

Cador said to him; ’tis now some considerable Time since, I have discover’d that secret Passion which you have foster’d in your Bosom, and yet endeavour’d to conceal even from your self. The Passions carry along with them such strong Impressions, that they cannot be conceal’d. Tell me ingenuously Zadig; and be your own Accuser, whether or no, since I have made this Discovery, the King has not shewn some visible Marks of his Resentment. He has no other Foible, but that of being the most jealous Mortal breathing. You take more Pains to check the Violence of your Passion, than the Queen herself does; because you are a Philosopher; because, in short, you are Zadig; Astarte is but a weak Woman; and tho’ her Eyes speak too visibly, and with too much Imprudence; yet she does not think her self blame-worthy. Being conscious
of her Innocence, to her own Misfortune, as well as yours, she is too unguarded.
I tremble for her; because I am sensible her Conscience acquits her. Were you both agreed, you might conceal your Regard for each other from all the World: A rising Passion, that is smother’d, breaks out into a Flame; Love, when once gratified, knows how to conceal itself with Art.
In other words, both Zadig and Astarte are in danger, he because he has done nothing wrong, and she because she doesn't recognise the wrong she's doing in being infatuated by Zadig. Were they both guilty, and felt guilty, they'd do a better job of covering their tracks, Cador explains.

There's a lesson there for all of us.

Hitchens on form

2008-10-12T23:35:00.000+02:00

"What are the main principles of a banana republic? A very salient one might be that it has a paper currency which is an international laughingstock: a definition that would immediately qualify today’s United States of America. We may snicker at the thriller from Wasilla, who got her first passport only last year, yet millions of once well-traveled Americans are now forced to ask if they can afford even the simplest overseas trip when their folding money is apparently issued by the Boardwalk press of Atlantic City. But still, the chief principle of banana-ism is that of kleptocracy, whereby those in positions of influence use their time in office to maximize their own gains, always ensuring that any shortfall is made up by those unfortunates whose daily life involves earning money rather than making it. At all costs, therefore, the one principle that must not operate is the principle of accountability."

America the Banana Republic: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

Ronettes - Be My Baby

2008-10-12T21:13:00.002+02:00

"For every kiss you give me, I'll give you three."

Species name

2008-10-11T17:32:00.000+02:00

Which bird is known in Hungarian as Kengyelfuto Gyalogkakukk?

For the answer, click here. (SFW)

Speaking of SSCs

2008-10-11T17:18:00.000+02:00

Image by Tonyç via FlickrSpeaking of SSC's (see previous post), here are two great sites for confessions:

Post Secret receives anonymous postcards from all over the world, with people communicating things they'd rather not confess out in the open. Some of the submissions are painfully honest, and honestly painful.

The Experience Project aims to put short, shameful confessors in touch with others like themselves, which is a bit odd, as if closet gays or adulterers are looking for contacts with others like themselves. I can see the value of knowing there are others out there going through what you're going through, but I wouldn't necessarily want to get in touch with them.

And then, for the rest of us, there's the secret blog. Something about posting your wickedness to the Internet makes it more cathartic than simply keeping a journal. There's the constant danger of being caught, slim as the chances may be. And a journal, even a beautiful Moleskine, won't allow you to post hyperlinks, photos, audio and video.

Short shameful confession

2008-10-11T11:29:00.000+02:00

This blog is number four on a Google search for the term "short shameful confession".

Also 24th and 45th. Miz UV is at 46. I guess I just have more shame to confess.

That one

2008-10-08T22:15:00.000+02:00

This could be the slip of the tongue that goes down in history. I'd heard about it before I saw it, and even then I was stunned. He really did say it.

I say "slip of the tongue" not to suggest he didn't mean it. I use it in the Freudian sense: he did mean it, he just didn't mean to say it out loud.

It would have been catastrophic against a white opponent. Now, he may as well start calling Obama "boy".

Bitty

2008-10-08T22:03:00.001+02:00

See more funny videos at Funny or Die UK

Tumblelogrolling

2008-10-08T21:45:00.000+02:00

Image via WikipediaGot a tumblelog? Back it up.

Not got one? Get one. Me and Towse gots one (each). So that's an endorsement.

So does Graham Linehan, creator of Father Ted and The IT Crowd, who also has a blog.

What more does it take to persuade you peeps?

Get shaggin

2008-10-08T08:17:00.000+02:00

Everyday Latin

2008-10-08T08:12:00.000+02:00

Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes!
If you can read this sign, you can get a good job in the fast-paced, high-paying world of Latin!

Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.
I'm not interested in your dopey religious cult.

Noli me vocare, ego te vocabo.
Don't call me, I'll call you.

Nullo metro compositum est.
It doesn't rhyme.

Non curo. Si metrum non habet, non est poema.
I don't care. If it doesn't rhyme, it isn't a poem.

Fac ut gaudeam.
Make my day.

My World and Welcome... Funny Pages: Handy Latin Phrases:

Long story short

2008-10-07T16:54:00.000+02:00

Hyperwords for Firefox.

Get it. Now. You won't believe you lived without it.

Stuff white people like

2008-10-07T16:39:00.002+02:00

Based on a post from the very funny blog of the same name.

Click to biggify

Elephants, yeah

2008-10-05T19:35:00.000+02:00

A tribute to Pavarotti. And elephants.

Grapes 2.0

Probability

SSC: Hayley

Nurture

Never shall affection die

And the rain runs

Sehnsucht

Nostalgia

Joker

Heartache

Conspiracy

Ouch

Useless actions

Bonne nuit

Destiny

Up In the Air

Recipe

Viral

Beard

Bite

Horse

TIA

The Lovely Bones

I don't believe in miracles

Short shameful confession

Flemish Brabant

Love is everything

A question of gullibility?

Short shameful confession

Late for the sky

About the Banner « Burns Banner

I don’t want anything to change

Nothing lasts for long

The Smiths - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want (Live Version)

Short shameful confession

Boy(s)

My thief

Think local

Cloud

Now, oh now I needs must part

Rest awhile, you cruel cares

Angel

La Vie en Rose - Pomplamoose Covers Edith Piaf

Pome: I am

Play the Game -- Queen cover by Nataly Dawn

To Chloris

Beethoven sky over Budapest

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Josaphat

New Year's honours list

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Farewell, my friend

Carla Bruni on Late Show w/ David Letterman Nov 18 2008

Hungarian Suicide Song

Zemanta

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Brussels Choral Society - Brahms - Requiem

70 Greatest Sentences

LIFE: is a minestrone

Butt Bandit caught at last

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Dickipedia

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The joke that writes itself

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