A brief discourse

9:15PM

I think I’ve quoted these lines in these pages before, but:

X. Vous autre

With the diaries he [Tolstoy] forced into her [his wife]
a jealousy that licked her insides
for 47 years.
They both wrote every night.
“Immortal wheat for the New Life!” begins his entry for June 2, 1837.
And next door,
with her little red reading glasses perched on her nose,
“If I could kill him and make another man exactly like him,
I would do it joyfully!”

Her leaving a doorway, light leaving a doorway

[Anne Carson]

11:28AM - a Schama pearl

(The “Conclusion” that every doctoral advisor urges on his students as a professional obligation has always seemed to my inconclusive temperament to be so much wishful thinking.)

— Dead Certainties, 1991

12:39PM - Elder God

Scan 4
Originally uploaded by alastoros oistros

Makes reference to:

11:28AM - Scary, scary, scary, scary Solstice!

2:02PM - Two free concerts (for local bi-locators) plus some bonus concerts.

First, the concert I’ll be in, playin’ tenor viol, plus skyedwaggie, rogairedubh, & reedyliz.

Tuesday, December 1, 8 p.m., Distler Performance Hall at Tufts University. The Tufts Early Music Ensemble, a mixed ensemble of voices, viols (+2), lute, recorders, harp, krumhorns (-5 against sentient beings), and other early instruments, along with the Seven Hills Renaissance Wind Band, will explore the secular music of Guillaume Du Fay and his contemporaries, with special emphasis on songs set to Italian texts. This event is open to the Tufts Community and to the general public, is FREE, and no tickets or reservations are required.

Then the concert I would attend if I were not on stage concurrently:

Tuesday, December 1st, 8:00 p.m. Salome Sandoval McNutt Lute Graduation Recital at Longy
School of Music, Pickman Hall. 1 Follen Street, Cambridge.

+ + + + + +

Saturday, December 5th, 8 p.m., L’Academie at Marsh Chapel, Boston University, doing French stuff for haute-contre. [Not free]

Tuesday, December 8th 8:00 p.m., Room N1, 33 Garden St. Me & Sarah Hager, organ/harpsichord, plus a bunch of viols will play my absolute favouritest repertoire of all time, English Fantasia Suites from the times of James I/VI, Charles I, & the Protectorate. See some Jenkins here for a foretaste.

Saturday, 12 December: my Futuristic-Themed birthday party. No, I haven’t sent out invitations except on Face-Boke. I fail at internets. Before my party, you can catch the Boston Camerata doing medieval Iberian in Cambridge.

Saturday, 19 December, my homies in Musicians of the Old Post Road do their Christmas concert. I will be there hawking CDs.

Tuesday, 22 December, my homies in Seven Times Salt do their Christmas concert. This is a great concert for crossover classical / folk fans, since a large part of their repertoire is drawn from folkdance &c.

I’ll be in P*ttsb*rgh the 23rd through 30th.

12:25PM - Synth Britannia - Part 1/9

via Momus, an excellent Synthpop documentary.

12:40PM - Flanders and Swann - The War of 14-18

original French lyrics, s'il vous plaît.

3:30PM - sweet sweet internet

I’ve been off-line this week. It was eventful in many awesome, sad, interesting & crazy ways, about which I have much more to say later. For the time being, let me mark the sad Belgian-beer spiced demise of Girolamo Frescobaldi iBook & the birth of Francesca Caccini MacBook from his ashes.

If you had big news that you chose to disseminate by LJ this week, or even just something you think I should read, you could send me an e-mail, even just one with a link to your entry!

1:32PM - Review capsules

The new Yo La Tengo was $7 at Newbury Comics, so I bought it — the first CD I’ve bought in years, because record shops used to be a terrible vice of mine, & now I’m a little embarrassed by what a huge collection I have. It’s good — not one of their greatest, perhaps — though I need to live with it for a few years to say that with any authority. The album art consists of photographs of work by Dario Robleto, whose work I absolutely loved at the DeCordova’s “Old Weird America” show this summer. “Old Weird America” included folk-art-themed works by living artists. I plan to get the catalogue as soon as it goes on sale, because it may be one of my favorite contemporary art shows ever. There were watercolors of cartoonish American Civil War battles done by a Quaker guy coming to terms with his adolescent fixation on violence. There was an amazing series of portraits of Founding Fathers in the style of 19th-century (Masonic &c.) allegorical prints — Ben Franklin on a vision quest with his Turkey spirit, Washington chopping down the cherry tree with the message “F U Tree”, & Jefferson looking wily with the inscription, “Good Luck, Assholes!” A splendid show. Dario Robleto’s work involves popular music, so he often uses records or tape as a material to make something else. One piece used shredded tape in imitation of Victorian hair sculpture (the funerary art, like flowers made with the deceased’s hair). Another — perhaps my favorite — was an apothecary’s cabinet of magical/medical herbs burned & ground up with records of music for various dance crazes — Mandrake & the Monster Mash.

The Weekend of Ill Repute: this year’s highlight was the Harbor Island cruise. Went out to B*mpk*n Island & played croquet on the overgrown grounds of a 19th century hospital for ‘Deformed’ children. [This according to a poster on the island. Web-research shows the hospital's official name was the Burrage Hospital for Crippled Children. — ed.] The island had weird stunted trees, creepy brick ruins, strange hippie-witch art, & places to grill things. The other parties were also lovely. I do not plan to make frites for 20 people again any time soon, though I certainly enjoyed it & am considerably less terrified of deep-frying than I was. On the way back from Cr*n* Beach in *psw*ch, we introduced S*l*m* to YMA SUMAC.

Yesterday morning I competed in the DASH with *r*, a singer friend — a puzzle hunt through downtown B*st*n, though as you can see from the website, the same puzzles were administered in several towns. A spectacular puzzle asked which groups ought to have covered certain songs — you could listen to them on an iPod. For example, Britney Spears’s “Toxic” — by Poison, or “Urgent” by Rush, or [the best] “Jizz in My Pants” by Cream. As usual, I was pretty good on the wit, punning & anagrammatical puzzles, fine on the logic, & my eyes glazed over on anything poker-related. There was a lot of poker, because the puzzles were all set in the Wild West. Went to J**y’s in D*v*s for a snack, was introduced to Thai bossa nova from the Bossa Blossom comps. Last night, baked weird pie & watched Moonstruck with slackalope.

Old Crone: You have someone on that plane?
Loretta Castorini: Yeah, my fiancé.
Old Crone: [angry] I put a curse on that plane. My sister is on that plane. I put a curse on that plane that it’s gonna explode, burn on fire and fall into the sea. Fifty years ago, she stole a man from me. S’aprese il mio uomo! Today she tells me that she never loved him, that she took him to be strong on me. Now she’s going back to Sicily. Ritorna in Sicilia! I cursed her that the green Atlantic water should swallow her up!
Loretta Castorini: I don’t believe in curses.
Old Crone: [shrugging] Eh, neither do I.

Other than that, am lonely, am poor, am trying to do things, even if I can’t afford them, because staying home & cowering about my ‘career’ is considerably less efficient than racking up enough bills & having enough fun that I actually want to work.

Edited to add a shout-out to my friend Chr*st*ph*r, who put snails on the dining room table during his Gumbo party Saturday night as a conversation piece. "Since we've been sitting here, they've probably exchanged sperm six times!"

1:29AM - "Oh, Paris!" - Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele

12:37PM - Nobody Understands Goth Jackson

Nobody Understands Goth Jackson
Originally uploaded by Joe D!

12:54AM - Loredana - Vreau toata noaptea

5:58PM - Ruthling's Veg.

ruthling kindly let me take her farm-share for the week whilst she’s on holiday. Here’s the haul:

• 1 lb potatoes, quite small but v. tasty.
  
• 1 bunch rocket (I refuse to use the word “arugula” unless I’m speaking Italian. “Rocket” is just so much cooler.)
  
• 2 small eggplants.
  
• 3 small but nice green peppers.
  
• 1 bunch cilantro (Fuck Yeah! [so very extremely NSFW])
  
• 1 bunch radishes.
  
• 1 lb tomatoes, orange.
  

Thank you, ruthling! I think I’ll make baba ghanoush with the eggplants; if I do, I’ll save some for you.

10:15AM - Naming Cephalopods on a Monday Morning

Poll #1448190 Name the Squid
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 23

What should I name my brand new 24-inch plush Giant Squid?

Other (specified)

12:42AM - As old as the New Comedy

This is an effort on my part to patch up letting a whole month slip by without posting — but my life’s been so uneventful there’s not much to say. J*y* is safely settled in L*ttl* G*n*v* (since R*n**’s boyfriend elected not to stay here). Her birthday party was last night (thank you to the loyal readers who came, particularly the loyal readers who left gin & tonic behind for J*y* & me to enjoy this evening after the Shakespeare. Went to see Comedy of Errors tonight for free on the Common. It was as dippy & fun as ever (dicey cod-Cuban dancing & all) but I was reminded again of the curious profundity of that play, its outspoken women, its carnivalesque master-servant relationships [in a very deep sense, because the liberties allowed to the Dromios are contingent & the established order is still enforced with violence — ed.], & most of all the serious questions it poses about ‘who am I, & how do I deserve the things that happen to me?’

What else? It’s hotter than blazes up in here. The tallow’s melting in my head; I’m forgetting important things. It’s impossible to distract me these days because I am so unaware. wayman came to visit & we had a good game of Dominion (which I’d never played before) with ruthling & G. The weekend before, chris_brigham was in town for queen_of_wands & motive_nuance’s housewarming; I missed that party but got to catch up with Dr. Brigham over tea one night & burgers a day later. [Four Burgers is pretty good, but I liked their fries & their grape soda better than the burger itself.]

I finally read All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, the Tod Wodicka book about a medieval reënactor’s fractured family. Go google it. I’m too hot to provide links tonight. Good book: funny/profound. Has a large number of irritating characters but nobody truly hateful (unless a particular character happens to push one of your buttons). I suppose Wodicka did enough research & he gets the general feeling of reënactor culture but I doubt he writes from within it. One character is alleged to have gone to Julliard for medieval music — in the 1990s. But he justifies the Julian quote he uses as a title really nicely, & the story deepens in a very satisfying manner.

I may have to sleep in the basement tonight.

12:03PM - nostimon hemar

I’m sorry it’s been such a long time! I meant to give you all an mp3 mix before I went up to the mountains, but a combination of domestic upheaval & plain old-fashioned laziness compelled me to spend a lot of time shifting piles of sheet music around my room. It was terrifically fun.

It was also terrifically fun to spend a week in the mountains with a quorum of my nearest & dearest. I’d be remiss if I didn’t make a special shout out to newfytron, whose second-hand smoke is sweeter than jasmine. I almost stole your cardigan, you bitch, but amadea won it from me in a fistfight. I won’t even try to summarize everything that happened; we tried to throw more festivals, but we ended up just having late-night dance parties. Suits me just fine. There was also an academic conference.

This week I’m in love with early-nineteenth-century music again. Played D.940 last night with *r*n, a keyboard/viol from Br*nd**s. She is my long-sought-after duet partner. Piano duets are everything I’ve ever wanted, really: obbligato chamber music, witty, complex, not too hard. There’s something pleasantly Dr. Seuss about two people on the same instrument (shout out here to the Octobass, which you can look up). Symphonies in chamber arrangements are also the bomb. [Concert idea: Musical Takeaway: chamber arrangements of eighteenth-century music designed for the enjoy-it-at-home market.]

I’m sorry not to be at *mh*rst this year (I’ve been waking up to Dioclesian every morning). I’ll probably dance at *B*L, though I am also going to play for at least one person in the vocal master class.

2:37PM - All Summer In A Day Pt. 1

11:23PM - Ukulele Orchestra of GB - Wuthering Heights

3:16PM - Fringing one's BEMF

Concert on Monday at BEMF. They changed the spelling of my name; go figure.

2.30 p.m., Friends’ Meeting on Beacon Hill.
Love’s Excess
English Restoration songs, many with Sapphick themes.

I am renting a car, which, if you know me, you know I hate doing; I would rather pay my friends. If you would like to earn my undying gratitude, some pocket money & baked goods of your choice, volunteer to help me or provide a car.

12:56AM - Yma Sumac: Tumpa (Earthquake)