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Saturday, March 8th, 2008
Listening in the car to Robyn Hitchcock's April '96 concert in Bilbao, and Sylvia says "I want to hear the one about the street." Cool -- I fast-forwarded to "De Chirico Street". Listened for a minute and then Sylvia says, "There's too much stuff happening on that street." 
posted evening of March 8th, 2008: Respond
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Never use epigraphs -- they kill the mystery in the work!
-- Adli
If that's how it has to die, go ahead and kill it; then kill the false prophets who sold you on the mystery in the first place!
-- Bahti
This morning I started reading The Black Book, by Orhan Pamuk -- and as I read the first pages I had the immediate sensation of having come home. Now the context for this is having felt really strongly drawn into the writing in Snow and My Name is Red, and digging Other Colors to the point of identifying the speaker of the words as myself; and then being less impressed by The New Life and The White Castle. Now this book is definitely holding out promise of having been written by the mature Pamuk, the one who entrances me utterly. (It was written before The New Life, which surprises me a little.) What really struck me was the intensity of my reaction -- the palpable shock of recognition I felt starting from the very first sentence. ("Rüya* was lying facedown on the bed, lost to the sweet warm darkness beneath the billowing folds of the blue-checked quilt.") I've only even known who this guy is for less than a year but I've apparently given him lease on a substantial portion of my cerebral cortex. Not too much organized yet to say about this particular book, I'm just starting it; but it does seem worth noting that the switching back and forth between first person and third person narration is so smooth and natural, it took me a few paragraphs to even figure out it had happened, the first couple of times he did it. Subtly beautiful. It took longer to figure out what was going on with Chapter Two, which is a column written by the narrator's cousin, but once I had gotten that it was good. Pamuk seems to be anticipating me -- when I have a question about some detail of the plot it seems to be getting answered within 2 or 3 pages of where it arises. It's just really hard to resist giving a long quote. Here is a bit from the first page: Languid with sleep, Galip gazed at his wife's head: Rüya's chin was nestling in the down pillow. The wondrous sights playing in her mind gave her an unearthly glow that pulled him toward her even as it suffused him with fear. Memory, Celâl had once written in a column, is a garden. Rüya's gardens, Rüya's gardens... Galip thought. Don't think, don't think, it will make you jealous! But as he gazed at his wife's forehead, he still let himself think.He longed to stroll among the willows, acacias, and sun-drenched climbing roses of the walled garden where Rüya had taken refuge, shutting the doors behind her. But he was indecently afraid of the faces he might find there: Well, hello! So you're a regular here too, are you? It was not the already identified apparitions he most dreaded but the insinuating male shadows he could never have anticipated: Excuse me, brother, when exactly did you run into my wife, or were you introduced?... And it goes on from there -- this seductive prose (in Maureen Freely's translation, and hooray! for Maureen Freely, say I) won't let me go. Freely has also written an afterword to the novel, which gives some historical context to the events of the story, and talks about her process of translating Turkish.
 *Rüya is the name of Pamuk's daughter, in addition to this character's name; when Sylvia was looking over my shoulder this morning she said "Rüya, like in 'off the floor'!" "Off the floor" is a game Pamuk and his daughter play in the essay "When Rüya is Sad", and which Sylvia has appropriated for her own.
posted evening of March 8th, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
It's the first real snow of the season! (I think -- I am remembering now that I wrote a similar post back in December or something, but that the storm blew over.) Sylvia and I had a snowball fight! Speaking of snow, look at these pictures, from Switzerland -- pretty!
posted evening of February 12th, 2008: Respond
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Friday, January 4th, 2008
So who remembered that at the beginning of Peter Pan, before Peter ever comes and takes the children to visit Never-Never Land, he existed as a story that Wendy told to her brothers? That part of the story had totally vanished from my memory and from Ellen's. (Other things I did not remember include the in-your-face racism and sexism, pretty hard to miss -- I guess it's been a long time since I watched this.)
posted evening of January 4th, 2008: 2 responses
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Tuesday, January first, 2008
At the matinée today we watched The Water Horse and greatly enjoyed it. But it had this problem: nothing about it was original. The characters were all stock characters, the plot was such that you knew very well at every moment what would be happening in the next minute. The shots all had a very familiar feeling to them. What made it fun and enjoyable to watch (besides the skill and talent with which it was assembled, which were considerable), was sitting next to Sylvia and watching her take it all in. That same thing has saved worse movies for me. Like some of the corny, manipulative film tricks have worn off for me, but I can still experience the reaction to them at second hand. We saw previews for a couple of films that looked just hilarious, one about an adventure writer who is an agoraphobe until she is called on by a young fan whose island paradise is invaded by pirates, and her main character comes to life and helps her save the day -- so many confused bits of cheese pasted together -- and one about an American Girl (tm) doll who comes to life and seeks employment in the misogynistic world of mid-20th-Century journalism, if I've got that straight.
posted evening of January first, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, December 26th, 2007
Sylvia played "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" on her new ocarina today! That was quick. Not quite right yet -- it sounds to me like the ocarina must be tonic, maybe in C, and Sylvia is trying to play in D (not in A, because "there isn't a E-1" -- she is referring to all the notes as string + finger). So a couple of notes are off -- I need to look more closely at it and show her what the key is. Still, quick progress!  Update: no, I'm wrong -- the instrument is diatonic. But Sylvia doesn't really get sharps and flats yet, she is probably playing all naturals, diagrams for which are grouped together at the top of the page. If she's interested I will explain that to her; but I expect she is going to want to figure it out on her own.
posted afternoon of December 26th, 2007: Respond
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Tuesday, December 25th, 2007
The rather silly Pied Piper of Hamelin video, with rhyming dialogue, was made worthwhile by the lovely actors and by Sylvia's observation that "If this were a play, Emma [the stage rat from Moominsummer Madness] would say 'It's all wrong.'"
posted evening of December 25th, 2007: Respond
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Monday, December 24th, 2007
So strange: a package arrived in the mail, addressed to me, from Lark in the Morning music, a shop of which I have not thought for a long time. I'm pretty sure the last thing I ever bought there was my concertina, in 1985 or so. In the package is an ocarina and a book of tunes, and no information about who sent it. My first two ideas, my father and my uncle John, are both wrong. So, I've got an ocarina. Thanks, whoever sent it! I'm no good with wind instruments. But maybe Sylvia or Ellen will pick it up.  Update: Mystery solved! It is a gift for Sylvia, from her aunt and uncle.
posted evening of December 24th, 2007: Respond
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Monday, December 17th, 2007
Sylvia's semester is wrapping up; and yesterday and today she played at the winter concerts of the Youth Orchestras of Essex County, her first performances since she joined the Overture Strings (the youngest group in YOEC) in the fall. The shows were great. Overture Strings performed "The Blue Danube Waltz", "The Great Gate of Kiev" from "Pictures at an Exhibition", and "The Nutcracker March". Lots of fun, although Sylvia found the second violin part for "Blue Danube" quite frustrating -- it is mostly disjointed quarter notes with rests in between and it's hard to get a sense of the melody when you are practicing by yourself. Her favorite piece was "Pictures at an Exhibition".
posted evening of December 17th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, December 15th, 2007
Another evening, another movie -- tonight we watched the first act of The Magic Flute, and were pretty pleased with it all in all. My experience with Bergman has been pretty mixed; I liked this a lot. It had the beautiful photography and lacked the slowness and storyless-ness that has turned me off to some of his movies. And it presented the opera in a way that allowed me, who am not much good at enjoying opera, to really dig it -- I especially liked the reaction shots of the audience. Sylvia was into it too, except for the part with Papageno and Pamina singing about the wonderfulness of love, which she found boring. ...Idly wondering whether Bergman's films had much influence on the creative process of Monty Python. There were a number shots in this film that made me think of The Holy Grail. The dragon at the beginning could easily have been a Gilliam design. Both movies came out in the same year so I guess there isn't much of a possibility of direct influence one way or the other; but it seems to me like they could be coming from similar places stylistically. And if this were so I would tend to think of Bergman as the source and Python as the derivative since Bergman had been around for a lot longer at that point -- or I guess it's also possible that the source was some third party from which both The Magic Flute and The Holy Grail are derivatives -- but the similarities were striking enough to make me want to think there is a closer point of connection.  (Note: if you are watching this movie with young kids, there are one or two scenes in Act II that you will want to skip over.)
posted evening of December 15th, 2007: Respond
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