This day began with a communal breakfast. Soon after Mama announced it I arose and went expectantly to the kitchen, only to find that though the plateware had been ceremoniously set the edibles consisted only of one measly basket of buns, a jam jar, the butter dish that is always on the table anyway, a little round of camembert cheese and gouda slices. Measly, I say! There was admittedly also hot milk, with which Papa kindly prepared a café au lait for me. Anyway, I registered my protest, then dismissed the matter. In the shelf all the ingredients for "Haferflocken mit Kakao" (oats with milk, cocoa powder and sugar, which is an unrefined but tasty combination) were there, so I made that instead. Gi. is in Münchehofe again and T. was still asleep, but the rest of us, including our uncle N. who is visiting over Christmas, were all present.
Then N., Ge., J., and I went off for a walk to the nearest park. Even though my legs were bare — I've never liked following the conventional wisdom regarding weather-appropriate clothing because it's unimaginative, restrictive, and often exaggerated, besides which I can't be bothered — it wasn't too cold. Later in the day the thermometer outside the window indicated a temperature of ca. 3 degrees, which is a big improvement over the lows of around -10 in the past week. The frozen snow was murderous, though, and the fact that none of us slipped on it is a minor miracle.
After that I had an internet session. The New York Times website has a slideshow of photos from the past year. It started out with pictures of Barack Obama's inauguration but by the time I'd finished it I was totally depressed. Fortunately Gawker also has a post, "Our Favorite Things About 2009: These People Are Gone," which encapsulates the members of the Bush Administration and then reminds us that no matter what else happens, (God willing) we no longer need to know, remember, or care that these people exist!
***
Throughout the early afternoon I decompressed with a very long piano session, which I only interrupted for dinner (more on that later). It reached from Bach (from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II; the Goldberg Variations; and all of the Concerto in d minor) and Händel (the suite which ends in the "Harmonious Blacksmith" variations) through Beethoven and Schubert (from the sonatas) as well as Chopin (waltzes, a polonaise, and a mazurka) to Enrique Granados (Spanish Dances Nos. 4 through 6) and Tchaikovsky ( from the Seasons).
The Baroque music went well, but playing it from non-urtext editions is extremely annoying because editors often stick in their phrasing, so that I have to make the mental effort of not only inventing my own phrasing but also of consciously not using the editor's phrasing, because the editor's phrasing more often than not totally obfuscates the composer's original intentions by creating a neoromantic sound soup. I hadn't played Chopin for weeks or months, but it went well. It's still difficult to relax and play it fluidly and lightly because constantly hitting the wrong notes and overusing the pedal makes me very tense (which is conversely sort of useful with grumpy pieces like Beethoven's and Bach's). As for the nocturnes, I did play the beginning of Op. 27 No. 2; this is the only one I can stand to hear and play often, since it's pretty much the only one that isn't a supine, substance-free mood piece. Fairly or not, I especially detest the canned drama of Op. 20 in c sharp minor, a plague which The Pianist (the film with Adrien Brody) apparently unleashed on YouTube.
On the whole I'm pleased with the way I've been playing for the past week or so; it has been easier to follow the thread of the compositional narrative, convey the mood, and capture the composer's idiosyncracies well enough that a listener could hopefully tell quickly which is which. Getting an objective distance from the music by focusing on other things for the past weeks/months has helped me a lot because it gives me time to recognize thoughtless bad habits, to think of better ways to interpret it, and altogether to avert the contempt bred by familiarity. I've also been in a grumpy and unhappy and cynical mood lately — partly due to the worry about finding a job (I think about my dwindling bank account several times a day), partly due to feeling useless and beginning to wonder if I am suited to any work at all, and partly due to the fact that it's winter. This, while not so great for my feelings, is musical gold. (Learning to deal with the mood also builds character, but that's so obvious it really requires no pointing out.)
***
Dinner consisted of a tradition known in our household as the "Arabic plate." There was a basket of Turkish flatbread ("Milchfladenbrot," to be precise), a hot bowl each of couscous, basmati rice, and bulgur wheat, and then two large plates whereupon were heaped sundried tomatoes kept in oil, black olives, pickled rolls of grape leaf containing bulgur, and a dozen or so dips from the Turkish supermarket down the street. Besides the obvious tzatziki and baba ghanoush, there were compounds of goaty or sheepy cheese, ground chili peppers, chickpeas or whatever, etc., which were new to all of us.
Since then we've sung Christmas carols in the corner room, English and German and French, though once again I was a frog and left the proceedings early for the sake of returning to my beloved internet (N.B.: not a replacement, merely an extension, of my family (c:< ). Now that I have returned to the beloved internet for a while now, I really want to watch television. Lately there have been tons of documentaries in the programme, intelligent and superbly made ones (especially on the channels Arte and 3Sat) which are not all devoted to the memory of Hitler or to conspiracy theories about the Mayan calendar or to history so simplified and inaccurate that I feel like a piece of my brain is missing after watching it. [N.B.: Re.: historical "reenactments" in documentaries, they are an innovation so rubbishy that if I were given the choice to go back in time and change something, preventing them from ever existing would be my first priority, were it not that countless extremely lousy actors are employed because of them.] Anyway, I haven't seen a documentary since the day before yesterday and am currently in withdrawal.
***
At any rate it's Christmas tomorrow! It will be very unmaterialistic (N. was joking about each of us receiving a single sugar pearl as a present, but I fear that tomorrow morning he will find that it was no joking matter )c: ) as customary — I weighed buying presents this year and even thought out what to get everyone, but after imagining my self asking Papa and Mama for money in a couple months when my bank account runs out before I have a job because I spent too much too quickly, I decided against it, which was depressing until I thought that at least this teaches me the value of being able to give nice presents (though then I realized that my siblings would probably be happier with nice presents than with the knowledge that their deprivation has led to their sister's spiritual enlightenment) — but there will be loads of chocolate and other delicious things to compensate. (c: Besides, a primary function of religion is to offer stern "consolations" for the difficulties in life!
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Winter Is Icumen In
It has been snowing modestly and in tiny flakes for the past three or four days. One day it fell glittering in the glow of the street lamps like flecks of gold dust settling in a stream; on another it was like pieces of ash driving through the air above and around a bonfire; and today it is like the minuscule white flies or gnats hovering and swooping over the deeper grass in summer. The quantity of snow covering the ground is not so impressive, but ragged lines of it are cleaving to the tree branches outside the apartment windows, the rooftops are dusted, cars powdered, and the grass on the street median only visible in dark patches through the white.
If I overcome my laziness I'll crack a volume of Henry Thoreau's essays and reread "A Winter Walk" (?), because it describes the snowy landscape extremely well. Living beside a thoroughfare in the city the descriptions of hallowed silence might not ring a bell as much (besides which I haven't been outside the apartment in five or so days), but as the platonic ideal even those have a certain relevance.
If I overcome my laziness I'll crack a volume of Henry Thoreau's essays and reread "A Winter Walk" (?), because it describes the snowy landscape extremely well. Living beside a thoroughfare in the city the descriptions of hallowed silence might not ring a bell as much (besides which I haven't been outside the apartment in five or so days), but as the platonic ideal even those have a certain relevance.
Monday, December 14, 2009
A Spot of Tipple
Having nothing much to write about, I want to share two drink recipes that have been keeping me contented during the past weeks. [Warning: The quantities are an approximation.]
***
The first is a refreshing and summery antidote to the winter, and very much like the punch which we traditionally prepare for New Year's:
1 canned peach half
syrup of canned peach
mandarin orange (optional)
white wine
sparkling mineral water
Cut the peach half into neat little wedges and put those into a wineglass. Pour enough syrup over the fruit to cover it generously; plunk in about three of the mandarin orange's segments, cut in little wedges or just in half. Pour in white wine perhaps in a 1:2 or 1:1 ratio to the syrup. Then add enough mineral water to bring out the flavour of the peach again (the alcohol tends to blot it out) but not so much that the drink tastes watery. A mint leaf would probably be a pretty garnish, but I haven't tried it and couldn't say if the flavours fit.
Often the pieces of fruit refuse to slide out of the glass on their own, so we use a fondue or dessert fork to fish them out.
*
The second recipe is warm and more wintery. Given the paucity of sugar and absence of cream, it is less flavourful and more healthy than Irish cream, and besides it's pretty much ordinary coffee with a splash of whisky, so I have no doubt that connaisseurs of alcohol or coffee or both would scorn it. But I make it often.
coffee, previously made
1 tsp. sugar
hot water
milk
dash of whisky
Put the sugar into the bottom of the mug, and pour two fingers of coffee onto it. Pour in hot water almost to the top of the mug or until the coffee is a little weaker than you would customarily drink it; then add milk until the coffee is as dark or light as you wish. Finally put in the whisky. When I make the coffee with Glenfiddich it's a nobler drink, but the plonk which we also possess under the name of whisky doesn't clash with the coffee as much flavour-wise and makes the drink more comfortably boozy.
***
And here is a New York Times slideshow with links to *real* winter drink recipes. The most feasible are probably the eggnog (as long as you try the classic recipe, and not the modern ones for people with a venturesome spirit and far too much time on their hands) and the apple cider toddy.
On the Guardian website I also liked this lengthy debate on the merits of mulled wine/Glögg/Glühwein. Sometimes I do find Glühwein cloying and rather medieval due to the strong spices, but am not violently opposed to it.
***
The first is a refreshing and summery antidote to the winter, and very much like the punch which we traditionally prepare for New Year's:
1 canned peach half
syrup of canned peach
mandarin orange (optional)
white wine
sparkling mineral water
Cut the peach half into neat little wedges and put those into a wineglass. Pour enough syrup over the fruit to cover it generously; plunk in about three of the mandarin orange's segments, cut in little wedges or just in half. Pour in white wine perhaps in a 1:2 or 1:1 ratio to the syrup. Then add enough mineral water to bring out the flavour of the peach again (the alcohol tends to blot it out) but not so much that the drink tastes watery. A mint leaf would probably be a pretty garnish, but I haven't tried it and couldn't say if the flavours fit.
Often the pieces of fruit refuse to slide out of the glass on their own, so we use a fondue or dessert fork to fish them out.
*
The second recipe is warm and more wintery. Given the paucity of sugar and absence of cream, it is less flavourful and more healthy than Irish cream, and besides it's pretty much ordinary coffee with a splash of whisky, so I have no doubt that connaisseurs of alcohol or coffee or both would scorn it. But I make it often.
coffee, previously made
1 tsp. sugar
hot water
milk
dash of whisky
Put the sugar into the bottom of the mug, and pour two fingers of coffee onto it. Pour in hot water almost to the top of the mug or until the coffee is a little weaker than you would customarily drink it; then add milk until the coffee is as dark or light as you wish. Finally put in the whisky. When I make the coffee with Glenfiddich it's a nobler drink, but the plonk which we also possess under the name of whisky doesn't clash with the coffee as much flavour-wise and makes the drink more comfortably boozy.
***
And here is a New York Times slideshow with links to *real* winter drink recipes. The most feasible are probably the eggnog (as long as you try the classic recipe, and not the modern ones for people with a venturesome spirit and far too much time on their hands) and the apple cider toddy.
On the Guardian website I also liked this lengthy debate on the merits of mulled wine/Glögg/Glühwein. Sometimes I do find Glühwein cloying and rather medieval due to the strong spices, but am not violently opposed to it.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
An Olive Branch in Oslo
Through sheer good luck (and lack of something better to do than turn on the "idiot box") I caught the tail end of Barack Obama's speech in receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. The following is my impressionistic, which is to say probably inaccurate, summing up of the event:
To deal with the inessentials first, the setting of the Oslo City Hall was bright and spacious, rather like that of a federal legislative assembly. In the stage area the floral arrangements were in my opinion underwhelming, especially the wrinkly anthuriums (or similar flowers; at any rate they're the ubiquitous spade-shaped specimens of living plastic for which the crass but useful term "butt-ugly" might have been invented) in an unappealing shade of green, set in cushions of an apricot-tinged blossom.
The sea of people in their chairs was looking bored/antagonistic — though Michelle Obama was attentive as in duty bound though probably suffering from jet lag and evidently at pains to keep her eyes propped open, and Will Smith with family was relatively alive — as was warranted by the length of the ceremony. I remember that the year where the Muhammad Yunus won, a cheerful Bangladeshi dance troupe performed, and the audience could not have possibly looked more humourless, inanimate, and pasty-faced; this year it seemed marginally better. As is usual with televised audiences, the camera zoomed in on faces with desperate attempts at topicality (a fellow in a white kippah was a frequent victim, and when China and the Cultural Revolution were mentioned, possibly Chinese people were singled out, whereupon one of them looked puzzled) and the owners of those faces strove to shutter them as well as they could. Four persons presumably all of the Norwegian royal family were stranded front and centre in an isolated row of chairs which made them very conspicuous, but they bore it stoically and one white-clad lady in an admirable cloche hat and immaculate blonde coiffure even fished up a smile from time to time. Another member of that row was a gentleman with a finely trimmed beard framing his visage, which fascinated me through its paradoxical expression of uncommunicative mental alertness. At the end Lang Lang (in a white coat, suggestive of a wedding cake and adorned with doves at the sleeves) performed the Liebestraum (No. 3?) by Liszt with much enthusiasm.
As for the speech, it was a characteristically Obamian, fluent and uncomplicated mixture of refreshing common sense, rhetorical flourishes, (since it was directed at an international audience) first-year world history lesson, and sincerity. Obama referred to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy. He argued that peace cannot be just or lasting if it is only the absence of conflict and not also the prevalence of human rights; he name-checked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which impressed me because it is likely either gibberish or anathema to the majority of Americans, but which makes sense given his field of legal expertise; besides he argued that human rights are not a western construct but truly universal (which was of course music to this ex-Amnesty International-er's ears). He emphasized that mass abuses of power cannot be ignored, and that if the international community were willing to stand as a united front and be willing to enforce heavy sanctions, etc., then hopefully one wouldn't be faced with the dilemma of military action vs. passive complicity in crime. But condemnation of such abuses will not achieve anything on its own; one must still be ready to engage in dialogue, and to offer the responsible government a friendlier avenue of policy. Then he argued forcefully in favour of pursuing ideals that seem unreachable, even if they are in fact not fully reachable, rather than settling for an unsatisfactory status quo in the name of "realism." To illustrate this argument he again mentioned Gandhi and King, whose proposals may not always have been 100% practical but whose guiding principles are extremely valuable.
So far so good. What was really problematic was his defense of the war in Afghanistan, though he had the decency to look unhappy about it. He tied it back directly to September 11th, apparently forgetting that 15(?) of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, that the Afghan population had nothing at all to do with the matter (I'm inclined to believe that the attacks were really the initiative of those who carried it out and not to be tied back in any except a tenuous way to the former mujahideen in Afghanistan), and so on and so forth. I shouldn't become too self-righteous about it, because I haven't opposed the war in Afghanistan much. But if one defends that war one has to be aware that one is defending the deaths of entire innocent families and even, if some reports are accurate, of entire innocent villages through aerial raids — this does mean people of all ages being burned alive and torn to pieces and disabled. It means defending the deaths of hundreds of American, British, Canadian, and other soldiers, at times through "friendly fire." It also means defending the destruction of opium poppy fields which, however undesirable the health effects on the consumers and however undesirable the funnelling of money for weapons to violent parties may be, deprives terribly poor people of their income. It also means defending an egregious breach of a country's sovereignty (thereby setting a bad precedent, one might add), and the installation of a corrupt president who apparently has no means to ensure any modicum of security, prosperity, or civil liberties outside the confines of the capital city. It also means defending what I think is a totally inept excuse for rebuilding a country that was so miserably indigent anyway that it should have been impossible not to significantly improve the infrastructure (education, health care, electricity, etc.) through even a modest injection of foreign aid.
But, to return to Obama's speech, what especially got my goat is when he talked about achieving peace through war, or displayed glimpses of Shrub-like smugness; one of my alternate-universe nightmares is of Bush and Blair winning the Nobel Peace Prize for the invasion of Iraq — for which they were genuinely nominated back in the day by persons evidently underequipped with brains — and at times in the speech their spirit peeked forth. I also didn't think the speech was an appropriate platform to nag at the designated villains of Iran, North Korea, and Burma again; of course their governments are not beacons of civil liberties, but mentioning them would only not have been overly political if he had criticized American allies (Belarus, for instance) or examined the proverbial beam in his(/the American government's) own eye as well. For instance when he said that the US had never waged war against a democracy, it may be literally true, but the CIA-supported coup against Salvador Allende immediately (and the one against Mohammad Mossadegh, later) leapt to mind. Altogether it will require a whole lot more time, incense, atonement, and holy water before the demon of the Bush Administration is exorcised once and for all.
Besides I think that an enormous obstacle facing human rights today is that the European Union and the US discarded them so easily once a pretext for doing so arose with Sept. 11th, despite the fact that we are far richer, more stable, and better furnished with (e.g. law enforcement) resources than most or all of the countries whose governments we consider morally depraved. What I thought was good about the Clinton Administration was that it proved through its actions that financial growth, international political might and humanitarian ideals were not incompatible; besides, at least as far as good intentions went, it was very serious about genocide and other mass human rights abuses. (On the other hand I never liked Madeleine Albright's — and apparently Hillary Clinton's — dogmatic conflation of her perception of America's interests as well as America's incumbent government's philosophy, with the overarching moral imperative in foreign policy.) In a nutshell, I wish that Obama had said something about the importance of proving the practicability of one's precepts and setting a good example.
To deal with the inessentials first, the setting of the Oslo City Hall was bright and spacious, rather like that of a federal legislative assembly. In the stage area the floral arrangements were in my opinion underwhelming, especially the wrinkly anthuriums (or similar flowers; at any rate they're the ubiquitous spade-shaped specimens of living plastic for which the crass but useful term "butt-ugly" might have been invented) in an unappealing shade of green, set in cushions of an apricot-tinged blossom.
The sea of people in their chairs was looking bored/antagonistic — though Michelle Obama was attentive as in duty bound though probably suffering from jet lag and evidently at pains to keep her eyes propped open, and Will Smith with family was relatively alive — as was warranted by the length of the ceremony. I remember that the year where the Muhammad Yunus won, a cheerful Bangladeshi dance troupe performed, and the audience could not have possibly looked more humourless, inanimate, and pasty-faced; this year it seemed marginally better. As is usual with televised audiences, the camera zoomed in on faces with desperate attempts at topicality (a fellow in a white kippah was a frequent victim, and when China and the Cultural Revolution were mentioned, possibly Chinese people were singled out, whereupon one of them looked puzzled) and the owners of those faces strove to shutter them as well as they could. Four persons presumably all of the Norwegian royal family were stranded front and centre in an isolated row of chairs which made them very conspicuous, but they bore it stoically and one white-clad lady in an admirable cloche hat and immaculate blonde coiffure even fished up a smile from time to time. Another member of that row was a gentleman with a finely trimmed beard framing his visage, which fascinated me through its paradoxical expression of uncommunicative mental alertness. At the end Lang Lang (in a white coat, suggestive of a wedding cake and adorned with doves at the sleeves) performed the Liebestraum (No. 3?) by Liszt with much enthusiasm.
As for the speech, it was a characteristically Obamian, fluent and uncomplicated mixture of refreshing common sense, rhetorical flourishes, (since it was directed at an international audience) first-year world history lesson, and sincerity. Obama referred to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy. He argued that peace cannot be just or lasting if it is only the absence of conflict and not also the prevalence of human rights; he name-checked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which impressed me because it is likely either gibberish or anathema to the majority of Americans, but which makes sense given his field of legal expertise; besides he argued that human rights are not a western construct but truly universal (which was of course music to this ex-Amnesty International-er's ears). He emphasized that mass abuses of power cannot be ignored, and that if the international community were willing to stand as a united front and be willing to enforce heavy sanctions, etc., then hopefully one wouldn't be faced with the dilemma of military action vs. passive complicity in crime. But condemnation of such abuses will not achieve anything on its own; one must still be ready to engage in dialogue, and to offer the responsible government a friendlier avenue of policy. Then he argued forcefully in favour of pursuing ideals that seem unreachable, even if they are in fact not fully reachable, rather than settling for an unsatisfactory status quo in the name of "realism." To illustrate this argument he again mentioned Gandhi and King, whose proposals may not always have been 100% practical but whose guiding principles are extremely valuable.
So far so good. What was really problematic was his defense of the war in Afghanistan, though he had the decency to look unhappy about it. He tied it back directly to September 11th, apparently forgetting that 15(?) of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, that the Afghan population had nothing at all to do with the matter (I'm inclined to believe that the attacks were really the initiative of those who carried it out and not to be tied back in any except a tenuous way to the former mujahideen in Afghanistan), and so on and so forth. I shouldn't become too self-righteous about it, because I haven't opposed the war in Afghanistan much. But if one defends that war one has to be aware that one is defending the deaths of entire innocent families and even, if some reports are accurate, of entire innocent villages through aerial raids — this does mean people of all ages being burned alive and torn to pieces and disabled. It means defending the deaths of hundreds of American, British, Canadian, and other soldiers, at times through "friendly fire." It also means defending the destruction of opium poppy fields which, however undesirable the health effects on the consumers and however undesirable the funnelling of money for weapons to violent parties may be, deprives terribly poor people of their income. It also means defending an egregious breach of a country's sovereignty (thereby setting a bad precedent, one might add), and the installation of a corrupt president who apparently has no means to ensure any modicum of security, prosperity, or civil liberties outside the confines of the capital city. It also means defending what I think is a totally inept excuse for rebuilding a country that was so miserably indigent anyway that it should have been impossible not to significantly improve the infrastructure (education, health care, electricity, etc.) through even a modest injection of foreign aid.
But, to return to Obama's speech, what especially got my goat is when he talked about achieving peace through war, or displayed glimpses of Shrub-like smugness; one of my alternate-universe nightmares is of Bush and Blair winning the Nobel Peace Prize for the invasion of Iraq — for which they were genuinely nominated back in the day by persons evidently underequipped with brains — and at times in the speech their spirit peeked forth. I also didn't think the speech was an appropriate platform to nag at the designated villains of Iran, North Korea, and Burma again; of course their governments are not beacons of civil liberties, but mentioning them would only not have been overly political if he had criticized American allies (Belarus, for instance) or examined the proverbial beam in his(/the American government's) own eye as well. For instance when he said that the US had never waged war against a democracy, it may be literally true, but the CIA-supported coup against Salvador Allende immediately (and the one against Mohammad Mossadegh, later) leapt to mind. Altogether it will require a whole lot more time, incense, atonement, and holy water before the demon of the Bush Administration is exorcised once and for all.
Besides I think that an enormous obstacle facing human rights today is that the European Union and the US discarded them so easily once a pretext for doing so arose with Sept. 11th, despite the fact that we are far richer, more stable, and better furnished with (e.g. law enforcement) resources than most or all of the countries whose governments we consider morally depraved. What I thought was good about the Clinton Administration was that it proved through its actions that financial growth, international political might and humanitarian ideals were not incompatible; besides, at least as far as good intentions went, it was very serious about genocide and other mass human rights abuses. (On the other hand I never liked Madeleine Albright's — and apparently Hillary Clinton's — dogmatic conflation of her perception of America's interests as well as America's incumbent government's philosophy, with the overarching moral imperative in foreign policy.) In a nutshell, I wish that Obama had said something about the importance of proving the practicability of one's precepts and setting a good example.
Friday, December 04, 2009
A White Night and the West Wind
I've been up since yesterday, and have watched TV (news, Tatort, CSI and Bones), practiced the piano (bits of Bach's Partita No. 4 and of the Moonlight Sonata), drafted an email to Papa (who is currently abroad) which I ended up not sending after all, caught up on the Guardian and New York Times and Globe and Mail as well as assorted blogs (Gawker, Jezebel, Chocolate&Zucchini, Je Mange La Ville, The Sartorialist, and A Don's Life), read a late 19th-century novel (The Award of Justice, set in a mining town at the Rocky Mountains, by A. Maynard Barbour) on Project Gutenberg, and finally worked again on a Lighthouse blog post about one of Shelley's poems. Lastly I took a shower which put a period to my previous piglet-like state of happy dirtiness. (c:
*
Since then Mama's friend M. has come for a visit and the two of them are chatting away in the corner room. In honour of the occasion Mama prepared an elaborate breakfast from which I have already profited. It specifically consists of croissants, buns, brie and camembert (or two bries, or two camemberts, for all I know), cucumber slices and tomato wedges, gouda, ham-like meat, jams, honey, eggs boiled in the shell, coffee, and tea as well as a munificent platter of Christmas delicacies: Spekulatius, Pfeffernüsse, Printen, Dominosteine, Marzipankartoffeln, and gold coins which hopefully contain chocolate and not the intriguing brown toffee-ish substance which is its occasional alternative. Where the platter is concerned I have only had a Marzipankartoffel and a fragment of Spekulatius for fear of depriving my school- and university-beleaguered siblings; aside from the ethics of the matter, and the natural impulses of sisterly sympathy, it isn't wise to make them cranky.
*
The Shelley post has sucked up hours and hours in work, also because I went in knowing little about the poet aside from a general impression gathered from his most famous poems, and therefore found out a lot of interesting and necessary pieces of information and ideas only during the process of writing the blog post. Though I was repeatedly tempted to say that it's done and just post it, I didn't until just now because of the niggling feeling that it's only a tiny bit short of complete.
Now and then I have wondered whether to "illustrate" one of the Lighthouse posts with music; in this case it took a while to decide not to embed a YouTube video of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in d minor. The thing is that the concerto really feels suited to the poem; it is rebellious and unconventional but also lyrical and mostly optimistic, it reminds me (as I wrote in a previous blog post) of a tempest and therefore of wind, it has impassioned passages interspersed with tranquil lulls, and it likewise ends on a peculiarly ambiguous (fulfilling/unfulfilling) note. As for the time frame, Mozart composed the concerto in 1785 whereas "Ode to the West Wind" was written in 1819 and published in 1820.
Another artistic work that came to mind in connection with the poem is a Shakespearean sonnet. I decided to keep that out of the blog post, too, but initially I wrote:
As it turns out the one significant cultural cross-reference I kept in the post was a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, as a literal illustration. I am not a great fan of that artist and this particular painting is perilously close to kitsch. (I also suspect that whoever uploaded this image to Wikipedia photoshopped it to heighten that unfortunate effect, but at least the details are easier to make out here especially given the reduced picture size than in the other, nobler and darker image.) On the other hand it comes from the same period and atmospherically depicts an apposite scene.
*
In any case I seem to have reached the point of sleep deprivation in which my brain is on autopilot, but I'll practice the piano. Then, as soon as someone besides Gi. is at home, common sense will presumably propel me to the bank to take care of an urgent point of business. (A propos of the latter, and because a picture is worth a thousand words: )c:<<< )
*
Since then Mama's friend M. has come for a visit and the two of them are chatting away in the corner room. In honour of the occasion Mama prepared an elaborate breakfast from which I have already profited. It specifically consists of croissants, buns, brie and camembert (or two bries, or two camemberts, for all I know), cucumber slices and tomato wedges, gouda, ham-like meat, jams, honey, eggs boiled in the shell, coffee, and tea as well as a munificent platter of Christmas delicacies: Spekulatius, Pfeffernüsse, Printen, Dominosteine, Marzipankartoffeln, and gold coins which hopefully contain chocolate and not the intriguing brown toffee-ish substance which is its occasional alternative. Where the platter is concerned I have only had a Marzipankartoffel and a fragment of Spekulatius for fear of depriving my school- and university-beleaguered siblings; aside from the ethics of the matter, and the natural impulses of sisterly sympathy, it isn't wise to make them cranky.
*
The Shelley post has sucked up hours and hours in work, also because I went in knowing little about the poet aside from a general impression gathered from his most famous poems, and therefore found out a lot of interesting and necessary pieces of information and ideas only during the process of writing the blog post. Though I was repeatedly tempted to say that it's done and just post it, I didn't until just now because of the niggling feeling that it's only a tiny bit short of complete.
Now and then I have wondered whether to "illustrate" one of the Lighthouse posts with music; in this case it took a while to decide not to embed a YouTube video of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in d minor. The thing is that the concerto really feels suited to the poem; it is rebellious and unconventional but also lyrical and mostly optimistic, it reminds me (as I wrote in a previous blog post) of a tempest and therefore of wind, it has impassioned passages interspersed with tranquil lulls, and it likewise ends on a peculiarly ambiguous (fulfilling/unfulfilling) note. As for the time frame, Mozart composed the concerto in 1785 whereas "Ode to the West Wind" was written in 1819 and published in 1820.
Another artistic work that came to mind in connection with the poem is a Shakespearean sonnet. I decided to keep that out of the blog post, too, but initially I wrote:
If Shelley had grown older, disillusioned, and resigned, or if he had lived in a different political climate and period, perhaps he might have written something closer to what feels to me like the "Ode"'s thematic twin but emotional antithesis: Shakespeare's sonnet LXXIII ("That time of year thou may'st in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, / Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang," etc.
*
In any case I seem to have reached the point of sleep deprivation in which my brain is on autopilot, but I'll practice the piano. Then, as soon as someone besides Gi. is at home, common sense will presumably propel me to the bank to take care of an urgent point of business. (A propos of the latter, and because a picture is worth a thousand words: )c:<<< )
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
