Monday, September 29, 2014

A cry for help




As with so many things, I have tried to figure out the point of this. It's from a very bad movie starring Mitzi Gaynor, whose name I could never stand, called The I Don't Care Girl. In this number, which strains to be avant garde and flamboyant and all that uninhibited shit, she flings herself around in a slutty outfit and repeatedly shrieks, "I DON'T CARE".  How they got one of America's foremost concert pianists to put on a dog suit, or a wolf suit or whatever it is (first I thought it was a cat suit, but I don't think so) is beyond me, but he may have been stoned on pills. Alarmingly, I seem to be travelling backward in time to 2012 and my Oscar Levant phase, which was quite fascinating, at least for me.




Oscar Levant in drag. He still has that saturnine Slavic face, melancholy crumpled brow and incredible profile even when wearing this ridiculous old-lady suit. There was something truly poetic about him, original, and sad.

I almost want to apologize for this post, and for the last one about my dream, which came pretty much straight out of my journal. Though my life isn't bad now, my attitude toward my work couldn't be worse. Frustration and failed dreams are beginning to curdle into cynicism and bitterness. So what do I do?

Turn again?




That dream about talking to Harold - well, analyzing a dream can puncture it, leave it limp and lifeless. But I found it strange, or I do now,  that though I was fairly interested, I was not wildly excited nor even surprised that I could meet a man who had been dead for 40 years. He didn't really look like HL, though I knew it was him, in that weird way that people can shape-shift in dreams. He looked almost like a cartoon of himself or one of those standard 1950s black-and-white businessmen on TV sitcoms, the Dad on Dennis the Menace or something. Pulling out that list of ten questions was killing. If this was supposed to be some sort of interview, the dynamics had been completely reversed. He had taken control utterly, and obviously didn't really want to know anything about me or have any sort of real exchange. Just answer the questions, like a quiz. I grabbed the paper and crumpled it up and threw it away, and at first he looked disconcerted, but then -

BLANK.




The most crucial part of a dream liquefies and collapses like the centre of a caramel chocolate left out in the sun too long, or microwaved to see if it'll make it taste better. (I do that all the time, even though it's fairly idiotic and usually ruins the item in question.) We talked, yes, in a little more relaxed way, and I felt a bit hopeful, but I don't remember ANY of the content, though obviously that should have been the whole point of the dream. He got up to leave quickly - God, he WAS in black and white, though I wasn't. - and when I shouted after him, "Can I send you a copy of my novel?" he said, "Oh, no" in a sort of bright, breezy, utterly dismissive way.

What does it all mean? Well, what do YOU think it means? This chimera, this rare unicorn in the woods has retreated back into the mist. Now I feel a bit ridiculous to have taken this on. I should've written about Oscar Levant, instead. Or anything else. I allowed my imagination to go wild, as you are supposed to. Writer's imaginations are damnation, like a muscle that has been worked and worked, a huge grotesque bicep good for nothing except completely disabling your arm.




Dream-Harold's dismissal represents pretty much the reception of my novel, and at the same time, my lovely torturous Facebook experience grinds it into me daily how much more successful all other writers are, how they are wined and dined and laugh buoyantly out on the terrace while sipping rare champagne and smoking cigarettes in long holders. With those long white gloves on, you know, Deborah Kerr-type gloves that are sort of wrinkled, and immaculate as if you never touch anything because you don't have to. I however am left with my nose pressed against the windowpane. It was that way with my two other novels, and as a matter of fact, it has been that way throughout my entire life with the majority of things. The feeling is, I should go away now and not embarrass myself any further. For my failure embarrasses THEM, you see, and intimidates them, for hungry dogs lurk around the outside of the terrace with the men wearing their top hats and the women in the wrinkled gloves. Hungry dogs who never "made it", though everyone else did, of course, because God loves them and doesn't love you.

And that's what the dream means.




Postscript. I forgot about the Jerusalem part, watching the choir at the beginning of the dream. This may have just been some sort of crazy-ass thing that wasn't even connected, and it was full of the Dali-esque symbolism (speaking of melting) that suggests dada or theatre of the absurd.The hymn was significant to me in the past, quite significant in fact: it was on an old Christmas album of mine, and I used to thrill to it, cry, etc. It was Special in that I only listened to it at that time of year. Then I remembered more about it: it was on an old LP that I transferred to a tape, but the sound quality got worse and worse over the years. I made the mistake of sending the LP away somewhere to get it transferred to a CD, as was common then when nobody had any equipment to do it. When it did come back months later, it was a worse mess than the original. The album "faded in" at the start - in other words, it didn't just start normally, so it sounded like  ". . . oy to the WORLD. . ." When I complained about it, they said they did that with all their transfers "for effect". Imagine losing the first couple of bars of every song - this is effect?

So what does this have to do with anything? I suppose it's just part of my odd history with the song.

Which is all about the present world passing away and a New World, a new Jerusalem taking its place. The afterlife, as I understand it. It means crossing over. Leaving this world forever for greener and saintlier pastures, where the music is better and somebody listens to you.




Literal death, or just the death of my dream? The death of my dream is bloody painful. The theme of my life is family, with all its monumental struggles and irreplaceable rewards. That's it, that's  my assignment while here on earth, and I guess I'm not going to get beyond it no matter what my efforts. I often say, well, when you're lying on your deathbed (speaking of crossing over), is your career going to walk in and say, "I love you and I will never leave you until the end"? I don't see it.

And once again the scene was chang'd
New earth there seem'd to be,
I saw the Holy City
Beside the tideless sea
The light of God was on its streets
The gates were open wide,
And all who would might enter
And no one was denied.
No need of moon or stars by night,
Or sun to shine by day,
It was the new Jerusalem
That would not pass away
It was the new Jerusalem
That would not pass away
Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Sing for the night is o'er
Hosanna in the highest,
Hosanna for evermore
Hosanna in the highest,
Hosanna for evermore!



(I don't set out to do it this way. But I don't like to do a whole lot of separate posts on the same subject, or, worse, incorporate new information into the original post. This whole blogging thing is a process, with deeper layers uncovered and connections made - perhaps the most valuable part of it. So sometimes I end up with a P. S. to the P. S. With all those hosannas at the end of The Holy City, I remembered something I had heard in a Bible class somewhere. The leader looked around the circle searchingly and asked, "OK, who knows what hosanna means?" Of course all the hands shot up and someone claimed it meant "Praise God!" or some-such. Then, shaking his head with the intense pleasure of proving everyone wrong and himself right, he said, "Oh, no, it doesn't."

And it doesn't.

Nothing comforting about the original meaning: it is a cry of anguish, fear and near-despair. Somewhere along the line, someone found that definition too "strong" and softened it. On Palm Sunday, the crowds were really shouting to Jesus, "Save us! Save us!" Kind of puts a whole new spin on it, doesn't it?)


Strong's Concordance

hósanna: save, we pray

Original Word: ὡσαννά

Part of Speech: Hebrew Form (Indeclinable)

Transliteration: hósanna

Phonetic Spelling: (ho-san-nah')

Short Definition: hosanna

Definition: (Aramaic and Hebrew, originally a cry for help), hosanna!, a cry of happiness.

HELPS Word-studies

5614 hōsanná – a transliteration of the Hebrew term (hôsî-âh-nā) meaning "Oh, save now!" or "Please save!"

[The -na suffix in Hebrew expresses intense emotion. 5614 (hōsanná) comes from two Hebrew roots meaning, "Save now!" (= "Save I pray!").]








Sunday, September 28, 2014

Jerusalem dreams




I had a very strange dream about Harold Lloyd.  I was listening to some gospel music, or rather watching it performed live, and it was the anthem Jerusalem
 (a. k. a. The Holy City) being done in a very over-the-top way. Later I was trying to find a recording of it because it reminded me of church, as if it was being sung by my former church choir, though nobody looked the same. At one point I was sticking a pencil in a vast machine-looking box to unlock it. In some way the music was supposed to come out of it, but the pencil kept breaking off, so I didn't get to hear it again.

Then I had a chance to meet Harold Lloyd. He looked like a slim, good-looking but otherwise unremarkable middle-aged businessman, from the era of his talkies in the mid-1930s (I was thinking The Milky Way where he plays a milkman boxer), and he started firing questions at me: ten standard questions handwritten on a piece of paper “just to get to know each other”. This was his usual method with people. I took the piece of paper and crumpled it up and threw it away and said, “Let’s just talk to each other instead.” He looked uncomfortable, but seemed to come out of it and we talked. I don’t remember anything we said after that, but he soon left, and as he went out the door I yelled after him, “Would you like me to send you my novel?” He breezily said, “Oh, n-” (the “o” disappearing as he vanished around the corner and was gone). 

No interest at all. Oh no, don’t send it to me. No one even wants to READ it to find out what they think. "I already know I don't like it." Like a little kid with new food.


Oscar Levant: one-man band




Oscar, reclining and reflective, begins to dream. He dreams he is in a vast concert hall. . . 




. . . playing Gershwin's Concerto in F with his cigarette-stained fingers. . . 




. . . and conducting at the same time. . . (and he was a real conductor so he isn't just waving his arms)




. . . and likewise the  percussion, he's really playing (an early
 example of cloning, or else he accelerates himself to the speed of sound)






My personal fave, cuz he looks so sexy. . . 




     Cute with a gong (and doesn't he look a bit like Buster Keaton?)




"Bravo! Bravo!"


(I stumbled on these while looking for gifs on Google. I keep looking for gifs on Google and finding MY gifs and thinking, why are MY gifs so much better than anyone else's? 'Strue, you know. These were made during my feverish Oscar Levant phase a couple of years ago. It was fascinating, and I am sure I could dig out more now if I wanted to. In fact, what brought me here in the first place was finding another Levant performance on YouTube. He shows up in odd places on Turner Classics and always adds something strangely appealing to otherwise-routine movies. He showed up in an abomination called The I Don't Care Girl, in which he played something so convoluted and strange that I couldn't guess who wrote it. Just ripped through it like chain lightning. He also wore a strange tiger-striped cat suit for one scene in which he had one line. There was nobody like him, and perhaps that was a good thing.)


 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look



Saturday, September 27, 2014

Bear on the Rampage: outtakes




The gigantic black bear that terrorized the small town of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, holding its citizens hostage for a tense two hours.




The bear's preferred method of attack was to lie down on his victims.




The bear could sprint at a fantastic rate, reaching speeds of  up to 1/4  mile per hour.




BEAR!!!!!




Exhausted from a long day of terrorizing Port Coquitlam, the enormous bear lies down for a refreshing 15-hour nap.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Weekly World News: Bear on the Rampage!




Hello, and welcome to the silly hour. Or, at least, the silly story of the week. I didn't get to see this bear, and yet, in some remote spiritual way, I felt I was involved. I had just had my hair done, and my stylist told me, "my daughter just texted me that there's a 900-pound bear on the loose and the school is in lockdown." Alarmed, she cautioned me against walking home (which would take me right past Ground Zero, the bear's immediate vicinity), so of course I had to go and see this for myself. And yes - at Prairie and Oxford, the place was abuzz with TV cameras (CTV, CBC, Global and a couple of others), reporters, cops, conservation officers and numerous curious spectators.




It seemed I had come a little late and missed the bear. But it was all over the news that night, the top story. (Only in Vancouver!) On the CTV News report, a bystander makes a comment about the bear eating rotten apples and getting drunk, a completely bogus story designed to make it look as if he knew something. (Every crowd has its self-appointed expert/pompous asshole.) The media immediately seized this and ran with it. Now Buster Bear (or Busterina, as some people claim - but how can they tell?) is all over the internet, mainly because of that "hungover bear" angle and the "rampaging" description, which is just about as stupid as anything I've read for the past 2 or 3 hours.




From the footage, even when the conservation guys screamed and fired rubber bullets and "bear bangers" (don't ask) at it at close range, the bear only managed a lethargic trot. For the most part it just snoozed. I looked at a close shot of its face, and it's definitely a battlescarred old bear, with part of one ear missing and a face scratched up from many a battle in the bramble bushes.




The thing is, people have strange ideas about bears, thinking  they run after forest animals and eat them, when not busy killing small children. Bears are foragers and eat fruit and roots and bugs and other stuff that comes out of the ground, with honey being their favorite. I rarely see bears on my walking trails, but I DO see great chunks of rubbed-off fur on tree trunks, and bear scat which is a tarry black and usually full of fruit pits. Salmon they like, when they can get it, but for the most part they're vegetarian. One cannot fault them for being attracted to garbage, but I think that is entirely our fault for being such filthy animals ourselves. No other species is as destructive as the human being.

Anyway, I wish I HAD seen Buster the other day, but I'll have to be content with these (what, you didn't think there'd be - ?) - these humble gifs.




Bear Gallery










Say cheese(cake)!





Is it Friday yet?






Thursday, September 25, 2014

Just one more musical contraption. . .




I had almost forgotten about this monstrosity, yet another self-playing musical contraption from Siegfried's Museum in Rudesheim, Germany. Also known by its German name, Siegfried's Mechanisches Musikkabinett, but that's too hard to spell.

This one is truly frightening. It seems to need to get up steam before it starts, then for the longest time doesn't seem to know what tune it's supposed to play.  I'm not sure it ever sorts that out . The banjo and cymbal look like staring eyes, the keyboard a grinning mouth. Everything moves, and what comes out, if not music, is certainly something. I finally figured out that they have taken the back off this thing so we can see what's going on inside. The other side of it MUST look better than this.






Siegfried's Haunted Dolls: take two




Having finally found a much better video of the automaton-orchestrion from Siegfried's Museum, I wondered if I should completely rewrite my earlier post, but I don't think so. It's true people are not as drawn to this instrument because of its sheer creepiness, with gorillas in frilly dresses opening and closing their mouths as they jerkily play stringed instruments. The sheer size of the cabinet is intimidating, practically covering a wall. And the music is the strangest-sounding stuff, almost grotesque. But it's the primitive quality of the music that comes from these things that attracts me to them. If I want good-sounding music I can turn on the radio.








Enchanted (haunted?) dolls




I have yet to see any really decent video of Siegfried's Museum of Mechanical Musical Instruments in Rudesheim, Germany. It looks like a fascinating place, with over 350 examples of antique self-playing instruments, some going back over 200 years, but all the videos are shot by tourists, raw footage unedited, with priorities that simply baffle me. Most linger for several minutes on a hideous thing that plays six out-of-tune violins at once, and a not-very-old gramophone playing Doris Day singing Que Sera, Sera while everyone sways and sings along with misty eyes. All the items in the videos follow a certain sequence, so obviously this is an organized, preset tour, and only a few instruments are playable; most are probably too frail with age, which is too bad because the wheezy, sometimes off-pitch sound is definitely the best part.




But I'm quiffed at one thing. (Is that a word?) Squicked, too, but that's something I want. The last exhibit is simply spectacular, an automaton orchestrion unlike anything ever made before. And I really can't show it to you unless I post a very lousy video that only shows it from one side. The tourists all seem to wander away from this, uninterested, when it is by far the most fascinating and rare piece in the collection (which is doubtless why they save it 'til last). I don't know how many figures there are in this, but I think it's around 30, and they are each playing a musical instrument in jerky fashion while wheezy, creepy, circus-y music plays in the background. Just my cup of tea! But the fact that nobody seems to realize what a spectacle this is means no one has ever properly video'd it. You get, at best, 30 seconds shot from an extreme angle, or an annoyingly bobbing-up-and-down shot over a lot of bald heads, or the glare of the glass cabinet. I can't edit YouTube videos, and for once a gif just won't do it, so all I can do is. . . oh I don't want to do this!! But here it is. I'll explain later. . .




I wish there were a way to shorten or otherwise edit the boring parts, and take a decent shot panning this amazing, one-of-a-kind work of art character-by-character. As I will show you in the totally-inadequate stills, not all the figures are human, adding an extra dimension of creepiness to the thing.




What amazes me right away is what good shape these are in. They must have been extremely carefully-protected from dust, sunlight, dampness, over-dryness, and anything else that would bleach out colours and shrivel up fabric.

The automaton/orchestrion was created by one Bernhard Dufner, and so far I can't even find a date because there is NEVER any information on YouTube with the videos! This whole subject is thinly-documented, though there are many dry lists and catalogue numbers on lousy old sites that haven't been updated in 10 years, with links that don't work worth a hoot. With no photos or videos, these are obviously meant only for those auction-obsessed collectors who are trying to fill an abyss within.




The cabinet itself is exquisite, as is shown by long shots which seem to dwarf the creepy, crazy, magnificent dolls within. It's a pity we can't see each doll in closeup and even handle it. Come to that, I don't think I'd want to handle a gorilla in a dress. But here is where National Geographic needs to get in there and take extreme closeups of these things, because they are truly remarkable.

And creepy.




Dear God, I hope these are gorillas and not some hideous representation of black people! If it matches the caricatures of the day, it might be, rendering it even more creepy.




A long shot of the cabinet. Can you smell the old wood? Who was this made for? I must at least try to dig out some information. Imagine having this taking up half your living room. And wouldn't it be fascinating (another National Geographic special!) to see the workings of the thing, to take off the back and peer in? Imagine the feat of engineering that brought this into being.




And here he is, Siegfried, master of the House of Creepy Magic, looking just as strange and Gandalf-like as you would expect him to be. He didn't create any of these bizarre instruments, but merely presides over it all. Never mind, watch the video, start it at 2:12 and watch to the end. And try to image what it's really like.






































Blogger's P. S.: a big aha, but at the same time a depressingly small one: I found a journal of mechanical instruments, music boxes and stuff, and the list of articles went back to 1978. Obviously I couldn't/wouldn't read the whole thing, but after some sifting I found the name of Bernhard Dufner. He was not at all who I thought he was: an American, for one thing, working in the late 1800s when these contraptions were at their peak of popularity. (Imagine how business must have fallen off with the invention of the phonograph, not to mention photography and motion pictures.)

So his magnificent moving-doll orchestrion was likely built towards the end of the 19th century, though the costumes look baroque. It explains the still-vibrant colors, when fabric dyes had become much brighter and more stable. One wonders if the style of clothing was intentional, a way of "antique-ing" the thing to look more valuable than it really was. And what was he doing in Buffalo, New York, if he did such fine, European-standards work? Or was it some other Buffalo? The article, with its flyspeck type, was in PNG and not reproduceable, so I literally had to print this, scan and crop it. But it looks mighty handsome, doesn't it? Dufner is still pretty obscure, and Google searches netted me exactly nothing. But he did produce one strikingly original piece, still exhibited 150 years later on the other side of the world. The story is so unlikely that it could only be true.



Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Incendiary instruments








Welcome to my nightmare. One of my continuing feverish obsessions is with, what, old stuff? Old stuff connected to music, to musical instruments. . . to mechanical instruments, which fascinate me most of all. These were built to amuse the very rich in the days long before any sort of recording existed, and far exceeded the music box in out-of-tune-ness and general detestibility. But it is this that makes me love them so.

I would have included automatons, but I couldn't find any, which appalled me because I know hundreds of such videos exist. I can't find anything at all under "automatons" any more because it's now the name of some game or TV series or something, but I'm fascinated with them too because they combine music with jerky, macabre movements. Something weird going on here, too, because all of these instruments seem to be on fire, or about to put out a fire (the rackett at the top looks quite a bit like a medieval fire extinguisher) - the open-air calliope, designed for an old-fashioned riverboat, looks more like a giant out-of-control gas barbecue, and the bottom one, well. I guess we could call it steampunk. The awful camera work is for effect, I assume. These instruments were designed for old-fashioned circus wagons and were definitely made to be heard outdoors, at as great a distance as possible.

I shouldn't do it, I tell myself - stay up so late, get so engrossed - and find so many odd things, it's quite unbelievable.




The cheese that saved me




Not long ago I posted a long screed about how horrible name-brand cheddar has become. Over the years, it's gradually morphed from something at least vaguely cheeselike to a decidedly unpleasant substance which tastes like the inside of a rubber glove after milking a cow.

We can't afford to scour the country to find just that right gourmet cheese shop for my cheddar fix, but everyone kept saying, "Oh, just go to Costco." Costco kind of reminds me of that silent movie Metropolis, except the cashiers are a little nicer, but I went anyway, desperate.

I was surprised at the variety, though the prices really weren't all that great. There were lots of good European and domestic cheeses, but I was bent on cheddar, a GOOD cheddar, edible, dependable, good for recipes, grating, melting, but most of all just EATING out of hand, maybe with a bite of apple now and then to cleanse the palate.




There were enough of them, the usual blandies like Kraft and Cracker Barrel, but also Irish cheddar in a weird opaque wrapping (cheese that felt hard as a brick - no rubber here), and a Welsh cheddar with a warning label: Powerful Cheese. This was what we used to call rat trap cheese, hard and oily. Not what I was looking for.

So we saw this Balderson cheese, had never heard of it, but noted it was NOT labelled "mild, medium, old, extra old" or, worse, "mild, medium, sharp, extra sharp," the "extra sharp" meaning sticking the streaming udder right in your mouth.




It was labelled according to years of ageing, and they had a two-year and a five-year. Armstrong cheddar, which I used to love and which has turned traitor and gone supermarket-bland, used to have a 5-year that I liked, though it was a bit hard, almost dry in texture. I went back and forth. Would 2-year give me that cheddar buzz, that rich flavour that just keeps developing in your mouth? The 5-year cost more, and I wasn't sure if it would have a too-firm texture (though anything would be preferable to the rubber lego-bricks I had been choking down),

I have to tell you, all the way home in the car I worried. It cost $16.00 for 750 grams of this stuff. If you live in the States, it'd probably set you back less than ten bucks. And this is a Canadian product. I was working my way into a lather as I wrestled the shrink-wrap off and plunged my knife in.




Yes. I knew at once. This is cheese. This is REAL cheese, and though the flavour is rich and mature and the texture almost fudgy, it's still creamy enough to melt in the mouth. It had little cracks all over it like marble where you bit it, a sort of "grain". So I kept eating it and eating grapes and yelling to my husband, "This is good, don't you want any?" 

My pleasures in life are few, truly they are. Between our recurrent health woes and being strapped for cash, we don't get around much any more. Finding something like this - and it turns out there is a whole VILLAGE named Balderson in Ontario, prime dairy country, and a big store that would be heaven to skip around in with a cheese basket- it's significant. Hey, maybe none of my writer's dreams have come true (and for the most part, they haven't, the third novel leaving me with a sense of abject failure), but now I can lay my hands on some really kick-ass cheddar.

It's something. Isn't it?







Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look