The Glass Character

Friday, November 9, 2012

Always look on the bright side

Prelude

Life can be a shit-storm, but some days it's just shit.

You get one more rejection, you're in a royal snit.

You're feeling suicidal, don't find joy in anything -

But when you feel crap-awful, just lift up your heart and SING!

Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best...

And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...

If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing.

And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...

For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow.

So always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath

Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.

And always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the right side of life...
(Come on guys, cheer up!)
Always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the bright side of life...
(Worse things happen at sea, you know.)
Always look on the bright side of life...
(I mean - what have you got to lose?)
(You know, you come from nothing - you're going back to nothing.
What have you lost? Nothing!)
Always look on the right side of life...

(words and music by Eric Idle)

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Gangnam Girl - GO!!

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Victorian corsets, Part 2: the Cold Iron Hand

I don' t know what it is, but in the last few years I've become enraptured with pictures of Victorian women in beautiful dresses.

Is this my gay side, or what? Or do I want to BE them? I would imagine the undergirdings for such gorgeous gowns would be uncomfortable, to say the least.

Does it get any more elegant? Do we have anything to compare to this today, except maybe in a period movie or a stage play?

Period costumes - hell, no one does it better than Winona Ryder in The Age of Innocence.

Memorable quote: "The corsets are a tremendous help to the performance, because you're playing a repressed person and you can feel the pain that they endured. My waist had to be 19 inches and they had to measure me every day. I would be on the floor and they would pull the strings until it was 19 inches. . . But if I did it again I would want it the same way because it made my performance."

What takes a little thunder out of this is the fact that Winona's waist was probably about 20 inches to begin with.

Now isn't this nice? It's one of those fainting couches. Makes you want to run out and buy one. (Is that a cigarette I see in her hand??)

You didn't have to diet then. If you had overindulged or gained a few pounds, you just pulled the laces in a little tighter, et voila - a beautiful waist that a man could span with his two hands. It's proven by this shot of a woman in everyday dress whose waist has been reduced to a thread. This is probably a simple everyday outfit that somehow looks extremely elegant.

Looks like a Seurat painting, but it's real.

Ethel Barrymore, with roses stuck all over her.

From an interview with Karin Cartlidge (star of The Cherry Orchard) in the London Times:

"These bloody corsets do a lot for repression: I nearly fainted in one. I find them quite sexy; actually, it's a funny sort of thing. They hold you in like a cold iron hand round your heart, therefore all your emotions just seethe away underneath it. It's like being in a sort of prison and it's quite exciting, there's something erotic about it."

OK. . .

What about Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, being slowly and sadistically

driven crazy by Charles ("come wiz me to zee Casbah") Boyer? Sadomasochism. . . insanity. . . corsets. . . I'm ready to kvell.

This is one of those eerily crystalline Victorian-era photographs that depicts middle-class women out for a stroll in their ordinary clothes, which nonetheless look gorgeous. My goodness, I love those dresses: the proportions were always perfect, and the hats added height and style.

Another quote. . . from some anonymous

actress in The Buccaneers: "For the first two weeks it is unbearable in the

corsets. Now I put it on, and I'm saying, 'Tighten me in more, tighten me in more!' and they're saying 'Your corset is meeting! We can't!"

Goodness. Now I see why they're coming back (mainly as a fetish item, but soon the world will catch up and realize this is the ultimate diet aid).

We couldn't do this slightly bizarre post without Miz Scahhlett and her green barbecue dress, probably the most fetching thing she wore in that interminable costume melodrama. Certainly better than that red rag she was forced to wear to that, you know, thingammy, that thingamajigger where she was supposed to be publicly acknowledging she was an adulteress when in truth she hadn't even given Ashley a hickey.

Though not for lack of trying.

In this scene, I assume war has just been declared (or "woah, woah, woah", as Scarlett put it). Men are running back and forth in a blur and colliding with each other, or maybe those guys are conjoined twins joined at the ear.

Lina Cavalieri, who could throw on just about anything and look

amazing. Oh well, maybe I AM gay.

Why is it, though - I just had this thought, and it was strange - I've never heard a gay woman rhapsodize over any item of apparel or anything to do with fashion. It's funny cuz they're supposed to like women and notice women and be turned on by women. But it's gay men who do all the rhapsodizing. It's weird.

Maybe I'm a gay man?

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

It took me years to write, will you take a look

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Bewitched, enchanted, and downright seduced

Yes, this is about music again, a topic I can't help returning to. And this is one of those fugitive pieces, remembered quite vividly from my childhood: one that wriggled away and escaped. I think it was the title that popped into my head yesterday, in the tiniest bubble possible, but at first I got it wrong: I thought maybe it was The Amazing Flutist, and I couldn't remember the composer's name.

It took a while. Then when I finally I winkled it out, The Incredible Flutist by Walter Piston, I realized that what we had listened to all those years ago was not even our record. I believe it belonged to my brother, who for some reason toted it home with him when he came back from university. I'd be maybe 10, he'd be maybe 20.

How often did we listen to it? Twice? If that. But if you take the time to listen to this, you'll see why at least parts of it lingered on in my memory. And yes, if you are at all familiar with Stravinsky's Petrushka, you'll likely notice that this is very much in the same mold.

Yet, in place of the frenetic near-delirium of Stravinsky's work, there is an innocence, even a purity in this suite: and some of it is just eye-fillingly beautiful, takes me aback. I don't know all of the story (for this is just a reduction of a full-length ballet score, one that was very rarely performed for some reason), but I can guess that the Flutist was a sort of enchanted/enchanting Pied Piper figure who attracted women rather than rats.

These folk tales often have an underlay of eroticism in them. If you look up the literal meaning of enchant, it means to gain power over someone by casting a verbal spell, an incantation. If you look at words like cantor, it's obvious we're in the realm of sacred (or profane) song. This seems to be implying (or shouting!) that music can be an extremely powerful means of seduction.

Let's not get into Justin Bieber or Mario Lanza or whoever happens to be the heart-throb of the day. Music hath charms, whether sung or piped or fluted. I once knew a man - an incredible man - who played a flute (and a saxophone and a piano and a clarinet and a -) who enchanted me for five years, without his ever knowing it.

So enchantment can even be involuntary. On his side, or her side, or both.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Celestial passions

Lord, how I love these old contraptions! They are musical time machines transporting us back to a simpler, more ingenuous time. This baby must have been a high-status piece of equipment in the Victorian era, like the stereos of the 1960s (when you invited your neighbor over and turned the amplifier up to 11). It amazes me how pristine the sound quality is: I don't think this instrument could be reproduced today to sound any better.

Bestial passions

Since music is something I swim in like a fish in the ocean, YouTube has been a huge blessing for me. I can dip in, bail after a few seconds if I don't like a piece, and saturate myself with the ones I do love, over and over again. Not only that, but the more analytical side of my listening mind can revel in comparisons of the same piece.

I've been getting into Afternoon of a Faun by Debussy, a piece which is almost embarrassingly erotic and which caused quite a stir when it debuted in Paris for portraying "bestial" passions. Which it did. One incensed audience member even walked out, going straight over to his mistress's chambers where he fucked the living daylights out of her.

I was thinking about fauns, erotic music, Debussy and the flute. Then I found a rapturous version of Debussy's Reverie by an ensemble which was unknown to me before. Trio del Garda has a web site, but no CDs, not that I can find. You can download quite a few YouTube videos, but the quality isn't very good. This surprises me: musicians have such cut-glass, noticing-your-watch-tick-across-the-room hearing that you'd think they would not allow even a hint of sound distortion, not to mention all those audience heads that seem to indicate amateur video. Are they really so strapped that they allow this inferior product to represent their work? I didn't post the Reverie, but only because the soundtrack is so full of offputting distortion.

But I had to post something of theirs, so I chose an unusual arrangement of a familiar, favorite piece (the Intermezzo from Cavalliera Rusticana by Mascagni: remember Raging Bull?), usually played by lush orchestra with orgasmic organ in the background. I noticed the flautist first, of course, since he is obviously the lead instrument in this ensemble. I am very very picky about woodwinds, having grown up with wind players all around me, flute, oboe, clarinet (which my brother insists isn't really a musical instrument but a sort of pacifier for Middle School band students).

The best-known, like Galway, don't always fall on my ear in the best way. Galway had a very syrupy vibrato and a tendency to push the high note until it sharped. Jean-Pierre Rampal was the genius of his time, and I was privileged to hear him in concert many years ago. Defying the limits of the instrument, his tone was fat and lush and even sensuous. Surely he somehow expanded the resonant frequency of an instrument that can be excruciatingly thin, even sour. It was a fat shiny pelt of a sound, a musical mink coat that you could run your fingers through. No one has equalled it since.

But this guy, well, he has something going for him. He has a pronounced vibrato, in fact if there were any more it would be too much. But he uses it so beautifully. His high range has great purity and precision, so the end of the phrase needs something to soften and "voluptu-ize" it (and yes, I know that's not a word, but it's Friday and I feel like making stuff up). In short, I like him. I am CRAZY about chamber work that is very pared down, not so much string quartets as things like flute, bassoon and harp. Harp is sublime in ensemble, but completely wretched on its own. The only solo harpist I have ever really enjoyed is Harpo Marx, and only because he played jazz on it.

The first video I posted today is of the same piece (the Mascagni Intermezzo), played on a vintage Regina 17" upright music box with an automatic changer. I've posted this one before, but I think it's time for an encore. It's very beautiful, with an otherworldly quality in the decay of the notes, a dreaminess. Though it's played with precision (rubato seems out of reach for such things), it never sounds mechanical. And it's absolutely in tune, which most of these things aren't. What I love best is the changing mechanism, no doubt deemed a marvel of its time: you didn't even have to get up! How those thin discs avoided becoming unplayably warped is beyond me. I especially love how the disc disappears at the end, falling in a blur like some musical guillotine.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

DAY OF THE DEAD: Peer Gynt versus the Trolls!

You might have heard this piece before - in fact, I'd be surprised if you haven't, because it has been ripped off for a thousand scary movie scores.

It's from Peer Gynt by Edvard Grieg, one of those staple classical works that I had forced down my throat as a child. But did you ever stop to think what the chorus was saying?

And why they were saying it?

And who they were?

Those questions will be partially answered by this transcript, cut and pasted from the YouTube video. It's in Danish, but the captions might help you figure it out:

(The troll-courtiers): Slagt ham! Kristenmands søn har dåret
Dovregubbens veneste mø!
Slagt ham!
Slagt ham!
(a troll-imp): Må jeg skjære ham i fingeren?
(another troll-imp): Må jeg rive ham i håret?
(a troll-maiden): Hu, hej, lad mig bide ham i låret!
(a troll-witch with a ladle): Skal han lages til sod og sø?
(another troll-witch, with a butcher knife): Skal han steges på spid eller brunes i gryde?
(the Mountain King): Isvand i blodet!

In case you're curious as to what all those little buggers are saying, I dug out my old multiple-CD set of Peer Gynt, complete with dialogue in about 20 languages, that I never listen to because I don't know WTF is going on.

CHORUS OF TROLLS

Kill him! The Christian's son has deceived the fairest daughter of our ruler!

A YOUNG TROLL: Let me cut off his fingers!

CHORUS OF TROLLS: Kill him!

ANOTHER YOUNG TROLL: Let me tear out his hair!

CHORUS OF TROLLS: Kill him!

A TROLL MAIDEN: Oooo-ah! Let me bite his bottom!

CHORUS OF TROLLS: Kill him!

A TROLL WITCH: (with a ladle) Shall he be boiled to a broth in brine?

CHORUS OF TROLLS: Kill him!

ANOTHER WITCH: (with a cleaver) Spitted and roasted? Or stewed in a cauldron?

CHORUS OF TROLLS: Kill him!

THE OLD MAN: Keep cool now - ice-cool!

Lovely.

Today is All Saints' Day, also known as Day of the Dead (which is movie-title-ready, as far as I am concerned). It follows closely on the heels of All Hallows Eve, also known as Halloween. Many cultures go a little batty on this day, lighting zillions of candles (at the least) and parading around in scary skeleton-costumes. It's also revered by the Catholics, whose strange rituals have been superimposed over traditions that were far more ancient and primitive. (Yuletide, anyone?)

Frida Kahlo, the brilliant but strange Mexican artist, made much of this macabre festival in her paintings. We don't do much on the Day of the Dead except pick up shattered pumpkin pieces and candy wrappers, relieved it's all over for another year. I do wonder, however, why it is that little Mexican children eat sugar skulls on this day. Did they somehow set a fashion, eventually taken over by Sour Patch Kids and neon Gummi worms?

I couldn't think of better music to celebrate this spooky day than the Chorus of Trolls from Peer Gynt (better known as In the Hall of the Mountain King). I always feel like I'm walking around in Ikea when I hear this. I thought "hej" was supposed to be a friendly greeting.