Monday, December 21, 2015
Dudamel! (or: where has this man BEEN all my life?)
Dudamel in 2012
Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez (born January 26, 1981) is a Venezuelan conductor and violinist. He is the music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Background information
Birth name Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez
Born January 26, 1981 (age 34)
Barquisimeto, Lara,Venezuela
Genres Classical
Occupation(s) Composer, conductor
Instruments Violin
Years active 1999–present
Associated acts
Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Website www.GustavoDudamel.com
So now I find out about Dudamel, and I am simply overwhelmed. Where has this man BEEN all my life? I am not sure. He is the proverbial bundle of joy, and as it turns out is a huge celebrity in the classical music field. Celebritude never impressed me much in any field, but if there is an area that needs big celebrities, it's this one.
I keep hearing that the days of the classical concert hall are numbered. The average opera-goer is 48 years old, and younger ones are not coming up through the ranks. This man conducts with a zeal I have simply never seen. I did see Leonard Bernstein in 1967 during our Centennial, and I'll never forget his balletics on the podium. But Bernstein was a dark, angsty figure tangled in his own neuroses. This guy - well, the only other figure in classical music I can compare him to is Itzak Perlman, whom I've also seen perform (twice!), filling the concert hall with happiness and sharing his contagious joy.
I haven't even begun to scratch the surface here. There are dozens of Dudamel YouTube videos, and here the guy is only 34 years old, a baby in conducting terms. He's already been at it a long time. Even his name is exotic, like something you can eat, bechamel or caramel, or bechamel followed by caramel. (It's also a bit like Gargamel, the villian in the Smurf cartoons.) No doubt his detractors see him as overexuberant, not serious enough, but to me he looks like a badly-needed injection of energy and presence, accessibility, in a field that has prized insularity and snobbitude for far too long.
Classical music can't afford to be elitist any more. Sometimes, as with Winston Churchill, the right person steps up at the crucial moment. This man with all the names (reminding me of that great silent screen hero/sheik, Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla) might just be the one to do it. He goes on Ellen and Conan and who-knows-who-else, even Sesame Street, spreading the joy and opening the door.
The gifs I made were a delight to me, because he's obviously so digging the music that he can hardly restrain himself from dancing. Sometimes he literally dances, and when he conducts a piece like An American in Paris, I can't help but think that Gershwin, who was known to tap dance while waiting for an elevator, would like his approach just fine.
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Sunday, December 20, 2015
Sleep in heavenly peace
Yes, there IS a spiritual component to Christmas for me, after all. My cat Bentley. He has brought more joy and love into my life than I have felt for a very long time, and just looking at him zonked out or grooming himself with obvious delight promotes deep relaxation, which for me (with my assurance I'm going to die in the next year) is a very great blessing.
This was originally a MUCH longer post, so don't complain about how many there are. I cut it down to less than half. These are just the good ones.
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A little Bible study, anyone?
Blogger's Note. When I'm down and troubled and need some loving care, I turn to the Good Book for wisdom and solace. I found plenty of it here - except that it was also X-rated. This is the story of a woman who illustrates the expression "he's hung like a horse". I didn't include the whole chapter because it's very repetitive. I first found this on a Facebook post in which verse 19 - 20 were featured on a red Starbucks holiday cup.
Ezekiel 23 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Oholah and Oholibah
23 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 Mortal, there were two women, the daughters of one mother; 3 they played the whore in Egypt; they played the whore in their youth; their breasts were caressed there, and their virgin bosoms were fondled. 4 Oholah was the name of the elder and Oholibah the name of her sister. They became mine, and they bore sons and daughters. As for their names, Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem.
5 Oholah played the whore while she was mine; she lusted after her lovers the Assyrians, warriors[a] 6 clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all of them handsome young men, mounted horsemen. 7 She bestowed her favors upon them, the choicest men of Assyria all of them; and she defiled herself with all the idols of everyone for whom she lusted. 8 She did not give up her whorings that she had practiced since Egypt; for in her youth men had lain with her and fondled her virgin bosom and poured out their lust upon her. 9 Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands of the Assyrians, for whom she lusted. 10 These uncovered her nakedness; they seized her sons and her daughters; and they killed her with the sword. Judgment was executed upon her, and she became a byword among women.
11 Her sister Oholibah saw this, yet she was more corrupt than she in her lusting and in her whorings, which were worse than those of her sister. 12 She lusted after the Assyrians, governors and commanders, warriors clothed in full armor, mounted horsemen, all of them handsome young men. 13 And I saw that she was defiled; they both took the same way. 14 But she carried her whorings further; she saw male figures carved on the wall, images of the Chaldeans portrayed in vermilion, 15 with belts around their waists, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them looking like officers—a picture of Babylonians whose native land was Chaldea. 16 When she saw them she lusted after them, and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. 17 And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their lust; and after she defiled herself with them, she turned from them in disgust. 18 When she carried on her whorings so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned from her sister. 19 Yet she increased her whorings, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt 20 and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose emission was like that of stallions.21 Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians fondled your bosom and caressed your young breasts.
And in case you haven't had enough, here's a choice cut from the book of Deutoronomy:
No man whose testicles have been crushed or whose penis has been cut off may participate in the assembly of the LORD.
I don't think Oholibah would be interested.
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Saturday, December 19, 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015
Margaret's Facebook Year In Review!
Don't you just love it when Facebook tenderly, lovingly responds to all your most personal needs? These are photos which Facebook has chosen, JUST FOR ME, to represent my joyous, hectic-but-lovely, event-tumbling year.
Here's me in Palm Beach. Oops. I'm not there. Where am I?
It took me a while to figure this out. Facebook randomly picks photos from all the things you've posted, then whacks them together in any old order to represent the Jolly Chaos That Is Your Life.
I didn't realize my year had been so filled with bigotry, prejudice, discrimination, conflict, hate, etc. until I saw this. Now I know. (Actually, that's a picture of me on a bad hair day.)
This is cute, but it ran in a British newspaper in 2013. I'm not sure what it has to do with my Year In Review, except that - hey, I DID get a cat this year.
Wow! This has me in it! Unfortunately, it is me in 1983.
This image had more "likes" than anything else I posted in 2015. An accomplishment in itself, don't you think? Isn't getting lots of "likes" really the reason we go on living, in a world full of stress, toil, Isis and climate change? The picture was grabbed totally at random off Google Images when I wanted an autumn scene as a screensaver. Then I cropped it into a square for my FB profile picture, just because I already had it.
Actually, no. . . it might have been THIS one that had all the "likes", over 40 of them, which for me is phenomenal. For someone else, pathetic. The "oooohs" and "ahhhhhs" over this were quite impressive, considering I had no idea where it was taken, and didn't much care. The significant thing, though, is that out of Facebook's carefully-chosen selection of personalized Year in Review photos, two of them were almost identical (as well as having nothing to do with me!).
The thing most people don't realize, which I found out by accident, is that each time you open your Facebook Year in Review, you get a different set of twelve photos, taken completely at random from your status updates. People look at this and go "awwww. . . ", believing that "someone" at Facebook, some dimpled dowager with her hair in a grey bun, is thinking of them, carefully and lovingly selecting each personal photo from a crumbling old album with black pages (removing the stick-on corners first), when it is actually created by some vast engine of cloud-infected Orwellia. People open it and see photos from 2015, and they sort of make sense as a year-end review (people have a habit of making things make sense: see psychics, Donald Trump, etc.), but mine don't. I love to play with images and use a lot of different ones, but as you can see, almost none of them pertain to me personally.
Never mind, Orwellia B. Cloud chooses her photos with such care that even YOU don't know why they're so significant.
The Twelve Gifs of. . . whatever. . .
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my Giphy gave to me. . .
Twelve drummers drumming
Eleven pipers piping
Ten lords a-leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
FIVE GOLDEN RINGS
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
And a hm hm-mm in a hm hmm.
EXPLANATION. You know that I explain myself far too often. Or I just think of something else and tack it on, in non-linear fashion. I started off by testing out my "new" (to me) Giphy program. It's really quite good and dead-easy to use, fast, and lets you use tenths of a second. They're also clearer and much larger, so you can post them original size. Big drawback, they're only half the length, but isn't it better to have a system that actually WORKS?
In testing it out, I must have been in a Freudian free-associating festive mood or something, as I wanted to see what a real turtle dove looked like. Then TWO turtle doves, and then, oh God. I was giffing them all over the place. And one thing led to another.
In most cases I have free-associated, and in nearly all cases I've been free with the numbers. I hate math anyway and am no good at it, still count by shooting my fingers and get lost after seven. My IQ is 143, which is not too shabby, though I guess it could be higher. It's just curious I can't count, is all.
So twelve drummers drumming get collapsed down into one. That's close enough, isn't it? I was going to try to get an image of Ringo at his drum kit, but then thought: Jesus, that's dumb and unimaginitive. So I ended up with one raw turkey drumstick, which is pretty festive when you think about it, especially when being rinsed under the tap.
Eleven pipers piping was at first going to be someone filling a hash pipe or a bong or something, but there were THOUSANDS of pot videos to choose from, all of them made by people who were extremely stoned. So it ended up being a piping bag, which is every bit as nice, don't you think?
Ten lords a-leaping. I cannot explain this one, except that "lords a-leaping" reminded me of Stephen Fry. I don't know if he leaps or not, but here he's getting jiggy while sitting in a chair. I love the psychedelic lighting, a nice touch.
Nine ladies dancing. The tango scene from the movie Frida seemed like a natural. Pretend there are nine of them if you're a stickler. I especially love Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera. He's perfect, and believable. Without him the whole movie would collapse under its own pretentions.
Eight, seven, six, five. . .
Four calling birds might be a bit confusing. Forget the four, for one thing. Forget the calling. This is a BIRD, as in British bird, as in Twiggy. I was sick of birds anyway. In this whole song there are twenty-three birds, which is like twenty-two too many.
And the rest takes care of itself.
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