Deconstructing A Day In The Life (Isolated Tracks)

This song is primal, and without a doubt the Beatles' masterpiece. Every single element of it rings true, and every single element of it is necessary to the whole. As Salieri said in Amadeus, "Pull out the tiniest detail, and the whole thing would fall down." But it doesn't, and evokes the '60s more vividly than anything else I can think of. What leaps out at me instantly are the drums - and if anyone still underestimates Ringo's brilliance here, they will have to answer to ME!

Ringo was my first Beatle-love, back when drums were just a lot of pounding rather than the glue holding the entire thing together. The big nose, the floppy hair, the sad blue eyes and somewhat rueful smile - it KILLED me when I was only ten years old and supposedly far too young for those sorts of feelings. The Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964 - memorable because it happened to be my tenth birthday, for which we had actually gone to a restaurant (named Rossini's - and for some reason I remember seeing a mouse running along the sidewalk outside). This was rare, as most birthdays were home affairs - but my mother still made the cake. Restaurant desserts were deemed almost wicked back then, a near-shameful extravagance.

So we get home from my birthday dinner, turn on the TV as always, and whether or not I was prepared for what happened next has been lost to me. After the fact, it seemed that the sizzle and buzz around the Beatles must have been going on for weeks. But I was too young to play those 45 rpm pop records, and may or may not have heard them on the radio. Then the gangly, stiff-limbed Ed came on and announced something "for all you youngsters" - and then - BAM!

Everything changed.

The next day, all I was hearing about at school was Beatles, Beatles, Beatles. We had all been watching Ed Sullivan forever, and I had never seen any references to any of the other acts (not even Topo Gigio, the Little Italian Mouse). I remember the teacher could not keep order that day, and at one point made a remark about wigs, thinking that's what "Beatles" were. But suddenly it was Beatles everywhere, including bubble gum cards with four different  poses per ten-cent package (I had a nearly-complete set before THROWING THEM OUT when I turned 13 - how childish to collect such things!), shirts, lunch boxes, thermos flasks, and - most magical of all - Beatles dolls. I promptly got me a Ringo doll, and kept him in my desk.

The more you listen to this, the more impossible it all seems. These guys were just bloody geniuses. Paul and Ringo are now in their 80s, and like Bob Dylan, still performing, still going strong. Ringo has turned out to be the coolest Beatle, as I always suspected. Peace and love! His son Zak was drummer for The Who, which is not too shabby and proof that talent can be inherited, so long as you put in the hard work and dedication along with it.  I don't know a lot about drums, except that Ringo's accuracy was crystalline - combined with a slight shuffly effect which was deliberate. He has even talked about it, a way of slightly smearing the decay so that the beat was both diamond-hard and spookily underwater-ish.  I have always felt A Day in the Life would be nothing without Ringo. 

This is the Ringo doll I DIDN'T have. Magnificent! The little ones are worth a fortune now, so I can only imagine what this work of art would fetch on eBay nowadays.

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😽How the Pussycat Learned to SPEAK!

A song from my favourite childhood record, Puss in Boots. Puppetry by ferociousgumby!

When I was just a teeny-weeny kitty,
Everyone told me that I looked so pretty.
They said, “Beautiful eyes!”
They said, “Lovely fur!”
But all I could answer was “Meow”,
Or “purr”.

My coat was black,
My eyes of course were yellow,
People always said, “What a charming fellow!”
I wanted to thank them, but I did not know how,
For all I could answer was “purr”
Or “meow”!

Then one fine day, as I was lying sleeping,
A great idea into my head came creeping:
A pussycat who could learn to say “meow”
Could say just “me”, by leaving off the “ow”-

So I said, “me, me, me, me, me”
And it was plain you could see
From “me” to “we” to “she” to “he”
Was just as simple as it could be.
I practiced daily for a week,
And that is how I learned to speak!

Then I thought that I would try
Slipping off from “me” to “my”.
From “me to “my” to “sky” to “why”
Was just as simple as eating pie!
I practiced daily for a week,
And that is how I learned to speak.

Soon I was no longer a beginner,
If someone asked, “How would you like some dinner?”
If I wanted to answer, I could say, “YES, SIR!”
Instead of replying just “Meow-ow-wow-ow

Wow-ow-wow"
Or “purrrrrrrrrrr,
Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

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Meghan's Mess!

 

I don't like to waste space (except that I do, sometimes) on such an insignificant figure as Meghan Markle. But the worst of her many "worsts" is how she holds herself up as a fashion icon. People really buy this, supposedly, though she looks dreadful most of the time, with the worst assortment of ill-fitting, ill-suited, badly-designed outfits that make you wonder if she even uses a mirror.

These "industrial beige" pants are a case in point. I don't know at what point high-waisted, pleated, baggy, wide-belted polyester pants came back in style. I remember "high-rise baggies" in the early '70s, but eventually they gave way to increasingly lower-rise pants, an inch or so lower a year, so that by Year 5 or so they barely covered a woman's ass. Thus, when she bent over, her entire ass, and I mean both cheeks, could easily pop out and display itself. I considered this an abuse of the public consciousness, because you just could not look away, and it went on and on for literally years. Then, relentlessly, fashion dictated that beltlines would rise again to a more decent level, which caused me to breathe a sigh of relief.

When I first saw my very stylish granddaughter wearing  a version of these in a much nicer colour, I was kind of amazed,  but happy about it. But to see Meghan in them somehow didn't quite make it. She has a very square figure, is short and has no waist, so pleated pants just widen and flatten her in all the wrong places. NEVERTHELESS, on her podcast she not only wore the above beige pants, but (of course) MERCHED them on Meghan's Mirror (an ironic title if ever there was one). These relics from  the early '70s went for somewhere around $350.00. But just look what happened when she actually wore them!

YES. These selfsame, pre-merched, high-rise, pleated, wide-belted baggies turned into THIS mess. I cannot fathom how an article of clothing could go from one state to another. It is almost a work of science fiction. If she slept in them for a week without bathing, maybe? Or wore them out in the rain? Or are they just too goddamned tight in the crotch?

What truly astonishes me is what happened to the bottom hems. Suddenly the legs are two totally different lengths! I can't believe this is just her usual spraddle-legged way of posing, so that her crotch (always the most prominent feature of her stance) is thrust into our faces. One bottom hem is a good six inches longer than the other. The short hem is also a few inches narrower. It's a high-water look, but only on one side! 

I was unable to find it, unfortunately, but last night I saw a full-colour version of this mess, and beside it, the version that appeared in most of the media worldwide. All the wrinkles had been photoshopped out, so that the pants appeared much more like that merched version at the top.

I don't know where I heard this saying (like so many other random bits of effluvia that swim around in my consciousness), but it has been said by SOMEONE that "you have to be very rich to look that bad." Rich, maybe not. Bad - definitely YES. How can you spend that much and look so  horrendously awful? The wide, bulky elephant pants (which actually hark back to the '60s) have bottom hems that drag the ground and completely cover the nauseatingly pointy, tottering stilettos, and - in addition - the cherry on the shit sundae -  a back seam that is so taut it wrinkles on one side (??WTF) and rides up the ass.

To paraphrase another quote that rattles around in my brain: Some are born great, some attain greatness, and some marry Prince Harry, the dimmest bulb in the entire royal lineup. I can only think of one other example of a Hollywood princess marrying royalty - but  Grace Kelly never looked like this, not even on her worst day, with a hangover.

BONUS PHOTOS! Oy-vey, there's more.

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The Troll Doll Channel: 💗FALLING IN LOVE💗

I have discovered a TROVE of 78 rpm recordings from my childhood, all in pristine shape, with nary a pop or a skip. This is one of the real joys of YouTube. I tried to sing some of these songs to my kids a zillion years ago, and they acted like I was crazy (which I am, of course!). But now I feel vindicated, and get to enjoy these any time I want. One of my all-time favorites was Puss in Boots. What I really appreciate now is how good the voiceovers were, with Puss coming across as a total smart-aleck and his master, John, naive and a bit of a dimwit. And the singing was so great! They honestly do not make voices like this any more. People really knew how to sing, and gave their best even on a children's record which would probably not pay them much. What I love about this is how childlike the imagery is, making the romantic aspect a little more comprehensible to kids. I mean - sliding down bannisters? Home runs in baseball? Come to think of it, falling in love IS a little like that. Especially the bannister part.

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Dream images: black and white, late at night

A collection of dreamy and somewhat nightmarish images from my files, some disturbing, others confusing, and still others just plain weird. A few are images of what is now popularly called liminal space, a phenomenon which I thought I was the only one to perceive, as in - why does this familiar place look oh, so strange and frightening? Why is everything just a little bit "off"? HOW DO I GET OUT OF HERE?

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OSCAR LEVANT: Good-bye, and good night

 

GOOD-NIGHT, OSCAR LEVANT 

CANDICE BERGEN  APRIL 1  1973

Notes on an all too brief encounter in Hollywood

APRIL 1  1973 CANDICE BERGEN


“Good-night, Oscar Levant, wherever you are. . . .”

On an April afternoon in Los Angeles, the Walter Matthaus gave a luncheon for the Charles Chaplins. People began waging their campaign for invitations in early March.

The weather was sublime; the kind of day that strangled you with the joy of living. It was a day that made abandoning the East for the West a rational move. It was a day that made everyone glad to be alive . . . or almost everyone. . . .

Sulking in the shadows, a spectral silhouette, loomed the face that launched a thousand analysts. Was I seeing a ghost? I thought Oscar Levant had been dead for years.

This was one of his rare sorties of the last decade and he observed it by scowling fiercely from the deep recesses of a rocking chair.

A die-hard New Yorker assaulted by western resort wear, he wore a dark and somber suit that looked like it last saw action in the 1950’s with Harpo Marx at “21” or Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin.

His feet sat passively in slender, shining wing tips reviewing the passing parade of patent leather boots and white Gucci loafers. It was as if he were a British colonialist struggling to maintain civility amidst savages.

“Oscar Levant”—the name was a household word, like “polio" or “anemia;" a name synonymous with merciless humor, hypochondria, insomnia, insanity, George Gershwin, and chain-smoking. He was a brilliant, sickly legend—terrified of living and petrified of dying.

I loved him in movies but he always looked like the stand-in’s stand-in, or the anemic son of a studio head. There was this ugly guy wisecracking with Gene Kelly in An American in Paris, or falling over Fred Astaire and I could never figure out how he ever got there.

But in Rhapsody in Blue he played himself—concert pianist, wit, Gershwin’s old friend and foremost interpreter of his music—and he stole the movie.

He wrote three books—A Smattering of Ignorance, The Memoirs of an Amnesiac, and The Unimportance of Being Oscar—crammed with anecdotes about celebrities and insights about himself: his army of analysts, the legion of doctors, his addiction to pills, the convulsions, the shock treatments, the mental hospitals. All told in crisp, concise story form.

His television show in the late Fifties was a weekly video happening. People everywhere were exclaiming, “Did you hear what Oscar said last night!” Because Oscar would say anything. And did.

Taking time out for assorted nervous breakdowns, he returned to the air in 1960, announcing:

“This is Oscar Levant in Meet The Mess. This is Oscar Levant, who has made insanity America’s favorite hobby. My show is now syndicated. It goes to the Menninger clinic in Topeka, Bellevue in New York, and the psychiatric ward at Mt. Sinai in Los Angeles.”

I was never so excited to meet anyone. What with his penchant for pretty girls and my fixation for ailing underdogs, we were instantly smitten.

He clutched my arm and I helped him outside. He seemed very ill and had great difficulty walking. “How old are you?” he asked, without much hope.

“Twenty-five.”

“I’m sixty-five,” he said proudly. And while he looked awful, it was hard to believe. He seemed more like a little kid imitating a dying old man.
“I’ve always been very boyish,” he offered offhandedly. “William Le Baron at RKO called me Peter Pan. . . .” Tremors contorted his face into grimaces, interrupting his speech.

I asked Oscar if he were all right. What a dumb question.

“My wife took me to a doctor and he treated me for Parkinson’s disease, which it turned out I didn’t have,” he said venomously, “but the treatment gave me Parkinson’s symptoms.” He stopped short.

Looking steely and suspicious, years of service on her sleeve, his wife June appeared and took his arm, announcing as if to a child, “Come on Oscar, it’s time to eat lunch now.”

He glowered at her furiously, muttering, “I read where Lyndon Johnson had a heart attack from smoking too much. Maybe I should start again.” And sulking and seething, he was firmly led away.

After lunch, I asked him if I could take a photograph. “Of course,” June answered quickly. “Where do you want us?”

I pointed to a chair I had for Oscar. He had barely lowered himself onto it when June landed on his lap. His face went ashen and he limped into the house, cawing crazily, “June’s trying to murder me! She sat on my lap and almost killed me. . . . She almost broke my legs!”

Later, I went to say good-bye to Oscar. “Will you talk to me?” he pleaded, immersed in an overstuffed sofa.

“I’m sorry, I have to leave.”

“Can’t you stay a little longer?” he asked weakly.

“I really can’t, I’m sorry,” and I bent down to give him a kiss.

“I love you,” he said plaintively, looking up at me from the depths of the couch.

“I love you too,” I said. And I did.

On a Thursday, four months I later, I called him about possibly arranging an interview the following week. “Can’t you come today?” he croaked urgently, as if next week would be too late. I could.

It was the same old, large house he had lived in for twenty years— across from Jimmy Stewart, down the block from Lucille Ball—the kind of house you don’t notice on a street with homes designed to be seen.

Oscar sank slowly into a chair in the living room—faint from opening the front door. There were no maids. The house was silent and simple.

With his pajamas discreetly buttoned at the neck while a robe, slightly askew, slid off his shoulders, he looked like a kid home sick from school.

Extraordinary hands, a pale, translucent yellow, dangled delicately from his sleeves—elegant and sensitive contradictions of the fiendish face. His furtive eyes were a faded green and his teeth looked like old piano keys. His hair lay limply in oily strands, and blistered, black leather slippers hung on veined, snow-white feet. As a physical specimen, he deviated violently from the ideal.

It was as if his face and body had already begun to die. Oscar was merely dispensing with preliminaries.

He camouflaged his terror with toughness and impatience, bombarding me intensively with stories familiar from his books.

“You know what I said about Zsa Zsa Gabor? She not only worships the Golden Calf; she barbecues it for lunch.

“And I used to say I grew organic marijuana and I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.

“I also said ‘I live on the periphery’ and ‘So little time, so little to do,’” he announced proudly.

Squeezing out the words with winces and grimaces, he sped on in spurts, “Judy Garland loved me. We met and she hugged me and I said, ‘This is the greatest embrace of pharmacopoeia in history.’

“Joe Kennedy loved me too. He leaned over to me once at Pavilion and said, ‘You know, you’re one of the only Jews I like.’”

The stories flowed like wine. “When Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe got married and Marilyn became Jewish, I said, ‘Now she’s kosher, he can eat her.’ And they took me off the air,” he crowed triumphantly.

“You didn’t see my show. I was brilliant on that show. It was after I had left all the mental hospitals, God, all the pills I took. . . .”

He continues in frantic free association, “Did you see Mick Jagger on the Cavett show? All that hollering and sybaritic dancing. He seemed overripe, priapic. Do you know what ‘priapic’ means? A continual state of erection. And it’s very. . . .” He begins to sing, “It’s very clear . . .” and trails off.

“I had quite a time in London in 1946. I was slightly priapic myself. There was a club . . . well, I laid every dame in the place—except a Jewish girl named Mimi. And she’d make café au lait. I was so impressed by her manners. A prostitute. You know what she said to me? ‘I suspect you of buttering your toast on both sides.’ So I told my analyst and he said, ‘Why didn’t you have an affair with her?’

“I couldn’t. I liked her.”

He was like some Lewis Carroll character who spoke in rhyme or riddle. His idioms were anecdotes and the songs he sang.

“My father was a great man,” he raced on nonstop, “he died very young. What of? I don’t want to say the word. It’s too terrible what he went through. I left it out of the book.

“My father told me a story once: A boy killed his mother and cut out her heart and the boy tripped and the heart said, ‘Did you hurt yourself, son?’

“My father told me that about my mother. It really bedeviled me,” he paused, looking pained.

“One of my sisters-in-law had the chutzpah to tell me that while my mother was carrying me, she tried to get rid of me during her pregnancy.” He looked at me, incredulous. “Isn’t that a helluva’ thing to tell a young boy?”

He continued compulsively, “Once I said to Bill Inge that September was the worst month because my mother died in September. But Inge said that August was the worst month because he went to Menninger’s and it was always empty in August. All the doctors were on vacation.”

He stood up shakily, sashed his robe and sat down, “You know I read a lot. This eye closes when I read and when I play the piano it stays open. Does my blinking bother you?” He looked suddenly concerned. “Is it pretty bad?”
June entered briefly. “She’s a terrific dame, terrific,” Oscar said soberly when she left. “She used to make her entrance to my act doing a cartwheel on a cane.”

Suddenly the old green eyes darted in my direction and he angrily erupted, pointing a fragile finger accusingly, “Why aren’t you taking notes? What’s the matter? Don’t you like my stories? These are terrific stories!”

Oy. Of course they were terrific. Although I’d read most of them. But what I wanted was something more personal than a performance. I replied that I loved the stories but that I wanted to hear more about him.

“These are about me!” he insisted.

Hmm. So I explained that he was one of the most special people I had ever met and I wanted very much to know him.

“Really?” he said in a small, surprised voice. And bravely battling gravity, he smiled. It was like watching salmon swim upstream. I melted.

“Help me into the den,” he said. “I want to play you something.”

He shuffled in and sat down at a piano, the top thickly thatched with old sheet music. “I can’t play too long,” he warned. “I’ve got arthritis in my back and Morton’s neuralgia in my feet and I’ve had this bacterial disease. . . .”

He opened a piece of music and smiled softly. It was like finding his first love. “I love songs more than anything,” he crooned quietly, almost to himself. Then he said hastily, “Half the keys don’t play,” and he began playing But Not For Me, confiding happily, “These are lyrics no one knows—the third verse.”

And in his robe and pajamas and a faltering falsetto, he sang softly, “It all began so well,/ But what an end./ This is the time a fella’/ Needs a friend./ He ain’t done right by Nell./ However, what the hell/ I guess he’s not for me.”

I’ve had more than my share of moments in my life, but this was one of the best. He savored it a second then snapped, “You know what Ira Gershwin said about me? Oscar is a masochist because he wants his cassock kissed.”

And then he disappeared into a mountain of sheet music, ferreting furiously, surfacing triumphant. “Look what I found!” he crowed, waving Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. He played it slowly, with “customary arthritic abandon.” “That’s one of the pieces I played the night my mother died. I haven’t played it in years.”

Frail, pale hands flying, slippers scurrying over the pedals, piano wires rattling; Oscar was in his heaven. Now all was right with the world.

Music was the miracle drug, a magical time machine; the tremors and blinking disappeared, his ailments vanished. Radiant and rapturous in the arms of his music, he went from Prokofiev to Schoenberg like a madman in love.

At the front door, he asked timidly, “Is it okay if I kiss you good-bye? Just on the cheek,” he added properly. “I don’t have any designs you know.”

It was a sunny summer evening, Oscar peered outside, turned on the porch light and asked anxiously, “Can you see all right?” I was hooked.

The next day he left a message to call him. I phoned from a friend’s house and he asked for the number and called back; he’d remembered more stories he wanted me to take down.

Then he announced proudly, “My grandson came to visit me today—I kiss him. . . . Could I call you?” Assured he could, he sighed, “Well, I feel like I’ve found a friend. Thank you very much for listening to me.”

He phoned over the weekend and I was out, so he called my friend, sometimes two and three times a day, with tales of George Gershwin and Alexander Woollcott, Humphrey Bogart and “Paganinny,” as he pronounced it.

I called him Monday at two o’clock to confirm our visit at four. “Oh no,” he wailed urgently, “that’s too late, come over now. Give me ten minutes.”

Twenty minutes later, I rang the bell. June, who was just leaving, answered it. Oscar was upstairs resting after practicing the piano and she went up to get him.

“Oh God,” I heard June gasp over and over. I froze. Well rehearsed after thirty years, she called the emergency squad. “Come right away, there’s something wrong with my husband. I think he’s dead.”

I went upstairs. June was standing in the hall trembling. “He had a towel over his face,” she stammered. “He covers his head with a towel because he always sweats after practicing. I thought he was taking a nap.”

He was lying in bed, waxen hands across his chest, flanked by a battery of pill bottles. The faded green eyes were locked wide ahead. His mouth was stretched taut and open in a soundless, outraged scream.

I had never seen anyone dead before. In the movies someone always feels for a pulse, so I felt for his pulse. My heart was beating so hard I could only feel my own.

I couldn’t believe it. The man who was constantly terrified death would arrive before you did was dead. I always thought he was kidding. We had always mourned him. He’d devoted his life to dying—he would die forever.

We were going to be buddies. I was looking forward to a siege of phone calls, an assault of anecdotes. I had been dreaming of afternoon visits and talks, listening to him practice in the late-day sun with the keys that didn’t play and the piano wires that rattled and Gershwin and Berlin and Schoenberg. . . . I was going to be his friend.

Now he lay there like a furious old bird. Shot down quietly on a summer afternoon, with no fanfare or glory, no grand farewell; he died in bed with a towel on his head, his slippers off and his pajamas on.

For a man who spent his life dreading it, death seemed cruelly anticlimactic.

“What is—what was the man’s name, Miss?” asked the young policeman routinely filling out his forms.

“Oscar Levant,” I said.

He showed no signs of recognition. A tourist bus glided by on its guide to movie stars’ homes.

“The poor thing,” June whispered as they carried him out.

BLOGGER'S OBSERVATIONS. First of all, hurray - I never thought I would see this piece in its entirety, though I hunted for it for years. It was paraphrased in the Levant bio A Talent for Genius, but I realize now that some key details were left out. I think I have an idea why.

Candice Bergen obviously could have had her choice of professions, given the lurid and loving way this piece is written. She spares no details about how macabre a presence Levant was at only 65, and yet, the unique charm and sweetness dwells deep even in a thoroughly wrecked and prematurely old man.

There were surprises in this piece, but not many.  No surprise that June Levant was a bit of a drill sergeant who probably arranged every detail of the last fifteen years of his life, but a rude surprise in that his death wasn't at all what I thought. Reading the bio A Talent for Genius, the authors seemed to be implying he lay down for a nice little nap, and then peacefully died. It wasn't that way at all, obviously. 

The details Bergen sets down are brutal - I won't repeat them, because I can't. He died with a look of horror on his face, like he had been struck by lightning. The great conductor Leonard Bernstein, another tortured artist who had a sort of running feud with Oscar, was wasting away from cancer and emphesema, when suddenly one day his whole body stiffened, and he shouted, "WHAT IS THIS?" - and died.

Death came calling, and instead of stealing away with him or bearing him up on gauzy wings, it shoved him hard and knocked him over. Both of them, really, were just bucked off. And yet, their deaths matched their tormented, unhealthy, driven lives, both men paradoxically attracting doggedly loyal, loving support right to the end.

I am pretty sure the description of his death in the biography was watered down for a reason. It was written with a lot of input from June Levant, and though most of it is vivid and detailed, there's a hard sort of shellac over some of it. A veil was drawn over that harrowing face, perhaps in deference to her. I don't mean to be too hard on Mrs. Oscar, who obviously had a formidable task in looking after her husband in his prematurely invalid state. But I also believe she had a role in pushing him out into the spotlight on late night TV and quiz shows, where he looked so gruesomely awful that his old friends could barely suppress gasps of horror when they saw him. It could be argued he wanted and needed the stimulation, but at that point he seemed hardly of this world any more: a somnambulist, a walking ghost. 

The authors use ghostly images to describe Levant again and again in the biography: "a spectral presence", "wraith", "shade", and so on. Candice Bergen lays it on very thick, perhaps TOO thick in places. And what killed him? He was a four-pack-a-day smoker and drank up to 40 cups of coffee a day, supposedly did not drink, but sucked up copious quantities of Demerol and any other painkillers he could lay hands on, finally just gobbling whatever pills his "friends" brought over when they visited, even birth control pills. It takes a toll. But like Bernstein, he also wore himself out from the inside. One day, the heart too frail for living just stopped, and he was unceremoniously kicked off the mad ride that had been his life. 
 

BLOGGER'S NOTE. This is a repeat, but it's one I particularly like. It took me years to track down this article, which until that point I had only seen excerpts of. It is both tender and macabre, which kind of describes its subject. Rest in peace, Oscar. You deserve to.

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NASTY SWEARING SQUIRREL disrupts the neighborhood!

I have never been sure WHY squirrels do this, as it's never obvious what the threat is. I'd say it's territorial, but this isn't the time of year for defending babies. There is plenty of food in the yard from all our bird feeders, which they constantly drain. The babies were sort of weedy this year, and the adults don't look so good, smaller, with thin tails, and a lot of fur missing. The huge cedar tree in our back yard is a sort of high-rise apartment tower for birthing and raising their young, and we often see pregnant or nursing squirrels. 

Though the ubiquitous blacks aren't very cute this year, the greys with their sweet faces, white tummies and big, fat, puffy silver tails are much nicer-looking, but very rare. In fact, everywhere we've lived, greys are much more rare and look totally different, plumper and prettier.  But I have read in many places that the blacks turn INTO the greys. This makes no sense at all, as they are so physically different, and we do not ever see an interim stage as we do with mallards, where the males "fledge" over a period of months. 

These days the smaller red squirrels are even more rare. With those, you mainly hear a short, sharp bark that can go on forever. Only once I saw one on the back fence, flapping its  tail violently and swearing away, but sounding more like a distressed bird (which I thought it was, initially) than any kind of squirrel. These I very rarely see in the back yard, but when we go on our trail-walks they will approach us fairly timidly, hesitantly, as if hoping for food. 

Even as I write this, I hear yet more swearing in the back yard. What is going on here??

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PULCINELLA: Stravinsky, chagrin d'amour, and CLOWNS!🤡

 

Pulcinella is a ballet by Igor Stravinsky based on an 18th-century play—Pulcinella is a character originating from Commedia dell'arte. The ballet premiered at the Paris Opera on 15 May 1920 under the baton of Ernest Ansermet. The dancer Léonide Massine created both the libretto and choreography, and Pablo Picasso designed the original costumes and sets. It was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev.

OK, enough Wikipedia (and I only use it because I'm too lazy to put it in my own words). This video is hardly the ideal Pulcinella, but the ideal Pulcinella may exist only in my own mind. It was one of the recordings I grew up with, and we played the spots off it, mainly because my father was on a Stravinsky kick and wanted to hear everything he ever wrote. I remember the music vividly, but not the conductor, the orchestra or the record label (else I might be able to track down a reissue).

As a kid, I suppose I knew a little bit about the ballet, something about clowns jumping around in those white outfits they wear in Europe, but of course I had never seen it. I still haven't seen it. I've never even heard a live performance of the whole work, only the ubiquitous suite. But always I had an echo in my brain of that first recording. I own five Pulcinellas now, and I don't listen to any of them because that first one spoiled me for anything else.

Why? The voices. The three singers, tenor, baritone and mezzo-soprano, are the spirit of the piece, and all too often they sound wooden, as if they just don't get it and are only singing the notes. The piece has to be conducted with a certain irony and even satire, a sour edge contrasting with lamb-gambolling sweetness. The music is often at odds with the odd-sounding words, which in fact have nothing to do with Pulcinella and the commedia dell'arte. The words are more like medieval sonnets about thwarted love. And yet they are splashed against this odd rococo backdrop, this motley set painted by Picasso.

There were a few Pulcinellas on YouTube, and a while ago I tried to find a good one. There is a rare performance of the ballet, but it's chopped up into 10-minute pieces. A more complete one exists, but someone has recorded it with atrocious sound distortion, as if they didn't even notice the music. What is the matter with people today??? I doubt if I will ever find the perfect combination, and besides, all those clowns jumping around is distracting when I would rather concentrate on the melancholy sweetness of the music.

Anyway, it took a hell of a long time to find a translation of the Italian words, and it wasn't on the internet either, but on a set of CD liner notes, with type so small you had to take a magnifiying glass to it. It had the Italian on one side and the English on the other, like a menu.(I once bought Coles notes for a Chaucer class, and it was the same deal) I had to transcribe the words line by line, and it took a while. I thought I posted something about it already, after all that work, but I can't find it. If this is repetitious, please forgive me.

Since I decided against the ballet version, which in fact was pretty silly, I had to make a few (gulp) gifs to fill the gap. I was trying to get something across which, as usual, I didn't quite. When you look up pulcinella, you get punchinello, a nasty little creature in a Milky the Clown-style puffy white suit, a conical hat and a nasty bird-beak. He's menacing, is what he is. He'd scare little children. But wasn't the commedia the thing that brought us Punch and Judy? Maybe they called it something else back then.

Pulcinella  

by Igor Stravinsky

(Tenor)

While on the grass

the lamb grazes

alone, alone

the shepherdess

amid the green leaves

through the forest

goes singing.

(Soprano)

Content perhaps to live

In my torment I might be

If I ever could believe

That, still far away, you were

Faithful to my love,

Faithful to this heart.

(Bass)

With these little words

So sweet

You rend my heart

To the depths.

Fair one, stay here,

Since if you say more

I must die.

With such sweet

Little words

You rend my heart

I shall die, I shall die.

(Soprano, tenor, bass)

I hear say there is no peace

I hear say there is no heart,

For you, ah, no, never,

There is no peace for you.

(Tenor)

Whoever says that a woman

Is more cunning than the Devil

Tells the truth.

(Soprano, tenor)

There are some women

Who care for none

And keep a hundred on a leash,

A shabby trick,

And have so many wiles

That none can count them.

One pretends to be innocent

And is cunning,

Another seems all modesty

Yet seeks a husband.

One clings to a man

And has so many wiles

That none can count them,

None can number them.

(Tenor)

One pretends to be innocent

And is, and is cunning

Another seems all modesty

Yet seeks a husband,

There are some

Who care, listen, for none.

Who cling to a man

And who flirt with another

And have a hundred on a leash

A shabby trick,

And have so many wiles

That none can count them.

(Soprano)

If you love me, if you sigh

For me alone, gentle shepherd,

I have pain in your suffering,

I have pleasure in your love,

But if you think that you alone

I should love in return,

Shepherd, you are easily

To be deceived.

A fair red rose

Today Silvia picks,

But pleading its thorn

Tomorrow she spurns it.

But the plans of men

I will not follow.

Because the lily pleases me,

I will not spurn other flowers.

(Soprano, tenor, bass)

Sweet eyes, bright with love,

For you my heart languishes.

BLOGGER"S NOTE! This is a summer repeat from something I posted in 2014. I received so many cool comments from people over the years, including one that I got just today! So I'm re-posting them here.

11 comments:

Unknown August 6, 2021 at 1:40 PM

Thankyou so much for your wonderful online posting that I found when searching for lyrics to Stravinsky's Pulcinella. Wherever you are at present...I hope you might access the BBC audio broadcast from London's Royal Albert Hall tonight (6th August 2021) ...part of the Promenade Concert Series. I've been listening at home in Somerset, England on a digital radio...but searching on my laptop for something audiovisual. Your series of dancing clown 'clips' completed my understanding of the spirit of this piece. 

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Margaret Gunning August 6, 2021 at 3:44 PM

Thank you so much! I'd forgotten I posted this SEVEN years ago - my formatting wasn't so hot then (I'll try to fix it!). I no longer run ads for my novels either! I may be able to pick up the concert on YouTube, maybe after the fact. I've seen some of the Proms videos before, my favorite being the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony. Glad you enjoyed this blast from the past!

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WanderMonkey January 31, 2022 at 6:26 PM

Many thanks for posting the lyrics. When I was younger, I preferred the suite version, with no singing. But now well into middle age, and become more fascinated with the Commedia Dell'arte, I have a much bigger appreciation for the full ballet and its plot. But I still don't know Italian, so this is very useful!
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Margaret GunningJanuary 31, 2022 at 8:00 PM

Pulcinella was part of the background music of my youth. Though I was raised with (so-called) "classical" music, my Dad's taste in recordings was eclectic, and included the "modern stuff" (Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Barber, Shostakovich, and even Gershwin) which many of his confreres disdained. When we first listened to this work, we all laughed at the second-to-last movement with its goofy trombone-slides and double-bass stretches played in the highest register, an earthy and clownish effect. Stravinsky runs the gamut, as far as I am concerned, and can be tender, satiric, eccentric, mercurial, savage, and very funny. His Ragtime piece makes me laugh out loud, for some reason, maybe because it sounds so dire! Thank you for taking me back to this nearly-forgotten post.

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AnonymousOctober 3, 2022 at 5:12 AM

Thank you for the info! 

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Margaret GunningOctober 3, 2022 at 10:19 AM

You're welcome! I may re-publish this one some time, as I sometimes do, given the fact I've kept this blog going for TWELVE years now - and if I don't remember the piece, no one else will either. It pays to recycle!

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Joe Cooke December 6, 2023 at 3:06 PM

I learned about Igor Stravinsky by reading a book by Aaron Copland. The first piece I heard was the Rite of Spring, but I found that I preferred Petrushka and Firebird. I realized then that Stravinsky was constantly re-inventing himself and always trying new things. I got interested in his neoclassical period through Capriccio. Later I heard the Serenade, which I eventually got in score, for study. Pulcinella was something I added to my Spotify playlist. I'd heard it before, but moved past it for the Symphony of Psalms. I just watched Pulcinella on YouTube. The one I watched was: Basler Ballett, Academa of St. Martin in the Fields, cond. Sir Neville Marriner, choreography Heinz Spoerli Vers. 1980. It was magnificent! It makes much more sense to me as a ballet, because that's what the music was written for. Stravinsky's preference for orchestral versions seems to derive from the disastrous debut of the Rite, but he wrote beautifully, and from the heart, for the ballet, and knowing that, I find I appreciate his work so much more.

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Margaret Gunning December 7, 2023 at 11:59 AM

Thank you for your comments! It delights me to see that people are finding this post after nearly ten years. I'll be looking up that video for sure.


Christina HilaSeptember 8, 2024 at 7:28 PM

In July 2024 I saw an orchestral and voice performance of Pulcinella at Lincoln Center, NY. I love Stravinsky and his ballets and was privileged to see him conduct in person in Italy in 1962. I had never heard more than the first piece of Pulcinella. I was, however, disturbed by the English translation . I felt that it did not express the sarcasm and tongue and cheek which is so essential to the Commedia dell’arte. Perhaps the ballet would express it better. It was fun however that the Philharmonic did the piece.

Margaret Gunning September 9, 2024 at 11:07 AM

Wow, you're really fortunate you got to see him! We had an album of just the suite in the 1960s and played the grooves off it. I never had any idea what the words meant, but I noticed some oddities. There did seem to be some clever verbal twists in it, such as:
Mentre l’erbetta
pasce l’agnella,
pasce l’agnella
To me, "pasce agnella" sounded a lot like "Pulcinella", so I wondered if it was a clever Stravinskyan pun.
Then there was this:
tra fresche frasche
per la foresta
cantando va.
tra fresche frasche
cantando va
per la foresta
cantando va
cantando va
cantando va
Oh, surely this repeating and repeating of "la fresche frasche" was meant to be satiric, as it sounded like "music/shmusic" or some such clever pun. "Cantando va" sounds a bit silly when sung over and over again.
I am sure any translation would be inadequate, as musical jokes don't translate that well, but I surely see some sly in-jokes here and there. I still love that clownish, almost cartoonish passage towards the end with the sliding trombones, before that incredible final chorus with all the singers, which actually makes me cry.
I'm far from a musicologist, but as a child I was saturated in "classical" music. I did get to hear and see Leonard Bernstein in 1967 (first performance at Centennial Hall - I remember every part of it!), and at some point I saw and heard George Szell, but he didn't interest me too much and I called him George Sizzle. But then, I was something like ten years old!

Margaret Gunning September 9, 2024 at 3:01 PM

I just thought of another one that always struck me as funny:
Bella, restate qua,
restate qua,
ché se pit dite appresso,
se dite, dite appresso,
io cesso moriro,
cesso moriro, moriro, etc.
These lines are full of the playful repetition that makes the words sound kind of silly. I particularly like the "etc." here, and the "moriro, moriro, moriro, moriro" ("I will die, I will die, I will die, I will die") is sung in a jaunty, cheerful way!

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