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Thursday, December 24, 2015
Gershwin plays Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (solo piano)
As is so often the case, I appear to have come full circle.
I was on an obsessive George-trek some time ago, when it was aborted by someone's astonishingly insensitive remarks. Seldom in my life have I ever had the rug so nastily pulled out from under me by someone who used to (I thought) support me.
He has set himself up as the head of a Spiritualist church in a tiny community on the Island, grabbing the crown and putting it on his own head like some small-minded backwater Napoleon. Since he got into all that, he seems to believe my own psychic experiences (which I used to feel safe to share with him) are, at best, suspect, and at worst, completely fraudulent.
It all just died away then, seemed to end forever, and there was nothing I could do about it but move on.
And then.
Love walked in.
I have had an on-again-off-again relationship with spiritualism for my whole life, but I approach it in a slightly different way from the blue-haired dowagers sitting around the table with the wee-gee board. I don't believe in "calling" spirits or summoning them or telling them to do anything at all. I don't feel haunted, and I am not at all, one bit, afraid of being taken over by evil spirits. No. It has never been like that with me.
I have had any number of things happen to me which, if you classified them, would have to be filed under "psychic experiences". Many came soon after someone's passing, either someone I knew or knew of. Sometimes, what I perceived turned out to be of some comfort to those who were left behind. I never offered those insights, if that's what they were, unless the situation felt right, unless I sensed some receptiveness and thought it actually might do some good.
THAT is what this is all about, sharing your perceptions in order to help others, not hanging out a shingle or starting an insular little church and making yourself the head of it. And yet, the message I was receiving from this psychic despot was, no, Margaret, what you're receiving can't possibly be authentic. The main reason being, I "don't know enough about it", am a rank amateur who shouldn't even go near this subject, and need to go get an advanced degree from his little University of Evil.
Never mind, I'm getting carried away.
I do feel presences, cannot prove or disprove them, but who cares when it feels like this? This one, when he does come around, just sends me swooning, the vibe is so wonderful. I ask myself, who am I to be perceiving this? Then again. Why not, when I am willing to leave that door open and see what happens, with neither expectation nor fear?
I have never "seen" George, but lots of people have. There are any number of curious anecdotes about his sudden, startling appearances. He never got to complete his work, had barely started on the mature works which surely would have grown in richness and complexity. But it was more than that. Towards the end of his short life, he was known to ask out loud, "Why can't I fall in love?" It was hard for him to be profoundly close to another human being. His brother Ira probably came closest.
With this restlessness, this odd loneliness amidst the adulation of millions, then the sudden cutting down of a life not even yet in full flower - it's a combination which might, if you do believe in such things, lead a person to want to hang around on this earth even after they have "passed".
The sightings aren't usually macabre or scary, though they can be startling. Mostly it's playful and a little wicked, the pranks of a little boy who never grew up. He can be walking down the street in that hurried head-down way, sitting at a player piano with his own music coming out of it, or in his workroom smiling and waving while his poor brother Ira nearly has a heart attack from terror.
When he walked back in recently, just completely spontaneously - I can't really describe the feeling. I don't have the words. An astonishing rush of rapture, a sweetness, a dearness, a - . I'll never get close, damn it - how I wish I could describe it! I can see why people loved him the way they did.
I just listened to HIS version of Rhapsody in Blue and laughed all the way through it - yes, laughed. That little circular riff in the Andante, the three notes played over and over, sounds more like a slightly lopsided triangle when he plays it, the rhythm a little tipsy so that it becomes so much more quirkily wonderful. But you can't write that kind of thing down.
People try to define genius in all sorts of different ways. "Why didn't anyone think of that before?" It's so simple! But no one did. And yet, and yet - works of genius appear to have always been there. It's a great paradox.
Gershwin knew he was a genius and spoke almost modestly of it, with that strange arrogant self-effacement that was his trademark. In fact, he had all the modesty of a brilliant eight-year-old who is constantly being told how smart he is. That level of smart is loneliness itself, because there is simply no one else on your level. And yet, for all his warmth and loveableness, he was unattainable, unavailable to people. That inaccessible core found expression only in the music.
They're writing songs of love, but not for me.
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Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Messing with your mind: Victorian Christmas cards
The Victorians had kind of an odd sense of what was festive. Large jellyfish suspended in mid-air seemed like an unusual choice. Not sure what the child (dressed very strangely) is doing. Or is he/she perhaps underwater?
Now, here is the true Spirit of Christmas: a child taking a savage beating from Father Christmas. Or maybe this is our good friend Belsnickel! Didn't he used to tie kids to trees?
The Victorians loved anthro - anthropo -anthropomor - oh screw it, birds that looked like people. To me, this is remeniscent of Hieronymus Bosch and his bird-headed demons in Hell, but at least these guys are decently dressed.
Cards with dead birds on them. These just kept showing up. I don't think you'd send a card like this now, except maybe to a cat.
This looks kind of like a human dung beetle. I hope he doesn't have to go to the bathroom any time soon.
For some reason this reminds me of Terry Gilliam.
Merry Molluscs to All! And a loaded New Year.
This one is handsome, if oddly Satanic. Maybe it's the hornlike ears.
It seems that terrified children have always been part of the Yuletide scene. We've covered this in a previous post: Belsnickel and his terrifying sidekick, Krampus, but I really think this is a little extreme for Christmas. And why is he driving a car?
Now this is my favorite. It would make me scream out loud! I am not sure how this (and it looks a bit like a coaster for a drink) would convey The Compliments of the Season, but it must have, or nobody would have sent it.
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I can't BELIEVE I used to watch this. . .
Does humiliation ever have an end? I used to watch this show slavishly, loved it, in fact, even while I had a sneaking feeling it was the worst dreck I'd ever seen. And now I know! My kids were teenagers then and made horrible fun of it, calling it "Buddy and the Buh". I've tried to watch bits of the thousand or so episodes that are now posted on YouTube, but I can't. Something always stops me. (Good sense? Sanity? Taste?) I do remember, for it was on Friday night, which is a magical time already (is it not?), drinking a gallon of peach cider and weeping because Real Life Should Be Like This, and isn't. I'd get pretty soused and pretty self-pitying. I no longer drink, at all, because I've since come to realize it plays crazy-eights with my brain (all that Irish DNA, no doubt). And I don't think I'd watch a show like this, of which even the introduction is smarmier than smarmy. But in a cringeworthy sort of way, and as a big chunk of Gorgonzola-like nostalgia, it's almost a little bit fun.
At the end of Season 2, ratings were beginning to slip. Even the most ardent 70-year-old woman was beginning to find the show too predictable. Also, I think people came to realize that Ron Perlman wasn't the handsome hunk they assumed he was (which see, below).
So. . . in a bold ratings grab, the producers decided to have Katherine and Vincent finally Come Together. This had a Thorn Birds effect and drove the final nail into the Nielsen coffin. (The Big Bang Theory recently did the same by having Amy and Sheldon have "coitus". The idea so sickens me that I haven't even watched the episode on my DVR.) From this point on, BATB plummeted in more than just ratings. Unresolved sexual tension between Katherine and Vincent (who had an awfully low libido for a beast) was the only thing holding the whole preposterous mess together. But this montage from the "sex scene" is the most ludicrous moment of all, accompanied by someone singing a syrupy version of the theme music.
Does any of this have anything to do with sex? You tell me. Sliding your hands together in slo-mo, then pulling them apart again, must be symbolic of Something Else. At least Rachel Ward and Richard Chamberlain (who is resolutely gay) got to run along the beach in The Thorn Birds before collapsing into bed. I do wonder how that whole rose-blooming/ball of flame stuff would play now, almost 30 years later: to me, it's kind of like that famous Monty Python montage with the collapsing tower.
Ay-ay-ay! The entire show self-destructs in one scene. Katherine then has Vincent's fuzzy little baby, which predictably gets lost in the dense labyrinth. Whether "above" or "below", I don't know or care. Then she is killed off and the show has to limp along without her. Linda Hamilton, following the trend of many an actor in a successful series, wanted out of her contract, certain her career would explode without it - followed by the inevitable return to obscurity and deep-dish unemployment.
This commentary by Christopher L. Bennett kind of sums the whole thing up:
Anyway, the second season ended with a cliffhanger where Vincent was lost in his rage and Catherine went in to try to help him, and in the third season premiere, that “help” evidently consists of the physical intimacy the show aggressively avoided until now. Although the avoidance is still intact, because their “love scene” is in the form of a hilariously cheesy video montage of blooming roses and explosions and hands clasping, with the song version of the main title theme playing over it. This cheesy montage has two effects: One, it gets Catherine pregnant, and two, it breaks their empathic bond so that Vincent can’t find her and save her when Gabriel abducts her (before she can tell Vincent about the child). But Gabriel learns of Vincent and wants to possess his child, keeping Catherine alive until she delivers and then killing her, with Vincent just too late to save her. The show remains intensely euphemistic about sex even in her dying words to Vincent: “We loved. There is a child.” Christopher L. Bennett
So Katherine had to TELL him they had done the nasty. Good grief: didn't Vincent even remember his one opportunity to make the beast? This show was even sadder than I remember.
P. S. TOTALLY looks like Will Ferrell's uglier brother.
P. S. TOTALLY looks like Will Ferrell's uglier brother.
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Monday, December 21, 2015
25 Words That Are Their Own Opposites
25 Words That Are Their Own Opposites
Judith B Herman
filed under: Words
IMAGE CREDIT:
ISTOCK
Here’s an ambiguous sentence for you: “Because of the agency’s oversight, the corporation’s behavior was sanctioned.” Does that mean, 'Because the agency oversaw the company’s behavior, they imposed a penalty for some transgression' or does it mean, 'Because the agency was inattentive, they overlooked the misbehavior and gave it their approval by default'? We’ve stumbled into the looking-glass world of “contronyms”—words that are their own antonyms.
1. Sanction (via French, from Latin sanctio(n-), from sancire ‘ratify,’) can mean ‘give official permission or approval for (an action)’ or conversely, ‘impose a penalty on.’
2. Oversight is the noun form of two verbs with contrary meanings, “oversee” and “overlook.” “Oversee,” from Old English ofersēon ‘look at from above,’ means ‘supervise’ (medieval Latin for the same thing: super- ‘over’ + videre ‘to see.’) “Overlook” usually means the opposite: ‘to fail to see or observe; to pass over without noticing; to disregard, ignore.’
3. Left can mean either remaining or departed. If the gentlemen have withdrawn to the drawing room for after-dinner cigars, who’s left? (The gentlemen have left and the ladies are left.)
4. Dust, along with the next two words, is a noun turned into a verb meaning either to add or to remove the thing in question. Only the context will tell you which it is. When you dust are you applying dust or removing it? It depends whether you’re dusting the crops or the furniture.
5. Seed can also go either way. If you seed the lawn you add seeds, but if you seed a tomato you remove them.
6. Stone is another verb to use with caution. You can stone some peaches, but please don’t stone your neighbor (even if he says he likes to get stoned).
7. Trim as a verb predates the noun, but it can also mean either adding or taking away. Arising from an Old English word meaning ‘to make firm or strong; to settle, arrange,’ “trim” came to mean ‘to prepare, make ready.’ Depending on who or what was being readied, it could mean either of two contradictory things: ‘to decorate something with ribbons, laces, or the like to give it a finished appearance’ or ‘to cut off the outgrowths or irregularities of.’ And the context doesn’t always make it clear. If you’re trimming the tree are you using tinsel or a chain saw?
8. Cleave can be cleaved into two “homographs,” words with different origins that end up spelled the same. “Cleave,” meaning ‘to cling to or adhere,’ comes from an Old English word that took the forms cleofian, clifian, or clīfan. “Cleave,” with the contrary meaning ‘to split or sever (something), ‘ as you might do with a cleaver, comes from a different Old English word, clēofan. The past participle has taken various forms: “cloven,” which survives in the phrase “cloven hoof,” “cleft,” as in a “cleft palate” or “cleaved.”
9. Resign works as a contronym in writing. This time we have homographs, but not homophones. “Resign,” meaning ‘to quit,’ is spelled the same as “resign,” meaning ‘to sign up again,’ but it’s pronounced differently.
10. Fast can mean "moving rapidly," as in "running fast," or ‘fixed, unmoving,’ as in "holding fast." If colors are fast they will not run. The meaning ‘firm, steadfast’ came first. The adverb took on the sense ‘strongly, vigorously,’ which evolved into ‘quickly,’ a meaning that spread to the adjective.
11. Off means ‘deactivated,’ as in "to turn off," but also ‘activated,’ as in "The alarm went off."
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12. Weather can mean ‘to withstand or come safely through,’ as in “The company weathered the recession,” or it can mean ‘to be worn away’: “The rock was weathered.”
14. Help means ‘assist,’ unless you can’t help doing something, when it means ‘prevent.’
15. Clip can mean "to bind together" or "to separate." You clip sheets of paper to together or separate part of a page by clipping something out. Clip is a pair of homographs, words with different origins spelled the same. Old English clyppan, which means "to clasp with the arms, embrace, hug," led to our current meaning, "to hold together with a clasp." The other clip, "to cut or snip (a part) away," is from Old Norse klippa, which may come from the sound of a shears.
16. Continue usually means to persist in doing something, but as a legal term it means stop a proceeding temporarily.
17. Fight with can be interpreted three ways. “He fought with his mother-in-law” could mean "They argued," "They served together in the war," or "He used the old battle-ax as a weapon." (Thanks to linguistics professor Robert Hertz for this idea.)
18. Flog, meaning "to punish by caning or whipping," shows up in school slang of the 17th century, but now it can have the contrary meaning, "to promote persistently," as in “flogging a new book.” Perhaps that meaning arose from the sense ‘to urge (a horse, etc.) forward by whipping,’ which grew out of the earliest meaning.
19. Go means "to proceed," but also "give out or fail," i.e., “This car could really go until it started to go.”
20. Hold up can mean "to support" or "to hinder": “What a friend! When I’m struggling to get on my feet, he’s always there to hold me up.”
21. Out can mean "visible" or "invisible." For example, “It’s a good thing the full moon was out when the lights went out.”
22. Out of means "outside" or "inside": “I hardly get out of the house because I work out of my home.”
23. Bitch, as reader Shawn Ravenfire pointed out, can derisively refer to a woman who is considered overly aggressive or domineering, or it can refer to someone passive or submissive.
24. Peer is a person of equal status (as in a jury of one’s peers), but some peers are more equal than others, like the members of the peerage, the British or Irish nobility.
25. Toss out could be either "to suggest" or "to discard": “I decided to toss out the idea.”
The contronym (also spelled “contranym”) goes by many names, including “auto-antonym,” “antagonym,” “enantiodrome,” “self-antonym,” “antilogy” and “Janus word” (from the Roman god of beginnings and endings, often depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions). Can’t get enough of them? The folks at Daily Writing Tips have rounded up even more.
One of these things is not like the other
While playing around with the article on contranyms (which is a word with two opposite or contradictory meanings), I found a lot of interesting images. Many, like the Word Hippo, were obviously meant to teach grammar and vocabulary to young children. But I noticed an interesting thing here. Many of the images don't reflect up-to-date attitudes - but do the educators even realize that, or notice it?
These pictures each have two images on them, and they are meant to portray or at least illustrate words which have opposite meanings. I'm the first to say that gender is gender, except that it's not any more (does the name Kaitlyn Jenner mean anything to you?). So how can "girl" and "boy" be opposites, which they are supposed to be in this illustration? This is hairsplitting, but maybe not: the boy is looking at, maybe staring at the girl, who looks glassy-eyed and stares straight ahead.
"Brave" seems to mean "nasty" in this picture. "Cowardly" is either "afraid" or "startled", which would be pretty natural if a nasty old bird was waving his nasty old wings at you with a mean, angry expression on his face. Neither one of these illustrations is representative of the actual word. Like the rest of us, kids pick up about 80% of their knowledge from visual images. This may be picky, or maybe not: the bird is pink and looks like a female. Cowardly?
This one is pretty loaded with cultural significance, too. "Beautiful" is depicted by an obviously female, pink primping bird, wearing June Cleaver pearls and a bow on her head. This is the most stereotypical view of beauty I have ever seen, since the word can mean so many things. "Ugly" can also mean many things, but an angry-looking bird with ruffled feathers and scars may have just won a cage match with a predator. I'd put him in the "brave" category, myself. But don't we always try to teach children that beauty comes from the inside? My vote goes to the guy on the right. (Again,note the very obvious gender split.)
And THIS is loaded in so many ways, I don't know where to start. "Strong" means "on steroids", apparently, as pumped-up as Schwarzenegger in the 1970s. The musclebound guy is on top, of course - where else would he be? - and looks fierce and smug at the same time, with those angry black eyebrows, the same ones that show up on those "brave" and "ugly" male birds. And his eyes look like two black holes.
I feel sorry for "Weak". His head is flat, for one thing, but he looks scared and almost apologetic. He's ashamed of his body because it makes him "weak", at least relative to the strong guy. But it's what's inside that counts, isn't it?
But this one REALLY bugs me. "Young" is not only looking in the opposite direction of "Old" - she's pointing that way. "Old" is sort of looking that way too, but her arms are as crooked as Grandpa McCoy's, her whole body looking bent and rickety. Her hair is in a grey '80s perm and she wears black-rimmed, unfashionable glasses and a dull-maroon, biblike thing, perhaps to shield her from dribbling. I HATE portrayals of people my age - yes, my age - that look like this, just as I loathe the phrase "little old lady", which no one else seems to object to.
You might say I'm nitpicking. I can hear the "oh, come ON"s from here, the "can't we say anything these days?" - but added all together, there's something happening here. A subtle or not-so-subtle prejudice is coming through. These "things"/people are NOT "opposites" and don't portray opposites, but that's what kids are being taught. Visual images shoot right to the back of the brain and stick there. Cowardly, ugly, weak, old - not very desirable states, not according to these images anyway. The only totally positive one is the opposite of "girl", which is, of course, "boy". The unspoken assumption here is that we should all want to be one of those.
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