The Glass Character

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Caitlin's Test Kitchen: MICROWAVE MUG CAKE!

Time travel: theory or fact? Here's the proof

Could it be? Or have I been watching too much of the Big Bang Theory and Sheldon's endless theorizing about the possibility of time travel?

I have - maybe you've noticed - this little habit of making gifs out of YouTube videos - the shorter the better (which is why some of the gorgeous ones I made tonight wouldn't post - they were probably way too long). I found some stunning footage taken in London around 1900, in an era where the horse was the main mode of transportation, women wore corsets and skirts to the ground, and men were always properly attired in dark suits, overcoats and bowler hats (top hats for more formal occasions).

The uniformity of dress is one of the more remarkable aspects of these tiny visual time machines (along with the eerie three-dimensional quality of the ancient film: how did they ever achieve such an effect, or was it somehow pulled out of the depths of the antique silver nitrate by digital restoration and HD?). The aspect of the people, their facial expressions and formal bodily postures, reveal how very different these times were. Again and again I see women wearing a sort of uniform: a white blouse, often with puffy sleeves,which they called a shirtwaist, and a long dark skirt. The waist is so small that it's plain it didn't get that way on its own. Hair is piled atop the head with pins, and going without a hat is simply unthinkable.

Men are similarly hatted. Even poor blokes could afford an old battered one. A straw boater didn't cost you much, did it? To go about hatless - well, it was simply disrespectful, almost criminal. At the very least, it was suspicious.

As this three-second snippet of time on Blackfriars Bridge (first gif) endlessly repeats itself, we see carriages going by in a kind of dreamy haze, and people walking along the bridge - a woman all in black, a widow perhaps, walking in that stiff-spined way corseted women were forced to walk. Behind her is a couple so properly attired that they could have been cut out of a magazine.

But who's this out front? Who's this bloke, not very visible at first because he's walking beside the carriage (wagon?) - the one pulling his left hand out of his pocket and looking right at the camera (bloody sauce!)? He's wearing a fine enough coat, and he walks as if he owns the bridge, with a sort of swaggering stride.

Where's he going, then, that he should be walking (hatless!) with such an important air? Who does he think he is?

I'll tell you who *I* think he is.

He is not of his time.

He's from Somewhere Else. More specifically, he's from Now. Whether he projected himself into the past (meaning he's in two places at once: hey, quantum physics tells us it's a cinch, and the saints have been managing it for centuries) or just jumped, bodily, with his whole being, I KNOW this guy did not belong in Edwardian England striding, bareheaded and insouciant, across Blackfriars bloody Bridge back in 1896.

Looking more closely - and it's too bad I can't get a tight closeup of such a grainy figure - it may be that he isn't even wearing a tie. No one went without a tie unless they were in hospital - in a lunatic asylum, I mean. He just sort of flaps along without a care, so informal as to alarm the passersby.

If you plucked out any of the other figures and plunked them down in modern society, we'd think, oh, how lovely, there must be an Edwardian exhibition at the museum. Or something. If you plunked HIM down, no one would pay him any notice.

BECAUSE HE IS NOT OF HIS TIME.

He is not of 1896, he is of "now", which means that he knows things. Why do you think progress accelerated so wildly in the 20th century? Was it seeded by these blokes from the future (their future, I mean - this time shit is full of slippery concepts and paradox).

What shall we call him? Roger? How did he get back there? Is he from OUR future, when time travel really does exist? Why don't we see time travellers walking around in the here and now? The only ones I've ever met believe in conspiracy theories and wear hats made of tin foil.

Roger will ever remain a mystery, breezing along the bridge 117 years ago. Not one atom of him would remain - not in a normal time-line, I mean. In truth, Roger may be walking around right now. The other Roger, the parallel one? My brain aches - a drowsy numbness pains my sense - and it's definitely time to go to bed.

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

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

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Perez Hilton in the 16th century?

I've always loved Faure's Pavane, hadn't heard it in a long time, maybe even years. I knew there were two versions, the original orchestral setting and another with chorus. The first time I heard the less-often-performed choral version, I was shocked. Here were these two groups of singers, men and women, alternating lines, obviously singing of aching, longing, yearning, thwarted desire, mortality, grief, loss, and - well, that's what I thought for the longest time. It laid the piece bare, gave it a stunningly human voice and changed it for me forever.

There's something a little heavy and sad about the beauty of that chorus and the call-and-response structure of the song, reminding me of wilting roses and lilies in a hot room in which a pale dead girl lies in state. In her waterfall of black hair is a gardenia placed there by her lover, who sneaked into her bier at midnight in a last act of tender devotion before stabbing himself through the heart and (etc., etc., etc.).

Every once in a while I wondered what the words meant - but no I didn't, because I thought I knew already. "Observez la misere!" could only be "See, see what misery we are in!" "Mon coeur" was repeated and repeated: o, my heart! The way the sad elongated phrases were looped and draped upon the sombre, pensive melody was elegiac and even a bit funereal. Wasn't the meaning pretty obvious?

I also thought I knew the meaning of "pavane": surely it meant a threnody, a song of mourning. Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess seemed to be a potent example.

I have no idea why TODAY, when I was busy, when I had to make a milk-run trip in to Vancouver, when I spent the day kind of turning in circles and eating too much, why TODAY was the day I actively began to wonder what the lyrics meant. I wanted to do a particularly poetic post on it, illustrating those shining, tear-dripping, grief-stricken lines.

When I finally found a YouTube version I could live with, on perhaps the 19th or 20th try, I thought Wikipedia might give me some help on the meaning of the words. I was a little disappointed, nay, taken aback, to find out that the choral version was just an add-on to impress a girl:

Fauré composed the orchestral version at Le Vésinet in the summer of 1887.^[5] He envisaged a purely orchestral composition, using modest forces, to be played at a series of light summer concerts conducted by Jules Danbé.^[5] After Fauré opted to dedicate the work to his patron, Elisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe,^[6] he felt compelled to stage a grander affair and at her recommendation he added an invisible chorus to accompany the orchestra (with additional allowance for dancers). The choral lyrics were based on some inconsequential verses, à la Verlaine, on the romantic helplessness of man, which had been contributed by the Countess's cousin, Robert de Montesquiou.^[7]

Wiki was good enough to provide the French version of the lyrics, which looked so peculiar that at first I thought they must have made a mistake:

C'est Lindor, c'est Tircis et c'est tous nos vainqueurs!
C'est Myrtille, c'est Lydé! Les reines de nos coeurs!
Comme ils sont provocants! Comme ils sont fiers toujours!
Comme on ose régner sur nos sorts et nos jours!

Faites attention! Observez la mesure!

Ô la mortelle injure! La cadence est moins lente!
Et la chute plus sûre! Nous rabattrons bien leur caquets!
Nous serons bientôt leurs laquais!
Qu'ils sont laids! Chers minois!
Qu'ils sont fols! (Airs coquets!)

Et c'est toujours de même, et c'est ainsi toujours!
On s'adore! On se hait! On maudit ses amours!
Adieu Myrtille, Eglé, Chloé, démons moqueurs!
Adieu donc et bons jours aux tyrans de nos coeurs!
Et bons jours!

So where was all that grief, l'angoisse, wilting flowers, etc.? This just sounded like a bunch of people babbling, even gossiping. "Observez la mesure" merely meant "keep time", as in following an elaborate dance step. The pavane, far from being a song of mourning, turned out to be a formal, courtly dance from the 1500s:

The pavane, pavan, paven, pavin, pavian, pavine, or pavyn
(It. pavana, padovana; Ger. Paduana) is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century (Renaissance).

They couldn't even figure out how to spell it!

But it got even worse than that when I found the English translation.

It’s Lindor! it’s Tircis!

and all our conquerors!
It’s Myrtil! it’s Lydé! the queens of our hearts!
How provocative they are,
how forever proud!
How they dare reign over our destinies
and our lives!
Watch out! Keep to the measure!
O the mortal injury!
The cadence is not so slow!
And the fall more certain!
We’ll tone down their chatter!
Soon we’ll be their lackeys!
How ugly they are! Sweet faces!
How madcap they are! Coquettish airs!
And it’s always the same! And will be so
always!
They adore one another! They hate one another!
They curse their loves!
Farewell, Myrtil! Eglé! Chloe! Mocking demons!
Farewell and good days
to the tyrants of our hearts!

—Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac

(1855–1921)

Who's Lindor? Who's Tircis? Why this list of meaningless-sounding names? It begins to resemble some Perez Hilton screed about the latest tits-and-ass starlet, But it sounded so wonderful! It sighs, it even seethes a little. Bosoms heave, the men and women sing as across a huge gulf, the vast abyss separating male and female, etc. etc. But it's nothing like that at all.

Faure had a great tune and just needed a few verses; this Montesq-whatever knocked them out for a price. All calculated to please his "patron" the Countess, and if he wasn't boinking her I don't know who was, because this is just going to too much trouble for someone you're NOT boinking. And Faure was no fool - he knew full well that no one listens to the words anyway.