Alexander Scriabin

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I have been rereading David Lindsay's odd and fascinating novel “A Voyage to Arcturus” lately. There's a wonderful line in the first chapter, describing a society lady sitting slumped at the piano: “She had been playing Scriabin, and was overcome.”

 

 

I have Scriabin playing in the background right now as I write this. I wouldn't describe myself as “overcome,” but I'm enjoying it.

 

 

Alexander Scriabin was a Russian composer at the turn of the last century. He started as a Chopinesque romantic, but gradually became more and more experimental. His music is visionary and free-form; it's not atonal, but it has a harmonic vocabulary of its own. Scriabin gave his symphonies titles like “The Poem of Ecstasy” and “Prometheus: A Poem of Fire.” Two of his piano sonatas are “The White Mass” and “The Black Mass.” (How can you not love a fin-de-siecle composer who thinks the height of wickedness and fashion is a Black Mass?)

 

The piano music sighs up and down the keyboard in long almost-tonal arpeggios. Almost-melodies come and go. Bizarre insect-like trills interrupt the proceedings. The symphonic music is very heady: dark and rich like chocolate cake. Scriabin wanted fragrances pumped into the air supply of the concert hall, and colored lights, so that all of the senses would be involved. He wanted everything at once.

 

Wow! Overload!

 

Scriabin died in 1915 of an infection, supposedly from having cut himself while shaving.

 

The following is the second and final movement of Scriabin's fourth piano sonata. He wrote a poem to go with it: about a faint blue star which, when approached, becomes a gigantic sun, a “sun of triumph!”, which is engulfed by the one who loves it.

 

 

If you listen to it: don't let it overcome you.

 

Or – what the hell! Why not?

 

 

06_Sonata_no._4_Prestissimo_volando.wma Listen on Posterous

 

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Beefy is as beefy does

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I approached my work friend Apollonia's desk the other day, cautiously, as I always do. (I never know how she might react. Sometimes she throws things at me.) She was looking at her computer screen with rapt attention. “What is it?” I asked.

 

 

She looked up at me with dewy eyes. “Seals tossing the caber.”

 

 

“Harbor seals?” I asked. “Or Navy Seals?”

 

 

She giggled. “Navy Seals, naturally,” she said in a little-girl voice. (Apollonia and I share an appreciation for the same kind of men, which explains her caber-tossing fantasies.) “Arms are good on a man,” she said dreamily. “Shoulders. And you know what else? Backs.”

 

 

“Display,” I said. “It means: 'I'm big and strong. I can take care of you. I can protect you.'”

 

 

“Yeah,” Apollonia said. She looked thoughtful. “Whether or not it's true. Looks can be deceiving.”

 

 

In his book “Sociobiology,” E. O. Wilson says that just about all animal behavior, from coral organisms through social insects to crustaceans and monotremes and mammals and yours truly, has a biological basis. I vaguely remember a Time or Newsweek simplification of the theory from the 1970s: they took the old Charles Atlas cartoon of the scrawny guy and the bully on the beach and changed the dialogue. When the bully kicks sand on the scrawny guy and grabs the pretty girl, the word-balloon over his head reads: “My genes are good! Mate with me!”

 

 

But there are other urges. Apollonia, you will remember, has a Robert Pattinson fetish. Yes, Robert Pattinson, who looks as if he were made out of pipe cleaners and construction paper. This, I'd say, is more of a protective-mother thing. This probably also explains why I do not share Apollonia's depth of feeling for Robert Pattinson. I actually had the nerve to bring this up to her. “Robert Pattinson,” I said, “has neither arms, nor shoulders, nor back. And yet you love him. Why?”

 

 

She regarded me for a long time. “Oh, babe,” she said. “Those cheekbones. That chin.”

 

 

Gevalt!

 

 

Here, to clear your palate after thinking of the scrawny Pattinson, is a New York Magazine slideshow of the biggest biceps in this summer's movies. Chris Hemsworth, AKA Thor, is the clear winner of the contest.

 

 

He's big and strong, boys and girls. He can protect you.

 

 

But remember what Mother Apollonia says: looks can be deceiving.

 

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Sunday blog: Who is Sylvia?

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Today, May 8, is the birthday of my friend Sylvia. I have always loved her name. Shakespeare got a pretty good song out of it:

 

 

Who is Sylvia? What is she

that all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she;

the heaven such grace did lend her,

that she might admired be.

 

 

Is she wise as she is fair?

For beauty lives with kindness.

Love doth to her eyes repair,

to help him of his blindness,

and, being helped, inhabits there.

 

 

Then to Sylvia let us sing,

that Sylvia is excelling;

she excels each mortal thing

upon the dull earth dwelling:

to her garlands let us bring.

 

 

And now listen to what Schubert (and the great Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) did with it!

 

14_Gesang_(An_Silvia),_D891.wma Listen on Posterous

 

 

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Secular Easter

 

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Partner and I celebrated Easter this year by going to a nice restaurant in downtown Providence for brunch.

 

 

Partner was born and raised Catholic; I was a convert to Catholicism in my teens. Both of us have gone through waves of piety and observance, but we have both come through it and out of it, and Holy Mother Church has lost her charms for both of us.

 

 

A few years ago I went through an ultramontane phase. I went to Mass almost every day at noontime. I joined the local parish. I even did the Triduum, the three-day ritual that leads up to Easter Sunday.

 

 

And suddenly, one day in the spring of 2008, I packed it in. I just stopped going.

 

 

Why? One too many homilies explaining why, although the Church loves everyone equally, they just couldn't accept gay people as they were. One too many homilies about God's mysteries which are beyond man's understanding.  Too many intelligent people sitting meekly and listening to illogical and badly-presented drivel.

 

 

Ritual is very nice, of course, and very attractive. I think this may be the center of religious belief: the deeply satisfying practice of dancing and singing and chanting magic words. A peaceful feeling comes over you sometimes when you do it. And once you're in a nice peaceful mood, it is easy (and comforting) to believe that God is very pleased with you.

 

 

And religion may even be useful. David Brooks, in a recent New York Times column, talked about the uses of absolute religious belief. It creates values, you see. It is a regimenting and organizing principle.

 

 

(Until, of course, it runs up against another absolute faith. It sort of creates problems at that point. But David Brooks is apparently okay with that.)

 

 

I'm not quite a pagan, not quite an atheist. I have vague yearnings, and a sense that there may be something unseen, some magician behind the curtain, something more to reality that we can't quite put our finger on yet.

 

 

But whatever it is, it's not hanging over the altar at St. Sebastian's Church.

 

 

If I want to dance and sing in front of a god, I'll do for some more kindly god, who doesn't mind if I screw up from time to time.

 

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Insects I have known

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Every region has its insect population. Back in Washington state, we had all kinds of crazy critters: lime-green katydids, stinkbugs by the millions, spittlebugs in the weeds (there's nothing like taking a walk in summer though the tall grass and getting slimed all over with gobs of spit).

 

 

Rhode Island has nice dragonflies in summer, as well as meat-eating yellowjackets and teeny-tiny ants that boil by the millions out of cracks in the sidewalk.

 

 

Something bit me in Morocco.  I barely felt it, but within a few days my thigh turned blue, then purple, then red and orange in waves. “That's a spider bite, all right,” the Peace Corps nurse said.  It was eerily beautiful, like a sunset at sea. It took months for the colors to go away.

 

 

In Tunisia: bedbugs! You wake up and find three, four, five little tiny bits on your skin, all in a neat row. Live and let live, right? What's a little delicious blood among friends, am I right?

 

 

Once in Tunisia, I was in the living room with a bunch of friends. They were all seated; I was standing in the doorway. All at once something crawled out from under the sofa.  I was the only person who was looking down, so no one else saw it. It was maybe five inches long, and it was bright red, with a million little feet, and it was undulating across the floor in the most prehistorically evil way you can imagine. I yelped wordlessly (I think everyone thought I was having a stroke), picked up a nearby Arabic dictionary (the heaviest thing I could find) and threw it at the thing. I hit it, and it leapt (I do not kid you) into the air writhing and thrashing. I forget how we disposed of the corpse. Next day at work I described it to my friend Halim. “It was red?” he said. “Good thing you killed it. Those are pretty bad.”

 

 

I never found out if he was kidding or not. I didn't want to know.

 

 

On the lighter side: one lovely autumn day in northern Morocco, I was coming down a staircase on the outside of my apartment building (it was a converted villa, very nice). Everything was littered with falling leaves. As I ran my hand down the railing, I felt a leaf cling to my hand. I looked down at the leaf -

 

 

And the leaf looked back at me.

 

 

(You know those Disney nature films with bugs that camouflage themselves as sticks and fallen leaves? They're not making that stuff up.)

 

 

I shrieked. I jumped into the air, waving my hand and screaming. I was terrified. My friends, waiting for me at the base of the stairs, were in hysterics.

 

 

I probably frightened the poor bug into a heart attack.

 

 

And it serves him right for scaring me.

 

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Thamusida

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My first Peace Corps assignment was in Kenitra, in the northern part of Morocco, in a region called the Rharb. It has a San Francisco climate, and the terrain is very lush. “Rharb” is derived from the Arabic word for “west,” as is the word “Morocco.” This is the far west of the Arab world, and of the classical world in general. I discovered while there, to my delight, that scholars had in fact identified this region as the Garden of the Hesperides, where Herakles went to collect the golden apples.

 

 

One weekend my English friend Austin and I went for a trek to find the ruins of an old Roman settlement called Thamusida, which was marked on all the local maps. We tramped through endless muddy fields and asked all the shepherds and farmers, but none of them knew what we were talking about. It was Austin (who'd been a tour guide in his day) who had the bright idea of asking them if there was anything in the neighborhood “before Islam.” Right away they knew what we were talking about. “Those old rocks!” they said. “Over beyond the m'rabet. Why do you want to see them?” (To many Muslims, anything “before Islam” is by definition without merit and, therefore, uninteresting.)

 

 

We found the m'rabet without any problem – a stuccoed Muslim shrine, with wishes and prayers written on papers and cloth and tied to the trees outside. Then Austin pointed out that the ground was covered with snails. “Roman ruins nearby,” he said. “The Romans took snails with them wherever they went. Apparently they stay where they're planted. Two thousand years later they're still here.”

 

 

Behind the m'rabet we found Thamusida. It was, as the old farmers had said, just some old rocks lying broken in a field, and a few grooves in the ground that had been walls. There was a Latin inscription on one, just enough to identify the place. Probably it wasn't much. According to Wikipedia, it had docks and baths and a shrine to Venus.

 

 

And the old broken stones were slimy with snails, descendants of the snails those Roman soldiers had brought with them as snacks.

 

 

What will we leave behind, children?

 

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New York City

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Partner and I take a day trip to New York City once or twice a year. Sometimes we see a show (we saw Angela Lansbury in “Blithe Spirit” a couple of years ago, and she was hysterical, and very spry for an octogenarian). Sometimes we do museums. (I could spend the day in the Metropolitan with no trouble at all.  I could spend eighteen days in the Metropolitan with no trouble at all.  The room full of Monets is worth about two years of looking, all by itself.)

 

 

We eat somewhere different every time. We usually lunch at one of those crazy little corner places that look like the interior of a Seinfeld episode. For dinner we hit Restaurant Row – Russian? Italian? Brazilian? - or sometimes pub food, or a steakhouse. Once we ate in Chinatown at an all-you-can-eat place, and it wasn't very good, but at least it was different.

 

 

Usually we see someone famous in the street. We saw Edie Falco a few years ago, which was very neat, but it was also fun to see the people trailing after her and surreptitiously photographing her. We saw Brad Garrett, who is (I think) actually even taller than he appears on TV, towering over the crowd on the sidewalk, with that nasty don't-talk-to-me look on his face, and I wouldn't have dared to go near him. And Daniel Davis (whom we saw in “La Cage” on Broadway). And even the guy who played the mayor on “Gilmore Girls,” whatever his name was, waiting on line with us to get into “Spamalot.”

 

 

Last spring around this time we did something we've both wanted to do for a long time: we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

 

 

If you've ever wanted to do this, here are a couple of tips:

 

 

• It's beautiful. Do it right away. You will be able to brag about doing it for the rest of your life.

• Pick a nice day.

• Take your camera.

• Do not suppose you will be alone on the bridge. You will be accompanied by several thousand other people.

• There is also a bicycle lane. The bicyclists are angry and deadly. Do not step into the bicycle lane.

• Brooklyn is on the other side (the welcome-to-Brooklyn sign at the end of the bridge adds: “How Sweet It Is!”). Go left after the bridge and you'll be in Dumbo, which is very hip and artsy. Go right and you'll be in Brooklyn Heights, which is pleasant and residential. We had dinner at a nice neighborhood place and took the subway back to Manhattan.

   

 

Doctor Johnson said that a man who was tired of London was tired of life.

 

 

I will never tire of New York City.

 

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Look at the pretty pretty butterfly!

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Partner and I are planning a trip to Florida in October, which means (of course) Disney World. Partner has been there several times; I've only been there once, with him, in 2002. He pretty much had to drag me there, as I was very dubious about whether or not I'd enjoy it. 

 

 

Of all of our vacations together, it was one of the best.

 

 

I will limit myself to one recollection. We were walking in the Animal Kingdom – maybe through the India part – and suddenly an enormous butterfly landed on Partner. These butterflies, I don't know where they get them, but they have an affinity for people, and they're very tame; they will land on you with no fear at all. They are enormous and very beautiful.

 

 

They also grip you like bejeezus with their little butterfly feet.

 

 

It doesn't hurt; it's kind of like a very small pinch. But they are very determined not to fall off, and they make sure you know it.

 

 

As you can see in the above photo, we played with the butterfly for some time. It finally got bored, left us, and found a family with small children. It decided it liked the little boy best, and landed on his head. The rest of the family was delighted. “Oh my god Bobby! How pretty! Look at the pretty pretty butterfly!”

 

 

Bobby did not look as if he was entertained by this at all. He looked alarmed. You could tell that, while the rest of the family was enjoying the pretty pretty butterfly, he was feeling the pretty pretty butterfly's claws digging into his skin.

 

 

I was a little afraid that Bobby might panic and squash the pretty pretty butterfly, but the Disney organization evidently trains the butterflies to know when they've reached your limit. It flew away at last.

 

 

On an old episode of “The Simpsons,” Bart announces that he'd like to come back as a butterfly. “Why?” Lisa asks.

 

 

Bart smirks. “Because,” he says, “no one ever suspects the butterfly.”

 

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Jesus Christ Superstar

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A while back, for Palm Sunday, I posted a clip from the movie “Jesus Christ Superstar” on this blog.

 

 

On Easter night, TCM showed the whole movie, which I haven't watched for years.

 

 

I was engrossed.

 

 

Some thoughts:

 

• I perfectly understand now why Passion Plays have always been popular. The story has everything: tension, heroes, antiheroes, villains who may or may not be well-meaning, love, betrayal, agony, death. And the ultimate happy ending.

• The 1960s slang - “One thing I'll say for him, Jesus is cool!” - was dated almost as soon as it hit the stage, and certainly by the time it hit the screen. And there's a very Haight-Ashbury atmosphere about the cast: long hair, no shirts, lots of jewelry. But it works somehow.

• The frame – a troupe of actors arriving at a desert site to enact the story, and gradually becoming the characters they portray – has also been done a million times. But it still gives me a thrill. After the opening montage, when everyone has put on his costume, the scenery has been assembled, and they're all just waiting for the story to begin, I always get a shiver.

• Some of the symbolism slaps you in the face; other bits are very subtle. It wasn't until the other night, for example, that I noticed that, after Judas in the desert is buzzed by two jets, they perform a maneuver and turn, and their silhouettes in the air are two small crosses.

• Pilate, with his ever-so-subtle British accent, is slightly foreign, which is appropriate for a Roman among Israelites. He also evokes a kind of early Bowie sensibility, which is perfect for the role.

• Josh Mostel as Herod is utterly perfect: comedy relief at just the point in the story you don't expect it. (I learned online that Josh's father Zero Mostel was furious that he'd been passed over by director Norman Jewison for the lead in “Fiddler on the Roof.” Jewison had casted an Israeli actor named Topol. When Josh told his father about Jewison casting him in “Superstar,” Zero raged: “Why didn't he cast Topol's son?”

• I also noted online that there's still much discussion over whether this is a “musical” or a “rock opera.” Well, it's an opera, all right; there's next to no spoken dialogue. Not quite sure if it's “rock,” however . . .

   

 

 

And finally:

 

• One of the dancers in the “Simon Zelotes” number is very cute. I think, however, he's also the soldier who flogs Jesus.

 

 

Uh-oh!

 

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May Day blog: "The Battleship Potemkin" by Sergei Eisenstein

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It's May Day, comrades! International Workers' Day!

 

 

For today, one of my special favorites: “The Battleship Potemkin,” directed by Sergei Eisenstein. This is a long YouTube clip – over an hour – but it's the whole movie. It has everything: pathos, heroism, death, revolution, and a happy ending. And Alexander Antonov, who plays the rebellious sailor Vakulinchuk, is adorable. And this version uses Shostakovich for background music yet.

 

 

Unite, my brothers and sisters!

 

 

 

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