You got the look the gods agree they want to see

[sovay]

I have had a multiple-front stressful day of the kind that leaves a person sort of uselessly vibrating, but a dear friend who is not on DW has just e-mailed me with the news that the Cerne Abbas Giant is neither a pre-Christian artifact nor seventeenth-century political satire but an early medieval . . . something and I am delighted. Or as I said elsenet, "The giant chalk dick has a date on it!"

(I am amused that the hold music I am currently stuck listening to is a kind of lounge muzak version of "On the Street Where You Live," but that's different. [edit] It was not so amusing that I felt obliged to listen to it after the first half-hour.)

Comments

[nineweaving]

Synchronicity! Just yesterday, I was looking for a passage in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s letters that I wanted to quote on my panel, and lighted on another. Ralph Vaughan Williams had decided that he needed to see the Cerne Abbas giant again, and had stopped by her house on his way. She didn’t say why RVW wanted to visit Chalk Dude, but recorded their conversation:

“He had asked me, a little sternly, why I had left off composing, and I explained that I had come to the conclusion that I didn’t do it authentically enough, whereas when I turned to writing I never had a doubt as to what I meant to say. But if I were reincarnated, I added, I think I would like to be a landscape painter. What about you? Music, he said, music. But in the next world, I shan’t be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.”

Nine

[sovay]

What about you? Music, he said, music. But in the next world, I shan’t be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.

That's really lovely.

I hope Chalk Dude went into the music he made.

[nineweaving]

That's really lovely.

I see now that the visit was just days before Vaughan Williams' sudden death, so lovely and poignant.

He and his wife sent friends postcards of the Giant, his said to include "rude comments," hers chaste.

I hope Chalk Dude went into the music he made.

You could write that story...

Nine