Only the voluntary homage paid by the living to the unqualified and dangerous dead

[sovay]

I have managed very little with the day beyond capitalism and serving as a platform for sleeping cats, but I recognize the latter of these two activities as imperative. Have some links.

1. I had never before heard of "Waka Waka Bang Splat," an ASCII poem composed by Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese around 1990. I liked this note about regional pronunciations, which of course contains some folk drift of its own.

2. As I am still not comfortable in theaters, I would not be attending Perfection, of a Kind: Britten vs Auden even were I in the right country for it, I just wish they were offering virtual tickets. Even if he's just reprising his scenes from The Habit of Art, I am charmed by the idea that Alex Jennings has become an interpreter of Britten—it was my successfully imprinting introduction to him as an actor. I didn't realize Night Mail (1936) was ever performed outside of its GPO film context.

3. Courtesy of cyphomandra: on the other hand, the British Library is selling tickets for the livestream of The Dark is Rising and Other Stories: Susan Cooper and Natalie Haynes in Conversation. I can't remember what happened last year to prevent me listening to the radio adaptation, but I enjoyed its incidental music.

I don't think it is much of a news flash that I am very tired. Do I know anyone who's not?

Comments

[asakiyume]

I wonder if maybe the radio BBC The Dark Is Rising wasn't accessible here? I heard about its coming, then there was a big lacuna, and then it was an event in the past tense. I can recall at least once trying to access something on the BBC and not being able to.

Or maybe it *was* available but I, like you, just missed it.

Cool about the tickets for this event, though!

[rydra_wong]

You should be able to listen to it -- it's still up on the BBC Sounds website, which I believe is not region-locked:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/w13xtvp7

ETA: this says that you can't download eps outside the UK, but you should be able to listen directly on the website:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/listening-outside-the-uk/international

[asakiyume]

Thanks! I'll give it a try.

[sovay]

You should be able to listen to it -- it's still up on the BBC Sounds website, which I believe is not region-locked

I'm glad it's still up!

[ethelmay]

I downloaded all of them at the time, I am pretty sure. I found them mildly enjoyable, but I wasn't nuts about them. I think the style was purposely old-fashioned and might very well appeal to someone who was familiar with that sort of presentation from childhood. I am not sure I had ever listened to a whole radio play of any sort - no, that's not quite true, I'd listened to a dramatization of The Lord of the Rings one year when my husband was gone a lot because his father was dying, and I wasn't sleeping much and was having unusual difficulty reading, so I spent a lot of midnight hours knitting and listening to LOTR on headphones. But I only listened to the dramatization because the library didn't have an audiobook.

[sovay]

But I only listened to the dramatization because the library didn't have an audiobook.

That's so interesting to me as a difference. I can listen to radio plays much more easily than I can to audiobooks or podcasts. I still can't do anything else while listening, but I enjoy the experience a lot more.

[ethelmay]

I don't usually do very much audio of any kind, but I was in a particular state and wanted something very familiar where it wouldn't matter much whether I finished it or could concentrate. (I did in fact listen to the whole thing in the end.) I bought a dramatization of The Wizard of Earthsea a while ago, and have hardly listened to any of it.

[sovay]

I don't usually do very much audio of any kind, but I was in a particular state and wanted something very familiar where it wouldn't matter much whether I finished it or could concentrate. (I did in fact listen to the whole thing in the end.)

That makes sense. (I hope you enjoyed it.) Under normal conditions, I listen to music almost constantly while working or writing, but if it has lyrics either they need to be in a language I absolutely don't understand or I need to know them so well that I don't have a chance of getting hooked by the sense of them, in direct contrast to my otherwise default of tuning out whatever I hear in favor of whatever I am reading. I can't do the wallpaper media thing that so many people I know report with podcasts or even TV shows. If I am listening, I need to be just listening.