It's another bad dream that seems to've caught us in our lie

[sovay]

Nobody told me Mission of Burma was recording their fourth studio album. Eric? *crickets*

I am still not very interactive, sorry.

Now the great Bear and Pleiades where earth moves
Are drawing up the clouds of human grief
Breathing solemnity in the deep night.
Who can decipher in storm or starlight
The written character of a friendly fate—
As the sky turns, the world for us to change?
But if the horoscope's bewildering
Like a flashing turmoil of a shoal of herring,
Who can turn skies back and begin again?
—Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes (1945)

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

a flashing turmoil of a shoal of herring

What a great line. That, and I like the notion of the constellations drawing up clouds of human grief.

One long sign of human sorrow
and the eyes of the stars, themselves,
may fill with tears.

ETA comma

[sovay]

What a great line. That, and I like the notion of the constellations drawing up clouds of human grief.

Here is the aria, as performed by the beautifully strange-voiced Peter Pears. The recording is from 1958, but he originated the role. It is one of my favorite operas.

One long sign of human sorrow
and the eyes of the stars, themselves,
may fill with tears.

Yours?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you for the music! Wonderful! I like strange voices :-)

Yes, mine.

[timesygn.livejournal.com]

37.
--

After the plague, the city-wall caked with flies, the smoke's
amnesia,
learn, wanderer, to go nowhere like the stones since
your nose and eyes are now your daughter's hand;
go where the repetition of the breakers grows easier
to bear, no father to kill, no citizens to convince,
and no longer force your memory to understand
whether the dead elect their own government
under the jurisdiction of the sea-almonds;
certain provisions of conduct seal them to a silence
none dare break, and one noun made them transparent,
where they live beyond the conjugation of tense
in their own white city. How easily they disown us,
and everything here that undermines our toil.
Sit on your plinth in the last light of Colonus,
let your knuckled toes root deep in their own soil.
A butterfly quietly alights on a tyrant's knee;
sit among the sea-eaten boulders and
let the night wind sweep the terraces of the sea.
This is the right light, this pewter shine on the water,
not the carnage of clouds, not the expected wonder
of self-igniting truth and oracular rains,
but these shadows as gentle as the voice of your daughter,
while the gods fade like thunder in the rattling mountains.

- Derek Walcott, THE BOUNTY

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the Peter Grimes quote.

And no worries about not being very interactive.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Who is the quizzical dude in your icon?

[sovay]

Who is the quizzical dude in your icon?

A very young Denholm Elliott as Sub-Lieutenant John Morell in The Cruel Sea (1953). Having previously seen him only in later roles, where he excels at wry, slightly seedy characters—Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is an exception, as is Mr. Emerson in A Room with a View (1985)—and I love him for it, I was floored to discover him as a slight, neat, erstwhile barrister with no shady edges. He was just thirty for this role, I think, so I can only assume that like Fred Astaire, he spent his twenties failing to convince bartenders that he could order his own drinks.