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Well, we couldn't admire him when we weren't allowed to read him
I just took a hot shower. This is news only because there has been no hot water in the house for two nights; my mother and I spent most of yesterday bleeding air out of the pipes and I still wound up half showering in absolutely cold water and half sponge-bathing with water heated in a teakettle on the stove. It was giving me flashbacks to New Haven. (My apartment had many virtues, chiefly that it was mine, but heat and hot water in winter were occasionally not among them.) The bright side was that in between ministering to the plumbing, I caught about forty-five minutes of Doctor Zhivago (1965) and was reminded again that pace Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness as his half-brother completely steals the film for me. Yevgraf is a wholly cynical narrator, an officer of the secret police who can introduce himself quite honestly as "nobody's idea of an uncle" and clarify his feelings toward Yuri Zhivago with the admission, "Besides, I've executed better men than me with a small pistol," and the audience knows the words are neither apology nor boast. And yet he puts considerable effort into looking after the threads of his poetic, vulnerable half-brother's life, whether helping to clear the family out of Moscow in advance of a purge or searching years later for the lost child of Yuri and Lara, and the slight, ironic awareness with which Guinness tells his story—its own kind of deadpan—suits these complexities. I wouldn't mind seeing the film again just for the rest of his scenes.
In any case, my hair no longer smells like cigarette smoke. This afternoon, Mission of Burma gave a free show at MIT to celebrate the Tuesday release of The Sound The Speed The Light (and the first annual Mission of Burma Day); I went with Eric and I forgot that open-air concerts, in paradoxical contrast to clubs, now involve smoke. About eighteen different people's nicotine-flavored deathwishes found their way into my lungs, not to mention my jacket. Thank God I forgot my hat. But the music was wonderful—they opened with some neck-snappers from The Obliterati and then played the entire new album backward, with some of their oldest songs for encore. Five of the songs were new to me. Two are my favorites off this album already. It being my birthday season, the CD I acquired at the show has been squirreled away in the house somewhere, so I will not get the chance to listen to "Feed" or "SSL 83" before Friday, but I do not imagine the studio versions will disappoint. And in counterweight to all the secondhand smoke, for a while the person standing in front of me was a father who had brought his four- or five-year-old daughter to the concert, hoisted up on his shoulders so she could get a view of the musicians. She had on the kind of industrial-strength earmuffs usually seen on airport runways, albeit not usually in hot pink, and she was smiling. Really, I am sorry only that I forgot my camera. Walking to and from the car to the courtyard, the light was clear and fading, dissolving papyrus-gold at the horizon as if it had forgotten it belonged to autumn. On some plywood at the head of a chain-linked lot, someone had spray-painted or markered, "BEAUTY."
My poems "Lupercal" (Not One of Us #39), "Painted Gods and the Eye of Childhood" (Space & Time #104), "The Devourer" (Mythic Delirium #19), "The Plague Hill" (Mythic Delirium #19), and "The Second Ghost" (Home and Away) have been given honorable mentions by Ellen Datlow in Best Horror of the Year #1.
I am going to attempt sleep. Or at least not staying up with a new Heyer until dawn. It might work.
In any case, my hair no longer smells like cigarette smoke. This afternoon, Mission of Burma gave a free show at MIT to celebrate the Tuesday release of The Sound The Speed The Light (and the first annual Mission of Burma Day); I went with Eric and I forgot that open-air concerts, in paradoxical contrast to clubs, now involve smoke. About eighteen different people's nicotine-flavored deathwishes found their way into my lungs, not to mention my jacket. Thank God I forgot my hat. But the music was wonderful—they opened with some neck-snappers from The Obliterati and then played the entire new album backward, with some of their oldest songs for encore. Five of the songs were new to me. Two are my favorites off this album already. It being my birthday season, the CD I acquired at the show has been squirreled away in the house somewhere, so I will not get the chance to listen to "Feed" or "SSL 83" before Friday, but I do not imagine the studio versions will disappoint. And in counterweight to all the secondhand smoke, for a while the person standing in front of me was a father who had brought his four- or five-year-old daughter to the concert, hoisted up on his shoulders so she could get a view of the musicians. She had on the kind of industrial-strength earmuffs usually seen on airport runways, albeit not usually in hot pink, and she was smiling. Really, I am sorry only that I forgot my camera. Walking to and from the car to the courtyard, the light was clear and fading, dissolving papyrus-gold at the horizon as if it had forgotten it belonged to autumn. On some plywood at the head of a chain-linked lot, someone had spray-painted or markered, "BEAUTY."
My poems "Lupercal" (Not One of Us #39), "Painted Gods and the Eye of Childhood" (Space & Time #104), "The Devourer" (Mythic Delirium #19), "The Plague Hill" (Mythic Delirium #19), and "The Second Ghost" (Home and Away) have been given honorable mentions by Ellen Datlow in Best Horror of the Year #1.
I am going to attempt sleep. Or at least not staying up with a new Heyer until dawn. It might work.
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Glad to see you're still alive, at least.
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Thank you! Totally accepted in both cases.
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And yay, pink earmuffs, and papyrus-gold horizons --and "beauty" as a tag for graffiti artists.
Someone on my LJ friends list posted some of the poetry that Boris Pasternak wrote for Dr. Zhivago--I remember liking it.
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Your fault!
Someone on my LJ friends list posted some of the poetry that Boris Pasternak wrote for Dr. Zhivago--I remember liking it.
I liked the novel very much. The film is a different entity, but I was surprised, when I finally saw it—I had actually avoided it, having acquired the impression it was swooningly romantic and not political at all—at how faithful it was to the feel of the novel. It transfers a number of the images from Zhivago's poetry directly into the cinematography, and that's always neat. And there is Alec Guinness.
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Heh. Thank you. May I ask why?
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Well, then: I approve just as immensely of you!
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Thank you!
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Congratulations on the honourable mentions!
Glad you enjoyed the concert--you've my sympathy on the subject of the smoke. I'm so grateful for the lack of smoking in pubs these days; there was somewhere I was playing this summer (Private club? Outdoors? I'm having trouble recollecting just the now.) where I got a similar reminder of what things used to be like. The father and the daughter with pink hearing protection sounds very cute--pity you didn't have the camera, but your description is charming.
I hope you managed to sleep.
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Thank you! Reprints are better, but I can't complain over not being ignored.
The father and the daughter with pink hearing protection sounds very cute--pity you didn't have the camera, but your description is charming.
What I really wanted the camera for was the tag art and the sun. I was content just to watch the kid enjoy the music—and not, unlike many of the attendees, go deaf.
I hope you managed to sleep.
I did, finally. Thanks.
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No. We had to replace a piece of the heater. But at least there's now heat.