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For history, come down to the seaside for the day
I call at least two-thirds of this weekend a success. (Tomorrow is going to involve furniture moving. I'm dubious.)
Yesterday was spent in New Hampshire;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schreibergasse picked me up at the bus station and after a short discussion of scenic downtown Manchester, we stashed the car in a university lot and walked for some distance down the river, behind the buildings that line the east bank of the Merrimack. These are the old mills built by the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in the late 1830's, mostly now made over into schools, start-ups, mysterious corporate logos (I am sure Jetboil is much less interesting than it sounds, but neither Schreibergasse and I were going to ask), and a lot of space to rent, but on the water side of the railings is an incredible, post-industrial shingle of old tufa-colored bricks and jettisoned machineries: rust-congested cogs and shafts melting back into the mud, a battered piece of ventilation bending up out of dry briar canes and winter-flattened grasses. (Ensuing conversation led Schreibergasse to introduce me to Ursula Vernon's gearworld later that night, but I paid him back with Kate Beaton before I left.) There were chunks of ice lodged against the rocks, tilted over them like capstones: they looked like an installation by Andy Goldsworthy. Of course I did not have a camera. Nor for the interior of the building he showed me around afterward, which had carpeted the floors and chopped the weave rooms into cafeterias and offices, but otherwise preserved details like counterweighted doors and raw brick everywhere. Someone had painted blue sky and clouds at the top of the elevator shaft. Eventually we returned home to make dinner, which entailed a rather Dickensian, if not Ankh-Morporkian meat pie: ground beef, lamb's liver, pork heart; onions, leeks, carrots, turnip; cinnamon, allspice, parsley, grains of paradise, nutmeg, and at least one other spice we both agreed on; Schreibergasse and I were responsible for the filling, G prepared the crust, and the results were eaten enthusiastically by all, especially Peter, whose favorite part of the pie apparently is the crust. (There was also zucchini, but it was much less structurally impressive.) I finally got to try Dogfish's Midas Touch, which tasted almost enough not like beer for me to really like it; I am nonetheless glad to have bought some from the inexplicably well-stocked convenience store that Schreibergasse and I walked to on our late-afternoon tripartite quest for dental floss, the compost heap, and a turnip. After dinner, the living room was invaded by catechumens, so we left them to G and generally hung out with tea and pages of manuscript in gothic or insular hands. I read my ungodson a Boynton book before bed. I might actually have fallen asleep before two in the morning. And I woke up this morning to oatcakes and the unhelpful capacity to converse coherently for five minutes and then fall back asleep for twenty more without noticing, but eventually I sorted out my brain and the afternoon was divided more or less evenly between taking Peter to the playground and reading cartoons about the Confederation of Canada. I think everyone was kind of zoned, but it was very pleasant. There was lentil soup.
And then I took the bus back to Boston and metrushthatspeaks for Les Vacances de M. Hulot (M. Hulot's Holiday, 1953) at the Brattle Theatre. It is a magnificent movie. As Hulot, Jacques Tati resembles nothing so much as a stork or a heron or some other long-legged, ungainly wading bird which has unaccountably found itself transformed into a middle-class French tourist in possession of a pipe, a battered hat, and a stuttering, twanging, almost transcendently ramshackle little car (which I would have sworn was the original of Newt Pulsifer's Wasabi, but my cousin informs me it's a 1924 Amilcar? I mean, good for the Carthaginians, but I want to know who names a car that) full of luggage that never quite explains itself. He is very polite, very kind, not at all a joker, and a catalyst for chaos the whole summer long—a good third of which happens to him personally and all of which he meets with a kind of perpetually bemused, essentially unsurprised Zen; it is clear that the world never behaves naturally in his vicinity and he has simply gotten used to it. He doesn't even notice the sea wind that kicks in through the door he opens from offstage, like a foretaste of his presence, and blows the hotel's lounge into paper-swirling disarray. (That one time he runs the hell away, however, the audience is totally with him.) I find myself reluctant to describe any other scenes, because so much of the charm of the film is the unhurried different directions in which events unfold, like the dreamy, archetypal summer into which all summer memories are compressed. I will note that Tati was a mime before he was a director, so Hulot moves like nothing on earth; his characteristic forward-canted gait is the way a cartoon character walks, except it's taking place in three dimensions. Simply watching him negotiate a roomful of other people is a treat. In short, I recommend the film without reservations and I think its protagonist is the sweetest personification of disorder I have ever encountered, and we're going back for Mon Oncle (1959) on Tuesday.
Has anyone ever set Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Miniver Cheevy" to music? It really is one of my favorite poems. I am aware that I write this while listening to a sixteenth-century lute galliard.
Yesterday was spent in New Hampshire;
schreibergasse picked me up at the bus station and after a short discussion of scenic downtown Manchester, we stashed the car in a university lot and walked for some distance down the river, behind the buildings that line the east bank of the Merrimack. These are the old mills built by the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in the late 1830's, mostly now made over into schools, start-ups, mysterious corporate logos (I am sure Jetboil is much less interesting than it sounds, but neither Schreibergasse and I were going to ask), and a lot of space to rent, but on the water side of the railings is an incredible, post-industrial shingle of old tufa-colored bricks and jettisoned machineries: rust-congested cogs and shafts melting back into the mud, a battered piece of ventilation bending up out of dry briar canes and winter-flattened grasses. (Ensuing conversation led Schreibergasse to introduce me to Ursula Vernon's gearworld later that night, but I paid him back with Kate Beaton before I left.) There were chunks of ice lodged against the rocks, tilted over them like capstones: they looked like an installation by Andy Goldsworthy. Of course I did not have a camera. Nor for the interior of the building he showed me around afterward, which had carpeted the floors and chopped the weave rooms into cafeterias and offices, but otherwise preserved details like counterweighted doors and raw brick everywhere. Someone had painted blue sky and clouds at the top of the elevator shaft. Eventually we returned home to make dinner, which entailed a rather Dickensian, if not Ankh-Morporkian meat pie: ground beef, lamb's liver, pork heart; onions, leeks, carrots, turnip; cinnamon, allspice, parsley, grains of paradise, nutmeg, and at least one other spice we both agreed on; Schreibergasse and I were responsible for the filling, G prepared the crust, and the results were eaten enthusiastically by all, especially Peter, whose favorite part of the pie apparently is the crust. (There was also zucchini, but it was much less structurally impressive.) I finally got to try Dogfish's Midas Touch, which tasted almost enough not like beer for me to really like it; I am nonetheless glad to have bought some from the inexplicably well-stocked convenience store that Schreibergasse and I walked to on our late-afternoon tripartite quest for dental floss, the compost heap, and a turnip. After dinner, the living room was invaded by catechumens, so we left them to G and generally hung out with tea and pages of manuscript in gothic or insular hands. I read my ungodson a Boynton book before bed. I might actually have fallen asleep before two in the morning. And I woke up this morning to oatcakes and the unhelpful capacity to converse coherently for five minutes and then fall back asleep for twenty more without noticing, but eventually I sorted out my brain and the afternoon was divided more or less evenly between taking Peter to the playground and reading cartoons about the Confederation of Canada. I think everyone was kind of zoned, but it was very pleasant. There was lentil soup.And then I took the bus back to Boston and met
rushthatspeaks for Les Vacances de M. Hulot (M. Hulot's Holiday, 1953) at the Brattle Theatre. It is a magnificent movie. As Hulot, Jacques Tati resembles nothing so much as a stork or a heron or some other long-legged, ungainly wading bird which has unaccountably found itself transformed into a middle-class French tourist in possession of a pipe, a battered hat, and a stuttering, twanging, almost transcendently ramshackle little car (which I would have sworn was the original of Newt Pulsifer's Wasabi, but my cousin informs me it's a 1924 Amilcar? I mean, good for the Carthaginians, but I want to know who names a car that) full of luggage that never quite explains itself. He is very polite, very kind, not at all a joker, and a catalyst for chaos the whole summer long—a good third of which happens to him personally and all of which he meets with a kind of perpetually bemused, essentially unsurprised Zen; it is clear that the world never behaves naturally in his vicinity and he has simply gotten used to it. He doesn't even notice the sea wind that kicks in through the door he opens from offstage, like a foretaste of his presence, and blows the hotel's lounge into paper-swirling disarray. (That one time he runs the hell away, however, the audience is totally with him.) I find myself reluctant to describe any other scenes, because so much of the charm of the film is the unhurried different directions in which events unfold, like the dreamy, archetypal summer into which all summer memories are compressed. I will note that Tati was a mime before he was a director, so Hulot moves like nothing on earth; his characteristic forward-canted gait is the way a cartoon character walks, except it's taking place in three dimensions. Simply watching him negotiate a roomful of other people is a treat. In short, I recommend the film without reservations and I think its protagonist is the sweetest personification of disorder I have ever encountered, and we're going back for Mon Oncle (1959) on Tuesday.
Has anyone ever set Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Miniver Cheevy" to music? It really is one of my favorite poems. I am aware that I write this while listening to a sixteenth-century lute galliard.
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I laughed when you said the zucchini was less structurally impressive. The deck seems kind of stacked against it.
And which Boynton book? I used to read those to my kids at bedtime. They liked "Moo, Baa, La-La-La," as I recall, and also the one that had the line "And when the moon is on the rise, the [somethings] all exercise" (on a ship, I think--they're doing their moonlit exercise on a ship).
Speaking of sixteenth-century lute galliards, and Kate Beaton, did you see her recent offering, where she makes brief cartoons based on covers of books? I'm thinking of the last of these, for the book on Elizabethan song.
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I really, really wish I'd had a camera. The light was beautiful, too, clear and lately slanted even at three o'clock.
Within walking distance of the Manchester bus station, you say?
Yes. We drove, because
And which Boynton book?
Snoozers: 7 Short Bedtime Stories for Lively Little Kids. I think it's a relatively new one; I hadn't seen it before.
I used to read those to my kids at bedtime.
Excellent!
They liked "Moo, Baa, La-La-La," as I recall, and also the one that had the line "And when the moon is on the rise, the [somethings] all exercise" (on a ship, I think--they're doing their moonlit exercise on a ship).
"They all go up to exercise"—it's The Going to Bed Book. But Not the Hippopotamus was a favorite of mine.
Speaking of sixteenth-century lute galliards, and Kate Beaton, did you see her recent offering, where she makes brief cartoons based on covers of books? I'm thinking of the last of these, for the book on Elizabethan song.
Personally, I loved The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats.
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And yes, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats was a good one--as one commenter remarked, the slightly quieter "craaahh" while he's writing is great.
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---L.
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Which of his films have you seen? It was my first.
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---L.
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I ended up having nothing to do with the furniture moving and a lot more to do with making sure that the welding didn't catch anyone on fire. Today has been weird.
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Well, I'm glad nobody caught on fire.
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That's what return visits are for . . .
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A lot of art songs get one outing, so to speak, and then they lie unsung in the catalogue files.
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Thank you!
(Do you remember it was any good?)
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What's with your health?
You have to tell me what part to write next, or it'll die. I don't want it to die. Help!
Send me what there is so far. I'll try to be useful!
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You have everything that's finished. Helas.
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It sounds more pre-Dickensian to me. I think it was in the 16th and 17th centuries that French and English cooks demonstrated their skill by spicing dishes to the point where the type of meat was unrecognizable. Reminded of it not so much by your quantities (of which I know nothing), but the types of spices. People living in relative squalor in Victorian London could never have afforded nutmeg.
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Has anyone ever set Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Miniver Cheevy" to music? It really is one of my favorite poems. I am aware that I write this while listening to a sixteenth-century lute galliard.
I can _almost_ hear an air for it, but I'd have to change some of the phrasings slightly to make it fit. I can't think what the air is at the moment, but I've no gift for composing so it's probably something already out there which I'm having no luck at putting a name to. I'll see if I can find some time to think on it tomorrow.
Lutz Kirchhof is good, isn't he? I've his recording of the Bach lute suites somewhere--should listen to it.
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I'd never heard of him; I was attracted by the title of the album. It's great stuff.
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"The Lute in Dance and Dream", yes? That is a good one.
There was a time when I really wanted to play Renaissance lute.
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No, Music for Witches and Alchemists (2000).
There was a time when I really wanted to play Renaissance lute.
Did you study it?
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Oh. I've not heard that one. Lovely title.
Did you study it?
I played some of the music on guitar (third string down half a tone, put a capo at the third fret, and you've a rough approximation of a six-course lute or a vihuela), but that's about it. If there'd been instruction from lutenists, rather than classical guitarists, available to me then I suppose everything might have been different, but there wasn't. I'd probably do better with mediaeval lute, anyhow--four or five courses, dronier tunings, and plectra seem to be more what I'm able to work with, in the end.