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But, when they should transform to newts, are naughty and erratic
Yesterday I felt optimistic enough about this cold to go out and meet ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ratatosk for lunch at Dave's Fresh Pasta and then hang out until the evening, trying not to cough on anyone too badly and mostly succeeding. (He has two books of Walter Garstang. I got to watch a puppet feed a cat. It was great.) Today I am back to drinking soup and sounding like a TB ward. Rabbit, rabbit. Other less festive noises. Links.
1. I didn't know anyone had written a revamp of Five Children and It. Can someone who isn't me read this first and tell me what on earth it's like?
2. I have tickets next week for Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse at the Boston Lyric Opera. I've never heard the opera, but it's based on the mystery of the Flannan Isles light (and I got a discount for being an ex-Opera Boston subscriber). I am looking forward.
3. I hope people do come to refer to this work, academically, as the Whoopensocker Dictionary.
4.cucumberseed: Cookiethulhu.
5. This documentary really sounds like porn for me.
ratatosk for lunch at Dave's Fresh Pasta and then hang out until the evening, trying not to cough on anyone too badly and mostly succeeding. (He has two books of Walter Garstang. I got to watch a puppet feed a cat. It was great.) Today I am back to drinking soup and sounding like a TB ward. Rabbit, rabbit. Other less festive noises. Links.1. I didn't know anyone had written a revamp of Five Children and It. Can someone who isn't me read this first and tell me what on earth it's like?
2. I have tickets next week for Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse at the Boston Lyric Opera. I've never heard the opera, but it's based on the mystery of the Flannan Isles light (and I got a discount for being an ex-Opera Boston subscriber). I am looking forward.
3. I hope people do come to refer to this work, academically, as the Whoopensocker Dictionary.
4.
cucumberseed: Cookiethulhu.5. This documentary really sounds like porn for me.
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Why?
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Because if I can't live by the Atlantic coast all my life, at least I can stare at it for sixteen hours and yearn.
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But this is interspersed, as shewhomust says, by Bright Young Things doing experiments on which beach's sand is best for making sandcastles. It's a little frustrating, but worth it for the moments that feel like they walked straight out of a Susan Cooper book.
(I am personally more addicted at present to Ancient History of Britain. You have the same archaeologist presenter, with his charming accent, and he's solo presenter. It's one of the most joyful archaeologist shows I've seen, & as beautifully shot).
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See, that sounds lovely, and so does anything that reminds of Seaward or Greenwitch. Maybe it will turn up on Netflix and I can watch just the good parts.
It's one of the most joyful archaeologist shows I've seen, & as beautifully shot).
Hmm. I'll have to look for that.
Thank you!
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Oh, and Ancient History is followed by Celtic History of Britain, which starts screening here this weekend. *excited bouncing*
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Please report back!
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That seems really silly. Who's going to sign up to watch a show called Coast and expect not to spend hours staring at sea, sky, stone?
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I particularly wonder whether she'll keep it in Nesbit's third person, as I've not read a book by Wilson that wasn't first-person, and I've read quite a few. I'd have thought The Treasure Seekers would be much further up her street.
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Wilson's are some of the best "problem books" I've read, but the idea of her re-doing Nesbit makes me feel queasy.
The book does not seem to have been published yet - I was poking around on Wilson's page at Amazon.uk and did not see it.
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Hence my wish that someone should test it before me. I've never really thought of anything being intertextual with Nesbit except C.S. Lewis.
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Her name and some of the titles of her earlier books look familiar to me, but not so that I could tell you anything about them. If she was in print in the U.S. in the '90's, I might have read something of hers. I wouldn't swear to it.
I'm intrigued, but fearful.
I nominate you to fall on this particular maybe-grenade. You did write a book on children's literature. Looks like a target on your back to me.
I'd have thought The Treasure Seekers would be much further up her street.
A slightly different question—do you think it would lend itself better to updating/retelling?
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I'll certainly read it, anyway. I was impressed by what Hilary McKay did with A Little Princess, so maybe Wilson will come good here.
(On an unrelated note, I have to admit to finding Neil Oliver's accent curiously irritating. Which is a shame, because I like his programmes in almost every other way.)
* Don't forget Edward Eager!
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. . . I kind of want to ask you to write an article about that, even though I haven't read the relevant Wilson.
I was impressed by what Hilary McKay did with A Little Princess, so maybe Wilson will come good here.
I did not read Wishing for Tomorrow, although
Don't forget Edward Eager!
Yes! I haven't read any of his books in years, but I should have remembered. Half Magic and Knight's Castle are practically Nesbit fanfic.
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Absolutely!
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2. Chaaaaaaaaamber opera.
a) Sherbourne Waltz. *bounces*
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That was my first reaction as well, but I figure it could be like Yuletide: even the most improbable premises come off brilliantly in the right hands. You know, like Regency lesbians.
. . . I'm not going to be able to salvage that sentence, so I'll just move on.
2. Chaaaaaaaaamber opera.
I will provide a full report!
*bounces*
Anyone who doesn't have a theme song of their own by now?
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I seem to have resurfaced.
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I'll put some thought into it.
I seem to have resurfaced.
I'm glad.
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I can't imagine why anyone would do this. With luck, it will at least not be horrible. *knocks wood*
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I'm glad you were given a discount, and I hope the opera is very enjoyable.
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I should hope they will. It sounds brilliant, any road, although I do have to quibble a bit with the implication in the article that a po'boy is a part of the torpedo/hoagie/hero/submarine sandwich family. For now, I'm choosing to interpet this as a pardonable oversimplification on the part of the Guardian's writer.
Cookiethulhu.
"C is for C'thulhu, that's good enough for me..."
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Excellent. I hope it's as lovely as it sounds.
Best wishes for a cessation of the cold and its associated unfestive noises.
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The dictionary will be out soon and you can find out for yourself!
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I knew I could count on you.
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I had dinner with
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Also, I doubt you're into 70s prog-jazz, but there's also the 23 minute song Hammill did as Van der Graaf Generator: "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers". Superb, but best approached with caution.
- M
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My two favorite twentieth-century operas are Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium (1947) and Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes (1945). I can tell you why I like them, if you think it will help.
(I can also tell you why I like more classical operas, but I assume you will have tried those already.)
Also, I doubt you're into 70s prog-jazz, but there's also the 23 minute song Hammill did as Van der Graaf Generator: "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers". Superb, but best approached with caution.
I'm already attracted by the (even misspelled) band name . . .
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Please do, if it's not a pain.
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It's not a pain if I do it through music.
For years, my standard audition aria was a song called "The Black Swan." I heard it for the first time in high school; it gave me nightmares.
The sun has fallen and it lies in blood
The moon is weaving bandages of gold
O black swan, where, o where is my lover gone?
Torn and tattered is my bridal gown and my lamp is lost
With silver needles and with silver thread
The stars stitch a shroud for the dying sun
O black swan, where, o where has my lover gone?
I had given him a kiss of fire and a golden ring
Don't you hear your lover moan?
Eyes of glass and feet of stone
Shells for teeth and weeds for tongue
Deep, deep down in the river's bed, he's looking for the ring
Eyes wide open, never asleep, he's looking for the ring
The spools unravel and the needles break
The sun is buried and the stars weep
O black wave, o black wave, take me away with you
I will share with you my golden hair and my bridal crown
O take me down with you
Take me down to my wandering lover
With my child unborn
The title character of The Medium is a fraud. Her particular clientele are griefstricken parents, convinced that their dead children communicate with them through the vocal talents of Monica, Madame Flora's never-seen daughter, and the silent puppet-mastery of Toby, the mute, feral boy she took off the streets of Budapest one starving winter. The two of them are not much older than the ghosts they pretend to be; they play at love as if it is one more new trick and it is beginning to turn into the real thing—shy, capricious, cruel. Madame Flora drinks heavily, clutches her daughter like her rosary and beats Toby when the strange, wordless way he looks at her begins to trouble her conscience; they are used to her rages. What they are not used to her is her fear. At the seance, she felt something touch her: a cold, cold hand at her throat. Monica swears she saw nothing. Toby only stares, as uncanny a thing as one of his puppets. If she's lucky, she's only losing her mind to drink. She cannot shake the terror that for once in her false life, she called up something true—and it is not a plaintively singing daughter or a laughing infant boy. The first act closes as she shivers in her daughter's arms, praying while Monica sings a lullaby from her own not-so-long-ago childhood, to soothe her. Drowned lovers and dying suns. If the ghost in the opera is real, I don't think Madame Flora is the one who made it manifest.
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Peter Grimes (1945), Benjamin Britten’s first full-length opera, takes place in the insular world of the Borough, a small coastal town in Suffolk near the beginning of the nineteenth century. The title character is an outsider among the fishermen: solitary, not much liked, an unpredictable mix of visionary and taciturn, with a brutal temper. It is widely believed that he murdered his first apprentice, although the coroner’s inquest cleared him. Now a second boy has gone missing and local opinion needs very little encouragement to turn ugly. Grimes’ sole ally in the Borough is the widow Ellen Orford, whom he dreams vaguely of marrying, respected and rich, safe. She knitted his new apprentice a jersey. It has been found washed up at the tide-line. Looking at the anchor she embroidered on it, Ellen tries not to admit what this discovery might mean.
Embroidery in childhood was
a luxury of idleness.
A coil of silken thread giving
dreams of a silk and satin life.
Now my broidery affords
the clue whose meaning we avoid.
My hand remembered its old skill—
these stitches tell a curious tale.
I remember I was brooding
on the fantasies of children
and dreamt that only by wishing
I could bring some silk into their lives.
Now my broidery affords
the clue whose meaning we avoid.
Its melody is like a needle dipping and sewing through cloth, its halting, half-beat rhythm the thought she cannot force herself away from. The whole opera is filled with the sea, the heave and drag of tides, the dazzle of light off the waves, undertows and murky swirls of storm. It is not an allegory; its antihero is too complicated for that. The sea outlives everything, but we remember and are scarred.
I hope that gives you some idea.
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You're welcome. If you like the music, I will be glad to send you both operas entire.
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What does this mean?
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It's the first words you say for luck on the first day of the month. I got it from my mother's side of the family; I have no idea of its cultural origins. Various people I've met over the years say the same or some slight variant and nobody seems to have any idea where it comes from.
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Thanks. It's weird; I seem to be getting about one functional interactive period a day and it's not even consistently timed. I really hope at least it settles on being a morning or an evening thing before this cold is through!
Therefore, if you are well by then and would care for a somewhat quirky change of scenery, would you like to meet up in Salem either on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon?
. . . I couldn't do Tuesday, but Wednesday is really tempting. Could I let you know early next week? I like Salem: I have a membership to the Peabody Essex Museum.
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