I’ve dreamt of this day since Piccadilly Terrace, when we argued metaphysics

[sovay]

I had a wonderful day. I know.

I woke up at a godforsaken hour to find that a copy of A Mayse-Bikhl has been acquired by the National Library of Israel. It would make a better story if I choked on my tea from seeing the e-mail, but that was while reading something innocuous like Pat Barker at breakfast and just silly.

I was awake at a godforsaken hour because I was meeting two friends who do not have livejournals so that I could accompany them to a flea market at the Somerville Armory and they could show me Ken Russell's Gothic (1986). I did not find any clothes at the flea market, although I seriously considered a nonfiction LP about the moon landing called One Small Step (1969) just because it was narrated by Wernher von Braun and Chet Huntley, and a full orchestral score of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, hardcover, pocket-sized, and leatherbound. I didn't have a justifiable use for the latter and the former would probably have worked best as an unserious gift for some fan of Tom Lehrer, but they were very tempting on sheer grounds of weird. I tried on some cargo pants, but they didn't fit.

I did buy a candid photograph of George VI and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in Canada. For eight dollars. The dealer knocked two-thirds off the price because I recognized the subjects without taking the picture out of its sleeve and because I had been studying another photo of an American city street to see if I could tell the year in which it was taken from the movies on the marquee. (I couldn't, but I remembered the titles: H. M. Pulham, Esq. and Come Live with Me. So, 1941. Also, somebody liked Hedy Lamarr.) I just saw there's now a stage version of The King's Speech; I cannot imagine the unspeakable hipster cred I am going to rack up by saying I liked him before it was cool, but fleurdelis28 and nineweaving will back me up on this.

(There is a stamp on the back of the photograph: "Scott Camera Craft Ltd.—1018 Douglas St.—Victoria, B.C.—Mar. 5 1941." Someone has also pencilled in, "King George VI + Queen Elizabeth 1941," but the internet tells me the royal tour was in 1939. It is possible the film was only developed later. Help? Canada?)

There was a watercolor I couldn't afford in the consignment store where they bought their Green Man chair afterward. (Richard de Menocal.) There were bison burgers for lunch. There was fig-tasting mead from South Africa. Gothic is a hysterical laudanum dream of the Romantic poets at the Villa Diodati and I enjoyed it greatly, even if I really feel I should research the actual Claire Clairmont now. I don't know if I needed Byron/Polidori with Gabriel Byrne and Timothy Spall, but now that I've had it I don't feel I should complain.

The timing even worked out such that ratatosk could pick me up afterward and introduce me to shape-note singing at Christ Church Unity in Brookline, which was my first choral anything in nine years (I had to think about it), not counting Suor Angelica. It's hard for me to evaluate whether I liked the experience of an art form I was so patently bad at, but it was certainly worth going to. (I even ran into someone I knew from Tea.) We had late dinner at City Girl Cafe and generally hung out until it became necessary for me to come home so that I could take out the trash, write this, etc. I wound up singing "Ten Cents a Dance" for him and derspatchel and Abbie the Cat, who I think was unimpressed.

I am exhausted, but I don't want to kill anything. This is okay by me.

Oh, and go see Measure for Measure. Even the actors who aren't sock puppets are good.

Comments

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

I had no idea you weren't already a fan of shape-note singing, or else I would have tried to evangelize you about it long ago. I live in WMass, Sacred Harp capital of New England, so I tend to take it for granted; there's a sing every Tuesday night and a giant annual convention in March. I'd very much like to try the sing you attended in Brookline, too. I've always been a trifle shy about leading, but it's great fun once you get used to it. In any case, welcome to fasola land.

I just saw there's now a stage version of The King's Speech; I cannot imagine the unspeakable hipster cred I am going to rack up by saying I liked him before it was cool, but fleurdelis28 and nineweaving will back me up on this.

I may rent Gothic; I like the idea of Timothy Spall in almost anything, but he'd be a hoot as Polidori.

I witnessed you liking The King's Speech before it became A Thing. If anybody* tells you, "Oh, I loved that movie, Colin Firth is hot and it was so funny when he said 'fuck'," I hereby authorize you to stand with your arms folded and a slight smile on your face.

*even for values of "anybody" that include me.

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

The Brookline sing is generally much younger than the Newton (Norumbega Harmony) one (which is tonight). Despite being not very far apart at all geographically, there is almost no overlap in attendees -- I've been going to both for about two years and still haven't figured out why they're so different.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

An embarrassment of riches! If I manage to move out that way, I'll try going to both.

Yeah. There are certain singing groups I'm involved with that just don't intersect at all, for no apparent reason. Perhaps people in them had a fight years ago, and the grudge has just hung on... yeah, doesn't make sense to me, either.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Must show this thread to my husband. He got interested in Sacred Harp back when we lived in Worcester MA. (I had done a bit in college as well.) Those names are familiar, but I can't remember which singings he used to go to.

I do remember going to a wedding in Vermont attended by a lot of morris dancers, and asking my husband whether we'd seen a lot of the same people at shape-note events, or whether they just looked a whole lot the same. We finally decided on the latter with perhaps an occasional instance of the former.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

There's probably a Central MA sing, too. I only go to the one in N'hampton regularly. It's good to see that Sacred Harp is getting lots of attention in the Pacific Northwest, too.

asking my husband whether we'd seen a lot of the same people at shape-note events, or whether they just looked a whole lot the same.

Morris dancing and shape-note singing each tend to leave a... mark on one's soul. Eventually this becomes visible. We don't like to discuss it too much in public. Also, consider the fact that we New Englanders only have about six basic face types which get repeated over and over with minor variations. H.P. Lovecraft--boy, he knew about us...

/morris-dancing shape-note singer

[sovay]

I had no idea you weren't already a fan of shape-note singing, or else I would have tried to evangelize you about it long ago.

I'd heard it; I'd never tried it. I recognized a few of the tunes, but I don't know if they'd migrated from shape-note out into the wider world or been assimilated into it or what.

I may rent Gothic; I like the idea of Timothy Spall in almost anything, but he'd be a hoot as Polidori.

I think he was my favorite part of the film. As I just wrote to handful_ofdust: total Renfield.

If anybody tells you, "Oh, I loved that movie, Colin Firth is hot and it was so funny when he said 'fuck'," I hereby authorize you to stand with your arms folded and a slight smile on your face.

Hah. Thank you! Now watch, it'll actually happen at a party . . .

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

I don't know if they'd migrated from shape-note out into the wider world or been assimilated into it or what.

Good point. If you recognize a tune, it's very likely to be a shape-note composer's rewrite/rearrangement of a traditional or otherwise secular tune. One of my favorite hymns (I was just singing this the other day with negothick) is Sacred Harp 162, "Plenary."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-uG9isQBnQ

The tenors have the melody, which is "Auld Lang Syne," but it took me till the other day to realize that was what it was, since I've been singing treble or alto and the melody does not dominate the arrangement in any case.

[sovay]

The tenors have the melody, which is "Auld Lang Syne," but it took me till the other day to realize that was what it was, since I've been singing treble or alto and the melody does not dominate the arrangement in any case.

The one that blew my mind, I know as "The Men of the West/Rosin the Beau." Only in a different time signature, and slightly less revolutionary and/or drunk.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

I live in WMass, Sacred Harp capital of New England

Right, remind me where? If you're anywhere within reach of N. Adams, osirusbrisbane would probably be thrilled to have you stop by for game night.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Near Smiff College and North Hamster. North Adams is like forty-five minutes away, and I used to go there fairly often for contra dances. Game night sounds good to me.