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

[margavriel.livejournal.com]

I had a wonderful day. I know.

That's so great and happy! I am envious.

May you continue to have more.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

♥

I am so glad of your day.

[selidor]

This does sound like a distinctly good day.

In an alternate universe of which I hope, Hedy Lamarr and Alan Turing met and became great friends - maybe they filed patents together on the mathematics underpinning the brain structures that decode dolphin sonar. Possibly there was also a royal tour of Canada in 1941 there, and you have a photograph that slipped through the gaps between worlds.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Shape-note singing ♥

[papersky.livejournal.com]

It was 1939, and it was in April and May so that they had debutante presentations early and late that year, March and June.But the film might not have been developed, or they may have made more prints to sell in 1941? (That was the tour where MacKenzie King was PM of Canada, and the PM of Alberta was Mr Queen, so they had the King, the Queen, Mr King, Mr Queen, and his wife Mrs Queen, which made for some funny moments of radio commentary.) They didn't leave Britain in 1941 because they were busy looking the East End in the eye.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

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.

!!!

PS: Everyone is bad at shape-note the first time.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

I had a wonderful day.

Yay, yay, yay! Wishing you more of them!

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

Oh, well done! I'm glad you had a good day. I would love that market, and the mead.

(I'm a bit squeeful now, having come home to find Singing Innocence and Experience waiting for me.)

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

I had a wonderful day.

Fabulous! May be it followed by a thousand more, renewable.

(Mazel tov on A Mayse-Bikhl!)

Nine

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

That sounds terrific. I hope there are many more days like it in store.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

My husband is a big shape-note singing fan, as is my son. In fact we have to clean house this week due to guests for a local convention next weekend.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

A Grand Day Out.

...Your consignment stores are better than the ones I see!

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

I thought I asked you the shapenote question for the Regency and we had had a whole discussion; apparently that was my wife (who is both a fan and quite good at it) -- e-mail tells me so. Still! Shapenote! Yay! It is apparently a uniquely American thing, and some of the songs are a grand mix of impassioned and kooky. I will go home and pluck lyrics from her shapenote sing binder, which are all from "The Aeolian Harp of Gold" or something like, ca. 1860.

Also, Bertie and his wife were clearly in Canada doing Sekrit War Work.

[gwynnega]

Great news about A Mayse-Bikhl!

I should try watching Gothic again. I bounced hard off it when I watched it years ago, but I am such a huge Russell fan...

[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.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Yay for good days! May there be more on the horizon.

I did a little shaped note singing in college, because one of my music professors was very much into it.

If you have some time, could you tell me a bit more about the interaction with the National Library of Israel? I'm taking Collection Development this semester, and that's the kind of thing that the class will probably cover.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I had a wonderful day. I know.

This pleases me greatly.

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.

Congratulations!

I'm sure you're better at shape-note singing than I am. I'm very taken with the sound of it, but I'm not really used to the concept of singing off any sort of notation at all.