Alan's brain, like a wireless set, resonated to a signal from the unseen world

[sovay]

Apologies for the jumble of the previous post; I had known about the Pet Shop Boys' A Man from the Future, but not that I would have any way of listening to it, and I exploded into go-mode. I am still quite happy about the acceptance. But I just spent the last hour listening to an electronic concert work about Alan Turing and it was really wonderful. Libretto written in close collaboration with Andrew Hodges, Juliet Stevenson narrating. There is Morse code woven in among the synths—the announcer, describing Turing in advance of the performance, parenthesized him "without whom quite a lot of the equipment onstage wouldn't exist tonight." A choral setting of a stanza of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." A violin plays "Cockles and Mussels" over the facts of Alan's trial. It went farther into the present day, politically, than I thought it would. I didn't make notes for myself; I'd rather just listen. Some lines that stuck with me as they went by:

Chris was waiting outside the labs. He took me out to see the stars.

They were having a wonderful time, seeing the history of the future.

Whenever I recall some past epoch, Alan said, I think of whoever I was in love with at the time.

Thinking and doing—the logical and the physical.
It was the problem of his theory and the problem of his life.

Never far beneath the surface lay the traditional equation of sodomy, heresy, and treachery.

A man from the future, Alan had imagined a world with intelligent computers
Where homosexual life is normal.

The law killed and the spirit gave life.

I wish I could pick out fragments of the music in the same way. You should be able to listen to the recording here. I'm so glad someone wrote this. I'm so glad it was the Pet Shop Boys. (They heard of Alan first through Breaking the Code! It wasn't just me!) Someone point me at a CD or a DVD and I will hand money over. This was an excellent thing to do with an evening.

P.S. I had not realized until it was announced that the first part of the concert was going to be orchestral versions of songs by the Pet Shop Boys, arranged by Angelo Badalamenti and performed by Chrissie Hynde. Result: OH MY GOD IT'S THE TORCHY LOUNGE VERSION OF "RENT." HUZZAH EVERYTHING.

Comments

[phi]

Please don't apologize for the jumble of the previous post. My social media feeds haven't had near enough joy or delight in them this past week. It was really good to read about yours.

[sovay]

My social media feeds haven't had near enough joy or delight in them this past week. It was really good to read about yours.

Thank you, then. I hope your own joy/delight quotient starts looking up soon.

[gwynnega]

It was very moving. I hope there will be a CD!

[sovay]

It was very moving. I hope there will be a CD!

I will shout to my friendlist if I hear about one! Ditto.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you for the heads-up! I'll play this later!

[sovay]

Wow, thank you for the heads-up! I'll play this later!

It's really worth your time. My mother asked if the visuals were nice and I said I didn't know—I was only listening!

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

Also, I remember catching a lot of a recording of the opera, somewhere... A friend had a copy? Was it a dream? (Wow, memory, way to behave. I have to be at a meeting in 15 minutes.)

Then I think if it was a dream, then it was probably you who had the copy...

[sovay]

Then I think if it was a dream, then it was probably you who had the copy...

My father was trying to record it off the BBC. It looked like it had worked the last time we talked; I'll check!