Said you want to dance while the world stops

[sovay]

Today's mail brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #59. The issue is themed around music, fire, and ghosts; it contains especially recommendable work by Craig Rodgers, Alexandra Seidel, Tim Jeffreys, F. Brett Cox, Stephanie M. Wytovich, and Davian Aw, as well as my poems "The Great Fire" and "The Women Around Achilles." The latter was written as a gloss on the story of Achilles on Skyros, a piece of post-Homeric midrash whose gender essentialism has always sat badly with me; the former is a very recent take on chronic illness and politics. There is a ridiculous typo in one of them which is entirely my fault.

1. Last night I attended the premiere of Michael Veloso's Trinity (2018) at Lexington High School. I desperately want a recording. I have very high standards for atomic art and this piece easily exceeds them; I know less about twenty-first-century classical music than I should, but anything where I can hear neutrons clicking and cascading and the furnace churn at a fireball's heart is a success by me. It was not quite as weird to revisit my old high school auditorium as I had been worrying.

2. I woke this morning hearing the last stanza of Kipling's "The Widow's Party"—Bellamy's setting that uses the tune of "Dol-Li-A." All I can remember of my dreams is that I was singing it; I don't know when or for whom. It's been in my head all day, especially when I walked to the library and back to pick up a research book. We broke a King and we built a road—

3. I appreciate handful_ofdust tagging me Leslie Howard in one of the cuter moments of Berkeley Square (1933). I also appreciate her commentary on this photograph of Ida Lupino, Roscoe Karns, and Toby Wing. Whatever they just suggested, he'd be an idiot to refuse.

4. I don't understand what kind of person could read the headline "Green-haired turtle that breathes through its genitals added to endangered list" and not want to save it on the spot.

5. I am never not going to be happy that my fifth-grade teachers taught us about probability by teaching us to play craps so that we learned (a) about probability (b) the house always wins.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Number 5 is indeed praiseworthy.

The author's description of Trinity is intriguing. What other atomic themed art did it bring to mind?

[sovay]

Number 5 is indeed praiseworthy.

I had good fifth-grade teachers. They ran a nine-month unit on human sexuality and reproduction after one of them got pregnant at the beginning of the school year. There was a baby in the spring.

The author's description of Trinity is intriguing. What other atomic themed art did it bring to mind?

Mostly it sounded like itself, but I would put it alongside Dana Falconberry's "Alamogordo" (2016) and Oppenheimer Analysis' New Mexico (1982) as completely different approaches to and equally powerful evocations of the Manhattan Project and its aftermath.

[ethelmay]

They ran a nine-month unit on human sexuality and reproduction after one of them got pregnant at the beginning of the school year. There was a baby in the spring.

Sounds potentially rather expensive, as curriculum goes.

[sovay]

Sounds potentially rather expensive, as curriculum goes.

I don't think it could have been a regular feature, but as an improvised one-shot, it was awesome.

[alexxkay]

Re: atomic art
One episode of the recent Twin Peaks was heavily themed around atomic weaponry (to the extent that Lynch themes are at all discernable). Rather than the "normal" Badalamemti score, it used a lot of "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima".

Re: making good use of pregnancies
One of my all-time favorite productions of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was a student production at Brandeis. Due to the long lead times involved, they didn't find out until after casting that, during production week, Titania was going to be eight months pregnant. They designed her costume to emphasize her belly. Her speech about her handmaiden's pregnancy got fascinating new layers.

[sovay]

One episode of the recent Twin Peaks was heavily themed around atomic weaponry (to the extent that Lynch themes are at all discernable). Rather than the "normal" Badalamemti score, it used a lot of "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima".

I must have heard that; I could see Lynch using it well. Klaus Badelt's score for K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) turned out to have built its reactor scenes around variations on Richard Einhorn's "Voices of Light" (1994), which I now want to hear in its intended context.

Due to the long lead times involved, they didn't find out until after casting that, during production week, Titania was going to be eight months pregnant.

I love the idea of a pregnant Titania. I would hear it leap out on parent and original.

[jesse_the_k]

Thank you for introducing me to Dana Falconberry, who makes the kind of music I adore.

[sovay]

Thank you for introducing me to Dana Falconberry, who makes the kind of music I adore.

You are very welcome. I love that album and "Alamogordo" best of all. I bought it on the strength of hearing "Powerlines."

[moon_custafer]

I have very high standards for atomic art

Yesterday I learned of the Goiânia accident, which was..... I mean, at least the sailors on the K-19 were *aware* they were on a nuclear sub; this was civilians making the wrong call at (almost) every single turn.

[sovay]

Yesterday I learned of the Goiânia accident, which was..... I mean, at least the sailors on the K-19 were *aware* they were on a nuclear sub; this was civilians making the wrong call at (almost) every single turn.

Yes. I've read about that. That kind of unconscious hand-to-hand contamination is a nightmare, literally: you don't know what it is and people start dying.

[selkie]

You also acquired reams of hockey slang completely unflinchingly out of love for your godchild! And her parents!

[sovay]

You also acquired reams of hockey slang completely unflinchingly out of love for your godchild! And her parents!

I will never forget what it means when a crease is cold!

(It still sounds unfortunate.)

[gwynnega]

I love that gifset from Berkeley Square.

[sovay]

I love that gifset from Berkeley Square.

Leslie Howard with books is adorable.

[sami]

... that turtle

I want to save it and also keep it as a pet.

[sovay]

I want to save it and also keep it as a pet.

I think that is a very understandable impulse.

[thisbluespirit]

4. Wow, that is quite the turtle!

There is a ridiculous typo in one of them which is entirely my fault.

Oh, no! How annoying. Still it sounds like an excellent edition - with two v excellent poems in there.

[sovay]

Wow, that is quite the turtle!

It has better hair than many humans I have seen.

Still it sounds like an excellent edition - with two v excellent poems in there.

Thank you!

[poliphilo]

...A courthouse stands where the Reg'ment goed....

Now I'll be singing it all day too.

[sovay]

Now I'll be singing it all day too.

We're on Day 2 here . . .

[coraline]

I am so so sad angry that a combination of really unpleasant health stuff meant I missed the trinity concert - I had SO been looking forward to it, for many reasons.
I also hope there is a recording.

[sovay]

I am so so sad angry that a combination of really unpleasant health stuff meant I missed the trinity concert - I had SO been looking forward to it, for many reasons.

I am so sorry. Really unpleasant health stuff is a terrible reason for anything.

I also hope there is a recording.

I said very firmly that I would pay down actual money to support artists and musicians if it existed, so I can hope.

[negothick]

Only you, sovay, would think "Dollia" rather than "Liverpool Lullaby" in response to the Brian Peters/Anni Fentiman recording. I had to trace the 60s song, familiar to me from Judy Collins, back to its source--which was "Dollia."
"Liverpool Lullaby" by Stan Kelly "is based on a Tyneside song [Sandgate Dandling Song] written by Robert Nunn (1808-1853), a blind fiddler, to a traditional tune called Dollia:

When daddy'd drunk he'll take a knife
And threaten sair to take my life.
Who wouldn't be a keelman's wife
To have a man like Johnny?

Stan Kelly has reshaped the song in modern Liverpool terms without sacrificing any of its character and without parodying it.'

Kipling could have had the blind fiddler's version--or the original--in mind when shaping this poem. It's a perfect match for the narrative voice and the heavy weight of irony.

[sovay]

Only you, sovay, would think "Dollia" rather than "Liverpool Lullaby" in response to the Brian Peters/Anni Fentiman recording.

Thank you.

Kipling could have had the blind fiddler's version--or the original--in mind when shaping this poem. It's a perfect match for the narrative voice and the heavy weight of irony.

That was Bellamy's rationale for setting Kipling's verse to the tunes he did! He thought you could discern from the contours of the poetry the songs that must have been in Kipling's head as he wrote. I read an article that cited either written remarks of his or an interview about it; I'll try to find it again. It's strongest in the Barrack-Room Ballads. In some cases I'm pretty sure he just wrote his own trad-sounding melodies, but the majority I can recognize are very plausible, like "Blow Ye Winds" for "Mandalay," "Maggie May" for "Gunga Din," or "Derwentwater's Farewell" for "Danny Deever." (He owed a serious debt to Louisa Jo Killen.) "Poor Honest Men" fits so perfectly with "Spanish Ladies," I'm sure Bellamy was right to use it. I wish I had the liner notes to his Kipling albums as well as the songs.

[edit] This is not the article I was thinking of, but it alludes to some of the same material.

[negothick]

"Mandalay" fits best to "Ten Thousand Miles Away", I think--as does Heather Wood. Even the rhymes are similar. In fact, she shared Peter Bellamy's--and other folk settings--of Kipling's sea songs at a Sea Music Symposium at Mystic about 10 years ago. A historian (and not a folkie) in the audience had the nerve to question her sources, not knowing who she was. "How can you prove that Kipling had these songs in mind? Were you there?" It led to a verbal brawl that almost turned physical.

[sovay]

"Mandalay" fits best to "Ten Thousand Miles Away", I think--as does Heather Wood. Even the rhymes are similar.

I think we're talking about the same song. I heard it first as the whaling song rather than anything else.

It led to a verbal brawl that almost turned physical.

I assume she ate the historian for breakfast.

[negothick]

Yes, she made him regret he was ever born--he never returned that I know of, and before this incident, he used to attend regularly.
But no, not "Blow Ye Winds in the Morning"--this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWcj9LeFqhA *(sung by Dan Milner, who was in attendance that fateful symposium)*

[sovay]

But no, not "Blow Ye Winds in the Morning"--this one

I'm not arguing the Milner is a closer match, but I think of them as fundamentally the same tune, just one with a little more embroidery than the other. I recognized Bellamy's "Mandalay" at once from having heard Cooney's "Blow Ye Winds."

[asakiyume]

I got my subscribers copy of Not One of Us that same day, and was recommending it to people on Twitter. Both of your poems are brilliant--I remember very vividly "The Great Fire"; so powerful. I didn't remember the Achilles poem (please don't tell me I commented on it at length before--I'll feel so demoralized), but I think it's breathtaking.

I'm guessing what the typo must be, and I'm here to say, the language works well either way. (But I know there's a matter of intention, so.)

[sovay]

I got my subscribers copy of Not One of Us that same day, and was recommending it to people on Twitter.

Thank you! I hope people followed your recommendation and liked it. Jessica Amanda Salmonson boosted the magazine on Facebook, which I really appreciated it.

Both of your poems are brilliant--I remember very vividly "The Great Fire"; so powerful. I didn't remember the Achilles poem (please don't tell me I commented on it at length before--I'll feel so demoralized), but I think it's breathtaking.

Thank you very much. The Achilles poem is not recent, if it helps; it spent a couple of years languishing in a publishing limbo before being rescued and rehomed to Not One of Us.

I'm guessing what the typo must be, and I'm here to say, the language works well either way. (But I know there's a matter of intention, so.)

It's in the title of the second poem. It's really stupid. I went back to check the proofs and it was there, I just didn't catch it a year ago. This is why I always ask spatch to look over my Patreon reviews before I send the links out, just to make sure I'm not glossing over any typos, mentally substituting the real words instead.

[asakiyume]

I totally missed that! I tell you, until you pointed it out, I didn't see it. ... This doesn't recommend me as a copy editor.

Well, good then! That means you did mean "raining" in the other poem. I was trying to make you have wanted "reigning" ... which really wouldn't have made much sense, but I just didn't see the other thing and so was constructing elaborate other-theories.