:::this is the way the world ends:::
I was reading Atlas Obscura this afternoon, and they talked about a beautiful clock in Glastonbury. A deeply embedded memory of this surfaced:
It was 25 years ago, around this time that I first saw that clock. 25 years ago, exactly, I was in Norwich packing up to start my Navy Dumb training. Now to get some Toasted Tea biscuits for Jerod.
The Metropolitan Opera is offering free streams of their past performances. I have the luxury of two monitors at home, so I leave the performance up in a browser window and listen/watch throughout the day while I work in the primary screen. The process is a little more osmosis than active engagement, but by the end, I feel like I got 80% out of it as I would watching the first time.
One tip, I also pull up the synopsis of what happens in the opera in Wikipedia and it increases my understanding of the work immensely.
Opera sets seem to be a whole different type of stagecraft. All are spartan in some manner, “pointing” their construction to the performers. I watched the entirety of Carmen and they employed a complicated mechanism of rotating sets. The design and way the performers used this to dramatic effect was top-notch.
This week is Wagner week, and here is the schedule for The Metropolitan Opera.
…his Alien movie, this looks fantastic. Any takers?
Garfield, I haven’t come back to in appreciation yet. I still think it’s pretty juvenile. While I hope my kids find it and love it like I did, I also hope they outgrow it 😉
This and tomorrow’s entry do something to Garfield that makes it interesting, much more interesting than it would be on its own.
I present: Garfield as Garfield.
I’ve had three phases of my life in relationship to Peanuts.
One thing that has helped my appreciation of comic strips are projects like this, and I’ve got a few more to share in the upcoming days.
In the Attic by Seamus Heaney
1.
Like Jim Hawkins aloft in the crosstrees
Of Hispaniola, nothing underneath him
But still green water and clean bottom sand,
The ship aground, the canted mast far out
Above a seafloor where striped fish pass in shoals—
And when they’ve passed, the face of Israel Hands
That rose in the shrouds before Jim shot him dead
Appears to rise again . . . “But he was dead enough,â€
The story says, “being both shot and drowned.â€
2.
A birch tree planted twenty years ago
Comes between the Irish Sea and me
At the attic skylight, a man marooned
In his own loft, a boy
Shipshaped in the crow’s nest of a life,
Airbrushed to and fro, wind-drunk, braced
By all that’s thrumming up from keel to masthead,
Rubbing his eyes to believe them and this most
Buoyant, billowy, topgallant birch.
3.
Ghost-footing what was then the terra firma
Of hallway linoleum, Grandfather now appears
Above me just back from the matinée,
His voice awaver like the draft-prone screen
They’d set up in the Club Rooms earlier.
“And Isaac Hands,†he asks, “was Isaac in it?â€
His memory of the name awaver, too,
His mistake perpetual, once and for all,
Like the single splash when Israel’s body fell.
4.
As I age and blank on names,
As my uncertainty on stairs
Is more and more the light-headedness
Of a cabin boy’s first time on the rigging,
As the memorable bottoms out
Into the irretrievable,
It’s not that I can’t imagine still
That slight untoward rupture and world-tilt
As a wind freshened and the anchor weighed.
I was showing a student this artist’s work today to talk about atmospheric perspective, and it occurred to me that Toby and others might enjoy it.
Another interesting article from the New Yorker. It’s really amazing how good one can get, almost to the point of it being magical, when you solely focus on one skill for your entire life.
And here’s a video of his talent on display:
As I’ve been sharing things on the blog, I’ve wondered why I’ve kept things unserious after all the pressures, concerns, and nightmares of the past week. Perhaps I need a place for respite from the typical news flow across the internet. I felt I’ve needed evocation, rather than provocation.
Here’s a series of photos that evokes something inextricably Kansas out of me, and thought I’d share.
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
Another link I found in early 2013, was a series of videos an auteur named Matt Shapiro has put together for the last seven years called The Cinescape. It’s pretty amazing craftsmanship, and even though none of the films he spliced together are original works, the way he did it is. It’s masterful and brings to mind how movies, even in their most mundane form, can be filled with wonderful images and themes. Sometimes I feel as if there’s a boredom of abundance. There’s just so much high-quality filmmaking these days, that even the worst of the Hollywood dreck can be filled with amazing facets.
The Cinescape above also reminds me of how movies feature variations on a theme, and that the tropes can get tedious after a while. So, there’s a sense of wonder and disappointment as I flip through all seven of these and start to see some of the tricks filmmakers use to emotionally and visually connect.
From one of my favorite blogs called simply Drawn.
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