When you’re writing a swashbuckler of a novel with young lads first learning to use a blade and pistol as your hero and dastardly men on black horses with eye-patches and a big red feather in their black hats as villains, you need to listen to some swashbuckling music to get in the mood. Erich Wolfgang Korngold is my go-to composer when there’s some swash to be buckled, so here’s a suite from his score to the Errol Flynn historical adventure film, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.
National Poetry Month, day 13
Not all poetry is about positive things. Poetry can be angry and visceral, as in this poem by Wilfred Owen. Owen is known as one of the great poets to write during World War I, and he was actually killed in action on November 4, 1918 — just a week before the armistice ending the war was signed.
The Latin phrase at the end of the poem means: “It is sweet and noble to die for one’s country.”
Dulce et Decorum est
by Wilfred OwenBent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
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ROGUE ONE and other thoughts on the state of STAR WARS
So, the first trailer for ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY dropped last week, and…well, it looks good. How good? I won’t hazard a guess, but it does look like a Star Wars movie. Felicity Jones as the heroine looks fine, although the trope of the good guys having to trust everything to a rogue whose methods or motivations are questionable isn’t the freshest thing in the universe. Also, I’m a little turned off by the apparent gritty tone of the film, which looks to me like Star Wars melded with Battlestar Galatica. Maybe it’s not full-on grimdark, but the film’s producers have noted in past interviews that their story isn’t as morally unambiguous as the main-line Star Wars story, which isn’t something I’m thrilled about. There’s a place for morally ambiguous stories of war in science fiction, but Star Wars to me is about mythic storytelling, so I’m not sure how the tone will fit.
More troublesome to me is that we’re going to the Death Star well again, this time to tell the story of how the Rebellion got the “complete technical readouts of that battlestation” in the first place. I’m not sure this is a story I’ve ever really cared about hearing, especially since this will be the fourth movie in the Star Wars universe where a big spherical planet-destroying space station is a major plot point. This, coupled with the derivative story in The Force Awakens, and with the coming films centering on young Han Solo and young Boba Fett, seems to indicate that Star Wars is heading into a period of self-referential self-milking. And it’s not just the movies: we’ve had numerous novels and comics over the years that told versions of what happened in between the movies, and Disney’s first act of business upon acquiring Star Wars was to strike all that from the record and then…immediately start producing more novels and comics that tell versions of what happened in between the movies.
Frankly, I’m starting to get a sense of Lather, rinse, repeat from Star Wars. It’s the feeling I had during the second season of Star Trek: Voyager, when it became clear that we weren’t going to see exciting new stories but just more TNG-flavored tales told on a new ship with a blander crew. Maybe I’m wrong and these movies will be great, but I want new stories, not constant revisitings of the old ones. I’m not interested in Star Wars as ritualistic theater where the same stories are told all the time.
:: Something crystalized for me a few days ago, via a post on Tumblr, regarding the approach Disney is taking to Star Wars as a whole, and the misgivings I had about the characterizations in The Force Awakens. Someone wrote this:
There are posts about Finn that come across my dash frequently that really concern me.
It’s not that I don’t think musings about what a sweet innocent soul he is and imagining what his humble life must’ve been like are coming from a loving place, but Finn’s character has already been filled in via a canon source, and it was not humble.
Read the novel “Before the Awakening,” where you will learn that while FN-2187 may have pulled shifts as a janitor just like any military trainee has to work some shit jobs, he was actually the absolute rock star of his elite band of Stormtroopers. He was the natural leader, the best of them all, the highest scores in every possible measure, someone Phasma and Hux were well aware of as the shining example of what their pet Stormtrooper program could accomplish. He was everything they’d worked for for years.
The only problem was, he cared too much about his fellow Stormtroopers, even though they didn’t return the feeling, due to indoctrination and some envy of his superiority. It is pretty obvious, reading BtA, that Finn is Force sensitive. It is that Force sensitivity that set him apart, and made him the one who could overcome a lifetime of indoctrination and get out.
I know it’s the fault of the film for sketching him so lightly, but guys, it is crucial that we start acknowledging who Finn is, and his strengths. Which, canonically, are leadership, strategy, all the skills a commander must have. I worry that there is too much PRECIOUS PURE CINNAMON ROLL going on and not enough shared knowledge of his *canon character background and gifts*.
Please spread the word about Finn. This sort of thing shortchanges him horribly. When the FO lost FN-2187, they lost more than just another Stormtrooper. They lost a future general, and the Resistance picked one up.
There are so many ways this makes me crazy (none of which are the poster’s fault), but at the crux of it is this:
NONE OF THIS IS IN THE MOVIE.
And I’m not exaggerating here. There is not ONE thing in the movie that supports any of this. The Tumblr poster says that the movie “sketches Finn lightly”, but I think that’s drastically understating things. The film strongly suggests that Finn is a space-janitor who is seeing his first space action. There’s no other reasonable reading of what we see in the film: the way Finn is stunned by the single death of a single stormtrooper, the way Finn lowers his weapon when he’s supposed to be killing innocents, the way he just stands there slackly as Kylo Ren wanders through, the way he has to rip off his helmet to try and regain his composure…sure, Finn’s training comes through at times, just by virtue of his knowing stuff (“Fly low! It’ll screw up their scanners!”), but mostly, there isn’t one thing in The Force Awakens that establishes Finn as “the absolute rock star of an elite band of stormtroopers”. There really isn’t one thing that clearly establishes him as being Force-sensitive. There isn’t one thing that establishes that Finn is held in any particular esteem by Hux and Phasma (who are still awful, terrible characters). As far as the movie is concerned, Finn is just some random stormtrooper who inexplicably develops a conscience one day. Nothing of his background is established in the movie, no context is given at all for his change of heart, and to be told “Well, you gotta read this other novel to get it” is incredibly weak tea.
And that’s what makes me crazy about how Disney is approaching Star Wars now.
First of all, it’s simply not reasonable to expect people to be up on the minutiae of every single thing out there that has been declared to be “Star Wars canon”. I’m not planning to read any of these novels; at most I’ll read some of the comics. Most people who see the films will do even less than that, but now we’re leaving crucial bits of information out of the films entirely. That bit about Maz saying “That’s a story for another time!” when she’s asked how she got Luke’s original lightsaber? Well, there’s no doubt in my mind we’ll get that tale in some other media format, and that’s a ridiculously cynical approach to storytelling. “We’ll just leave crucial stuff out, so people who want a coherent tale will be forced to indulge all this other stuff!” Ugh.
The movies have to be coherent, and if they’re not going to be, then I have a problem. I’m not going to sit back and enjoy Daisy Ridley and John Boyega and the others if the story they’re wandering through is leaving out key details as a selling point for books, comics, and video games. In truth, I’m going to find it hard to care. If the movies can’t tell the entire story — and that means playing fair with the characterizations and explaining the presence of major items like Luke Skywalker’s first damn lightsaber — then the movies are at best lazy and at worst they are reduced to marketing devices. And wouldn’t that be an irony? To see Star Wars movies reduced to pushing other media tie-in stuff so that fans can learn what the hell is going on? Years after people were busily accusing George Lucas of selling out and using his creation to sell stuff, we’ll cheerfully look the other way because now Disney is doing it.
So yeah, I call bullshit — utter, complete bullshit — on the idea that if I didn’t read some novel, I don’t really understand Finn as a character. That is the job of the movies, and if they’re actually not going to do it, well then, I for one will pine for the days of George Lucas being in charge.
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National Poetry Month, day 12
For being “dead” as poetry is always said to be, I sure have met a lot of poets online. I sure have met a lot of folks who still practice this “dead” art form and who are still invested in its future. I sure have met a lot of people who are knowledgeable about poetry and who still insist that there are new things to say, or new ways to say old things, or new ways to say new things, using the tropes and mechanisms of poetry.
When I go to bookstores, I always see people browsing the poetry section, and I see lots of new poetry books adorning the shelves. I even buy some myself, on occasion. I’ve bought several poetry chapbooks for my Kindle.
Poetry is dead? Well, if it is, there sure seems to be large number of people who never got the memo.
Natasha Head is a poet I first met on Instagram, and then on Tumblr and Twitter as well. She’s active on Facebook, and what’s more, she’s very active in the Canadian poetry community, and she has appeared on podcasts to read her work and she’s been printed in Canadian journals and she has published several collections of her own work. She’s quite a wonderful poet who has become an essential voice in my own writing world.
Poetry is dead? I’d tell you not to tell her, but really? I don’t think she gives a shit. She’s too busy writing poems.
Losers Like Us
by Natasha HeadI had the car and the notebook
You had the weed and the beer
We both had the urge for leaving
Get up and get out of hereWe made it as far as the sidewalk
Never knew that at one point it ends
Never knew where the concrete would take us
Never knew that we’d never againHid the car in the lot at the old rink
Took the path beaten on the forest floor
Took the notebook the weed and the beer
Took again and then took some moreThe camp wasn’t much to look at
There really wasn’t much to see
Just me with my little notebook
And you with your bag of weedThe bench was hard and splintered
But to us it was good as a throne
The smoke was heavy and skunky
If it wasn’t, we would have stayed homeThe soundtrack was a walkman
With blaster speakers doctored by you
Suicidal Tendencies, Social Distortion
Back then, the balls and chains were few.You let me tell you stories
I let you read what I had wrote
I let you sing my simple words
Even then it was poetry you spokeAll we knew for certain
Was that we couldn’t be caught
Losers like us have a way of evasion
We slip away with barely a thought.(via)
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National Poetry Month, day ten
National Poetry Month, day nine
The intersection of music and poetry is a fascinating one. There are song lyrics, which are almost always poetry, and then there’s the way in which poetry and music both can sometimes reflect the world in similar ways. There is often a mystery at the heart of both poetry and music, in that the poets and the composers have things to say about the world that really can’t be said in any other way.
This is a poem about music. Someone said something once to the effect that “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” which is clever and pithy and…well, a little wrong. Words can never quite express what music does, but that doesn’t mean that words can’t point the way or capture something of the emotion we feel about a work of music. This poem does something else, though: it expresses gratitude that music even exists.
There is a story here, of course. When Sergei Rachmaninov premiered his Symphony No. 1, the work’s reception was so disastrous that it sent the young composer into a depression that lasted several years, until he finally received therapy that helped him recover enough confidence to finish his Piano Concerto #2, which is merely one of the greatest concertos of all time. Rachmaninov went on to a long life of composition, and lovers of his work — amongst whom I count myself — are indebted to Nikolai Dahl, the physician who conducted Rachmaninov’s therapy.
This poem, by Diane Ackerman, expresses that very gratitude. I read it in a book called The Music Lover’s Poetry Anthology, which I bought whilst in New York City last November. Nikolai Dahl is a curious footnote in music history, but what a footnote!
Rachmaninoff’s Psychiatrist
by Diane AckermanI’m listening to Rachmaninoff’s
Piano Concerto No. 2,
which he dedicated to Dr. Dahl,
the psychiatrist who guided him
through the straights of fever,
not long after Sergei had heard
his own first symphony played.
Horrified by its many defects
which seemed a sewage of noise,
he had fled the hall, ashamed,
a quagmire of self-doubt.We cannot know all the sounds
Dahl and he exchanged,
but rubbing one word against another,
Dahl gradually restored
Sergei’s confidence. History tells
that Dahl used affirmations
and auto-suggestion:
“You will compose again.”
“You will write a piano concerto.”
“You will write with great facility.”
Repeated until the words saturated
His gift from head to fingers.In truth, nothing can kill a gift,
but it may become anemic
from great shock or stress-
a sprain of the emotions will do,
or a traffic accident of the heart,
or a failure dire as a clanging bell.For two years, Dahl worked
on Sergei’s shattered will.
at last he collected up his senses
in a burst of blood fury
and composed his triumphant
2nd Piano Concerto,
full of tenderness and yearning,
beguiling melodies, raging passion,
and long sensuous preludes
to explosive climaxes,
frenzy followed by strains
of mysticism and trance.Loaded with starry melodies,
it was a map of his sensibility,
and a wilderness rarely known
-the intense life of an artist
seen in miniature, with rapture expressed
as all-embracing sound.Will you tell me if you know,
how Dahl might have received
such a gift? I cannot imagine it.
With hugs and shared enthusiasm?
With an austere thank you?
In his private moments, did he weep
at the privilege allowed him?
For a time he held the exposed heart
of a great artist, cupped his hands
around it like a flame, blew gently,
patiently, until it flared again.For that, he earned the blessings
of history, and soothed millions
of hungry souls he would never meet.
Listening to Rachmaninoff’s
concerto today, intoxicated by its fever,
I want to kiss the hands of Dahl,
but he is beyond my touch or game.
Allow me to thank you in his name.
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Symphony Saturday
A symphony today by an American woman.
In the late 19th century, the American musical tradition was pretty much an extension of the European musical tradition, which is generally why American composers of that period aren’t generally held in the highest regard; American concert music was still maturing, and the first real American musical forms — rooted in the emergence of jazz — had yet to fully emerge. But there was still good music being written, and it’s really Eurocentrism that keeps a lot of it from being heard more.
A good example is this fine symphony by Amy Beach, who lived from 1867 to 1944. She was a prodigy and a gifted performer who received great acclaim as she took the stage in her late teens, but then she married a man who decided that she shouldn’t perform much and that she shouldn’t study composition with a teacher, so while she continued making music, I must inevitably wonder what art was stifled by our society’s sexist idiocy of the day. During her lifetime, her compositions were actually credited to “Mrs. H.H.A. Beach.” The mind, hopefully, reels.
Beach’s Gaelic Symphony is reminiscent of Dvorak (who was a heavy influence upon her) in its orchestration, and she used a number of Irish songs in the symphony’s melodic material, creating a work that is fascinating to hear. Beach wrote this symphony early in her musical life, before she embraced native musical material, but it is still a fine and invigorating listen. In her later life, Beach would live for 34 years as a widow, composing and teaching. She never wrote another symphony, unfortunately.
Here is the Gaelic Symphony by Amy Beach.
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National Poetry Month, day eight
A short poem today, short but powerful. One of the band directors at the music camp which featured in yesterday’s post actually wrote a piece for symphonic winds based on this poem, which packs tremendous imagery and emotional power into just four lines. The Western wind has many connotations, few of them bad, and in this case, the speaker is praying for its return so that the “small rain” can return, bringing cleansing and healing. And then, the wish for a return to a familiar warm bed and the arms of a beloved. This is a very old poem, and nothing is known of its writer; in fact, it may be just a fragment of a larger work that is lost to us now. If so, and if the remaining work is as good as this quatrain that has survived to our time, what a loss that must be!
Western wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ! If my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again!
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Nothin’ good comes from a can…. (An experiment involving whipped cream)
Pie-in-the-face weirdness below the break….
OK. So it’s been my experience that the most common form of whipped cream in the US, the stuff in the aeresol can, is great for topping your pumpkin pie or for dipping strawberries or for giving to cats as a treat (yes, this is a thing), but lousy for pies in faces. The stuff is very highly aerated so as to come out of the can better, but once it’s dispensed it breaks down very quickly. You really have to use the stuff fast, lest the effect be less of getting hit with a pie and more of getting hit with a plate of thick milky-cream stuff. Yuck.
But, I saw a can of whipped cream the other day marked “Extra Creamy!” and that it was made with real cream. So…I tested it, because that’s what you do.
I dispensed the contents of the can into a pie crust. It started breaking down almost immediately, which was not an encouraging sign….
But hey…in for a penny, in for a pound as they say.
These results weren’t awful, I must admit. Not great, but not nearly as disappointing as previous attempts with this stuff. In fact, these particular results weren’t really disappointing at all.
I don’t expect this stuff will replace my usual preferred products for this sort of goofery (you can’t beat a nice coconut cream pie for splatting purposes), but for a “quick hit”, there are worse options out there.
So the whipped cream in the spray can gets a partial reprieve. I will not be embracing shaving cream, though. Because ewwwww!
Tips for success: Use a lot of the stuff, and dispense it as close to the splatting as possible. The spray-can stuff will melt quickly. And have fun, because as always, a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!
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Bad Joke Friday
