I had to leave for work early today, and the stars were still visible through wisps of cloud.
Then, once I got to work and we were starting on the project that required my presence a bit early, I noticed the sunrise forming up behind The Store.
Buffalo has some gorgeous sunrises and wonderful skies.
I know I’ve been doing “autumnal” music this year instead of “spooky” or “scary” music, but this one really does fall into both categories, and it’s one that I post every year this month anyway, so here we are: that wonderfully brooding The Isle of the Dead, by Sergei Rachmaninoff. This piece is so wonderfully magical in Rachmaninoff’s downbeat way, starting from the very opening when the 5-4 time feels like the oars rising and falling awkwardly. Then the rocking of the waves starts…and the work’s real drama and emotion kick in, leavened with Rachmaninoff’s trademark lyricism and the way he can make musical passages yearn and yearn and yearn before they finally reach a kind of resolution, not unlike the mustering of the sea before the waves break upon the cold sand.
I love this piece. Here is The Isle of the Dead by Rachmaninoff.
Subtitled A Voyage Along the Wild Coasts of the British Isles, Adam Nicolson’s book Seamanship relates the story of how Nicolson, in a moment that might be consdiered a mid-life crisis, decided to acquire a yacht and sail from Cornwall to the west coast of Ireland, then back to Scotland and through the Hebrides and ultimately to the Faeroes. The yacht is acquired, a skipper (named George) is hired, and off they go.
It is, as you might expect, a voyage fraught with difficulties. Nicolson’s status as a novice sailor is exposed almost immediately as he struggles with seasickness before they’re barely out of port, and more struggles come along the way, such as a disastrous attempt by Nicolson to take their inflatable raft and go ashore at one point. Along the way the personal relationship between Nicolson and George suffers, with the two men unable to bridge the gap between novice sailor on a trip that’s basically a whim and the experience seaman who is grappling with the awkwardness of being both Captain and employee to the same man.
Along the way they make many stops at the stunning locations along those particular seacoasts (the book could really have used a photo section), and Nicolson’s descriptive passages are all evocative and well-written. They meet people along the way–a French sailor here, a cloister of excommunicate monks there–but the encounters are over almost too quickly, and the book always seems to be skirting around the level of depth and thoughtfulness that I found myself expecting. I really kind of expected more from this book, which manages to fall on the wrong side of the oft-cited rule of showpeople everywhere: “Always leave ’em wanting more.” If you do that, sometimes it really is the case that you didn’t give ’em enough.
But like I said, there are a lot of really fine passages in Nicolson’s book, most of which come as he grapples with the enormity and the indifferent nature of the sea itself. This passage comes from when he has managed to capsize their raft and is struggling just to get back to the surface:
Down deeper this time into the roll of the surf, suddenly alarmed at the idea of the dinghy itself, its protruding outboard, coming slamming on to my head as I was down there, and the feeling of enclosure, of wanting to shout, but the water of course clogging me into silence, a wet muddled claustrophobia like the worst of a bad dream, a fear like a nightsheet twisted around your head, into your mouth and nostrils and neck, a gag on your life, a garrotting by water.
This was the idea of the sea in its killing horror, the death element, the antithesis of life. This moment, seen face to face, was the reason that people have always, from the very beginning, loathed the sea. The Odyssey, which is not only the first but the greatest sea poem ever written, as old as the tumuli in which chieftains lie buried on the hills of southern England, and old then the great hillforts that straddle the skyline beside them, is suffused not with love of the sea but fear of it. Odysseus–the first great middle-aged hero in literature; his poem the story of the Middle-aged Man and the Sea–longs to go home, to the sweetness of land and the stillness of a house. But the loathing of Poseidon, the sea god, encloses him in one near fatal sea-trap after another. That is one of the Odyssey‘s central meanings: the sea itself is the element of death.
A few pages later:
The condition of the sea is murderous. Homer calls it “wine-dark” not because that is its color, even in the Aegean, but because that is its nature. It is thick with the intoxication of darkness. It is loved, sentimentally, by the ignorant and by romantics because death is the moment for which Romanticism longs, and because, as Homer knew, as my own panicked crisis now told me, no moment is more vivid than one embraced by death.
That is why death as sea is such a casual affair. Death has no need to approach. It doesn’t need to gird itself up here. It doesn’t come rolling like a swell, proceeding grandly towards you with its bosom before it and its intentions clear. Death is already there, a few feet away, resting beneath the table, its head on its paws and a smile in its eyes, happy to accept the scraps that fall.
Perhaps it’s a spoiler to note that nobody actually dies at sea in Seamanship, but Nicolson seems to feel death’s nearness at each point anyway. That’s probably wise. The sea can, after all, take us and never give a single tiny hint as to where we’ve gone.
Roger has alerted me that today is Jeff Goldblum’s 70th birthday! Huzzah!!!
I’ve been a fan of Mr. Goldblum’s for quite a few years, but looking at his filmography, he’s been on my radar even longer than I’ve been aware that he’s been on my radar. I first encountered him in the movie Thank God It’s Friday, the camp disco classic (and yes, I stand by those words, Thank God It’s Friday is glorious disco camp and it’s a rollicking blast to watch even now and I do not apologize for that opinion for one damned second).
Goldblum worked slowly and steadily up the Hollywood food chain, until he was finally a viable lead, probably starting with The Fly, which is an undisputed horror classic and, for my money, the greatest of the 1980s splatter-gross-out horror movies. (I will take The Fly over Alien one hundred times out of one hundred chances. I know, technically Alien isn’t an 80s movie, but I said what I said.)
Finally in the 90s, Goldblum hit it big and was seemingly everywhere. And I was always happy to see him in stuff! Jurassic Park, obviously. Independence Day, which always makes me happy, since it’s like if you took a golden retriever and made them into a goofy sci-fi alien-invasion blockbuster popcorn flick. Goldblum wasn’t just about quirky characters in effects blockbusters, though; he’s done a lot of serious and darker work, too. I’m still sad that his NBC noir-procedural show Raines didn’t score good ratings, because Goldblum was very effective in that show as a troubled detective.
More recently–very recently, actually–we’ve been watching Goldblum’s DisneyPlus show, The World According to Jeff Goldblum. If you haven’t seen this, figure out a way to see this! So far there are two seasons (I hope they do more!) of episodes that are always around 25 minutes long, and each is a min-documentary about some aspect of popular culture. Topics addressed thus far include sneakers, denim, dogs, puzzles, and motocycles. Each episode is a delight as Goldblum does his “quirky cheerful weirdo” thing. We’ve been loving this show. More and more, we need cheerful content that reminds us that our world, with all its problems, really can be a cool place, too.
Two final amusing Goldblum-related items. If you remember his first scene in Jurassic Park, there’s a moment where Goldblum gives this laugh that instantly, and perfectly, establishes his character as being just this side of a madman. (It’s about 25 seconds into the clip that I just linked.) Well, some brilliant soul actually took that almost-maniacal cackle and turned it into a song sample. Sometimes I just love the Internet.
And finally, there is apparently some occasional confusion as to how Mr. Goldblum’s surname is pronounced. Well, here he clears it all up:
Happy birthday,
I ended up going down a small rabbit hole not about piano music, but about pianists specifically. What’s how I found this comedic video, which I found pretty funny.
I promise that even as the local football club, the Buffalo Bills, may possibly be enjoying their best season ever, I will not turn this blog into a place for frequent football-ish commentary. For one thing, I’m not watching the games anymore; for another thing, football opinion often turns out to be dead wrong, and I’m wrong enough without tempting the Wrong Gods.
But…well, the Bills played at Kansas City the other day, and that is a matchup that many see in today’s NFL as being possibly equivalent to Patriots-Colts back in the 2000s, when those two teams always seemed to be squaring off in memorable contests pitting Tom Brady (boooo!) against Peyton Manning. And in the contest the other day, which ended with a 24-20 Bills victory (at Kansas City, which is amazing enough), there was a play toward the end of the game that typifies the Bills now. Quarterback Josh Allen took the ball and ran with it. Allen is quite the running quarterback, and he doesn’t just “take off and slide before he gets hit”; Allen runs the ball. Earlier in the season he stiff-armed a defender, which was amazing to see, but there’s another thing he does that he’s kind of made his calling-card:
Josh Allen hurdles guys.
He literally jumps over defenders, and he does so in such a way that he comes down and keeps running.
On this particular play, Allen took off. He was running toward the sideline, and then he turned upfield. Chiefs safety Justin Reid–wearing number 20–executed perfect technique to bring down a ball-carrier in this situation. Reid got in front of Allen’s lane, squared his shoulders, lowered himself to make the tackle, and brought up both arms. His arms closed–on nothing.
Because as Reid executed his perfect tackling technique, Allen went airborne and flew right over Reid’s head. Allen then landed and kept running, picking up another few yards, while Reid grappled with nothing but air. It was the kind of play that you almost always remember.
No, I’m not going to be a regular football blogger again. But I have to tip my blogging hat once in a while when something like this happens.
Just…wow.
Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg wrote a concert overture, inspired by the familiar landscapes he knew around this time of year, and he titled it simply, In Autumn. That’s pretty straightforward, isn’t it? The piece is melodic and brooding in precisely the way we’d expect from the composer of one of the best piano concertos of the 19th century, or from the man who wrote “In the Hall of the Mountain King”.
In Autumn has definite rustic feel to it. Grieg seems to be writing about a more turbulent kind of fall than we usually picture when thinking of the season; but maybe he was on to something. As I write this, it’s a cold and windy day outside, and hillier locations south of where I live are reporting dustings of snow for the first time. Hmmmm.
Here is In Autumn by Edvard Grieg.
The Odd Pathology of the Politician’s Mind
Here’s something that I’ve been thinking about all day. It’s a video of Senator Ted Cruz cheerfully walking up the aisle at Yankee Stadium, as Yankee fans make their opinions of him loudly known, right to his face.
There’s a LOT of very salty language here, so be careful…but what gets me here is Cruz’s demeanor here. He looks like he’s having the time of his life and that he’s surrounded by loved ones and supporters who can’t get enough of him or his presence…and nobody, not one single solitary soul, is the least bit happy to see him. At all.
I get that politicians have to cultivate a thick skin and all, and that this sort of thing is probably par for the course sometimes. But there’s just something about Cruz here that…how can I put this…it’s like he has a mental ability to simply remove it from his perception. He’s acting as if he genuinely doesn’t even notice this reaction. It’s not the mean enjoyment of it that wafts from Mitch McConnell’s body like a putrid death-stench; Cruz doesn’t strike me as enjoying being this hated. He strikes me as being completely unaware of it.
I guess this isn’t terribly surprising, given his history of sycophantic groveling and his cheerfulness as he spouts complete and utter nonsense that is so redolent of bullshit it often stuns other people in their tracks as they try to parse together enough of his absurdities to amount to something easily refuted. But this just really puts it front and center. He’s looking around, grinning and waving when the only people around are the ones shouting obscenities at him; he looks like he’s trying to shake hands with nobody who is offering their hand in return.
Someday, when the historians chronicle this period we’re being dragged through like prisoners in a chain gang, there will be entire chapters dedicated to attempting an explanation of Ted Cruz. If I were writing such a history, the entire chapter would simply be this:
Moving on….