Continuing our explanation…wait, that’s not right…our exploration of musical works inspired by the moon, we have today a short piece my Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi. I have featured Einaudi’s music here a couple of times previously, and each time I’ve noted (a) my general lack of familiarity with his music, and (b) my desire to learn more about it. Have I done so? Well…no. Not yet. I should probably go through my archives here and actually learn more about the music of the many composers of whom I have said something along the lines of, “I don’t know much about them but I should learn more!”
Anyway, this piece, called simply “Full Moon”, is just one piece in a larger work that is itself part of a larger sequence of works! Einaudi released a series of seven albums, called Seven Days Walking, with each album being a musical summation of one of the days. The idea of the project is musically depicting the same walk undertaken on seven different days, and noting the similarities and the differences that come from interacting with the same landscape in different conditions at different times. “Full Moon”, a minimalist piano-violin-and-cello work, is from Seven Days Walking: Day Three. The piece recurs in several of the subsequent albums in the series, slightly varied each time.
Because it was wonderfully crisp and cool out all weekend, I decided to fully embrace my favorite look, poofy shirts paired with overalls, during both days. And that’s probably a big reason why it was a really good weekend indeed. When you’re at maximum comfort, both in terms of just physical comfort but also just plain looking the way you want to look, it’s hard to have a bad day. And I had two pretty good days: trips to the farmer’s market and our favorite bakery and a different library branch where I checked out too many books (in terms of “will I get through them before they’re due”, because really, that’s the only actual context in which “too many books” is a concept that makes any sense at all). Then the next morning it was off to the Outer Harbor for some photography, and then it was off to Knox Farm for a little more photography (and some video footage shooting) because it was just too darn cold at the Outer Harbor! When those winds come off the lake on a cool fall morning, it can be downright chilly.
Let’s see, what else…there was cheese for dinner Saturday, and pork chops with corn on the cob last night. Yeah, not a bad weekend at all. I mean, sure, the weekend ended with the Buffalo Bills getting clobbered at home by the Baltimore Ravens. Bummer, but it happens. I went to bed when the score was 40-25, and, well, sometimes you don’t win…[listens to voice in earpiece]…OK, I have some new information here.
Anyway, here are the weekend’s outfits! Yes, this is two different poofy white shirts. Saturday’s overalls were dark blue Levi’s. Sunday’s overalls were vintage Lee Hickory-striped.
There’s something to be said for how life improves when you finally figure out what your real “look” actually is….
I saw this mentioned on Reddit earlier last week, and it’s interesting to think about. It’s pretty obvious that geography plays a strong role in sports: how games and events are scheduled depends on where they are taking place and what needs to happen to get the participants there. Here’s an interesting article about one unique problem: the NBA had to change its approach to scheduling games in Denver because of (a) how distant that city is from pretty much everywhere (the closest city to Denver with a big-four sports team is Oklahoma City, at nearly 500 miles away), and (b) how far Denver’s airport is from the city proper (over 20 miles from downtown Denver). And there’s the other factor of Denver’s elevation to account for; teams in Denver have a built-in advantage. (Not that it’s helped the Rockies this year, obviously.)
That’s just one venue with one NBA team. This is the kind of thing that sport schedulers have to think about, everywhere. Fascinating stuff, the machinations behind the games that we all end up watching.
It’s hard for me to talk about my feelings for Freddie Mercury.
When Freddie Mercury moved, he cracked open the atmosphere. He’s almost frightening. When he walked across a stage, or threw his body into a note, or flung his head backwards, audiences were transfixed. In him, they saw freedom. Through him, they experienced catharsis. He went there FOR them. People talk about performers who go “into a zone.” Mercury’s zone was bigger than most.
I just got done typing a lengthy comment, and I actually want to preserve it here as well:
Way back when I regularly watched AMERICAN IDOL every season (I know, I know), there was a young contestant, probably 16 or 17 years old, a girl, who had an amazing voice but she was REALLY inexperienced. So every week out she comes to do some song someone much more famous had already done, and she would try to replicate THEIR performance, often with surprising fidelity, but also with lack of “soul” because that’s all she was doing: replicating. And she always picked songs where the original vocalists did tons of runs and melismatic stuff and vocal gymnastics. One judge (can’t remember who, might have been Simon, might not have been) started criticizing her for doing songs every week that relied on vocal fireworks. Well, one week she comes out and does a Queen song. No runs, no major musical fireworks, and one of the other judges, maybe Randy, maybe not, says to the first judge, “You should be happy now! She didn’t do a lot of runs!”
Talk about missing the point (I promise I’m getting to it!): she had come out and aped Freddie Mercury, a man whose voice was so astonishingly pure and who had such astonishingly perfect control of that instrument at ALL times, never needed to back into a grab-bag of vocal tricks and runs and who knows what else. That’s what I always think of when I listen to him singing, just the complete and utter control he had every time he stepped up to the mic, ANY mic. Studio, stage, giant stadium, small club, anywhere. He knew exactly what he wanted his voice to do, and more than that, he knew what he NEEDED his voice to do, and that’s what he did. He was the best kind of virtuoso: the one whose technique is SO perfect that you barely even noticed how perfect his technique WAS. Watching him sing was like watching, say, Vladimir Horowitz play piano: that guy barely moved, he didn’t flail around at the keyboard and rock back and forth in ecstasy, he just…played. (Not to say Freddie wasn’t a showman, because oh was he ever, but he just knew how to do it that made it look completely effortless.) There’s a reason Freddie Mercury is on my personal Mt. Rushmore of pop-rock singers (the other faces being Sam Cooke, Annie Lennox, and Ann Wilson).
Of course, I have to end a post like this with something featuring Freddie Mercury, don’t I? Well, why don’t I go back to the beginning? In 1980, there was a lot of Queen on the radio, but my first real sustained introduction came via the movies: the amazing and wonderful Flash Gordon, that gonzo space opera-planetary romance that paired comic-book imagery and earnest storytelling with a rock-and-roll soundtrack. To this day I don’t know how that movie worked, but work it did. Here’s how it began:
Somewhere in this world there walks a person who saw that and did not become a Queen fan on the spot. I’d rather not ever meet that person. Who needs that negativity!
Carla has been trying to get Daisy to like her and play with her. The results have not been terribly encouraging, but Carla can be relentless, so we’re not giving up!
Social media has been abuzz lately over the trailer for a new film of Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights. I mean, look at this thing:
Yeah, that’s…quite something, isn’t it? Will I watch that? Maybe. I think it will be viewed best at home, after several drinks.
But anyway, here’s a suite of music by film score great Alfred Newman, composed for the 1939 film of the same book.
Of course, I suppose as time marches on it becomes less and less known that the greatest single adaptation of Wuthering Heights is the semaphore version!
A couple photos today, from a morning walk I took a month ago at the Charles Burchfield Art and Nature Center in West Seneca. Yes, I said a month ago. It seems that I edit my photos with the same philosophy that I use to edit my stories and novels: I let them lie fallow without looking at them for a while before I bring them all into Lightroom and then go through them.
One of my favorite visuals in any forest is when sunlight shines through a small gap in the trees, creating a shaft of golden light that strikes the path or the forest floor. I always, always, always find this captivating, like I’m getting a glimpse into something magical.
The problem I’ve had as a photographer is capturing this. It never looks right, no matter what device I use…phone, camera, no matter what, this particular image has always eluded me.
Until now.
I think I’m starting to crack this particular puzzle of mine.
I really think I may be starting to level up at this whole photography thing.
(Speaking of “leveling up”, the title of this post is derived from a computer fantasy role-playing game.)
Continuing a short investigation into classical music inspired by the moon, we have a piece by Benjamin Britten. The Four Sea Interludes are taken from his opera Peter Grimes, which is in turn one of Britten’s most well-known works. Grimes has endured in the operatic repertoire ever since its premiere, and the Four Sea Interludes have taken their own place in the orchestral repertoire. As interludes, these four pieces are derived from the incidental music Britten wrote to bridge scenes and allow scene changes to take place behind the curtain. The composer did need to do some extra work to convert the interludes, which lead straight into their new scenes in the opera, into successful standalone works.
Though there are four “Sea Interludes”, I’m only including the third here today, because of its theme. Called “Moonlight”, it sounds soothing and meditative at first…but as one listens it becomes somehow more restless, until it ends on an unresolved chord. The pulsing underneath seems like the insistent lapping of waves against the shore, with drops of silvery moonlight breaking through the clouds.
I’m enjoying a quiet Labor Day, which happens to be September First. We made it, folks! We’ve made it to the -Ber Months! This is the best time of year. And now it’s time for me to start making dinner. I’m grilling burgers.
Here’s Mr. Diamond.
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All I’ll say for now…
…is that I’d rather live in less interesting times.