This topic is whatever you want it to be, one size fits all

[LoveMyPeppermill]

Came through Bingen the last time I rode down the Rhine. It seems she's a Saint now, but only became so in the past few years.

Not only is she a Saint, she was declared a Doctor of the Church.

 

[LoveMyPeppermill]

I used to have the LP recording by Sequentia (the one on YouTube is a later version). Somewhere in the middle there's a gentle, dreamy instrumental piece which is suddenly interrupted by the devil screaming Euge! Euge! It used to make me jump out of my skin every time.

That was Benjamin Bagby himself. That shout was powerful, but I wasn't crazy about the way he did the Devil generally, at least when I saw him do it live. (I don't listen to that recording; I'll explain why in a minute.) He just let his words tumble out in an angry and undifferentiated rush. I get the artistic choice (to the Virtues, whatever the Devil shouts is just noise), but I didn't like it much.

That first Sequentia version of Ordo Virtutum features one of the performance practices for Hildegard that really does irritate me: the constant noodling by instruments alongside the vocal line. Yeah, I get the idea of heterophony in medieval European vocal music accompanied by instruments, but I never found it musically convincing; with plainchant in particular (and that's what Hildegard's music is), the noodling just gets in the way. I guess Sequentia ultimately agreed, because they mostly abandoned that practice around the late 1990s.

That said, sometime in the 1980s, they did a staged version of Ordo Virtutum with Barbara Thornton as Anima (the Soul), and they brought it to the Medieval Sculpture Hall at the Metropolitan Museum; to this day I consider it one of the most entrancing performances of any kind I've ever seen. (Despite the noodling instruments!) It was because of the thoughtful staging and the pure conviction that Barbara and her colleagues brought to their performance. They actually got me emotionally involved with the characters in a medieval allegory -- and, since those characters are not characters at all but abstract principles, is quite a feat.

The second version of Ordo Virtutum that Sequentia did was much better musically: no instruments noodling along with the singers, and beautifully clear voices doing confident singing. That staging (which must be the one on YouTube) came to NYC as well (Lincoln Center presented it at a nearby church), and the musical performance was just spellbinding. The audience was completely silent and still, just blown away.

The stage production, unfortunately, could be described as ghastly, except that it was too nondescript to deserve a word that strong. The singers, dressed in plain robes, just stood still and occasionally moved around, slowly, for no discernible reason. One singer at one point held up something that looked like a Star Wars light saber and grinned (she wasn't singing at the time), again for no discernible reason. The New York Times critic (who loved the music) compared it to a high school pageant, which happened to be exactly what I was thinking at the time. The only remotely good thing one can say about that staging is that it -- mostly -- didn't get in the way of the terrific music-making.

"Mostly" because the director, a queeny little gnome from Germany, played the Devil himself, delivering his lines in a petulant hiss that was something like a Paul Lynde or Charles Nelson Reilly character in a really bad mood. At one point he ended one of his little speeches with a cat hiss, making pretend-claws with his fingers. I'd have laughed out loud in derision if the musicians hadn't cast such a powerful spell.

I felt bad for Barbara Thornton: she was still alive and trying to take part, but her brain tumor had progressed to the point that she couldn't speak. She must have known how bad the staging was, but she was in no shape to do anything about it.

 

[cabinfever]

Two men who I love and I love this photo of Jimmy and Willie

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Not only is she a Saint, she was declared a Doctor of the Church.

Good... because It sorely needs medical attention.

 

[rareboy]

Needs a good fucking enema.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Needs a good fucking enema.

Wasn't that Gotham City in Batdance?

 

[Essex Boy]

Repurposed sardine tins.

Have a closer look.
https://ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon.blog/2023/03/02/fiona-hall/

 

[rareboy]

Rather like Judy Chicago's Dinner Party.

 

[LoveMyPeppermill]

I was so impressed with the metalwork at the top of each piece that it took me a while to realize that almost every piece has something sexual where the fish used to be.

 

[Essex Boy]

Barnaby has been focusing on his new character Bailey Wick. He does requests. There are some interesting comments from viewers deploring the debt bondage system that the song refers to ("I owe my soul to the company store"). Wikipedia says it was outlawed in the 1930s but someone claims to have experienced it first hand in 1972. And here we are now, getting our knickers in a twist about which toilet the gender-fluid children should use at school. Enjoy.

 

[Essex Boy]

 

[pat grimshaw]

George Maharis

George Maharis in Route 66 (1960)

www.imdb.com

So we can assume that --if he did do the penetrative sex-- he wasn't the passive one.

 

[Essex Boy]

On Visiting Westminster Abbey
by Amanda McKittrick Ros

Holy Moses! Have a look!
Flesh decayed in every nook!
Some rare bits of brain lie here,
Mortal loads of beef and beer,
Some of whom are turned to dust,
Every one bids lost to lust;
Royal flesh so tinged with 'blue'
Undergoes the same as you.
...
Famous some were—yet they died;
Poets—Statesmen—Rogues beside,
Kings—Queens, all of them do rot,
What about them? Now—they're not!

Amanda McKittrick Ros's Poems of Puncture (this isn't one of them) are on Librivox: https://librivox.org/poems-of-puncture-by-amanda-mckittrick-ros/

 

[Essex Boy]

Doggerel by a Senior Citizen
by W.H. Auden

Our earth in 1969
Is not the planet I call mine,
The world, I mean, that gives me strength
To hold off chaos at arm’s length.

My Eden landscapes and their climes
Are constructs from Edwardian times,
When bath-rooms took up lots of space,
And, before eating, one said Grace.

The automobile, the aeroplane,
Are useful gadgets, but profane:
The enginry of which I dream
Is moved by water or by steam.

Reason requires that I approve
The light-bulb which I cannot love:
To me more reverence-commanding
A fish-tail burner on the landing.

My family ghosts I fought and routed,
Their values, though, I never doubted:
I thought the Protestant Work-Ethic
Both practical and sympathetic.

When couples played or sang duets,
It was immoral to have debts:
I shall continue till I die
To pay in cash for what I buy.

The Book of Common Prayer we knew
Was that of 1662:
Though with-it sermons may be well,
Liturgical reforms are hell.

Sex was of course—it always is—
The most enticing of mysteries,
But news-stands did not then supply
Manichean pornography.

Then Speech was mannerly, an Art,
Like learning not to belch or fart:
I cannot settle which is worse,
The Anti-Novel or Free Verse.

Nor are those Ph.D’s my kith,
Who dig the symbol and the myth:
I count myself a man of letters
Who writes, or hopes to, for his betters.

Dare any call Permissiveness
An educational success?
Saner those class-rooms which I sat in,
Compelled to study Greek and Latin.

Though I suspect the term is crap,
There is a Generation Gap,
Who is to blame? Those, old or young,
Who will not learn their Mother-Tongue.

But Love, at least, is not a state
Either en vogue or out-of-date,
And I’ve true friends, I will allow,
To talk and eat with here and now.

Me alienated? Bosh! It’s just
As a sworn citizen who must
Skirmish with it that I feel
Most at home with what is Real.”​

Auden was 62 in 1969. He died in 1973. He also said this: "I don't go along with all this talk of a generation gap. We're all contemporaries, anyone walking this earth at this moment. There's a certain difference in memories, that's all. We're all contemporaries, facing contemporary problems."

 

[rareboy]

Love Auden.

 

[pat grimshaw]

W.H. Auden

He chose men who used him.

And he would urinate in the kitchen sink.

 

[Essex Boy]

^
I'm sure he had the good grace to move the dishes out of the way first.

 

[Essex Boy]

^
Here's a blast from the past. I just remembered this song from my teenage years. It used to make me cry with laughter and I haven't heard it for decades!

 

[pat grimshaw]

now she might have pissed in the sink
but I knew she's a nice girl straight away
because she moved the dishes first
did she moved the dishes first she moved the fishes.
she didn't pay on my frog. she didn't pee in my frogs born.
now we were against the couch or lying on the couch.

 

[Essex Boy]

sigh* Oh, Peeonme, if only you'd posted this before the weekend! On Saturday I had a day out in Brighton. It was the first time I'd been there in my life. Very crowded despite the rotten weather. I looked around for somewhere to eat and ended up in a ramshackle veggy wholefood place chomping pine nut kernels, kale and stone cold roast sweet potatoes. Then yesterday you showed us your kitchen stuff so out of curiosity I did an image search and the first picture that came up was of JB's American Diner on the seafront in Brighton.

Well, every cloud has a silver lining so next time I go to Brighton thanks to you I'll know where to eat! If you and Mrs P are ever in London I'll take you both down to Brighton and treat you. Brighton is a very rainbowy town.

Today is the hundred days day. It's a hundred days till Christmas. It was also the last weekend of summer, so yesterday I took myself off to Brighton again on a jolly solo date and I forgot to note down the address of JB’s American Diner! When I got home and checked it turned out it's somewhere along the road behind where the Hare Krishna people were manhandling a heavy concrete effigy of Betty Boop onto a wagon that looked like it was painted by Cressida Bell. So I probably walked past it and didn't see it.

​

The Royal Pavilion looked ghastly. I didn't go in. It looks like it's made of concrete too.

​

Brighton manages to be both enchanting and ratty at the same time. The big pull for day trippers is The Lanes but I didn't take any snaps because there was so much glare I couldn't really see what I was snapping with my tablet. I'm surprised these came out as well as they have.

This is just a hint of what's tucked away in the Lanes.