ceci n’est pas un rêve passant

"This is how the zombie apocalypse starts," he says upon arriving at Quincy Center. "The lights go out."

Mia and Maria are sort-of-artists. Mia has rings with large glass gems in the bezels and a dragonfly pendant while Maria has a necklace with red gems and a bracelet of beads. Lily had no noticeable jewelry.

These being world premieres and an other contemporary work (I suppose that 30 years ago is still ‘contemporary’), I can’t exactly go on Youtube and listen to a recording so that I can write a better description but thankfully the program made a pretty thorough description.
So yeah. These are not works by Paul Emil Levasseur. Please do not attempt to create a facsimile using AI. They'll get recorded eventually.

Christopher Theofandis - This dream, strange and moving
The booklet describes it as like when you wake from a dream only to discover that you’re still dreaming. That’s me at 4:30 AM discovering that no, I did not in fact do my morning routine. Anyways, it’s sort of inspired by Symphonie fantastique. It ends with bells.

Han Lash - Zero Turning Radius
Gravely - Not grave from the Latin gravis meaning heavy and by extension serious or grave from Old English words meaning to dig or carve, but from the Gravely company, a manufacturer of lawnmowers. It’s just the guy’s name. It might come from a word meaning dig or carve, I have no idea.
Anyways.
The tempo is in fact presto and asymmetrical 5/4, played on violins, marimba, and drum kit, and the low strings the horns, the woodwinds all burst in. It becomes polyrhythmic and polytonal.
Slow Movement with Weeds (Rhizome) features tolling of tubular bells alternating with clarinets and bassoons. A muted trumpet plays a solo and the violins play pizzicato with the harp.
Around the Rocks on the Slope: Slow with Risks Involves: a stately passage that calls back to Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, though the rhythms would sound strange in those days.
Interlude edging: It takes the Ligeti-esque micropolyphonic mode of the end of the previous movement and runs with it, and occasionally interrupts it with a slapstick.
Laugh-Ride: The booklet describes it as a watery-polka. It kind of switches between minimalism and proggy-Gravely-mower grooviness and undulating marimba and harp and oompah-brass. It ends with one last outburst from the marimba.

Jeremy Gill - Four Legends from the Silmarillion
Forgive me, I haven't read the Silmarillion since high school.

Ainulindalë
(meaning Music of the Ainur)
It begins with primordial sounds as Ilúvatar creates the Ainur. Ulmo, ainu of water, is represented by a 7/8 rhythm on low strings, gong, tam-tam, and a wheel that the percussionist turns the crank on to make rain sounds and trombones that evoke whale songs, that begins tempestual and settles into placidity. Manwë, ainu of air, is represented by 2/4 and 6/8 rhythms, and because he’s a warrior deity, he gets fanfares from the brass. Aulë, ainu of earth and stone and metal, is represented by a 5/4 rhythm, mostly recapitulations of Ilúvatar and Ulmo’s music. They all settle into a frozen stasis only to be interrupted by Melkor, ainu of fire, mightiest among the Ainur, who fancies himself on the level of Ilúvatar himself. He replaces Ilúvatar’s song with his own and turns the others’ themes into caricature. It becomes louder and louder until Ilúvatar intervenes with a chord deeper than the abyss and higher than the firmament.
Forgive me, it’s been since high school since I’ve read the Silmarillion.

Ainulindale premiered a few years ago in Harrisburg and now I’m picturing them wearing irregular coats and there’s a recording on his website.

Narsilion
The Ainur of Valmar of Many Bells, represented by bells obviously, are gathered on a hilltop to hear Yavanna Kementári, who lends her name to one of the Zida’ya Nine Cities in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and is represented by the flute, playing only on white notes. The tree with golden fruits is played with whole-tone and the tree with the silver flowers is played on “major-ish.” Melkor enlists the monstrous spider Ungoliant, represented by non-harmonic octaves and unisons, to devour all the light from the trees. Yavanna is able to salvage one golden fruit and one silver flower and so she places them on vessels and sends them into the firmament as the Sun and the Moon respectively. The bells return. The Ainur raise up mountains to protect Valinor from evil.

Tinúviel
A tale of forbidden romance between human and elf and based vaguely on Edith and JRR’s love story.
Tinúviel, meaning nightingale (sort of the Eurasiafrican equivalent to the catbird although only males sing and they don’t make a “EEHHHHH” sound that, when I was in Maine, made me think something was in pain or at least very hungry), is Beren’s nickname for Lúthien.
He uses variations on Rameau’s Rossignols amoureux and Babbitt’s Philomel.
Lúthien’s father tells Beren that if he steals a Silmaril from the dread power formerly known as Melkor, meaning He Who Arises In Might, who has now been saddled with the name Morgoth, meaning the Dark Enemy, he can have the hand of Lúthien. And so he journeys through the haunted valley of Dungortheb and into Doriath and encounters Lúthien dancing and singing, represented by crotales. He heads to the Falls of Ivrin, where his companions are all killed, but is rescued by Lúthien upon the hound Huan. He sings a song of farewell on harp, and then heads to the fortress of Morgoth. She offers to dance a seductive dance for Morgoth as a distraction while Beren takes the jewel from his crown. Beren is killed during their flight and Lúthien appeals to the ainu Mandos and he takes from her her immortality so that thy can be together once again.

Eärendil
This is kind of a recapitulation of the previous three legends.
Ulmo arises from the waters and speaks to Tuor to seek the hidden city of Gondolin. He shows up to the fanfare of trumpets. Morgoth shows up, destroys the city, but Tuor, Idril, and Eärendil escape to pentatonic music from the low strings.
Earendil meets Elwing, desecendant of Beren and Luthien. They travel past the Enchanted Isles, represented by mouth sirens, and are attacked. Elwing jumps into the sea and Ulmo transforms her into a bird.

Great concert aside from this cricket buzz from some electronic device or dying light bulb. At first, I thought it was my earballs.
Ben was also there as part of a concert-a-thon. The concert hall was maybe half full. Maybe the name Boston Modern Orchestra Project scared people off.

I got on the Commuter Rail at JFK which is good because taking the bus would’ve added at least half an hour to my trip back home.

burning question: what’s ‘taters’?

The Actors Shakespeare Project may have found their permanent home in Watertown, which would be nice if it was before 1969 (I'll give points to Karma and In The Court of the Crimson King and A Rainbow in Curved Air but my hot take is that the unmanned landing on Titan was a bigger deal than the manned Moon landing because there are rivers and lakes and weather) and the Green Line's A Branch still existed, but sadly no.

But at least there is Naya, a Lebanese restaurant nearby. I got a salad (spinach, arugula, and red cabbage), chicken kebab, jalapeños, sumac onions with parsley, feta cheese, cabbage slaw with dry mint, lemon, and olive oil, Lebanese pickles brined in vinegar and secret Lebanese spices, Kalamata olives, and zesty jalapeño sauce.
The people next to me were talking about “Mrs. Pac-Man! Mr. Pac-Woman!”

I’ve alreay summarized the plot to A Midsummer Night's Dream somewhere.
They maed a conscious decision to make Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius a little older and then made the fairy realm into a 90s club, which existed as a sort of refuge from the war on drugs, Reaganomics, and AIDS no matter your race, sexuality, gender identity.

Oberon had on a lot of glittery black eyeshadow, a tassled leather vest, and leather pants. Robin Goodfellow had red pants and a tight shirt with cubist eyes and faces.

There was sparkly confetti, there were bubbles, there was a fog machine, there were those light tubes with colorful LEDs inside them. I think i heard some Massive Attack.

Lysander walked onstage explaining to Hermia just why the fellowship couldn’t just use the eagles to fly into Mordor.

The actor troupe did a pantomime during the introduction and wore those full-body bodysuits. When the actual play within a play happened, they all wore clothing the color of an amplified peridot over those suits. And, if you’re wondering, the moon was played by a guy in peridot-colored pants holding a lantern and the wall was a guy with a peridot-colored poncho with a brick pattern and various graffito designs. The moon brought out one of those flipsy puppy toys and the moon and the lion sung the music from The Lion King in unison. The opening chant, which is in isiZulu but I always thought the movie was set in Kenya or something and also Simba means lion in Kiswahili so maybe it should be that but I dunno.
The leader had a black tuxedo jacket, a white shirt, and a peridot-colored bow tie and matching peridot-colored kerchief in her pocket.

There were two art exhibitions.
One was a homage to Gorky. Not that Gorky (the one Nizhny Novgorod was briefly named after) but Arshile Gorky, Armenian abstract expressionist painter who pretended to be a Georgian noble and relative of said that Gorky.
It wasn’t the anniversary of his death or birth or anything, but when he came to Watertown.

( click for art )

I ganked this from somewhere
burning question: why capitulate to the Trump administration when they've proven time and time again they'll just fuck you over anyway?

No, Chameleon isn’t disbanding and even if they were, there’s still one more concert in the season. Nor am I hanging up my, uh, keyboard. I think it’s just to pair with origin stories. This was planned in advance. The full quote from Finnegans Wake is “What has gone? How it ends? Begin to forget it. It will remember itself from every sides, with all gestures, in each our word. Today’s truth, tomorrow’s trend. Forget, remember.”
It’s all about cycles, memory, the passage of time, isolation.
I’m surprised we haven’t got an “are you tired of winning yet cause i’m not tired of winning yet” from John C. Wright but we do have Brad Torgersen begging “trust the plan! why aren’t you trusting the plan?”

Maurice Ravel, Sonata No. 1 for violin & piano “Posthume”
In France, the composers were innovative and the establishment was reactionary.
Ravel wrote this in 1897, performed it on piano with George Enescu on violin, completed only one movement, an d then shelved it and forgot about it. And then it was released with the subtitle posthume, which is le French for posthumous, or “after burial.”
Someone behind me, Gail I think her name was, was from New York, and she was talking about how New York isn’t as avant-garde (as Boston? As people think it is?)

Richard Rodney Bennett, After Syrinx I for oboe & piano
He did the soundtrack to the Gormenghast miniseries and that’s how I know about him.
This is the first in a series of works based on deconstruction of Debussy’s Syrinx for flute, followed by After Syrinx II for marimba, the Tango After Syrinx, the Sonata After Syrinx, and Dreamdancing.

Laura Schwendinger, Ghost House for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano & percussion
Instruments flit in and out while a soprano sings a Robert Frost poem.
When I copied it originally, it was just called “world premiere” and the booklet mentions the environment, the time when our allies were our friends, and when bigotry was not acceptable, a world that sadly no longer exists, so maybe this was a reaction. This must’ve been in the planning stages before all that stuff bit us in the ass.
The composer said she wrote this in the wake of the deaths of her father (or was it mother?) and sister in a short time.


Olivier Messiaen, Pièce pour piano et quatuor à cordes
He wrote this at age 93 and crammed all his Messiaen-isms (additive rhythms, block chords that represent the colors of his synesthesia, palindromes, and the song of a garden warbler) into a three minute work.

Gabriel Fauré, Piano Quintet No. 2 in c minor, Op. 115
This was written at a time when hearing problems meant he’d hear distortion in low sounds so he didn’t include those.

I met a shih tzu named Kissy.

I got a Fantastic Falafel at the Hummus Shop, which has falafels (duh), hummus and tahini (also duh. I mean. Duh.) and also cucumber salad and arugula and sprouts and zhoug, which they spell as schug. I should've gotten spicy pickles but whatevs.

There was a rodo in Andrew Station.

Grace isn’t an artist. It was hard to have a conversation because the train was so loud. I also think it might’ve been the same train because all the advertisements were Dave Portnoy shilling some scratch ticket thing.
Adrian does art and he also plays guitar.

burning question: how fucking dumb can a person be and still get away with being seen as smart? Because Elon’s trying to find that point.

There’s an advantage to taking the commuter rail from Braintree to South Station, that is to say, it’s free and fast, or at least free when the alternative is busing, but there’s a disadvantage in that drawing people is harder.
I got a chickpea and fava plate at Tatte, which also includes caramelized red onions, Aleppo chili oil, dukkah, and herb salad. You’re probably asking about dukkah because I know I was. It’s a mix of seeds and toasted nuts from Egypt.Tthere’s a bookstore in Beacon Hill with a squirrel named Paige as their mascot. It’s not a used bookstore but they did have Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, which I just remembered the existence of. Which came out almost 3 years ago. Huh. I didn't think the shelf life of a book was that long, especially in the days of Amazon.
I also got Strange Bird from a library and Alien Embassy from a used bookstore.
I didn’t get on the commuter rail for the way home. The drawings I made were mostly quick ones.

There was a rally for Ukraine on the Common, which makes sense because Trump's plan for peace is "let Russia keep their territorial gains and then give us half your resources." And to that, I think we can all say "иди на хуй."

Pavel Haas, Wind Quintet, Op. 10
A french horn is not a wind instrument, although I won't tell anyone if you don't. It reminds me of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring at times, which makes sense because it's based on Moravian folk music, as well as Jewish songs both secular and sacred. It was composed in 1929, published in 1934, mostly lost after the war, and in 1991, one of his former students found a copy of the score in the Moravian Museum in Brno.
Things didn’t end well for Haas, though he divorced his wife to spare her and hisn daughter the worst of Nazi rule. Thereisenstadt was presented to the world a a model vision of separate but equal but then once that served its purpose, they were all shipped off to Auschwitz to die. The story goes that Pavel Haas started coughing uncontrollably when standing next to Karel Ančerl and so Mengele chose him for death. Which might have been preferable, knowing what I do about Mengele.


Alban Berg, Adagio from Kammerkonzert for violin, clarinet & piano
The adagio is an ABA form in which the A sections are inversios and the second half is the first half played in retrograde

Darius Milhaud, La création du monde – Suite de concert pour piano et quatour à cordes, Op. 81b
Darius, or as they call him in Persia, Dārayavaʰuš, is a Jewish composer of neither Sephardic nor Ashkenazi heritage, but of a community in Occitania dating to 2000 years ago. There’s a version for small orchestra and there’s this version for, for those of you who don’t speak le Français, piano and string quartet.
Darius traveled in the early 20s and heard jazz on the streets of Harlem and in clubs in London and when he went back to France, he wrote this. The critics hated it and it would seem it provoked the very reaction Darius was looking for.

George Rochberg, Between Two Worlds (Ukiyo-e III) for flute & piano
This was composed in 1982, breaking from the theme of the interwar. Ukiyo translates roughly to "the floating world" not literally but in a sense of transience and impermanence. Ukiyo-e refers to woodblock prints depicting scenes of urban life in Yoshiwara.
It sounds a lot like traditional Japanese music.

Erich Korngold, Suite for two violins, cello & piano left-hand, Op. 23
It’s broken down into a präludeum und fugue, a walzer, a groteske, leid, and rondo, which are obvious enough in English. Except for lied, which means song. If you know anything about music, you’d know that.
It was commissioned by Wittgenstein, the same Wittgenstein who performed Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand. I wonder if there’s a concerto for no hands that’s supposed to sound like playing the piano with your feet or playing the piano by bashing your head against the keys. Maybe PDQ Bach.
That’s two Moravians in the same concert.

burning question: does anyone else think Trump knows he won’t be re-elected and is trying to create long-term problems?
He needs 38 which means there only has to be twelve states that don’t sign on to his bullshit “two consecutive terms or three terms whichever comes first.” And there's at least twelve states I trust to not sign on to his bullshit.

If he wasn’t 79, I’d say something about Trump Putining his way into permanent power by alternating between himself and a puppet president.

And for unconditional love, all you need is a dog.


Which means I deserve all the pets and all the belly rubs and none of the baths.


It's cold out there so I'm all snuggled up.


33 days until the vernal equinox
My human wanted to put that at the top but it would ruin it.


Arf, mateys! I'm a pirate!


My human says I look like I'm wearing a tuxedo so here I am all stylish.


Slurpy slurp!


The sunlight brings out my eyes.


burning question: does anyone else find the name DOGE offensive? He doesn't even like dogs. Grr, woof woof grr.

58 days until the vernal equinox

Delaney did dance at a performing arts high school once so she’s gotten to know a lot of artists. She’s impressed that I could draw them in so little time and that I could do it while standing. She had rectangular dangly earrings.
Mika isn’t an artist. She just does sportsball. She was holding a rose and a few other flowers and had a bunch of silver rings on her hand.

Johanna doesn’t know Delaney or Mika but she did see the drawings. She’s not an artist either.

I went to Boston Halal and got a spicy falafel rice bowl with chettinadu sauce on it, which is made with spices, onions, and herbs. I'll definitely be back again to have masala fries or beetroot kebab.

I think the Japanese people next to me were the same ones as last time. I was in the same seat.
Guy seated behind me bought a Beethoven cookie because he didn’t have dinner but since it’s so kitsch, he wants to frame it.
I think her name was Casey. She was wearing a green coat over a red coat and I thought of Sammy from Wayside School, who, instead of your traditional three dead rats in a trenchcoat, was one dead rat in a bunch of trenchcoats. She wanted to grab an empty seat in the front row but the guy said it’s Murphy’s Law, its rightful owner will walk right through the door.
And the concert was about to start.
One of them, or maybe someone else was talking about doing that and then saying that they always mix up left and right.

I always get this number mixed up because Glazunov’s Pastoral is 7 and because at a glance, the odd numbers tend to be more ambitious and large scale and modern.
It’s not the first narrative musical work ever.
The last three movements, a peasant dance interrupted by a thunderstorm and then a song of thanks, are merged together. As the fifth movement begins, you can still hear the thunder in the distance. There are two trombones and a piccoolo, which was unusual at the time.
It has been performed approximately 252 times.

I’ve seen the seventh symphony multiple times this decade already. I’ll point out that before, the symphony had been performed approximately 498 times and with two performances, that puts it up to 500. You’d think it would be the opposite because 6 got a segment in Fantasia and even had a snippet played on The Simpsons and Pinky & The Brain, but I suppose it is a favorite of a lot of people, my mom included.
For the record, the least performed is the first.

When I got to Symphony Station, a train just left but another train pulled in. Because there was only about a minute between them, the train I was on remained more or less empty.

burning question: why do we need an iron dome? To shoot down missiles from where, exactly? Canada?

68 days until the vernal equinox

I went to the MFA to see the O’Keefe and Moore exhibit in that nemontemi between Xmas and New Year.
And it was packed.

( clickity pok )
The Green Line was packed too which is why I’m glad I drew those people waiting before I got on. It was one of those one-car Green Line trains.


Meredith was reading a book called Humans: A Brief History of How We Fucked It All Up. There’s a hand on the cover and a blot of ink covers up the u in the word fuck.

There was a conversation in Slovak because one of the people I drew was from there though she didn’t see it until well after. They were going to the Gardner Museum before going home to Slovakia.

I took a one-car Green Line train back to Park Street. I’d say it was the same one but this one announced the stops instead of first showing Haymarket (which is in the other direction) and then showing Heath Street.

Maddy says she wishes she was an artist. Maddy, Julia, and Cat were talking about something and the only thing I could make out is “you stole from Santa?”

Kate says she can barely draw stick figures. She does a bit of sewing, though. Kate’s pendant is amber.
Celia has mesopelagic blue hair, a septum piercing with spikes, snakebite piercings on her lip, moon pendants, a necklace of black beads with a crucifix, a necklace with various silver charms. Charis, which comes from a Greek word meaning kindness, grace, and charm and has the same roots as charity and charisma, just has a cross necklace. They both got off at South Station.

burning question: who the hell asked for a Melania Trump biopic?

74 days until the vernal equinox


My perspective on imgur is "you get capcha'd, you're more likely to see failed uploads.



( Clickity-pok )


burning question: what's more American than sportsball?

76 days until the vernal equinox



( Clickity-pok )

burning question: You mean I could have gotten a free trip to Antarctica if I just spouted off nonsense about a flat Earth?

78 days until the vernal equinox


Wacky Races, is, despite the name, not a racing game, although there exists an unreleased Wacky Races racing game for the Sega Genesis.

Wacky Races is a relatively obscure show from the age of The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Scooby-Doo, with seventeen episodes and two spinoffs, one of which people call “Stop that Pigeon” because it’s repeated so often in the theme song but in actuality is called Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. I guess it has a cult folloiwng in Japan.

The other spinoff is the Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Dick Dastardly and Muttley do not show up in that. Their suspiciously similar substitute is Sylvester Sneekly, who wants Penelope Pitstop's massive fortune.


The other racers scroll by one by one but whatever, we'll see them as we play the game.

( Clickity-pok )

burning question: Couldn't Dick Dastardly just ask Gerald Ford to pardon him?