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Amethyst Rose: 18
2008-08-04 11:13 pm( TOAST: Amethyst Rose: 18 )
I'll be OK. I am OK. Going to go snuggle my Cat now. Thanks for listening.
Memories and dreams
2008-08-03 07:41 pmThe last few days I've been working on an arrangement for Yeats's poem "The Collar-Bone of a Hare"; it's finally coming together, I think. Might actually post some audio later this week. Odd; it insisted on intruding itself into the middle of a song I was writing, taking over some of the melodic ideas and a lot of the mindspace. The connection was waltz time and dancing.
This afternoon, though, one poem led to another and I found myself thinking of "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven". The two of them used to be among my favorites back in college when I was young, lonely, and depressed. Some day it may acquire music.
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Somewhere in the house I have a necklace of blue and white beads, where each blue bead represents a letter of that poem. It was given to me by the young lady who took my virginity, one magical night in the summer of 1970. It wasn't love, but seemed something stranger and more mystical to me. Might have been simple pity on her part, though I think not. I think she was a little surprised to have been my first.
If I had found the necklace, I would have been very torn over which of my friends to send it to, to give to their lover. Perhaps it's just as well. Is there someone you need to give this poem to? Don't wait.
Lamplighters Sunday
2008-05-19 09:06 am Yesterday was the last show of the season for the Lamplighters, the
mostly-Gilbert-and-Sullivan company that we've had season tickets to for
over three decades. So the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
flower_cat, chaoswolf,
B. (WINOLJ) and I headed up to San Francisco a little before noon. (The
Y.D. doesn't usually like to go, for some bizarre reason, so we take a
friend.)
The show was Gilbert & Sullivan Straight Up, With a Twist, written and directed by the redoubtable Barbara Heroux, the Lamplighters' artistic director. It's basically a series of selections from all the operettas, in chronological order, staged between two actors playing the roles of G and S. Their dialog is taken from diaries and letters, and provided a fascinating look into their occasionally-troubled collaboration.
There were nine singers: five men and four women. I really didn't know what to expect going in, but found it delightful. The singing was first-rate, of course, and the whole thing hung together surprisingly well as an artistic biography. The ending, after their death announcements, was especially effective: "The world is but a broken toy" from Princess Ida, followed by an ensemble rendition of "Once more gondolieri" from The Gondoliers.
I'd say, "Go see it!" but the season's over, so you lose. The program notes point to the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive if you want more information, and of course the complete libretti. Next season is The Mikado and Iolanthe.
We came home via I280 and stopped at Buck's for dinner; a delicious end to a pleasant afternoon out.
I finished off the day practicing some songs that aren't on the Baycon setlist but will probably come up in circle -- I'm sadly out of practice. And, a little surprisingly, the start of a setting for "The Collar-bone of a Hare", which started tickling my mind a couple of days ago while I was working on a (not totally unrelated) new song of my own.
