my 10 best films – “Closer”
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Category: positions to ponder
October 18, 2020
The Blower’s Daughter, listen, tells
August 23, 2020
“The Story of Calisto” – Ovid
“Jupiter and Callisto“ (1611 – 1613)
Peter Paul Rubens
___________
after having read Homer’s Iliad, the
greatest work of fiction, to my mind,
ever told, resounding through the
centuries and millennia with power,
pathos, and profound humanity, I
found it hard for one reason or
another to complete other
acclaimed epics, Virgil’s Aeneid,
for instance, too brimming with
bombast and bravado, much like
many American war movies,
wherein the Americans win every
conflict, whether or not they’ve
indeed won, all on their own, with
little acknowledgment of the other
international militaries that might’ve
also played essential roles
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as I read
on, is becoming more and more
offensive because of its recurrent
abuse of women, nymphs, virgins,
so that I can no longer champion
this work, however enthusiastic I
might’ve been at the beginning
I’m not ready to personally give it
up, but intend to relate it in brief
segments, with perhaps, here
and there, noteworthy verses
the myth that follows the
transformation of Cycnus into
a swan, and the restoration of
Earth after its near conflagration
upon the death of Phaeton, has
Jove / Jupiter / Zeus cast[ing]
an eye on ev’ry diff’rent coast in
order to ensure that all is aright,
which it is, and Nature smiles
again
but he spies by chance a nymph,
a follower of Diana, virginal
goddess of the Countryside, and
despite concerns about Juno, his
goddess wife, pursues the maiden
who was easy prey, did whate’er a
virgin cou’d … / With all her might
against his force … / But how can
mortal maids contend with Jove?
following which Diana arrives with
her train of nubile followers, to the
dismay of the young victim, who
could only try to hide her shame,
which her altered demeanour
must’ve somewhat, it is supposed,
uncovered
How in the look does conscious guilt appear!
Slowly she mov’d, and loiter’d in the rear;
Nor lightly tripp’d, nor by the Goddess ran,
As once she us’d, the foremost of the train.
but now the moon had nine times
lost her light, and any doubt about
her condition was erased, so that
Diana, unforgiving, a not uncommon
reaction, I’ve found, among women,
banished her to eventually alone
give birth to a son
meanwhile Juno, now doubly
incensed – This boy, she rails, shall
stand a living mark, to prove / My
husband’s baseness and the strumpet’s
love – turns the wretched mom into a
bear
but when the son had fifteen summers
told, and came inadvertently upon this
beast while in the forest, unaware it was
his mother, and to protect himself, he
aim’d a pointed arrow at her breast,
And would have slain his mother in the beast;
But Jove forbad, and snatch’d ’em through
In whirlwinds up to Heav’n, and fix’d ’em there!
where now we know them as either
the Great Bear and the Little Bear,
Ursa Major and Ursa Minor or,
more familiarly, as the Big Dipper
and the Little Dipper
who could ‘a’ ever thunk it
R ! chard
June 22, 2020
“The Afternoon of a Faun” – Debussy / Nijinsky / Nureyev
“Faun and Nymph“ (1867)
Pál Szinyei Merse
________
to take a break, for a moment, from the
travails of Io, a heifer still, though her
father, Inachus, is aware of the situation,
and Hermes, messenger of the gods, is
out, on the orders of Jove/ Jupiter / Zeus,
to save her, and, at the same time,
inspired by the music Hermes tells Argus,
her many-eyed keeper, Pan, god of the
wilds, has been playing, with reeds he’s
been left with of Syrinx, the nymph he
would’ve loved had she not been
transformed into rushes, as imagined by
Debussy in his evocative Syrinx for solo
flute, as highlighted in my last instalment,
I could not not remember Debussy‘s
other similarly mythological, and intimately
related, work, his Prelude to the Afternoon
of a Faun, as modified itself by Vaslav
Nijinsky, legendary dancer and
choreographer, into an event that verily
shook the early 20th Century
retitled, L’après-midi d’un faune, The
Afternoon of a Faun in English, the
performance captures everything one
would gather from Ovid’s myths of its
primitive, primal, sensibilities
the faun, needless to say, is representative
of Pan, god of the wild, woodlands, a satyr,
part instinct, part man, see above
watch Rudolf Nureyev, then, his equally
celebrated successor, take on the role
Nijinsky made famous, without any
alterations made to the original 1912
production, however improbably,
though entirely successfully, we’re in
Paris, May 29, though transposed,
faithfully and superbly, to New York,
Broadway, 1979
proceed, however, at your own discretion,
The Afternoon of a Faun is steaming, it’s
about what happens when a young buck’s
fancies, implacable and irrepressible, turn
to love, not for the scrupulous, where does
love begin, it asks, and lust retire, or is it
the other way around, where does yin, in
other words, meet, become, yang
these are questions that more and more
begin to come up, you’ll find, in Greek
and Roman, and most other ancient,
for that matter, mythologies, something
that isn’t at all touched upon in the
Abrahamic traditions, Christanity, Islam,
Judaism, monotheistic, though they’re
at least as old, where nature, the place
of animals, vegetation, land, water, our
intimate interconnection with them,
don’t much, for better or for worse,
come up
I miss the wonder of the more
pantheistic, the pagan, perspective
enjoy
R ! chard
April 29, 2020
“Take care of your link with life” – Buffy Sainte-Marie
“Blue Sky“ (1932)
Emily Carr
_____
while on the topic of alternate
mythologies, look what I found,
a poem of Buffy Sainte-Marie
on our present collective
crisis
the faith is that of our indigenous
brothers and sisters, who’ve
managed to keep their ancient
stories alive despite years of
intense political and official
opposition
their lore was never ever less effective
than Roman lore was to the Romans,
Sainte-Marie‘s Mother Nature no less
noble and inspirational than Juno,
queen of Rome’s Heaven, nor, for
that matter, than to Catholics their
Virgin Mary
listen
Take care of your link with life
Hold your head up
Lift the top of your mind
Put your eyes on the Earth
Lift your heart to your own home planet
What do you see?
What is your attitude
Are you here to improve or damn it
Look right now and you will see
We’re only here by the skin of our teeth as it is
So take heart and take care of your link with life
It ain’t money that makes the world go round
That’s only temporary confusion
It ain’t governments that make the people strong
It’s the opposite illusion
Look right now and you will see
They’re only here by the skin of their teeth as it is
So take heart and take care of your link with Life
Life is beautiful
If you’ve got the sense to take care of your source of protection
Mother Nature
She’s the daughter of God and the source of all protection
Look right now
And you will see she’s only here by the skin of her teeth as it is
So take heart and take care of your link with life
And carry it on
We’re saying
And carry it on
And keep playing
And carry it on
And keep praying
And carry it on
Buffy Sainte-Marie
R ! chard
April 3, 2020
“Metamorphoses” – Ovid, 101
“Primavera“ (1478)
Sandro Botticelli
_________
a friend expressed some interest in Ovid’s
Metamorphoses recently after I’d sung for
a few moments its praises, had told her I
was revisiting it after some time with the
intention of duly, this time, completing it,
given that, hey, we’ve got lots of time, at
present, all of us, on our hands, by very
mandate
it sounds wonderful, she briefed me after
I’d sent her the appropriate link, but there
are some parts I don’t understand
I’ll help, I said, only too eager to share
the delights of this inprobable treasure,
a gift nearly two thousand years old,
with the magic still of very revelation
Metamorphoses is a creation story, the
equivalent of the Bible for those who
revered the Roman deities, the same
deities that the Greeks revered, but
transplanted, renamed, to Roman
stock, like the Puritans did their
Christian seed at Plymouth Rock
Ovid, 43 BC to 17/18 AD, was a Roman
poet, paying fealty to Augustus, Emperor
of Rome, 63 BC to 14 AD, therefore his
Roman goddesses, gods, and his,
contemporary, Latin
which was translated into English early
in the Renaissance, but found its best
expression, to my mind still, in the
eminent hands of Sir Samuel Garth,
John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph
Addison, William Congreve, among
others in, already, 1717
listen
The Creation of the World
Of bodies chang’d to various forms, I sing:
Ovid is saying my topic is transformation, very
metamorphoses, plural of metamorphosis
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
‘Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc’d from Nature’s birth, to Caesar’s times.
poets have traditionally called upon their related
muses to inspire them to accomplish their task,
Ovid invokes his Gods, compare Shakespeare’s
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend / The
brightest heaven of invention, his prologue to
Henry V
“Ye Gods”, Ovid says, “from whom these
miracles did spring”, those everyday wonders
that surround us, inspire me, he asks, that I
might “compleat”, which is to say complete,
his poem, “this long laborious work”
his “numbers” are his years, “coelestial”, or
celestial, “heat”, is inspiration
“tenour to my rimes” means rhythm, weight,
to his poetry
“Nature’s birth”, or the beginning of time, to
“Caesar’s time”, Ovid‘s own period under
Augustus
Ovid asks the Gods to fuel him with the
fire to tell the story of the world from its
very beginning to his own epoch,
Caesar’s
how’s that for a project
enough for now
but stay tuned for, to follow, the Creation,
capital C, I tell you
R ! chard
December 28, 2019
from my dictionary
“Chardenal Dictionary“ (1908)
Max Weber
______
a few indiscriminate selections, not
even in alphabetical order
pity: love, but without the admiration
art: the product of deftness applied to an intricacy
to conceive:
a) to think of
b) to make happen
poetry: the conjunction of Beauty and Truth,
a bridge between language and music
courtesy: a prelude to poetry
prelude: what comes before
nucleus accumbens: the brain’s pleasure centre
religion: the institutionalization of faith
R ! chard
November 9, 2019
“Death is nothing at all…” – Henry Scott Holland
“St Paul’s Cathedral“
Thomas Hosmer Shepherd
_____________
upon learning of the recent demise
of my younger sister, my only sibling,
a friend sent me the following passage
“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away
into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains
exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we
lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we
were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar
name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put
no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or
sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we
enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my
name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be
spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.
Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death
but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because
I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing
is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was
before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we
meet again!”
it is usually presented as a poem, but
was part of a sermon, rather, given by
Henry Scott Holland, the very pastor
who composed it, at St Paul’s
Cathedral, in London, after the death
of Edward Vll
listen
it expresses well the experience I’ve
had with others of my beloved
departed
intimations of my sister are already
popping up in my reality, soon, I told
another friend, I’ll be talking to her
more often than when she was not
gone
much as is the case with my father,
for instance, away some 30 years
now, but an abiding presence,
however mystical, still, and,
it appears, forever
I consider myself profoundly
blessed
R ! chard
September 23, 2019
Piano Concerto no 2, opus 19 – Beethoven
“Allegro con brio, Bourke St. West“ (1890)
Tom Roberts
________
a concerto is a movie, but for the ears,
one listens, rather than looks, for one’s
information
quite specifically, Beethoven introduces
drama into his inventions, where earlier
there’d been merely an invitation to the
dance, minuets, for instance, gigues, or
disparate, disorganized, appeals,
otherwise, to our more interior, whether
secular or mystical, emotions, see in
this context, for instance, early adagios,
heart-wrenching, melting often, odes
these, or the even slower largos, fit
neatly, however, into Beethoven’s
compositional scheme of things,
between the introductory allegros,
often con brio, and the closing,
and equally spirited rondos, by
becoming the pivotal element in
his intended musical evening, the
core of his narrative presentation,
the plangent centre of his three
part play, film
here’s his Second
listen
R ! chard
September 21, 2019
Piano Concerto no 1, opus 15 – Beethoven
Al Jolson, in “The Jazz Singer” (1927)
_________________
in order to abate my discomfort, my
consternation, after meeting up with
one of the candidates I considered
favouring in the upcoming election,
I put on Beethoven’s First, which,
incontrovertibly, from the first few
notes, did the trick, took me out of
politics and the uncomfortable
present, into metaphysical
pertinence, and magic
I’d referred to the issue of blackface,
a searing issue at present in the
media, I said, what about Laurence
Olivier doing Othello, Placido
Domingo doing the very same Moor,
not to mention Al Jolson doing,
unforgettably, “My Mammy“
but picked up that neither the
candidate, nor his mentor, standing
by his side, had any idea what I was
talking about
Placido Domingo, I said, one of The
Three Tenors, remember them
the aspiring representative indicated
a dim recollection, his accompanist
admitted to having nebulously heard
of him, them, somewhere
OMGess, I reared, I’m talking to the
next generation, maybe even the
generation after that, who have no
recollection, no understanding of
where I come from, it was, to say
the least, unsettling, discomfitting,
sobering
there was no one at home with whom
to commiserate when I arrived,
answering machines only at the end
of every line, I resorted, therefore,
not unwisely as it turned out, to the
said Beethoven, who was, as usual,
a lifesaver
listen
R ! chard
September 15, 2019
“The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross” – Joseph Haydn
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