Bonnie and Clyde

A beautiful movie. Its violence was apparently controversial for its time (1967), but still a compelling telling.

Tchaik 4

I. Andante sostenuto - Moderato con anima. The introduction is the kernel, the quintessence, the chief thought of the whole work. The main idea, first in the trumpets and then in the horns, is Fate, the inexorable power that hampers over the search for happiness... The main theme of the Allegro describes feelings of depression and hopelessness. Would it not be better to forsake reality and lose oneself in dreams?... A sweet and tender dream enfolds me, a serene and radiant presence leads me on, until all that was dark and joyless is forgotten... But no, these are but dreams. Fate returns to waken us, and we see that life is an alternation of grim reality and fugitive dreams of happiness.

From Tchaikovsky's letter to his wealthy benefactor, Nadezhda von Meck, attempting to explain the meaning of the symphony.

Mr. Fluxus

Greg Allen (of "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind" fame) brings a new performance art piece to The Neo-Futurarium. I'd like to experience it, but time is an issue. Here's the Tribune's review.

Thoughts

Forgive me for not being impressed
by your image of spiders

crawling the mouth of Aphrodite.
I know you don't love me,
but why do you have to brag about it?

From Dyserotica by Lee Upton

From "My Life By Somebody Else"

I have done what I could but you avoid me.
I left a bowl of milk on the desk to tempt you.
Nothing happened. I left my wallet there, full of money.
You must have hated me for that. You never came.


From Strand's "My Life By Somebody Else"

Cloudberries

You give me cloudberry jam from Lapland,
Bog amber, snow-line tidbits, scrumptious
Cloudberries sweetened slowly by the cold,
And costly enough for cloudberry wars
(Diplomatic wars, my dear).

Imagine us
Among the harvesters, keeping our distance
In sphagnum fields on the longest day
When dawn and dusk like frustrated lovers
Can kiss, legend has it, once a year. Ah,
Kisses at our age, cloudberry kisses.

-Michael Longley


by way of The New Yorker

Excerpt from Scenes de la vie de boheme

Taken from the Lyric's Opera Notes of this season's performance of Boheme

At the Cafe Momus
"Gustave Colline the great philosopher, Marcel the great painter, Schaunard the great musician, and Rodolphe the great poet, so they regularly addressed each other, patronized the Cafe Momus, where they were spoken of as the four musketeers, as they were always seen together; indeed, they came and went together, played together, and sometimes too did not pay their bill together, always with a harmony worthy of the conservatory orchestra.

They had elected to forgather in a room where forty persons had been comfortable, but they were always found alone, for they had succeeded in making the place insupportable to the habitual visitors.

The passing guest who ventured into this den from the moment of his entrance became the victim of this wild quartet, and most of the time fled before he got hold of a newspaper or of his after-dinner coffee, the cream of which was often turned by the strange epigrams on art, sentiment, and political economy. The conversations of the four friends were of such a character that the waiter who was in the habit of serving them had gone crazy in the flower of his youth."

(Translations by Elizabeth Ward Hugus, published by Peregrine Smith Books, 1988)

From "Black Maps"

The present is always dark
Its maps are black,
rising from nothing,
describing,

in their slow ascent
into themselves,
their own voyage,
its emptiness,

the bleak, temperate
necessity of its completion.
As they rise into being
they are like breath.

And if they are studied at all
it is only to find,
too late, what you thought
were concerns of yours

do not exist.
Your House is not marked
on any of them,
nor are your friends,

waiting for you to appear,
nor are your enemies,
listing your faults.
Only you are there,

saying hello
to what you will be,
and the black grass
is holding up the black stars.


From Mark Strand's "Black Maps"