Le otto stagioni

I am realizing in ripping my classical CDs, that I have been even more guilty with them than with my non-classical of listening to only a few, forgetting the rest.

I think this is forgivable with the pieces that we all hear too frequently. I think this is also somewhat forgivable since I have determined that I work better while listening to baroque music than to the big romantics. Must be the Bach Effect.

But there are others that I really love, and that I realize I have really missed, now that I see them again. I am not just talking about my several different Misse L'Homme Arme, that I collected in college, or the soundtrack to Henry V, but also to versions of pieces that had slipped out of mind.

When I blogged a while back about recordings of Vivaldi's music, I overlooked one of the coolest things I have come across: the record is called Eight Seasons, and the performers are the Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica. The recording intersperses the four concerti of Vivaldi's famous seasons with the sections of the lesser known Cuatro estaciones porteñas of Astor Piazzolla, the Argentinian composer and master of bandoneon and tango nuevo. Kremer explains the title of the recording this way:

The globe, being round, implies two hemispheres. This makes the seasons (except places with infinite sunshine or those with a constant shortage of light) double themselves. That is how we get 2 times 4 seasons (or simply put--8 seasons). Admitting the global irrelevance of up and down, of North and South, of day and night--in a virtual reality it all takes place simultaneously--we also have to admit the irrelevance of any classification.

By interspersing the two compositions, and the two hemispheres with their respective cycles of seasons, Kremer et al. acknowledge Piazzolla's clear playing on Vivaldi, and throw into question which piece to listen to first. Yes, the first tracks are Vivaldi's Spring concerto, but they are followed not by Piazzola's "Spring in Buenos Aires" but by his "Summer," which itself therefore precedes Vivaldi's summer. Only if the disc were played continuously could a listener hear the two springs together, and by then all the seasons are cycling eternally.

The Mahler Effect.

If you were titilated by the joke to which Tim referred in an earlier comment, then you'll want to check out his retrieval of the whole joke.

The joy and the majesty.

Last weekend the PP and I went to visit a friend who has just had a baby, mostly so I could see the little tyke while he still is. He is, and is also cute, until he starts screaming because we woke him up from the nice nap he was having in his little rocking contraption while listening to Baby Bach.

Our friend explained to us that Baby Bach, which was really quite relaxing, is all the rage, and that they also have Baby Mozart and Baby Beethoven. Here is what the web will tell you about Baby Bach:

BABY BACH™ is a captivating experience that exposes babies and toddlers to the joy and majesty of classical music while mesmerizing them with stimulating, colorful images. Both you and your little one will love these award-winning versions of classic compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach.

My friend was not playing the colorful images, but her wee one did look mesmerized, though not captivated. Or I suppose he was captivated the way that I so frequently was during my freshman-year-in-college astronomy planetarium lab: just lean your head back and listen to the nice lady tell you about star formation in the dark.

Listening to the music was peaceful. What struck me about these versions is that they keep the classical pieces from being too stimulating, such that Baby would wake from his nice nap and start screaming on his own.

Now I understand that the going thought is that listening to classical music as a tot will make a kid smarter, and I am very much in favor of this. But I wonder why a kid could not benefit from listening to the real deal? I mean, if you want a smart kid, give him the 2- and 3-Part Inventions, for goodness sake! Or perhaps treat the little tyke to the full 6-CD box set of Keith Jarrett's Blue Note sessions, and let Junior appreciate what it takes to improvise around a standard theme. Of course you do run the risk that he will be a hummer.

But where is Baby Bartok? And the PP was imagining the Baby Tchaikovsky, complete with the pipe organs and canons. Now that would mesmerize and captivate.

Statistical details.

I had resisted posting stats on the size of my collection, because I don't want to get all embarassed that it is not as bad-ass as I wish it were. Plus, there is this tendency to believe that women don't obsess about music. Yes they do.

But then I got some spec type questions from Tim, so here goes.

Stats? How many CDs are you ripping, and how much hard disk space have you consumed doing so?

As of right now (9:46 am EDT on Monday, 8 August 2005 CE), I have ripped 8287 tracks, which has filled 30.3 GB when ripped in mp3 format. I estimate that I have about 900 CDs total, and that I have 150 to go. I will give a final figure when I have ripped everything. [ADDENDUM: I am ripping at 128 kbps. Not the highest quality, but a reasonable compromise.]

What are you planning to do about liner notes? I have taken to annotating my jazz tracks with the list of personnel and recording dates, when I can get them, but classical recordings have a whole nother level of complexity. What's your solution for managing that data?

I have sooooooo not solved this problem yet. There are places embedded within the tags for detailed information, but then you have to hunt for it. And how long do you want your "artist" tag to run, when you have a large number of personnel? I just don't know how to handle this.

And I am finding that classical music presents yet another dilemma, in that rarely is a piece performed by its composer. So then where do you list the composer? As far as I have discovered, there is no separate composer tag, so one is left to list the composer elsewhere. For the most part it works to list the composer's name at the front of an album title, because then an album search would give you the capacity to see all your Brahms together. But right now I am ripping a CD of three concerti by three separate composers, all performed by Jascha Heifitz with various second soloists and orchestras. So what do I do there? I entered the composer names in the title tag, but nowhere else have I done that, which will get confusing.

And there is the other liner-note problem of people like Matthew Herbert. Because of the way he constructs his electronic music, it is often of interest whether a song features the sounds made by the contents of Dani's bag on the day of recording or of newspaper clippings about Iraq from around the world shaped into instruments and filled with popcorn, rice and foreign coins. Where is the tag for that?

It all leads me to believe that although a digital database provides me with new ways of listening to my music (about which more soon), it cannot eliminate my need for my CDs.

First, The Dog Faced Hermans

Tim asked,

Where do I find a copy of the Dog Faced Hermans "Every Day Timebomb" on CD? It's not available in online downloadable form anywhere that I can find... (That last is because I'm trying to reconstruct a 12-year-old tape I got from you, and that song and the ee cummings spoken word stuff are the last standouts that I haven't found in digital form.)

Oh, I am sorry to read this, because my one hope for the Dog Faced Hermans was online downloadable sources, like the Indy one you referred to a few months back. I have been looking for the Dog Faced Hermans on CD since about 1995, when I realized that the only copy I had of their music was a quickly wearing out tape, where I had copied some songs from the CD collection at WXYC, source of so many delicious things. And I have had no success. I see there is a web source for some of their albums, but I don't see that title, and despite a little preliminary hunting on the web, I have had no luck.

As for the e.e.cummings, that came from a record in my parents' collection, and when I get teched-up enough to copy records to my computer (the day is not far off), I'd be happy to digitize that for you, because I bet it is oop, as we used to say in the book business.

When the generals talk.

(click on image if you want to actually read it.)

So I made it through the main part of my collection. By "main part," I mean the non-classical recordings, excluding compilations with music by various artists. Those are filed separately. And I keep the classical separate, too, as much as that makes sense to do, because I listen to it differently, at different times.

But genre is no doubt a confusing thing, which is why the "main part" is all the non-classical (as much as possible). Is Matthew Herbert jazz or electronica? And where is the line between world and jazz? Or pop and world? Or O Forget it, let's just put it all together.

Which is where I am getting a little hung up in my digital collection of ripped songs, because I do not yet know how I want things classified. Would it make more sense to keep distinctions among different kinds of jazz, for instance, or just call it all jazz? Do I want to file my Hindi songs separate from "World," or just call everything non-American World? Do my gains from lumping Enzo Jannacci, Giorgio Gaber, and Tiromancino together as "Italian" outweigh the losses that come from not calling them "pop" or "traditional" or "folk"?

And while much of the information that I get from this Gracenote database is pretty good (apart from the occasional typo), the information about genre is spotty. For instance, someone came up with such categories as "General Alternative," and "General Country," and "General World." That means, of course, that when you sort by genre, all these "Generals" get alphabetized under G, instead of A, or C, or W.

Not to mention that there is "General Hip Hop," "Hip Hop," "Hip-Hop," "Rap/Hip Hop," "Old School Hip Hop" and on and on. And I, for one, am willing finally to admit that I still do not understand the difference between rap and hip hop, let alone between hip hop and hip-hop.

And it is not as though there are clear standards for the assigning of genres. I noticed as I was ripping the (FABULOUS!) 6-CD box set of Keith Jarrett at the Blue Note, that while the Gracenote information for, say, Disc 2 called the genre "Free/Avant Jazz," Disc 4 was just called "Jazz." Wow, Keith, you really dropped off on your freedom there on Disc 4.

And then there are the just plain dumb moments. For instance this morning I ripped one of my Various Artists CDs called This Is Soul, a compilation that I bought back in the pre-download days, just for the Eddie Floyd recording of "Knock on Wood," although the collection has also given me "Rainy Night in Georgia," "Patches," and "Rescue Me." So what genre does the database offer up? Classic Rock.

This Various Artists part of the ripping is taking much longer than the main part of the collection, because I am trying to keep "The" and "A" off the front of band names, and then in a feat of sheer analness I reordered everybody's name to Last Name, First Name. Before you get in my face about that choice, I will give you the justification. Back in my Ann Arbor days I bought several CDs at my favorite used CD store, and the clerk, upon looking at my selections, said, "Ahhhhh. The Pet Shop Boys and Pere Ubu--reunited at last." I have always loved it that nothing on my CD shelf gets between these long-lost friends, but there in my big digital collection, things would get all messed up.

So three of these Various Artists do-dads to go, and then it is on to the Classical--a prospect I do not relish, because the people labeling tracks do not seem to realize that it is nice to attach the name of the piece before you say what the tempo marking for the movement is.

Finally stumped the database.

As I have been ripping all my CDs (People, this is a BORING task), I have been really impressed by the capabilities of the Gracenote music database that the Creative MediaSource Organizer uses to get information about a particular CD so that you don't have to type it all in yourself. And you do not want to type this information in yourself, particularly since, on the Creative software, the tab key does not move you from field to field.

Anyway, I kept thinking I would stump the database. Surely some of my obscure Italian CDs would get it, I thought. Wrong. Or how about some of those albums of electronica that I bought in the little music store in Birmingham (not Alabama) where most of the stuff was sold on vinyl and, true to the cliches of High Fidelity, I was the only female in the store? Nope--it has those too. OK, now this one would have to get it: the CD of Traveling Wilburys , Volume 1 that one of my colleagues put together from all the individual tracks, downloaded illegally after we all discovered to our horror that the CD is out of print and for sale for something like $100 used? Shazam, it figured that one out too.

Did I just say shazam? I'm so sorry.

So it took me until the Ws to get it, but finally I got it. The sad thing is, I stumped it when I needed its helpt the most.

You see, several years ago, before the Hong Kong handover, I was sitting in a hotel room in Seoul, watching television. I do not speak Korean, so I settled on an Asian Pacific version of MTV, where I discovered Faye Wang, queen of Cantonese pop, singing a rendition of a Tori Amos song. During the weeks I spent in Hong Kong, I heard this song again and again, and I got completely addicted to the sound of Faye's lovely voice, and I loved the way she turned a completely familiar song strange by singing it in yet another language that I do not speak.

So when I got home, I looked for albums of hers, with no luck of course. Then I became even more captivated by her in Chungking Express. Then finally, I stopped in an Asian video store, next door to one of my favorite Asian grocery stores in Ann Arbor. There she was! So I bought a CD. It does not have the Tori Amos song on it, but it does have "Here's Where the Story Ends" and "Dreams," hauntingly like and unlike the Sundays and the Cranberries.

The trick is, all the text on the CD jacket is in Chinese, and despite my attempt to learn to read Chinese in two years of study, I just can't hack it. So I thought, help me Gracenote CDDB, you are my only hope.

But no, that is where I stumped them. Figures.

Could not have said it better.

Today began with H.

Those of you who have devoted as much time (and money) as I have to listening to music will know what I mean when I say that digitizing my CD collection has been a ramshackle revisiting of my life, or at least of those years when I have had a CD player.

I see that my eye skips over certain CDs as if they weren't there, and when I am looking through my shelves for something to play, I don't notice Lightnin' Hopkins these days, or even Buddy Guy, even though those have been favorites in the past. And even though albums like k.d.lang's Absolute Torch and Twang used to make it into my player several times a month, and before that it never ever left it, I have not played it in months. Same thing with Dead Can Dance, and several Bob Dylan albums, all 10 bajillion of my Ani DiFranco CDs and also Talking Heads.

Coming to Baaba Maal reminded me of the guy who used to manage the textbook section of the independent bookstore I used to work for while in graduate school, back when it was everything I could do to buy dried beef and bread for sandwiches. It was the beef that was the real splurge, and working for about 2 months of "bookrush," enduring horrible upstairs un-air-conditioned heat and being part of the human chain bringing boxes up the stairs when the day's shipment arrived, and lugging stacks of textbooks to their designated location, and tolerating grouchy students and sometimes faculty--all that comes back with Firin' in Fouta. Marty was the manager, and he had this great lowkey manner that made him the perfect man to endure the stress of the start of school and push a vacuum cleaner around when everyone else had gone home. I still remember the first time he put that Baaba Maal CD in the store's player: it's that feeling when you first hear something that has to become a part of your life in a much more serious way.

And my graduate school roommate owned a copy of Janet, one of those albums that got entirely too carried away with little talking interludes. I'm not just talking about when she says in that sexy little voice, "Like a moth to a flame, burned by the fire," although it is such cliches that give albums like Janey their charm. You don't listen to pop like this for insights, but to hear what you already know said in such a comforting or ass-shaking way. It's fun when Janet's doorbell rings, and then she has to shut the door before she tells you what you already know, and, it turns out, she knows too, that you want her. And even though it may not have been this album that had an interlude that my roommate called "Janet goes online," it might as well have, because that is where I remember the absurd recorded sound of the modem.

Or there is Madonna's I'm Breathless, which became the prime listening material of an entire group of my college friends for a summer, even though every one of us was deeply embarassed to admit it. Madonna? Not cool at that time, but we were completely smitten with the vaguely swingtime sound of the mood she was trying to create, or even occupy. "But 'More' and 'Sooner or Later' were written by Stephen Sondheim," I would proclaim, trying to justify this smittitude. "But what about 'I'm Going Bananas'?" Richard would ask. "Just skip that one," Mike concluded, and we did, and vaguely howled if we didn't catch the CD in time when that song started, and it played more than a second or two.

And speaking of strange purchases, Information Society's Hack. I bought it exclusively for one song that happened to sound good in one particular car stereo on one particular day. The car stereo belonged to Patrick, who lived down the street from me and who I had grown up with. We spent many an afternoon blowing up plastic army men, or watching cars go around and around a magnetic racetrack, or playing with Star Wars people, or playing that dumb hockey game that does not really involve any skill but may also have been magnetic and all you did was watch your team shuffle around the board and maybe make a goal. And I am not sure how many times we listened to "Flash Gordon" on 45 instead of 33, laughing our asses off at the part where Freddy Mercury sang (fast), "He saved every one of us, he saved every man every woman every child, every body--Flash." You may not know how funny that is on 45. Anyway, Patrick took me boogie-boarding at Virginia Beach, which was a blast, and how much do I wish I had lived a teeny bit closer to the beach so I could bodysurf all the live-long day? And he had some kind of fancy little fast car with a great stereo, and he liked Information Society, and nothing could have sounded better than "Hack" on that particular day in that particular sunshine, and during that particular fantasy that I was a surfer girl. So now I own the entire CD.

Sometime in there, during the poor student years, I got too invested in used CD stores, and being able to sell things back and buy new things for cheap. Sure, it meant that I got rid of some real shlock that probably would not even have nostalgia value. But I wonder what else is gone from my collection, and my memory.

Can I get a witness?

I am sure you have long been waiting for more furious reflections on the results of my site meter.

I thought I had the winner when I found that someone had been led to my blog by searching for "swim phlegm." The good news is that the posting on that topic has been so heavily of late that my dear blog no longer appears among the top ten Yahoo hits for swim phlegm. Swim phlegm, swim phlegm, swim phlegm. There. That ought to bring it back up to the top.

And before we move on, don't forget to take This Fun Lungs Quiz!

But "swim phlegm" (can I say it again?) was not the real winner. Behold the real winner.

Sure, sure, sure I can see from that page why my blog came up based on the search, "What is Allen Iverson's cellphone number?" But can someone help me understand what chumpola would believe that that information would be readily available on the internet, a mere Ask Jeeves away?

Bring on the E's

I hope that my two readers (readers? are you still there?) will forgive the recent silence. You see, I have recently upgraded my computer to one with oodlewhops of hard drive space, and I am deep in the process of ripping my entire CD collection. I started out kind of scattershot, uncertain of whether I could fit much on my new machine. O, New Machine, forgive me for my lack of faith! Now I am proceeding alphabetically. We are, as I type, finishing the D's.

All to say, the recent silence may not end immediately.

But in the meantime, I point you to The Gurgling Cod's challenge to food-inclined people of America: an appropriate response to The Guardian's list of top 50 things every foodie should do. I will be the first to confess, apropos the list, that I have ever only done one of them, and I concur with the Cod's general doubts. Which one, you're asking? Well, given that I was following in the footsteps of everyone's favorite American fascist poet, here is a clue:

True, it was Venice,
And at Florian’s and under the north arcade
I have seen other faces, and had my rolls for breakfast, for that matter;
So, for what it’s worth, I have the background.

And will someone please offer an alternative to "foodie" so the Cod will settle his scales?

Funky bass funky bass.

Check out freeman's post about Les Claypool's Frog Brigade and then his review of the concert by Les Claypool and his Fancy Band in Royal Oak, Michigan a few days ago. freeman has been generous enough to provide samples of Les Claypool's music, which do rock, and have a listen particularly to the bits from that recent concert.

You do not want to miss this, people, so be warned: the downloads are only good for 7 days or 25 downloads, whichever comes first. Dawdlers are not winners.

Scooped again.

I bet you didn't know that Jerry Shriver of USA Today is a regular reader of this blog. Goodness knows I was surprised. But how else to explain this article in Friday's paper?

Stately Turin is putting its Games face on
By Jerry Shriver, USA TODAY

TURIN, Italy — Seven months before it enters the world spotlight as host for the XXth Olympic Winter Games, this once-regal city on the banks of the Po River is going through an unfortunate but necessary ugh! phase that temporarily masks some of its baroque beauty.

He goes on to say:

The beautiful Piazza San Carlo, bordered by magnificent arcaded streets, has been torn up to install an underground parking garage.

Scaffolding and tarps cling to some of the stately baroque buildings in the central Piazza Castello area, where many of the medals will be awarded.

Well, dear reader, you read it here first.

He does, however, include a lovely collection of photos along with his article. Go here to see parts of Turin not currently covered with scaffolding. And he points out a number of indoor attractions, things you can still see even with the mass beautification under way. I can personally echo his recommendation of the Museo Egizio, with its amazing collection of Egyptian artifacts and an interesting story to tell about Italian archaeological expeditions in Egypt during the early twentieth century. And I would add the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, or GAM. (Speaking of creative acronyms....) They have one of the more impressive collections of 19th and 20th century Italian art, centering as you might guess on artists from Torino and environs, but with excellent examples of the rapidly evolving range of styles during that period, and artists like Casorati, Sironi, Balla, and Modigliani. Don't miss it, and then go get yourself some agnolotti. They rock.

Posting will be light.

Guess what finally arrived from the UK in my mailbox today?

Deliberation.

OK, I am ready to take the plunge. I think.

I have decided to train for Nationals. I already have one qualifying time (assuming that this year's time standards don't get too much stiffer) and I hope that during this year's season I can pick up another one.

Is this crazy? Let's see.

ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR:
1. I have one cut already, dammit. It would be a shame to waste it.
2. The Masters Short Course Nationals take place beginning 2 days after my spring grades are due. Is this a sign? It might be.
3. I have a base layer already, from this past year's work, that would mean that I would not need to step up the swimming quantity so much as train with a little more focus. And because my two events would be 100 BR and 200 BR, there is room for focus there.
4. I have the training infrastructure in place, in the form of a team and a good coach who is game to help me pursue this goal--plus the available practice times actually work with the rest of my life.
5. I have had regular and serious training as a part of my life in years past, when I was trying to be a triathlete, before my calf pointed out that I am not a runner.
6. This kind of goal can be very motivating on those days when I do not feel like going to practice.
7. I don't have to train backstroke! This is good for everyone, because no one should have to see that.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST:
1. The sabbatical is over, Sister, and you would do well to keep in mind that you will have significantly less energy to devote to sports during this academic year.
2. It will require care to maintain not only the training schedule but also some semblance of a healthy diet.
3. Might need to cut back on the drinking. :o
4. The new time standards will be available in September, it seems, and I do not even know yet whether my 200 breaststroke time from last year will be fast enough for this year's cut.
5. Do I want the pressure of this goal in my life?

Advice to travelers

Welcome me home. Yes, after a fine honeymoon, with no groom, and after a couple of rough days of travel, I am home, home again. Without plans for big trips for a while. Whew.

But before I leave topics Italian completely, let me offer you one piece of advice.

If you want to visit an Olympic host city, do so after the games, not before.

Torino, capital of the Italian Piemonte region, will host the 20th Olympic Winter Games in February 2006. The city is psyched: there are special Olympic Stores all over the place, not to mention the ubiquitous rings and stylized torch in front of the Porta Nuova train station.

But unless you are more interested in seeing construction sites than touristic sites, you might rather not be part of the lead-up frenzy.

Touristic. That is one of those words we don't really use in English. In fact, per my dictionary, the adjectival form of "tourist" is "tourist." (It can be an adverb too--how efficient.) But because Italians can talk about "siti touristici," then their pamphlet translations use this new specially adjectivized form of the word. So presto, now it is an English word, and I kind of like it.

If you have traveled in Europe recently, then you have seen the new way of handling sites under restoration. Used to be there would just be plain old scaffolding over the thing being fixed. But is a Tyvec-wrapped scaffold any substitute for the actual facade of the cathedral in Orvieto? And if you have traveled thousands of miles to see the thing, is the greater cultural enrichment of Europe really what you are thinking of as you stand there in the square, your camera lowered?

So now those scaffolds are hidden in boxes, covered with some kind of sign material, often including a photo of the thing that is in restauro. For instance, this beautiful bridge across the Po has bronze statues at its four corners, allegories of Piety, Valor, Art and Industry. Now there is an allegory of Restoration--complete with its generous donors, each of whom gets space on the box for a logo. See? This way you get to see the statue even while it is being worked on--see it in that Age of Mechanical Reproduction kind of way. What might Walter B. say has happened to the statue's aura?

I am all in favor of new underground parking decks to replace the use of Turin's magnificent baroque piazzas as parking lots, but trust me that having an espresso in one of the city's famous cafes is not the same with a different view.

La festa di Nostra Signora di Montallegro

Last night I saw the coolest fireworks show. No, it was not an early 4th of July hoohah, although it turns out that my present home had its own fireworks display last night, much to my cats' dismay.

No, this was a fireworks show celebrating deliverance from the plague, a part of a festival held in Rapallo every year on 1, 2, 3 July, giving thanks to the Madonna of Montallegro.

The evening started off with three boats in the Tigullian harbor sending off little lights into the sea. Each boat must have released hundreds of the thing, over the course of a couple of hours, and watching their small lights float away was so serene. Very different from what would come next.

Namely, the firings of mortaletti, an ancient type of firework traditional to Rapallo. Each of the sestieri, or quarters of Rapallo puts together its own display, trying to outdo the others.

I happened to be watching from just above the fifteenth-century Castello right on the harbor, and beside it was the staging area for the display given by the Sestiere Borzoli, whose pirotechnicians all wore red shirts, and their area is marked off with red pendants. They have even painted a very cool shield on the pavement there by the beach.

Sometimes they would fire off one or two mortaletti, but a few of their firings involved multiples, strung together with paths of gunpowder. They would fire off a round, and then all around the harbor, the other sestieri would fire theirs. Ssome of them were too far away for me to see anything, but for some I could see puffs of smoke after the BOUM or else a few sparks and then the BOUM. But for the sestiere Borzoli, I had to plug my ears.

Their grand finale was impressive, even though I could see in advance what they had planned: a path of single mortaletti, then a small cluster, then a few more, then a double path leading up to an enormous conglomeration of the things. From the time when the guy with the long lighting wand walked over, to the end of the sequence, was fairly short, but full of fire and noise.

After all the mortaletti was a visual show over the harbor, and although my view was not perfect, I could see pretty well, and after all, I was in my room, not standing in an enormous crowd. Did I mention that all this was happening at 11:30 p.m.? For a lame-o like me, standing in the crowd would have been a strain, but from my very own room? As long as I hid behind the door to my balcony, I could even stand outside a little bit, even though the polizia had been yelling for people to watch from indoors. There must have been quite a danger for Italian police to be monitoring things!

And the fireworks were magnificent. It was strange, as an American, to see them for a religious festival, as they always seem to have Stars and Stripes Forever in the background, instead of Ave Maria. And even the choice of the O Fortuna opening from Carl Orffàs Carmina Burana did not seem strange in a festival dating back hundreds of years and celebrating the delivery from the plague.

Look here for more about the festa, the fireworks, and the sestieri. If you donàt read Italian, follow the link to the GALLERY for a bunch of great photos.

Italy = not a picnic

OK, Horvus A. Callithumper has shamed me into a quick post. I had thought maybe I would take a little break from the web, but no no no I could not resist checking in, and there are comments from mtnRoughneck and even Anonymous, so OK.

If this post looks strange, it is because I am typing while wearing sunglasses. Oh yes, and the funny diacriticals in unexpected places on Italian keyboards.

I can offer anyone planning to travel a few pieces of advice.

1. If your several-years-old glasses break at some point while you are in the comfort of your own home, and it seems easy enough to fix them with superglue, go ahead and fix them, but then really you should get yourself some new frames. You do not want the little arm to break off afresh while you are in a foreign land, particularly when you have recently arrived and you do not have anything else to wear or any tools or any recent sleep.

2. If possible, when traveling overseas, do not check your bag, especially if you are planning to travel lightly anyway. Sure, sure, I hear you about not wanting to lug the thing around in airports, and about worrying whether there will be room for it in the overhead bin, and about how you want to bring you handy Swiss Army knife along. Get rid of those thoughts immediately, for they only lead you down the path of pain and suffering. After all, many airlines see getting your checked bag on YOUR FLIGHT as an unnecessary bonus, especially when they are about to go bankrupt.

3. Believe what it says on tubes of superglue (or colla rapida, as they say here in Italia) about the glue working fast and sticking to skin. Especially believe it when you are considering, given your lack of any pins or similar items, whether to try to bite off the little tiny end piece on a tube of superglue. Especially since biting off that little end piece exposes more glue than a little pinprick would.

4. On a happier note, remember that there is little that a shower and a good night's sleep won't make tolerable. Even better if you can combine that with clean teeth, newly acquired deodorant, and a clean shirt and undies.

5. Even happier, sometime before you die, take the train from Roma to Rapallo. Somewhere around Pisa you start seeing beautiful mountains on the inland side of the route, and a little north of there the route veers west so that you are barely not in the Mediterranean. You go in and out of tunnels, since the coastline is mountainous, and each time you come out you get a stunning sight off to your left, that clear blue of the Med. Gorgeous. And the little towns along your right are all painted in those gorgeous oranges and pinks that look horrid anywhere but this kind of light.

6. And if you ever stay in the Hotel Italia e Lido in Rapallo, spring for the camera vista mare, with the sea view. I figured it might just be a tiny glimpse out of one corner of the window if you are the right height and the stars are perfectly aligned, but in fact it is splendid, with the Castello, the beach, and the sweeping coastline all right outside your window. I wonder if I'll be able to see the lights tomorrow night, when they are all set afloat in celebration of the festa of Nostra Signora di Montallegro, and maybe the fireworks, too. I hope they are visible through my prescription sunglasses.

p.s. to Tim: here in Rapallo, the weather is perfect. Heh.

Buongiorno, Roma.

Have yourselves a nice couple of weeks. I am off to one of my favorite places--Italia. But I should honestly say that I will spend but 2 days in my favorite city, and then it is off to places unknown, to me anyway. To Rapallo for a few days, and then on to Torino. In the first place I am Pound-hunting, and in the latter hoping to look at some of Vivaldi's own collection of manuscripts.

So wish me well. One thing is certain: I will eat well. OK, really two things, if you count the drinking separately. Ah, the land of good, cheap wine!

25 June 2005

This weekend two of my friends are getting married.

I wrote that sentence only because I wish it were true, and because it should be true. The more accurate sentence, but really not the truer sentence, should say, This weekend two of my friends are exchanging union vows. Of course they, like any other pair of women (or men) who have decided that they want to commit themselves to one another, cannot get married.

You will notice that I am not at their wedding, and the result is this intense dilemma. I am not at their wedding because last weekend I got married, and this weekend I am exhausted, and I really need to spend some time with the PP without everybody looking. This weekend, no one takes a picture when I hug him. This weekend I am not getting my hair done or putting on panty hose, and he does not have to wear a tie. I will probably spend all of this weekend with my feet in and out of only one pair of extraordinarily comfortable shoes. No parties--I am putting my foot down. This weekend we are drinking beer and watching movies and not answering the phone and maybe eating dinner out somewhere low-key where we do not need to dress up.

Who am I kidding? You don't have to dress up to eat anywhere here!

But this means I am not at their wedding, and instead I am thinking about them desperately. I am thinking that I hope that whatever family members got their reply cards all tangled up in their so-called morals, and so could not even send a polite "no" but had to raise a stink about not approving, are not missed. I am thinking about their chocolate fountain, and hoping that whoever they got to make it when the first guy--who originally said it was not a problem to make a chocolate fountain for a same-sex couple but then later stopped returning their calls and finally said he couldn't do it--backed out, I'm hoping that that new person makes them a hell of a chocolate fountain, and that my two beautiful friends can then see past that first guy and his hang-ups and enjoy that chocolate fountain for all they are worth.

I am thinking about the discussion we had recently about honeymoons, about where in the world would you go if you could go anywhere in the world, and how one of them had decided exactly where, and the other looked at me in disbelief at the idea that the whole world was out there, available, but then not really because this was just an abstract question with no footing in reality. But once I rephrased it as "where would you go if you had two weeks and $3000 and enough frequent flyer miles to cover your tickets," she got on it right away and we all had a great time thinking about possibilities--and laughing at ourselves.

I am thinking about their mothers, for whom this wedding has become a sort of realization of all the ways that being queer in America sucks--and of how people who don't know you decide they can go ahead and judge you because they have decided that that is what their Bible says to do. (Not that those people tend to be the best readers--I know this because they have been in my classes, and I have worked desperately with them, but it has not helped.)

And I am thinking about how they managed to be stronger women than I am, and bring their anxious it-is-only-a-week-until-our-wedding selves to my wedding, and to be happy for me, and even dance some and laugh a lot. I am thinking that I wish I had the endless strength that could have gotten my ass on a plane to Virginia today, so I could be there to say to them that I think that what they are doing is heroic and honest, not to mention that they are adorable as can be and that they inspire strength in me, even when I am not able to carry it forward.

Because I do not have enough strength to get on that plane, I am here having a quiet weekend with the PP. I wish I could say that I do not feel bad about that, but a part of me does, even as a part of me would not have this weekend any other way. But that is the way it goes, isn't it? That we rarely have untempered joy or grief?

But here's to you, my two wedding friends. I hope this weekend can be a real moment of joy, and that at the end of it you feel exhausted by the love of your family and friends.