Tangents

Different takes on the tarantella del Gargano:

With dancers:


With zest:


I dig this band:


On a sofa:


With castanets:


The late Owain Phyfe (our Renfaire and caroling gigs coincided for a few seasons):



Lyrics This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/183493.html.

Mark Miller's "Child of God," performed by my church choir (including me). Miller wrote the song during Methodist church battles over LGBT inclusion. The clip begins at 20:16. This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/179422.html.

Today's subject line is from Bachelor's "Stay in the Car," which has been earworming me since I heard it on WXNP earlier this week.

Dance recommendation: Anna Morrissey's All Together Alone, a modern take on "Ebben? ne andrò lontana," which I've adored since playing viola for it eons ago. Up until May 29. Warning for light-sensitives: there is some strobe action in it.

I keep meaning to mention the Stay at Home Choir's recording of Christopher Tin's "Sogno di Volare," which I sang on. (I chose to participate audio-only on this one.)



A Catholic composer who had also been involved with "Sogno" contacted me via Instagram about joining the virtual choir for one of his recordings, so that's in my practice folder now. I've sat out most of this year's SAHC projects, but they're doing another run at Ode to Joy, this time with a new German text by Michael Köhlmeier, and there's no registration fee for this one. It's unclear if there will be a recording involved, nor can I make the first alto sectional, but I do not care -- any time I can spend with that piece will help me refuel.

Today I squeezed in two dance sessions -- one for a reel that will be shown at a UK folk festival in June, and Karen Arceneaux's Beginner Horton class with Ailey Extension, where we're learning a combination to Billie Eilish's "Lovely" that Karen choreographed with Mental Health Awareness Month in mind. My back and shoulder are not 100%, and I stepped on a splinter last night (ow!), and there's like forty hours of work to fit into the next fourteen, so I'm pleased with myself for showing up (on camera, even!) and staying more focused than not.

It's not all wine and roses here, but my roses are doing very well this year, and my mom-in-law brought two bottles of prosecco to lunch on Sunday, along with this bouquet:



What I served (for four people total):

deviled eggs

bacon jam balls on red pepper strips

cashews

pickled garlic

tortellini with shrimp in a radish-lemon-anchovy sauce (adapted from an Anita Lo recipe)

green beans seasoned with butter and raspberry balsamic vinegar

zucchini soufflé

almond layer cake from Sweet 16th

The next afternoon, the other two members of the museum editorial team came over for our production meeting. I made another plate of deviled eggs, the junior editor brought Russian tea cookies, and we collectively put away more cake while having ourselves a merry time and discussing at length All the Things Due.

A week ago, something decided to eat every mallow seedling in my back yard. It left the adjacent zinnia seedlings alone, and I hadn't spent too much time thinning out the mallows, so I was amused as well as annoyed: I mean, clearly it was a really tasty snack for the critter? It had even consumed the scraps I had pulled from the ground earlier that Friday.

Being slightly ridiculous, I had put some of the bigger thinnings in water in hopes of transplanting them, and by yesterday some of them had developed long plump roots, so they went into some of the dirt patches out front. Fingers crossed . . . This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/175706.html.

One year in, I dance with imaginary partners and corners maybe once every 1.5 weeks. There are virtual contra and English country dances, concerts, classes, and presentations pretty much every day of the week, along with offerings from my early music and editing and public health circles. There isn't time for even a tenth of what I'd like to sample, never mind dive deeper into. (In other news, it's a day ending in "y" . . .)

Dancing alone also triggers unhappy memories of being a wallflower, and an envy of people whose partners enjoy waltzing and pousette-ing. It balances out: I literally doze off on motorcycles, which makes me less fun than our friends who are into them. I wouldn't want anyone else as my housemate, but my fantasy wishlist does include a dance spouse (along with a double manual harpsichord, a Citroen, an all-expenses-paid month in Barcelona, and the Bottega Veneta shearling coat I petted in San Francisco back in 2017).

On the flip side, drilling waltz steps was on my at-home list anyhow, practicing waltz holds tones the arms, and going through the figures revives happy memories as well, such as teaching "Volpony" during a Monday night class, being perfectly in sync with partners (and in demand) at past balls, and improvising a dance with another actor during last year's photo shoot for Grand Magnolia. ("Ah, Theater!" he declaimed afterward. "Where you gaze with all your heart into another person's soul -- and then move on . . .")

Anyway, one of the dances on tonight's NCD program was "Volpony." I felt an urge to double-check the source while Cathy was teaching (having mentally misfiled it under Molière instead of Jonson) and found it opposite "Wa Is Me, What Mun I Do":



These are two of the achingly loveliest tunes in the ECD canon. Some I get tired of, and some I have never liked (I'm with the minority that cannot abide "Softly Good Tummas"), but my heart lifts when I see these on a program:

(this recording doesn't quite capture the yearning I hear in Purcell's music, but will at least give you a glimpse of real social dancing, with elegance and errors in abundance)



This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/173811.html.

So, between allergies and scratches and figurative kicks in the teeth and waking up hung over (which seemed profoundly unfair because it was one flute of prosecco during a retirement-party Zoom and one flute of vermouth after dinner, but apparently that's one digestif too many for my metabolism these days) and nearly putting antibiotic ointment instead of toothpaste on my brush -- well. Hello, dregs of February.

But I slogged through this, that, and more, so some deliverables got delivered, some reportables got reported, the house is cleaner, and I pulled together a lemon-rosemary-olive-panko-parmesan-macaroni thing for dinner. It was mild enough today to walk to the Little Free Library in sandals. There have also been three rabbit holes: One was the lore surrounding St. Matthias, in the course of pulling together twelve lines for tomorrow's Tupelo poem; I was also intrigued by the why and wherefore of coppices, but that didn't make it into the draft. (Today's contribution was 14 lines of dog-gerel, so to speak . . .)

The second was triggered by Sam's Tumblr post on Sargent's depiction of Robert Louis and Fanny Stevenson. What an intricate household that was. I did not know that Fanny and her daughter Isobel were both cougars (with the same writer-illustrator).

I have not watched this video of "Let Beauty Awake" in full yet, but even a few seconds . . .

The last is a current memory-melody worm: there's a Swedish cradle song in a 1957 textbook called Singing in Harmony that one of my elementary schools discarded when I was a kid. (The Commonwealth of Kentucky Public Instruction stamp inside the front cover has a line where one was supposed to indicate "White" or "Colored" . . .) The setting is similar to some Beethoven art-songs I'm fond of; the next-to-last measure particularly gets me, and I've played it several times today:



Last night I looked up the composer and lyricist. There doesn't seem to be much online about W. Th. Söderberg (though the song got around enough to merit sheet music for mandolin and guitar -- published in Seattle . . .), but the author of the English words, one "Auber Forestier," turns out to have been the formidable Aubertine Woodward Moore, whose many roles included serving as music director of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin. (For some other day: she apparently gave Whitman season tickets she couldn't use and may have been on a first-name basis with Alcotts and Emersons and fiddlin' Bulls . . .) This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/172559.html.

...a friend or associate of a former classmate tweeted a video of harpsichordist Scott Ross, who died of AIDS-related pneumonia 30 years ago.

There is a recording on YouTube of Ross playing the Gigue from Rameau's "First Book of Keyboard Pieces," which happens to be what I played most often on the harpsichords around Connecticut College back in July.

This morning I sang a solo about God having countless names and faces, and slid a stone into our water communion bowl in memory of Thomas Peck.

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/159186.html.

Since last night, I've been living with the urge to howl holy hell at North Carolina.

What has helped: cranking up the volume on my car stereo and singing along as it plays "Stand" over and over. (That chorus!)

The Nashville Public Library is ordering copies of Good Trouble for its collection.

Team Tug of Warhol (War-HAUL!) was not victorious, but we were valiant, and apparently provided a good deal of entertainment for our colleagues back at the ranch via Facebook Live (as well as those who joined us at the park, where it was 91 freaking F at noon).

It's been an intense day. I dreamt at length about my late honorary mama and her family last night. I was up at 6:30 a.m. for an early meeting. A training session for our upcoming Native Women Artists exhibition included a viewing of The Indian Problem, which -- god _____, Tennessee. Gdi, North Carolina. I followed church class with ten minutes on the erg at the Y. I'm looking at the Road Scholar catalogue that just arrived -- Honorary Mama had suggested doing one of their trips together, and while that never happened, there's at least one that another honorary relative might be up for.

But first, bath and bed. And reinforcing that figurative breastplate.

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/157603.html.

During last night's Tony Awards, a friend mutter-tweeted about the genre of movies-turned-into-musicals, where some results are brilliant and others "rely on spectacle & giant showy numbers & maybe nostalgia." It came to mind as I was mulling over a comment someone had made about the Mika-Whitney duet I linked to in my previous entry -- that of the coach-finalist duets Mika had participated in over the years, this was the one with which he seemed most engaged.

It certainly is the finest acting-storytelling I recall seeing him do. It helps that the song works really well as a duet -- and that it hasn't been done to death on the show. I am as guilty of loving the familiar as much as most fans, and there was an article making the rounds after the Voice US finals that suggested (IIRC) that Voice judges and fans respond more instinctively to good covers than good originals since the show is largely cover-based. The French edition doesn't incorporate originals at all, other than riffs the contestants might work in during their blind auditions -- Drea Drury's Spanish rap in the middle of "Rude Boy" was a standout:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rhw9OSYZUQ

Here's the thing: there are thousands of good songs in French and English. The BYM and I have discussed before how, with covers, he wants them to be different enough from the original to be worth the listener's while, as opposed to making the listener simply wish they were listening to the original instead.
The Voice France cover of "L'Aigle Noir" has felt most right to me is Frederic Longbois's take in Season 7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPQa88KK140

The song is a bit like "Send in the Clowns" -- the singer needs to be old enough for the yearning of the words to make sense. In Frédéric's case it was also an inspired choice because it fit his voice well, Mika coached some pacing and restraint into the delivery, and it provided an excellent contrast to the screwball presentation of "Bécassine": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4ikkqhOLwA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4ikkqhOLwA

In comparison, Mika and Kendji's duet fails to move me (even though Kendji too went on to win the whole thing) -- their voices and faces don't convince me that they inhabit the world of regret that Barbara and Frédéric are familiar with. And this season, when Théophile Renier attempted it, I ended up recoiling from his smile. Dude, it's so not a happy song.

(Being a performer myself, I do get that some smiling happens involuntarily -- nervousness, ingrained habits of trying to connect with the audience, etc. [I have not managed to forget one scene from Madame Bovary that I not once managed to get through without giggling, even though its over-the-top desperate declaration of love pulled at the same heartstrings that vibrate today in reaction to the Mika-Whitney duet] -- and sometimes it can't be helped, because of diction or other technical demands. That said, I was totally in agreement with Théophile getting axed that round.)

I was on edge when I read that Leona Winter was going to cover "Kid" during the KO round, because Yoann Casanova's take (with young Leo) last year knocked off my proverbial socks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2opBne9hCGA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2opBne9hCGA

But, because Leona is a drag queen, she and the scene designer were able to tell a different story than either Eddy or Casanova: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTnZ3jrgWoY


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTnZ3jrgWoY

It's a hell of a song. Voice France is my gateway to many songs in both English and French [I tend to become acquainted very late to most Top 40 tunes, with dancercise classes (Pound, Zumba, Dance Blast, Balletone, and the like) being my other main channel], and pat of the fun is checking out the originals. In part because, good as the contestants are, it is at times very audibly clear how the coaches have more stage presence/awareness and more experience with interpretation. Sometimes the new voices/arrangements are more pleasing than the source (I can't say that I care for either Bon Iver or Birdy's versions), and sometimes they send me screaming back to the start. (Mano's audition with "Enter Sandman" was hilarious. His follow-up with "Beds Are Burning" was one of the worst second-round clips I've tried to listen to. It doesn't help, of course, that it was the favorite song of a college classmate and thus embedded deep enough in my emotional history that probably even a better singer would have little chance with me.)

All that said, the music that made me happiest yesterday afternoon? The tracks being played at Charming Charlie's at the mall, including Dagny's "Backbeat." (Praise the Lord for Shazam.)

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/153897.html.

The subject line is from "The Church in the Wildwood," a hymn Ann Green apparently used to sing whenever she went back to Mississippi. Made a cheese ball with pickled peppers for her service (because, by the time I got around to figuring out what to pull together on a school night, it was too late to get started on benne wafers, and I have in fact lived long enough to recognize that), and brought sweet potato crackers to go with it.

Lawd, this week.

Transplanted the geranium from Desire to my front yard a week ago. Three days later, every leaf but the smallest one looked infected. Can't tell if that corner is fungally cursed -- last year's results were wildly, weirdly mixed -- or if said geranium just doesn't like Tennessee clay, even though I aerated the hole and mixed in some compost and tried not to get its feet too wet. The French hollyhock a few feet away survived the winter and now looks glorious. Perhaps it's yet another chapter in the universe's attempt to school me in not trying so damn hard that I get in my own way. (Which, not incidentally, is what a waltz partner told me at the Orange Peel a couple of months ago.)

Lawd, this week.

Anyway, I binned all the leaves except for that sweet little leaf at the tip of one stalk, and we'll see if what emerges -- if anything -- looks better. My car reeks of pine chips because I've been too busy to unload eight cubic feet of mulch from it. I would probably do best to compost the mallow seedlings in my sunroom because I waited too long to transplant those, but it's nice to know that the dozens more in the pet food tub are likely still viable.

I am sipping Hild Elbling Sekt and snacking on Milano salami at this hour, because a gal's gottta unwind. Some good dancing tonight. I was tempted to road-trip to Blue Moon later today, especially since there is a waltz workshop on the schedule, and because Jed-who-drives-up-from-Huntsville is a favorite partner, but there is too damn much to do right here at my kitchen counter (so much that I'm going to have to skip a choir thing already on my calendar). Maybe next year...

A singing thing that did happen this week: singing backing vocals on a video, at Jeff Coffin's studio, and chatting with him about his upcoming trips to Tuva and Myanmar. And he's the second person I talked to in person in Nashville this week about Tuvan singers. I do like my life.

My Garden & Gun subscription has kicked in (read, frequent flyer miles from an airline I don't fly that frequently on), and Roy Blount Jr.'s column has beautifully paired opening and closing sentences. The opening sentence: "I'm walking up Dauphine Street in New Orlenas when a man turns the corner carrying a tuba and walking an enormous hairy dog, simultaneously."

A message I sent to a friend in Asheville yesterday: "PUT THE PHONE DOWN and go ogle art at Blue Spiral or eat a marshmallow at French Broad Chocolates or pet the crocheted coats on the cats near Laughing Seed Café."



This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/142045.html.

["Under the oak leaves" - a line from "Au clair de la fontaine" (By the clear fountain)]

The senior minister at my church is on sabbatical, and Rabbi Rami Shapiro is visiting monthly as a guest preacher. On September 11, he brought with him a shruti, which he played as the congregation learned a new round:



Longtime readers/friends may recall that I do have a thing about fountains... though this past month my scant spare time has been more on lake and river. My Labor Day getaway plans having fallen through twice, I decided to get on a paddleboard four out of my five days off, and last Friday I watched the full moon from my lantern-lit plank on the Cumberland.

Elsewhere and elsewhen: Paying work. Housework. Homework. Paperwork. Footwork. Speaking of--
Dancing: hip-hop, flamenco, Afro-Cuban (orishas), English country.
Friends: Visiting from France and elsewhere. Running for office.. Organizing campferences. Selling taco + lesbian farmer buttons (coupon code here, btw). Preparing for High Holy Days. Coding. Cajoling. Caretaking. I could go on ... in short, inspiring me.
Harvesting: peppers.
Deadheading: zinnias.

Recently published:

At unFold: Spacing for Sky, with typography by J. S. Graustein

At Folded Word: "O Margaret, Here We Are Again"

At 7x20, a weekful of polished micro-poems: 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5

There is more to say and write, much of it off-blog, but a guest arrives tomorrow, so for now it's back to cleaning. Onward!

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/137107.html.