So it’s almost the New Year and I can’t believe that I’m actually only starting to make use of the random itunes mix. I’m listening to Bellydance music from one of Kaeshi’s choreographies’, then Eminem and then Tori Amos and then a riff from Auld Lang Syne.
Oh, and I’m writing from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, btw.
Spent last night swimming in the legendary Hot Springs —the Utes believed doing these medicinal mineral baths provided ‘good medicine’ for the upcoming hunting season. Doc Holiday and plethoras of others, used them to try and cure Tuberculosis. Earlier that afternoon we’d hiked up to Doc’s grave stone—evidently the mineral baths hadn’t saved Doc in time…
Went to the Vapor Caves today, also part of the hot springs. Am getting ready now for a “Blue New Year” party at the Roxy, the only club in Glenwood. Don’t have much blue with me so will have to borrow. Watching the coverage of Times Square and its almost New Years in New York now; they’re all wearing blue as well. Just learned they’re dropping a bigger ball this year. Anyone know what happened to the previous one?
These are my top ten Auld Lang Syne Covers.
Happy New Year!!
Saw Dr. Atomic, written/directed by Peter Sellars and composed by John Adams, screened in a movie theater in Woodland Hills this morning as the matinee was being performed live at the Met. The ending, so softly humanizing. Rather than startle you with the impact of the inevitable explosion this entire opera is leading up to, it brings you inside Oppenheimer’s intellectual and emotional dreamscapes.
As the team at Los Alamos gets closer and closer to the actual test, the dreamscapes bleed together. Something terrifying and inevitable is moving towards them which they have no more control over than they do the desert thunderstorm.
I’m going to try and assemble some of this, to try and give a sense. Of course, I didn’t get the full experience myself because I saw it in a movie theater and not at the Met. Hopefully, at some point, Dr. Atomic and I will find ourselves in the same city at the same time. In the meantime, I’ll post photos and text since I can’t say much beyond what the opera itself says.
Much of the text from the opera was adapted from declassified U.S. government documents and communications among the scientists, government officials, and military personnel who were involved in the project. Other borrowed texts include poetry by Baudelaire, John Donne, and Muriel Rukeyser, the Bhagavad Gita, and a traditional Tewa Indian song. Marvin Cohen, head of the American Physical Society, has criticized some parts of the libretto for not being strictly scientifically correct, in particular the opening lines (below). [1]
The opening chorus is an incomplete excerpt from the 1945 Smyth Report:
“Matter can be neither created nor destroyed but only altered in form.
Energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only altered in form.”
Act I concludes with an aria sung by Oppenheimer with text from Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV:
Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee, and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to’another due,
Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason yhour viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely’I love you, and would be loved faine,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie:
Divorce mee, untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
Kitty Oppenheimer’s aria, “Easter Eve, 1945″, by Muriel Rukeyser is from her poem of the same name.
The Act II, scene iii chorus, borrowed from the Bhagavad Gita (translated into English by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood) reads:
At the sight of this, your Shape stupendous,
Full of mouths and eyes, feet, thighs and bellies,
Terrible with fangs, O master,
All the worlds are fear-struck, even just as I am.
When I see you, Vishnu, omnipresent,
Shouldering the sky, in hues of rainbow,
With your mouths agape and flame-eyes staring-
All my peace is gone; my heart is troubled.
Act II is peppered with a repeated refrain from Pasqualita, the Oppenheimer’s Tewa Indian housemaid. The text comes from a traditional Tewa song:
In the north the cloud-flower blossoms
And now the lightning flashes
And now the thunder clashes
And now the rain comes down! A-a-aha, a-a-aha, my little one.
In the west the cloud-flower blossoms
And now the lightning flashes
And now the thunder clashes
And now the rain comes down! A-a-aha, a-a-aha, my little one.
And now the rain comes down! A-a-aha, a-a-aha, my little one.
One of the only scenes of actual connection (though still full of loneliness and longing) is Baudelaire’s “A Hemisphere in Your Hair” is used verbatim in the scene w/ Kitty Oppenheimer:
A Hemisphere in Your Hair
Long, long let me breathe the fragrance of your hair. Let me plunge my face into it like a thirsty man into the water of a spring, and let me wave it like a scented handkerchief to stir memories in the air.
If only you knew all that I see! all that I feel! all that I hear in your hair! My soul voyages on its perfume as other men’s souls on music.
Your hair holds a whole dream of masts and sails; it holds seas whose monsoons waft me toward lovely climes where space is bluer and more profound, where fruits and leaves and human skin perfume the air.
In the ocean of your hair I see a harbor teeming with melancholic songs, with lusty men of every nation, and ships of every shape, whose elegant and intricate structures stand out against the enormous sky, home of eternal heat.
In the caresses of your hair I know again the languors of long hours lying on a couch in a fair ship’s cabin, cradles by the harbor’s imperceptible swell, between pots of flowers and cooling water jars.
On the burning hearth of your hair I breathe in the fragrance of tobacco tinged with opium and sugar; in the night of your hair I see the sheen of the tropic’s blue infinity’ on the shores of your hair I get drunk with the smell of musk and tar and the oil of coconuts.
Long, long, let me bite your black and heavy tresses. When I gnaw your elastic and rebellious hair I seem to be eating memories.
The best You Tube clip I could find was from the Amsterdam performance so the subtitles are in Dutch. The stage at the Met was more impressive (in my opinion) in the vertical dynamics. Is nevertheless worth checking out this clip, to get a sense..
That is what Woody Allen said about directing his first opera, Gianni Schicchi. The third of Puccini’s Il Trittico trilogy produced by LA Opera. Just came back from seeing it and it was HILARIOUS!!! My cousin, Jennifer –who came to see it with me– is not a huge opera fan but she was just totally loving it to pieces. Imagine this— The Sopranos, Edward Gorey and all of Mulberry Street tossing the dead uncle’s corpse out on the fire escape while pilfering his furniture. Oh, and the dead uncle impersonator (who actually has to become a –dying uncle impersonator– ends up rearranging all the financial designations–slanting in favor of himself, daughter and future son-in-law (in desperate need of duckets to secure their marriage vows) before giving the finger to the blind notary and getting stabbed to death by the pilfering matriarch. And, yes, its easier to follow than I’m making it sound. In fact, there’s actually a simplicity to it. Even the opening credits –white words on black screen with soundtrack– were just so rickety retro and then add Santo Loquasto’s black and white photo family album come to life thing. There’s gotta be more of this. I mean, having really iconic film directors come in to do this kind of this—-why isn’t it happening all the time??? Granted, not every director would want take on Dante’s Canto XIII (where this trickster character originates) but not every director out there is being offered the opportunity to push the outside edge of the envelope in this matter. Which of course, also means kudos to Placido Domingo for having the balls to initiate this sorta interface. I’d like to see Spike Jonze do an opera or James Cameron or Spielberg or Jason Reitman, even. Not all of them are even top of their form, yet. They would, however, have a signature style to bring to the table. for this sorta thing. Because what made the experience so utterly splendid for me, was that it was an interpolation drenched in clarity. Photos courtesy of LA Opera.
Every so often, I am reminded of just how limited in scope a sound bitten NPR interview –even a live one— can actually be.
When my friend Jason “Sage” Sagebiel, a classical guitar instructor and scholar who I met in Grad School, was interviewed by John Schaefer on NPR’s Soundcheck as a “Former Marine Sniper.”
Okay, so to Schaefer’s credit, those more current and topically relevant titles were provided later on in the interview. At the same time, it sucks that Schaefer was as eager to parse Sage into soundbytes as he was. Was like Sage had been targeted to serve this pre-fab, binary, paradigm that Schae. was pushing for, sans Sage, all along.
Granted, I still consider NPR my primary broadcast news source these days. Perhaps one day when I decide to, once again, own a television set, that will change. However, until that day comes, NPR is it for me and I want to continue to trust them.
Each and every one of the conversations I’ve had with Sage (and we’re talking conversations run an average of at least three hours in length) have provided compassionate, circumspect and provocative insights into complexities that very few people will ever experience as directly as Sage has experienced them.
To hear for yourself what I’m complaining about, you can check out the podcast. You can also check out Jason’s website. http://www.sagebiel-music.com
As the team at Los Alamos gets closer and closer to the actual test, the dreamscapes bleed together. Something terrifying and inevitable is moving towards them which they have no more control over than they do the desert thunderstorm.
