ARKANGEL PUSH PIN GRAPHIC

I listened to the Complete Arkangel Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost this morning, which features a glorious rendition of the whole let's-dress-as-Russians-in-front-of-the-Queen-of-France episode -- complete with outrageously fake Russian accents.

In other words, I discovered this morning that the only thing better than Shakespeare is Shakespeare performed in a Russian accent.

PROPERTIED AS ALL THE TUNED SPHERES

A Wikipedia reference on the article for Musica universalis:  

 Houlding (2000) p.28: "The doctrine of the Pythagoreans was a combination of science and mysticism… Like Anaximenes they viewed the Universe as one integrated, living organism, surrounded by Divine Air (or more literally 'Breath'), which permeates and animates the whole cosmos and filters through to individual creatures… By partaking of the core essence of the Universe, the individual is said to act as a microcosm in which all the laws in the macrocosm of the Universe are at work".

Then look at Cleopatra's lines:

His legs bestrid the ocean: his rear'd arm
Crested the world: his voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas
That grew the more by reaping: his delights
Were dolphin-like; they show'd his back above
The element they lived in: in his livery
Walk'd crowns and crownets; realms and islands were
As plates dropp'd from his pocket.

Mhm-hmm...

Shakespeare strikes again! Also the "his voice was propertied/as all the tuned spheres" is totally going in Music of the Spheres.

SHAKESPEARE DOES COGNITIVE SCIENCE, COGNITIVE SCIENCE DOES SHAKESPEARE

We are such stuff as dreams are made on

Fun if not terribly profound article over at Nautilus that puts the cog sci into poetics. Nautilus itself is an interesting little oddity. Think it was born of the OpenSource wave or post-wave a few years back, so the content's free. Usually has interesting concepts but rarely fleshes them out enough.

THE WORLD IS MY CLOISTER

John Runciman's King Lear in the Storm

Stuck in the block room all day, which has the sole but happy benefit of allowing me to enjoy Arkangel's King Lear. (That serie's is fantastic btw. Their production of Julius Caesar in particular.)  Thoughts, if such they is or were or are to be:

When I finally produce my silent visual Lear-inspired masterwork, it's going to either started with a sort of atonal trumpet piece (kind of this sad whimpery drawn out demented regal flourish), or just with the first thirty-five-ish second section of Beethoven's String Trio in C minor. Or maybe even just the first four notes. The rest is silence. I would use Rostropovich's version though, but the recording on YouTube's lousy.

Also totally forgot that Gilead's final line "I'll pray, and then I'll sleep" is from Lear, which is bizarre since it's one of my favorite lines from the play. It's fitting, too: in King Lear, which consists entirely of moving lines, one of the most beautiful and moving and haunting is quiet and tucked away in the middle of the storm/play. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep. Gilead elevates those little quiet things tucked away in the middle of the storm/life, and then puts the quietest bit of Shakespeare in the position of greatest honor: last.

Still processing if there's any more significance to choosing Lear of all plays. Lear : : Ames? There's the duh quality of coming-to-terms-w/-mortality-at-rather-late-notice -- or perhaps Robinson's suggesting that Ames himself only began to cherish the things he writes about and cherishes after he learned about his heart condition (though the book itself doesn't seem to suggest this (though it was written by Ames)) a la Lear's sort of death-catharsis/catharsis-death. Probs all that and more. Really, it's just another case of I am he as you are me as we are all LearAmesHereComesEverybody together.


Hearing the play also really brings home the amount of times the word "nothing" gets used in the first half. The only thing more terrible than hearing the word used like a drum-beat for the second-half too is hearing its echo. And of course there's "never, never, never, never, never."

POEM #4 MEMORIZED

1024. I went with Sonnet LXV because I couldn't make up my mind and because it's so like and unlike Keat's Grecian Urn, and who doesn't like a little lack of variety every now and then? It's not the prettiest, wittiest, sweetest, cleverest or profoundest of the sonnets by half imho, but it's number sixty-five, and it was printed in black ink...or pixels...and technically the text on this page is dark shade of gray...so phooey to the naysayer. You've got to start somewhere. If on the off-chance I were self-absorbed, I would point out that, on the basis of Grecian Urn and this, I have a problem with mortality. Or else I like history and memory. Or else I don't have problem w/ mortality, but appreciate the extra-temporal qualities in Grecian Urn and LXV. Lucky I'm not self-absorbed. Ecco il sonetto: 

     Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, 

     But sad mortality o'ersways their power,

     How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, 

     Whose action is no stronger than a flower? 

     O! how shall summer's honey breath hold out, 

      Against the wrackful siege of battering days,

      When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

      Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?

      O fearful meditation! where, alack,

      Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?

      Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?

      Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

          O! none, unless this miracle have might, 

         That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Let 'er riff! Free Writing Take #1.5

Mozart's Fantasy in D minor. Also: Because.

Attempt to partially clarify reaction to The Tempest. Hwaet! The argument: The Tempest is the closest Shakespeare comes to showing the essential unity between music and literature. The overall tenor is so uncanny, and the work itself demands such a multitude of emotional reactions that it defies verbal articulation - it's music, or magic, whichever you prefer. The peculiar combination of both fairy-tale outlandishness and a far more "personal" feeling both heightens the emotional reaction and a reader's emotional interaction w/ the play, mirroring a person's response to a musical piece - something almost infinitely abstracted and yet soul-stirringly intimate. See also the constant references to sounds and the auditory aspects of the Island itself + the frequency of lyrics w/in the script (Rondo in A minor). The Tempest, in other words, draws attention to the musica de la palabra. Anyhoo, think the basic "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" principle applies here. That's about that. It's Saturday, praise Bacchus. Mhm. Memorizing Ode to a Nightingale. Not a terribly original choice, but who needs originality when you have Keats going all highschool-angsty? "My heart aches, and a dull numbness pains / my sense, as though from hemlock I had drunk / or emptied some dull opiate to the drains / one minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk" if my memory serves. Still probs gonna try'n'memorize Tempest dough. Not terribly original for free-writing either. Guess I think in loops. In loops. In loops. Looper. Lark looper. I want to write a person. Will this make me a nicer human being? I doubt it. But I want to write a person. Lark Looper? Ditzy. Highschooler. Big glasses. Calls to mind a less rugged, pudgier version of Gordon-Levitt in Brick if he'd read less hard-boiled pulp fiction. Likes baseball because he likes stats. Quiet at first, warms up quickly. Genuine guy. Father out of the picture, mother bubbly elementary teacher. Only child, apple of said mother's shining blue eye. Happy enough, wants a life, doesn't know where or how to get it. Half-subconsciously resents mother's attention, better off remarried. Plays drums in highschool marching band, looks like a dork when he does it, loves it anyway. Friends few but loyal, mostly oddballs, "hi/bye" friends many. Watches inordinate amts of TV for no apparent reason, baseball and miscellaneous. Bright in everything but math. Not lazy, but not terribly enterprising either. Doesn't care about appearances. This isn't a person. What makes Lark Looper tick? Lark's got "nice-guy syndrome," unable to say no. Starts booking? Friday evenings he takes a 91 Miata (fathers?) and goes for long cruises w/ the top down to nowhere. Blegh.

Mercutio. The pox of such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes, these new tuners of accents! -- 'By Jesu, a very good blade! -- a very tall man! a very good whore.' -- Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardonnez-mois, who stand so much on the nw form that they cannot site at ease on the old bench? O, their bons, their bons!

Shakespeare

About to read Titus Adronicus. A cursory scan at the relevant Wikipedia page makes it sound like the Shakespearean answer to a Hollywood slasher-cum-gorefest (all the rage in Elizabethan times, it would seem).

Recently finished The Taming of the Shrew which,  meaning no disrespect to those feminazis in the audience, is quite amusing, particularly for the long banter when Petruccio and Katherine first meet. Also, the constant repitition of themline "Kiss me, Kate" kept reminding me of P.G. Wodehouse. That, not to mention the fact that every romcom starring either Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant is apparently a ripoff of Shrew, made itfeel like it was written yesterday. Ormthis morning.

Also love how you have the whole 'Induction' frame w/o a concluding segment.

Thakethpeare

'Twill prove a giddy world.

King Henry VI Part 2

Read through the 2 Henry VI today (trying to finish the Complete Shakespeare prior to reading Bloom's The Invention of the Human and Greenblatt's Will in the World). Notes:

1. Aio, te, Æacida, romanos vincere posse - Ambiguous Latin oracle that can be understand either as "I say, Aeacidas, that you can defeat the Romans," or, "I say, Aeacidas, that the Romans can defeat you.

2. Tantæ ne animis cælestibus iræ? - Is there so much anger in the minds of the gods? (From Aeneid I.11)

3. "'Tis politicly done" = ultimate political commentary title.

4. Invitis nubibus - Unsure. Based on Interweb: either, a.) Obscured by clouds; or b.) Despite cloiuds.

5. Bezonian - A knave or rascal. [From Italian bisogno ill-equipped recruit; lit.: need. (Also, presumably, French besoin).]

6. Quillet - A verbal nicety, a subtle distinction; a frivolous or evasive argument; a quibble.

Shakespeare on value systems

'Degree' speech from Troilus and Cressida:

109: Take but degree away, untune that string,
110: And hark what discord follows. Each thing [meets]
111: In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
112: Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
113: And make a sop of all this solid globe;
114: Strength should be lord of imbecility,
115: And the rude son should strike his father dead;
116: Force should be right, or rather, right and wrong
117: (Between whose endless jar justice resides)
118: Should lose their names, and so should justice too!
119: Then every thing include itself in power,
120: Power into will, will into appetite,
121: And appetite, an universal wolf
122: (So doubly seconded with will and power),
123: Must make per force an universal prey,
124: And last eat up himself.