Trompe L'Oeil

What a funny way for the pavement to erode! ;-)
A co-worker recently passed this my way. The website is a bit rough, but the pictures are great. The artist (Julian Beever) has his own site too, with most of the same pictures. I love this sort of thing - especially in a city where your can make it feel less like a city, or less like you have a brick wall straight out your "window." Or now that I'm getting into this, there are also these, which are pretty trippy.

My cousins have done some fabulous paintings of this sort on the walls of their various abodes - I'll have to ask about a few of those pictures again. I remember them as being just amazing.

It's been a week of recovery around here. (...a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.) The house is too quiet and the chairs are too cold.

Fuzzy pictures

I've fixed the pictures in Fionn's post, so you can scroll on down the page or see them in their own glory.

To make a full day of updating older posts, you can also now see the rest of the Irtrad-L thread about singing in languages other than your native. The navigation isn't very clear, but at the top of the page there's a back and forward arrow first, and then another set of back and forward arrows with what looks like a lightbulb (?) next to each one. That set is the one that will take you through the whole thread. Non-thrilling content disclaimer: Not much came of it in the end...

It's a beautiful sunny Lá Féile Phádraig here in Madison. Which at least makes all yesterday's snow beautiful if not entirely warm.

Sled dogs

The Iditarod race finished up this week with a fellow winning for the fourth time. I had to laugh when I heard the announcement that in addition to his cash prize he also is awarded a new truck. I get that when they're not actually racing they have an amazing amount of stuff that they have to transport all over the place, but I still find it hilarious that a race devoted to transport by way of dog gives away a shiny new gas-powered beast.

Technical difficulties: I failed in my picture posting attempt with my last post, and considering it was mostly pictures that's a bit sad. I'll tweak it this evening, so come back and see the real thing!

Thanks, Fuzzy

I've had a chance to tell most of you who knew him well, so now I think I can finally talk about it here. It was a bad weekend.

On Friday night A and I had to make the decision to have Fionn put to sleep. He would have turned 5 this summer. Fionn was a rescue cat - I was reminded by C that among other possible horrors I rescued him from his name given by the kind people at the Humane Society - Giovanni. (Apologies to all the Giovannis out there - it just wasn't right.) He jumped up on my lap in the meet-the-cats room at the Humane Society and started purring and knocking his head into mine. He was gregarious, and made people who didn't think they liked cats fall in love. He led a good short life.

Here he is with S and me, not long after he came home. (Note the nail polish - this secures the fact that it was just post-Halloween.) He loved to be held in any position... sideways, right side-up, upside-down, all 3 in quick succession, as long as he was in contact.




He had the chance to marvel at German snowflakes.




He helped me edit my masters thesis.



He charmed a big hulking heavy-stuff-mover at the Frankfurt airport. I was moving back home and had two enormous bags, a large cardboard box, a backpack, and Fionn. I could just barely pretend to manage all of it and a very kind airport hefter came to my aid moving everything through one of the screener machines for me. I was quite nervous about Fionn and all my things and suddenly couldn't see the man anywhere. I realized he was crouched down with his nose to Fionn's cage making cooing noises through the wires.

Fionn perfected the art of couch-diving.







We think Fionn was probably never properly weaned, since his greatest comfort was sleeping on top of a person, sucking on their shirt. He would just close his eyes and look like all was right with the world.

He was always happiest close to the action. Fionn had his own straight-backed chair in the living room here and whenever there were guests he was most likely to be found sitting on it paying close attention to the conversation. (Sounds like stories of me when I was a baby, when I was happiest falling asleep on a blanket in the middle of the floor when my parents were still up and especially if there were guests.)




We shared a love of nooks and books.




He was a good reminder of how to relax.






He listened nearby when I played flute and as with everything else, was totally curious. I remember for the first few months when he was still small and not so used to the sound, he would climb up on the nearest chair or table and put a paw over onto my knee and stick his face right across the embouchure from my nose to see where the sound was coming from.




A mechanical metronome was total fascination.




Bags and boxes were always to be investigated (yes, he is in all 3 pictures).




I'll miss being greeted at the door every day, and having him lay across my arms every time I work with my laptop on my lap.

Thanks, Fuzzy.

happy feet

Well, at least they're on their way to being happy feet. The Kanopy show weekend is past and as always there's a little necessary space of letting my body find center again. I tweaked my foot badly on Saturday night but with tape, ice & ibu I was able to do the Sunday show. R took a good look at it before the show and said it was the sort of thing he'd seen heal quickly in the past. I was dubious after my 4 month healing process when I bruised my ankle bones & tissue last summer, but it's feeling lots lots better now. Not 100% but close enough that I forget about it most of the time.

To give you an idea of how out of it I was yesterday, I called around lunch time to see if I could still register for the Bill T Jones masterclass scheduled for the evening. It wasn't until about 2 hours later that I realized I didn't have 2 feet to dance on. Oy. Tonight is the BTJ show at the Overture though, so if I couldn't dance last night at least I can watch tonight!

enormous, but not overwhelming

Inhabitat recently posted a single shelf bookshelf from an Amsterdam-based design house called Studio Frederik Roije. (Not re-posted here, but it's the first thing you see on the sfr site.) That one was a bit severe-feeling for me to put it in my own space, even though I like the design idea. Digging around the rest of their designs I found this (picture below) more extensive bookshelf called 'long legs.' The amazing thing to me about this design is that the space looks so open for having such a huge piece of furniture in it.

It's a cool modern piece but it reminds me of some of the intricate Asian wood patterns ( -> ) where the lines are all very clean (well spaced, horizontal & vertical only), but they can start and stop unexpectedly.

[edited for picture clarity - Fri afternoon]

doing justice

I keep a loose eye on a listserv called IRTRAD-L. It devolves into scrappiness every so often like too many listservs. I ignore those bits as best I can and keep my eyes open for (very subjective) interesting discussions and news of new good music/musicians I should find. I have probably made 3 posts in the many years I've been subscribed. This morning I posted #4 to the list in response to a question about songs and singing in languages other than your own. Given what I've been up to for the last 7 years I could hardly keep quiet...

Original question to the list:

All,
Can a singers do justice to a song in a language that they are not fully fluent in (Irish) - and can a listener who does not understand that language (Irish) appreciate that song as anything other than a 'nice sound' - presuming, of course, that it has been sung skillfully enough?
Best,
Jim

My reply:

Good heavens I hope so. Anecdotal evidence in favor:

I grew up in the States and started learning Irish a decade ago. Fully fluent is pushing it but I have good conversational ability. I sing with a small group (just 3 of us). We do songs in Irish, Scottish, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton. For years we've sung Griogal Cridh' - mostly to American audiences who have no knowledge of Scottish. We sang a set including that song at a small intimate dinner a few years back where we weren't introducing the songs at all. Later in the evening a woman came to talk to us asking to tell her about "that song." With a bit of singing partial lines we realized she meant Griogal. She had no Scottish (or Irish, etc) and had never heard it before but understood easily that it was a strong lament, and it had reduced her to tears.

I like to think we do justice to that song and many others, and I know that, while it's a different experience than listening to a song in your own language, people can have a deeper experience than thinking they've heard a "nice sound."

Music is it's own language and any song sung is really in two languages - the language of the music and that of the words. None of us would argue that instrumental pieces can draw out emotion, but I think there is an extra element when lyrics are sung. The human voice can convey quite a lot, even if it isn't a Babel fish.

Respectfully,

Elizabeth

I'm fearful of the responses devolving into a tradition/purist snipe-fest, but if they don't it could come to be an interesting set of posts to have around - hopefully good for all of us who didn't grow up in the Gaeltacht.

Dark Nights

It's into full swing now for Kanopy tech week (well, that would be tech night, dress night, opening night through 5 shows), so my posts will probably be a bit more sporadic even than usual. Or maybe there will be lots of them but they'll all be short and odd. You'll just have to keep an eye on your RSS feed to find out!

The show is called Dark Nights. Appropriate for the show and the time we get out of the theater at night. Actually pretty good for the time get into the theater at night! It's all rock music played on cellos but don't be afraid if you don't like old heavy metal - the melodies are beautiful and cellos really bring them out.

This morning was a great cool theater ghosts experience: I got to the theater a little before 10. We knew it would be open and had planned a short class/show tweaking session. The room was empty with low lights on when I came in. No sign of anyone. No worries, I was a bit early (which in Kanopy terms means I didn't sleep in nearly long enough). I came into this lovely peaceful room - beautiful wood and a big empty stage. And just as I set my bag down on the floor I hear just a few notes, very quiet. I realize what I'm hearing is the start of a piece from the second part of the show (windows media file from Amazon). But who started it? Where did it come from? Everything was dark in the control rooms, so I just hung out with the ghosts for about half an hour. Very cool way to start a day.

Off to pack up a bag full of little portable snacks... hot spicy V8 anyone?