Flutterings

Ah, YouTube, you siren!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhXsJjVdj1E
Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segel singing part of "The Confrontation" scene from Les Miserable while on a talk show. What makes this awesome is that even though it's performed as a joke, the two guys are so into it it is intense. *swoon*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6ndRLLGQJc
UK concert version of "The Confrontation" with Chinese subtitles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm5QhtBMnBg
US tour version of "The Confrontation"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MbsyOC8u6g
"Stars" in German. Christian Muller as Javert. (And because I'm a dork, I immediately thought, "Oooh, if I were playing a Regulus...")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIkbcXWoUBA
"Javert's Suicide" in German.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPj6wl5bf6A
Japanese anniversary concert version of "Do You Hear the People Sing?"

Was up too late and up too early (in relation to the too-lateness, that is), and there was a rejection for two poems in my in-box when I opened it. And I don’t have enough left in the mental tank to get any new submissions out the door before midnight.

On the other hand, I’m not sick yet, my beta-reader remains awesome, and there are other good things as well:

Receiving my copy and payment for On Our Way to Battle. (Thanks, samhenderson!)

The Library of Congress online card catalog and Amazon's look-inside-the-book feature. Vetting citations has never been easier...

The NYT’s article on Robert Fagles and his new translation of the Aeneid, and also that I noticed it because it happened to be #2 on the most-emailed list.

Songs from the Labyrinth is still delighting me during my commute and coffee breaks. It’s been reminding me both that Dowland is a hell of a songwriter and that Sting has that x-factor that separates okay musicians from those who have the knack of knowing when and how to bite off a phrase just so or stretchhh it out a second longer (I’m captivated by how he sings the word "eyes" two different ways in "Clear or cloudy" -- a very small detail, but it makes the performance for me.)

I don’t happen to possess that x-factor when it comes to music or calligraphy – I’m okay at them on my good days, but I’m never going to be great at either. And it’s not nearly present enough during most of my efforts at writing, either -- but I have been gifted with a measure of it there, and when it does kick in, oh is that a good feeling. When instinct and training and practice manage to intersect such that I know I’ve locked the right words into the right order to make the reader laugh or gasp or suck in their breath in recognition – in those moments, I am myself most alive.

The sooner I get through my current deadlines, the sooner I can get back to leaving saucers out for the prowling half-truths and stinging rhythms (pace Viereck). Onwards, then.

* In spite of miscellaneous mistakes, the chamber choir sounded good at this morning's services. (Enough that someone exclaimed "Wow!" right as our opening anthem ended. It feels wonderful to connect to a listener to that degree.)

* Today was the first day of this year's Religious Education classes. The minister and RE director read a charge to the teachers (all volunteers) themed around Noah's ark that included the line, "Remember: the ark was built by amateurs, the Titanic by professionals."

* Went fly-fishing yesterday at Newsom's Mill with four guys from church. The weather was perfect for wading around in the Harpeth River -- which was good, because the fishing was best where the water was up to my bra. It's not going to become a new hobby (too much driving and gear involved), but damn, casting is cool.

* Dinner was shrimp boil, with homemade key lime pie for dessert.

* Tired and frustrated and feeling like a turtle, but also hopeful and jazzed about there being so many things to make/do better.

Nuisances:
* mosquito bites
* sudden attack of badly missing my cat
* 18 hours of work to blast through in the next 24
* the ever-increasing heap of mending and ironing
* singing and writing chops not where they need to be

Joys:
* Slew of ideas for new poems; improving a story
* Funny, mega-huggable dog
* Sight-singing Salomone Rossi's settings of Psalm 80 and Psalm 128
* Good coffee
* Dan Russell's cover of Mark Heard's "I Just Wanna Get Warm"

Sources, the Unitarian Universalist cantata my church premiered last month, is now available via the audio page at Jason Shelton's website. It's a great piece, featuring different musical styles and themes. (FWIW, my favorite movements are the first and the fifth.)

My friend Arnie Reed took pictures that morning, during the early service. I'm the front-row alto wearing a green stole.
( Music Sunday, June 2006 )

"When you're doing it you're just trying to do the best you can," Mr. Preston said in 2001. "You don't know if you're doing something important, and whether it will make history has yet to be seen. Just the fact of being able to do it, and striving to do the best you can, was the accomplishment."

- from Jon Pareles's obituary of Billy Preston in today's New York Times. Preston worked as both a solo and session keyboard player, including with the Beatles.

On a related note, Nashville's Musicians Hall of Fame opens this Friday. I can't find Will Ayers's Rage writeup online, but what caught my attention in it is that the new Hall intends to lift up the work of session musicians as well as featured performers. This makes me seriously happy.


The title of this post is from Steve Winwood's "Still in the Game"

First Annual Nashville Interfaith Music Festival
Sunday, March 5, 3 p.m. - The Downtown Presbyterian Church

Color me startled: my copy of Word doesn't recognize "universalism" (although it suggests "Universalism" when prompted), but it does have "Schwarzenegger." Oy.

If my software makes little sense, however, my brain makes even less. I seem to be afflicted with both a bout of the stupids and a peculiar cloudburst of nostalgia, the latter triggered primarily by two pieces of music. The first is Richard Shindell's A Summer Wind, A Cotton Dress, which shot right up next to Dar Williams's "Iowa" and Peter Gabriel's "Secret World" the instant I played it on my car stereo, it being very much a song of someone who knows both of safety and burning, and there being a wild sweetness in the arrangement that has me playing it over and over again, sometimes singing along with the melody and sometimes piecing in bits of harmony, and missing moments that were never mine to miss...

...and the second is "Sweetly Sings the Donkey." I completely do not understand my reaction to this one. Yes, I sang it when I was a kid, and yes, it's a catchy tune, but it was never a favorite, and I don't have any specific memories attached to it, good or bad -- I can't even remember which grade it would have been -- so why did I melt into a puddle of goo upon seeing a songbook at the library today with that very title? All of a sudden I'm back to being nine years old, singing round after round with imaginary friends...

*shakes head*

And you? Which songs (or other sense-triggers) are distracting you these days?