I’ve had very little time to keep up this site, lately. Family does that, it seems. But at least I can throw out some links, here and there.
This is a song I love, from my favorite animated film, Spirited Away. The writer and singer is Yumi Kimura.
Next time someone asks me what kind of music I like, I think I shall reply, “Swedish Big-Band Rap”. It’s a more interesting answer than, “lots of stuff”.
Picking up The Lord of the Rings, or looking up something about it online, is dangerous; I frequently get nothing done the rest of the day. However many times one reads it, however, some things some things remain unclear. It’s very hard to tell how the songs are supposed to go, for instance.
It’s remarkable what you can learn from YouTube, however. Here, the Professor himself gives a stirring reading of the chant of the Ents as they go to make war on Isengard. It’s much better than anything I’d imagined reading it, and what had seemed one of the least remarkable poems in the book is now one of my favorites.
We went to the opera (well, technically, the singspiel) Friday night; on Hermann Hesse’s strong recommendation, we saw The Magic Flute.
This was a first for both Felabi and me. I’ve been to various symphonic performances, and have listened to enough “classical” music to have a strong, semi-educated sense of what I like. I like Mozart. I like The Magic Flute, too, having listened to various recordings… but unlike listening to a symphony on headphones, merely listening to recordings of opera seems a bit like reading a play; there’s a lot of important stuff missing. So, I paid too much money for the good seats, and dragged my beloved down to the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh to torture her with culture.
I can’t say the show lived up to my expectations, though I didn’t think it was bad, either. The strengths of the performance didn’t quite match the strengths of the opera itself… things just went their own way, and the result was odd, and less than it could have been.
For instance, the story begins with Tamino, the hero, in desperate flight from a monstrous serpent; Read more »
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