09.30.08
Posted in Musicalia Miscellanea at 8:39 pm by Miracle ♪♫
There is only one predominant question on my mind right now: Why haven’t I heard of this man before?! Gavin Bryars is deep and his music is penetrating. (Yes. Gavin Bryars. Why, who did you think it was? hehe =P)When a Multiply contact shared Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, I was seized by such an abysmal emotion that I myself could not comprehend.Thus began my cyber quest for this intense composer.So far, I have not come across anything about his religion, but I can only surmise that he is a Christian.
First stop, ever-faithful Wikipedia. Richard Gavin Bryars was born on January 16, 1943 and is an English composer and contra bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism, but as Michael Ondaatje (author of The English Patient) observed, “The music of Gavin Bryars falls under no category. It is mongrel, full of sensuality and wit and is deeply moving. He allows you to witness new wonders in the sounds around you by approaching them from a completely new angle…with a third ear maybe.”
I am currently listening to his Cello Concerto Farewell to Philosophy on Imeem and it is haunting.Naturally, the title aroused my curiosity and according to Gavin Bryars, “The subtitle to the work, for example, combines the subtitles of two idiosyncratic Haydn symphonies and I allude to them in different ways but chiefly through orchestration: for The Philosopher (surprise, surprise) by including a section in the concerto where the orchestration resembles that of the symphony’s first movement (pairs of English and French horns, muted violins and unmuted lower strings); for The Farewell, by the progressive reduction in the orchestration towards the end. Indeed, apart from the orchestral tutti in the last few bars, the last pages of the score are virtually for string quartet. The subtitle also refers to my own background as a philosophy graduate…”(Further surprise. Another one of them without my prior knowledge.)
As if those two compositions aren’t enough to overwhelm me, his discography includes, Nothing like the Sun - 8 Shakespeare sonnets for soprano, tenor, speaking voice, 8 instruments, North Shore for viola and piano, andThree Elegies for Nine Clarinets, The Creation Hymn, And So Ended Kant’s Travelling in This World for unaccompanied voices, Incipit Vita Nova for solo alto, violin, viola, and cello, among other interesting titles that I am hankering to listen to.
It’s sad how no one speaks much of him.His music is worth contemplating over and absolutely worth experiencing.
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09.29.08
Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 3:58 pm by Miracle ♪♫
As if I am not already immensely intrigued about Greece and enamored to many things Hellenic, a friend lends me a copy of Corelli’s Mandolin. [He is letting me keep the book until he builds his dream house and engineers his dream shelf. So yes, this book will practically be mine for circa two decades. *wide teasing grin* ]
Corelli’s Mandolin is incredibly lyrical, so musical that one imagines a fermata instead of a period after its closing measure. I am recurrently hearing the rapid arpeggios and tremolos, the gentle lapping of Aeschylus’ “innumerable smiles of the waves” on Greece’s bluish rocks, operatic echoes, Antonio Corelli’s mandolin, and Pelagia’s beating heart which is unbelievably very much like mine.This narrative presented an exquisite balance of love, loss, life, death, loyalty, innocence, sagacity, culture, medicine, history, literature, art, music, philosophy, and an ample amount of the most clever humour.The movie was a far, far cry.Despite its uniqueness as a novel, one cannot deny the influence of Gabriel García Márquez, and the author used this impression in such a beautiful way. Louis de Bernières should not be among those wordsmiths that you would stash away to your least favourite shelf.This book is a literary treat for the heart.
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09.28.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:34 am by Miracle ♪♫
While some people dream in colour, I dream in scents and am oddly conscious of my olfactory sense while awake. My memory brings me back to a time when my childhood best friend, Vinz, came home to Dipolog from his first semester of college in Cebu. Uninformed that he would visit us at that hour; I was out when he came over to the house, so he and Dandi had to wait for me. When they heard me coming, Vinz hid behind a wall. (How childish we were! Haha) At the door’s entrance, I breathed the air and averred without a hint of hesitation, “Vinz is here!” The incident should not imply that my friend bears such a powerful scent, because he does not, and I can maybe even take a stab at being poetic about it, but I won’t. The episode simply confirmed my freakish sense of smell.
Years later, I would be caged at the back of our “mini-pooper” while a certain gentleman along with Franz and my family members sat in the anterior rows. I happened to be at nose-level with this man’s nape. He donned no perfume or cologne but he had the fragrance of a book’s pages! Almost like that hardbound, Harvard Classics’ early 1900s publication of Virgil’s Aeneid perched imperiously on my shelf. A book that I inhale by stealth but of which I feel ineligible to touch. Months later, and miles away from where that event took place, I recognized the same man’s momentarily abandoned school uniform because of the same scent. So you see why I had to react when the new perfume, In the Library, came out on the market.
I can rummage through more of my peculiar nosy histories, not to mention refusing to send a blouse and shirt to the laundry for the sake of possessing and retaining meaningful scents. But it is 2:00 a.m. and I smell the dampness of dawn already. I should go to bed now and dream… in heavenly aromas, I hope.
Knowing the people you love by their scent is a unique gift…but you have to guarantee that you should not wish to erase any of them from your memory. Otherwise, it would be all the more impossible.
“Nothing is more memorable than a smell,” commenced Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses, and it continues by saying that “we see when there is light enough, taste only when we put things into our mouths, touch only when we make contact with someone or something, hear only sounds that are loud enough, but we smell always with every breath. Cover your eyes and you will stop seeing, cover your ears and you will stop hearing, but if you cover your nose and try to stop smelling, you will die.”
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09.23.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:56 pm by Miracle ♪♫
Chilly gales that puffed nostalgia and a fulmination of meridian sun left her in a lustrous stupefaction. Even in the dual-seasoned climate, the rock itself respired autumnal whispers and the grains of sand breathed their silent sighs through contagion. On that rock, at that exact point of time, autumn must have begun, for she was confounded not only by the might of nature, but by the unbearable burden of memory.
He [who embodied the sum of her past, present, and future hopes] taught her to be solitary more than one ever thought possible, and through that, bestowed upon her strength and profundity. “She looks like a poem,” someone once spake of her, and yet she would never be more beautiful than when she was alone on that rock where summer and autumn kissed – one season greeting the other, one season bidding farewell.
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09.19.08
Posted in 2008 Potpourri at 6:47 am by Miracle ♪♫
and unwrapping it for sentimental purposes while listening to Sting’s “Ne me quitte pas” (insert sizzle sound effect here) and Billy Joel’s And So It Goes. (C’mon, we eat healthy classical music for meals. It’s time for some deviant sweets.)
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Ne me quitte pas and And So It Goes: Two conflicting lyrics competing on my playlist for the past few days, one begging you to stay, the other tolerating you to have this heart to break.
The latter song wins - as usual.
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Dandi and I played music for a man suffering through the worst stages of cancer. Great is Thy Faithfulness was the fist piece and it was in that instant – not in Rachmaninov’s haunting and sonorous melodies – that despite my inferiorities as a musician I felt the power of music. For what is the main purpose of music? Is it not to glorify God and minister to other people? Would the man have been that touched if I played Ravel’s Toccata? I doubt it. Do not get me wrong, I love Ravel’s Toccata, but the moment simply reminded me that it’s time I reconsidered the real purpose of music once more.
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I have a new bookshelf made of glass and iron (Yahoo! Termite-free!) and there are 101 books coming from book city that includes Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and other titles and authors that Franz will drool over! *somersaults*
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A younger lady was asking me about the best thing I learned from being in love. Little did she know that my heart was pricked that day and her question led me to focus on the best effects rather than the painful aspects of *cough* falling in love. Somewhere in this blog I have written that my experiences though immensely agonizing are not amputations but growths – because I choose it to be that way. Fortunately for me, I have only loved the most wonderful people and what I gained from them was the good influence they had on me in literature, laughter, music, simple or deep philosophies in life… and using their influences with or without them, and the innocent and sincere act of loving are the best things there are to it.
Later that day, I chanced on a quote from a certain blog stating that we do not fall in love, but instead, we rise in love. As much as other girls would say to lovers past with satisfaction “I never really loved you anyway” out of scorn, I now prefer uttering, “I never fell in love you…
but I rose in love with you.”
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Billy Joel interrupts…
…I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretence
And still I feel I said too much…
So I would choose to be with you
That’s if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break
And so it goes, and so it goes…
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09.12.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:39 am by Miracle ♪♫
Le Matin
Adagio – Allegro
On that day, I will wake up beside you and follow the nascent sunlight’s path as it kisses the highlights of your face as a master’s brush adding the final touches on a portrait – and then suddenly, completeness! The image is immortalized.
Adagio – Andante – Adagio
Gently, I will lay still and gaze with admiring eyes at the masterpiece set before me, hoping that nothing interrupts the secret bliss of the moment, not even your awakening.For I have yet to creep silently out of bed and prepare your espresso and breakfast, and move carefully back under the covers to wake you up myself when that is all done. The tasks will not be accomplished immediately however.I shall extend my gazing for as long as I can.
Menuet
When at last I remove my eyes from you, I will be in a daze. I shall then waltz to the kitchen, run my fingers through my hair, ignore a self-check on the looking glass, and be convinced that nothing is more prettifying than the contented and enchanted smile I’m wearing.I will hum a Bach melody slightly out of tune while the espresso maker hisses happily and the fire on the kitchen stove dances merrily.
Allegro
Then shall you wake up to the winsome aroma of coffee and griddlecakes, and the pleasant rhythm and sounds from the kitchen, but you do not open your eyes and you pretend to be asleep because you wait for me to come to you.But I recognize you when you are truly asleep, and yet I do not say it, otherwise you will know of my secret bliss, and I will crawl back under the blanket and whisper your name, plant a kiss where the sunlight did, and watch the masterpiece smile back at me, and you will open your eyes to a beautiful day.
What a beautiful day, when I wake up to you.
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09.07.08
Posted in 2008 Potpourri at 9:56 am by Miracle ♪♫
Say goodbye to unsophisticated blogging Mira, Cle, Meewa! Friendster has upgraded their blog features and we can now post videos, music, accommodate comments from non-Friendster users, etc… but oh, how I loved the old lay out! The one where people visited to pay attention to your actual entry and not the fancy themes and widgets, the one where you did not care about non-Friendster user’s comments because your blogging does not feed on other’s comments anyway… but alas! Friendster has moved on. http://glizzando.blogs.friendster.com/ still exists but I can no longer edit or add entries there. I am only thankful that they did not make it inaccessible so that I may still visit it once in a while for sentimental reasons. Clicking on my Friendster page’s “View Blog” will lead you to the new http://glizzando.blog.friendster.com/ - a consonant short, or to be exact, an “s” short of the original address. I am still groping my way into the unfamiliar and complicated (for me at least) set up, so to those who bother to read my trivial collection of thoughts, and to those who linked me, or those who belong to my “Band of Bloggers,” please be informed. Please bear with me if you cannot find the links to your pages yet. I’m still lost. If you wish to be redirected to the new blog, you may also want to edit my address from your blogrolls - that is if my blog happens to be in your blogrolls.
I will try to move on, too. Huhuhu… I still want a plain black background with my virtual bookshelf on the side!!!
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09.01.08
Posted in 2008 Potpourri at 11:18 pm by Miracle ♪♫
“I collect my thoughts,” I answered.
Despite the many things I wanted to write about in August, last month’s blog calendar has been uneventful. After an in-depth blognosis of myself, I worried about becoming a trifle too blogmental and feared the thought of becoming a bloggadocio… but oh how I missed blogging! Therefore, as a new month begins, I cannot help but note a few things about the month that came before.
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On the opening day of the Olympics an unbelievable number of contacts wrote about the date 08/08/08 or used it as a title for their posts. It was entertaining to observe who would do it next. However, that is not the segment of Olympic history which occupied my thoughts. I was amazed to read of a
certain period in the earlier part of the century where athletes were also
required to perform art during the Olympics. Medals were also bestowed for feats in architecture, painting, sculpting, literature, and music. Wow, talk about merged physical and intellectual abilities! Perhaps the idea of me crushing on an athlete would not have been so far-fetched then. [I have never been attracted to muscled men, but a brainy muscled man is a different story. (Kidding!) =P]
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The Ambibo experience. Ambibo is a website founded
by Mr. Armand Frasco for the purpose of bridging resident and overseas
Zanorteans (people of Zamboanga del Norte). When Mr. Frasco proposed the idea of my participation, I thought that they could always find better “models”. It is quite ironic that I, whose face usually prefers to be cropped out or partly concealed in artistic photos, should be featured in Ambibo’s “Faces”. Brand me autistic or insecure, but it is a fact that I often avoid eye-contact with the camera’s lens in my solo photos. Being admittedly un-photogenic with my heavy and imbalanced brows which I forbade anyone to “fix” during the photo shoot, I admit I was not being an easy subject. “No foundation, no eye-liner, and no make-up if possible,” I begged – and it was not for the reason that I believed I was already picture-perfect that I did not need any of those; it is because I always wish to look as natural as possible. This project which I honestly described as “no biggie” initially, turned out to be a significant event when I realized it was more than just posing for the camera. If my few days of provincial fame could promote the benefits of home-schooling and encourage young people of our province to engage in music and art instead of other coarser delights of the senses, then perhaps I’ve done a small contribution to our youth.
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My little brother has been sleeping in my room during weeknights and being the
semi-spinster that I am, it is a little awkward to wake up in the middle of the
night to find little arms embracing me, or a little head snuggling under my
armpit, or wake up to those two beautiful pair of eyes and be reminded that
they belong to the most brilliant child I’ve ever known… and that soon he will
grow up to be a man and another woman will wake up to the same pair of eyes… so I will hold on to this while I can. It might be awkward at times, but it is the sweetest thing.
Thus ends a
simple collection of thoughts. After all, isn’t that what writing is all about? A Multiply contact recently marked how John Locke called his four-volume work, “an essay”. Just as life on earth is a collection of thoughts, is it not a mere essay in the grander scale of eternal life?
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