Art Nouveau Ho

It was a bleary-eyed afternoon, the Monday after the weekend before, and I was sharing a shopping mall food court table with moonwolf and crew when the question came up: "So how was your DragonCon?"

Exhausted smiles flickered around the table like gaslamps. We'd all had rampant good times, but for me, this was truly a weekend of unexpected gifts.

The short version: Many, many thanks to lost_in_avebury and brute_force for an object of beauty, puppetmaker40 and family for a lovely party, laughingmagpie and the crew of HM Airship Vertigo for letting me play, badmagic for the banter, moonwolf for being a Lady of Misrule, and nanashi_jones purely for being your fine self. And, of course, to speedlime for not killing your roommate. Kudos!

( The long version is below. GEEK ALERT )

I'm back in DC, having spent last weekend in Atlanta at DragonCon.

I still feel vestiges of Geek Shame saying that. But recently in London, a moment with two friends-of-a-friend altered my thinking on that matter. These were two New Yorkers, you know, Upper West Side types who think wearing a beaded top makes them bohemian? In the course of conversation I mentioned that I'd been to a medieval reenactment earlier in the summer, and I explained what that was...

"Oh. We thought it was like that thing they have in Sterling, you know, that fair..."
"Eeyuch! We wouldn't be caught dead there!"
"You couldn't pay us enough to go!"
"We've never been, of course. But we've heard about it."

Suddenly, it came to me: I loathe these women and all they stand for. Granted, Renaissance Fairs are nerd-intensive, but given the choice between nerds in tights and sneering trend-mavens, I will take the nerds every time. (Besides, what were these women doing if not cosplaying Sex and the City ?)

Then I went to Glyndebourne to see Love And Other Demons, the new opera by Peter Eötvös [pronounced "Erdversh."]
The opera was fascinating and the friend who'd invited me was lovely-- but also in the party was one of those loud public-school hoorah types who felt he had to sneer mordantly at everything, including at the mezzo when she was injured by part of the moving set ("Bloody stupid woman.") It was at that point that I let him know he was being a dick. The train journey back was... interesting.

So I've had it with sneerers and scoffers. They're dry-rot to anyone trying to create anything or do anything unusual. And I am done with shame. If you'd care to join me, I'll be hauling the Geek Flag up the pole and handing out free drinks to everyone who isn't boring. Cheers!

Truly, we live in an age that begets monsters.

Exhibit A: The Carrot Of Omen. This little beastie was in a bunch I picked up from my local farmer's market. I brought it to velvetdahlia's birthday party because I knew that none would be more able than she to say what exactly this carrot forebodes. (Also because she is one of the few people to whom you can say "Happy birthday! I brought you a mutant vegetable.") She is still, I believe, trying to divine its meaning through the art of REALALEOMANCY.

Exhibit B: In one of her more deranged experiments, esdi_leanne has created a giant squid. Not content with this unnatural exploit, she has SHARED HER TECHNIQUE with the scientific community at large, so that these results may be duplicated in any research facility. I need hardly remind you of what might happen if this information fell into the wrong tentacles.

Exhibit C: It should therefore come as no surprise that H. P. Lovecraft has taken to writing about chocolate.

[Theremin sound effects]
Tune in next week, gentle readers. And remember, be vigilant!

Only a few days left until the activation of the Large Hadron Collider.

According to the BBC, it will probably not destroy the Earth. It will, however, inspire scientists to rap. [Youtube]

Other unforeseen side effects may include xkcd comics and predictable typographical errors. [probably NSFW, that last.]

Mostly pilfered from MetaFilter

Well, my August job has disappeared (the double bill of a revived Gianni Schicchi and Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges.) The conductor has sadly been ill and in hospital, so they've had to postpone. A shame-- I was looking forward to being a china cup and a dragonfly...

Last night, however, I did collect a few shiny beer tokens for singing Haydn's Nelson Mass in the Palace of Westminster. I thought of monochrome_girl amid the Pugin splendour. We entered, though, via Westminster Hall, which is splendour of another sort: stark and solemn (except for the gloriously trippy medieval wooden angels looking down from the eaves). I almost lost the rest of the choir because I stopped to read the plaques in the floor that said things like "In this place Sir Thomas More was condemned to death."

In my search for links on the Houses of Parliament, I was intrigued to read that Big Ben [the low-pitched bell that strikes the hour in the Parliament clock tower, for non-UKites] gets its weirdly out-of-tune sound from the fact that it cracked in 1879. Normally when that happens, the bell goes back to the foundry to be recast, but with Big Ben they just patched it up and drilled a couple of holes to stop the crack from spreading-- which is why its tone, originally a low F, sounds about a quarter-tone down. To my ear, the pitch actually appears to bend slightly downwards as the stroke resonates-- but justpolina, with her perfect pitch, can probably describe it more accurately.

(I've just had lunch with my soprano friend Rosie, who already knew about the crack in Big Ben. Maybe it's one of those things you have to be British to know.)
( The bells! The bells! )

The one thing I arrived in Florence hoping to see was the Museo della Storia di Scienza, where they have Galileo’s telescope as well as a host of other scientific devices. I found it mostly closed for renovations, but I did see not one but two telescopes: a pretty embossed-leather affair that Galileo presented to Grand Duke Cosimo II, and a plain one made of wood and paper that the astronomer kept for personal use.

Yesterday I went to the Pitti Palace, and it turns out that most of the good stuff from the Science Museum is actually on display there as part of an exhibition on the Medici family’s relationship to science.
( Science, costumes, opera, BUTTONS )

While visiting the Mothninja household, I’d never really done the tourist things: there were streets to be strolled, cafés to be hung out in, translation to be done, dogs (crucially) to be walked. But this trip, I actually got my shit together and sorted out tickets for the Uffizi.
( Click here for lustful monks, filthy angels, Virgins and Venuses )
Fun fact about Botticelli's Venus and Mars, which is in London in the National Gallery: Its unusual shape, shallow and wide, has led some people to think it may have been intended for the lid of a dower chest or the back of a bench. That’s right, the back of a bench. A Botticelli masterpiece... on a bench. Those Italian Renaissance guys had it good.

I’ve been in Florence, Italy for the past few days, and it’s been lovely.

I have a sort of history with this city: I first came here with mothninja some years ago, on one of those breakup/pet death/everything-sucks-so-let’s-go-to-Italy sort of excursions. We returned a time or two, and she decided she’d like to live here. Fast-forward a few years and I’m visiting mothninja, her husband and three dogs in their lovely flat on the laid-back side of the Arno. She (and husband and dogs) have since moved back to London, which is lovely, but left me without a ready-made excuse to come here until my mother phoned up one day to say she was going to spend a week in a villa with some friends, and would I like to join her for a few days in Florence beforehand?

So I flew to Pisa, and on the way to Florence we stopped off at Vinci to see the Leonardo Museum. It’s in the village’s castle, which they’ve filled with models of the machines he designed. Leonardo liked his machines versatile: the castle is full of machines that press olive oil and wine at the same time, or hoist a burden at three different speeds, or shred your enemies while making a cup of tea. (I assume that’s what the steam-powered cannon was for.) Speaking of cannon, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES must orkamedies be informed of this, so don't let him see it, OK?

As well as steam, there were machines powered by horses, donkeys, wind, running water, -- but Leonardo’s preferred power source seemed to be the standard Renaissance wattage of a peasant turning a crank. I saw more gears, cogwheels and lyrically elaborate frameworks that afternoon than a steampunk -type would know what to do with. I know many of you reading this are in the steampunk community, but I have to say, I think peasantturningacrankpunk wins this round.

On Sunday night in the Moritzbastei, orkamedies told us a quote he'd read years ago in Dragon magazine:

"You don't stop playing games because you get old," he said. "It's the other way round."

Being in the throes of Geek Shame at that moment, I then mocked him for having read Dragon. I regret doing that. It was mean, and it missed the point: Truth is truth, wherever you find it.

The Ork, astute beast that he is, went on to point out that growing older just means that the games you play get bigger and better. Towering in his spiky red lacquered fetish armour, he grinned toothily at a masked, frock-coated rosenkavalier: "We're no longer doing this with dice and bits o' paper, are we?"

************
If I have one major piece of undeserved good fortune in life, it's that I seem to end up with the finest people in the Universe as friends. At the moment, my twisted heart is particularly with the Leipzig companions I've just bid farewell to: orkamedies, esdi_leanne, fairie_ring, thepussykat, littlecyberalex, and rosenkavalier. Thank you all.

The toast, ladies and gents, is "Black clothes, black powder, black beer, black humour." Prosit!

You've probably already seen the newly-discovered portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

One of the most important pieces of evidence for the painting being of Mozart was this letter of his to Baroness von Waldstadten from Vienna, 28 September 1782:
(Mersmann/Bozman translation: London, 1928)

"...That beautiful red coat which took my fancy so vastly, pray, pray let me know where it is to be had, and at what price—for that I have quite forgotten, having been unable to take in anything at the time but its splendor! Indeed such a coat I must have—one which will really do justice to certain buttons with which my fancy has long gone pregnant! I saw them once, when I was choosing buttons for a suit, in the Kohlmarkt at Brandau's button-shop, opposite the Milano. They are made of mother-of-pearl, with some sort of white stones around the edge and a fine yellow stone set in the centre of each. I should like to have all my things of good quality, workmanship, and appearance! How is it, I wonder, that those who have not the means would be prepared to spend any amount on such articles, while those who have the means— do not do so!..."

The scholarly conclusion: Mozart shopped like a girl. Or a Goth. I'd hazard a guess that after reading that, a good few people on my Friends list will be feeling a sudden kinship for the man.

I like his metaphor about the buttons impregnating his fancy. In a later letter Mozart thanked the Baroness "for having immediately taken so much trouble over the beautiful coat." She was a patroness of his, so she probably helped him purchase both the coat and the much-coveted buttons. A button which seems to match his precise description, with part of a second, can be seen on the far lapel of the coat in the new portrait.

Next time I'm in Vienna, I think I'll take time to visit Mozart's memorial (the exact location of his grave is, of course, unknown) and leave him a suitably fabulous button.