pallas_athena: (Default)
2024-01-28 10:52 pm
Entry tags:

On supertitle translation

Supertitle translation for opera is one of the things I do, and since I've just finished another marathon job (Wagner's Siegfried) I figured I would write about the process a bit. Following these general principles has resulted in supertitles which have been mentioned positively in reviews, as well as compliments from audience members.

For many in the audience, the supertitle is their first point of contact with dialogue, character and story. So your supertitle must:

- convey the emotion of the moment

- convey the 'voice' of the character who is speaking

while also:

- being concise (nothing too wordy-- you want the audience to spend more time watching the singers than reading the titles)

- not getting in the way of the action (nothing too prosaic or too purple)

AND it has to fit on two lines at the font size being used.

Lineation is important: verse dramatists and comics letterers know this. The principle is "one thought, one line." Or musically, if practicable, "one phrase, one line."

Ideally, line breaks should come at an intuitive point in the structure of the music or the sentence. Your audience will read at various speeds, but reading will be quicker and comprehension more intuitive if you follow this rule.

For example: in this last job I was given a set of someone else's titles from 2014 to work from. I ended up making alterations to almost every single slide, many of which involved lineation.

For example, I was given:

Out of the bush came a bear, who
listened to my tune


which I edited to

Out of the brush came a bear
who heard me playing


Just a small change, but it helps the title make intuitive sense when read.

Similarly, if the character is expressing one thought broken up into two short phrases separated by a breath or a rest, the supertitle should also break the thought into two lines.

Thus, Mime's first line could be written as:

Utter torment! Toil without end!


But the singer sings, and the audience hears, two distinct phrases. So the title should be on two lines:

Utter torment!
Toil without end!


Finally, a word about timing. First of all: the titles need to appear at a speed at which they can be easily read. You can get away with slightly faster changes by using less text per slide, but that's still risky: ideally you want titles that someone who reads more slowly can keep up with. I supertitled a Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 2019; the finales of Acts I and II involve large numbers of people all singing different text at high speed. At such times, all you can do is provide a summary, picking the bits of text most important to the scene and the story, and hoping for the best.

There are also certain moments when a change of thought requires a new slide, even if the line could all fit on one. That way, the audience discover the new thought at the same time as the character. In Act II of Meistersinger, when Pogner is wondering whether to go visit Sachs, he says:

Shall I? But what for?
...Better not


It wasn't until the dress rehearsal that I realised "Better not" needed its own slide, which gave a little more feeling to the moment when Pogner realises he's become distanced from his old friend Sachs.

Similarly, in comedy, if there's a joke being told, your slide should line up with the punchline so the audience discovers it as the singer says it. Ideally that title should be short and snappy, for ease of reading and comic impact.

If the original is funny, so should the title be-- but the singer should get the laugh.

Supertitle translation does call for your writerly skill, and will test your ability as a dramatist-- but your writing must always support the story and artists onstage. Beware of the temptation to impress with your cleverness or poetic flair: it's the director's production, not yours.

I write this as someone who's been supertitling for nearly twenty years. It's always someone's first time seeing the opera, and your titles can be pivotal to that person's engagement with the story. That's our greatest reward.
pallas_athena: (Default)
2023-12-21 08:50 pm

Poem of the day

Winter Solstice, Camelot Station

by John M. Ford, 1988


Camelot is served
By a sixteen-track stub terminal done in High Gothick Style,
The tracks covered by a single great barrel-vaulted glass roof framed upon iron,
At once looking back to the Romans and ahead to the Brunels.
Beneath its rotunda, just to the left of the ticket windows,
Is a mosaic floor depicting the Round Table
(Where all knights, regardless of their station of origin
Or class of accommodation, are equal),
And around it murals of knightly deeds in action
(Slaying dragons, righting wrongs, rescuing maidens tied to the tracks).
It is the only terminal, other than Gare d'Avalon in Paris,
To be hung with original tapestries,
And its lavatories rival those at the Great Gate of Kiev Central.
During a peak season such as this, some eighty trains a day pass through,
Five times the frequency at the old Londinium Terminus,
Ten times the number the Druid towermen knew.
(The Official Court Christmas Card this year displays
A crisp black-and-white Charles Clegg photograph from the King's own collection,
Showing a woad-blued hogger at the throttle of "Old XCVII,"
The Fast Mail overnight to Eboracum. Those were the days.)

The first of a line of wagons have arrived,
Spilling footmen and pages in Court livery,
And old thick Kay, stepping down from his Range Rover,
Tricked out in a bush coat from Swaine, Adeney, Brigg,
Leaning on his shooting stick as he marshalls his company,
Instructing the youngest how to behave in the station,
To help mature women that they may encounter,
Report pickpockets, gather up litter,
And of course no true Knight of the Table Round (even in training)
Would do a station porter out of Christmas tips.
He checks his list of arrival times, then his watch
(A moon-phase Breguet, gift from Merlin):
The seneschal is a practical man, who knows trains do run late,
And a stolid one, who sees no reason to be glad about it.
He dispatches pages to posts at the tracks,
Doling out pennies for platform tickets,
Then walks past the station buffet with a dyspeptic snort,
Goes into the bar, checks the time again, orders a pint.
The patrons half turn--it's the fella from Camelot, innit?
And Kay chuckles soft to himself, and the Court buys a round.
He's barely halfway when a page tumbles in,
Seems the knights are arriving, on time after all,
So he tips the glass back (people stare as he guzzles),
Then plonks it down hard with five quid for the barman,
And strides for the doorway (half Falstaff, half Hotspur)
To summon his liveried army of lads.

Bors arrives behind steam, riding the cab of a heavy Mikado.
He shakes the driver's hand, swings down from the footplate,
And is like a locomotive himself, his breath clouding white,
Dark oil sheen on his black iron mail,
Sword on his hip swinging like siderods at speed.
He stamps back to the baggage car, slams mailed fist on steel door
With a clang like jousters colliding.
The handler opens up and goes to rouse another knight.
Old Pellinore has been dozing with his back against a crate,
A cubical, chain-bound thing with FRAGILE tags and air holes,
BEAST says the label, QUESTING, 1 the bill of lading.
The porters look doubtful but ease the thing down.
It grumbles. It shifts. Someone shouts, and they drop it.
It cracks like an egg. There is nothing within.
Elayne embraces Bors on the platform, a pelican on a rock,
Silently they watch as Pelly shifts the splinters,
Supposing aloud that Gutman and Cairo have swindled him.

A high-drivered engine in Northern Lines green
Draws in with a string of side-corridor coaches,
All honey-toned wood with stained glass on their windows.
Gareth steps down from a compartment, then Gaheris and Aggravaine,
All warmly tucked up in Orkney sweaters;
Gawaine comes after in Shetland tweed.
Their Gladstones and steamers are neatly arranged,
With never a worry--their Mum does the packing.
A redcap brings forth a curious bundle, a rude shape in red paper--
The boys did that one themselves, you see, and how does one wrap a unicorn's head?
They bustle down the platform, past a chap all in green.
He hasn't the look of a trainman, but only Gawaine turns to look at his eyes,
And sees written there Sir, I shall speak with you later.

Over on the first track, surrounded by reporters,
All glossy dark iron and brass-bound mystery,
The Direct-Orient Express, ferried in from Calais and points East.
Palomides appears. Smelling of patchouli and Russian leather,
Dripping Soubranie ash on his astrakhan collar,
Worry darkening his dark face, though his damascene armor shows no tarnish,
He pushes past the press like a broad-hulled icebreaker.
Flashbulbs pop. Heads turn. There's a woman in Chanel black,
A glint of diamonds, liquid movements, liquid eyes.
The newshawks converge, but suddenly there appears
A sharp young man in a crisp blue suit
From the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits,
That elegant, comfortable, decorous, close-mouthed firm;
He's good at his job, and they get not so much as a snapshot.
Tomorrow's editions will ask who she was, and whom with...

Now here's a silver train, stainless steel, Vista-Domed,
White-lighted grails on the engine (running no extra sections)
The Logres Limited, extra fare, extra fine,
(Stops on signal at Carbonek to receive passengers only).
She glides to a Timkin-borne halt (even her grease is clean),
Galahad already on the steps, flashing that winning smile,
Breeze mussing his golden hair, but not his Armani tailoring,
Just the sort of man you'd want finding your chalice.
He signs an autograph, he strikes a pose.
Someone says, loudly, "Gal! Who serves the Grail?"
He looks--no one he knows--and there's a silence,
A space in which he shifts like sun on water;
Look quick and you may see a different knight,
A knight who knows that meanings can be lies,
That things are done not knowing why they're done,
That bearings fail, and stainless steel corrodes.
A whistle blows. Snow shifts on the glass shed roof. That knight is gone.
This one remaining tosses his briefcase to one of Kay's pages,
And, golden, silken, careless, exits left.

Behind the carsheds, on the business-car track, alongside the private varnish
Of dukes and smallholders, Persian potentates and Cathay princes
(James J. Hill is here, invited to bid on a tunnel through the Pennines),
Waits a sleek car in royal blue, ex-B&O, its trucks and fittings chromed,
A black-gloved hand gripping its silver platform rail;
Mordred and his car are both upholstered in blue velvet and black leather.
He prefers to fly, but the weather was against it.
His DC-9, with its video system and Quotron and waterbed, sits grounded at Gatwick.
The premature lines in his face are a map of a hostile country,
The redness in his eyes a reminder that hollyberries are poison.
He goes inside to put on a look acceptable for Christmas Court;
As he slams the door it rattles like strafing jets.

Outside the Station proper, in the snow,
On a through track that's used for milk and mail,
A wheezing saddle-tanker stops for breath;
A way-freight mixed, eight freight cars and caboose,
Two great ugly men on the back platform, talking with a third on the ballast.
One, the conductor, parcels out the last of the coffee;
They drink. A joke about grails. They laugh.
When it's gone, the trainman pretends to kick the big hobo off,
But the farewell hug spoils the act.
Now two men stand on the dirty snow,
The conductor waves a lantern and the train grinds on.
The ugly men start walking, the new arrival behind,
Singing "Wenceslas" off-key till the other says stop.
There are two horses waiting for them. Rather plain horses,
Considering. The men mount up.
By the roundhouse they pause,
And look at the locos, the water, the sand, and the coal,
The look for a long time at the turntable,
Until the one who is King says "It all seemed so simple, once,"
And the best knight in the world says "It is. We make it hard."
They ride on, toward Camelot by the service road.

The sun is winter-low. Kay's caravan is rolling.
He may not run a railroad, but he runs a tight ship;
By the time they unload in the Camelot courtyard,
The wassail will be hot and the goose will be crackling,
Banners snapping from their towers, fir logs on the fire, drawbridge down,
And all that sackbut and psaltery stuff.
Blanchefleur is taking the children caroling tonight,
Percivale will lose to Merlin at chess,
The young knights will dally and the damsels dally back,
The old knights will play poker at a smaller Table Round.
And at the great glass station, motion goes on,
The extras, the milk trains, the varnish, the limiteds,
The Pindar of Wakefield, the Lady of the Lake,
The Broceliande Local, the Fast Flying Briton,
The nerves of the kingdom, the lines of exchange,
Running to a schedule as the world ought,
Ticking like a hot-fired hand-stoked heart,
The metal expression of the breaking of boundaries,
The boilers that turn raw fire into power,
The driving rods that put the power to use,
The turning wheels that make all places equal,
The knowledge that the train may stop but the line goes on;
The train may stop
But the line goes on.
pallas_athena: (Default)
2023-07-31 02:25 am
Entry tags:

*taps mic* is this thing on?

So, social media seems to be in a state of collapse. It's strange, because this blog is a port of my old LiveJournal, and I'm old enough to remember when Facebook took the wind out of LJ's sails back at the dawn of the millennium.

Facebook is now Your Dad's Internet; no one who's on it wants to be there. They're just there because it's their single point of contact with certain people who aren't online anywhere else.

Twitter (X, whatever) under the Muskmelon is even more of a cesspit than it was under Jack Dorsey-- and let's not forget how utterly crap he was. That's why I won't be joining Bluesky. And I don't trust Zuckerberg further than I can throw him, so Threads can go fuck itself.

None of the other sites (Spoutible, Hive, Post, etc.) have gathered enough traction to be viable. Mastodon isn't user friendly enough to attain Twitter's former reach, and probably isn't aiming for that in any case.

In any case, I've increasingly had the feeling that putting effort into writing on a site like Facebook or Twitter is pouring wine into a jug with no bottom. Both sites give you no meaningful access to your own archive. If I'm writing-- however trivially-- I'm creating a body of work. I want to be able (ideally easily) to search it, reread it, cross-reference it. To be able to refer back, and refer one's readers back, in a way that's impossible on Facebook and troublesome on Twitter.

...All of which brings me back here. Here fewer people are likely to see what I write, but in a way that feels rather freeing. I noticed on LJ that the bigger my Friends list grew, the less I felt I could say. Now that nobody's listening, perhaps I can allow myself to talk.

And my past is there, for better or worse (often worse). Searchable and taggable. I'm tempted to go back and delete some entries, or leave notes on them saying look, here is some evidence that my past self was trash in many ways. If I haven't done that, it's because there's a lot of trash here, and only one pair of weak arms to shovel it.

Blogging, forsooth. Everything old is new again. We'll see if it sticks.

Postscript: A bit later, I ate my words and joined Bluesky. It's been okay so far. Still keeping an eye on it.
pallas_athena: (Default)
2022-05-22 04:59 pm
Entry tags:

In Memoriam

Speech given at the 57th annual Nebula Awards, in acceptance of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award on behalf of Petra Mayer, presented by Amal El-Mohtar

(The ceremony can be viewed here)

Thank you, Amal. What a wonderful tribute.

This can only be a pale shadow of the speech Petra would have given you. She looked forward to the Nebulas every year, and she loved coming here and hanging out with her favourite bunch of people (and discovering new favourites with each passing year). I wish she were here to speak to you herself. There’s no substitute for her voice.

When you lose someone you love, sometimes you raise your head from the grief and shock, look out the window and think “why hasn’t the world stopped?” And you wish for a moment that everyone had known how amazing this person was.

So sinking into the abyss of Twitter in the aftermath of Petra’s tragic, sudden, early death, the consolation I found was that in her case, people did know. Even people who’d only heard her voice on the radio had a sense of her personality, and the authors and journalists and people from the book world among whom she’d lived and worked were dealing with their grief by raising her a cairn of words as only they could. So to everyone who felt Petra’s loss and wrote something, even a few words, at that terrible time, thank you. It helped.

It’s hard to think of Petra being gone. Petra was a force of nature, a tsunami of enthusiasms and brightly coloured plastic jewellery and baked goods and Doctor Who and Art Nouveau roses and Buster Keaton movies and elaborate costumes and loud singing and creative swearing and you could almost forget that you were in the presence of the doyenne of NPR Books, Petra Mayer of the razor-sharp mind and keen editorial eye, marshal to an army of reviewers and voice heard by millions for all her years on the airwaves.

Critics, especially in national media outlets, are to some extent gatekeepers; and editors even more so. But Petra was a gatekeeper who flung wide the gates, and would have ripped them off their hinges if she could. From the beginning, she sought out not just the authors she knew and loved, but the overlooked and the underpromoted. She sought out the work of authors and critics from marginalised groups— she couldn’t bear the thought of institutional bias robbing us of those stories, those voices. She widened her mandate to include not just SF and fantasy, but comics, horror, mystery and romance. And if she couldn’t fit in a review of your book, or if she read it after publication, it still might turn up in one of her Best Of lists or reader polls, or in the great work that drove her to distraction every year: the Book Concierge (now renamed Books We Love).

Whether you were an author or a reviewer, Petra was the person you always hoped would read your work. Petra had the book journalist’s talent for speed reading— she devoured books. But she savoured each one, and each particular blend of flavours would remain in her amazingly retentive memory.

As a reviewer, you would send Petra your work and it would come back better and clearer. She would discern your meaning through the layers of obfuscation and overthinking, and she would knock away your excess verbiage like the stone obscuring Excalibur.

Everyone here knows the hazards of making a profession of something you love— but in Petra’s case, that love never wavered. The world of American letters was lucky to have her— and she would have been even more of a presence had she lived to old age— but if she were here accepting this award right now, I know she’d say she was the lucky one. How many teenage nerds grow up to work with their icons? and to be admired by them? She loved every moment. She loved your work, and she loved you.

So, Petra would want me to thank all of you for this award tonight. She would want to thank Jeffee, Kate and the Nebula board. She would want to thank National Public Radio, all of her colleagues at NPR Books, and each and every one of her reviewers. She would give heartfelt thanks to her family, especially her parents, Elke and Jeff, and her longtime platonic life-partner Josh Drobina.

On behalf of the journalist, editor, reader, writer, and force eleven nerdicane that was Petra Mayer, I know she’d be overjoyed to accept this award. She would have longed to party with you afterward, but be assured that wherever you gather, she will be there in spirit. Thank you all.
pallas_athena: (Default)
2022-05-22 12:14 pm
Entry tags:

Speak the speech

If you are called on to give a speech at the Nebula Awards, don't forget to:

-- notice at the last moment that the cat is sitting in front of the carefully positioned photo of your deceased friend

-- shoo the cat off the windowsill, knocking over the TARDIS mug

--set everything up again in the few seconds before you go live

--start giving the speech you were still editing 5 minutes ago

--forget to introduce yourself

--panic and cut the first paragraph as being too self-indulgent

--realise that the second paragraph doesn't make sense without the first

--improvise, cover your ass frantically

--somehow finish the speech

--where the hell is Petra when I need an editor/ person cooler than me/ person to get me a goddamn drink when I embarrass myself in front of the great & good of the science fiction world

--I miss you Petra
pallas_athena: (Default)
2021-12-07 02:18 pm
Entry tags:

Eulogy given at the funeral of Petra Mayer, 4 December 2021

Petra and I have been friends since around age 10. In middle school we fought a lot — largely because school was awful and we were in a continuously horrible mood for about 8 years. But by 9th, 10th and 11th grade we had settled into a friendship distinguished by public weirdness, extravagant modes of dress, sitting in the Bishops’ Garden playing guitars, singing, burning incense and eating crystallised ginger— the more fiery the better. And then, of course, there were comics.

We had this routine where we would go to Big Planet in Bethesda and buy comics, often from Jef, the nice (and extremely patient) fellow behind the counter. We’d dance up and down the aisles of colourful covers, calling to each other— have you read this? Ohmygod you HAVE to read this! I’m not letting you leave without this! Look, I’ll lend you mine, but you have to read this! (In retrospect, it’s not surprising that when Petra found her ideal career, it turned out to be, essentially, that.)

And then we would go around the corner to the Tastee Diner, order fries and chocolate milkshakes, dip the fries in the milkshakes and read the comics. In those days we read mostly indie comics, because those were sufficiently cool for us to be seen reading. We read our way through Sandman, Transmetropolitan, Preacher, Desert Peach, Finder and many other titles which are now problematic. It was only later that we discovered the joy of superheroes. As mature adults, we were ready to embrace the joys of fighting crime in colourful tights. (Anyone who’s ever read a 1980s X-Men comic will recognise a certain kinship with Petra’s fashion sense.)



We joke about how, in the X-Men and other superhero comics, death is a revolving door. But what it really is, I think, is a form of theatre. A favourite character will die so that the writer and the artist can give them that moment, and so that they can show all the other characters reacting, put those emotions on display. And then, after a certain interval, it becomes evident that you can’t really tell the story without that character, that the superhero team isn’t the same without them, and the fans are discontented— so a writer will find a way to bring them back. And that panel, the panel where you first see that character again, is always as beautiful as the artist can make it. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, it can feel like light is emanating from the page.

And God, I wish Petra were only comics dead. Because right now, a lot of us are feeling as though the story can’t continue without her. And the various teams she was a member of are feeling distinctly less super. All our powers are dimmed and lessened in her absence. Without her, who’s going to want to read the book? What editor okayed this decision? And what kind of douchebag author would write it in the first place?

Petra didn’t really give bad reviews, but she would definitely deem this situation unworthy of inclusion in the august archive of NPR. She would read anything, but her least favourite genre was where everything is terrible for no reason.

But I wish Petra were only comics dead. Because then, in some future adventure, we might hope to see her again. Perhaps in the lair of a mad scientist— always a popular choice for resurrections (and very Petra). Or in some far-flung corner of the cosmos, or an alternate universe— someplace with a lot of Kirby dots. When we least expected it, there she’d be, and we would fall to our knees in disbelief and weep for joy.

Even if it were one of those comics where she came back as Evil Petra in a cool new costume and extravagant eyeliner, somehow convinced that she must use her unholy powers to destroy us all, we would know what to do. We would play her some Magnetic Fields or some 80s rap, or put on an episode of Bake Off, or point over there and say “Hey, is that David Tennant?” And she’d immediately forget to be evil and go “ohmygod, where?!”

And you’d get that scene which we get over and over in comics, but we still can’t get enough of: that scene where a character’s turned evil somehow and there’s a big dramatic fight scene, and then their best friend or someone who’s been on their team for a long time will grab their arm and say “This isn’t you. I know you, let me tell you…” and the character is recalled to themselves by that recollection, that voice. And that’s absolutely what a friend is and does. A friend is someone who can tell your own story back to you when you’ve forgotten it. And Petra was such a great friend to so many of us, she knew so many of our stories and carried them with her. And even though we all know we’re bit parts at best, Petra could make you feel like a protagonist.

So what we have to do for now and later on, and maybe for the rest of our lives, is: to live our stories as though Petra were reading them. Because maybe, somewhere, she is. And when we arrive where she has gone, as we all must, the last thing we’d want is to have bored her.

Meanwhile, today, we should tell the stories we have about her. Tell the funny ones, the embarrassing ones— the ones that would make her want to come back from the grave to tell us to shut up— the ones where she’s great (which is all of them). Because, as she carried parts of all our stories, so we all carry parts of hers, and we always will.



I’d like to close with a short verse by Edna St Vincent Millay, one of the few poets (I think) capable of capturing the emotion of a moment like this:

For you there is no song,
Only the shaking
Of the voice that meant to sing; the sound of the strong
Voice breaking.

Strange in my hand appears 

The pen, and yours broken.
There are ink and tears on the page; only the tears
Have spoken.
pallas_athena: (Default)
2020-05-25 02:46 am

On the Muse of Fire

[Twitter thread; inspired by hearing a friend do the Muse of Fire speech in a fundraiser for the Globe, here.]

***********

In online Shakespeare, this speech (the Prologue to Henry V) becomes something else. Shakespeare says "This is a play: we'll do our best but we can't be the real thing. So please just watch the stage and imagine the reality."

But now we need to imagine the theatre too.

In the speech, there are repeated size comparisons between the enclosed Globe and the French battlefields

("Cockpit": cockfighting was held in even smaller spaces than the Globe. This engraving is 1808 but gives you an idea of what Sh was thinking of. Note that the cockpit, like the Globe, is circular)

The Chorus talks about how small the Globe feels-- but it was certainly larger than the rooms most of Shakespeare's audience lived in, then as now.

So the Muse of Fire speech feels personal, because it acknowledges the smallness and confinement of the space we're now in, and speaks to our desire for vaster spaces. It says we *can* have those spaces, if we imagine them.

And the speech then asks us for an act of *collective* imagination.

By emphasising the smallness of the Globe, Shakespeare makes his audience physically feel closer together.

(They were already pretty close. Today's Globe has a capacity of around 1400. Shakespeare's had similar dimensions & capacity about 3000. When sold out, they were packed in, welded together. Think mosh pit)

Today's productions often split the Chorus up among the ensemble. But given the text, we can assume the prologue was spoken by one person, addressing many, asking them (asking us) to collectively imagine something greater.

It starts by bringing out points of commonality: inviting us to look around at the place we're in. "This wooden O", "the girdle of these walls", "this unworthy scaffold". So everyone, groundlings and gentry, is looking around at the same time at the same walls enclosing them all.

And then the Chorus says: here's what I want you to imagine instead of these walls. Imagine huge armies, vast battlefields, warhorses.

"Into a thousand parts divide one man"

Where you've just invited 3000 people to imagine *one thing*, making them a unity

The Chorus then says (essentially): I'll be your guide; I'll be the one to let you know what to imagine. So when those 3000 people see the Chorus, they're now primed: they know they're going to be asked to imagine something together.

(Later, Henry will assume this function too)

So now, today, hearing this speech, we *feel* the smallness & confinement of the spaces we're in. When we hear "the girdle of these walls" we look around ruefully at our untidy desks, messy kitchens, worn sofas.

(But we still look around, at the same moment)

Today we're another thing Shakespeare's audience weren't: we're apart. Maybe we're watching the speech with a few flatmates or family. Maybe we've snatched a moment alone to watch it, shut into our rooms, resigned to hitting Pause when the next crisis happens

But the speech is still one actor addressing many, inviting us all collectively to look at where we are, then imagine something else. Something different. Something greater.

And when we hear those words, wherever we are, we think of those things.

And the things we imagine are the things we need, just as human animals. We're confined and need space. We're apart and we need togetherness.

(I don't know about you, but I miss being part of an audience like the desert misses water-- even with the occasional stresses involved)

So 400+ years from when it was first spoken, the Muse of Fire still speaks to us, now more than ever.

I hope theatre comes back. And music, and all the arts. In the meantime, please (if you can) support them and the people who make them.

And listen, watch, imagine.

****************

Acting For Others: https://actingforothers.co.uk
Help Musicians: https://helpmusicians.org.uk/support-our-work/make-a-donation

And please support your local theatre, music and performance companies and spaces, many of which are supporting furloughed staff as far as they can through this crisis.

And if you know an unemployed artist, please be kind to them. We've just seen our entire industry disappear, with little hope of it coming back any time soon.

It's great that so many performances are being shared online, but in most cases it doesn't pay
Just... I don't know. Maybe we can collectively imagine something else, something better, to come out of all this.

I hope so.

And I know the arts, and artists, will be a part of that. It's what we've spent our lives doing, and we're not gonna stop.
pallas_athena: (Default)
2019-11-03 09:34 pm
Entry tags:

On John Donne

[Originally posted to Twitter in response to a tweet by Greek Etymologies, which said:]

'Ecstasy' derives, via French and Latin, from ancient Greek ἔκστασις ("displacement, movement outwards"), from ἐξίστημι ("displace, change, stand aside from"), from ἐκ ("out of") + ἵστημι ("stand").


What a perfect excuse to link to John Donne’s poem The Ecstasy!

When talking about secular/amorous Donne, everyone thinks of the bed-poems, “Come Madam come,” “Busy old fool” etc

This is the opposite of that, a love poem describing a specifically non-sexual encounter.

Sex is present in the poem, both metaphorically and as a desired and looked-for thing. Towards the end, the future Dean of St Paul’s discourses on soul and body in terms that might make his holier parishioners blush.

But this is (most probably) still during the reign of Elizabeth; James’s Scottish Calvinism and its corporeal disgust were still waiting in the wings.

In these years the body is God’s creation in His image and therefore to be exalted. In Donne bodily pleasures become holy, and even the bodily pain of his future sickness brings him closer to God.

But in The Ecstasy, the soul is the protagonist; souls lead, bodies are specifically said to be unmoving (though not unmoved):

“And pictures in our eyes to get
was all our propagation.”

I love that line. Donne is very into reflections — like his tears in A Valediction: of Weeping reflecting his beloved’s face and becoming something more by bearing that image, as a blank disc becomes a coin when it bears the image of a face— then the tear falls and shatters, and the lovers part.

Anyway. Read the poem. Slowly if you can. He most likely wrote it for Anne, who married him w/out her father’s approval. (Her Dad sent him to prison!)

They knew one another about 4 years before they married in secret. It was another 8 years before her family were reconciled.

Here’s the sonnet he wrote when she died after 16 years of marriage. The way he talks about her soul here is especially heartbreaking if you’ve just read The Ecstasy. Flesh is only mentioned once, as an adversary.

Donne was far from perfect; he could be intensely misogynistic. Ironically, he was vile to his daughter Constance in later life when *she* wanted to marry someone he disapproved of. (To be fair, the suitor, Edward Alleyn, was much older and a former actor, so Donne had cause for concern. The couple married anyway; Edward died after three years, and Constance later remarried.)

But flawed as Donne was, he was loved by someone who knew him well. Best any of us can hope for, really.

(Misogyny and angry disavowal of all this soul stuff here)

**********

Postscript: I find the terse style of Twitter unsatisfying to post here. I come here to write good prose, and this isn't that. I wouldn't crosspost at all, but I wanted to save some of my writing on other platforms in case they fold, or in case I have to leave them.

This thread doesn't really say what I wanted it to say, either about Donne or about love.
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2019-05-01 10:01 pm
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Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, Book XVII

And thus it passed on from Candlemas until after Easter, that the month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom and to burgeon.

For, like as trees and herbs burgeoneth and flourisheth in May, in like wise every lusty heart that is any manner of lover springeth, burgeoneth, buddeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers corrayge, that lusty month of May, in something to constrayne them to some manner of thing more in that month than in any other month, for diverse causes: for then all herbs and trees reneweth a man and a woman, and in like wise lovers calleth to their mind old gentilness and old service, and many kind deeds that was forgotten by negligence.

For, like as winter rasure doth always erase and deface green summer, so fareth it by unstable love in man and woman, for in many persons there is no stability, but it is feebleness of nature and great disworship, whosomever useth this.

Therefore, like as May month flowereth and flourisheth in every man's garden, so in like wise let every man of worship flourish his heart in this world: first unto God, and next unto the joy of them that he promised his faith unto; for there was never worshipful man nor worshipful woman but they loved one better than another; and worship in arms may never be foiled. But first reserve the honour to God, and secondly thy quarrel must come of thy lady. And such love I call virtuous love.

But nowadays men can not love sevennight but they must have all their desires. That love may not endure by reason, for where they be soon accorded and hasty, heat soon cooleth. And right so fareth the love nowadays, soon hot soon cold. This is no stability. But the old love was not so. For men and women could love together seven years, and no lykerous lusts was between them, and then was love truth and faithfulness. And so in like wise was used such love in King Arthur's days.

Wherefore I liken love nowadays unto summer and winter: for like as the one is cold and the other is hot, so fareth love nowadays. And therefore all ye that be lovers, call unto your remembrance the month of May, like as did Queen Guenyver, for whom I make here a little mention, that while she lived she was a true lover, and therefore she had a good end.
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2019-02-05 10:23 pm
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Leavetaking

Last night I helped an old friend pack up her flat. She's about the seventh friend of mine to leave the country due to Brexit.

She was one of my first friends in this country; we've known each other since the year I came here to do A levels. She's Swedish and has lived here since she was 8.

For the past few years, she lived a short bus ride away from me. I helped her build all the flat-pack furniture in her place. It was only Ikea stuff, but we chose it carefully and were ridiculously pleased with our building skills.

Last night we watched the removal guys break it all up and throw the pieces into the back of their truck.

What we built didn't have any kind of market value, but it was of value to us.

This is far from the worst of the evils wrought by Brexit, of course. Couples and families are having to choose between staying in Britain and staying together. People born in the UK are being told to "go home," or seeing their parents and older relatives lose their right to live here. And all across this country, people are having to destroy or abandon the lives and relationships and places in the world they built with care.

What they built doesn't have a market value that the Home Office can recognise. But the small, human structures they built, their ways of doing things and connecting things and making things work-- families, jobs, neighbours-- have made this country better in a way that can't be measured. When people make their homes here, things get rearranged and cared for in small ways that add up to something greater that makes life here more liveable.

That's what we're losing.

[Posted to Facebook 5 February 2019]
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2018-12-16 10:29 pm
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(no subject)

The other night I found out that a friend-of-a-friend was an actual white nationalist. The tedious, grotesque, necessary process of going through their page and screenshotting all their shit left me feeling rather worn, and with a lot less patience for the hey-just-playing-devil's-advocate types.

So right now I'm feeling intensely grateful for the good people. I'm not saying this in the illusion that any of us are perfect, but you're just really... good, you know? You show up. None of us get everything right-- I certainly don't-- but you keep trying, you keep fighting, you support others and you never stop doing that work. I honour and respect that more than I can say.

We live, right now, in dark times. And yes, we fight on. But one of the ways we survive is by finding areas of shared humanity-- whether years-long relationships or mere moments. Moments of kindness are what keep us human; the world absolutely stands or falls by people being kind when they don't have to be. That shared humanity can also take other forms: a battle joined; information passed on; a corrective note well given and well accepted.

Justice and mercy. War and love. Life and art.

I wish to hell the world were in better shape right now. But as it is, I'm glad to be doing this alongside you.

(Posted to Facebook 16 December 2018)
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2018-12-08 10:32 pm
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If love were all

I tried to find a recording of Noel Coward singing this, perhaps the most personal of his songs; but there seems to be none online.

In Coward's absence, Julie Andrews's delivery seems closest to his. Crucially, she doesn't sentimentalise or self-indulge; just delivers the words and lets them speak. I'd wish for a simple piano accompaniment rather than a soupy mess of strings, but she succeeds despite it all.

I'll never forget hearing Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan sing this as Elyot and Amanda in Act II of Private Lives, seated comfortably at the piano in Elyot's messy apartment. Like Benedick and Beatrice, Elyot and Amanda are a couple whose favourite form of intimacy is verbal sparring; but the music created a rare moment of calm between them, their shared voices becoming, briefly, another form of intimacy for these two turbulent characters.

pallas_athena: (Default)
2018-11-06 10:37 pm
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(no subject)

US friends: if you have not yet voted, I hope you will do so.

I hope you will ensure that your friends, families, students and colleagues can vote. Those of you offering lifts to polling places, looking after people’s children and animals, covering for them at work and otherwise volunteering are saints.

Today have it in our power to win a future of greater justice, wisdom and kindness for our country. Victory today will not magically solve everything, but it will make it possible to make things better.

I need not tell you what we face: a party that has embraced white supremacist racism and violence; misogyny and sexual assault; hatred of immigrants, of people of Muslim or Jewish faith, of lesbian, gay, nonbinary and especially trans people.

The Republicans do not see any of these things as problems, or as disqualifications for high office. Indeed, they have embraced and endorsed candidates who have committed all of these and worse. Under it all lies a contempt for the people on lowest incomes that work the hardest; for people in poverty; without health insurance; living with a disability or caring for loved ones with disabilities.

We have a chance to help all the people Trump and the Republicans have hurt, and to prevent the greater harm they intend. We have a chance to enact sensible gun laws; to make sure all people in America have health care; to stop the persecution and detention of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers; to work for equality, and end the entrenched injustices based on race, gender, sexuality, ability, social background and more.

Everyone deserves housing, food, education and health care. This shouldn’t be a radical position. It’s an indictment of our times that it is now portrayed as one.

That’s what we’re working for. That’s what we stand to win. And when we do, it will benefit Republicans too. If they win, they want to crush us; if we win, we will begin to help them.

That is also the greatest fear of those who cling to power in the name of fear, exclusion and hate: that their carefully indoctrinated voters will see them for the frauds they are. They have made their choices; today we make ours.

Go vote. And please help others vote. Pound the streets. Light up the phones. Win this. Bring it home.

(Posted to Facebook 6 November 2018)
pallas_athena: (Default)
2018-06-30 09:22 pm
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On journalism

On Thursday night, the newsroom of the Capital Gazette— a local Maryland paper not far from my hometown— was broken into by a man who shot out the glass door, then killed five staff members, four of whom were journalists.

I don’t talk about journalism much here. But the fashion for bashing “the media” as a whole is reaching my friends, and there are things that need saying.

I’m not talking about criticism of individual media sources, or inspection of biases— those are both healthy, and needed. I’m talking about people who say “the media” as though it were all one thing, from one source rather than many. Often it will come with an adjective: “the liberal media” or “the centrist media”.

To be sure, the Murdochs, Sinclairs, Mercers, Dacres and their ilk are not forces for good. Far from it. One should be suspicious of any site that puts a political agenda ahead of the facts. That isn’t journalism.

Journalism is the courage of reporters like Ibrahim Alfa Ahmed, who went deep into territory held by Boko Haram militia. As a radio journalist, his reputation made strangers trust him enough to give him hard drives and phones with material recorded in Boko Haram bases and training camps. If he had been caught with these, he would have been killed— but he escaped with his life and brought the story back.

Journalism is the fortitude of Jason Rezaian, a journalist with the Washington Post. While working as their Tehran correspondent, he was taken prisoner for a year and a half. He was prevented from communicating with his wife and his mother. His illnesses went untreated. The charge was espionage: a frequent excuse used by totalitarian governments to imprison journalists. He's now free and writing again.

It’s not just in war zones that journalists risk their lives. I’m thinking of my friend Petra Mayer, a books journalist who found a homemade bomb in a New York street and phoned it in to the police and the newsroom.

I think of the tenacity of David Fahrenthold and Carole Cadwallader, who spend years of their lives combing through accounts, travel records, emails, interviews— finding the connections, the falsehoods, the illegal money. I think of the harassment, abuse and death threats they get from those who wish they'd stop asking questions.

Abuse of journalists has long been normalised in the online comments section, which few news sites have the staff or the resources to moderate effectively. Comments sections are also popular targets for professional Russian trolls working individually or in groups.

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump encouraged abuse of journalists. As President, he has continued that, calling them “enemies of the people”. His supporters have taken this as permission to step up their harassment.

Earlier this week, Milo Yiannopoulos texted two Observer reporters who had questioned him: “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.”

Meanwhile, journalists continue to annoy the powerful, ask awkward questions and uncover hidden truths. And the Rezaians, Fahrentholds and Cadwalladers of tomorrow continue to come up through local journalism.

On Thursday, the Capital's newsroom was attacked. Thursday night, they mourned their dead-- and prepared the next day's paper.
pallas_athena: (Default)
2018-05-17 10:54 pm
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Top 5 favourite Moon craters

1. TSIOLKOVSKY A beautiful crater on the Far Side. Pick it out by its distinctive black floor and white central peak. It’s black because at impact, the crater flooded with basaltic lava like the dark maria (“seas”) visible on the near side.

(The far side of the Moon has no seas.)

2. TYCHO
A classic. Huge bright rayed crater; what’s not to like? Contains approximately 50% of all drama on the Moon.

3. ARISTARCHUS
Brightest point on the lunar nearside, a tiny shred of brightness in the vast Ocean of Storms.

4. COPERNICUS
Another classic crater. Nothing particularly remarkable about it. It’s just always reliably there, west of centre, providing a steady mark to steer by.

5. SOUTH POLE- AITKEN BASIN
Imagine the Moon is a slightly rotten orange. Aitken Basin is where the heel of a giant hand gripped it and left a bruise. It’s one of the largest impact craters in the Solar System, about 2500 km across and 13 deep.

Since it’s so huge, it contains many smaller impact craters, some of which are so deep that sunlight never reaches the bottom. Lowest depth is about -6000m.

We can’t see the basin since it’s on the far side, but we can see the mountains surrounding it— the Moon’s highest, about the height of Everest (8000m). They are the furthest southern feature visible from Earth.

In conclusion, the Moon is extremely cool.

(Posted to Facebook 17 May 2018)
pallas_athena: (Default)
2018-04-17 10:58 pm
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In Memoriam Chris Bruce

I haven't quite found the words to talk about Chris Bruce.

In life, when I would try to describe him to other people, they couldn't quite believe it. A stuntman, an equestrian, a swordsman, and later a a fight director and stunt coordinator; he'd worked on the original Star Wars (as a stormtrooper) and the 1970s Musketeers films (doubling, among other things, for Christopher Lee). He went out drinking with Oliver Reed (who, he said, "taught me how to fight like a bucko") and lived to tell the tale. He worked with the greatest fight directors in the business, and was never without a story to tell.

Rest well, sir )
pallas_athena: (Default)
2018-04-10 11:04 pm
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On Journalism

I can only work one piece of actual magic, but it's a good one. Want to see?

***makes arcane gesture towards sky***

***Clouds part; rays of sunlight stream down, illuminating a banner held by singing cherubs which reads:***

IF A STORY IS ONLY REPORTED BY NON-REPUTABLE SOURCES, IT IS MOST LIKELY NOT A REAL STORY.

***Choir of cherubs sings the following lyrics:***

Check. your. sources, o my people. If the story confirms your views, double-check it. Triple-check if it makes you feel immediate outrage, anger, schadenfreude, satisfaction or glee.

If every other WORD in the HEADLINE is in CAPITALS, it is likely not a reliable source.

Another marker of unsoundness is the use of MULTIPLE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!

Reliable sources provide quotes that are dated and attributed; or if the quote is anonymous, they give a reason. Reliable sources state where their information is from, with a link or screenshot of the original.

Polls and statistics should have a link to the original research; from this, you can find out who paid for it, how recent it is and what their methods were.

If in doubt: do a search for key words from the headline or phrases from the story. If you don't see a credible fact-checked version, or you only see it reported in one place, then it's best to wait before sharing it.

In general, try not to get your news from anywhere that's trying to sell you an agenda. Even if the agenda agrees with your own.

I know we live in dark, uncertain times. In such times, we all seek comfort and reassurance. This is understandable.

But I repeat: beware of any story that appears to validate your own views, vindicate a politician you love, or damn a politician you hate.

Remember: all sites thrive on adverts, which require pageviews. Their writers know that strong feelings generate clicks and shares. They will deliberately phrase their headlines to manufacture those feelings: outrage, joy, fear, schadenfreude, glee.

Right-wing and left-wing partisan sites use the same techniques to keep their viewers in a constant state of outrage, insecurity and fear.

In these times, we need to save our outrage for the things that matter; the things we can affect and change.

These are many.

But our work to change things will be infinitely more effective if we arm ourselves with good information, rather than partisan soundbites.

Here endeth the lesson.
pallas_athena: (Default)
2017-12-10 12:46 am
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(no subject)

After this evening's (excellent) Messiah, the conductor and I got talking to one of the ladies who run things at the church, an older lady named Carolyn who had been singing in the first soprano section. She was telling me which museums I should go to in DC; she mentioned the Museum of African American History and the Native American museum. Then she said "And if you get to the Natural History Museum... in there, they have a lunch counter that used to be in a store called Woolworth's in North Carolina. I was arrested there while we were holding a sit-in, and I spent the night in jail."

Carolyn's story below )
pallas_athena: (Default)
2017-04-22 12:18 am
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Opera meme

Opera meme? Opera meme!

Opera I hate: That one where the tenor is a raging douchelord and the soprano is like "I shall now destroy my otherwise okay life because of my fateful passion for this raging douchelord" and everything goes to hell? That one. In all its iterations. Bonus points if the tenor has an anguished aria like "Why is it that no one understands me, a raging douchelord"

Opera I think is overrated: Aida
Opera I think is underrated: Ariadne auf Naxos
Opera I love: L'Incoronazione di Poppea
Opera I cherish: Don Giovanni, Zauberflöte
Guilty Pleasure: Mefistofele
Opera I want to see revived: Il Mondo della Luna, Sir John In Love, The Ghosts of Versailles, Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo
Opera that I first performed in: a disaster-plagued Don G (tagging Lindsay and Alex for no particular reason)
Opera that I first saw: Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Opera I saw most recently: La Gioconda
Greatest Opening: Das Rheingold
Greatest Ending: L'Incoronazione di Poppea
Worst middle of an otherwise great opera: Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Greatest Opera of all time: They're all great! Except the ones where the tenor is a douchelord.
pallas_athena: (Default)
2016-05-14 12:59 am
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When the BBC deleted its archive

As someone who gets the majority of their news online, I am incensed over the proposed cuts to the BBC's website. That site is the beau ideal of websites: no ads, no messy Flash crap and the links stay good forever. (Or at least until now.)

Apparently the vast archive of written articles, recipes and general information are "competing unfairly" with commercial news sources. That is, they have too much good content, so they have to make it less and worse.

The thing is, that site is a perfect example of the BBC fulfilling its mandate-- which is to make information freely available to as much of the public as possible. That archive of news articles, historical précis pieces, recipes and general life information is OURS. We PAID FOR IT and are soon to pay more (since the licence fee will now rise in line with inflation). The government has no right at all to take it from us.

Compare and contrast the US-based National Public Radio's website (for which I occasionally write): That site is full of excellent content, much of which, again, stays archived forever. You can listen to years' worth of in-house mini-concerts by all sorts of musicians who dropped into NPR for a session. ( http://www.npr.org/series/tiny-desk-concerts/ ) They have much of the radio content archived, but they also have a huge amount of audio, video and written articles that aren't on the radio, including a huge "arts and life" section. And NPR is *one radio station*, not a multi-channel media juggernaut like the BBC.

It's not hard to see the fingerprints of the Murdoch empire all over the recent white paper-- the (paywalled) Times recently ran a story with the headline "BBC's entertainment and soft news costs rivals £115m". But there's also a broader Tory philosophy at work here: that things that are free and public always need to be *not quite as good* as things you pay for. I'm pretty sure one of the reasons they're so determined to kneecap the NHS is to drive people to spend money on private health care and private insurance. Similarly, Cameron and his cronies have realised that the only way to force online readers to pony up for paywalled content, or endure sites that vomit Flash and autoplaying video ads all over the page, is to make the advert-free content at the BBC less good.

Of course, the BBC isn't free; it's paid for by us. But the Tories have handwaved that away and made the decision without any consutation with license-fee payers. If you want to imagine the future, imagine a page-covering ad flashing up on top of the article you're trying to read, forever.

(Posted to Facebook 14 May 2016. In retrospect, this was the beginning of the end for the BBC.)