As Jason Peters puts it at Front Porch Republic, Zeus has been avenged for offenses against statuary.
“I guess it takes a divine sense of irony to destroy a fiberglass and foam statue outside a place called Solid Rock Church,” said Monroe assistant fire chief Connie Flagration. “You want irony in a god, but this might be going a bit too far.”
I don’t understand why I don’t hear weeping in heaven. Or maybe I do.
I’m fascinated by the tortured, twisted biographies of so many creative types (not that I have a great deal of time to read extended biographies, but my websurfing habits lead me to encounter vignettes fairly often).
Today’s Writer’s Almanac has a little biography of Allen Ginsberg, born this day in 1926, and an excerpt from his poem Kaddish. Mental illness up the family tree. Ginsberg came to terms with being a very “out” homosexual, but he was tortured earlier in life with perceptions of antisemitism and addition to the burden of very eccentric parents.
Coincidentally, the New York Times today also has an obituary for “poet and Ginsberg muse” Peter Orlovsky. Troubles by the number, heartaches by the score. Booze, drugs, anything but monogamous.
Falling somewhat short of torture and torment perhaps is the life of E.M.Forster, author of Passage to India, which placed him at the top of the heap of British novelists, but also marked his virtual withdrawal from further publication during the rest of his life. Here’s a little attempted insight into the backstory (titled “A Closet With A View,” should you want a hint).
I could go on, but my day job beckons.
Speaking of “day jobs” and shifting a bit, I puzzle at times about the neural connections behind the scientific and engineering careers of many excellent amateur musicians I know. And don’t forget Russel Crowe’s unforgettable portrayal of a mad mathematician and game theorist in A Beautiful Mind.
Okay, I’m in a university town, and the university is a Land Grant school with an Ag and Engineering emphasis historically, so that’s anecdotal. So’s the tortured gay artist impression. But they’re my anecdotes, on my blog, and I’m stickin’ to ’em. (Insights welcome just the same.)
And I’m adding creativity to the list of things I don’t understand, saying a heartfelt Kyrie Elieison for these folks who suffered mightily, transgressed commandments quite openly — and made our lives richer.
What a dreary afternoon for a holiday! I needed a pick-me-up, and P.J. O’Rourke provided it.
O’Rourke has a great idea for reviving the newspaper biz, which desparately needs great ideas and revival: the pre-obituary:
What I propose is “Pre-Obituaries”—official notices that certain people aren’t dead yet accompanied by brief summaries of their lives indicating why we wish they were.
The main advantage of the Pre-Obit over the traditional obituary is the knowledge of reader and writer alike that the as-good-as-dead people are still around to have their feelings hurt. It was a travesty of literary justice that we waited until J. D. Salinger finally hit the delete key at 91 before admitting that Catcher in the Rye stinks. The book’s only virtue is that it captures, with annoying accuracy, the maunderings of a twerp. The book’s only pleasure is in slamming the cover shut—simpler than slamming the door shut on a real Holden Caulfield, if less satisfying. The rest of Salinger’s published oeuvre was precious or boring or both. But we felt constrained to delay saying so, perhaps because of an outdated Victorian hope for a death-bed flash of genius.
Let us wait no more. With the Pre-Obituary we can abandon pusillanimous constraint and false hope and say what we think about the lives of public nuisances when their lives are not yet a dead letter. And we won’t be stuck in the treacle of nostalgia and sentiment. We won’t find ourselves saying of some oaf, “His like will not pass this way again.” Or, if we do say it, we can comfortably add, “Thank God!” The precept of Diogenes isn’t “Do not speak ill of the living.”
Think of the opportunities we’ve missed already….
By O’Rourke’s lights, several notables besides Salinger needed pre-obituaries, but we blew the chance:
But we’re not too late for some others:
I might quibble with few on that list, but overall, it’s target-rich.
I could call it “Haikuly yours III,” but I’ll save that because (a) this one’s public domain now and (b) I know this poem and can sing it rousingly:
Amo, Amas
by John O’Keefe
Amo, Amas, I love a lass
As a cedar tall and slender;
Sweet cowslip’s grace is her nominative case,
And she’s of the feminine gender.Rorum, Corum, sunt divorum,
Harum, Scarum divo;
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band
Hic hoc horum genitivo.Can I decline a Nymph divine?
Her voice as a flute is dulcis.
Her oculus bright, her manus white,
And soft, when I tacto, her pulse is.Rorum, Corum, sunt divorum,
Harum, Scarum divo;
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band
Hic hoc horum genitivo.Oh, how bella my puella,
I’ll kiss secula seculorum.
If I’ve luck, sir, she’s my uxor,
O dies benedictorum.Rorum, Corum, sunt divorum,
Harum, Scarum divo;
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band
Hic hoc horum genitivo.
(“Amo, Amas” by John O’Keefe. Public domain.)
For what it’s worth, I can still sing the Portugese national anthem from memory, 42 years after the Wheaton College Men’s Glee Club learned it for our European tour. Rote memorization is odd.
Writer’s Almanac
Had permission to reprint
I don’t have. So here.
MEXICAN BAROQUE
Music of 17th and 18th Century
Sunday, May 23, 2010
4:00 p.m.
St. Boniface Catholic Church
318 North Ninth Street, Lafayette
“Mexican Baroque” is not an oxymoron like “Jumbo Shrimp.”
This vivid program features little-known sacred music composers of the Mexican high baroque — and that is very high indeed — sung in Latin with Baroque strings, trumpets, and timpani. Also, 18th century popular villancicos, guarachas and negrillas, sung in Spanish set to popular dance rhythms, and accompanied by guitars and percussion. The Mexican villancicos, described as “sacred entertainment for the masses,” have texts that are sometimes playfully humorous and sometimes profoundly spiritual. The alternation of the popular and sacred music of the Mexican high baroque reveals the deep reverence and the joy of living of the Mexican Baroque.
We’re two weeks out in rehearsal now, and I can say this is going to be a very memorable concert, and not merely because we bid vaya con Dios to Maestro William Jon Gray.
I need to think on good, kind, pure and “of good report” things after my last rant. An incident this evening makes that easy.
A few hours ago, the phone rang. My wife, upstairs, answered and directly called my name down the stairs that it was for me.
I knew it was going to be a charity or a “would you hold for an important recorded message Grand Poobah Sen. Slicksy from Southern North Dakota?” political pitch. Indiana’s no-call law has reduced to naught the commercial cold-calls, but charities and politicians are bidding to fill the gap. Continue reading “Interlochen Center for the Arts”
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 
