oracne

I have promo!

Scroll down on this page to see a blurb on the Duchess novel.

This one is a mixture of uplifting and uplifting but goofy songs to which you just have to give up. I'm still not entirely satisfied with it, but after a while you just have to stop futzing with it.

Uplift Mix, 87,748 KB. Available for seven days. Please comment if you download. ETA: Track 5 is now fixed, link updated.

Uplift

1. "Rise Up," Yves Larock
2. "Closer," Melissa Ferrick
3. "In the Night," Basia Bulat
4. "Oh No," Gogol Bordello
5. "Karma Chameleon," The Beat Farmers
6. "Ton Plait Favori," Malajube
7. "Another Train," Pete Morton
8. "You're Still Standing There," Steve Earle
9. "Las Batallas," Café Tacuba
10. "Mr. Blue Sky," Electric Light Orchestra
11. "Patio dos Amores," Dulce Pontes
12. "Rain," Priscilla Ahn
13. "Sur ma Tombe," Soldat Louis
14. "Don't Stop," Fleetwood Mac
15. "Kalise," El Guincho
16. "We Shall Not Be Moved," Dan Zanes
17. "It Don't Mean a Thing," Club des Belugas
18. "Kaimono Boogie," Kanjani 8
19. "Apres Ski Remix," Polkaholik Atomik Harmonik
20. "After Party," Ozomatli
21. "How Can I Keep From Singing," Eva Cassidy

Ravel - "Valses nobles et sentimentales"
Prokofiev - "Piano Concerto No. 1"
Shostakovich - "Piano Concerto No. 1"
Musorgsky - "Pictures at an Exhibition"
Martha Argerich, piano; David Bilger, trumpet
Charles Dutoit, conductor
The Philadelphia Orchestra

The Ravel made me feel like I was watching a movie with lots of women strolling along the Seine or whatever, wearing bustles and carrying those foofy ruffled parasols. The last movement got slightly more crunchy, but I still didn't love it.

The Prokofiev was awesome, as was Martha Argerich, who got a rather lengthy ovation. Fun with intervals and pounding on the piano to show it really is percussion!

The Shostakovich was nice; I wanted more trumpet solo. He got to spend a lot of time just standing there, and playing tiny little sections here and there, until the bravura bit at the end.

"Pictures at an Exhibition" was great fun to listen to; I love and am familiar with the piece, and was happy to hear it live. I didn't like the saxophone solo much; the sound was too airy, the solo not sexy enough, possibly because throughout Dutoit took it at a brisk pace. Sometimes I liked the brisk pace, sometimes I wanted a little more lingering and scraping on the crunchy bits. A couple of times, the strings felt too smooth and polished for my taste, but that's getting really nitpicky. Tuba solo hurray! I finally got to clearly hear the new(ish) principal tubist, Carol Jantsch, as other than part of the low brass. (I say principal, even though there's only one, because it is so cool.)

Lastly, Oh Charles Dutoit, please stop doing that with your hair. Pleasepleaseplease. Please sir please. You are a nice man and don't deserve to have your hair look like that.

If you've read any good mysteries lately, particularly historical mysteries, please tell me about them!

I'm currently reading C. S. Harris (Regency England) and Deanna Raybourn (Victorian England). I've already come to love Lindsey Davis (Flavian Rome).

EDITED TO ADD: My older posts on mysteries, at least the ones I had the foresight to tag.

This is the "flower" duet from Lakmé by Léo Delibes.

And this is the much darker song by David Usher that samples it.

Interesting, huh?

What did I do yesterday?

A load of laundry.

Tonight, though, I get to go to the Orchestra for free. Thank you, Tom!

Poll #1270462 Angsty YA
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

I like angsty Young Adult books.

In an angsty alternate-world YA fantasy, I'd like these things:

My favorite you-only-hurt-the-ones-you-love torture is:

Rehearsals continue apace for the Eric Whitacre concert. I discovered that my residuall brusing and sore muscles from Sunday, when I pitched onto some concrete steps, actually affected my posture; I had a hard time sitting up and breathing deeply unless I thought about it. Am much less stiff today, thank goodness.

My favorite of the pieces to sing remains "Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine," because it requires turning on a dime every few pages; I also adore the way Whitacre integrated Renaissance styles in one section, then uses the choir for onomatopoeia, or whatever it's called when voices imitate sounds when they're not using actual words to do it. Hey, there're performances of it on YouTube and imeem! Some of them quite messy in places, though, and of course the sound's a bit tinny.

My other favorite is "Five Hebrew Love Songs," which is just gorgeous. And for me, "When David Heard" is the biggest technical challenge, as we have long, long phrases of repeated triplets in wide intervals at various volumes that are quite tiring, especially when it's loud, loud, anguished at the end.

I have the feeling I'm going to be falling over at the end of these performances, but it's worth it for such exciting music. Because of our hookup with the Bach Festival, and a gig with the Chamber Orchestra, the rest of the year is all Bach, and Brahms' Requiem in February. It will make me very, very happy to sing those things, especially my very first time singing Bach's B Minor Mass this spring.

Eric Whitacre on MySpace has an nicely uncluttered site and several lovely choral pieces to which one can listen. None of the pieces my choir is doing is up--these are newer, and some of them are experimental operatic pieces.

Slumber-Song

Sleep; and my song shall build about your bed
A paradise of dimness. You shall feel
The folding of tired wings; and peace will dwell
Throned in your silence: and one hour shall hold
Summer, and midnight, and immensity
Lulled to forgetfulness. For, where you dream,
The stately gloom of foliage shall embower
Your slumbering thought with tapestries of blue.
And there shall be no memory of the sky,
Nor sunlight with its cruelty of swords.
But, to your soul that sinks from deep to deep
Through drowned and glimmering colour, Time shall be
Only slow rhythmic swaying; and your breath;
And roses in the darkness; and my love.

--Siegfried Sassoon

Finished my proposal for The Duke and the Pirate Queen! I'm sending it off today.

1. Worked on the short story instead of the outline this weekend, maybe 1000 words, but I figured out what the story's about.

2. Tripped on concrete stairs and now have some interesting bruising in straight lines.

3. Bought new ironing board cover at Sears after turning up my nose at less excellent ones at other places.

4. Mucous alien still draining. Communicating via Nyquil at night.

5. Friend from Buffalo is visiting this weekend, yay! Will have to juggle with pimping of Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Idyll

In the grey summer garden I shall find you
With day-break and the morning hills behind you.
There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings;
And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings.
Not from the past you'll come, but from that deep
Where beauty murmurs to the soul asleep:
And I shall know the sense of life re-born
From dreams into the mystery of morn
Where gloom and brightness meet. And standing there
Till that calm song is done, at last we'll share
The league-spread, quiring symphonies that are
Joy in the world, and peace, and dawn's one star.

--Siegfried Sassoon

Last night's wordcount: 1200 on the short story, a spinoff of the Duchess novel.

New crown on back molar.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I love the character flaws Charlie Crews has, because they make so much sense.

For example, holding a grudge against his ex-wife Jennifer and her new husband--she thought he lied to her about murder, she divorced him while he was in prison, and he never had a chance to defend himself. Meanwhile, she married someone else and had kids and is happy.

The grudge makes sense. Crews' way of showing that anger is the fun part. He holds the anger inside and lets it out only in rigidly controlled dribs and drabs, through petty acts of vengeance, like leaving a horse on their lawn or repeatedly stopping them for minor traffic violations (particularly the new husband, who so far as we know had nothing to do with his wife's former relationship). Once, the anger, or possibly the grief at what he's lost, erupts enough that he kisses her. I need to watch that scene again to ponder everything going on there.

It's also clear Jennifer has some anger and regret, mostly demonstrated in the interview clips that intersperse with the plot. She doesn't express these things to Charlie; she doesn't seem to feel she has the right, and even if she did, he might not believe it, as he was the injured party. She moved on. Charlie wasn't able to; however much he changed in twelve years of prison, he was also in a sort of stasis there (unaware of cell phones shrinking and gaining cameras, Instant Messaging, etc.). To him, I suspect the pain is all still fresh, a wound he can feel only now that the worst wound, being falsely accused, has been covered. By the last episode, he appears to be trying to move on, but I doubt that he'll be totally successful any time soon.

Alien mucous-monster still in residence, trying to communicate. Went to justinelavaworm's bookstore appearance last night anyway, and got to see her awesome boots in person. Oh, and her, too! Also met shvetufae!

Dentist tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn, to get my new crown put on. It's more fun than a barrel of monkeys around here.

I finally got to see Life by the simple expedient of buying the DVD set and enticing feklar to watch it with me. I've wanted to see it since I knew it had 1) Damien Lewis and 2) Damien Lewis playing a cop (Charlie Crews) who'd spent twelve years in prison for murders he didn't commit. Mmmm, angst.

I got all that and more; Sarah Shahi as the angsty partner (Dani Reese) who constantly plays straight woman to Crews' wacky Zen-ish koans and love for fruit, and Alan Arkin as Crews' prison buddy (Ted Earley) who was convicted of insider trading and now handles Crews' enormous financial settlement for his false accusation. (I still have no clue how someone in prison for insider training would end up in the same maximum security facility as an accused multiple-murderer, but I am overlooking that, the same tv-goggles way I overlook how Dr. Gregory House is still employed as a doctor.)

I'm looking forward to seeing more of Reese's angst in season two, and hoping that the tension between her and Crews continues atop what's become a bond of trust between partners. She had a lot of issues in season one that are just crying out for screen time.

As for Ted, he and Charlie are so married--at least in many of their conversations--and I hope he gets just as much or more screen time in the new season, not just as comic relief, but as a character in his own right. Did he learn anything from prison? How has he changed since his wheeling and dealing days?

A side note on financial settlements: barbarienne pointed out that Crews would only be due a financial settlement if evidence had been tampered with, not if he was simply wrongfully accused on the evidence presented. This is very interesting, given that the show's second season is supposed to delve further into a conspiracy that led to Crews being framed.

I watch for the characterization and the acting, which is all wonderful. At the moment, I'm still a bit dazzled by the way Lewis can demonstrate a man holding on to himself by his fingernails at the same time as he's spouting philosophy and picking up women on buses. It's clear that his sometimes fortune-cookie-like moments are really intended to distract himself from an emotional maelstrom. When he does achieve moments of Zen, it never lasts. It's a constant fight. And that's what makes it fun to watch.

Harlequin Enterprises Limited, the global leader in series romance and one of the world's leading publishers of women's fiction, announced the launch of Tell Harlequin--an online advisory panel that allows readers input into the direction of future novels by voicing their opinions and sharing their book experiences directly with the publisher.

This is not allergies. This is a cold. I wouldn't be this tired if it were allergies, and also the antihistamine would have worked.

Or perhaps a phlegm-alien is trying to communicate with me through my sinuses.

C.S. Harris, What Angels Fear: I loved this; it's a mystery set in Regency England, or rather on the brink of the Regency. The hero, Sebastian St. Cyr, is accused of murder and, using skills he gained as an intelligence officer on the Peninsula, decides the only way out is to find the real killer. It's very tautly structured and never lets you rest, because the information of one chapter might turn out to be a lie in the next. I also liked the intense romance element when St. Cyr is reunited with the courtesan who was his first love, and the hints of family secrets that I am sure will play out in future books of the series.

I haven't enjoyed a mystery this much since the last of Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series. I've ordered the next two in this series already.

Harris also writes romance as Candace Proctor; I plan to read a couple of her romances, as well.

Special thanks to badgermirlacca for the rec!