Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Playing

TRUMPET CONCERTOS
Sergei Nakariakov

Jesus Lopez-Cobos
Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne

-

- André Jolivet - Concertino for Trumpet, Piano, and Strings
- Henri Tomasi - Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra
- Johann Nepomuk Hummel - Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra in E-flat Major
- Joseph Haydn - Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major


MADELEINE ALBRIGHT
Fascism: A Warning

We cannot, of course, expect every leader to possess the wisdom of Lincoln or Mandela’s largeness of soul. But when we think about what questions might be most useful to ask, perhaps we should begin by discerning what our prospective leaders believe it worthwhile for us to hear.

Do they cater to our prejudices by suggesting that we treat people outside our ethnicity, race, creed or party as unworthy of dignity and respect?

Do they want us to nurture our anger toward those who we believe have done us wrong, rub raw our grievances and set our sights on revenge?

Do they encourage us to have contempt for our governing institutions and the electoral process?

Do they seek to destroy our faith in essential contributors to democracy, such as an independent press, and a professional judiciary?

Do they exploit the symbols of patriotism, the flag, the pledge in a conscious effort to turn us against one another?

If defeated at the polls, will they accept the verdict, or insist without evidence they have won?

Do they go beyond asking about our votes to brag about their ability to solve all problems put to rest all anxieties and satisfy every desire?

Do they solicit our cheers by speaking casually and with pumped up machismo about using violence to blow enemies away?

Do they echo the attitude of Musolini: “The crowd doesn’t have to know, all they have to do is believe and submit to being shaped.”?

Or do they invite us to join with them in building and maintaining a healthy center for our society, a place where rights and duties are apportioned fairly, the social contract is honored, and all have room to dream and grow.

The answers to these questions will not tell us whether a prospective leader is left or right-wing, conservative or liberal, or, in the American context, a Democrat or a Republican. However, they will tell us much that we need to know about those wanting to lead us, and much also about ourselves.

For those who cherish freedom, the answers will provide grounds for reassurance, or, a warning we dare not ignore.



Daily Painting

Robert Motherwell
UNTITLED [IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE] (1941)

Monday, October 14, 2024

Watching
HorrorFest 2024

WHEN EVIL LURKS
[CUANDO ACECHA LA MALDAD]

Demián Rugna
Argentina, 2023


Playing

Nicola Benedetti
HOMECOMING - A SCOTTISH FANTASY

Rory Macdonald
Julie Fowlis, Phil Cunningham, Aly Bain
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra


BERTOLT BRECHT
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

If we could learn to look instead of gawking,
We'd see the horror in the heart of farce,
If only we could act instead of talking,
We wouldn't always end up on our arse.
This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;
Don't yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.



Daily Painting

Carole Vanderlinden
ESCARMOUCHE [SKIRMISH] (2019)

Sunday, October 13, 2024

Watching
HorrorFest 2024 Edition

CURE
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 1997



Playing

Nino Rota
SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN C MAJOR

Ole Kristian Ruud
Hannu Koivula
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra

-

- Symphony No. 3 in C Major (1957)
- Concerto Festivo in F Major (1958-61)
- Le Molière Imaginaire - Ballet Suite (1976/78)


LEON WIESELTIER
Kaddish

Surely it is foolish to hate facts. The struggle against the past is a futile struggle. Acceptance seems so much more like wisdom. I know all this. And yet there are some facts that one must never, never accept. This is not merely an emotional matter. The reason that one must hate certain facts is that one must prepare for the possibility of their return. 

If the past were really past, then one might permit oneself an attitude of acceptance, and come away from the study of history with a feeling of serenity. But the past is often only an earlier instantiation of the evil in our hearts. It is not precisely the case that history repeats itself. We repeat history—or we do not repeat it, if we choose to stand in the way of its repetition. For this reason, it is one of the purposes of the study of history that we learn to oppose it.



Daily Painting

Odilon Redon
BUDDHA WALKING AMONG THE FLOWERS (1905)

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Watching
HorrorFest 2024 Edition

THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT
Michael Felker
USA, 2024

Playing

CLUB MOD on allclassical.org

Hosted by Andrea Murray

Playing

Green Day
DOOKIE

Daily Painting

Rasoul Ashtary
MEN ARE LUNATICS IN THE DESERT (2022)

Friday, October 11, 2024

Watching
HorrorFest 2024

TERRIFIER

Damien Leone
USA, 2016

Watching
HorrorFest 2024

ALL HALLOW'S EVE
Damien Leone
USA, 2013


Playing

Philip Glass
AKHNATEN

Karen Kamensek

Zachary James, Richard Bernstein, Aaron Blake, Will Liverman, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Disella Lárusdóttir, J'Nai Bridges,

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra & Chorus


TREVOR NOAH
On The View - October 10, 2024

What does it say about a country when the people feel thy need to find scapegoats?



Daily Painting

Vincent van Gogh
THE GARDEN OF SAINT PAUL'S HOSPITAL (LEAF-FALL) (1889)

Thursday, October 10, 2024

Watching
HorrorFest 2024

STOPMOTION
Robert Morgan
UK, 2024

America First?

Playing

Johannes Brahms
PIANO QUINTET IN F MINOR, OP. 34
STRING QUARTET NO. 1 IN C MINOR, OP. 51
STRING QUARTET NO. 3 IN B FLAT MAJOR, OP. 67

Takács Quartet
András Schiff

 

WILHELM RÖPKE
The German Question

Whether in Bolshevism, Fascism, or Nazism, we meet continually with the forcible and ruthless usurpation of the power of the State by a minority drawn from the masses, resting on their support, flattering them and threatening them at the same time; a minority led by a charismatic leader and brazenly identifying itself with the State.

It is a tyranny that does away with all the guarantees of the constitutional State, constituting as the only party the minority that has created it, furnishing that party with far-reaching judicial and administrative functions, and permitting within the whole life of the nation no groups, no activities, no opinions, no associations or religions, no publications, no educational institutions, no business transactions, that are not dependent on the will of the Government.

Daily Painting

Jakub Schikaneder
SYMBOLICKÝ VÝJEV [SYMBOLLIC SCENE} (1895-97)

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Watching HorrorFest 2024

THIRST
[박쥐]

Park Chan-wook
Korea, 2009

Of course. 

MAGAts wouldn't buy their blasphemy from anywhere else.

More here.



Playing

FACCE D'AMORE

Jakub Józef Orlinski
Il Pomo d'Oro

Théâtre du Capitole Toulouse
July 21, 2021

-

Arias by Nicola Matteis, Giovanni Antonio Boretti, Giovanni Bononcini, Francesco Bartolomeo Conti, Luca Antonio Predieri, Pietro Antonio Locatelli, Giuseppe Maria Orlandini, Nicola Fago, George Frideric Handel


SAMUEL BECKETT
Malone Dies

Let us say before I go any further, that I forgive nobody. I wish them all an atrocious life in the fires of icy hell and in the execrable generations to come.



Daily Painting

Júlio Pomar
LUSITÂNIA NO BAIRRO LATINO (1985)
[LUSITANIA IN THE LATIN QUARTER]

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Watching
HorrorFest 2024

IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH
Sergio Bergonzelli
Italy-Spain, 1970

Absolute lunatic. 

The very best the State of Georgia has to offer.

Playing

PJ Harvey
THE HOPE SIX DEMOLITION PROJECT


EDNA O'BRIEN
The Light of Evening

Never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature’s assiduousness and human cruelty.



Daily Painting

Helen Frankenthaler
CRUSADES (1976)

Monday, October 7, 2024

Watching
HorrorFest 2024

IL DEMONIO
Brunello Rondi
Italy, 1963

Playing

Dinosaur Jr.
WHERE YOU BEEN


ALICE CORBIN HENDERSON
“From the Stone Age”

Long ago some one carved me in the semblance of a god.
I have forgot now what god I was meant to represent.
I have no consciousness now but of stone, sunlight, and rain;
The sun baking my skin of stone, the wind lifting my hair;
The sun’s light is hot upon me,
The moon’s light is cool,
Casting a silver-laced pattern of light and dark
Over the planes of my body:
My thoughts now are the thoughts of a stone,
My substance now is the substance of life itself;
I have sunk deep into life as one sinks into sleep;
Life is above me, below me, around me,
Moving through my pores of stone—
It does not matter how small the space you pack life in,
That space is as big as the universe—
Space, volume, and the overtone of volume
Move through me like chords of music,
Like the taste of happiness in the throat,
Which you fear to lose, though it may choke you—
(In the cities this is not known,
For space there is emptiness,
And time is torment) . . . . .
Since I became a stone
I have no need to remember anything—
Everything is remembered for me;
I live and I think and I dream as a stone,
In the warm sunlight, in the grey rain;
All my surfaces are touched to softness
By the light fingers of the wind,
The slow dripping of rain:
My body retains only faintly the image
It was meant to represent,
I am more beautiful and less rigid,
I am a part of space,
Time has entered into me,
Life has passed through me—
What matter the name of the god I was meant to represent?



Daily Painting

Ralph Steadman
PORTRAIT OF GEORGE ORWELL (1995)

Sunday, October 6, 2024

Watching
HorrorFest 2024

MONOLITH
Matt Vesely
Australia, 2022

Reading

Susan Sontag
ON PHOTOGRAPHY

Playing

Bonnie "Prince" Billy
KEEPING SECRETS WILL DESTROY YOU


SUSAN SONTAG
On Photography

For [Diane] Arbus, both freaks and Middle America were equally exotic: a boy marching in a pro-war parade and a Levittown housewife were as alien as a dwarf or a transvestite; lower-middle-class suburbia was as remote as Times Square, lunatic asylums, and gay bars. Arbus's work expressed her turn against what was public (as she experienced it), conventional, safe, reassuring--and boring--in favor of what was private, hidden, ugly, dangerous, and fascinating. These contrasts, now, seem almost quaint. What is safe no long monopolizes public imagery. The freakish is no longer a private zone, difficult of access. People who are bizarre, in sexual disgrace, emotionally vacant are seen daily on the newsstands, on TV, in the subways. Hobbesian man roams the streets, quite visible, with glitter in his hair.



Daily Painting

Joan Miró
WOMEN, BIRDS, AND A STAR (1949)

Saturday, October 5, 2024

Watching
HorrorFest 2024

THIRST
[ÞORSTI]

Björn Leó Brynjarsson
Iceland, 2019

Playing

CLUB MOD on allclassical.org

Hosted by Andrea Murray

Playing

Cindy Wilson
CHANGE


SUSAN SONTAG
On Photography

To suffer is one thing; another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. It can also corrupt them. Once one has seen such images, one has started down the road of seeing more - and more. Images transfix. Images anesthetize.



Daily Painting

David Park
DAPHNE (1959)

Friday, October 4, 2024

Watching
HorrorFest 2024

GOOD BOY
Viljar Bøe
Norway, 2022


Playing

Pancho Vladigerov
STRING CONCERTOS
Capriccio Edition Vol. 3

Pancho Vladigerov

Georgi Badev, Dina Schneidermann, Emil Karmilarov, Ventseslav Nikolov, Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra

-

- Violin Concerto No. 1 in F minor, Op. 11
- Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 61
- Burlesque, Op. 14
- Bulgarian Paraphrases, Op. 18
- Rhapsody Vardar, Op. 16
- Bulgarian Dances, Op. 23
- Concert Fantasy for Cello & Orchestra, Op. 35


MARGARET ATWOOD
“Frogless”

The sore trees cast their leaves
too early. Each twig pinching
shut like a jabbed clam.
Soon there will be a hot gauze of snow
searing the roots.

Booze in the spring runoff,
pure antifreeze;
the stream worms drunk and burning.
Tadpoles wrecked in the puddles.

Here comes an eel with a dead eye
grown from its cheek.
Would you cook it?
You would if.

The people eat sick fish
because there are no others.
Then they get born wrong.

This is not sport, sir.
This is not good weather.
This is not blue and green.

This is home.
Travel anywhere in a year, five years,
and you’ll end up here.



Daily Painting

Ibrahim El-Salahi
ALPHABET NO. 2 (1962/1968)

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Watching
HorrorFest 2024

RONGGENG KEMATIAN
Verdi Solaiman
Indonesia, 2024


Reading

Maria Popova
THE UNIVERSE IN VERSE
15 Portals to Wonder Through Science and Poetry

Illustrations by Ofra Amit

Daily Painting

Helen Frankenthaler
SUMMER PICTURE (1959)