Category: Uncategorized
Spamalot
I saw Spamalot last night. As a devoted Monty Python fan, I knew I would enjoy it. I only hoped my expectations were not too high. They weren’t. It delivered. It provided the appropriate evocations of the source material and built from there. I particularly liked the thowaway line, “It’s got lovely plumage,” which harkens to my favorite skit, the “Dead Parrot.”
What struck me was how effective the show was at providing the best Broadway emotional manipulation, all the while ridiculing the Broadway conventions. The soaring showtunes about how silly showtunes are. I also felt uneasy about the gay and Jew jokes. Can the gays and Jews out there give me post hoc permission to laugh at those? Of course, similarly, I always feel a little uneasy about enjoying the song, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” since the original was sung by Jesus hanging on the cross, compete with leg kicks. Still, it was a real high point of the show. And the entire audience sang along.
It was a great show and fun to see it in its natural habitat, here in London.
St. Martin in the Fields
I attended “Choral Evensong” at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, next door to the hotel. I have found that, when I travel to cities with a high proportion of tourists, I gravitate to churches. It’s the one place when authenticity reigns. Such was the case this evening. It was actually a special event in that it was the last service at the Church until at least September, when the renovation is scheduled to be completed. There was a bittersweet feel to the proceedings, but the music was very beautiful. See the following clip for a little taste.
At the clonclusion of the service the choir led the congregation out of the Church for the last time. The choir sang as people exited and gathered in a semi-circle around the door. Then the pastor very deliberately closed the door, locked it and turned and embraced a colleague. All but the embraces is show next.
London
OK, Im back, after 6 months away. My last post was in Berlin. Today’s post is from London. So, I’ve straddle the two major WW II capitols. I’m typing this on the banks of the Thames.
I arrived in London this morning and the weather is, well, like London. Cold and overcast. I’m staying at the St. Martins Lane Hotel, a very “new wavey” kind of place, with spare furnishing and wierd videos playing in the elevators. The staff is very accommodating, but I did run across the dimmest clerk I think I’ve ever seen. When I first arrived, the concierge told me that Trafalgar Square was close by. So, I dropped my luggage and came back down and, since the concierge was not at his desk, I asked the clerk at the reception desk where Trafalgar Square was. She seemed very puzzled, pulled out a map and scanned it very closely for a few minutes, scouring both sides of the Thames River and finally, uncertainly, sent me to the right going out of the hotel and directed me to an intersection and down a main street. I proceded with great suspicion.
At the intersection, there was a sign for Trafalgar Square pointing in the opposite direction, back from whence I came. Turns out that the Square was to the left, within sight of the front door of the hotel. I don’t know how this woman finds her way to work in the morning.
The Square was filled with people, but the most striking feature in the statue of Alison Lapper, which presides prominently over everything except the towerring stature of Trafalgar himself. It is a massive shite statue of a pregnant, handicapped woman. I remember seeing a news report about this stature some years ago, but was taken aback when I saw it, given its size and pronience. My picture is posted, but you should click here to learn more about it.
Another amazing discovery is the fact that the hotel is next door to St. Martin in the Fields. It is currently being renovated, so its covered with scaffolding. I’ve got quite a few classical CDs of music by Neville Mariner at St. Martin in the Fields. I’d always pictured some buccolic setting for this church, not plopped in the middle of London’s major intersection with cars, trucks and busses barreling by. Another bubble burst.
There is a fantastic concert being held tonight with Mozart, Back and Vivaldi. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of buying a ticket to the theater before leaving the hotel. Bummer! But they do have choir music on Sunday, so I will catch that.
As for the theater, it won’t be so bad. Front row balcony for Spamalot.
Mozart
Johann Sebastian Bach
J
.S. Bach is my favorite composer. I discovered the breadth and depth of his music with the help of Prof. Robert Greenberg through his Teaching Company audio lectures. Bach’s music is intensely spiritual and moving. His St. Matthew Passion can bring you to tears. The Goldberg Variations sound very modern, almost jazz-like. And the Brandenberg Concertos are among the most familiar classical pieces in existence, but they always sound fresh. And this is just a tiny piece of his life’s work. During the time he was the capellmeister at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, he had to produce a new classical piece every week for that Sunday’s services over the course of three years, a stunning accomplishment. I recently heard advertised a CD collection of all his work. It consists of 140 disks.
So, one benefit of the misguided advice found in the guidebook referenced in the previous post is that I frantically searched for something outside of Berlin to visit before I left the U.S. I discovered that Leipzig is only an hour train ride from Berlin. Moreover, St. Thomas Church continues to hold services and there was one at 3 pm on the 
Saturday of my arrival. So, I landed in Berlin, dropped my luggage at the hotel and immediately set off for the train station to travel to Leipzig.
In Leipzig, my taxi driver spoke no English, so I took out my biography of Bach and pointed to the picture on the cover. He quickly delivered me to St. Thomas Church where there was a small line for the service. I paid two dollars for a program and found a seat in the middle of the church, which was filling up fast.
What followed was a full Lutheran service with a short reading, a moderate length homily of which I understood not a word and lots and lots of music. Much of which was composed right on that very site.
I have pictures of the visit but the blog is not letting me post them. Hope to be able to in the future.
Marshall Nails It
The best thing about blogs is that, every once and a while, you find some writing that perfectly articulates feelings or opinions you have that you can quite find the words to express. Josh Marshall did that for me today in his blog in describing a disheartening reality check that weighs down my optimistic anticipation of a good day for Democrats next Tuesday. Here’s the key paragraph:
“I hope that when the political history of the last half century is written it will show, as it should, that the Republicans engaged in a brand of divisive electoral politics that pitted Americans against each other: white against black, men against women, rich against poor, native born against immigrant, straight against gay. Republicans deserve to be tarred by history for exploiting our weaknesses, our prejudices, and our lesser selves for their own political gain. But those are still our weaknesses and our prejudices. We own them. And it is our lesser selves that have succumbed to the Republican political pitch and been willing to be exploited. Removing the Republicans from power will only be a temporary fix unless we fundamentally fix ourselves so that no one, no party, no movement can exploit those same weaknesses again.”
I have been saying that my fondest wish in life, beside all the personal stuff about kids and family and stuff, is to live long enough to see the judgment of history on the Bush Presidency. Can there possibly have been a worse President?
Another Divine Rumination
It is fascinating how many bloggers found, like me, divine implications in the Foley scandal. Here’s one that goes beyond the Republicans and conservatives, as per my post below and indicts, appropriately I think, the entire American populous. Very insightful….and sad.
