sandy

likin': basic channel - bcd-2 (2008) part 1 part 2



some of these songs are borderline what you'd hear walking into an express men's store. others are very excellent.

basic channel - mutism
cyrus - presence (edit)

mystery album art:


lisa germano - magical neighbors


sandy:


high places - sandy feat
caribou - sandy
beaches - sandy

blue sky

the harmony of the spheres told me this is what it sounds like when a star implodes on itself:

1.12.2009 Koko, London
1.20.2009 Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom, NY
1.21.2009 Bowery Ballroom, NY
1.25.2009 BBC's Freak Zone Sessions
5.18.2009 Royal Oak Music Theatre, Royal Oak, MI

animal collective - what would i want sky (5.25.09 roseland theater, portland, or)


personally, i think it sounds like a phoenix rising from its own ashes. time will tell whose metaphor is more apt.

closely related: grateful dead - unbroken chain

form of magic

"painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange hostile world and us, a way of seizing the power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires." /pablo picasso

picasso footage

via
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deerhunter blog - micromix 16 (mixed by bradford cox) via

1. animal collective - chocolate girl (live on bbc)
2. the dovers - what am i going to do
3. the chills - pink frost
4. coil - the avatars
5. jet harris and tony meehan - some people
6. b-52's - theme from a nude beach
7. birigwa - okusosola mukule*
8. black sabbath - solitude
9. growing - disconfirm
10. beach boys - he gives speeches
11. white magic - day

*most excellent.

posted to his blog right before the ac micromixes. and another song called galaxy cruisers, of which he says,

Here's a song I made on the bus ("Galaxy Cruiser") its for the Animal Collective dudes and Braddax, Fitz, & Chris.

baybay

scientific american mind asks alison gopnik, "what's it like to be a baby?"

If you look at baby’s attention you see a related but very different picture. Babies and young children are much worse at intentionally focusing their attention than adults. Instead, they seem to pay attention to anything that’s unexpected or interesting – anything they can learn from. We say that children are bad at paying attention but we really mean that they’re bad at not paying attention – they easily get distracted by anything interesting. And young brains are much more generally “plastic”, more flexible and better at learning than adult brains. Young brains are bathed in the cholinergic transmitters that enhance attention in adults, but the inhibitory transmitters that damp consciousness down haven’t yet come on line. If you put all that together it suggests that babies consciousness is more like a lantern than a spotlight – that it illumines the entire world around them.

animal collective - baby day
sharon jones & the dap-kings - nobody's baby

where the wild things are

apparently spike jonze cast 10-year-old noah lennox as max:

long term trip in the works

olympic national park



specifically, the hoh rainforest:







within the next few months, i do declare. i'll be listening to this:

taken by trees - east of eden



taken by trees - watch the waves
taken by trees - my boys

and this:

src - the angel song (1969)

feel like dancing

taken by trees recording in pakistan:



fan video of grizzly bear's "two weeks:"



more of this:

foxy

missin' the foxter.

last post

"the fire which seems extinguished often slumbers beneath the ashes." /pierre corneille
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via ongakubaka:

beaches - beaches

similar to: black mountain, sun dial, older spaced out hendrix



This is one of the more enjoyable all female bands I've heard in a very long time. They're five badass "beaches" from Australia who create churning krauty psych-rock jams. Mastered by Bob Weston of The Volcano Suns/Shellac, this album oozes positive vibes, and minimal vocals allows the music to shine through. Solid from start to finish. A great summer road trip album.

also, i decided just now after a lot of contemplating that this will be the last post of this blog. it's too torn between my own personal doings and music with a much wider appeal than all of that. there's too much amazing music out there that'd be better experienced alongside a proverb or enlightening idea instead of personal ramblings on my part. i'm starting a new one very soon that will feature a quote with a matching song. sort of like said the gramophone, but less watered-down and more prophetic. just simple and restrained, because simplicity and restraint are the new superfluity. except when it comes to cookies.
--


more norml ads

wow, we gotta try that steak

nytimes profiles past winners of top chef workin in new york:

With its curving wood bar and vases overflowing with freshly cut flowers, the neighborhood restaurant is stylish but comfortable — not the sort of place to eat at every night, but the favorite around the corner saved for special occasions. Perilla seems to occupy a different world from the scene at Centro Vinoteca, which is just how Mr. Dieterle wants it...

And Mr. Dieterle, for his part, quickly learned that investors were more interested in a solid business plan than a star turn on a reality show, and that his winnings wouldn’t go far.

“It’s kind of like being handed a case of vodka and saying, go open a bar,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”

very closely related: patton oswalt - great food is cooked by psychos (from werewolves and lollipops)

i read the other day some verses

"if our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. if the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. if the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of boston or new york, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. a sturdy lad from new hampshire or vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. he walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. he has not one chance, but a hundred chances." /ralph waldo emerson, self-reliance
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i've been reading a lot of emerson lately, and i watched into the wild yesterday. as i read self-reliance and other essays from his first series i'm reminded of how often a good block of text can easily substitute for the company of any number of people. to come into contact with thoughts you've had as explained by someone hundreds or thousands of years ago is quite an intimate experience, indeed. however, in emerson's perspective, at least, a life is really not worth living alone with the company of only books and the ideas of people with whom you will never be able to converse or challenge. into the wild parallels that as chris mccandless writes in a book, as his final diary entry, "happiness only real when shared." intellectual fulfillment and deeper universal understanding may come with solitude, but true happiness can really only be experienced in the shared places between common-minded people.
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pur ti miro, from l'incoronazione di poppea, is the first song i remember hearing in my music appreciation class focused on opera a couple years ago. originally it was sung by two castrati, or dudes whose you-know-whats had been you-know-whatted in order to preserve their prepubescent, pure voices. these days, since no male opera singer in his right mind would do that in order to conserve for himself a contralto of that calibur--not to mention, it's been an outdated opera modus operandi for centuries--the song is performed by two women, usually. all the clips on youtube of such performances are weirdly sparse, and at least one of the women is usually outfitted in skintight vinyl. it distracts from the intended mood somewhat, to say the very least.

ANYWAY the original song that i heard was a simple arrangement of a couple strings and a harpsichord with the two men singing this incredibly, and intimately, interwoven melody of love and dedication. each voice flies in accordance with the other like two birds swooping inches from the water as they careen through a brook (or some shit like that). it is supremely romantic--alomst too pretty to listen to in parts, but i listen to it on repeat, anyway, because it really is so beautiful. i could easily say this duet revolutionized the way i listened to and understood music from that point onward.



so, with that, comes animal collective's leaf house. i've always considered it one of my favorite ac songs, and probably my favorite song showcasing avey's and panda's harmonies and how lush they can become when finagled through mixers and multipliers and all sorts of what-nots.

it sounds amazing live. i'll be seeing ac in milwaukee on may 19, which is thirty-five days from today. five weeks is the length of time i spent in spain as a teenager, and they were the best of my life, still. everything else after that has been set against that initial bar of living abroad at fifteen. if five weeks could change my life and inspire me to the degree that living in spain did, i'm sure i can muster up some fireworks to kickstart my life yet again before experiencing ac live. good grief, i get goosebumps just thinking about it. bonnaroo is twenty-three days later. HUZZAH!

the happiness project

"a friend is a person with whom i may be sincere. before him i may think aloud. i am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that i may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another." /ralph waldo emerson



animal collective - grass

we do the dance up on the plains
then i shake your shoulders
you push me down into the grains
who rubs our noses in the night?
we do, we do.


--
charles spearin - the happiness project



Meaning seems to be our hunger but we should still try to taste our food. I wanted to see if I could blur the line between speaking and singing - life and art? - and write music based on these accidental melodies. So I had some musician friends play, as close as they could, these neighbourhood melodies on different instruments (Mrs. Morris on the tenor saxophone, Marisa on the harp, my daughter Ondine on the violin, etc.) and then I arranged them as though they were songs. /charles spearin, co-founder of broken social scene and do, make, say, think

tripping halfway up

this is a piece of flash fiction i wrote a couple weeks ago.
--

      franklin williamouse escaped indoors after a wild of bees chased after him.
      "whooo! did you see how hot it was outside, ma? you could poach an egg on the pavement."
      franklin mussed out his hair like there were bats tousled inside, and flakes of dust and detritus flushed into the air, illuminated for a brief moment by the voyeuristic sunlight lurking past the shades through the window next to the front door.
      "take off your shoes! they're covered in filth!" his mother cried at the sight of her child. franklin threw one ruddy boot after the other onto the mat next to the front door and darted upstairs, tripping halfway up.
       ms. williamouse's shoulders rose above her head as she leaned into the sink that housed the dirty dishes. sweat dripped down her nose onto her yellow apron, somewhat ochre these days. she sighed a willow tree and muttered this way or that about why her life hadn't come to fruition as she imagined.
      "a widow at such a young age." sunlight dipped under the top of the windowsill and imposed its way into the kitchen. it cast a beam of particles in the air that drifted and rested on her, only to fly right away or become invisible in the beam's unilluminating absence. upstairs, franklin romped around his bedroom, chasing with his wide eyes the bees that ran him indoors after a spell. he bustled from one window to the next as the one-act play of bees ensued.
      ms. williamouse cast her gaze to the ground beside her, glancing peripherally at her grandmother, mrs. williamouse. she was still. her lucid blue eyes only listened, now. more than four score and seven years ago she was born with a slightly doughnut complexion and, even as a woman, garnered physical similarities to abraham lincoln in his later days. in her youth she resembled something of a slightly less feminine lincoln. she was an unfortunate looking woman, from what she'd been told by her peers. ms. williamouse sighed a steam engine and went back to scrubbing the dishes, which would be recycled for dinner.
      "it's not right," as the food wouldn't clear off the plate. "it's not fair for my own sister to have been widowed at such a young age by her husband." she placed the unclean dish on a towel, and sank forward back into her shoulders. "i don't know how to help her."
      mrs. williamouse's hands stacked like paper on top of one another. her mouth, closed like a clamshell, was bulbous and puckered inward with roughly the same grisly formation, somewhat beautiful in its unabashed nature.
    "i don't know what to say to help her," ms. williamouse offered to no one. "i don't know what to do. nana, i don't know what you want me to do with you!"
      franklin had quieted and moved to the top of the stairs, peeking from behind the lathed wooden beams. his mother didn't notice him, because she doesn't notice what she doesn't expect to see. she turned now toward her grandmother. the sinking of her shoulders had transfered itself to her face.
      "i should give her my happiness, but it died with franklin. i should give you my home to stay in, but i can't take care of you in either one of our states. i don't know how i can help anyone with all of these grievances upon me! i don't know what to do!" her voice quivered to the frequency of her shivering skin; the sun burned through the kitchen window onto her back and the bow tie of her yellow apron. franklin watched.
      mrs. williamouse, with two or three slow twitches of her facial muscles, turned her head toward her granddaughter. she squinted into the light, slowly and with an efficient effort.
      "sunshine, happiness may be well and good for the body," her eyes almost closed shut now, "but it's grief that develops the powers of the mind." she reversed her slow twitches and averted her gaze back to empty space. ms. williamouse stared at her grandmother for a moment, her eyes wide as the drying dinner plates. she had more dishes to clean than had been cleaned at that point, and saw that franklin's shoes had left spatters of dried mud and leaves on the wooden floor next to the front door. she pulled the white drape past the window in front of her and returned to scrubbing. the plates dried a little more slowly in the shade.

there is so much

"before i go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. one should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. this philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when i saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true. " /f. scott fitzgerald, the crack-up (1936)


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associated press reports that the obama administration plans to reverse bush's stance on gay rights at the UN:

According to negotiators, the Bush team had concerns that those parts could commit the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In some states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.
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yale university is offering several semesters of lectures streamed online for free. courses include intro psych (which i'm about halfway through), intro to ancient greek history, philosophy of death, intro to the old testament, and others.

the opencourseware consortium has dozens more links to universities around the globe that stream thousands of lectures for free. open educational resources is a similar service.
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the new york times examines music and memory:

This process, of memory formation by neuronal entrainment, helps explain why some of life’s offerings weasel in easily and then refuse to be spiked. Music, for example. “The brain has a strong propensity to organize information and perception in patterns, and music plays into that inclination,” said Michael Thaut, a professor of music and neuroscience at Colorado State University. “From an acoustical perspective, music is an overstructured language, which the brain invented and which the brain loves to hear.”
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reuters says passion for opera is love at first sight:

Then the learning begins, with fans taking a number of years to discover how to truly appreciate opera fully.

"Fans get hooked when they are still outsiders, before having an active apparatus to interpret the experience, or are thoroughly socialized in what constitutes the enjoyment and how they should decode it," Benzecry said in a statement.

"Learning through interaction happens not at the beginning, as expected, but as the logical continuation that helps to shape the initial attraction."
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i finished the great gatsby a few days ago, and read the curious case of benjamin button this morning.

closely related: midlake - roscoe

whenever i was a child, i wondered what if my name had changed into something more productive, like roscoe, and born in 1891 waiting with my aunt roselyn.

lots more f. scott fitzgerald e-texts here.
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fifty and sunny

the blagoblognet gobbled up my post yesterday, which introduced a new mix featuring songs heavy on heavy synths. i will remake that later. right now it's fifty degrees on a sunday afternoon and i'm enjoying some new, peaceful music that audibly reflects the buds on the leaves starting to form on the tree outside my living room window. this lil' collection of ten songs is somewhat of a prelude to my impending road trip to california.

1. great lake swimmers - still /lost channels
2. chad vangaalen - city of electric light /soft airplane
3. stephen steinbrink - when it's easier /ugly unknowns
4. elizabeth cotten - wilson rag /freight train and other north carolina folk songs and tunes
5. geotic - middle school sleepaways (yosemite) /eyes
6. don peris - jubilee /go when the morning shineth
7. little joy - don't watch me dancing /little joy
8. stuart and caan - i wanted so long /the mayfly dance
9. vetiver - strictly rule /tight knit
10. bonnie "prince" billy - i don't belong to anyone /beware

download it here.

in other news: bonnaroo is 88 days away. to continue my long tradition of vaguely relevant celebrations, i've been watching bugs bunny, tom, and jerry perform liszt's hungarian rhapsody no. 2, which happen to be some of the greatest classical music videos of all time. i'm not sure what would even compete.

mini morning (re)mixes

some fine remixes for this dreary tuesday. i've included a new yeasayer song because everything they do is a remix of something else. enjoy the following music betwixt images of warhol and basquiat's powers combined.

feist + ed droste - service bell
elliott smith - satellite (helio sequence remix)
yeasayer - tightrope (live)
bruce springsteen - i'm on fire (cousin cole's bad desire mix)
black lips - veni, vidi, vici (diplo remix)
dj dangermouse + jay z - dirt off your shoulder
the knife - marble house (dave sitek remix)





1. four tet - hilarious movie of the 90s (manitoba remix)
2. beck - dark star (dave sitek remix)
3. roger o'donnell - for the truth in you (four tet remix)
4. professor murder - free stress test (harkin & wolf mix)
5. the roots - don't say nuthin' (valiant remix)


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highly notable albums of late:

great lake swimmers - lost channels


bonnie "prince" billy - beware


beirut - march of the zapotec/realpeople holland ep


various artists - dark was the night (disc one)
various artists - dark was the night (disc two)


here are the notable tracks:

and here are all the tracks:

Disc 1
01. Knotty Pine (Dirty Projectors and David Byrne)
02. Cello Song (The Books and José González) [orig. Nick Drake]
03. Train Song (Feist and Ben Gibbard) [orig. Vashti Bunyan ]
04. Brackett, WI (Bon Iver)
05. Deep Blue Sea (Grizzly Bear)
06. So Far Around The Bend (The National and Nico Muhly)
07. Tightrope (Yeasayer)
08. Feeling Good (My Brightest Diamond)
09. Dark Was The Night (Kronos Quartet) [orig. Blind Willie Johnson]
10. I Was Young When I Left Home (Antony and Bryce Dessner) [orig. Bob Dylan]
11. Big Red Machine (Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner)
12. Sleepless (The Decemberists)
13. Stolen Houses (Die) (Iron & Wine)
14. Service Bell (Grizzly Bear and Feist)
15. You Are The Blood (Sufjan Stevens)

Disc 2
01. Well-Alright (Spoon)
02. Lenin (Arcade Fire)
03. Mimizan (Beirut)
04. El Caporal (My Morning Jacket)
05. Inspiration Information (Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings) [orig. Shuggie Otis]
06. With A Girl Like You (Dave Sitek) [orig. The Troggs]
07. Blood Pt 2 (Buck 65, Sufjan Stevens and Serengeti) [orig. The Castanets]
08. Hey, Snow White (The New Pornographers) [orig. Destroyer]
09. Gentle Hour (Yo La Tengo) [orig. Snapper]
10. Another Saturday (Stuart Murdoch)
11. Happiness (Riceboy Sleeps)
12. Amazing Grace (Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues)
13. The Giant of Illinois (Andrew Bird) [orig. Handsome Family]
14. Lua (Conor Oberst and Gillian Welch)
15. When The Road Runs Out (Blonde Redhead and Devastations)
16. Love vs. Porn (Kevin Drew)

andrew bird - noble beast (two-disc version)


vetiver - tight knit


and for good measure, six organs of admittance - shelter from the ash

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in other news: 100 days to bonnaroo!



grizzly bear, animal collective, tv on the radio. and all the others above. heavens to betsy it's going to be one fancy parade indeed.
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hey: if you're not a member of imeem, go sign up right now. it's free, and you can only listen to thirty-second clips of songs if you don't join. it's the only music site i've found that lets you upload unlimited quantities of music and tweak playlists to your own likings. the ONLY thing that sucks about imeem (and it does suck a lot) is that they tend to stick little adverts in between playlisted songs, so it fucks with the flow of good music. other than that, no emails or annoyances.

words on film

"theater is simply what cannot be expressed by any other means; a complexity of words, movements, gestures that convey a vision of the world inexpressible in any other way." /eugene ionesco

charter is not a great internet provider, but i now have unlimited bandwidth that i can use to acquire media of all sorts. it's kind of incredible to think about how much happier and productive i am when i can consume all the culture i want. someone said to me, in so many words not too long ago, that movies are just movies, and not to be taken to heart when contemplating life and life's decisions. after considering that platitude for a while, my only response is that the same can easily be said of music and literature, which is to say that if you can't personally find a reason to apply the great gatsby or rigoletto or the godfather to your life, it's your grand loss, and that is sad to me.

"we do not go [to the theater] like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it." /charles lamb

in the past few days, i've watched "doubt," "frost/nixon," "slumdog millionaire," "milk," and "the wrestler," to round out the new film category. for good measure, i've also been repeating some old favorites, like "groundhog day," "shawshank redemption," "amelie," "reservoir dogs," and "adaptation" (to compare meryl streep's performance with "doubt"). every single one of these movies adds something to my life, and adds something novel every time i watch each. "frost/nixon" and "the wrestler" (maybe even "groundhog day," to a certain extent), stick loneliness square in the limelight, and that's a theme i love to be explored in film. it's virtually impossible to get a decent film made entirely on one's own, so to see such a universal downfall of the human condition conveyed so well in film is actually a joy to see and with which to empathize. after all, negative emotions are no reason to get down on life. avey tare says, "either way you look at it, you have your fits, i have my fits, but feeling is good." he also says, "i can't hold what's in my hand / don't do any good to say this isn't what i planned." no doubt.

"true tragedy may be defined as a dramatic work in which the outward failure of the principal personage is compensated for by the dignity and greatness of his character." /joseph wood krutch

i told a friend recently that nixon's downfall, as portrayed in "frost/nixon" by frank langella (who was also great in "good night, and good luck"), is exactly the kind of punishment i wish would befall bush 43. killing the dude with a bullet or putting him through endless trials for war crimes and rampant disservices to humanity would be a waste of time and effort in the quest for true justice. no one feels any better putting that douchenozzle peanut factory ceo through a trial where he pled the fifth to every single question, and no holocaust survivor feels any better that hitler put a gun to his head in his final, cowardly moments as a genocidal warmonger. what did make people feel like they'd at least gotten some sort of relief or revenge on a man of this calibur was nixon's admission of wrongdoing, and that it was public, humiliating, and humbling. sam rockwell, playing james reston, jr., wonderfully delivers the following lines in response to the closing frost/nixon interview:

You know, the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, trenches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn't understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon's face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist.

fuck that guy (who happens to be nixon, in this instance), and serves him right for ending up the way he did. but a lot of other things could be said on the contrary, and that's basically what i got out of the movie. among other less salient themes.

"a film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet." /orson welles

"slumdog millionaire" was entertaining. i didn't really gather any grand life lessons or feel the kind of loss i did while watching "the wrestler" or "milk," for example, but i was engaged and entertained for sure. it wasn't a bad movie, but it certainly didn't evoke my ethos, pathos, or logos any more than any other relatively good movie. it wasn't earth-shattering; it wasn't the axe that broke the frozen sea within me. mostly, i was reminded of the scene in the coffee shop episode of stella where an old businessman (played by cameron of "ferris bueller's day off") falls, completely unwarrantedly, in love with a barista after knowing her for about fourteen seconds and proposes that they spend the rest of their lives together. the girl, probably half his age, feels exactly the same. it is ridiculous, and at the end, the three unrelated protagonists are discussing their relationship, and michael black dryly recants, "yeah, it didn't really work out in the end. they went out a couple times, but it sort of fizzled out. it turns out, they didn't really have a lot in common." and that is how i feel about the reunion of the slumdog millionaire and latika. for people who enjoy happily ever-afters, this movie delivers. and perhaps i'm missing cultural cues here, but the dance scene at the end was preposterous. how can i take a movie like that seriously when it culminates in a mumbai train station, coordinated dance-off? it's like ending the great gatsby with a syncronized swim number as nick carroway paddles ceaselessly into the past. although when salim resigns himself to death in a money-laden bathtub before a shooting spree and whispers, "god is great," that was an awesome moment. the rest of the movie was cumbersomely structured. in light of the other films i'm blaggin' about, i'm quite confused as to why it walked away with so many awards. sort of like the diametric opposite of gladiator winning every oscar except best actor, which went to denzel washington. what the hell was that all about.

"the real actor--like any real artist--has a direct line to the collective heart." /bette davis

"milk" is one of those movies that feels like it was made by some of your own friends, for your own friends. it encapsulates a massive feeling of excitement that i have for moving to san fransisco. there are just more people involved in social progression over there than there are in madison, wisconsin, and the land itself has the history to go with it. movies told quasi-documentary style with plenty of fiction added in always make me feel this way if they're done properly. doubt and slumdog were entertaining, but milk makes me excited to do something tangible and meaningful with my life, and that's more than most people can say after watching any ol' flick. not only was it a fantastic movie with seriously great acting on the tail end of talent's range, it also beautifully juxtaposed puccini's "tosca" with the fall of harvey milk as complicated by dan white. before his death, tosca's lover realizes all the good things in the world that matter are essentially over for him, and it whips him into a rapturous optimism about life. the opera concludes with tosca throwing herself off a building after realizing it was kind of her fault that the one she loves is now dead in her arms. in a nutshell. take a gander:

vissi d'arte



e lucevan le stelle



now imagine these sentiments applied to the life of harvey milk and all that he fought for. there's a scene in "milk" where the eponymous character is watching the final scene of "tosca," and this look that's transfixed on sean penn's face is really harrowing. he's more than aware of all the threats on his life made by assholes (that is actually not a bad pun), and it's as if he can see himself as cavaradossi and tosca simultaneously, wondering as which character he'll wind up and who'll be his foil. maybe i have a soft spot for film that refers to opera in order to convey a really simple message too powerfully expressed to be put into a soliloquy or dialogue. see the fifth element, closer, shawshank redemption, pretty woman, and a slew of other movies where the opera is a direct shout out to a major theme in the movie. this dude, who i guess is some guy on a blog whose words i could never legitimately use in a graded paper, makes a good point about the marriage of opera and film:

Perhaps a better though unexpected reference for the use of narrative by a different medium is opera. Yes, stories are told by opera, but they take a very different form. For one, the marriage of music, voice and acting require different approaches, and value different aspects of story. In opera, story creates the trajectory for the opera, and provides the context for the music and vocals. But it is not really the heart of the creative form. The music and vocals are. The storyline of many operas can be summarized nicely in a sentence or two. That is fine for the medium, as the real value lies in the sound, not the story.

it's about "the spectacle; the bigger than life emotions," as harvey milk may or may not have actually said.

"a play should give you something to think about. when i see a play and understand it the first time, then i know it can't be much good." /t.s. eliot