Sample just enough, / ever so poorly, / to keep the exhibit / guards at bay.
How to Evade Copyright: My First Thought Experiment
29 Friday Mar 2019
Posted Education
in29 Friday Mar 2019
Posted Education
inSample just enough, / ever so poorly, / to keep the exhibit / guards at bay.
28 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted Education
inAfter weeks of some basic training at The Light Factory
I vowed to the townsfolk to focus more on camerawork
This trip, instead of my jotting down weird stuff like this.
06 Saturday Oct 2018
The law of the sacred woods, inscribed in Archaic Latin, belongs to a pagan era.
Perhaps it conveys the mystery and the terror aroused by silence and darkness.
No one violates this wood, nor does anyone take away in any way what the wood belongs to, nor cuts off, except on the day when the annual sacrifice is made; only on that day, and for it to be done without deception and for the necessities of the sacrifice, it will be licit to cut. If someone transgresses [these provisions] he will have to offer a sin offering with an ox. Who will transgress voluntarily and with bad intention will have to offer Jupiter an ox as a sin offering and will be fined with three hundred asses. It will be up to the dicator to check the offer of the sacrifice and collect the fine.
With the arrival of Saint Isaac, Monteluco began to grow as a monastic retreat.
By the 13th Century, the path of St. Francis passed through this sacred spot.
23 Sunday Sep 2018
Posted Education
in1) When La Traviata was first conceived, Verdi wanted the opera to be staged in “modern dress.” Yet for reasons unclear to me, the Venice opera scene insisted that it be set “in the era of Richelieu.” In a gesture befitting the Italian maestro, Spoleto’s 72th Stragione Lirici Sperimentale has done up his ambition proud.
2) When La Traviata was first performed, the audience jeered at the casting of an aging, overweight soprano in the lead role of Violetta. In an ironic reversal of gender roles tonight, the casting of the tenor somewhat strained credulity. No one, so far as I could tell, except Rebecca and me seemed bothered by the girth.
3) When Verdi’s Il Trovatore finally comes to Spoleto, I should be in a far better position to go to work seriously on A Night at The Opera, a Marx Brothers’ film that sticks true to its name. In the meantime, when I get home, I can check out the operatic straight dope in Stanley Cavell’s A Pitch of Philosophy.
22 Saturday Sep 2018
Posted Education
inWhen your iPhone is in a pouch,
You can’t snap the proof you want.
A portrait so clear needs no retouch
Much less all these words in this font.
20 Thursday Sep 2018
Our story begins in rubble. La Basilica di San Benedetto di Norcia was destroyed by a second set of earthquakes, after our fall trip in 2016. It held one fresco of note, the Resurrection of Lazarus (1560), painted by Michelangelo Carducci.
What’s been discovered, during the removal of the debris inside the building, is an earlier fresco, depicting an “Enthroned Madonna with Child and Angels,” that is apparently “of refined execution by a skilled, but as yet unidentified, artist.”
They are set to restore the work. Under the scientific direction of the Institute for Conservation and Restoration, the plan entails “a superficial cleaning of the fresco with [some] partial consolidation and painting of the pictorial surface.”
I am amazed to think it could be done, just as I am curious to learn more about the way that frescoes go lost in a building or the plaster crumbles away in bits, water its enemy I suppose. In any case, I here draw a line in the sands of time.
20 Thursday Sep 2018
Especially when we’re not sitting outside, observing the people parade,
A copy of Corriere dell’Umbria or its attractive fellow in the tabloid trade
Will put us to work on our Italian lessons. Rebecca, more advanced than I am,
Need only use a pony for a word or two; whereas I put the piece on my iPhone.
Always after our parting, like today, I take it home to plod my way through it.
Tying sentence by sentence, most of them rather long, into Google Translate.
Apart from the virtual keyboard that amazingly escaped my attention hitherto,
I’m taken back to the Norcia-Castelluccio trip we arranged long ago with Carlo.
12 Wednesday Sep 2018
When Grazia is on duty at our spot, due cappuccini all but goes without saying. Only we say it anyway–if only as prelude to naming whatever treats are in store.
When the help’s there, as this morning, we normally order the same two words. A verb may have helped. Or moving past the crowd to get closer to the counter.
But this time, unlike all the others, instead of our cups of Joe we beheld il conto (the “bill,” i.e., for those who are counting on a translation of our predicament).
Now Rebecca, at this moment (I discover later), figures the standing procedure at Italian bars has just changed to pay first and then to enjoy yourself at leisure.
Meanwhile I am speechless, as I overturn what few Italian words and phrases I have stored in the attic of my memory for emergencies never quite like this one.
About the time that Rebecca finds the right line the bargirl realizes we haven’t already been served. Just as we’re relieved, in other words, she’s embarrassed.
“Mi dispiace” joins “Non c’è problema” with broad smiles all around to span the crisscrossed communication. Once we finish, I seek instruction on a punchline.
11 Tuesday Sep 2018
Posted Education
in(Sung to the dying strains of an American classic, with apologies to all the members of the Western Writers of America, not to mention without sincere regard and my abiding respect for a fine Italian tradition. I just couldn’t resist!)
As we walked about in the streets of Spoleto
As we walked out in Spoleto on multiple days,
We spied an old hill town, all draped in white linen
And every other bolt of fabric a clothier would buy.“I see by your outfit, that you are a tourist,”
These words they did say as we slowly passed by.
“Come stand here beside me and hear my sad story,
For I’m a-fishin’ for business or else I will die.”“Oh once to the Market I used to go dashing,
Oh once to the Market I used to go gay.
First down to Rosie’s, and then to the art house,
Took a big hit to the hip, and now here I lay.”“Oh beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
Someone please pay the piper as you carry me along;
Take me to the green valley, there try to restore me,
For I’m an old cowboy and I know we’ve done wrong.”
10 Monday Sep 2018
The last time we went to a contemporary opera
, we struggled a bit to keep the distance between atonal harmonics and noise. Non c’è un problema in this case.Or else, when it was, the opera offered lots more to sustain us. Like the video, starting in the open air before closing in on a hill town, projected on a screen.
A house is seen. Lights, projected on the scrim, let us peek inside. It is evening. It is quiet. A mother and her daughter prepare for bed. Nature, off stage, sings.
This commissioned work is dedicated to the inhabitants of Valnerina, the nearby valley where two earthquakes hit on each side of our Spoleto visit in 2016.
Yet the idea comes from the sound of bells, an instrument “strongly linked to the territory and to the most intimate parts of us,” explains the musical composer.
Plus it’s connected (by the kindly provided synopsis) to an Emily Dickinson poem. Not to mention there’s dialogue also screened if you can decipher it.
Last but not least: the plot. After the first night, the Event. The veiled screen falls. The routine of the characters is repeated (indeed, reversed) and changed.
Lontano da Qui, when Google speaks, means “away from here.” For us, two years ago, that signified we were safe. It also affirms the effort to start over.