The picture I have been working on of the clowns of Sing Sad Songs is now finished.
These are the clowns;
Filed under clowns, colored pencil, humor, novel, Paffooney
When I was in Cow College at Iowa State University I spent most of my study time listening to KLYF Radio in Des Moines. They would eventually transform into an easy-listening music station, but the time I truly lived a K-LYFe was when they played classical music. And it was there that I first fell deeply in love with the Saturday Matinee stylings of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the first incarnation of John Williams of Star Wars fame. Yes, movie music. Classical movie music. And it seemed, mostly movie music for Errol Flynn movies.
My sister was always a lover of Errol Flynn movies, and when KGLO TV Channel 3 would play one on the Saturday Movie Matinee in the early afternoon, we would have to watch it, the whole thing, no matter how many times we were repeating the same four movies. Nancy would memorize the lines from the Olivia deHavilland love scenes. I would memorize the sword fight scenes with Errol and Evil Basil Rathbone (Good Basil was Sherlock Holmes, and we had to watch those too.) Early evenings on those Saturdays were all about playing pirate and Captain Blood adventures. Or better yet, Robin Hood.
But the music of adventure was by the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold. He did the sound tracks for Captain Blood, Robin Hood, and the Sea Hawk.
I sincerely love the corny old movie matinee music because it was not only genius-level mood music and story-telling in a classical music instrumental masterpiece, but because even now it takes me back to the boy I was at twelve years old, playing pirate on Grandpa Aldrich’s farm. Making Robin Hood bows out of thin tree branches and arrows out of dried ragweed stalks. Sword fighting to the death with sticks with my cousin Bob, who was always Basil Rathbone in my mind. while I’m sure I was Basil Rathbone in his mind.
To be honest, there is much more to Korngold than I have relentlessly gushed about here like a hopeless nerdling fan-boy in the throws of a geeky movie passion. He was a musical child prodigy like Mozart. He wrote a ballet called Der Schneemann (the Snow Man) when he was only eleven, and became the talk of the town in Vienna, Austria in 1908. He became the conductor of the Hamburg Opera by 1921. He wrote some very fine classical music in the 20’s that still rings through orchestra halls to this day before coming to America in the early 30’s with film director Max Reinhardt. He scored his first film in 1935, adding music to Reinhardt’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. He was fortunate to escape Europe just as the Nazis were coming to power in Germany, and also at the right time to team up with new movie star sensation, Errol Flynn. He won his first Oscar for the musical score of the movie Anthony Adverse in 1936 and he won his second for The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938. He died in 1957, a year after I was born. But I promise, I didn’t kill him. I was in college in the 1970’s when his music underwent a revival, complete with renewed popularity.
His music was pure gold to listen to in the fields of corn in Iowa in the 1970’s. It was just as good as that last pun was terrible. So, in other words, really, really, spectacularly good. It was the music that scored my childhood fantasy adventures.
Canto Sixty-Four – The Ruins of Tanith and Davalon’s Nesting Quarters
Farbick led his small band of rebels into the gaping hole the forward stabilizer arm of the Bonehead had cut into the side of the bio dome. The wreckage inside the building was pretty extensive.
“You really think we can stop the Senator?” Stabharh asked Farbick from directly behind the Telleron leader of the rebels.
“We can if we can convince more of his crew to join us in resisting his mad planetary death wish.”
“That’s going to be pretty hard. Senator Tedhkruhz is extremely evil and his men are mostly very weak minded.” Slahshrack was a real ray of sunshine in the gloom of the situation.
“We have to try,” said Starbright, “otherwise your species and your planet will be extinct.”
“Wait a minute, what’s this?” Farbick said, hearing a moan in a rubble pile and noticing a slight movement amidst the shattered concrete shards.
With Stabharh’s help he and Starbright began un-piling the stones, and soon two small Telleron bodies were revealed.
“Davalon! And is that Tanith with you?”
Davalon was holding Tanith tightly in his arms. The tadpoles were both bruised and bloodied, but technically still breathing.
“Can either of you still talk?” Starbright asked.
“A… a little…” Davalon was obviously wearied by the effort.
“What are you doing here?” Farbick asked. “You tadpoles should all be safe on board the mother ship. Why would Xiar send you here?”
“He… ah, didn’t. We took a wing without permission and came to help this world survive.”
“We… ah, didn’t know we were doing that last part when we… ak, set off on the adventure,” Tanith said with a painful wince.
“You both have extensive injuries. We have to get you both to someplace safe where you can hibernate and recuperate,” Starbright said.
“Do you know what this place is?” Farbick asked, since the tadpoles had apparently been in the place for a while.
“Yes… ouch… it’s a science facility where they are trying to restore the atmosphere of the planet and create new viable… ahg!…food sources.” Davalon was in quite a lot of pain.
“So scientists survived?” asked Stabharh, quite surprised.
“One,” answered Tanith. “A little Galtorrian girl named Sizzahl. But she’s… oof!… a very intelligent little girl.”
“She’ll be the reason Tedhkruhz came here,” said Stabharh. “He means to slay anyone and everyone who might be smart enough to bring this planet back to life.”
“We have to stop him,” Farbick said. “Where do you suppose he is now?”
“I don’t know,” said Stabharh, “and I have no idea how to find him.”
“When I was a little lizard,” said Slahshrack, “I would turn to the last chapter of the book and read ahead to find the answer.”
“We can’t do that here, stupid,” said Stabharh. “This is real life, not some idiot fiction book!”
“Yeah, too bad about that, huh.”
*****
Filed under aliens, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, science fiction
The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto: A Novel
by Mitch Albom (Goodreads Author)
Michael Beyer‘s review
Jul 23, 2017
It was amazing!
This book is a miracle. It makes words into music and fills your imagination with some of the most beautiful guitar music ever played. It introduces you not only to a very convincing portrait of a fictional musician and Rock and Roll icon, but a vast array of very real musicians and show people who agreed to be used as a part of the story, approved the sections about them, and even helped Mitch Albom to compose it. These include notable music makers like Lyle Lovett, Darlene Love, Tony Bennett, Paul Stanley, and Burt Bacharach. The story itself transcends its fictional form, giving us a look at a musical history whose scope goes from the Spanish Civil War of the 1930’s to Woodstock, and on to the present day. It even gives us glimpses into the distant musical past, framing the story with the song Lágrima by the classical guitarist Francisco Tárrega. And all this music the book fills your mind with is actually performed only in your imagination and memory. Albom proves again with this book how his mastery of language makes him an absolute master story-teller.
And now, here is me trying to make sense out of a reading experience that made my figurative heart grow wings and soar into the clouds in ways brought forth only by the strains of a sweet, classical Spanish guitar.
Stories like this one make a unique music in the mind, and though it is all fiction, occurring silently in the theater of your mind, you hear the music in your heart. This story elicited the music of Rodrigo’s Adagio throughout, a piece I know intimately. I myself have never written a musical book the way this fiction book was written. But I know now that I have to try. Poetry becomes song lyrics, right? There is a connection between a good archetypal story about life and love and laughter, and the bittersweet strains of music on a Spanish guitar.
I truly and utterly fell in love with this beautiful book. Mitch Albom is a genius… for a Detroit Tigers baseball fan. And I would not risk telling you anything that might spoil such a beautiful story. All I can say is, don’t read it… listen to it as you would a piece of beautiful music. Listen to it and love it.
Filed under book review, Celebration, classical music, humor, music, novel, strange and wonderful ideas about life
So the head monkey has fired the giraffe in charge of looking into the Russian banana pilfering that has everyone questioning his fitness to rule. Rule? Heck! I question his continued right to own bananas!
But this post is supposed to be a reflection on surviving, not another angry animal metaphor about things that can’t be cured until the next election, or until the elephants that put the monkey in charge do something about their own addiction to bananas and work up the necessary human emotion and moral outrage to remove him as head of the zoo.
Steve Bannon, the idea-monkey of the Monkey Kingdom
So let me enumerate some of the thoughts that give me peace in the midst of this insane monkey-house cacophony. (Cacophony is a good word to use around the topic of the monkey king because it has both the words “caca” and “phony” in it.)
Orangutan Junior Kushner has taken to wearing Trump-style hair.
So, the long and the short of it is this. It is not hard to see the end of this struggle to survive the monkey king’s rule. I, for one, will probably not survive. But cutting the legs out from under the giraffe investigating the Russian banana pilfering was probably the beginning of the end of the monkey king himself. The lions, wherever they have been hiding, will now come out and eat him.
Filed under angry rant, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, grumpiness, humor, Paffooney, pessimism, politics
I read a lot of other people’s blogs for a lot of reasons. As an old writing teacher and retired Grammar Nazi, I love to see where writers are on the talent spectrum. I have read everything from the philosophy of Camus and Kant to the beginning writing of ESL kids who are illiterate in two languages. I view it like a vast flower garden of varied posies where even the weeds can be considered beautiful. And like rare species of flower, I notice that many of the best blossoms out there in the blogosphere are consistent with their coloring and patterns. In other words, they have a theme.
So, do I have an over-all theme for my blog? It isn’t purely poetical like some of the poetry blogs I like to read. I really only write comically bad poetry. It has photos in it, but it isn’t anything like some of the photography blogs I follow. They actually know how to photograph stuff and make it look perfect and pretty. It is not strictly an art blog. I do a lot of drawing and cartooning and inflict it upon you in this blog. But I am not a professional artist and can’t hold a candle to some of the painters and artists I follow and sometimes even post about. I enjoy calling Trump President Pumpkinhead, but I can’t say that my blog is a political humor blog, or that I am even passable as a humorous political commentator.
One thing that I can definitely say is that I was once a teacher. I was one of those organizers and explainers who stand in front of diverse groups of kids five days a week for six shows a day and try to make them understand a little something. Something wise. Something wonderful. Something new. Look at the video above if you haven’t already watched it. Not only does it give you a sense of the power of holding the big pencil, it teaches you something you probably didn’t realize before with so much more than mere words.
But can I say this is an education blog? No. It is far too silly and pointless to be that. If you want a real education blog, you have to look for someone like Diane Ravitch’s blog. Education is a more serious and sober topic than Mickey.
By the way, were you worried about the poor bunny in that first cartoon getting eaten by the fox and the bear? Well, maybe this point from that conversation can put your mind at ease.
Mickey is tricky and gets good mileage out of his cartoons.
You may have gotten the idea that I like Bobby McFerrin by this point in my post. It is true. Pure genius and raw creative talent fascinate me. Is that the end point of my journey to an answer about what the heck this blog is about? Perhaps. As good an answer as any. But I think the question is still open for debate. It is the journey from thought through many thoughts to theme that make it all fun. And I don’t anticipate that journey actually ending anytime soon.
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
Johann Sebastian Bach may or may not have written his organ masterpiece, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor in 1704. All we know for sure is that the combined efforts of Johannes Ringk, who saved it in manuscript form in the 1830’s, and Felix Mendelssohn who performed it and made it a hit you could dance to during the Bach Revival in 1840 made it possible to still hear its sublime music today. Okay, maybe not dance to exactly… But without the two of them, the piece might have been lost to us in obscurity.
The Toccata part is a composition that uses fast fingerings and a sprightly beat to make happy hippie type music that is really quite trippy. The Fugue part (pronounced Fyoog, not Fuggwee which I learned to my horror in grade school music class) is a part where one part of the tune echoes another part of the tune and one part becomes the other part and then reflects it all back again. I know that’s needlessly confusing, but at least I know what I mean. That is not always a given when I am writing quickly like a Toccata.
I have posted two different versions for you to listen to in this musical metaphor nonsensical posticle… err… Popsicle… err… maybe just post. One is the kinda creepy organ version like you might find in a Hammer Films monster movie in the 1970’s. The other is the light and fluffy violin version from Disney’s Fantasia. I don’t really expect you to listen to both, but listening to one or the other would at least give you a tonal hint about what the ever-loving foolishness I am writing in this post is really all about.
You see, I find sober thoughts in this 313-year-old piece of music that I apply to the arc of my life to give it meaning in musical measure.
This is the Paffooney of this piece, a picture of my wife in her cartoon panda incarnation, along with the panda persona of my number two son. The background of this Paffooney is the actual Ringk manuscript that allowed Bach’s masterwork not to be lost for all time.
My life was always a musical composition, though I never really learned piano other than to pick out favorite tunes by ear. But the Bach Toccata and Fugue begins thusly;
The Toccata begins with a single-voice flourish in the upper ranges of the keyboard, doubled at the octave. It then spirals toward the bottom, where a diminished seventh chord appears (which actually implies a dominant chord with a minor 9th against a tonic pedal), built one note at a time. This resolves into a D major chord.
I interpret that in prose thusly;
Life was bright and full of promise when I was a child… men going to the moon, me learning to draw and paint, and being smarter than the average child to the point of being hated for my smart-asserry and tortured accordingly. I was sexually assaulted by an older boy and spiraled towards the bottom where I was diminished for a time and mired in a seventh chord of depression and despair. But that resolved into a D major chord when the realization dawned that I could teach and help others to learn the music of life.
And then the Fugue begins in earnest. I set the melody and led my students to repeat and reflect it back again. Over and over, rising like a storm and skipping like a happy child through the tulips that blossom as the showers pass. Winding and unwinding in equal measure, my life progressed to a creaky old age. But the notes of regret in the conclusion are few. The reflections of happinesses gained are legion. I have lived a life I do not regret. I may not have my music saved in the same way Johann Sebastian did, but I am proud of the whole of it. And whether by organ or by violin, it will translate to the next life, and will continue to repeat. What more can a doofus who thinks teaching and drawing and telling stories are a form of music ask for from life?
2 Comments
Filed under artwork, autobiography, classical music, commentary, happiness, humor, Paffooney, sharing from YouTube, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as classical music, Fugue, happiness, happiness to the point of stupidity, J S Bach, life lessons, music, rants, testing, Toccata