No work on Seven Dreams today, because—in case you didn’t notice—I finished Dream One yesterday.
Not that it’s done by any means. We’ll talk about that tomorrow.
Today, I ran all kind of errands and ended up back in the patio, finishing the little wall on the far end:
Little bit by little bit, sweat drop by sweat drop (it’s humid out there), it becomes reality.
We’re just going to let this sit here for a while and annoy us.
Dream One, 4a. “Hark, the sound of screaming fans” | score [pdf] | mp3
In other news, I watched the Royal Opera production of Anna Nicole, music by Mark-Anthony Turnage, libretto by Richard Thomas. You can find videos here, and the entire production via Amazon Instant Video. Oddly, the show has not been recorded.
It was quite entertaining—the music was likable and fun if not exactly hummable, and the production values were beyond excellent. Costumes were incredible, and hats off to director Richard Jones. And Eva-Marie Westbroek must be seen to be believed as the ill-fated Playboy bunny—she is simply amazing from beginning to end. The rest of the cast was right behind her, too—do you know how mind-blowing it is to see a perfect replica of Texas trailer trash on an opera stage? Great, great fun all round.
I did the sensible thing this morning: since I can’t make up my mind about Theseus’s little gigue bit, I just skipped ahead to where I was surer of what I wanted, mainly because I’d already written it.
After a little repartée between Theseus and Daedalus, Daedalus starts riffing on his machines again, so I knew we’d pick up the “machine music.” Oddly, Daedalus continues his lilting 3/4 time over it.
Finally Ariadne enters, we get a few cheap laughs at her expense, and when the boys try to exclude her by picking up the gigue theme again, she busts a nut, leading into her “My mother spoiled and pampered.”
From there to the end of the Dream, we’re good.
No samples today because it’s all just pretend notes right now. I’ll have to work on them some more before they become real.
Spoiler alert: the fact that T & D return to the gigue theme means that I probably am going to settle for that.
Unless you count getting all sweaty and gross out in the yard. But progress on the opera? None.
As promised, I fixed the curve on the walkway:
I started the stone wall on the far end of the patio and got it about two-thirds done:
The ferns are Silver Lady Palm Ferns—from our very own Coweta Greenhouses—and they’re just placed there to show the final effect. I have to go get another load of stone and then put in another couple of layers on the left-hand side. This will happen Monday, since tomorrow I get back to the labyrinth.
After I finish the stone wall, there’s one more area to deal with:
It’s ugly. I think what I shall do is use some large pavers and the little pavers (shown here) to build a kind of raised bed and then just plant Autumn Ferns there. Maybe Dixie Wood Ferns. Maybe both. Something simple.
And now… MargaritaFest!
You know how on TV shows a crew will sweep in to a person’s back yard and move mountains of stuff and then by the end of the day there’s this gorgeous retreat where before there had been nothing but sand and crabgrass?
It might not work that way in real life.
Sure, that looks fine from a distance, but this is after I sweated my way through yesterday afternoon digging and mulching and tearing down old bamboo fencing.
Notice the five stepping stones. I ran out of materials to reset the last three. Back to the store. And it still has to have landscape fabric and mulch.
And over by that fence? I still have to move all the old pavers, clip the wisteria, install a little stone wall on the upper half, lay out pavers along the fence for an eventual wooden creation, plant, mulch, etc.
Then I have to trim the cherry laurel and install pretty little lights in it because lovely first wife.
And that’s not even getting the herb garden/side of house weeded…
What I’m trying to say is that I will not be attempting to solve Theseus’s aria problem today.
Update:
Here’s all I got done today, between all the errands necessary to get ready and an afternoon jaunt to invest in Apple stock. Plus rain.
Yes, I will smooth out the curve. Tomorrow, the far fence.
Tomorrow is Nancy Willard’s birthday. (It’s also my son’s birthday, and that of my first girlfriend. Anybody else?)
One of the greatest regrets of my life is that I have been unable so far to get William Blake’s Inn produced. Nancy is such a phenomenal writer and artist, but more than that she is such an unbelievably warm and supportive human being that she deserves to have this work staged and performed all over the country.
When I asked her for permission to set her Newbery Award-winning book to music in 2003, she did not hesitate. As a creative master, she was unafraid of what I might do to her “child”; indeed, she eagerly anticipated the completion of each song and has remained the work’s biggest fan.
In a perfect world, we would be able to workshop William Blake and then give it a full staging—soloists, chorus, adults, children, puppets, projections, orchestra—and present it along with an exhibit of her related artwork. (She actually built the Inn out of cardboard. It’s with all her papers at UMich/Ann Arbor.) And then we would take it on the road to share with the rest of the planet.
I may be exploring new territory with Seven Dreams of Falling, and my magnum opus of SUN TRUE FIRE may be my future towering work of genius, but William Blake’s Inn will always be my favorite child.
To our children we shall say
how we walked the Milky Way.
(If you haven’t before now, go listen to the Epilog. It is probably the best thing I will ever write.)
Now that my doctor has transitioned from suggesting I might benefit from moderate exercise to insisting that I walk two miles every day (within 30 minutes, YOU GUYS!), I have the opportunity to listen obsessively to my work on Seven Dreams of Falling.
Thus it was that as I slogged around the park this morning I found myself really enjoying “Hark, the sound of screaming fans” as an entirely fun piece of bravado.
Which is why I set myself the goal of ditching it and writing something else. I cannot shake the feeling that an audience of any sophistication would sneer at this snarky little tune.
side note: I’m having issues about melody. On the one hand, I despise modern opera’s avoidance of a good tune. There’s a reason why we keep scheduling the Top 40 years and years after their premieres and more modern pieces... not so much. (For the record, I would love to hear and learn from each and every piece mentioned in that article.)
On the other hand, maybe it’s because of my lack of talent, but I don’t think bits like “Hark” are very strong. It seems lazy to plop something in there just because it’s hummable.
Oh, who knows? My inadequacy, my fear of not being thought one of the “cool kids,” or is it all just fine? Discuss in comments.
So I wrote another version of “Hark, the sound of screaming fans.” Not the whole thing, just the first two lines. I’m not happy with it either. It’s definitely got Theseus’s smarminess down, but if anything it’s even weaker musically than yesterday’s version.
Maybe I’ll keep pushing, writing ever more strenuously for voice and ear until I have something at which the cognoscenti will nod knowingly. Or maybe I’ll just leave the gigue where it is.
Dream One, “Hark, the sound of screaming fans,” 2nd version | score [pdf] | mp3
I found a solution for the cheesiness of Theseus’s opening aria, and that is MOAR CHEEZEENESS YOU GUYS!
Seriously: I abandoned the lame attempt at polytonality in his first phrase and settled it into straight harmony, and then extended the first verse. So now we have a full-on huckster approach, a kind of in-your-face/dare-you-to-diss-this-throwback attitude.
I’ve moved on to Daedalus’s objections, which will be in a kind of waltz mode over Theseus’s 9/8 gigue.
Dream One, “Hark, the sound of screaming fans” (06/24/14) | score [pdf] | mp3
I posted on Facebook how frustrating it is to compose something that is perfectly cromulent but which you know is not the solution to the problem, and after losing a whole week to grappling with Theseus’s first appearance, I was ready to slap down anything.
So I have. It’s silly, silly stuff with a couple of good bits, but really, can you hear this being performed on a modern opera stage? The faux-Baroque bit is too much to begin with, and now this lame bel canto? I think it gets Theseus’s hucksterism right, but it’s just so unsophisticated.
But here it is. Scoff in the comments. I’ll be over in the corner working on a replacement.
Dream One, “Hark the sound of screaming fans” | score [pdf] | mp3
You may recall that my plans to celebrate turning 60 by going to live in an alkali desert for a week were scotched by the inability of my partner in crime to travel with me.
We have regrouped. There are more than a couple of regional Burns, and we have decided to go ahead and establish our 3 Old Men ritual performance group and start with Alchemy, taking place here in Georgia Oct. 2-5. We have tickets (more than we need, actually) and are putting together our team.
We are also beginning to move forward with all the practical matters that we would be in the middle of anyway were we still heading to Nevada in 10 weeks, i.e., the labyrinth, staves, and skirts. We met a couple of weeks ago to discuss these things, and now that I’m not having rotator cuff surgery, I’m ready to get started.
This weekend my lovely first wife and I have been in Raleigh, NC, for a family wedding, and while here we needed to visit some kind of “largest” fabric store for private upholstery reasons. I’ve already bought muslin to mock up the 3 Old Men skirts cheaply, and I’ve pretty much decided to make them of monks cloth because of its hand and drape, but since I was bored, I messaged the following photos to my fellows:
The fake fur is a Burning Man joke, of course. I don’t see how people wear anything out there other than loincloths, frankly. The G.I. Joe fleece was likewise a joke.
The psychedelic fabric, though… There is some part of me that can see us standing in the woods of north Georgia, waiting at the entrances of the four-path labyrinth, clad in some pretty freaky skirts. It doesn’t take it a lot of imagination to assign earth, fire, air, and water to them, either.
Also, I found as I wandered aimlessly around this largest fabric store that there could be many different interesting ways to build these skirts: brocades, sheers, etc. I finally decided that I needed to get home and actually build the thing first, study how the skirt will move and flow, and then powwow with my fellows on what ritual aspect we want to present.
At any rate, we will now resume updates on the progress towards Alchemy/Burning Man.