My Birthday at the Tower of Song! (Leonard Cohen live @ TerraVibe 30/7/2008)

Now, I heard, there was a secret chord

that David played and it pleased the Lord
But... you don't really care for music, do ya?

I cannot seem to remember ever having done something special on my birthday. In the heart of summer, my friends and I have always been scattered to the four corners of Greece (and now that wanderlust is upon us, the four corners of the world - getting birthday wish phonecalls from New York, Limassol, Melbourne, Vienna, London - and this year - Varna, well... it is undeniably funny but gets really annoying when almost nobody's around for the fun of it).









As always, this year I had nothing to look forward to and was particularly miffed (I like this word, I will be using it more often!) that I would in all probability miss the Leonard Cohen show since I heard of it too late... BUT ! the Lycabettus theater was closed because of security concerns and the concert was moved to the huge TerraVibe venue. Although such an expanse would not be suited to Leonard Cohen's music style, it would ensure ticket availability!

Why do I love Leonard Cohen so much when I do not even listen to similar style music?

The great Leonard Cohen


It goes like this:
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift
The baffled King composing
Hallelujah

It must be the effortless way he tackles the pitfalls of strong emotion, the way that irony finds its way into the lyrics, the way that drama of mythical proportions is reduced to the level of our fundamental weaknesses.

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
and from your lips she drew the
Hallelujah

To be able to say "I've gotten over you", "We'll never see each other" or to say "I've found God" is one thing. Through his lyrics, Cohen is able to not only say all this, but shrug it off and walk away alone into the sunset with a deadly parthian shot...

Well, really, what's it to ya?

The Webb sisters, Charlie and Hattie, bowing

So,on that Wednesday, on my birthday, I stood before the Tower of Song, to listen about the conquest of Manhattan and a little viennese waltz on closing time...

There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
the Holy or the broken
Hallelujah

Dino Soldo (winds) and Javier Mas (mandolin, uti, lute)

I found not only this but so much more: the nobility of a truly great artist shown in the courtesy with which he treated his supporting musicians (all of them significant artists in their own right) and the respect and humility he showed towards his audience, beginning with an impressive address in greek at the beginning of the show, a reminder of the time he spent in the island of Ydra.


For more than three hours, with about all requests fulfilled, the great Leonard Cohen delivered a mighty lesson of emotion and dignity, with lyrics and attitude laced with the acidity of experience, pain and the firmness of a man who knows what he wants, it's just that... he has always found the others lacking in the qualities that one would need to rise to the occasions.

I do not know if at the time I could survey the events of my life from such a point of view, but... when one is true to his emotions, well that is all one needs, no matter how the others respond to them.


And then the answer became quite clear: We found it with you, Leonard. We whispered it at first, murmured it as it went on and then we sang along: dee dum dum dum, da dee dum dum...

That simple.

Duet with Hattie Webb

I did my best but it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth...
I didn't come to fool ya

Your songs stand up for us even in our defeat. You stood up for me even on my defeat. And it was on my birthday.
Unforgettable.


Thank you Leonard.

"Thank you friends"

And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my lips but
Hallelujah

PS: Ah, remember me, I used to live for music (baby)
Remember me, I brought your groceries in (ooh, baby yeah...)







.

Betrayal

One thing that all people who claim to know me have to say about me is that I am moral, dignified and trustworthy, a good person all in all.

I sometimes pointed out in vain something. Something that the three or four people who really know me have pointed out themselves: that simply because I am not a cruel-hearted and uncaring bastard does not make me the bastion of dignity, morality and goodness that I choose to put on display.

These virtues that I, along with everybody else who knows them, so admire in my parents are virtues that have to be proven by test in tempering hardships.

I could certainly be conceited, indifferent, cold, uncaring or anything that people born even in the tiniest bit of privillege tend to become. I do believe that I am a good person.

However, the core of these virtues was hardly ever tested in me. Hardly did I ever come to the need to prove anything as in the majority of situations I lorded above my peers.


It has come to pass these past hours, days and months that I have betrayed these things time and again. I have betrayed the virtues I professed belief in, I have betrayed, lied to, hurt and exploited my friends and I have betrayed myself.

I have fallen low. I have irreversibly proven myself weak. Weak and undignified.

Now is the time to set things straight. Try to give back to people that which they have given to me freely, even after I have betrayed their emotions, their love and trust.

I will have to rise up to the challenge (maybe for the first time in my life). And to make the ultimate sacrifice of that which has brought me so low.

"Passion is a strict lord / He is also its humble slave."

Not even passion, not even true love can justify betrayal. And the reckless hurting of other people because one cannot endure the pain. This is High Treason.

Enough. Enough now.

.

Imperial Journey: Death in Vienna Everything dies. (Who wants to live forever?)

Vienna is filled with the death trappings of the Habsburg dynasty. Death comes particularly hard on a life of power and privillege and the very least one can do is go out in an operatic way.

However it can be very moving. From the Augustinians' church at the Hofburg (where the Habsburg hearts are placed in urns) to the crypts of the Stephansdom (where their internal organs are placed) and to the capuchins' Kaisergruft (Imperial Crypt) where their bodies proper are laid to rest, Vienna keeps reminding the visitor that everything and everyone dies. Memento mori.

Descent to the Stephansdom crypt...

This time I managed to visit all three resting places of the Habsburgs. More interesting are the images from the capuchins' Imperial Crypt:

Death's head decoration from the huge sarcophagus of Maria Theresia. As time progressed sarcophagi became less ostentatious and ornate however.


Sarcophagus of a Habsburg archbishop.




Poor Franz Joseph. He worked from early morning to late night, received hundreds of officials everyday, changed the face of Vienna with a massive construction project for theatres, facades and so on, and yet... all that remains to remember...Mayerling, the fall of the Empire in the Great War and his late dementia, when he was kept locked in his toilet so as not to shit all over Schönbrunn palace, as "The Good Soldier Svejk" informs us...


...and poor Sissi. Some hungarian must have left the flowers. They are so like the flowery stars that she wore on her hair...

Stars.

Appropriate indeed to think of stars today. One thinks of something when one loses it.

For the internment of Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma, wife of the last Austrohungarian Hbsburg Emperor Karl I, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, the legend for the tradition into the capuchins' crypt was played out in whole. My aunt attended the funeral and she recounted to me the ceremony, as best as she could remember:

Empress Zita

The funeral process stopped at the gate of the Kapuzinergruft. The herald knocked on the heavy door. "Who desires to enter?" replied the gatekeeper monk from inside...The Herald announced that Her Imperial Majesty the Empress-consort Zita of Bourbon-Parma, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary has passed away and is by imperial right to be interred in the crypt. "We, the dead in here, know of no Empress Zita" came the sorrow-laden voice of the monk.

The Herald knocked, the question was placed again, to which he replied that Zita of the Habsburgs has passed away. "We know of no Habsburgs" came the grief-striken reply.

The Herald knocked for a third time. The monk again asked "Who is it that desires to enter?"

There was silence, and then, the Herald said:



"Zita, a poor commoner, whose sins are as numerous as the stars in the sky..."

Tears in his eyes, the monk said "Then... she may pass".

.

The shadows of Paris.

One of the best songs by Henry Mancini ( possibly second only to Meglio stassera) from the Pink Panther: A Shot in the Dark OST. Great music and the lyrics are right at home.

Why must we meet in the shadows of Paris
where hardly a star seems to shine?

Why can't we meet in the sunlight of Paris
where Paris can see you are mine?

Have you come to me from another
whose lips you have tried?

Do you still belong to another?
Is that why we hide?

Why am I cold in the sunlight of Paris
where laughter and song fill the sky?

Why am I warm in the shadows of Paris
when I know that dawn means goodbye?

Have you come to me from another
whose lips you have tried?

Do you still belong to another?
Is that why we hide?

Why am I cold in the sunlight of Paris
where laughter and song fill the sky?

Why am I warm in the shadows of Paris
when I know that dawn means....




Goodbye.

PS Flying for Aéroport Paris-Charles de Gaulle, at dawn.

.

Søren Kierkegaard

Today is the birthday of the great Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. (5 May 1813 - 11 November 1855).

Kierkegaard is one of my favourites as in his writings I see the foundation of the austere (some would call it bleak) "scandinavian" existentialism that I came to love and admire initially through Ingmar Bergman's films.

In the first place, however, I came to reflect upon Kierkegaard's writings not because of Bergman's existentialism but because of a comment by Umberto Eco, about the Vatican's excessive reaction against Roger Peyrefitte's ridiculous accusations. I had in mind at the time the Corsaren (corsair) affair as an exemplary handling of bad and injust critics by the writer. When I looked deeper into it, one of Kierkegaard's article responses, The Activity of a Traveling Esthetician and How He Still Happened to Pay for Dinner ( En omreisende Æsthetikers Virksomhed, og hvorledes han dog kom til at betale Gjæstebudet ), locked me irrevocably into the thinking process of an intelligent writer/critic.

Indeed, it is my firm belief that in Foucault's Pendulum (by Umberto Eco), Jacopo Belbo's views about intelligent reading and editing instead of attempting to write are deeply Kierkegaardian in nature. Besides that, there are other unveiled references to Kierkegaard in that book: Belbo, in an imaginary anachronism, suggests - as a potential editor to a young William Shakespeare - to move Hamlet's plot from Italy to Denmark, because of the spectre of kierkegaardian austerity that looms above that land.

Another matter that makes Kierkegaard unique in his point of view regarding the human nature is his love for Regine Olsen. The words he addressed to her (quoted from Wikipedia's selection from his Journals) are indicative:

"Thou sovereign of my heart treasured in the deepest fastness of my chest, in the fullness of my thought, there ... unknown divinity! Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. ... it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here."

However, in self-destructive drama he broke their engagement and tried to alienate Regine because he believed that his calling and their relationship were incompatible things. He tried to appear cool and measured saying that he would marry: "in ten years, when I have begun to simmer down and I need a lusty young miss to rejuvenate me."

He never did.



The scribbling modern philosophy holds passion in contempt; and yet passion is the culmination of existence for an existing individual—and we are all of us existing individuals.

Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift til de philosophiske Smuler
(Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments)

ΥΓ: Εαν δοθεί ξανά η ευκαιρία για μακρά συζήτηση, Τάσο, θα σου αναλύσω την κιρκεγκάρντια, κατά βάση, άποψη περί συγγραφής που έχω. Απλώς χθές διακόπηκε η συζήτηση λόγω χαρμόσυνων οικογενειακών νέων. Till next time.

.

Love will tear us apart

This morning, with the weather as a perfect backdrop, I saw Control, the film about Ian Curtis. A stunningly dark film that catches the mood underlying the music of the Manchester scene. Ian Curtis was the singer for Joy Division.

This was their most succesfull song. Apart from a wonderful rhythm and melody, apparently people saw the truth in it.

Now, I see it too.

(His tombstone, in Macclesfield Cemetery. The words on it are chosen by his wife Deborah..)

LOVE WILL TEAR US APART

When routine bites hard
and ambitions are low.
And resentment rides high
but emotions won't grow.
And we're changing our ways
taking different roads.

Love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again.

Why is the bedroom so cold
turned away on your side?
Is my timing that flawed
our respect run so dry?
Yet there's still this appeal
that we've kept through our lives.

Love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again.

Do you cry out in your sleep,
all my failings expose?
Gets a taste in my mouth
as desperation takes hold.
Why is it something so good
just can't function no more?

Love, love will tear us apart again.
Love, love will tear us apart again...

Tony Wilson, a co-founder of Factory Records and one of the most influential people in the Manchester scene once recounted :

"I'd been warned on a train to London two weeks earlier by Annik [note: Annik Honoré, Curtis' lover]. I asked her, 'What do you think of the new album.' She goes, 'I'm terrified.' I said, 'What are you terrified of?' She replies, 'Don't you understand? He means it.' And I go, 'No, he doesn't mean it; it's art.' And guess what, he fucking meant it."
(Factory: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays. BBC documentary 2007)

Indeed. Ian Curtis knew better. Love CAN tear people apart....he commited suicide on 18 May, 1980.

The Meaning of Life pt. III: Fighting each other. - Would I fight?

(Greek War Flag flying Greek colours and St. George, the patron saint of the Greek Land Army killing the serpent - October 2006)

One year ago I completed my compulsory time of service in the Greek Army. The "anniversary" was 2 days ago but illness prevented any celebrations.

(6-inch Guns of the Artillery firing blank salvoes to salute celebrations of Greek 28 October National Holiday)

The question, even though one year has passed, still remains haunting: Would I fight and possibly die? And, if yes, why?

(Second posting special forces - winter 2006-7 : I must have been really pissed off that day...)

The answer to the first question is easy. I am now under oath and I would do it. Not because of the oath per se.
Oaths have a special mystique of their own and the very notion of allegiance to death resonates deep into the soul of a warrior. And it has proven destructive, as it was demonstrated when during the Second World War most officers of the Wehrmacht stayed true to their oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler even though he was clearly leading Germany to total annihilation.

(First posting -infantry - autumn 2006 :"Hey Doc, do you know anything about electronics?" "Yes Lieutenant, as a matter of fact quite a few things..." "Ok then, you get the radiophone..." αργότερα... πού'σαι ρε μαλάκα Αντωνιάδη, πάρε με στο κινητό δε λειτουργεί αυτη η μαλακία που μου δώσανε...)

But, no, I am afraid and very sorry to say that it is not the oath to the flag that would be my main drive to fight. Very sorry indeed to say that because many people, many good people died for that flag.

(Second posting -special forces winter 2006-7: Hellenic Air Force C-130 Hercules approaching paratrooper drop zone for the first sortie of the day)

In all honesty, who would appreciate the idea to die for a country run by worthless and utterly corrupt politicians, petty and unworthy servants scurrying to do the bidding of mindless masters dealing in high-stakes finance? Who can forget that the fat blubbering slobs that claim to represent the people of Greece are smugly seated in their parliament chairs simply by stepping on the bodies of the young men that died under the treads of tanks fighting for an ideal that has become what we now try to pass as democracy?

(Infantry grenade launcher - first posting - summer 2006 - why would a doctor need a grenade launcher anyway? but of course to show off...)

(First posting - infantry - summer 2006 :Aboard a Hummer with a mounted KORNET anti-tank missile launcher. Note the funny "shoot the doctor first" helmet)

No, the ideal is dead and its carcass is being raped everyday by politicians, journalists and civil servants all across the country.

(Second posting - special forces - John Rambo beware...)

(Second posting - special forces winter 2006-2007 : "Hey Sarge, where are my medical supplies?" "We'll deliver them to the dressing station, doc!" Instead of medical supplies I got 3 crates of hand grenades. Guaranteed to permanently cure anything out of existence)

I would fight for it is in our nature to do so. Because the aggressors would try to impose a new order that would inevitably be worse than the present status. And it is only natural to resist that.

(Second posting - special forces - 08 February 2007 - On my discharge day. Not allowed a moment of respite even on my discharge day I got to cover a paratrooper landing covered by Malcolm Brabant for BBC World on a report on those pussies that are dodging conscription to the Greek Army - watch the video here: Greek crackdown on draft dodge. I got to be on BBC TV as "Dr. George Papadimitropolous". At least they got it half-right...)

And not because we cannot bear the yoke if need be. Humans can tolerate and get used to almost anything. What I would and could not bear however is the indignity of seeing the people I love bear that yoke.

I can think of no better words than those of the poet Richard Lovelace,one of the Cavalier poets who fought for King Charles against Oliver Cromwell. From his poem:

To Lucasta: Going to the Warres

I.
Tell me not, (sweet,) I am unkinde,
That from the nunnerie
Of thy chaste breast and quiet minde
To warre and armes I flie.

II.
True: a new Mistresse now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith imbrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

III.
Yet this inconstancy is such,
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Lov'd I not Honour more.

You see, I would fight for the people next to me. I would fight for my friends. I would fight for my family. I would fight for my childhood playgrounds. I would fight for the one I love. I would fight so that her eyes remain unclouded of tears. And I would die, I would die a thousand deaths rather than having to bear the shame of having to watch this. How can someone love anyone, if one does not love Honour more?

PS. To lighten things up a bit: "A man may fight for many things: his country, his principles, his friends, the glistening tear on the cheek of a golden child. But personally I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock and a sack of French porn. - Edmund Blackadder The Third.

(In 2007 Santa Claus arrived with a free-fall parachute. This year I hope he chose something more convenient that allowed for more gifts...)

The Raven

On the 29th of January 1845, the New York Evening Mirror published for the first time Edgar Alan Poe's poem "The Raven".

It is by far my favourite poem written in the English language (sorry Alfred, sorry Tom, sorry William...)

ΑΝΑΓΚΗ -plate 3

I would like to share it with you, along with some of its illustration plates made by the great Gustave Doré.

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December

THE RAVEN

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

vainly I had sought to borrow, from my books surcease of sorrow

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

`Other friends have flown before - On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Nepenthe

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Is there, IS THERE balm in Gilead?

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted - nevermore!

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor/Shall be lifted - nevermore!

PS: "But in the Cosmos there is balm as there is bitterness and that balm is nepenthe" H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider

Failure - The Show must go on (does it?)

Empty spaces - what are we living for?
Abandoned places - I guess we know the score..
On and on!
Does anybody know what we are looking for?

Another hero - another mindless crime.
Behind the curtain, in the pantomime.
Hold the line!
Does anybody want to take it anymore?
The Show must go on!
The Show must go on!
Inside my heart is breaking,
My make-up may be flaking,
But my smile, still, stays on!

Whatever happens, I'll leave it all to chance.
Another heartache - another failed romance.
On and on!
Does anybody know what we are living for?
I guess I'm learning
I must be warmer now..
I'll soon be turning round the corner now.
Outside the dawn is breaking,
But inside in the dark I'm aching to be free!

The Show must go on!
The Show must go on!
Inside my heart is breaking!
My make-up may be flaking!
But my smile, still, stays on!

My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies,
Fairy tales of yesterday, will grow but never die,
I can fly, my friends!

The Show must go on! Yeah!
The Show must go on!
I'll face it with a grin!
I'm never giving in!
On with the show!

I'll top the bill!
I'll overkill!
I have to find the will to carry on!
On with the,
On with the show!

The Show must go on.

(?)

(Gone forever...)

Sometimes, Freddie, it is too painful to go on. You were fortunate to leave us early....

PS: Today is the 22nd anniversary of the SpaceShuttle Challenger disaster. We all remember it. We will never forget those men and women, the true pioneers of our age.

The President, Ronald Reagan, gave a speech that quoted from the poem "High Flight" by Jonh Gillespie Magee Jr., an aviator who died during WW II:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark nor even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God

(Once you have reached out to touch the face of God, even for a fleeting moment, you simply cannot just let go....)

The disaster effectively ended, for a long period of time, our dreams that everyman could reach space and come in touch with the Great Infinite. Shattered hopes, shattered dreams. An apt coincidence, don't you think...?

La jolie rousse - The pretty redhead

About a month ago I came across a book by Umberto Eco: Opera Aperta : Forma e indeterminazione nelle poetiche contemporanee. Although the phonological experiments on Joyce's Ulysses translations being read concurrently (or rather, consecutively in fugue) are not my bag, I knew that I would be fascinated once more by Eco's ability to put names to faces (i.e. to be able to illustrate a point with definitive and authoritative examples). Plus it had excited my interest by an extensive reference to Norbert Wiener's Information Theory.

These are points, however, that I would like to explore in future posts.

The introduction to the First Edition (Bompiani, Milano, 1962) had a few lines by Guillaume Apollinaire as a header. These were from the poem "La Jolie Rousse" (The Pretty Redhead), written for his beloved Jacqueline Kolb. I can find no better day to post this excellent and wonderfully fitting poem that I found by pure chance (or just by looking at the right places...)



LA JOLIE ROUSSE (1918, Calligrammes)

Me voici devant tous un homme plein de sens
Connaissant la vie et de la mort ce qu’un vivant peut connaître
Ayant éprouvé les douleurs et les joies de l’amour
Ayant su quelquefois imposer ses idées
Connaissant plusieurs langages
Ayant pas mal voyagé
Ayant vu la guerre dans l’Artillerie et l’Infanterie
Blessé à la tête trépané sous le chloroforme
Ayant perdu ses meilleurs amis dans l’effroyable lutte
Je sais d’ancien et de nouveau autant qu’un homme seul pourrait des deux savoir
Et sans m’inquiéter aujourd’hui de cette guerre
Entre nous et pour nous mes amis
Je juge cette longue querelle de la tradition et de l’invention
De l’Ordre et de l’Aventure

Vous dont la bouche est faite à l’image de celle de Dieu
Bouche qui est l’ordre même
Soyez indulgents quand vous nous comparez
À ceux qui furent la perfection de l’ordre
Nous qui quêtons partout l’aventure

Nous ne sommes pas vos ennemis
Nous voulons vous donner de vastes et d’étranges domaines
Où le mystère en fleurs s’offre à qui veut le cueillir
Il y a là des feux nouveaux des couleurs jamais vues
Mille phantasmes impondérables
Auxquels il faut donner de la réalité

Nous voulons explorer la bonté contrée énorme où tout se tait
Il y a aussi le temps qu’on peut chasser ou faire revenir
Pitié pour nous qui combattons toujours aux frontières
De l’illimité et de l’avenir
Pitié pour nos erreurs pitié pour nos péchés

Voici que vient l’été la saison violente
Et ma jeunesse est morte ainsi que le printemps
Ô Soleil c’est le temps de la Raison ardente
Et j’attends
Pour la suivre toujours la forme noble et douce
Qu’elle prend afin que je l’aime seulement
Elle vient et m’attire ainsi qu’un fer l’aimant
Elle a l’aspect charmant
D’une adorable rousse

Ses cheveux sont d’or on dirait
Un bel éclair qui durerait
Ou ces flammes qui se pavanent
Dans les roses-thé qui se fanent

Mais riez riez de moi
Hommes de partout surtout gens d’ici
Car il y a tant de choses que je n’ose vous dire
Tant de choses que vous ne me laisseriez pas dire
Ayez pitié de moi

THE PRETTY REDHEAD

Here I am before all, a man full of meaning
Learned on life and death about anything a living man could know
Having tried the pains and the joys of love
Having at some point or the other imposed his ideas
Learned on many languages
Having travelled not a little
Having seen the war through both Artillery and Infantry
Wounded in the head, trephined under chloroforme
Having lost his best friends in that fearful struggle
I know of the old and the new as much as any man by himself can know of these two
And without worrying myself much about that war today
Between you and for you my friends
I arbitrate that long quarrel between tradition and innovation
Between Order and the Adventure

You whose mouth has been made in the image of God's
Mouth which is order itself
Be indulgent when you compare us
To those who were the perfection of order
Us who go questing for the adventure in all places

We are not your enemies
We want to give you vast and strange domains
Where the blossoming mystery offers itself to those who would pluck it
There they are New fires Colours unseen before
A thousand unimaginable phantoms
Which must be given reality

We want to explore the bounty enormous country where everything is hushed
There is also time, which can be driven away or made to return
Pity for us who continually fight at the frontiers
Of infinity and of the future
Pity for our errors pity for our sins

Here comes summer the violent season
And my youth is dead along with springtime
O Sun it is the time of blazing Reason
And I wait

To always follow the noble and gentle form
That she dons to make me love her solely
She comes and she attracts me like a magnet does to iron
She has the charming aspect
Of an adorable redhead

Her hair are made of gold one would say
A beautiful shining that stays
Or those flames that prance about
In the fading tea-rose

But laugh at me laugh
Men from everywhere but above all people from here
Because there are many things that I dare not tell you
Many things that you would not let me say
Have pity on me

(Awkward literal translation by me, highlights by me as well)

It was a year ago, and five years ago... Exactly.

Lessons from the past : Love

I do not exactly welcome hardship but sometimes it is necessary if we are to develop the skills and stamina needed to face the world and live a full life. A cushy life will breed an idle mind.

To quote from Frank Herbert's masterpiece, Dune: " 'There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscle' -from "The Collected Sayings of Muad'dib" by the Princess Irulan"

However, the blows of the year 2007 were particularly hard in a very nasty way. Anathema to the year 2007. Its memory shall live in infamy. Anathema sit, anathema, anathema.

I will not mention the disastrous fires of the summer which destroyed a good portion of our forestland, caused a deplorable number of casualties and left us so numb that we did not even have the good sense of coming out to the streets with tar, feather and a hefty length of rope for each member of the parliament (and each candidate of the September elections as well).

The worst of that year for my family came in springtime when we lost two people who were very close to us.

The first was an uncle,a cousin of my mother's, who worked with my father's business for more than 40 years. Besides humoristic squabbles about football, politics and regionalistic joking (my father is from the Peloponnese and my mother - and her relatives - are Cretan) they never exchanged (in all that time) an angry word. It was he who brought my mother there to work as a secretary and that is how she met my father.

He died of lower respiratory tract infection, caused by multi-resistant nosocomial bacteria, as a result of a two-month long hospitalisation because of a massive cerebral infarction.

The second was a distant cousin of my father's. He was a farmer, a rock of a man who could make a cow ( A COW ! ) kneel with his bare hands, with thunderous laughter and continuous good humour. His house was like the halls of the kings of Olde, always open, with food always on the table and beer and wine continuously flowing for any man that should chance to pass by.

For him I have these lines from a very old poem:

Hwǽr cwóm mearh, hwǽr cwóm mago? Hwér cwóm máððumgyfa?
Hwǽr cwóm symbla gesetu? Hwǽr sindon seledréamas?
Éalá, beorht bune! Éalá, byrnwiga!
Éalá, þéodnes þrym! Hú seo þrág gewát,
genáp under niht-helm, swá heo nó wǽre!

( Where is the horse gone, where the young rider? Where now the giver of gifts?
Where are the seats at the feasting gone? Where are the merry sounds in the hall?
Alas, the bright goblet! Alas, the knight and his hauberk!
Alas, the glory of the king! How that hour has departed,
dark under the shadow of night, as had it never been!

Lines from the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Wanderer", translated by Professor JRR Tolkien).

He died of lower respiratory tract infection caused by multi-resistant nosocomial fungi and bacteria, as a result of a three-weeks long hospitalisation because of worsening chronic obstructive pulmonary disease caused by non-small cell lung cancer.

The relatively long course of these two deaths, along with the prolonged suffering that comes with such cases served to illustrate to me the meaning of a much abused and misused word.

Love.

You were not there. You may have seen similar cases. But you were not there (except for you Dennis - the family holds great gratitude) to witness with your own eyes.

Not for one minute were they alone. And not just make-believe concern. Their neighborhoods were silent for weeks before they died.

But what you should have seen were their wives. It was not despair. It was not histrionics.

It was the WILL to fight. To help them live. I tell you, if Death had to come to get them in a physical form, black robes, sceletal fingers, scythe and all, he would get a right-royal kick up his buttside. This is not Sweden where one might think to settle these matters in a game of chess.

You should have heard their words. Spoken because they knew they would never get another chance to tell them how they feel. They were the only times in my life that I cmae close to witness an Ideal. No speeches, no paeans, no flags, no ceremonies have ever come close to that.

Still, their lives together were ending. But, the certainty of that was not a cause of despair for them. If anything, it was an embarassment to the great entity that is supposed to watch over our lives and rule wisely, in an omniscient and omnipotent way...

I have seen Love transcend the concepts of Death and of Universe. And that, in the face of two aged, uneducated and bewildered women.

What a mighty lesson that was.

PS.

Today is the birthday of Professor JRR Tolkien. If he were alive, today he would be 116 years old. Details about him and his works are widely known.

I will only say that his undying legacy comes from his unwillingness to compromise in anything that had to do with his views on language, art and morality. He faced everything with the stature of someone who holds the moral high ground and has genuine love for what he does.In this manner, he created the last true epic of our civilization and helped turn our scholarly eyes to an age which we thought barbarous and obscure simply because the Glory of the Roman Legions had faded.

And speaking of love, Tolkien was buried with his wife. The stone reads:

Edith Mary Tolkien
Lúthien
1889 – 1971


John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Beren
1892 – 1973

Juletid, pt. III : The Spirit of Christmas - Memories come alive

CHRISTMAS-GREETINGS

[FROM A FAIRY TO A CHILD]

LADY dear, if Fairies may

For a moment lay aside

Cunning tricks and elfish play,

'Tis at happy Christmas-tide.

We have heared the children say---

Gentle children, whom we love---

Long ago, on Christmas-Day,

Came a message from above.

Still, as Christmas-tide comes round,

They remember it again---

Echo still the joyful sound

'Peace on earth, good-will to men!'

Yet the hearts must child-like be

Where such heavenly guests abide;

Unto children, in their glee,

All the year is Christmas-tide.

Thus forgetting tricks and play

For a moment, Lady dear,

We would wish you, if we may,

Merry Christmas, glad New Year!

Lewis Carroll, Christmas, 1867.
(First published in Phantasmagoria, 1869)

The spirit of Christmas is Love. The spirit of any holiday is love. But, to quote, (of all sources...) the movie "Love, actually" : "Enough....enough now" (from the only realistic scene of the film...).

So, beyond such commonplace statements, the Spirit of Christmas is the one single transcendental feeling that goes beyond all the exaggeration, corniness, cuteness, deluded arrogance and generic kitsch that surrounds the celebrations of these days. Indeed, it not only transcends them, but even gives them purpose and meaning.

For who would dream of spartan, or even doric Christmas? Christmas is sybaritic, and was meant to be thus even from the days of the celebrations of Jul (complete with the Wild Hunt around the days of Winter Solstice), and the Death of Baldur.

What evoces this feeling is different for each one of us. For me it is nothing less than the revival of childhood memories.

The fireplace, to which I later in the night retreated to read the works of Dr. Seuss, and my absolute favourites: the Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and the Alice books by Lewis Carroll. And later: the works of Professor Tolkien....




























The food, marching out of the kitchen in a stream of delights and the thought in the back of our head that this year we will need more cretan tsikoudia for digestion.

The all-day long music by 19th century Romantics, with Stokowski's interpretation of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, from the soundtrack of Fantasia holding the most prominent place.

Going to bed with the last embers dying in the fireplace...and the pregnant moments of the following morning before the opening of gifts.

As long as all these things revive, Christmas will be frosted with a glowing dust that keeps the magic alive.

Before we part, for the time of celebration is nigh...

...a couple of words and a poem by Lewis Carroll:

Dear Children,

At Christmas-time a few grave words are not quite out of place, I hope, even at the end of a book of nonsense - and I want to take this opportunity of thanking the thousands of children who have read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, for the kindly interest they have taken in my little dream-child.

The thought of the many English firesides where happy faces have smiled her a welcome, and of the many English children to whom she has brought an hour of (I trust) innocent amusement, is one of the brightest and pleasantest thoughts of my life. I have a host of young friends already, whose names and faces I know - but I cannot help feeling as if, through "Alice's Adventures" I had made friends with many other dear children, whose faces I shall never see.

To all my little friends, known and unknown, I wish with all my heart, "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year". May God bless you, dear children, and make each Christmas-tide, as it comes round to you, more bright and beautiful than the last - bright with the presence of that unseen Friend, who once on earth blessed little children - and beautiful with memories of a loving life, which has sought and found the truest kind of happiness, the only kind that is really worth the having, the happiness of making others happy too!

Your affectionate Friend,

Lewis Carroll

Christmas, 1871