This is a test. Something weird happened with the publishing of today’s Something for Thursday post, and I’m making sure it was a weird one-off.
OK, it appears to have been a weird one-off. I wrote the Something for Thursday post yesterday and then went to publish it this morning, but for some reason WordPress noted that the date had changed but still published under yesterday’s month…so instead of appearing as a 10-1-26 post, it showed up as a 9-1-26 post. Which is better than what I thought had happened! I thought the post had just disappeared. Once I figured that out it was easy to change the date and fix it.
It’s strange to me how weirdly clunky blog mechanics are starting to get….
Many years ago, when I was but a “yoot” and I was taking piano lessons, my teacher–a lovely old lady named Margaret Hooker–invited me, along with several other students, to go see a piano duet that was making the rounds. I don’t remember their names, sadly; I’d like to look them up, but I have no idea where I’d ever start to try to look. They played on two gigantic Boesendorfer pianos that weren’t content to stand with 88 keys; no, these monsters had 92 keys. The new ones were way down at the left end, at the very bottom of the register, and they were all four colored black so as to help the pianists maintain their place. That was a fascinating concert: two pianists sitting across from each other and maintaining the ensemble nature of their music.
Not all piano music for four hands requires two pianos, though! Oftentimes the work puts both pianists behind the same keyboard, so the entire work is executed from a single instrument. This always looks like a fraught process to me: how do the two manage to never cross their hands or stray? Or, what if some composer perversely writes the work so they have to?
I suppose ultimately it’s just one of those things that the good ones just know how to do. Four-hand piano music always sounds…well, four-handed, I guess. What I mean is that it’s clearly only a piano, or maybe two pianos, that you’re hearing…but the work is still somehow larger, more sonorous, with that extra playing going on.
I heard this work yesterday while I was driving around on the last day of my autumn vacation. It’s a suite of six short piano duet pieces by Gabriel Faure, called the Dolly Suite. “Dolly” was the nickname Faure used for the daughter of one of his mistresses. The work is pleasantly urbane and even a bit innocent, with an exuberant dance in the finale.
Just a reminder, since I haven’t shared one in a little while, that in addition to all the other places I share content, I also have a newsletter! And there’s a new installment from just yesterday, a feature I call “And Now, a Photo”, in which I share a photo of mine that might be older or maybe isn’t one that I would feature on my Photo Gallery Instagram but which I still think is interesting or useful in some way. Check it out and subscribe! It’s not just photography over there, after all. I have more coming!
Here we have a student piece written by a young composer, when he was only 19 years of age. But not just any composer: it’s 20th century Russian great Sergei Prokofiev.
Prokofiev is, I admit, something of a tough nut for me. I don’t always respond readily to his music, for one reason or another. But this piece grabbed me immediately, perhaps because it is to my ears a fascinating blend of lyric Romanticism and of atmospheric Impressionism. I hear a wild melding of Tchaikovsky and Ravel here, and that is absolutely amazing to me. This work is called a “sketch”, and it is just that: a piece written by a student composer to explore some aspect of composition. In this case, I imagine it was to explore orchestral color and mood, and the mood is definitely dark and autumnal, in my ears.
Fifty-five is kind of a strange number, isn’t it? It feels significant, but I’m damned if I can figure out why. It’s not halfway to anything in particular. Maybe it’s lingering from 55 being the upper speed limit on American roads for many years…and really, how did they choose that number, anyway? Why 55? Why not 50, or 60? How did they land on 55? It gave Mr. Hagar a nice rhyme for his classic song, sure…but I don’t know why 55 other than that. (Maybe if I actually looked it up, there’s a good reason.)
Anyway, I’ve just turned fifty-five. Here’s what that looks like:
I’m grayer in the hair and beard now, and the hair is thinning a bit up top and in back. I’m of mixed mind if I should attempt doing anything about this, maybe I’ll ask my doctor next time I’m in for a visit, I know there are treatments and whatnot but I’m not sure if I care enough to the point of spending actual money on it. Weight-wise, I’ve continued my long trajectory of being down, but very slowly: I seem to be another pound or two lighter every time I see the doctor, which at this rate is about 3-4 pounds of weight loss a year. I can live with this.
And of course, there are the normal aches and weird stuff that goes along with this age…getting down on the floor remains as easy as ever, but getting back up off it requires a bit more muscular investment than I’m used to. A few weeks ago I also went in for a diagnostic medical procedure that I was actually overdue to have done, but I suppose the less said about that, the better. (All is well, nothing was found that was bad, I don’t have to do that again for a few years, and let’s just say that preparing for this particular procedure was another data point in my longing for Star Trek medical tech where Dr. McCoy or Crusher or Bashir can just wave a doo-dad over your body and diagnose everything you got goin’ on, right then and there.)
I do note increasingly this disconnect between how old I mentally feel with how old I physically look and how old I’m socially seen. I don’t wanna be the Old Dude quite yet! But alas, I can’t control time, can I?
Anyway, yeah, here I am, 55 and aging nicely for now. And with that, I’m off to try to tidy up my library and finish laundry and–HEY! Get off my lawn, ya buncha hooligans!!!
OK, here we go! We just got back from our annual trip to Ithaca for Apple Fest, and I also just turned another year older, so I’ll get back in the swing with this, a Quiz.
1. If you were trapped in a TV universe for a month, what TV show would you choose?
If I had to actually live in a teevee universe for a month? Am I actually hobnobbing with the cast, or am I just some Joe Schmo living there? Normally I’d take an easy way here with Star Trek, but I think instead I’ll go with the setting of a very new show that I’ve been enjoying a great deal since it launched last season: Port Wenn, the fictional Maine coastal town of Best Medicine. If you haven’t seen it, in the show a city doctor who is very buttoned-up goes to live in this little New England town full of quirky residents. Think House MD meets Newhart.
2. What song instantly revs you up and gets you going?
Oooof, I don’t know about a song that fires me up…but “Dreams” by Van Halen can, and has, neutralized many a bad mood I’ve been in. Also, “Human” by The Killers is a nice song to play during the home-from-work drive; I like making the transition from being annoyed at work to being happy at home.
In college, my roommate and I would blast the last movement of Saint-Saens’s Third Symphony, the “Organ” Symphony, while we dressed for band or orchestra concerts. That was always fun.
3. Are you decorating your home for fall?
Not really. I always feel like I should do more seasonal decorating, but it never really happens.
4. How do you treat a cold?
Rest and lots of fluids. Green tea with honey, soup, and a lot of water. My goal is to drown that virus and flush it out of me.
5. What insignificant thing would you be genuinely annoyed if you lost it or it was taken from you?
Well, we recently broke one of the glass bottles we use for maple syrup, and that’s been on my mind for replacement now. I had bought a bottle of syrup years ago in the shape of a snowflake, and we have been rinsing and refilling it for years (along with a few others) from the big quart or, more recently, half-gallon jugs of maple syrup that we buy at farmers markets and the like. That bottle broke during washing a month or two ago. Bummer!
6. What place do you remember vividly, even though you haven’t been there in years?
Maybe next year I’ll drive the 60 miles or so to Allegany and Olean, NY to see how things have changed in the towns I grew up. I have visited neither since 2014, when I helped my parents move for the last time.
7. Do you have a favorite Dolly Parton song or story?
Song? “Hard Candy Christmas”, which I’m sure will be featured this coming Holiday season here during the Daily Dose. Story? I love that she knew that owning the rights to her own songs was important, so she declined to let Elvis Presley record “I Will Always Love You” because he required ownership of any song he did. I also love that someone asked her about the fact that a lot of people think she’s a “dumb blonde”, and she replied, “Whatever, I know I’m not dumb and I’m not blonde.” I don’t know how true this is, but I remember reading that Parton would go out with her husband and be totally unrecognizable because she would eschew makeup and any wig.
OK, that’s all, I got more unpacking to do. Moving on!
It’s FALL, y’all! So here’s a fall song. No, the leaves aren’t turning yet, except for a single tree here and there where the color is starting to nibble around the edges…but Nat King Cole is never really out of season, is he?
I’m going to pause the exploration of Japanese composers for a bit, kind-of, because as I write this, the Autumnal Equinox is just under four hours away. The sun is scheduled to cross the equator at 8:05pm ET, and right now it’s–[checks watch]–[actually checks phone, I don’t currently wear a watch]–4:12pm. So, for the next bunch of weeks, I’ll be featuring autumnal music. I’ll likely be doing this up until Halloween.
But I don’t have to make the transition super sharp! I can feature Japanese autumnal music! Composer Toru Takemitsu wrote a lot of music inspired by autumn; apparently this season fueled his musical imagination quite a bit. So here is In an Autumn Garden, which Takemitsu wrote for gagaku orchestra. This is an orchestra comprised of Japanese instruments that was often used to perform the ceremonial music of court, as well as in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. The work has the feel of religious chant to my ears.
As I write this, we are at T-minus 58 hours, 21 minutes, and a few seconds away from the Autumnal Equinox. This one has been a long time coming, folks, but it’s COMING!!!
This summer was, in terms of weather, rather unpleasant. We usually get our fair share of hot and humid here in the 716, though not so bad as the actual Eastern Seaboard and the cities of the Atlantic northeast. But what usually happens is a lot of low 80s, with some humidity, along with a few stretches here and there where the humidity spikes and we’re into the 90s. Those periods suck, I cannot lie; even though in recent years I have found myself having an easier time with heat and humidity than I used to be able to manage, I would never claim to like those things.
That kind of weather is usually in July, and then in August while it doesn’t exactly cool off a lot, it usually does a bit. Usually in August we’ll generally dip into the high 70s for the most part, and also usually in August we’ll start to have a few nights here or there with that blessed “good sleeping weather”: the humidity drops, and overnight lows dip down to the low 60s or even the upper 50s if we’re lucky. Because of this, and because the County Fair always takes place in August, I have long maintained that August is usually my favorite summer month. This usually happens. Usually.
You can probably tell by my liberal use of “usually” in that last paragraph that none of that shit happened this year!
Nope, didn’t happen. We didn’t hit the 90s any more than usual, so we had that going for us at least, which was nice, but we also had almost none of that wonderful August respite. What happened instead is that at some point in early July, the heat seemed to set up camp in the mid-to-upper 80s, maybe in the 85-87 range, which is just warm enough to start to feel uncomfortable. Along with those temps came humidity levels that weren’t soakingly unbearable for the most part; instead it was just humid enough to be unpleasant outside. It’s like this summer was calibrated to just exceed my upper boundaries of comfortable summer weather, and then…it just stayed like that.
Into September.
WELL into September!
Like, until more than halfway through September!
This, as Dr. Harry Vanderspiegel often said, was some bullshit.
I have two date-based strong weather opinions: Snow after St. Patrick’s Day annoys me greatly, and so do temps over 80 after Labor Day. And these are not equal opinions, either. Snow after St. Paddy’s is annoying and obnoxious. Eighty-degree days after Labor Day actively piss me off.
But…it seems that we’re finally turning the corner into autumn, and this is right on time for our annual trek to Ithaca and the FLX region for the Apple Harvest Festival and more.
This brings me to the brilliant YouTuber Rachel Maksy, who does a ton of great content about whimsical crafts and fantastical clothing and all manner of other stuff. She also rocks a mean pair of overalls, and like many people who play in the “whimsy” end of the pool, she welcomes autumn with deep relief when it is finally in the offing. She offered up this short video on her channel, and I don’t think a single video has summed up my feelings on anything more than this one does:
And no, I will not be attempting any kind of reproduction of that. Dancing is, ahem, not a thing I do.
By the way, in a longer recent video in which Ms. Maksy repaints a chest to make it more autumnal in decor, she briefly comments on her love of overalls even though she apparently believes they are not…complimentary of her body. At about the 6:15 mark she says: “I love overalls as much as the next girl, even though they constantly humble me. Why does it always look like I’m wearing a diaper? Why do I look like that?”
And then she says, “This is how I imagine my body looks when I wear overalls,” adding a sketch diagram to the right side of her frame:
At this moment I cracked up, because…well…I mean…OK, I’m struggling with how to phrase this without sounding creepy as shit, and I don’t know if I’m going to figure it out, so, here goes….
…ahem…
I love the way overalls look from pretty much all angles, but Ms. Maksy is right: overalls do not accentuate, or flatter, the backside. They just don’t. At their best they are still kind of shapeless back there, and in some extreme cases, they can bunch up and look like an extra bag in that vicinity. And they’re not supposed to, right? Overalls are originally intended as protective and functional clothing. So yeah, I get it.
But obviously I do love the way they look (otherwise I wouldn’t collect them or wear them more than anything else), so what gives? Well, in their protective and functional design, overalls end up concealing in a way that can be almost teasing, if you wear them well and pair them with a good top. Women’s overalls will usually compliment and accentuate hips while concealing…other things. And other parts of the figure are concealed from some angles, and tantalizingly hinted at from others. Instead of revealing the whole package, overalls make it something shown in brief, incompletely suggested.
Plus, there’s the whole fun and “whimsy” angle. It fascinates me how overalls, which are originally garments created for hard work, lend themselves to fun and whimsy while other articles of clothing in the “workwear” arena…do not. I mean, when was the last time you saw anyone being whimsical and fun in a pair of Dickies work pants? Maybe a pair of coveralls can work, but they lack that fun teasing nature that lends itself well to whimsy and play.
Anyway, that’s my thinking on the subject: overalls may not do the backside any favors, but they do enough other fun stuff that I’m fine with it. Overalls remain perfect for most of life’s informal activities, work and play. I’ve been saying for a while that overalls are the official uniform of shenanigans, and I stand by that.
And now, lacking any particularly good way to bring this to a conclusion, I’ll just lurch to a stop.
I wanted to get back to Japanese music, but I didn’t get a lot of the pre-listening done this week that I like to do when I’m presenting music I’m not familiar with, so this week I’m going with something I’m very familiar with…but still Japanese! This is a cue from Kiki’s Delivery Service, music by the great Joe Hisaishi. It’s called “A Town With an Ocean View”. This is heard when young witch Kiki, on her first journey out into the real world, ends up in a city that’s much larger than anything she’s known before. She is amazed by its energy and bustle and beauty, and the music shows this so wonderfully.
I’ve noticed over the years that I gravitate toward stories that show cities as places of genuine magic….
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