Archives for August 30, 2006

Laryngitis.

Later.

(Imagine a big sick frog intoning those two words and you’ll get the idea.)

UPDATE: My condition has evolved. I now sound like the subject of my next book.

“He played Franck’s Prelude, Aria and Finale. The noble, declamatory music with its military stride and confident accent marched through the room, filling it with flags and cheering crowds, a gallant expedition setting out in the morning of life to win a spiritual prize. Eustace thought he knew why Victor chose this piece; not only was it, superficially at any rate, the very breath of encouragement, but it expressed all those sentiments which he, Victor, so sedulously kept out of his daily manner. Here, at the piano, protected by the anonymity of art, he could walk in old heroic traces without being betrayed. Sir John was right to say that he played like a professional. He had the evenness of touch, the restrained, impersonal approach to emotion; he did not hurry when the music was easy, and slow up when it was difficult. He could let go without letting himself go.”

L.P. Hartley, The Sixth Heaven

So Terry’s got laryngitis and I’ve got my parents in town. Advantage Ms. OGIC, by a very large margin, but in terms of blogging output, nobody wins. I’ll leave you, however, with a few good links:

– Robert Archambeau is very acute, not to mention downright hilarious, dissecting audiences at poetry readings. Poetry readings get a bad rap, he admits; but “what if a big part of the problem with poetry readings isn’t a matter of what’s up on stage, but a matter of what’s down in the seats?” (Via Dan Green).

– Peter Suderman argues that “classic TV” is not just a myth, and that the DVD medium overcomes the precise obstacles previously cited by my illustrious co-blogger to even the best series television attaniing the status of bona fide narrative art.

– Not a link but an observation. There’s been much ado about Marisha Pessl’s cause c