Related literature —
Related video —
(Recall, in light of the previous post, that
Apollo is the lord of the dance.)
The Girl in the Yellow Dress
(from the Broadway musical "Contact")
Thursday, August 9, 2018
Drama Queen in Yellow Dress
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Saturday, October 27, 2012
Behind the Green Door
Backstory—
Posts of October 24th—
Love Ghost and Versions—
and a version of Plan 9—
Related religious meditation—
Irresistible Grace, illustrated by The Girl in the Yellow Dress.
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Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Tuesday February 5, 2008
A literary complaint:
Philip Larkin on his fear of death—
This is a special way
of being afraid
No trick dispels.
Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten
musical brocade
Created to pretend
we never die….
A literary response
quoted in The Last Enemy:
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
— Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:
— Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.
Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.
— Back to barracks! he said sternly.
He added in a preacher’s tone:
— For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.
He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.
— Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?
— James Joyce, Ulysses
From a musical brocade:
“My shavin’ razor’s cold
and it stings.”— John Stewart,
who died on January 19For the rest of
the brocade, see
The Last Enemy.
Related material:
The Crimson Passion:
A Drama at Mardi Grasand the quote by Susan Sontag
in yesterday’s entry,
as well as a recent
New York Times book review:
“Slow music, please.
Shut your eyes, gents.
One moment. A little trouble
about those white corpuscles.
Silence, all.”Ite, missa est.
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Thursday, April 1, 2004
Thursday April 1, 2004
Loretta’s Rainbow
AMC April 1, 2004:
8:00 PM Coal Miner’s Daughter
10:30 PM Love with the Proper Stranger
From an interview
with Iris Dement
(b. 5 January, 1961, Paragould, Arkansas)
Your songs are filled with hints of a very complicated, difficult life.
ID: Well, I turned 36 this year, and I feel like I’ve been through some difficult things in my life. By far the most difficult thing was leaving the church. My whole life revolved around the church, all through growing up and even as an adult. I didn’t leave it out of rebelliousness, because I loved the feeling of being in the church, with the music and the preaching. But there was an awakening one day, a realization that I didn’t believe in a large part of this stuff, and I could either go on and pretend to be a part of the group or acknowledge that it was not me or something I could live with.
What’s your first musical memory?
ID: The first music that I consciously remember, no doubt about it, was a Loretta Lynn record. I was very young, maybe four, and it was the middle of the day when my mom and dad brought it home from the store. It was a Loretta Lynn gospel record and on the cover she was wearing a lacy yellow dress and she had pretty red hair. I immediately liked it before even hearing it, she was so pretty.
My parents’s first record player was one of those suitcase types with the lid that flipped up and I listened to it over and over again and probably had that whole album memorized in a week. We didn’t have a lot of records so I played the same ones over and over, and I think there’s something really neat about not having too much coming at you so you really absorb just one or two things. Because something really gets into your bones when you don’t have a lot of choices. You get to know things inside out.
So now with all the choices out there, are you listening to more stuff?
ID: No, I don’t really listen to a whole lot of music. I never did. I had a few things I really liked like the Loretta Lynn record that I listened to constantly. I’m kind of embarrassed to say this, but I still listen to those same records. When I’m out on the road, I take them with me. I put on my Merle, my Johnny, my Loretta.
Loretta Lynn, Hymns, 1965
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“And the rain’s comrade,
the bow of Iris,
wove her many colours
into a rounded track.”
— Dionysiaca 2.200
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Sunday, September 1, 2002
Sunday September 1, 2002
Backbeat in Heaven
The great musician Lionel Hampton died at about 6:15 a.m. EDT Saturday, August 31, 2002, in New York City’s Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Quincy Jones said, “Heaven will definitely be feeling some backbeat now.” (AP story)
Hampton himself said, “I learned all that in the sanctified church.” (N.Y. Times story)
Can we hear an AMEN?
Yes, we heard an amen… Live from Lincoln Center on PBS from about 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. EDT tonight (Sunday, September 1, 2002), in a live broadcast of the final performance of the musical “Contact.”
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Theology was made visible by Colleen Dunn, who appeared as Grace (the girl in the yellow dress). Christ himself was present in the form of a CD of “Do You Wanna Dance?” held aloft by a priest (the after-hours club bartender). |
The evening ended with the redemption by Grace of a sinner (a maker of TV commercials) and with (as Quincy Jones noted) a strong new backbeat in heaven.
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