npr

Classical Fans Tell Stories Of ‘First Loves’ : Deceptive Cadence : NPR

Link ~ ~ Mark

I was homeless, and working holding a sandwich board on the side of the road. It was so dull! I saved up for weeks and got a Sony Discman for $50.00. Now I had something to listen to while I worked. The Discman was so expensive that all I could afford was an Excelsior Gold recording of the fourth and sixth symphonies that was lying in a discount bin for a dollar-fifty. When I was playing it for the first time, in my board, pacing up and down the block — because if you stopped moving at anytime, the police would ticket you for loitering — I suddenly burst into tears. I felt like Beethoven was there with me, saying, “I know this sucks. But look— here is the whole world, outside, birds, the sky, the sun, and here you are! You are in it! Buck up!”

Classical Fans Tell Stories Of ‘First Loves’ : Deceptive Cadence : NPR

Quote ~ ~ Mark

I think Jones suffers from a common problem some good actors have: the character she has created is so individual that you don’t really realize it isn’t a cliche. You know her, so you feel like she’s a type, even though she’s not. If this is a cliche, who was the last Betty Draper before Betty Draper? I’m not sure there was one.

Complexity, Beauty, and the Underappreciated January Jones. Most interesting character on the show so far, but then I’m only halfway through the second season.

The Snow Man

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

Wallace Stevens reads The Snow Man. Jay Keyser reads it on NPR (less dreary, more enthusiasm) and praises it highly before dissecting a little bit. Keyser also has this crazy idea of writing the poem out on notecards and making a hanging mobile out of it a la Alexander Calder.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.