I Love Opera! «First note»

I do love Opera!

This seems a strange thing in these days and time. How many Opera lovers can you find in the several billions people who inhabit this, our hapless planet?

Our seal, I mean human beings in general, our seal seems to be the confused, mixed, blatant noises and the confused, mixed, blatant actions in growing speed: if you breath, you lose, if you blink, you are left behind, we must go, Go, GO! never mind grasping what is going on around us, no time for that! We must reach the future before it reaches us and becomes long past and use it just as a propeller for the next step into future.

When time overtakes us and we find we are not fit anymore for the athletic feats that filled all the time of our life we find our hands empty, maybe some of us reached the shores of the American Dream, but, and this is arguable, the only thing they have is wealth, poor and stupid wealth with no significance when the line of end is near.

Now, if you could stop and think a bit, lose a small part of the immense wealth you are pursuing since you learned to read the words “one dollar”, then there is hope to fulfill a rich experience in life…

Opera is not a popular music genre. It cannot be. Society as a gregarious group presents a difficult way of living, the bigger the group the greater the competition. This situation demands so much of an individual that any other requirement is to ask too much.

The need of music and lyrics that help people find a way to raise their thresholds on suffering and let them be lost in any kind of ecstasy, in rapturous delight; that separate them from the hard reality, IS a strong need, but that music must be undemanding, able to dull feelings into a kind of stupor that conceal the piercing pain of actuality.

Opera is just the opposite, it tells melodramatic stories, with tortured characters full of pathos and pain, the “real” reality, (except in what is known as “opera buffa“, that is, comic opera which are just a little part of the whole) but the music is the redeemer. When you accept the hurting feelings from those acting, the drama as normal since so is life too, and let music seeps into the tissue of your soul, then OPERA is the only way to set you free, to stir, to shake you into a magic world of bliss and joy without creating a fantasy world for a while nor dampening your human feelings.

Maybe this introduction makes you recoil from Opera or maybe it opens a small crevice of curiosity.

(to be continued)


You are listening to beautiful Dame Joan Sutherland performing a deliciously distressed Elena singing "Mercé diletti amiche" from Verdi's "I Vespri Siciliani", just let the butterflies of her voice caress your soul...



© 2009 Od Liam.

Hunting or Haunting

Yesterday morning I decided to show up in the Hunters' Club, they said there was a gathering to recount member's adventures, and I wanted to tell them about my last one.

When I arrived there were already several persons waiting to tell their stories, I took my time listening to other people tales and when there was a lull around the guests I started, harrumphing:

"A few months ago I went to the African savannah looking for a rare white lion the native mentioned have been seen prowling on the field, I guessed his head, and mane would look nice over my mantelpiece".

"I secured the help of a group of natives to carry my impedimenta and armed with my favorite high powered rifle started to track the lion on the vast expanse of land".

At this time I realized I had the complete attention of the crowd assembled in the room.

"A few miles ahead", I went on, "I found the first traces of the animal, I decided to follow them alone since my group of natives refused to go on arguing that this lion was very dangerous and has already killed human beings. Disregarding this arguments as nonsense I kept going until, some time later I espied the white mane moving about the bush".

Now, the audience was hanging on each of my words.

"I approached silently leeward, looking for a good spot to ensure my shot. The animal was feeding and completely oblivious of its surrounding so I had time to choose the right place, I was already congratulating myself for such a good hunting".

"As I started to raise the gun to my face I heard a low growl to my right, surprised I looked toward the bushes and saw a big white lioness already charging for my throat!"

I made a long silence looking at my audience...
Then one of them could not endure the suspense and asked in a small voice:

"How did you escape?"

"I didn't!", I said, while I dissolved into thin air.


Alfred Hitchcock theme by OST

© 2009 Od Liam.

Correlative

"Hell does not exist!", said the agnostic.


"Then, what does pain exist for?" asked the philosopher.






Sequetia "Dies irae" from Mozart's "Requiem" performed by "Orchestra Scuola Orchestra", conducted by A. Bellaccini, and the choir "Coro Diapason", conducted by P. Ghezzo.


© 2009 Od Liam

Vortex

The day Jorge Luis Borges found out tautology a tornado was unshackled over Literature.


Fragment of "O Fortuna" from Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana"


© 2009 Od Liam.

Worlds

I climbed the chestnut and observed without blinking the cobweb decorated with small beads of transparent dew full of changing iridescent reflections of light.

A few inches below me a small finch tossed off a new warble.

The scent of the forest filled the space around me.

The rugged bark of the tree designed variegated patterns on my skin.

I introduced a small leaf in my mouth and tasted the distinct, intrinsic flavor.

In few moments I enjoyed five universes that seemed infinite from my first six years of live...

A sentimental rendering of a fragment of Ceccini's Ave Maria by Sumi Jo.


© 2009 Od Liam.

Ideal balance

Every morning, when you get up, come near a mirror, look closely to your image and say:

"I am the best, the only one, there is no other better than me"

If you can hold your gaze for more than fifteen seconds without
bursting out in a peal of laugh and guffaw, your self-esteem is in good health!
If you cannot, your humor is perfect!

"Yakety Sax" performed by the band of Benny Hill Show.



© 2009 Od Liam.

The desire of the everlasting hills

When would the desire of the everlasting hills be accomplished?!

Days go away as the hackneyed saying goes: sand between the fingers.

I am not complaining, it is fast, the passing of time I mean, but not fast enough for a light soul with immense wings. Things happen but they are not changing anything. Remember the old rule, change anything that let everything stay unchanged?

Everlasting hills

It is amazing how after eons human beings still keep their old practices of exploitation (such a blasting word!), indifference and hate towards their own species, what is worse, it seems as if there is no signal of change.

Even if all persons on the world (count me in, of course), I am being generous here but lets give us the benefit of the doubt, even if all persons on the world would agree that we are gentle, forgiving and with the heart full of good feeling to our neighbors, evil runs rampant on every place and nook on this miserable planet.

In an optimistic mood one can believe that tares, or better yet darnel, and wheat grow together but reality shows us that the scent of darnel fills all the corners of Earth.

I think we must endure and wait, but it is not easy. Mermaids' songs are stronger as time goes by, society follows paths far away from those mounds and glens we learned to call our own, and when the landscape changes so radically we start to ask: Are we right?, is it worth this solitude and this pain? But of course, when we come to remember we are a small boat in the grieving, dusky ocean of reality, the answer comes easily to mind: "this is how it is, there is no way around, we must accept solitude as our natural environment, no matter how noisy it is, it is all beside ourselves, never into us". We are in here but we do not belong here, not as a solid part of the party we live daily, only as a necessary accessory. So we can enjoy what there is to enjoy and endure whatever there is to endure.

Yeah, right! But it is still a hard bit to bite!
What if...?
Oh! come on!!



A superb version of Lacrimosa from Mozart's immortal Requiem conducted by Herbert von Karajan



© 2009 Od Liam.