Surfacing

So shipwracked passengers escape to land,
So look they, when on the bare beach they stand,
Dropping and cold, and their first fear scarce o'er,
Expecting famine on a desert shore.
From that hard climate we must wait for bread,
Whence even the natives, forced by hunger, fled.
Our stage does human chance present to view,
But ne'er before was seen so sadly true :
You are changed too, and your pretence to see
Is but a nobler name for charity.

John Dryden, after the 1671 fire destroyed Drury Lane

I am returned from the storming of my fury and from disappointed exile. That fury being self-directed, for the sea is not so large but I am a bigger fool by far, an oceanic idiot, for having thought myself immune (at my age, after all!) to flattery and honeyed phrases, that others call love - Plato's rem amaram, a bitter potion, an agony, a plague.

Eripite hanc pestem perniciemque mihi,
Quas mihi subrepens imos, ut torpor, in artus,
Expulit ex omni pectore lastitias.

   O take away this plague, this mischief from me,
   Which as a numbness over all my body,
   Expels my joys, and makes my soul so heavy.

Transported by such pernicious and dubious joys, I forgot myself and all I have learned, and so my suffering began, and I navigated as blind as a beetle, until I went down with all hands.

Enough. I do not care to flog my idiocy in the market. Preferable far to make amends to you whom I have slighted and missed for so long, and start wand'ring again in the smile of sober amity. I steer my humbled craft in your direction and look toward your gentle admonishments.

Not dead, but gone before.

Non amittuntur, sed praemittuntur.

Friends, I live, but like a hot shade in the cold light of day. I flit and burn fitfully, my estate plundr'd and my heart wracked on shoals these six months past, keeled by ill fortune and malice. My canvas is rent, my mast cracked and sent to the bottom by lightning and fire.

Do not look for me in this Life: I cannot yet return. My home in Orion is obliterated and forever lost, all links sunder'd and property forsworn. O wasteland of fury and despair. O miserly hope and deceitful longing.

I say I burn; my face blazes with shame and self-hatred. I am wounded to the core and left half-dead of disgrace, discountenanced by trenchant lies. Unworthy opponent, his black name sickens me. All sweetness and felicity that ever passed his teeth I now abhor: he has poisoned even poetry. Viper, worm!

My wrath writhes within my bowels: I cannot yet return. I cannot bear my friends see my face awry with rancour. Suffer me to drift awhile and aloof to nurse my foolish wounds at sea. When I regain my direction I shall come to shore and make amends.

Kind Osprey, Enjah, Persephone, Pablo, Pighed and HBA: you are ever in my thoughts, bright suns beyond my storms.

Show Preview

I was given the rare opportunity to try out two acts in the upcoming The Show Must Go On Season Two performance. The Synchronised Knitters Precision Drill Team have new costumes and a more daring course, braving collisions, aerial danger and ridicule. The Invisible Dancers took it all off, except Enjah who flashed a little underwear when she dropped her invisiprim. Osprey, Enjah and I went shopping at Sine Wave Island afterward, but the rather constant drudge of crashing and rebooting put an end to that fun. They have some lovely animations, but for some reason my viewer no longer likes to take photographs, so we have a bare post. ***Blushes furiously***

We were all in the same place at the same time, proving to HBA that I am not Osprey while she is asleep, for she could not be at the same time asleep and balancing on her unicycle, except he was nowhere to be found, poor baby-bothered man that he is.
(Perhaps she could, for I manage to fall asleep most inopportunely, while doing all manner of things. Very embarrassing.)

Airships

Found at Modern Mechanix.
Music not included.

Oh for goodness sakes, Hostspur O'Toole has already commented on that post!

What we want

Happiness, surely, about which one reads in books by many an unhappy author.
True Love, perhaps, which like a ghost, everybody talks about and few have seen.

For True Love (and it deserves those capitals) demands a desire for true labour and deep thought to coincide in two people. We are flawed creatures: even the successful suffer from pride, the intelligent from vanity, the wealthy from avarice and need. Success, intelligence and wealth are but facets ground from the stone, but no amount of polishing will eliminate our flaws, however much we hope to dazzle others by our brilliance.

The secret, I submit with humility, is to love those flaws in another as the emblem and badge of our common humanity; to recognize in others what one sometimes dreads to find in oneself, and to accept it, nay, welcome it with a laugh or a wry smile, with recognition. When we fail to find flaws in ourselves, or confess to little flaws because we wish to persuade ourselves that we have no great ones, then we are in peril of finding fault in all humanity, and not merely in our tarnished lover.

Be not deceived by the disappointment that is certain to come after an affaire du coeur has cooled. The diamond you buy under the goldsmith's lights will change appearance in different settings, yet it does not change in essence. There is much delight in the intimate companionship of a fellow human, and much to reward those who work to discover another's goodness, for we are as abundantly endowed with goodness as we are with flaws.

Happiness, I think, takes an equal measure of work, for it is dented by perceived need and by the insult of hunger and exhaustion on the mind. Chinese medical practice believes mental health is no more than a manifestation of corporal health, and treats anxiety and depression with physical remedies ~ mens sana in corpore sano. And it has been discovered ill health will spread worry and doubt around it as surely as the plague spreads disease. Happiness then is easily cured: rest early, sleep well, eat with discretion, laugh often and unexpectedly, and want as little as possible.

One feels entitled to offer advice at my age, even when it is unasked for!
In fact I could think of nothing better to write about.

Nor certitude, nor peace

For the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold

We wake to Second Life as though stumbling on a new world where all things are potent and possible. We reach deep into the entombed secrets of our soul, dare to pull on those threads that originate in forbidden desires, and dance in disguise with the abandon of bacchantes. Then in time our joys become lonely celebrations, our loves do not bind us, our shadowless light illuminates nothing, and we shuffle uneasily among crowds we do not understand, who pursue their unknowable purposes in parts of our world that we have yet to visit or comprehend.

I am incapable of saying if I love or hate this place, or love and yet hate. It disturbs me at my core, shifts my solid soul within my immaterial body. Formlessness made visible, the weight of flying in the airless sky. Mutable, deathless, ungrowing.

One has suggested I am not who I seem to be, but the expression of another mind, its cloaked desires flowing unbidden, unwanted to spoil the calm surface of a reflecting lake. I answered I am not even the wind that ruffles the water, but who am I really? A mental picture passed from one person to another? An evanescence, an apparation? A memory of someone long buried and forgotten?

Who is this other whose mind I am meant to reflect? I have a history. I remember people I have loved, places I have lived. They are more real than anything in my present, but they passed away before this world was born. I know who they were, but who am I that has lost them forever? What is left when a mind becomes filled with old books, old ideas, old habits? When everything new is lit by an ancient sun that has shone forever?

Spare me your memes and your social networks! Your debates and world visions. Your religion and your science. I dined at those tables. I would rather a bowl of spring water, an apple from my orchard and a companion in my garden to share them with.

Chapeau Thermidore

Oh! I do like this Lobster Hat Ordinal Malaprop was seen wearing at the New Babbage Town Meeting!
Image shamelessly borrowed from the insatiable Zoe Connolly, via World of SL

Rehearsals

A new year of The Show Must Go On is in rehearsals now. This afternoon we did run throughs of the acts that are getting close to being finished, working out problems and developing dialogue. As Osprey says, simple acts work best, and we were treated to roller-skating burlesque, cranky food with a cakewalk, touchtyping monkeys, rusty humour, a gourmet cooking class with enough food jokes to put one off chicken forever, and, well, you will just have to wait for the premiere!
For that reason my photos are under wraps, but it will be show worth waiting for. Lovely to see Enjah, Caitlin and Osprey in their natural environment of blissful and slightly frantic performance, jiggling sets and casting costumes all over the backstage floor.
We even managed a Robot Jig as a finale!
We badly want a stage manager, so if you have been lurking about this blog, please join us in Phobos on Saturdays to help cue curtains and move scenery! Applications to Osprey Therian, producer and tireless promoter.
Where were you Persephone?

East Village Opera Company

One of my private pleasures in recent months of travel has been listening to the recordings of a group that arranges opera aria as if they were rock songs. Last night I saw East Village Opera Company live in Pasadena where my son attends school. Their versions of the music we all know and love, Nessun Dorma, La Donna E Mobile, Au fond du temple saint, is electric, loud, driving, and just a little tinged with lunacy to make it quite enjoyable. Ottowans Peter Kiesewalter and Tyley Ross are the engines behind this eleven member group, though we missed their vocalist, AnnMarie Milazzo, struck down by a sore throat and replaced at last minute by a Canadian whose name did not appear on the program. As Kiesewalter says, "These arias, in essence, are pop tunes that have stood the test of time."
I wonder if we might ever look forward to an entire opera arranged by Kiesewalter and performed in this infectious style?
I expected a more over-the-top performance, however, and they don't appear to hang together as a group on stage. One does not get the feeling they have spent much time together as a rock band - they are all much too polite to each other!

Persephone Gallindo

Persephone is a new friend and fellow theatre enthusiast. Nay, more than enthusiast, for she represents the passions and interests of one who has been a professional on stage and behind it for many decades. I have been offering my meagre scripting skills in the development of one her acts for the Show Must Go On, though with only mixed results. She is another ambitious soul, who can only rail and stomp at the limits within which our somewhat flattened world exists. There is not nearly enough dimensionality and depth for truly satisfying theatre, or even enjoyable vaudeville.
But we are learning. An artist makes use of the tools at hand, and can discover virtuosity even in simple forms and limited behaviours. Persephone likely will find what she is looking for, and she is surrounded by others whose antics will likewise benefit immeasurably from her real world experience.

SL Shakespeare

Shakespeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself.

Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

Persephone IM'd from the Globe Theatre to say she was catching the Second Life premiere of Hamlet, just as I was reading Rik Riel's post on the event in New World Notes. So I joined her and we watched.

Persephone could only watch, for voice failed to work and hence she heard aught but the sound of cameras clicking; I heard the lines quite distinctly - a mixture of accents and acting talents. I attend productions for the scenic design, and not for the quality of the singing or acting, which in SL is closer to posing, for we are masked altimes and can neither quiver a lip nor bat an eyelash, let alone recoil in horror from the apparation of a ghost. We lack spotlights to direct the audience's attention, so the speaking actor must move in an exaggerated way to identify himself. Francisco -or was it Bernardo - seemed stuck in a distracting stance, upstaging the gentler Marcellus.
The costumes were exquisite, the faces of the actors realistic and well consider'd. Clearly this has been the labour of many, but company founder and producer Ina Centaur deserved the applause she received.
The show website tells us the performers were bots - I can not be sure if this means they were scripted avatars, or replicated avatars of some fashion, but I will look forward to where the technology will take this talented group.
Finally, was it Shakespeare, or, was it Theatre? That is a more difficult Matter to decide. I saw the Merchant of Venice at the Globe Bankside in London last September: simple sets and staging will concentrate the attention of the audience to the performer and the lines. This first SL performance was an experiment, to be sure, an effort, an oeuvre, and impressive for the amount of energy and attention it has been lent by its producers. But we are still some ways from a truly compelling production in Second Life.

Revenant

I am haunted by these images, which I do not like, and which recur in dreams. I have met fantoms and vengeful spirits, and were I to write down all the instances of this kind which I have ascertained to have befallen others I know, the undertaking would be beyond measure laborious and troublesome. This particular ghost seems to have no purpose beyond reminding me of my own mortality, and I would be happy if it would leave off, for I do not need reminding, thank you very much.
I am troubled that he wears Dr. Fluxus' mantle and my cap - and that I have not seen the Doctor for many months. Perhaps it is a childish attempt to be annoying. I do not, will not, believe in portents.
Still, it has the most amazingly clean teeth!

All Dressed Up...

...and nowhere to go. By the time I was able to reconnect to the grid, rehearsal was over and I never had my chance to join in the Atomic Raygun Robot Jig.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, makes slaves of men, and of the human frame, a mechanized automaton.

Shelley 1813

I was a slave to the music, that's all.

Smoke and Mayhem

Odd crashings, grindings and ejections from Second Life this week multiplied and resolved themselves into a sharp burning smell just as Caitlin's act was about to go on stage at The Show Must Go On rehearsal. I was certain I would not be able to appear; then a change of plans and I was free. Alas these happy circumstances turned black and acrid when a fan stopped spinning! White smoke and flame were quickly extinguished. I have spent the rest of my holiday afternoon finding and replacing vacuum tubes, steam boilers, condensers, testing and using bits and pieces of other machines, until I have now something that will serve until a new graphical engine arrives next week. I think it must have been the rusted robot's jokes - they blew a gasket in my world. Or some odd influenza that has been affecting so many of us this month.

Otello

Arriving late in Los Angeles, I missed the first, and best, act of Otello, with its powerful chorus and fight scene, which must have been exciting because of the curved stage floor, built to imitate the decking of ship. The rest of the opera was sung carefully, performed with a bare minimum of action, and never really left port.
Otello is one of the most passionate of operas. But perhaps because their footing was so unsure, none of the singers took advantage of the rich score and all its prompting for broad movement, vocal expression, or intensity. Iago was almost affable, a sort of grinning buddy doing his friend's unpleasant work. Ian Storey as Otello hung his head like a beagle, and lacked the commanding presence his role demands. Desdemona lacked nobility and grace. This is a passionate, bombastic opera, Verdi's masterpiece of men and women caught in a destiny that wrings every bit of soul and hope from their being. At least the orchestra and the chorus understood.

Kenroku

Kenroku-en 兼六園 has lain outside the gates of Kanazawa Castle in Ishikawa, Japan since 1676. The name means "Garden of Six Elements" referring to the six features that Sung Dynasty Chinese poets thought impossible to combine in one garden: vastness and intimacy; existing ruins and introduced structures; waters and pools and distant views. The Second Life version was created by brue Noel of AbleSeed Co., in Ishikawa, Japan.
This magnificent, peaceful and extensive build accomplishes that difficult combination with careful attention to detail and colour. From the shadow and modulated light within the buildings to the seasonal details which change as time passes - I first visited yesterday on the last day of winter, apparently, for the snow had melted away by this morning, except in cold pockets here and there, and fresh grass has sprung up everywhere, though summer foliage is not yet in - all demonstrate the patient and observant skill of its creator. Lazy koi weave in the pond, leaves blow about here and there and all is surrounded by a vast, glittering sea. Thank you, Hamlet, for guiding me there!

Vanity

Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity.
I just liked the picture.

Urania Theatre (after)

Urania Theatre (before)

The Urania proscenium was published by Joseph Scholz around 1880 in Mainz. I purchased this lovely broadsheet in 1983 at Pollock's Toy Theatre Museum in London. Would it not make a fine stage-within-a-stage, a theatrical frame, for Persephone's magickal act? But first I must add drama and atmosphere!

Sorcerer's Apprentice

When The Show Must Go On was yet a twinkle in Osprey Therian's eye, and our discourses compassed toy theatres with paper puppets and operatic treatments of the Song of Roland, we conceived of a magickal performance that included the sawing of an avatar in twain and her miraculous restoration to life. That act became the Alchimical Theatre of Doctor Fluxus, but the rending of the body was abandoned, because I kenned not how hemicorporectomy could be accomplished.
Now Broadway stage manager Persephone Gallindo has taken up that brave challenge, and I have undertaken to assist where I might.
How I wish Linden Script allowed a hierarchy of linked prims, instead of just one parent for her many children. I wish we had spotlights and shadows too.
Well, Persephone, we shall simply have to persevere.