{"id":371,"date":"2005-12-18T22:55:47","date_gmt":"2005-12-19T02:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=371"},"modified":"2006-06-20T14:20:50","modified_gmt":"2006-06-20T18:20:50","slug":"vaguely-musical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2005\/12\/18\/vaguely-musical\/","title":{"rendered":"Vaguely musical"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rickman\"OK, go here<\/a>. How awesome is that? Alan Rickman reading you one of Shakespeare’s more famous sonnets? After seeing this on Cherie Priest’s LJ<\/a>, I just went out Saturday and bought this CD. (I can do that, because Halifax has shops like The Madrigal<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Man, there’s a lot of good stuff on there. Branagh, John Hurt, Joseph Fiennes, Diana Rigg, etc. Plus some musical sonnet renditions–Sarah is a fan of the Annie Lennox “Live With Me And Be My Love” in particular.<\/p>\n

\"divider\"<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Ditty Bops<\/a>, the Wishful Thinking video<\/a>. Girls in foundation garments, singing happy jangly old-timey tunes, in a well-designed video with lots of comic violent imagery. How can you go wrong? (Would you click if I told you that it was an official selection at the coney island film festival 2005?)<\/p>\n

\"divider\"<\/p>\n

\"DrunkenLearning a Latin drinking song<\/a> would be a hell of a party trick, wouldn’t it?<\/p>\n

Meum est propositum in taberna mori
\nubi vina proxima morientis ori.
\nTunc cantabunt laetius angelorum chori:
\nDeus sit propitius isti potatori, isti potatori.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course Latin has that advantage of everything rhyming so easily, which makes for easy verse construction.<\/p>\n

If you translate it literally you don’t get something you can readily sing:<\/p>\n

My proposal is to die in the tavern
\nWhere the wine will be near my dying mouth;
\nThen choirs of angels will quite happily sing,
\n“May God be propitious to this drunkard!”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So someone has to do a bit of more idiomatic translation:<\/p>\n

For in this my heart is set:
\nWhen the hour is nigh me,
\nLet me in the tavern die,
\nWith a tankard by me,
\nWhile the angels looking down
\nJoyously sing o’er me,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(More verses, with both literal and idiomatic translation at the link.)<\/p>\n

\"divider\"<\/p>\n

I fully endorse Danielle’s plan to take care of the future of music, the “Get In The Van<\/a>” plan:<\/p>\n

First I find the warehouse space in various locations around America and line the walls with speakers connected to a single turn table and one CD player. I enlist the help of five volunteers, all of whom must own a van. The vans will be driven everywhere – urban, suburban, big cities and small, picking up children and young adults that would like to rock the mike. No one is exempt – black, white, Indian, Venezuelan, we don’t care, GET IN THE VAN. The van will take you to the warehouse, where an electromagnet the size of Montana will suck your bling-weighted bodies to the bench, forcing you to sit through hours upon hours upon hours of Kool Mo Dee, Slick Rick, Ice-T, Doug E Fresh AAAAAAAAAAND the Get Fresh Crew, Leaders of the New School, Public Enemy, NWA and Ice Cube before he started acting in Disney films. Actually, fuck that – Ice Cube, YOU CAN GET IN THE VAN TOO.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An aside–the phrase “get in the van triggers” three separate things for me: Hank’s book<\/a>, the cop in Withnail and I screaming<\/a>, and the Golden N sketch from Sesame Street. (How wrong is it that I can find no link to anything about the bit on the net?).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, go here. How awesome is that? Alan Rickman reading you one of Shakespeare’s more famous sonnets? After seeing this on Cherie Priest’s LJ, I just went out Saturday and bought this CD. (I can do that, because Halifax has shops like The Madrigal). Man, there’s a lot of good stuff on there. Branagh, John Hurt, Joseph Fiennes, Diana Rigg,… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linkapalooza","category-music","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-5Z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}