Sherry Chandler

A different kind of birdsong?

From Heraclitean Fire, who says:

The set-up in the video isn’t exactly the same as the one in the gallery, but it gives you the idea: a flock of zebra finches in a room with electric guitars and up-turned cymbals, who ‘play’ the instruments by hopping around and perching on them. They are free-flying in the gallery, and you can walk on paths between the instruments.

It’s an immediately appealing idea and quite memorable, so it will probably be something of a hit, at least by the standards of contemporary art installations. To be honest, though, I thought it was less striking in reality than it was in neatly-edited little close-ups on YouTube. It was more like being in a slightly odd aviary than in some kind of extraordinary art-place. People did seem to be enjoying it, though. I slightly wonder how much of that was just the pleasure of being in among all these very tame little birds, but perhaps I’m just projecting my own reactions.

I’ll have to admit to zebra finch envy. They are lovely little birds. But like Harry, I wonder if they wouldn’t be happier left alone. And can they hear all that racket?

27 February 2010 – 23 May 2010
The Curve, Barbican, London

A salmagundi

Harry Rutherford, of Heraclitean Fire, has started a new blog interprise called A London Salmagundi: Being a Hotchpotch or Gallimaufry of Divers Things etc. It’s the place to go to find your photo of the Common Potoo (which I think is a bird) or a photomicrograph of a dinosaur bone. or a YouTube of Jerry Lee Lewis on the Steve Allen show in 1957.

It was through Harry’s Salmagundi that I discovered F*ck Yeah, Victorians, a tumblr site that has been fascinating my husband for about a week now. it’s not a site for the squeamish, but it is certainly a window into the wierder side of Victorian culture.

If you think you might prefer to do something wholesome, like crochet, look to Pocahontas County Fare for your links to Free Crochet Patterns, Especially Old Ones .

Thinking about old crochet, old lace, I thought I might go looking for an old poem on the subject. Here’s what I found:

Old Flemish Lace

A LONG, rich breadth of Holland lace,
A window by a Flemish sea;
Huge men go by with mighty pace,—
Great Anne was Queen these days, may be,
And strange ships prowled for spoil the sea—
For you—old lace!

Stitch after stitch enwrought with grace,
The mist falls cold on Zuyder-Zee;
The silver tankards hang in place
Along the wall; across her knee
Dame Snuyder spreads her square of lace,
A veil—for me?

The Holland dames put by their lace,
The bells of Bruges ring out in glee;
The mill-wheels move in sluggish race:—
Farewell, sweet bells! Then down the sea
The slow ship brings the bridal grace—
The veil—for me!

Manhattan shores—a New World place,
The Pinxter-blows their sweetest be:
And now—come close, O love-bright face—
Bend low—…
        Nay, not old Trinity,
To Olde Sainte Marke’s i’ the Bowerie,
Dear Hal,—with thee!

—Amelia Walstien Carpenter, Stedman, Edmund Clarence, ed. An American Anthology, 1787–1900. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900; Bartleby.com, 2001

Dear Hal, I’m guessing, is the proposed bridegroom. And a pinxter here, I think may be the pinxter azalea.

And then I found this, which sort of pulls it all together, except maybe for the bawdy Victorians:

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows ‘ flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ‘ they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ‘ wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ‘ lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ‘ ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed ‘ dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks ‘ treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, ‘ nature’s bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest ‘ to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, ‘ his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig ‘ nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, ‘ death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time ‘ beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, ‘ joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. ‘ Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; ‘ world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, ‘ since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ‘ patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.

— Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems. London: Humphrey Milford, 1918; Bartleby.com, 1999.

“The sea is calm tonight”

Matthew Arnold was born on Christmas Eve, 1822, but the fact didn’t seem able to rescue him from his high Victorian mournfulness. Not a poet to make one feel all warm and sentimental. I picked the poem below for no better reason than it is NOT “Dover Beach,” and being about birds, it gives me a chance to link to Harry’s Advent Calendar of Birds, where you will find some lovely photographs, including this one of the spotted nightjar. It reminds me of the whippoorwills that used to sing on my parents’ doorstep. That’s how far back in the country we lived. My brother used to joke that we lived so far back in the sticks, we had to pipe in daylight.

Rebecca has some lovely Courier & Ives-ish photos of the 30-inch snowfall on Droop Mountain that should put sleighbells into your head.

Speaking of which, here’s my favorite version of “Jingle Bells.”

Oh — and here’s the poem, and just in case you wonder what the poem’s on about, the story is here. Ovid’s version is here, scroll down. And no reference to Matthew Arnlod is complete without a link to “The Dover Bitch:”

Philomela

HARK! ah, the nightingale—
The tawny-throated!
Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark!—what pain!
O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still, after many years, in distant lands,
Still nourishing in thy bewilder’d brain
That wild, unquench’d, deep-sunken, oldworld pain—
Say, will it never heal?
And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy rack’d heart and brain
Afford no balm?

Dost thou to-night behold,
Here, through the moonlight on this English grass,
The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?
Dost thou again peruse
With hot cheeks and sear’d eyes
The too clear web, and thy dumb sister’s shame?
Dost thou once more assay
Thy flight, and feel come over thee,
Poor fugitive, the feathery change
Once more, and once more seem to make resound
With love and hate, triumph and agony,
Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?
Listen, Eugenia—
How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
Again—thou hearest?
Eternal passion!
Eternal pain!

— Matthew Arnold, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 1962

Do I get points for having Willie Nelson, Matthew Arnold, and Ovid all in one post?

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Via Morris Book Shop, the most literate cities in the U.S. Lexington/Fayette County rank # 15. But hey! We’re ahead of NYC.

This and that

Thanks to the Poetry Hut Blog for reminding me that time approaches for the National Book Awards. You can find the lists of finalists here, including the poets.

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Here’s something I picked up from Harry that I think you’ll love:

A spectacular and extremely rare textile, woven from golden-colored silk thread produced by more than one million spiders in Madagascar, goes on display Wednesday, September 23 in the Museum’s Grand Gallery. This magnificent contemporary textile, measuring 11 feet by 4 feet, took four years to make using a painstaking technique developed more than 100 years ago.

This unique textile was created drawing on the legacy of a French missionary, Jacob Paul Camboué, who worked with spiders in Madagascar in the 1880s and 1890s. Camboué worked to collect and weave spider silk but with limited success, and no surviving textile is now known to exist. Previously, the only known spider-silk textile of note was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, and it was subsequently lost.

Click through and watch the video.

BTW, Harry recently celebrated his fifth blogiversary, so I invite you to go over and congratulate him. I remember when his blog was called Stormy Petrel.

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The Dead Mule has its October 2009 issue up. Bucha neat stuff, include three poems by my old buddy Charlie Hughes, who deserves an award for the best Southern Legitimacy Statement going.

Cat with mayors and sparrows

From Project Gutenberg’s The Spectator via and redacted by Heraclitean Fire:

As I was walking [in] the Streets about a Fortnight ago, I saw an ordinary Fellow carrying a Cage full of little Birds upon his Shoulder; and as I was wondering with my self what Use he would put them to, he was met very luckily by an Acquaintance, who had the same Curiosity. Upon his asking him what he had upon his Shoulder, he told him, that he had been buying Sparrows for the Opera. Sparrows for the Opera, says his Friend, licking his lips, what are they to be roasted? No, no, says the other, they are to enter towards the end of the first Act, and to fly about the Stage.

[ long passage snipped ]

But to return to the Sparrows; there have been so many Flights of them let loose in this Opera, that it is feared the House will never get rid of them; and that in other Plays, they may make their Entrance in very wrong and improper Scenes, so as to be seen flying in a Lady�s Bed-Chamber, or perching upon a King�s Throne; besides the Inconveniences which the Heads of the Audience may sometimes suffer from them. I am credibly informed, that there was once a Design of casting into an Opera the Story of Whittington and his Cat, and that in order to it, there had been got together a great Quantity of Mice; but Mr. Rich, the Proprietor of the Play-House, very prudently considered that it would be impossible for the Cat to kill them all, and that consequently the Princes of his Stage might be as much infested with Mice, as the Prince of the Island was before the Cat�s arrival upon it; for which Reason he would not permit it to be Acted in his House.

In case you’ve forgotten your Survey of Brit Lit, here is wikipedia:

The Spectator was a daily publication of 1711�12, founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in England after they met at Charterhouse School. Eustace Budgell, a cousin of Addison’s, also contributed. Each ‘paper’, or ‘number’, was approximately 2,500 words long, and the original run consisted of 555 numbers. These were collected into seven volumes. The paper was revived without the involvement of Steele in 1714, appearing thrice weekly for six months, and these papers when collected formed the eighth volume.

The Beagle Diary

Well, while I’m pointing the way to famous diaries online, here compliments of Heraclitean Fire, is Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary.

As of this writing, nothing posted for August 12^th. On August 11^th, Orwell’s party seems to have encountered a version of the world tree:

Shortly after passing the first spring we came in sight of the famous tree, which the Indians reverence as a God itself, or as the altar of Walleechu. It is situated on a high part of the plain & hence is a landmark visible at a great distance. As soon as a tribe of Indians come in sight they offer their adorations by loud shouts. The tree itself is low & much branched & thorny, just above the root its apparent diameter is 3 feet. It stands by itself without any neighbour, & was indeed the first tree we met with; afterwards there were others of the same sort, but not common.

Being winter the tree had no leaves, but in their place were countless threads by which various offerings had been suspended. Cigars, bread, meat, pieces of cloth &c &c., poor people only pulled a thread out of their ponchos.

Boomshine

Are you bored at work?

Play Boomshine.

And if you figure out how it works, please tell me.

Courtesy of Harry.