Household Opera

A meme for a Sunday afternoon: Five imaginary lives

In an effort to get back into writing fiction (and, hopefully, poetry as well), I've been working my way through the exercises in Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. The one I've found the most fun so far is the one she calls "Imaginary Lives": imagine that you have five other lifetimes to pursue whatever you want to pursue; what would you do in each of them? It occurred to me that this would make an interesting meme, and that I would love to hear how various blog friends would answer the question. So here are my five; feel free to adopt this meme at your own blog or post your own five in the comments!

In no particular order:

1. Dramaturg. I went through a hugely stagestruck phase in my late teens/early 20s, and there for a while in college I took theater classes and auditioned for a bunch of shows; but after a while I realized that acting wasn't really one of my talents. But being intimately involved with a production behind the scenes and being paid to do loads of research? That would be fantastic.
2. Perfumer. A week ago I was chatting with an acquaintance who makes soaps and bath products and with whom I always end up talking about perfumes. "I think it would be really fun to blend my own," I said, "but I don't think I have the nose for it." "Oh, I think you do," she replied, "you just haven't trained yourself by sniffing all the different notes one at a time and learning what happens when you start combining them." I also think it would be marvelous to do what the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab does and create scents based on myths and legendary places and poems and fictional characters.
3. Book artist. I love artists' books; I love altered books; I'm fascinated by the work of small presses; I had a wonderful time at the bookmaking workshop I went to this fall; and every time I see an artist's book or a beautiful small press book, I think "I want to do that!"
4. Costume designer. (Especially if I could be a costume designer for an opera company.) Another behind-the-scenes job for stagestruck people who don't necessarily want to act; see #1 above. Knitting has given me a whole new level of interest in the aesthetics of clothes, and I've always been something of a costume history geek.
5. I don't know quite what to call this one, but if I had but world enough and time, I would spend at least one lifetime walking all over the world and writing books about it. "Mountaineer" isn't quite the right word: I've never really burned with the ambition to scale Mount Everest, or even Mont Blanc. I'm not interested in ropes and pulleys and serious climbing gear and oxygen deprivation; I'm more interested in just wandering wherever my feet can take me. Kind of like Alfred Wainwright but not just for the Lakeland Fells (although I could happily spend years and years wandering around the Lakeland Fells).

Over to you, Reader. If you had five extra lifetimes, what would you do with them?

The poem fragments in the back of your mind

Emily Lloyd at Poesy Galore has tagged me with an irresistible meme:

"What are ten lines from poems that stick in your head when you are walking around your day? Or, if you stop a minute and think of some lines of poetry, what comes up? It’s fine if you distort the line as you remember it, if you misremember it."

Here are mine. I suspect that I'd probably give a different set of answers tomorrow or next week; some are lines that come to me often, and others presented themselves when I started writing them all down.

1. Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. [This one pops into my head all the time when I'm bored, reminding me that I probably have no Inner Resources.]
2. And now that the end is near / The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
3. ...Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.
4. Green is night, green kindled and appareled.
5. Love's the boy stood on the burning deck / trying to recite "The boy stood on / the burning deck."
6. Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind.
7. For Juliana comes, and she / What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
8. Small comfort the candle / Of moon on the maple; / The steeple of poplar, / The arch of the birch. [I don't know who wrote this poem; I read it in a children's poetry anthology at least twenty years ago, and Google hasn't yet been able to tell me anything about it.]
9. And is the white sail free on its walled infinity? [Another one I read decades ago, on a placard in a bus in Santa Monica. I didn't think to write down the author's name, and the rest of it fell out of my head a long time ago. It's probably not nearly as good a poem as I thought at the time, but I remember it because it's something of a mystery.]
10. Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.
11. [Bonus, because it was in my head all morning:] Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet, / Over the splendor and speed of thy feet.

I tag anyone who wants to be tagged. Have at it!

A favorite-movie alphabet

I saw this meme over at Easily Distracted and liked it so much that I'm stealing it. The rules are simple: name a favorite movie for each letter of the alphabet. So here are mine.

After Life: I'm reluctant to give any summary, because any summary would make it sound cheesy. Just go watch it if you haven't already.

Babette's Feast and My Beautiful Laundrette (tie): I can't decide. Both of these are on my desert-island list. I considered putting My Beautiful Laundrette under M, but M was crowded with possibilities already. Runner-up: Bull Durham.

The Company: The first of several Robert Altman movies on the list (see also G and M). I love the scene with Neve Campbell's character playing pool by herself in the bar.

Dark City: This one makes the list largely for the amazing Edward-Hopper-esque visuals, but I don't care.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: I've watched a lot of movies about memory, some sublime (see After Life) and some crappy (the lame adaptation of William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic comes to mind). This one is definitely on the high end of the scale.

The Full Monty: Especially for the scene where they start unconsciously rehearsing their chorus-line routine while waiting in the unemployment office. Or perhaps Fargo, mostly for Frances McDormand: "Oh for Pete's sake, he's fleeing the interview. He's fleeing the interview!"

Gosford Park: Altman has a way of taking well-worn genres (the war movie, the Western) and doing things to them you never expected. Here he turns the English country-house murder mystery inside out.

High Fidelity: "That's the worst f$!@ing sweater I've ever seen. It's a Cosby sweater. A Cosssby sweatah!" Jack Black is my favorite thing about this movie. If I'm ever in a band, I want it to be named Sonic Death Monkey.

Italiensk for begyndere (Italian for Beginners): I never thought I'd enjoy a Dogme95 film so much.

What to pick for J? The dark and disturbing Jacob's Ladder, which messes with your head seven ways to Sunday, or the much sunnier and happier Juno? Or I might just cheat a bit and say (Being) John Malkovich.

The only thing I can think of for K is Kind Hearts and Coronets, with Alec Guinness as a whole series of members of a wealthy family who get bumped off one by one by the protagonist. It's been a while since I saw it, but I have fond recollections.

Life Is Sweet: I had to get some Mike Leigh in here somewhere, and this is one of my favorites. But I could also have gone with the Lord of the Rings trilogy considered as one massively long three-part work.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller: As the Lorraine Bowen song goes, I'm in love with Julie Christie (she makes me go misty). Runners-up: Magnolia, Memento, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Moonstruck, and Moulin Rouge!. (Criminy. Do all my favorite movies start with the letter M?)

North by Northwest: Hitchcock obsession, I haz it (see also under V for Vertigo).

O Brother, Where Art Thou?: Love George Clooney in this one. And the soundtrack. And the Homeric intertextuality. And everything about it, really.

Party Girl: Every librarian's favorite movie! Also, I'll watch Parker Posey in nearly anything.

Queen Christina: Because it has Greta Garbo in 17th-century drag, assuring one of her courtiers "I will not die an old maid. I will die a bachelor!"

Le rayon vert (The Green Ray): Oddly, I'm not really a fan of Eric Rohmer's movies in general, just this one. It's hard to say why I love it. Not much happens apart from the main character screwing up her summer vacation plans. But you watch it a few times and you realize that not a single detail or shot or bit of dialogue is superfluous, and the ending feels like a miracle. Runners-up: The Royal Tenenbaums, and, on a totally different note, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.

Singin' in the Rain and The Station Agent in a tie for S. Also Sunset Boulevard.

Trois Couleurs: Rouge: The whole Three Colors trilogy, really, but if I have to pick just one, then definitely the final one.

The Usual Suspects: Because it made a huge impression on me the first time I saw it, even though I suspect it probably doesn't hold up to repeated viewings as well as I once thought.

Vertigo: I went through a huge Hitchcock phase there for a while, and while it's no longer the obsession it once was, Vertigo was the movie that started it, and to this day it's way up there among my favorites. Runner-up: Velvet Goldmine.

Wonder Boys: There's just something about this movie that makes you feel like you're living inside its world. Also, Michael Douglas is brilliant as the pot-smoking, pink-chenille-bathrobe-wearing novelist who can't finish his enormous novel, and the writing workshop scenes crack me up. Runners-up: Wait Until Dark and The Wicker Man (the original version; I avoided the remake because I suffer from an allergy to Nicholas Cage).

X is the letter that gets left out of every abecedarium. Mine is no exception. (I just didn't like The X-Men enough to consider it a favorite. Or eXistenz, for that matter.)

Y: Like Tim, I think it's probably cheating to put Y tu mamá también for Y. But without it I'm Y-less, and I really liked it. So I'll cheat.

Z: Zéro de conduite? Zazie dans le Métro? What is it with French movies about rebellious children with titles that start with Z? (Actually, neither of these are on my all-time favorites list, but I wanted to have a Z.)

So there you have it. Feel free to spread the meme!

In which this blog takes a personality test

Via Academic Cog and New Kid on the Hallway, the Typealyzer: a site that analyzes your blog's Myers-Briggs personality type. In my case, it wasn't far off. Every time I've taken the Myers-Briggs test, I've scored as either an INTP or, on a couple of occasions, INTJ. The Typealyzer thinks my blog is a bit more practically oriented than I am:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

I'm surprised that it pegged my writing style as more oriented toward sensing than intuition, and the whole "race-car driving" bit is way off, but actually, I kind of like the idea of being a mechanic. Who knew this blog would be where I'd channel my inner Kaylee Frye?

Name that poem!

A meme for a Saturday morning: I've just discovered Wordle, a site that lets you generate nice-looking multicolored "word clouds" out of any text you put into it. One of the first things I tried doing with it was running the text of various poems through it. And then I thought, "I wonder how identifiable a poem is when you turn it into a word cloud?" It occurred to me that this could have the makings of a guessing game of sorts.

So here are a few word-clouds, all using fairly well-known poems (I found all of them at poets.org):

• Example 1
• Example 2
• Example 3
• Example 4

Guess away at the original poems, if you're so inclined, and post your guesses in the comments — and pass the meme on, if you like. I'll post the answers after a few days.

Answers to the last lines meme

Herewith, the answers to the Seven Last Lines meme:

1. Edith Wharton, "Roman Fever" (guessed by Dorothea)
2. John Milton, Paradise Lost (guessed by brd)
3. Arthur C. Clarke, "The Nine Billion Names of God" (guessed by Mike)
4. Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella 45 ("Stella oft sees the very face of woe") (the only unguessed one)
5. James Joyce, "The Dead" (guessed by Mike)
6. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (guessed by Dorothea)
7. Wallace Stevens, "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour" (guessed by Hank)

Thanks to everyone who guessed! I hope you guys had as much fun with it as I did. And feel free to appropriate, if you're so inclined. Meanwhile, go look at Mike's version.

Seven last lines meme

It's still way too hot. I'm avoiding homework. Hence, the conditions are perfect for starting up a meme. I'd been thinking about literary last lines, and started pulling books off the shelves and scribbling down my favorite final lines, and the result looked too much like an amusing quizzy thing not to share.

So here are seven last sentences, chosen sort of randomly (one is from a novel, three are from short stories, and three are from poems). If you want to guess any of the sources, post them in the comments. If you've got favorites of your own, consider yourself tagged to continue the meme elsewhere.

1. "I had Barbara," she said, and began to move ahead of Mrs. Slade toward the stairway.
2. They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow
   Through Eden took their solitary way.
3. Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
4. I am not I: pity the tale of me.
5. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
6. "Well, I'm back," he said.
7. Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
   We make a dwelling in the evening air,
   In which being there together is enough.

Have at them! I'll post identifications after a while.

Still here

... still internetless at home, still blogging from computer labs and the public library, and still fed up with the whole situation. The longer posts I've been contemplating will have to wait (again). Can anyone recommend me an ISP that actually does its damn job?

In lieu of profound thoughts and well-honed prose, I'll just mention that I'm slowly succumbing to the by now heavily documented lolcats phenomenon. I didn't get into it until I discovered, first, lolbrarians ("Im in ur IFLA faceting ur classification"); then, a retelling of the classic "Trouble with Tribbles" Star Trek episode in lolcat-speak; and, most recently, loltheorists, where Socrates asks "I can has dinner in town hall?" and Schroedinger proclaims "I haz ur cat."

Yes, I think we've established it now: I'm very easily amused. Fellow opera fans: who wants to start making lolcomposers macros?

I'm not really a coloratura soprano.

I couldn't resist this meme any more than Jane Dark could...

Your life as an Opera by ladivinabionda
Name
Voice type	Coloratura Soprano
Your character type	The evil monarch who has potential lovers executed
Your Opera will be:	A tragedy based on Greek or Roman mythology with a glorious deus ex machina ending.
Composer	Beethoven
Your Operatic Death	You are executed for being a witch.
Where will your opera premier?	At the San Francisco Opera, in a gawd-awful avant garde German production which gets good reviews not because it is good, but because it isn't traditional.

Back from ACRL (but first, a meme)

I got back from my Baltimore trip last night, and will post a more detailed account of ACRL in a day or two. (Short version: learned some interesting things about cognition, the PennTags project, blogs in the classroom, and related topics; managed to bump into lots of people I hadn't seen in ages; went to the National Aquarium for the first time since grade school; and nearly snorted iced tea out of my nose listening to John Waters' keynote address).

But in the meantime, there was no resisting the Firefly Personality Test (via CultureCat):

Your results:
You are Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)

Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 70% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 65% Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 55% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 45% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 45% Inara Serra (Companion) 40% River (Stowaway) 30% Wash (Ship Pilot) 25% Alliance 15% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 10% A Reaver (Cannibal) 5%

You are good at fixing things. You are usually cheerful. You appreciate being treated with delicacy and specialness.

Click here to take the Serenity Firefly Personality Test