Having a very good month so far! Excellent news on the home front, which eliminated a major source of stress, which meant I focused enough to get one of my two remaining final papers written and done, woo! :) Went to the Symphony Silicon Valley last night with my housemates to celebrate, and was startled…
(another of the very short papers for the class on the spirituality of creativity) I know of several works of art with a mythic element which I find inspiring — I even created some of them. For this assignment, however, I picked the one I’ve known and loved the longest: Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries….
On Saturday I was very pleased to get to go to the ballet again, with my delightful companion, to see “Carmen.” It was danced by the wonderful Ballet San Jose, with the marvelous orchestration performed by Symphony Silicon Valley. “Carmen” was preceded by the unfortunately titled short piece “Who Cares?” by George Balanchine (e.g. “What…
The weather is absolutely gorgeous today! I am so pleased to have sunshine and warmth now, instead of constantly gray and rainy days. Consequently, here are some more quietly happy random thoughts… of no particular seriousness or order. :) ———- My hair is growing longer! When I let it down, the longest ends now brush…
I just finished listening to an utterly fascinating interview on a blogradio with a man named Allan Johnson. I’m very interested in hearing what others think of it as well. Rarely have I heard a man with such patience and empathy so clear in his very voice, let alone his words; he actually had me…
Wowzers. This has been an extremely momentous holiday season for my household and myself. I’m very excited at successfully registering for my first quarter of classes for the PhD — both on-line and face-to-face classes, it looks like. I’ve not done on-line classes before; nifty! I’m being careful for the first quarter and not taking…
Because I too love symbolism, I checked the meaning of the various names used. There’s an interesting mix which made me think the composer, Adolphe Adam, picked some deliberately for their translations, while others were simply chosen either for their commonality, or for reasons I cannot fathom. Giselle, for example, is Old German for “pledge”…
I got to watch the gorgeous ballet Giselle this last Friday night! One of my housemates is an astonishing sweetie, and has taken me to both concerts and ballets for the past two years as birthday/C-mas presents. I’ll enthuse about the ballet, but first a quick plug, because I really, truly enjoy the performing arts…
I did find myself rather raising an eyebrow at some of the symbolism, however, with its emphasis on white clothing and long white veils for purity, consistently white girls in all the graphics, and the emphasis on the ceremonial lighting of candles to conquer and banish the darkness. Not only is that dark vs. light…
Now a bit more rambling about the “Hidden In Plain Sight” conference. As I’ve mentioned previously, it lasted for four days: Thursday through Sunday. The Thursday talks were seriously hampered by two issues: an inadequate sound system, and the unexpected surprise of almost all the conference’s attendees showing up. This meant the hall, which was…