Happy St. Patty’s Day!

I haven’t had a single beer today, nor have I been wearing green. I have, however, watched this video, and I think that counts for a lot, because it is without doubt the most inspired version of “Danny Boy” ever recorded. Beaker is an artist.

Bitchface: The Masterworks

Just a quick note to say that the tumblr blog Bitchface: The Masterworks is just about the best thing ever. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys bitchfaces and/or art. Check it out.

On the “Real Women Have Curves” Meme

Jezebel.com nails it once again. Writer “Lingerie Lesbian” wrote a blog post about, well, lingerie, and touches  (among other things) upon a subject that’s been on my mind a lot:

The “Real Women Have Curves” meme is problematic not only in its suggestion that certain types of bodies are better than others in their size and shape, but also in their suggestion that “real women” should want curves. It goes without saying that curves do not make a woman, but it does need saying that these curves that are so associated with “real” womanhood (and in this situation, an explicitly feminine version of womanhood) can bring an unwanted femininity especially because they are associated with this idea of the classically beautiful (read: classically feminine) woman. I hate when we act like beauty and femininity and curvy bodies are somehow synonymous.

THIS. The writer posts a meme:

I’ve seen this before multiple times, reposted by various Facebook friends, I’ve seen several more pictures like it, and it annoys me every time.

Of course I don’t have anything against women being curvy. I’ll level with you,  I’m not a curvy woman myself. It’s not that I don’t have any curves at all, I do, but I don’t think anyone would describe me as curvy. When I’m not wearing a shirt, or if I’m wearing a tight-fitting top, you can count all my ribs. In the seventh grade I found a document authored by the boys of my class listing the girls of our class according to boob size, and I came in last, and I don’t think my position would have improved much if those same boys were to track down all us girls again today and do a qualified estimate (actually I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t, as I happen to know that the one contender for my final place is currently breastfeeding. So.). My scrawny stature is not brought on because of dieting or because I’m obsessively trying to look like a supermodel (which I don’t, by the way, not at all.). I just happen to have the genes for a small, non-curvy stature. Sometimes that’s annoying, sometimes it’s ok, but at no time does it mean that I’m not womanly, and I resent that idea.

Look, I was as thrilled as anybody when the Christina Hendricks thing started happening a few years back, and curviness came back in style. I grew up with the whole “skinny is pretty” thing and disliked it as much as the next person. What I don’t see, however, is how it suddenly became ok to just go ahead and say the exact opposite, namely that curvy is the only way to go, and that skinny women are not hot or, even, not real women. It offends me that when it comes to the issue of women’s appearance we’re obviously so reluctant to learn from the mistakes of the past. That it is obviously so difficult for us to just accept women for what they are. That there always have to be a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or ‘real’ and ‘false’ when it comes to our looks.

I also don’t think ads like these are as funny as people make them out to be:

I mean, I see how they’re thoughtprovoking in the sense that women are always trying to lose weight these days. But mostly I just think they’re kind of a depressing reminder that things have been this way for a really friggin’ long time, that for as long as anyone can remember, the world has had an attitude towards what kind of body type women should have in order to qualify as attractive. As Lingerie Lesbian puts it, it’s “woman vs. woman imagery”, and it’s ridiculous. And I do not even see what it’s supposed to mean. Skinny women and curvy women and in-between women have co-existed at all times, and, at least among my friends and acquaintances, I see no proof that curvy women have a harder time finding romantic partners than skinny ones, or vice versa. We’re ok. And we’re all women.

I’m not saying that people are not allowed to have preferences. If you’re a woman and your curves/skinniness makes you feel sexy, well, good for you. Also, if you’re a man and you happen to be into curvy ladies, that’s nice. But please, please let’s abandon the whole “real women” rhetorics. As well as the idea of a certain body style being “in”. Thanks.

Im Dorfe. Happy Birthday, Schubert.

It is so fitting, isn’t it, that Schubert should have been born in January? As I’ve mentioned before I love Schubert’s music dearly all year round, but it seems to me especially appropriate for the month of January, and I have, in fact, set up a rule for myself that under no circumstances am I allowed to listen to Winterreise earlier than January 1. That way I have something to look forward to about this the bleakest, coldest month of the year.

Oh, Schubert. It really does make me so weepy every time I think about his much too early death, even more so than with Mozart. The Grim Reeper cheated us out on a lot of undoubtedly great music from both gentlemen, certainly, but at least Mozart got to have a wife and kids. What did Schubert get? Syphilis, that’s what. Or at least something similarly nasty and painful and isolating. To have lived through such misery and then to have maintained the ability to communicate feelings so well through his music, to have insisted on remaining so warm and human deep inside that coldness … It breaks the heart.

Happy 216th, old Franz.  You are missed.

Pitch

Oh, internet. You’re killing me.

2012

At Tegner’s Museum in May

New Year’s Eve has come and gone, but I inspired by And All Suns Are Darkened I thought I’d do a 2012-themed blog post.

2012 was an awe-inspiring year for me. I met a wonderful man in April, I got a new job in September, I moved in with aforementioned wonderful man in October, and that same month I was published for the first time in a major Danish newspaper, with an essay on Tove Jansson’s moomin books.

Midsummer’s Eve

Highlights of the year include sitting on a hill at the Tegner Museum in Northern Sealand with my boyfriend on a warm, sunny day in May and feeling quite unbelievably happy (which was admittedly what I was vague blogging about here). Strolling with him along the Vltava in Prague in July.

Death and Mirth at the astronomical clock in Prague. July

Happy, rainy day near Vysehrad, Prague. July

Getting the call on an early September afternoon from the HR manager at my new work place and being told that I was offered the job. Seeing my name in that essay on Jansson, illustrated by Jansson’s incredible artwork. Coming home to my boyfriend on dark blue December evenings, dead tired from a long day of work, to sit down and have dinner with him while watching Christmas specials and movies and looking forward to the holidays with an excitement I haven’t felt for decades.

Moomin sketched in the wallpaper of a Copenhagen café by unknown artist. November.

My blog, however, has suffered a little during this very busy past year of mine. When I look back now, all my favourite entries are from early 2012, that is, before all these life-changing events started happening. In January I delivered my few, inadequate words about Schubert, and I stand by those words especially during these January when my usual Schubert craze sets in:

To me the switch to major tonality in the opening lied “Gute Nacht” has always been what solidified the sadness of it, and set the tone for the rest of the lied cycle which, I believe, is a cycle about an infitine, hopeless sadness. To me, the major tonality in this lied, and the rest of the lieder, signifies the recognition of the lost beauty, or love, or happiness without which the sadness would be bearable.

I also did a piece about the cuckold as a comical figure that I had actually completely forgotten about since I wrote it, but there it is:

What is so exceptionally fascinating in Pagliacci is, however, that Leoncavallo examines the tragic aspects of the cuckold man all the while acknowledging the comic potential of the motif. The central aria of the opera revolves around the idea of laughing at the cuckold buffoon (“Ridi, Pagliaccio!”), and in the frantic play-within-the-play ending the opera, the ambiguity of the cuckold as a comical/tragic figure is constantly at play. The audience-within-the-play wants nothing more than to laugh at the buffoon, but cuckold Canio’s very real despair is constantly creeping into the caricatured pantomime grief of the cuckold Pagliaccio.

I also kind of like that I did a blog post in the past year about my appreciation of boy bands:

What the boy bands did with their elaborate dancing routines was to send off the signal of a serious effort being made in order to please a female audience. With their performances they created a piece of irresistible fiction about young men teaming up and going out of their way to satisfy a woman…

And I stand by my criticism of MTV’s Plain Jane (although I have to say that I really miss that show. For some reason I haven’t caught a single episode of it for months now and I gotta hand it to Louise Roe & Co. – it’s a darned entertaining program):

The “learn-how-to-flirt-with-guys” challenges that the Plain Janes are put up to are a little less offensive to me, since these could easily be seen as a way of learning how to get the young women to have fun and let loose a little, and these exercises don’t have the approval of one specific guy as their focus. The actual scenes, however, suffer a great deal from being so obviously staged: The allegedly random guys are clearly hired actors, and if I were one of the Plain Janes the idea that the show had to hire people to flirt with me would not exactly make me feel more self confident.

And reviewing 1998 slasher flick Urban Legend was a welcome opportunity to revisit some of my favourite folklore:

Urban legend characters are traditionally vaguely defined archtypes who don’t need any real introduction: The Babysitter, The Killer, The Ignorant Tourist etc. Since the urban legend-teller will usually insist that these are people he knows or at least knows of, we will usually be able to relate to the characters even if we know very little about them. This aspect is of course lost in a movie, where we’re constantly aware that we’re watching a piece of fiction played out by actors. So an urban legend movie is  dependant on our being able to identify with the characters on screen, and this is a huge problem in Urban Legend. The casting consists almost entirely of secondary actors from 1990s tv-shows. Between Pacey from Dawson’s Creek, Toni from 90210, Gersten from Twin Peaks, and Jordan from My So Called Life the H!ITG-factor  gets kind of distracting …

That review was from April, and I actually don’t think I’ve done much blogging worth mentioning since then. I can’t imagine what 2013 has in store for me, but so far things seem promising: Last week we celebrated my mother’s 60th birthday, and I got to give her a speech for the first time in my life, and to see her surrounded by her best friends, all so eager to pay tribute to this incredible woman who means the world to me. And three days ago, my little nephew was born, a healthy, lovely boy. I have received a photo of him swaddled in a white cloth with blue teddy bears on it that used to belong to my brother and later to me when we were babies. The boyfriend and I are planning a trip to Jutland to see him and his parents, and I cannot wait to hold that darling little boy, my parents’ first grandchild, in my arms.

But I’m getting a little more accustomed to my new life, my new apartment, and life with my boyfriend every day. And among my 2013 new year’s resolutions is definitely: “Blog more”. I’m looking forward to that. So happy 2013, everyone! And thanks for sticking around.

Happy New Year. New Year’s Eve

Advent and Christmas Songs: Singing That Richt Balulalow

Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols has been an essential part of my Christmases for several years now. Annina Teatime first introduced me to it, and she did a lovely post about it back when we were Confidential Attachées here, and I don’t really have much to add. It’s simply a beautiful work, with a quiet, serene Christmas atmosphere to it that’s so much different from the one you find in crowded, loud department stores this time of year. And “Balulalow” is a jewel of a song.

Happy 3rd Sunday of Advent.

Advent and Christmas Songs: The Swedish Edition

Yes, the snow is still falling. This is what the yard behind my building looked like this afternoon.

Last week I complained about the general sort of bland state of Danish Christmas carols, a blandness that, however, is not paralleled by the carol tradition of our Northern brother country, Sweden. The Swedes are excellent at keeping their traditional music alive, and while genres like ballads and folk songs and folk music are mostly thought of as things of an ancient past in Denmark, in Sweden the likes of Jan Johansson have managed to keep folk music alive and allowed it to evolve and adapt to more recent music. I think this shows in the Swedes Christmas carols as well. Swedish Christmas carols are wonderful, with a unique, old kind of sound to them, and below are a few of my favourites:

Jul, jul, strålande jul

Try listening to that one without getting goosebumps and misty eyes. I dare you! “Jul, jul, strålande jul” is simply breathtaking and ideal for being sung polyphonically by a choir as in the above video. It is at once warm and hearty and grandiose, and the lyrics are beautiful as well: they address Christmas like an apostrophe, asking it to shine over white forests, over the passing of old generations and over the lives of young people, over raging wars and the sighs of young children. I also like how the white forests are a recurring motif in the lyrics – connecting the Swedish wintry landscape with the Christian tradition of Christmas.

Gläns över sjö och strand

I love how this one goes back and forth between a minor and major key, one of the thing that Swedish folk music excels at, in my opinion. There’s an even more folk tone-y version of this carol for the thus inclined, composed by Widéen. I’m usually all about the folk music, but I actually prefer the above original version, by Alice Tegner, for its solemnity. That version was also featured in the excellent TV series based on Astrid Lindgren’s Madicken of June Hill books – sung by Madicken and her family on Christmas Eve (song starts up at 25:25).

Det strålar en stjärna 

This video version is from Lucia Day in Sweden which is appropriate since I first heard “Det strålar en stjärna” on Lucia Day five years ago. I was living  in a student hall that accommodate a lot of Swedish exchange students at the time, and while Lucia Day is also a thing in Denmark, the Swedes have a much more elaborate tradition when it comes to celebrating December 13, so the women among the Swedish students took it upon themselves to wake the rest of us up by way of a Lucia parade (as described by me here), and they sang this beautiful carol about the star of Christmas, shining brighter every day as the holidays approach.

Die Sendung mit der Maus

I just found this German cartoon online. I hadn’t seen it since I was about eight years old, and I had completely forgotten about it.

I’m pretty sure that that tiny purple elephant is the cutest thing anyone ever animated. Not just the shape and size of it, also the way it trots about and the way it makes that forced, airy trumpeting sound.

Hélas Avril

Edited because I wrote “Matteo DE Perugia” the entire way through the first time around. I suck.

Just a little season-appropriate music for you all to enjoy: Matteo da Perugia’s “Helas, avril”.

I first heard this piece when I was working for a Copenhagen sinfonietta in the autumn of 2010. The ensemble toured Sweden with a programme that included a re-composed version of da Perugia’s song. I had the responsibility for all the practicalities of the concerts, I was fresh out of the university and nervous that I would screw up somehow, but this song stopped me in my tracks and made me forget everything around me for a moment. I have returned to the piece several time since. It conveys such a beautiful sadness, and with that ancient tonality that always induces in me a sense of something distant and otherwordly. I regret that I’m not able to link to my favourite recording of the piece, namely that by ensemble Mala Punica. There’s a kind of modern sound to their interpretation of the song, and I miss that in the above recording which seems to strive towards a medieval atmosphere. It’s a matter of taste of course, but I do think that the modern sound and ensemble Mala Punica’s focus on the soloist’s voice do a good job at bringing out the secularity of the song, which is indeed a love song.

The lyrics present a persona who is infnitely sad despite the loveliness of the month of April, because he misses his beloved. As an earlier blog post betrays I have studied French medieval poetry a bit, and I remember learning that spring was frequently referred to by medieval European troubadours in their love songs as the season of love. I like how in “Helas avril” the joys of Spring are so directly contrasted by the inner life of the lovelorn protagonist.

You can read lyrics are, translated by Michel Chasteau:

April, alas, your sweet return has brought me
greater pain than I can well express,
seeing you so fair, so fresh and merry
bedecked with flowers, happy and carefree,
filled with scents of joy, while all I have
is memories of love, regrets and tears.

How eagerly would I go to meet sweet death
in this your season, ending thus my life
in defiance of Fate
and its power,

Since in your span I cannot see my lady,
And there is nothing I desire to see
apart from her
And that’s the truth

Your sight brings me the greater grief because
I feed distress wit inner agitation.
So do I pine, and must for ever pine
Until I see her noble form once more
And May will find me still complaining
if Mercy does not come to my assistance.

April, alas…

Apropos of modern interpretations of this song, the phrase “Hélas, avril” also appears in “La Javanaise” by the wonderful Serge Gainsbourg:

I have no idea if the lyrics are a reference to the 15th century song, but I like to think that they are. A casual medieval poetry quote would add even more swag to Gainsbourg than he already had, if that’s even possible.