Relaxing

Certainly a better day than yesterday. Humid as well for some reason. Occasional sunshine , so not too bad. Also a day off relaxing as i had a major li -in this morning. I must have needed it.  It was a long day yesterday.  I have also  listened to some music on CD - in particular the first Arctic Monkeys album and one by the Gary Bartz NTU Troop.

Looking forward to the free breakfast tomorrow morning.

Book 62 - Takashi Hiraide "The Guest Cat"

Takashi Hiraide "The Guest Cat" (Macmillan)




The Guest Cat is a very lyrical novella about a husband and wife. He's a writer/editor and she is a copywriter. They don't have children or pets and they are okay with that since the husband isn't really into animals anyway. One day a cat wanders into their lives and while the woman is pleased, for she has an affinity with all things growing, the husband insists the cat is a guest. In order to better appreciate the story (besides just for those cat lovers out there) one must have an understanding, and some appreciation for, Japanese culture.

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In fact the neighbor’s cat comes into their house like it belongs there. The next day it returns. And again after that. While she won’t let them pick her up and she won’t get in a lap, she does accept offerings of cat food and fried mackerel. She becomes what I call a time share cat. And she changes their lives. Not in any sudden, large, ways, but slowly they begin to interact and to see the beauty in the garden their house sits in. She is ephemeral in their lives but lasting in her effect on them.

I pictured this story building like a piece of music first the violins representing the couple with the appearance of Chibi like an oboe and the end something like a contrabassoon and viola fading off into our subconscious mind simmering with the question at the end of the story and if we agree with the narrator's outlook on life.


It’s a precious little story (the book is quite short)and so is this book. It’s like a little jewel, and yet contains so much in a subtle way: aging, death, relationships, spirituality, and being in the moment. Sit in a quiet place and read this book. I highly recommend it.

Emergency Funding...

Because of she is ...

Originally posted by a_phoenixdragon at Emergency Funding...

I still need to get enough to cover my insurance from the GoFundMe Campaign I have rolling currently.

GoFundMe: Emergency Funds Campaign

I'm stepping up the signal boost because it can take a few days for the funds to process to my bank, which puts a bit of a time limit on me. Hubby and I have jobs, but it will take a bit before we get paid and all of our pay has to go to rent. To say we are desperate is rather an understatement, but we're still holding out hope that it will get better and we can make it through the beginning of this month.

If you can, please boost the signal. You have all done so, so much for us - and though I hate to ask, I would be grateful if you could do so again. Any platform is fine, as long as it gets out there.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. For helping us in the past. For everything you do here and now. For giving us support, good advice, kindness and love. Thank you...

*Squishes Everyone*

Love~
Mandy

Bad Faith

In bad Faith it is Eliza Dushku looking oh so fine! Cold shower required boys!

Yesterday's Book Finds

I found these from my final visit yesterday in Tonbridge at one of the charity shop visits i did.

Volans Hunter:Gathering

Anither piece of modern classical music -

Kevin Volans - String Quartet No.2 "Hunting: Gathering" (1987)

"When I wrote Hunting: Gathering in 1987 I had grown tired of the 'composition etude' - the one-idea piece. I decided to try and write a piece which included as many different musical fragments as possible, strung together in a pseudo-narrative. To keep the fragments separate, each is written in a different key. As I wanted the different pieces to come and go in a random fashion like images or events on an unplanned journey, my principal problem was how to move from one key to another without any sense of development (i.e. without modulating). I was also consciously trying to keep the overall scale of events constant, not allowing one piece to dominate others unduly - rather like viewing everything against a fixed background. Although the piece is in three sections it is conceived as one movement or, more precisely, one journey, and should therefore always be played in its entirety.

SOURCES

In Hunting: Gathering I made reference to many different pieces of music:
ranging from very rough approximations of style to more or less precise transcription. The principal ones are: the first half of the ritornello melody at the beginning of the piece is derived from Maz sa goala (the lyre of the initiates), a piece of the music of the Hamar of South, Ethiopia,there's a fleeting reference to a variant of the Shona mbira tune Nyamaropa (Zimbabwe) at bar 65; at bar 1-25 a remembered unaccompanied tune sung by two (Xhosa?) girls (I'd lost the original source when I wrote the piece). at bar 162 the style, but not a quote of lesiba music from Lesotho (the lesiba is a single-stringed instrument which is blown!); Malienne kora music at bar 265; and a small set of variations on the piece Muthambe (bar 387f) which was played by a famous 19th century mbira player and medium, Pasipamire, of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. There are also several more private references to Scarlatti, Handel, Stravinsky and my own earlier work. With the exception of the mbira pieces all have been harmonically or melodically altered and, on occasion, combined with one another to suit my purposes.

The piece was commissioned by Doris and Myron Beigler and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts for the Kronos Quartet."
Kevin Volans

Kronos Qt - Volans "White Man Sleeps"

Another piece of music from Kevin -

Kevin Volans - White Man Sleeps

Recorded by the Kronos Quartet from the CD "Pieces Of Africa"