verarule.bsky.social
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Reward of a third listen: J C F Bach's extraordinary La Voce di Cassandra. Never heard it before. So 20th century, fractured accompaniment and the voice of a woman being shaken by what she alone can see. Music suited to 'Apollo, God of access, my ruin! What have you let me in for?' Thank you, AA.
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Ah, makes sense, she's strategy over reaction-tactics. That she has a Trojan temple is fascinating -- keep your (deity) enemies closer.
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Thank you for restoring the honour of Cassandra's last words. Always to see the fate of those you cared about, but be unable to convince them of it! Such a relief to walk, head high, into Agamemnon's palace, sure this is your chosen exit. No tomorrow ever in her eternity in the Elysian Fields
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Sanctuary in Athena's temple, the goddess's aegis cape snake-fringed, sometimes scaled like snakeskin. She protected serpent-twined Athenian King Erichthonius, gestated and birthed by Gaia after Athena's own near-rape. Why didn't she protect Cassandra, but look away and only avenge the outrage?
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And her foreknowledge not glimpses of the unforeseeable, but an ever steadier gaze at the all too visible. while everyone else averted their eyes (Margaret Atwood's 'we lived as usual by ignoring'.) 'No Greeks evident and a huge horse of course left as an offering -- we won! we won! Shut up!'
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Awake at 5am today to listen for the second time while the sun rose far across the city. Golden Apollo Helios! All the music, art and godly prophesy rights don’t make him any less the privileged divine git, wanting Cassandra to break her votive vows. Thanks for noticing that, μακρινός Άλεξ
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The spindle and not just as the Moirai'
metaphor
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The cooking pot:
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All the most ordinary things that access the past fastest. The cheese grater and mixing bowl:
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Happy Sat afternoon. Loaf baked with Kalamata olives, more olives, tuna, eggs, capers, onion, good oil and vinegar, and, oh, unexpected extra podcast! Alex reverting to baby brother self, 'look at what my big sister did and can do!'
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Listened once and a half now, need wine.
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Athena and Aphrodite concur. Adopt, esp where the child is tough. This might be Persephone and Demeter, but I see two Persephones -- both abducted and abandoned in the underworld, and victorious in the darkness:
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They have work to do together down there, managing the timelessness of an ever growing kingdom. No surprise, she's a woman, she has a second job up there, focus of the rite of spring. summer comfort of mother Demeter, and with her. preparer of mortals not to fear autumn nor death.
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And Regnant Queen her King looks up to? Literally:
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Shedunngood. So Persephone sang, 'Things don't have to collide/I know what my decision is/ Which is not to decide', and got a LOT better suitor than a fringe-flicking Prince Charming. What if the 'scream' were a yell of excitement --not to be a princess-goddess in eternal teenhood but a Queen?
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Happy now. Sunday to be redeemed, the mysteries explained:
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And oh look -- no gushy rushing. Persephone ascends those steps stately from the tomb of all mortals as a diademed queen. Hermes -- his straight-at-you-out-there pose and gaze rare on the terracotta -- is here not just divine messenger but heaven's herald. This is a moment of pomp and glory:
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Encouragement for this stage in the process of making the
next ('bit by bit, putting it together... the art of making art is putting it together') -- a female trinity, mother Demeter, redeemed daughter Persephone, and the dark spirit/ghost Hecate lighting the way www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
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This is Jill Lepore's take for BBC Radio, circa 2022 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr29... . There's a new update version of the same series currently available on BBC Sounds, but the original is crisper
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BTW, Greek hospitality, suddenly struck me the Biblical advice to be kind, 'Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares' (King James version of Hebrews) was once attributed to Apostle Paul, and then to Greeks of his circle ...
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And Alex, still in need of the stern regime of Hypnos -- get more sleep!
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So development hell, behind the scenes, trailer AND sizzle reel. All at once. A tantalising experience even on second listen ... With Naomi in the role of Iris, winging about the ether as messenger/info provider
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Will be issuing EVERYBODY I KNOW with non-victim Persephone merch. Possibly filling gift tote bags with pomegranates when they're in season....
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No way does this P, lofting her four-flame torch, look like a victim -- clearly the power round this place.
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Sacrati and the unconsoled abductee’s lament. Keel’s Adam Pontypee (’Milly…. I might’ve known she’d have a girl’). The Very Blessed Ethel Waters! Weill’s September Song, oh his ‘Speak Low’ would work also—‘our summer day withers away, too soon, too soon’. (He had fled the encroaching dark.)
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Second listen, θεϊκός Άλεξ , having in fulfilled hope risen early today for the first. THE week for Persephone’s repeatable resurrection, not just by and of herself but for all life. Thank you for Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Jerusalem veg soup -- ou sont les potages d'antan?
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Novelist J P Priestley’s BBC radio talk in 1940, on what happen under Nazi occupation — everybody under the power of people ‘rotten with unsatisfied vanity, knowing envy, and cruel power … you will find that the laziest loud-mouth in the workshop has suddenly been given power to kick you
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Had forgotten where we we had reached in the madness of this week, that it will be Saturday tomorrow. (Goes out to fetch extra and better coffee ready for the Great Listening.)
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Thank you a lot. Because right now, she's almost ... comforting, sure in knowing the worst.
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ω άλεξ ο προφήτης, can we hope this series, or the next-- so, there will be another! -- will have an episode on Cassandra? 'I knew the truth. And told you. Every time. Over and over. And you would not listen. Then you stopped your ears...'
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Happy now, Ω αρμονικό Άλεξ.(Took much searching online through the weeks of the first two episodes to track that piece by Marianna.) PERSEPHONE NEXT TIME! Excited
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Your Podyssey community, O σοφός αλεξ :
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Many years of nipping into the National Gallery to delight in this Angelico -- his heaven suggested by rows of goldsmith-style patterned haloes around holy heads. And look at that celestial ultramarine blue, ground from lapis lazuli stone, the precious pigment more costly than gold. Zero flash!
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O λαμπρός Άλεξ: just enough time to hear it through twice. So much. Too much? Never enough. Thank you esp, for Ficino, Lyly, Botticelli's halos (consider Fra Angelico's heaven, so sparing with the auric embroidery), golden robots of protocol and doom. And Bernstein's Cunegonde.
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Hypnos will sort it out.
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o τιμώμενος άλεξ, waking on Saturday is oh good it's Farmer's Market today, coffee in the spring sun, lasagne bulb-pots maintanence -- so many hyacinths, two tulips already -- and also another PODYSSEY DROPS! King M, careful what you wish for...
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Cultural κατάβασις? To the deepest level, -6 on the lift panel, going DOWN.The Malden maybe a gesture to the Lot parallel...
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O αγαπημένος Άλεξ : so you too sing of the dead to the living, hold and transmit their memory and meaning. Remember, for yourself, and between ourselves, and pass it on. Pass; passing: the past… That was quite some bedtime story
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Is it tomorrow yet, O beloved Alex? Why isn't it tomorrow yet? If I go to sleep early, will it come sooner?
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Oh beloved Alex. The curiosity (all threads followed right through the turns of the labyrinth), and the frequency-agile mind expressed in that melliflous voice -- total μέλι ! May you top the charts week after week
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Multi-lingual etymology makes the snark snarkier. 'Suit', short for 'a suit of clothes', ie matched set of formal MALE garments, eg 'morning suit', takes off circa 1860: 'costume' was used 1890s-c1950s for a matched jacket and skirt tailor-made for WOMEN
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And not only the movies, television too, where the camera may be very close in to head and shoulders much of the time, cf bsky.app/profile/greg...