Take that Omicron away

 Standing on the edge of the new year and fighting the sense of vertigo, I wonder about my sanity.

Am I the only person, for instance, who peruses the headlines about Omicron and hears Paul Simon singing in their head?

"Omicro-o-n/ Makes me mask like a mummer/ Brings lock-down into a third summer/ Make me think all the world is falling ill/ Oh yeah/ I'll get a Pfi-i-izer booster...." 

My daughters think I'm deranged.

See you next year.

Pencilling it in

Christmas got more complicated when I became Santa's liaison officer.

I may have mentioned this.

This year, I managed, for the most part, to stay on top of things, but still found myself nipping into the new book store in the Cook Street Village on Christmas Eve.  It's like a Tardis -- way bigger on the inside.

I found about half a dozen treasures for stocking-stuffing, a job that Santa delegated to me some years ago.  One thing I spotted was a package of delicate pink pencils, perfect for younger daughter, who, I am reasonably sure, still thinks Santa is fully responsible for Christmas stockings.

I checked in with her mid-morning on Christmas Day, asking what she like the best.  She liked a lot of things, showing them to me proudly --- except for the pencils.  They had, she informed me, "swear-words" on them.

To my carefully-concealed horror, I noticed, for the first time, the delicate gold letters on each pencil, forming short and sometimes, quite long variations on expressions containing the F-word.  I quietly took the pencils to my room and have spent some time scraping the lettering off.  It's embossed, of course, and is taking some time.

Merrying @&%ing Sixth Day of Christmas.

Lost and found

I do this every damn year. 

I start buying Christmas presents and stocking stuffers in September and October -- which is a good idea. 

I hide them promptly -- which isn't such a good idea, although it is a good impetus for cleaning out closets and drawers. 

I spent a chunk of today shifting summer clothes out of the way, and was relieved to find four presents. 

After I re-hid them in a more obvious place, it occurred to me that some stocking stuffers I got months ago are still missing. I guess I'm still not off the hook for the drawers in the highboy. 

Back in the heady days when I wasn't responsible for Christmas -- i.e. being Santa's liasion officer, not the giving birth to a deity -- my mother would take me for pre-Christmas outings: pantomimes, ballets, and one memorable afternoon, a clutch of Christmas cartoons by the National Film Board of Canada. 

 This was one of my favourites.

(The gag about the dancer and the pianist hasn't aged well.)

Living without him

Another one of those little nails in the heart. 

Scrolling through my newsfeed early this morning, I fell across the news of the death of Michael Nesmith. Yes, he will be best remembered for how he got famous, being one of the Monkees, rather nastily labelled as the "Pre-fab Four" by critics at the time. 

However, he was my favourite Monkee, slightly removed from frenetic madness, with his wry wit, and dry delivery. 

Being connected with what was an Americanized attempt to capitalize on the looniness of the Beatles in A Hard Day's Night, it's easy to forget that he was a songwriter himself. 

His most famous song was covered and forever claimed by Linda Ronstadt, when she was the lead singer for a group called The Stone Poneys. Her version is a pop classic, soaring and passionate. 

 Nesmith's version of his own ditty is far more country and down-to-earth, although he always gave credit to Ronstadt for her interpretation. He's also credited with being a pioneer of the concept of the music video. I'm particularly charmed by this song, part of a summer replacement show entitled Television Parts in the mid-1980s. With Christmas getting so close, I can't resist a little bit of Monkee magic, their rendition of "Riu riu chiu". Nesmith is the guy in the tie.

You'd better be home soon

Elder daughter is joining us for Christmas in a week. We haven't seen her in person in 430 days. 

As the time draws nearer, complications from the emergence of the Omicron variation have made things more nerve-wracking. 

First, in addition to the stringent testing and documentation of same that must be made before leaving the UK, elder daughter is now required to re-test on her arrival in Vancouver airport, before going on to Victoria to isolate for at least 24 hours, or until the test results are known. Our fond parental dreams of welcoming hugs are on hold. 

Today, new restrictions were announced in Britain, most taking effect next Monday. Ironically, they re-instate precautions that were never really discontinued here in British Columbia, where we are required to mask in shared common spaces and on transit, and show proof of vaccinations at non-essential venues, such as theatres, cinemas, and restaurants. 

I've written about this song before, it seems, like much good art, to shift and illuminate many situations over the years. It's sung here by an international choir of health care workers.

Her mama's gonna make her look good

I've spoken of this before. 

It won't go away.

The victims weren't my students -- but they could have been.

The students weren't my relatives -- but they could have been.

Mike Downie is the film-making brother of the late Gordon Downie, lead singer of the Tragically Hip.

This is a song about the identification process.

She used to like lavender pantsuits/ Long black velvet gloves/ Smiles across crowded rooms/ To the only boy she ever loved

Don't you worry/ Her mama's gonna make her look good

Didn't like leopard coats/ Or tall thin millionaires/ Kissing everybody on New Year's Eve/ Or sending them to electric chairs

Won't you give me the chance/ The chance to explain/ Ah, well -- explain away/ The snow is so merciless/ Poor old Montreal/ In spite of everything that's happened/ Yeah, in spite of it all

Don't you worry/ Her mama's gonna make her look good

Because a coward won't die alone.

Am I a child?

It's a melancholy sort of day. I stepped out into a cold clear morning and noticed the grass, so green from the excess moisture from a run of atmospheric rivers, was now white with frost, crunchy beneath my feet.

A killing frost. 

It put me in mind of ephemeral things. Like the voice of a treble. 

Cai Thomas is, the last I checked, thirteen, and his voice is changing. Luckily, his particularly pure and sweet treble voice has been recorded for posterity, on a recent album entitled Seren, which is a popular wish list of most classical or folk piece you'd like to hear a gifted treble sing.  (His rendition of Mozart's Vesperae Solennes de confessore is stunning.)

The song I keep returning to, however, is a new one to me:   Ēriks Ešenvalds' setting of "Only in Sleep", a 1920 poem by American Sara Teasdale, which puts us in the rather odd position of listening to a pre-adolescent boy sing the words of a thirty-something woman looking back to the playmates of her childhood.  The recording, of course, is better, and if you'd rather listen to the perfection, follow the link.

However, it's rather fun to see Cai Thomas, by this time, shooting up into a gangly and fidgety adolescent, sing, still very beautifully and professionally, captured by an amateur camera, as he sings the fancy fade-out:  "Am I a child?"

Not for long, evidently.

  Only in sleep I see their faces,

Children I played with when I was a child,

Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,

Annie with ringlets warm and wild

Only in sleep Time is forgotten --

What may have come to them, who can know?

Yet we played last night as long ago, 

And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.

The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,

I met their eyes and found them mild --

Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,

And for them am I too a child?

- Sara Teasdale (1920). (Sarah Teasdale committed suicide in 1933, at the age of 49.)
 

Made of flecks of light and dark

Imagine one person writing musicals and never really repeating ideas.  A musical based on a Bergman film, and another on a penny-dreadful legend, then a painter on the edge of the Impressionists' circle, plus a music box of presidential assassins, and a blending of fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm and Perrault with all the gory parts intact - and that would be less than half of the output of this one person. All shows which can be watched repeatedly, because they are so dense with ideas, that each renewed viewing would reveal something else missed.

I was introduced to the music of Stephen Sondheim in a gentle and, at the time, comprehensive way, via an award-winning show featuring his songs up until the mid-1970s entitled Side by Side by Sondheim.  It featured a dazzling catalogue of his work in partnership with New York giants such as Leonard Bernstein and Sammy Cohn, and songs written on his own, mostly for musicals, with the occasional cabaret number or something heard faintly in a movie soundtrack.  All relentlessly clever: complicated rhyme schemes, mordant, wicked wit, and heartbreak.

And this was before he produced several more decades of thought-provoking theatre, with songs that are fiendishly difficult to sing without being difficult to hear.

It was a week ago Friday when I heard the news about his death, and like others, I was suspended in disbelief, even though the man was 91.  It was about 3 in the afternoon, and I waited for confirmation from other news sites -- even though the first word came from the New York Times.

A tune played relentlessly in my head, and the next day, it became evident that I was not alone.  In Times Square, with huge screens flashing advertisements behind them, a hastily assembled choir made up of members of current Broadway shows sang the song.  In Central Park, another massed choir gathered by the Bethesda Angel and sang the song.

The video version  I'm choosing is from a BBC Proms concert from 2010, celebrating Sondheim's 80th year.  The song is "Sunday" from my favourite Sondheim musical Sunday in the Park with George.  It got sung a lot in 2010, and will probably be sung repeatedly in the coming year. 

 And I will hear something different, every time.

Advent-tageous

Have you ever had an Advent Calendar so witty, you've not been that anxious to open the doors?

This year is the year for me.

This morning, I was searching in vain for door #3, and I fell to perusing and enjoying the loopy titles, and rather wishing they were actual books.

So far, my favourite is The Red Nose of Courage.  My least favourite is the extremely unappetising Green Egg Nog and Ham.

(Door Number 3 turned out to be on the spine of Les Mistletoe.)