Skip to main content

Featured

TERRA FIRMA: LEARNING FROM THE MASTERS — WRESTLING WITH MENTORS

MENTOR #1: JORGE LUIS BORGES There is, in one person, a strange sea within. Every time you pick up one of his short stories, or read through one of his poems, you feel like you’re setting forth on an epic journey to mysterious, undiscovered lands. (I’m still freaking out about Hampton Sides’ fabulous The Wide Wide Sea , where Captain Cook is sailing hither and yon, from darn near pole to pole, in this wooden ship—a wooden world, actually—encountering new peoples, sometimes hostile, almost always magical, and moving through these uncharted spaces as if he were mapping the universe!) That one person? Jorge Luis Borges. I have learned more about mystery and magical moments from him than from almost anyone. Here is a poet whose poems can read like a novel, a short-story prose master whose stories can read like poems. Borges enters mental climes that are almost always uncharted. Think of it! His short stories unfold like novels, and he is careful—or perhaps un-careful —to unfold his tales w...
Post a Comment
Read more
Labels

THE TERRA FIRMA SOUNDTRACK: PART THREE

 






From the alien glass prison to a humanoid. This will take Elizabeth's true breakthrough from prisoner into becoming.


The Liberators. From left: Maurice Ravel; Claude Debussy; Bertrand Chamayou; Pierre Boulez

1. Shattering into life: Ravel's extraordinary "Une barque sur l'océan" from Miroirs. She breaks up as she breaks out, all fueled by the love she detects in the man who has dared to aim his most exquisite passions towards her once he finds out that though she may appear as simply a "thing," she is a real, live being. Bertrand Chamayou's sublime survey of Ravel's piano works is, in my opinion electrifying. Ravel's inventive keyboard writing, invoking waves and the ocean itself is sublime. This is the music that moves like light. Hearing it you can see how the two lovers, one human and one alien, spiritually invoke (here we go again) Gwen Harwood's penetrating insight: 

"...though words can never contain, as music does, the unsayable grace that cannot be defined yet leaps like light from mind to mind."

Brava Gwen! Bravo Ravel! Bravo Bertrand!

Just an aside: Gwen Harwood, Christopher Marlowe, and Christopher Logue are three of the greatest discoveries my questing mind has ever discovered! The greatest LLM is not built (or being built) by Anthropic, ChatGPT, or Grok it is built by God Himself and that LLM is the human mind! 

2. A Becoming fueled by Love: Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé and Debussy's "Sirènes" from Nocturnes bring Elizabeth into human form and into a new life as a human. Boulez takes pride of place here. He leads Berlin in a star voyaging rendition of Daphnis while he brings out of Cleveland all the glorious mystery and questing contained in "Sirènes." 

In a story about evil aliens music, which I'm assuming such creatures know little about and probably hate because it is human generated after all, music serves to elevate, liberate and add touch of light and life to the high stakes of Terra Firma.

As always you can hit me up at:

fromandromedaandback@gmail.com

I hope you enjoy Terra Firma and the adventures of Gunz, Lucky, Dr. Priss and Elizabeth!

More Terra Firma music: Playlist! Part One | Playlist: Part Two | Playlist: 4 | The Nylons Electrify "Remember" | Playlist: Part 5 | Soundtrack: When You Hear It You'll Know!

More Terra Firma: Alien Enhancements: Elizabeth Comes Onto the Battlefield

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment