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| Tragic, I know. (This is not MY elbow, just for illustrative purposes) |
- My elbows are looking like hell! Looking on the internet, the remedies offered include: olive oil, cooking butter, a mixture of baking soda and lemon juice (???), loofah scrubbing, and professional advice. There's some nice tips here. My method: Enchanteur lotion. I've always used this shit, my grandma loves it, and when I was in high school and being a big-ass Francophone any product with a remotely French-sounding brand name was IN. When lunch money was tight (and it's always tight in boarding schools) I used to improvise and use this lotion as hair cream. It leaves your hair smelling real nice all day and boys keep looking back when you're going past them. Well it was definitely better than one of my friends who used his shampoo as Brylcreem, right to this day he can't grow more than 3 inches of (head) hair! Back to my elbows, they're looking marginally better than last week, when they looked like cities were built and razed down on them. I'm just going to scrub 'em harder with my loofah - but they hooort so maach!!
- I've just finished orchestrating the fifth lied from my song cycle. I love the English horn so much I gave it a solo cadenza. On the other hand the score really looked like I was neglecting the clarinets (compared to the other lieder I've already composed), but ah well. The lyrics are quite raunchy: there's references to bunian people, Malay version of sirens, and coming to death naked, which is basically true, right?
"Datanglah, wahai hati yang duka
Hati muda gundah gerhana
Hati yang tidak disinar suria
Hati yang sunyi tanpa gembira, tak gembira.
Hati sayu berseorangan
di gelap malam bermuraman
diteman bulan dan sepuluh bintang,
tujuh ratus saka bunian.
Hai manusia! hujungmu 'dah hampir
seribu nafas 'dah kau hembus.
Hai manusia! akalmu jahil,
badanmu fana bagaikan kabus.
Datanglah, anak kecil manusia,
datanglah padaku dengan segera
dengan telanjang dari segala peristiwa
duduklah denganku di sisiku selama-lamanya."
Come, Blackheart
The restless youth
in sunless eclipse,
O unhappy heart!
Lonely heart,
sulking in darkness,
with the moon and ten stars
and seven hundred sirens' curses.
Man-child! your end is nigh
your thousand breaths are spent.
Man-child! you are naive,
your body melts like the mist.
Come, Man-child,
come to me now,
naked from your sins,
come and sit with me forever.
© fUGA arts limited 2011
- Last Friday I concluded my ENT posting (that's Ear, Nose and Throat or Otolaryngology for you prudes) with a bang. I got a question about nasal mass and a test to confirm whether it's a polyp or a hypertrophied inferior turbinate (basically a 'roided up nose verandah) and I said "proding test" (it was actually "probing test"). Apart from that it went well. Right now I'm supposed to be writing up case reports for the posting but hey, I'm allowed a rest from time to time! My next posting is Ophthalmology. I wasn't a good Ophthal student (wasn't good at ENT either, but at least I really like looking down people's throats, maybe it's the singer in me), but I'll try hard. BANZAI!!
- The 2010 Grammy nominations are out! On the classical front, I'm rooting for Fab Fabio's Ercole su'l Termodonte for Opera Recording (although a Billy Budd win would be nice, too) and Diva/Divo (Joyce DiDonato!!!) for Solo Vocal Performance. The Ercole should win for Beloved Vivica's performances alone: her Con aspetto lusinghiero was dangerously sultry, and her Scenderò, volerò, griderò could probably replace surgery to cure tongue-tie; but this precious (on musicological terms, seeing as it was a scholarly reconstruction of the score) recording also has DiDonato, Damrau, Beloved Jaroussky (!!!!!!), Ciofi and Lehtipuu. Villazón is a known quantity (translation: meh!) and I've sadly no other information about Miss Romina Basso, but she was at least effective. Oh, I'm looking forward to this already! (And the Academy's chance to correct their decision over snubbing Beloved Vivica's Vivaldi album last year, what a fiasco!) Good luck everyone!!
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