And a weekend of epics! Two epics, in fact. But first, some local news. Our winterless winter continues. A cold day here and there, but mostly well above-normal temperature days. Barely any snow all season, and very little rain. Our indoor fun continues, regardless. Deb has finished her most recent short film, Effigy House, and is nearly finished remodelling the bathroom. How's that for dual projects. A busy woman is a happy woman, or so some say. I continue to work on my piano program. I have had three lessons with Philip Adamson on this program so far. We have managed to get through the Bach Prelude and Fugue (Book 2, Eb+), and the four-movement Beethoven sonata (Opus 10 #3). It is my lifetime 12th Prelude and Fugue (there are 48), and my 11th Beethoven Sonata (there are 32). Given another two lifetimes I might get through all of them. Unfortunately, some complications have arisen in the piano performance group. People kept inviting others to join, and now it is too large for my liking. I have withdrawn from it for now, and so once again am without an audience. It was fun while it lasted, though. But our home can no longer hold all the members, as is the case with other members.
In Wondrium news (The Great Courses) we usually have two or three lecture series going on. Right now we are watching a very good series about the Gnostic Gospels, and one about the 23 best piano works of all time. Whereas we used to mostly seek our spiritual enlightenment (pre-Covid) outside of the house (concert halls, art museums, travel, etc.), now 90% of our searching is done within the Homestead walls. Streaming services like Criterion and Mubi (and Prime) have a lot to do with it. But Deb's filmmaking keeps her indoors a lot and very involved with making her artistic dreams come true. My piano practice has become much more regular and less interrupted by day trips and longer trips. I read at least two hours each day, which I love doing. As to outdoor pursuits, I am still heavily involved with astronomy. I hope to return to Iaido next month. And our travelling days are slowly beginning to return. But we love our home and all the varied things there are to do within in. The less I drive places the better I feel. Our days of being within crowded environments are quite rare compared to what they used to be.
That brings me to our epic weekend. Saturday was the Full Winter Moon. We usually celebrate full moon days whenever possible, and this time we went all out. Deb cooked a wonderful spaghetti and vegan meatball early dinner, with her own no-tomato sauce. Later we made a pumpkin pie, a kind of round cake or pie always on hand for full moon nights. We enjoyed a roaring wood fire (luckily it was the one cold day of the week), and listened to Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. We have an excellent 1955 version from the Vienna State Opera, and we cranked up the speakers and listened to one of our favourite operas. There are so many fantastic arias in this opera, which is mostly comedy but has a terrific horror/fantasy element to it as well. It was a long overdue listening event, and we both went to bed with great music soaring through our brains.
Then came Sunday. We made this Lawrence of Arabia day. The overture to this epic film, one of the best films ever made, is nearly as good as the one to Don Giovanni! David Lean rather outdid himself, and the desert photography has never been done better. We began watching at breakfast (late time on Sundays), quit at intermission for a few hours, then went back at it around 5 pm to finish up at 6:45 pm. I was so inspired by my (3rd?) viewing that I went and purchased Lawrence's complete writings, which is part of the Delphi Classics series, for $2.99. Whenever I come around to the "Ls" in my Delphi reading list I will commence reading the works of T. E. Lawrence. Now I have clips from Mozart and the Lawrence soundtrack rattling around in my head. O'Toole did a superb job in a very tough role. Just as he begins to think of himself as godlike, he gets captured by Turks and tortured. This totally changes his view of things, as he comes to realize not only his own mortality, but the fact that he isn't really anyone special. The whole job of trying to unite the Arabs, many of whom were completely uneducated, and to save them from British rule, becomes as hopeless a cause as someone trying to unite the American Indians against the whites. It was simply every tribe for itself. It worked for hundreds and even thousands of years. But change was coming over the world so rapidly that no one, not even Lawrence, could totally foresee it.
We also managed to get through the final two episodes of Doctor Who, in the season that featured Tennant and Tate. "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" concluded the 10th Doctor's 4th season. It pulled out all the stops, as it featured Rose Tyler, Torchwood and its three main characters, as well as Martha Jones and Unit, Sarah Jane Smith and her son (and even K-9 in a brief appearance), and other former characters. Bernard Cribbins as Donna's granddad remains a highlight of the entire season, as does Donna herself. She gets a brilliant role in the final episode, and aces her performance. I wish she had lasted more than one season.
Besides hearing one of the greatest operas ever written, and watching one of the greatest films ever made, other fun things happened this weekend, too. I finished reading a book of delicious stories by Clark Ashton Smith. I began reading Solaris, by Stanislav Lem. I did some work on my NM map collection. Of course I also practiced my piano pieces. And we are making good progress on Eastshade, a PC game we have been really enjoying for some time now. We finally took our long awaited balloon ride in the game, which became a slow motion flyover of all the landscape we have covered while playing. The balloon took us up into the mountains, and we got to climb the highest peak. We are nearing the conclusion to the game, but I'm hoping at the end, like Myst, we'll still be able to explore the towns and forests and lakes. I think Deb and I would be good candidates for a Mars colony, providing we had enough things to keep us busy indoors.
Lawrence took up two of my three festival choices for February. I have one remaining. Before that we watched my going away choice (before I picked Lawrence, which is also leaving Criterion this month), another neat little noir film called Backfire, from 1950. A good story keeps most viewers guessing who the bad guy is, as we never see him until the final scene. Three war buddies back from Europe go different ways afterwards. One is in hospital having no less than 13 surgeries. One of his buddies wants to team up with him and buy a ranch. The third one runs a funeral home. Buddy number two runs into some bad trouble, and buddy number one has to go look for him, after recovering from his last surgery. We love watching b & w noir crime thrillers, and this one comes out better than average. It stars a lot of familiar actors.
The next update should be the February reading summary, just as soon as I finish up Solaris.
Mapman Mike
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