Log24

See also a Log24 post from Dec. 5, the lawyer's dies natalis.

See also Miles Davis in this journal and
the posts of Sunday, November 21, 2004.

"We’ll build in sonnets pretty roomes;
As well a well wrought urne becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombes."

— The Canonization*

Whoosh.

* By John Donne. See also a piece by
  James Hillman that might have been
  titled Notes for Doctor Sax.

Happy birthday to Mira Sorvino (Harvard '89).

Related material: June 9 and June 10, 2008.

A more dramatic presentation, also done on June 9-10, 2008—

Alicia Keys, "Superwoman" video.

Happy dies natalis  to Miles Davis—

"… nothing ever truly dies. The universe wastes nothing. Everything is simply… transformed."

— Keanu Reeves in the 2008 "Day the Earth Stood Still." (See today's 11:07 AM entry.)

Academy Awards
for Cambridge

“First of all, I’d like
 to thank the Academy.”
— Remark attributed to Plato

“A poem cannot exhaust reality,
  but it can arrest it.“

— At War with the Word:
   Literary Theory and
   Liberal Education,
   by R. V. Young,
   Chapter One

For one such poem, see

“Life and Death United:
An Intimate Portrait of
a Man Named Miles Davis,”
from a seminar’s weblog
at DePauw University on
Sunday, November 21, 2004.

See also the four Log24
entries on that date as well
as yesterday’s entry on Davis
and the entries preceding it.

Lydian Mode

In memory of composer
George Russell, who
died at 86 on Monday —

Russell’s thoughts on the Lydian mode
strongly influenced Miles Davis,
notably in Davis’s “Kind of Blue.”

“The power of the Lydian mode,
  Russell realized, is
  freedom from time’s restraints.
  The major scale is in a state of becoming.
  The Lydian scale already is.”

— The Gravity Man, by Alice Dragoon,
    quoted at LydianChromaticConcept.com 

Related material:

“Field Dance,” from the date of Russell’s death.

“The Tables of Time,” from Nov. 13, 2003,
  and the four entries that preceded it.

Today’s previous entry and
The Reversible Diamond Puzzle
(from St. Nicholas, November 1874)–

Quarter to Three
 
(continued from
 Dec. 20, 2003,
 and from
 April 3, 2006)

… so put another nickel in the machine….

Related material:

1. The death of
   jazz percussionist Don Alias,
   
   
2. Miles Davis’s album
   Bitches Brew
   (“Miles Runs the Voodoo Down“),
3. Joni Mitchell’s album
   Shadows and Light
   (“God Must Be a Boogie Man“),
4. the Log24 entry
   from the day Alias died,
   which contains the following:
5. “By groping toward the light
    we are made to realize
    how deep the darkness
    is around us.”

   — Arthur Koestler

For the Dark Lady

On this midnight in the garden of good and evil, our new site music is “Nica’s Dream.”

From a website on composer Horace Silver:

“Horace Silver apparently composed Nica’s Dream (1956) for Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter-Rothschild, an English aristocrat and a very dear friend of his. She was known to the New York press as the Jazz Baroness and to the black musicians for whom she was something of a patron, simply as Nica. Her apartment in the fashionable Hotel Stanhope on Fifth Avenue became a ‘hospitality suite for some of the greatest jazz players of the day, whom she treated generously.’ (Jack Chambers, Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis, University of Toronto Press, 1985, 1:248)

This music is not unrelated to the work of Thomas Pynchon.  From an essay by Charles Hollander:  

“There are some notable parallels between Nica and the woman Stencil knows as V., who started her career with ‘…a young crude Mata Hari act.’ (V.; 386)….  Not that V. is Nica in any roman a clef sense: she is not. But the resonances are powerful at the level of the subtext. Nica is a Rothschild whose life reflects the issues Pynchon wants us to attend in V.: disinheritance, old dynasty vs. new dynasty, secret agents and couriers, plots and counter-plots, ‘The Big One, the century’s master cabal,’ and ‘the ultimate Plot Which Has No Name’ (V.; 226)….” 

See also my journal entry for the December 16-17 midnight, “Just Seventeen.”

For the feast day of

St. Ingrid Bergman:

Like Shakespeare, Ingrid Bergman was born and died on the same date… In her case, August 29.

To honor her performance in “Spellbound,” here is a copy of the first crossword puzzle ever published.

The Reversible Diamond Puzzle

“This puzzle appeared in the November 1874 number of ‘St. Nicholas.’

ACROSS, from top to bottom:

1. A consonant. 2. A number. 3. Measures of distance. 4. An abyss. 5. A consonant.

DOWN, from right to left:

1. A consonant. 2. A snare. 3. A name. 4. The point of anything small. 5. A consonant.

S
T E N
M I L E S
P I T
M

The across words are different from the down words, but there is a direct relation between them: one is the reversible form of the other.”

One might also compare an eerie sound clip from the  Oscar-winning score of “Spellbound” with a weird clip from “Selim,” by the World Saxophone Quartet.  The latter is from the album “Selim Sivad” (Miles Davis backwards). One reviewer claims that this album displays “astonishing, telepathic group interplay.” This may or may not be true; if the services of a psychiatrist are required to help decide the issue, let us hope she is as attractive as Saint Ingrid.

The above remarks are, of course, intended as a partial antidote to the music inevitably associated with Bergman… “As Time Goes By.”  (Please do not play it again, Sam.)  Of course, the World Saxophone Quartet may be too powerful an antidote… It reminds one, as does the greatly superior weird music from the “Forbidden Planet” soundtrack, of Monsters from the Id.  From such monsters, let us pray to Saint Ingrid for deliverance.