Wednesday, March 16, 2011

ELVIS COSTELLO: The Delivery Man

One of the artistically highest points in Elvis Costello´s career, the way i see it, gotta be the album ¨The Delivery Man¨ (2004).

¨The Delivery man¨contain 14 tracks and is an absolute perfect work, perhaps I would have add ¨Watching The Detectives¨, a live track included in his previous release with ¨The Imposters¨ ¨Cruel Smile¨ (2002), but that is just a whimsical idea of mine.

The album strikes me as formidable and inspiring and according to an article in wikipedia: The album had its genesis in a conceptual story apparently written for Johnny Cash. Costello himself states:

The Delivery Man started out as a story about the impact on three woman’s lives of a man with a hidden past. The story took the song "Hidden Shame" as its unsung prelude. Parts of the narrative ended up being displaced from the final album by more urgent songs taken from the news headlines. One of the songs moved aside was to find an ideal home onSecret, Profane & Sugarcane.

Davey Faragher ( Bass) and Pete Thomas (Drums) provide one of the most proficient rhythm sections in many a years. First time I listened the album I thought Robert Plant would jump at any moment with a microphone to join them, so strong was the playing that only Led Zeppelin at the peak of their powers and maybe David Bowie´s Tin Machine eponymous album could equal the energy of the drums and the elegant perfection of the bass playing.The riffing pedal steel guitar of John McPhee and the keyboards by Steve Nieve rock earnestly throughout the length of the Cd.

I have always maintained that Costello´s genius is kind of sparkling, an inspiration that explodes randomly to exalt his musicianship at just a precise moment in time. I obviously don´t know the way he works, I don´t know if he spends many hours trying to compose music and lyrics, but i like to imagine him jumping from his seat at some point and start playing and creating those great pieces like nobody could. There are some songs by Costello that makes the ride of his life through this world a very worthy case in my opinion because they transmit immediately a bang! a flush of emotions, fireworks through my whole self. A powerful artistic genius, but just in very defined moments.

We all know that originality is just a myth, that, no matter how hard you try, is impossible to reinvent the world at every step of the road. There are always weak moments in an artist´s life. Inspiration seems to avoid you, mediocrity sets in and you find yourself aimless facing a creative emptiness......Elvis Costello has the gift, though, to build precious gems amongst the whole load of albums he have made.

¨The Delivery Man¨ is the 21st. studio album recorded by Costello and the third with his band ¨the Imposters¨ with whom he has recorded 2 other albums, ¨Cruel Smile¨(2002), and ¨Momofuku¨(2008) and it is that precise moment in time in which Costello´s greater creative spirit sparks all over and shine in a demonic light. He produces sometimes ordinary works, for example ¨Almost Blue¨ (1981), an album made up exclusively from covers to country songs that was pointed out as a great country album in its time but that worked only to fulfill his love of this genre and nothing else in my opinion. Country stays at home and is not much appreciated outside, therefore lacks universality. Of course many may think different, this is just my idea of music appreciation.

Costello at his best can come with things like ¨the Delivery Man¨ (2004) ¨Armed Forces¨ (1979) or the excellent album of covers ¨For The Stars¨ (2001), and then you have to admit that he is one of a kind, one among millions of mediocre performers to take control of the last part of last century in music, just with a bunch of others. And still making some noise in 2009 with ¨Secret, Profane and Sugarcane¨ and in 2010 with ¨National Ransom¨.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Sabbath´s Indecent Theater, a poem by Kyran Lucien

Sabbath´s Indecency is nearly over,

There, a man deprived of heraldry.

All of his life driven away,

By a lowest estimation,

By his long time fame erected.

There a man crying in a cemetery,

Haunted by ghosts,

Of a lover gone,

Of an Oedipal motherly grip,

Looking for his own burial ground.

There a self detaching man,

Ruinating everything he touches,

Addicted to suffering, He, Who could have been best

In spite of his begrudging reactions to society of man,

He, who could have simply bliss out.

There a man over and done with life,

Facing suicide as the last act

Of an empty, lonely, bitter man

The greatest misery of all

in a father´s heart, and inside his own mind.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Philip Roth-Patrimony

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Submitted by Kyranlucien0129 on Tue, 02/22/2011 at 4:15pm.

By Kyran Lucien

Patrimony is an intimate and touching album of memories on Philip Roth´s father last years of life. It is as well a celebration on the life of a man whose extraordinary vitality and complex personality are the source of one of Mr. Roth´s richest and controverted characters ever. The love of the son for his father takes the writers mind to a tour the force through the whole of his family experiences to explain and re-create every possible memory in time that could explain the man as a whole and to deal with the extreme pain of being human, it is an attempt not to understand but to accept the sad destiny of humanity. Death. Why a man should die....? Herman Roth asks his son as well as he asks himself. Philip Roth makes the same question to all of us, and even though we know there´s no answer at all, we share and live with them that most dreadful and deeply embedded fear of all. Death is our common destiny, we will be sooner or later face to face with the final moment of our existence and it is up to us only how we are gonna received this uninvited and much despised guest. Through Herman and Philip Roth we see ourselves dealing with an intense gathering of emotions that can only be lived between creator and creation. Fortunately for Philip Roth, the final sum of feelings is a very good one. His father was a very stubborn man, but a stubborn man who loved deeply his family and fought for them. With some incongruence and lack of tact, yes, but with a great deal of love. Philip Roth is a proud son and a loving son. That I think is the best gift Herman Roth could ever have expected. The patrimony, a totally unexpected one, that is what Philip Roth receives at the end of his father´s life, and he receives it with a total submission, whether good or bad, his patrimony is the greatest proof of his love for his father through the ordeal of his last years, and he made his father sure he was loved and appreciated. Not everybody can feel so rewarded in life as they were. Patrimony is a novel that can be placed among the greatest things Philip Roth has ever written.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

RICHARD BARBIERI, A musician just for the few.......

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Submitted by Kyranlucien0129 on Sun, 08/22/2010 at 2:46pm.

Art and music just for the few, that kind of statement applies very well in most of my musical and artistical tastes. I have been listening Richard Barbieri's music for more than 30 years and for me is so natural his way of doing music that i sometimes lost perspective on what other people regard as "trendy". As a matter of fact I was never much interested in trendy ways. I can tell that basically since i left elementary school I started to be really interested in new ways of artistic expression beyond what I already knew and heard at home and amongst family friends. My really first big musical hero was the greek musician and composer VANGELIS, and since then, i can't just listen music in a superficial way. As I grow older I am less and less inclined to be virulent about art in general, i tend to listen more pop-culture oriented bands without feeling pangs of disgust in my stomach but i will always hate lady gaga shit or madonna or christina aguilera (i really hate such a big stupidity) or anybody like them for the case. I can listen ne3w music because there are tons of great new ideas and virtuosity in new technological ways, so unsespected when i was a child but through the years, my biggest pleasure have always been to be so deeply interested in people like RICHARD BARBIERI, RYUICHI SAKAMOTO (a very similar kind of musician although with different approaches to composition), BRIAN ENO, JAPAN , NO MAN, MICK KARN, DAVID SYLVIAN, ROBERT FRIPP, KITARO, POPOL VUH, MAGMA, RICK WAKEMAN, GENESIS, PREMIATA FORNERIA MARCONI, FRED FRITH, PHILIP GLASS, JON ANDERSON, and all sorts of atmospheric, progressive, classical trained musicians that make music a little less boring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEHfBe7FfBA

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by Kyranlucien0129 - 24 days ago
Calgary, Canada Canada

Member Since: Jul 2010
Member Points: 294

Solo work from the talented synth player from Porcupine Tree. Track is off of the album Stranger Inside.

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Friday, March 26, 2010

A Personal Chess History, A Poem By Kyran Lucien

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Submitted by kyranlucien on Thu, 03/25/2010 at 6:58am.

A personal chess history.......

I’m a man full of memories,

And every moment of my life,

Present or past,

I’m full of them like the heaven full of stars.....

To me, every object I see, every word I say,

My dog resting on my lap,

My girl lying beside me in my bed,

Ascribes me to a time when I was learning to feel

I have a history of my own,

Many things to mouth about,

And many things I learned at home

Good or bad, that made the man I am.....

My love for music, books or chess,

My love for friends,

Not measurable in a human way,

My opinions on god, good and evil,

Distorted by early misinformation,

My concepts about faith,

Inflamed by early readings,

And my eternal wish to fly away,

Living my life like a migrant bird,

Traveling around the orb,

Inspired by the beauty of being alive.

I wanted to know who I am.

I've always did, I still do,

I don't want to step the back door

birdbrained, unwitting, unsensible,

That’s why I started this personal history with chess in it.

II.

I shall begin talking about my father,

The most enigmatic human being,

I ever came across,

He was distant, quiet, a stranger,

My very first memories of life,

My very first memories of him,

Are related to a chessboard,

And my longing to be his friend.

A chessboard Immobile for days in the same place,

He’d practice on it his solitary matches,

Learning the labyrinth of possibilities

Just for the sake of it,

I wouldn’t ever ask anything, it was banned.

I wouldn't even try to be like him

I'd say to myself everytime I found

that silence unbeareable.

And I didn't want to play chess

Not for a while, nor staying home,

Not through my busy early youth

I just wanted to breath freedom.

Experience the rackety earth beyond my door,

Screaming lawlessly I was full of it,

But then somehow I'd be confronted with the real world,

And with family struggles and depressions,

I'd learned that everything was not right,

That old philosopher Pangloss was severely wrong,

We didn't live in "The Best Of All Possible Worlds",

As his own demoralized experiences advised.

He wasn't fond of music

At least not the way I am

But my grandma was

And she thaught me all about feelings.

She taught me to read, to play, to be free,

She told me stories I will never forget,

She read to me Shakespeare's tales,

Through Charles and Mary Lamb's eyes......

She kept from the fact that extreme beauty

Always hides extreme madness,

She kept from me how Mary Lamb

On a fit of anger stabbed both her parents

She always kept from me the ugliness of our world,

She protected me and made me conscious,

She tried hard to make me a believer,

And that's probably the only thing she'd ever failed to achieve....

There were too many gods and godesses,

Too many sprites and spirits

throughout the whole history

of civilization too take one god seriously....

There were simply,

Too many notes in that symphony.....

To Be Continued......

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Calgary Canada

Member Since: Jun 2009
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Monday, March 22, 2010

If Only I Could….

i wrote the poem with some mistakes. since i write always in a hurry so as not to lose the idea or image of things in my head, i procrastinate too, and normally dont repair the mistakes since i feel my main task is done, to say something that’s bothering me. Also the picture of the girl is really corny now that i come to think of it, but i needed just something to make more evident the frame of mind i was in when i was writing. but here is the way it should have been written, more or less. If only I could stop thinking in chess and life….a poem by Kyran Your blog changes have been submitted. « Blogs home Submitted by kyranlucien on Mon, 03/22/2010 at 12:51pm. If only I could stop thinking in chess and life, Juat not thinking , feeling or minding. My chess pieces die too, like any normal human being. If I take a Knight One of my bishops will follow down a path where there’s nothing else but silence, long lasting death, what for…..? Is it better to be a coward…? is it better not to fight when a full, huge scope of ways are opening just in front of your staggered eyes…..? Is it better to hide in the most cryptic realm of your fears…. The principle of conciouss life offends my inteligence, There are no ancillary roads, there are no secondary choices or palliative strategies, there are no such things even when you play with them crooked ideas in your mind, you’re bound to make choices here you kill or die, here, there is no point of return, you enter the game to be done with it, and if you dont move and lose without fighting, shame on you…!!! you must be horribly depressed, you might not find a moment’s peace in your disillusion, but you must play the game like you live your life, and if you lose, then, well, something in your world is going terribly wrong, sometimes is better not to think, Aaaah! If I could only be a chess piece!!!! without memory or feelings at all…. but here I am, trying to find in a 64 squared board the secret rebuttal of a life in rags…. Kyran Lucien Thoughts? “the walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy” jim rohn. (this guy sucks anyway, i just found attractive this sentence)

If only I could stop thinking in chess and life….a poem by Kyran

Your blog changes have been submitted. « Blogs home Submitted by kyranlucien on Mon, 03/22/2010 at 12:51pm.

If only I could stop thinking in chess and life,

Not thinking , feeling or minding,

my chess pieces die too,

like any normal human being,

If I take a Knight

One of my bishops will follow

down a path where there’s nothing else

but silence, long lasting death,

what for…..?

Is it better to be a coward…?

is it better not to fight

when a full, huge scope of

ways are opening just in front

of your staggered eyes…..?

Is it better to hide in the most cryptic

realm of your fears….

The principle of conciouss life offends my inteligence,

There are no ancillary roads,

there are no secondary choices

or palliative strategies,

there are no such things

even when you play with them crooked ideas in your mind,

you’re bound to make choices

here you kill or die,

here, there is no point of return,

you enter the game to be done with it,

and if you dont move and lose without fighting,

shame on you…!!!

you must be horribly depressed,

you might not find a moment’s peace in your disillusion,

but you must play the game like you live your life,

and if you lose, then, well, something in your world

is going terribly wrong,

sometimes is better not to think,

Aaaah! If I could only be a chess piece!!!!

without memory or feelings at all….

but here I am, trying to find

in a 64 squared board the secret rebuttal

of a life in rags….

Kyran Lucien

Thoughts?

“the walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy”

jim rohn. (this guy sucks anyway, i just found attractive this sentence)

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) and the translation of Dante's Comedy

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Submitted by kyranlucien on Mon, 02/22/2010 at 5:49pm.

Kyran's Library and Musical Database

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) and the traduction of Dantes Comedy

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Submitted by kyranlucien on Mon, 02/22/2010 at 5:48pm.

Translation Notes
The seminal translation of The Divine Comedy - and the one presented here - was by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), the famous American poet who wrote such classics as The Song of Hiawatha and The Courtship of Miles Standish. In 1861, after the tragic death of his wife, Longfellow found solace in the task of translating Dante into English.

Longfellow also wrote Six Sonnets on Dante's Divine Comedy during the work of translating the La Divina Commedia. These were published as poetical fly-leaves to the three parts. The first and second prefaced the Inferno. The third and fourth introduced the Purgatorio, and the fifth and sixth the Paradiso.

I respect any writer as much as i respect Longfellow because is not an easy thing to write, but when it comes to translations, i think you should better have a good knowledge of the language youe are translating or you gonna run into many inexactitudes and misinterpretations. A good skill is recommended, not basic understanding, but knowledge. Dante and Homer and Virgil are very dificult to translate because they wrote not in prose but in verse. how knowledgebla you have to be to translate a story written with a very high level of metaphores, linguistic gyres and poetry....?I would not try to translate greek to english even though I love Homer. There was a mexican writer, called Alfonso Reyes, the best mexican writer i have ever read, who dedicate all of his life, like the great english poet and novelist Robert Graves, to learn and understand the greek spirit of language, He, Alfonso Reyes, like Robert Graves, wrote a wonderful body of work about greek culture, in the case of Reyes, he wrote more than 40 volumes of greek matters and literature and translations, but he only took the task of tranlating the Iliad and the Odissey at a very late age, when he was sure of was he was saying, and Alas....! his traduction is regarded as thye best ever made in spanish of the inmortal works, and guess what....He did it in Verse...!!!!! he not only translate the sories, but faithful to the spirit of both works, he made it into verse....he wrote every end of a line in rhyme with the next one and the next one. and another line with a different ending, would sound not like the next one but the one after, you'll see, Homer wrote in Hexameters, a very popular way of writing in the old ages, Dante in Rhyma terza or tercets, and therefore, the importance of final syllables are fundamental for the works themselves, are the most important feature of this art, it provides tempo, music, cadence, poetry, and a sense of harmony to the whole, and too many translations of homer and other masters were made in prose before, but nothing in verse, with which, to read Homer or Dante or Virgil or Hesiod or anybody else, in a different language than the original was half an experience of the ride, till the 20th century in which some scholars decided to try the translation in verse, and from then, everything sounded different. I know that there is no way to be totally accurate, but the Graves and Reyes, they both have made amazing efforts to give Homer and the Dante what they deserve: Respect.

If you think that translate is possible just with grabbing a dictionary and looking for words, you got it wrong.

Dante Wrote:

Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte;

ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,

dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.

Longfellow translates:

So bitter is it, death is little more;

But of the good to treat, which there I found,

Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

Good to treat...!!!!???

what's that...?

In this line especifically, the poet says:

so bitter that death is only a bit more

but to speak of what i really saw

speak i must of the other things i found

After reading this you dont feel like you really want to keep going on this translation, but to find another version instead, provided of course that what your looking for is the experience of beauty as well as the understanding of the poet's ideas, in my case, i try to not take a lesser work than the original self....

well, i cant finish this now, my big problem is I can't never finish anything, i dont have solitude or peace, how can you think when everybody is jumping on you like a, like a, like suckers...!