Great Discourse between Zizekand and West

When I have fears that I may cease to be

"When I have fears I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love! - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink."

                                            - John Keats

Leda And the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
    Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
    By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
    He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

    How can those terrified vague fingers push
    The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
    And how can body, laid in that white rush,
    But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

    A shudder in the loins engenders there
    The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
    And Agamemnon dead.

                        Being so caught up,

    So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
    Did she put on his knowledge with his power
    Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

- William Butler Yeats

A take on bringing the kids to the ballet - but it's the Nutcracker!

     It's the winter holidays.  That means one thing - the annual trip with the kids to the ballet.  It's a ritual, I tell you, a yearly round of tantrums, fist thumping and uncontrollable crying: 'Not again.  Take somebody else to the stupid Nutcracker.'  'But it's so Christmassy.'  'So is hypothermia.'  In the end I just have to agree to go, but on the strict understanding that I can sing 'Everyone's a Fruit and Nutcase' under my breath during the 'Dance of the Reed Pipers'. 
     Thing is, they are not even our kids.  Haven't got any.  Instead, we have a dog whose chief advantages are: 1) you can leave him at home while you go out to get drunk without returning to find Social Services on your doorstep; and 2) he never, ever wants to see The Nutcracker.  So each year we borrow children from different branches of the family.  And why?  Because my beloved once heard somebody on Desert Island Discs whose childhood was transformed by a visit to the ballet, that's why.  I never trust stories like that.  When such people talk about being 'transported', I only ever think of convicts and Australia - for the thousand that went out, only a handful made it back.  For every celeb who later talks dreamily of their youthful visits to the concert hall, how many countless others sat bored witless, silently vowing never to return?
     What get me is not Tchaikovsky, nor even the audience packed with little girls.  No, it's the parents.  It feels like bulk lip-service to culture.  Once a year they cart the offspring off to the Nutcracker and that is that box ticked for another 12 months.  I suppose at least it has themes that are likely to resonate with young people.  A lot of children's concerts I attend turn out not to be children concerts at all, but merely adult concerts at which children are present - the only differences seem to be that the hand dresses casual, Harry Potter is always in there somewhere and the thing is hosted by some slightly over-eager actor type who hasn't spent long enough on the script.  I should know, I have done it myself a few times: from the stage, the mass of squirming forms reminded me of looking out onto farmyard.
        Now, you are probably thinking I am a resentful, child-hating monster.  Not a bit of it.  On the contrary, as a professional entertainer I am writing to tell you that I am available for children's parties, and, strangely, my diary is empty over the festivities!  Oh, all except for one date in December, of course, when I'll be at the ruddy ballet.

- Rainer Hersch is a British conductor.

a thought, merely a thought

     Even if you were going to live three thousand years, and even ten thousand times that, still  remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses.  The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same.  For the present is the same to all, through that which perishes is not the same; and so what is lost appears to be a mere moment.  For a man cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a man has not, how can anyone take this from him?  These two things then you must bear in mind: the one, that all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man hall see the same things during a hundred years or two hundred, or an infinite time; and the second, that he who lives longest and he who will die soonest lose just the same.  For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he  has, and that a man cannot lose something he does not already possess.

- from Meditations by Emperor Marcus Aurelius

Our Favorite Tumbrel Remark

   Lady Diana Cooper was waiting under her umbrella outside the Dorchester hotel tapping her foot impatiently waiting for her Rolls Royce when a beggar approached her and announced that he had been without food for three days. Her response? "Foolish man that you are. You must try to eat. If need be, you must force yourself."

A list of my favorite brindisis (Opera drinking songs)

So let's raise our goblets and sing....

• "Libiamo ne' lieti calici"  - from Verdi's La traviata.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWECvv4wcIQ

• "Viva, il vino spumeggiante"  - from Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OlbwdEnrdc

• "Si colmi il calice" from Verdi's Macbeth.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WRyz3P6_Xw

• "Inaffia l'ugola" from Verdi's Otello.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6qKmAQ8klQ

• "Vin ou Bière" from Gounod's Faust.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXw8UQnRRo0

• "Il segreto per esser felici" from Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNssdwEAQl4