Recent Posts

When you meet God with a Dog, the answer is, "arf" and I gave him a bone.

I might be a Saint or a good samaritan

HB Mr H!

I thought about memories - Xmas 2020
It was a pretty odd Christmas - hospitality experience- really, really really really really story - “gifts” , 4 ICUs, no passport, motels, hostels, and more

the beginning of my Christmas

the Oscar Wilde’s Christmas story - Wales
The Italian departed tenor LP - hymnals
George Winston solo pianist
A smidge Christmas songs - bittersweet

Enjoy your day
Ho Ho Ho

I have some more reflections/reviews but it still wasn't really Bernstein - the actors were fantastic. The movie (a play, 50s, NYC) and too Busby....

They'll probably get an Oscar(s)


excerpt the 2nd collaboration review


The scenes are almost Chekovian in style - chock-full of subtext and nuance. The actors do an amazing job of painting a tragic picture of a lifelong partnership filled with love, but also sadness and disappointment. The Jerome Robbins ballet stylizes the young couple’s initial rush of frenetic success, seamlessly transcending from the realism of the scene of Bernstein reviewing a ballet rehearsal into a metaphor born of the very style he was midwifing. The cinematography is gorgeous - the transitions from scene to scene are theatrical and elegant, shifting in place and time with the change of an angle. The dialogue has an energy to it that is hard to quantify - it’s like watching Shakespeare and having to get used to hearing the actors speak in verse, but after twenty minutes, your brain adjusts and it sounds natural. If you are at all interested in the mid-century journey in the United States, you need to see this movie.

I watched Maestro......"is a superficially engaging soap opera about a famous marriage going off the rails thanks to a famous musician's promiscuous bisexuality. That the musician happens to be Leonard Bernstein, the most charismatic figure in American classical music in the second half of the twentieth century, gives the film a certain allure, enlivened by the virtuoso performances of Bradley Cooper (also the director) as the maestro and Casey Mulligan as his sparkling, long-suffering wife, Felicia. Like all Hollywood biopics of such figures, the film is more interested in the great man's personal foibles than what made him so celebrated - i.e. his musical genius. The film, shot partly in black-and-white (the heady, glamorous early years) and hyper color (the troubled later years), skates through the prodigious career with an occasional cinematic flourish, a great deal of incomprehensible, overlapping dialogue and little regard for what propelled it besides the hero's manic energy. (No one seems to mind his chain smoking amid irrepressible hugging and kissing.) The film's climax is double-barreled: an uncomfortably invasive account of Felicia's fatal struggle with cancer and a protracted segment showing the maestro outdoing himself in podium theatrics while conducting Mahler in a vast English cathedral, apparently so transporting that Felicia is able (once again) to overlook the less appealing side of their union. If the filmmaking becomes tiresomely overwrought, while evading true insight, well then so did its subject."

excerpt the top collaboration review

The bottom review - all tbob

I knew Lenny was an odd duck. I've seen him so many times and even the Carnegie. He was a musical genius but he wasn't like Bradley's figure in the movie/documentary. There was too much - CGI. It was interesting but I'll never see the rerun.

There's some great music documentaries - Horowitz, Cohen, Pavarotti, etc

I am back.......

Had some wonderful Mongolian Beef - lunchtime (possibly a picture)

I'm staying in my studio. I'm not sick but I had several things to do so I couldn't come to "work" playing piano at Brain Center. Re-sched'd the grand piano - Thurs 21st 1pm

I was talking to a few people and I've got to get it done today - I'll do a writing and get some little nap.

Music - YOGA "I got free" by George Winston (RIP)

It's a day of music and I think I wrote a song. I've been driving and watched people..... I saw my cronies I just waved I didn't talk to anybody. Actually I did call a barista "I need a banana" for my smoothie. We'll see whether I'm going to do play piano or just listening it

It's a reasonable day at the rain - drizzing

I have to deal with the government.............

Here's a blog and I didn't write it but I enjoy it and I hope somebody liked it

Now we don't have to think about "the plagiarization"

I put it down for the second time because I like it

The writer's name
AND
quotes

BY JILL GOTTENSTRATER" a blog


"Have you noticed what a noisy world we live in?

When at home, many of us have our televisions on while we scroll through Facebook, stopping to watch all the awesome cat or laughing baby videos, all the while, attempting to be semi-engaged in a conversation with our family members.

When we get in our cars, we turn on the radio or listen to our favorite podcasts. We fill the empty space in our cars with noise.

When we walk the aisles at our grocery store, ads or music (subliminally sending us messages to buy more) are streaming from above.

When in the company of others, most of us find it awkward when there are those rare moments of silence that settle over the conversation. It’s our nature to want to fill that silence with words.

Have you experienced a time lately when you’ve actually sat with silence?

Silence can feel thick. I know that sounds weird, but some of you know what I mean. There is a heaviness that accompanies silence–not a bad heaviness—one that’s like an old cotton hand-made quilt.

Silence is loud itself, but not in a noisy way. I know this sounds weird, too. The loudness of silence I’m talking about can feel deafening–in a good way.

There’s an art to sitting with silence. I imagine we could learn a thing or two from the monks who take life-time vows of silence. I’m not suggesting you and I need to take a vow of silence to that degree, but I am suggesting that we vow to take a few minutes each day to sit with silence.

Friends, our brains were not created to be stimulated and firing at all times, so consider your daily vow of silence as a means to caring for the one body, and all its contents, which you’ve got to carry you through the remainder of your time here on earth.

It’s not easy sitting with silence because our minds have a tendency to wander and race. I could write an entire post on methods of managing and facilitating your quiet time, but for today, let me arm you with one helpful tip: Breath in and breath out, taking deep steady breaths. Breathing this way is good for you both physically and mentally. Deep breathing releases endorphins and increases the flow of oxygen through your body, which aid in pain management, stress relief, and increased energy.

Here’s my challenge for you today. Plan a daily retreat to get away and have quiet time. Some of us may find it harder than others to find that place of retreat in our lives, but even if you have to go and sit in your car in the driveway to get a few minutes of quiet, that’s OK.

Two minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes….just allow yourself some time to just sit in silence and breathe deeply.

Not only will you enjoy the benefits of this time but those around you will, too. Enjoy, and let’s see if we can’t all make this a daily practice”