Sideways Station

Etceteras for the next 25 kilometers - Good Road Signs

It's the etceteras you really have to watch out for.

Hold on to your hats when crossing railway bridges ?

Women can dance the samba on the pedestrian crossing.

Siblings crossing.

Kids kicking the stuffing out of triangles.

A warning to people in wheel-chairs ? Or to alligators (wheel-chairs being hard to digest) ? Or to vehicles trying to drive through in-between.

When wet, the wheels on the left-hand side may end up on the right-hand side.

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All pictures from Icons, Taschen

Handkerstuff (re-post)

There are lots of things you can do with a real handkerchief which you can't do with tissue. I remember that people used them to wave from trains when passing houses of people they knew. Actually you just stuck the handkerchief out of the window and it would wave itself. Of course, now you can't even open train windows at all. I also have recollections of people in hot weather tying knots in the corners, soaking the hankie in cold water and wearing it on their heads.

And surely to be handed a freshly ironed, neatly folded, soft handkerchief to wipe one's tears must be a consolation in itself. Thinking of that use, I believe that I have a whole class of new words to suggest. I do this with some apprehension, because though new words are amusing and sometimes mesmerising, they are a bit like unknown animals you bring back to your own house; some of them turn out to be bad guests and there are a few hundred words which in my opinion we desperately need to get rid of.

Despite this, in the single-volume dictionary I have to hand I am busy trying to push handiwork one way and handknit the other, so that I can make room to fit in a whole new pageful.

Let us suppose some bad news has blown in through the window or that something which never was supposed to happen has just knocked on your door. You are sad and distressed. What do you do to console yourself if no one hands you a handkerchief ? A handkerwalk makes me feel better sometimes, my footsteps stretch my cares out in all directions  around the town until they're too thin to notice any more. Or perhaps you prefer to pick up the phone and have a handkertalk about it all. If there is someone you always call when you need to do this then that is your handkerfriend.

At night or in times of stress you might of course be seen opening the fridge in search of handkerfood. But there may be something specific you may find more comforting (and I want to point out that none of the following examples apply to me), for example, a handkersausage, handkerchocs, or handkerchup (a thick layer of ketchup spread over what is pretty bad food to start with) There may be some people, though I find this difficult to believe, who turn to handkerporridge. 

How about handkercraft ? A word which straight from its coinage rolls wobbling on its edge into ambiguity. Is this some hobby like woodwork or brick-laying which you turn to in dark times ? Or is it the motorcycle you tear down the road on while howling ? Or is it a car or even a boat ?

You may have a favourite handkerchair, perhaps there is only one handkerplace that makes you feel better, or you could be compelled to buy some handkershoes. Some people have handkerchildren. In Autralia there probably are handkeroos, but I don't know what they are. Neither do I know what a handkernaut is, but I'll know one when one turns up and I will know what to call  it/ her/him.

Airports

Some airports get a person's name
and then drift miles away
and come to dis-resemble them.
Unless Da Vinci was a good
extortionist, De Gaulle dressed
black in grimmest leather
and had a hobby which
he practised in a dungeon
and JFK used sticky tape
to keep his trousers up.
Time for renaming:
Rome Al Capone,
Paris Franz Kafka and
New York Homer Simpson Airport. 

Listen to the poem

(This poem is from my book The Observation Car, which is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2588218)

Handelitis and The-sun-is-shining Road

Every now and then I have an attack of musical fever and have to listen to a piece of music a hundred and thirty-seven times in a row. Examples of past episodes are Dylan singing Blind Willie McTell, Carlos Gardel singing Milonga Sentimental, Tupelo Honey sung by Cassandra Wilson as well as Uri Caine and Paolo Fresu performing Si dolce è il tormento.

Sometimes I get a more serious case and I want to listen to everything a peformer ever played or sung or a composer ever wrote. The most recent occurrence was an attack of Handelitis. Hepatitis has various forms: A, B and C. So does Handelitis and I came down with Handelitis O, because I specifically felt a compulsion to attempt to listen to every Opera he had ever written.

It was only in the late 20th Century that Handel's operas began to be performed regularly again, because previously there were so few singers who had been trained so as to be capable of taking on the parts written for castrati.

The explanation generally given for the spread of castrated singers is Paul's injunction in 1 Corinthians that women should be silent in church ("mulieres in ecclesiis taceant" in the Latin Vulgate). As a result women were not allowed to sing in choirs in church. But who was going to sing the top line in the harmony ? For a while boys were used. But as music became increasingly complex it was discovered that boys' voices inconveniently broke before they had time to become proficient enough to master the parts. If they were castrated, they maintained their upper range and also developed the power of adult lungs as they grew. Gradually the demand for castrati increased and families with a talented musical child often found it a good investment for him to undergo an unexpected accident. (Because in most cases these were presented as accidents.(As William A. Frosch puts it in this interesting article: There were a surprising number of children who were attacked by wild swans or geese, gored by wild boars, or who were kicked or fell in ways that damaged or destroyed their testes.)  This all because somebody said women should not be heard in church. It might be worthwhile thinking about this the next time you are on the point of voicing a very strong opinion:  you can never really tell what effect it might have in 1500 years' time.

However one feels about it, it would seem that the castrati had voices of unequalled beauty. (I found one quote according to which, when asked by Pope Paul VI what the Church could do for music, Stravinsky answered "Give us back the castrati".

The most famous of them, Farinelli (real name Carlo Broschi), given the kind of media promotion we have today, would have made many of our superstars look like midgets. After making half of Europe swoon in the theatre, he ended up being employed on an exclusive contract by the Queen of Spain who had come to believe that his voice could cure the severe depression of her husband King Philip V. 

One of my favourite Handel arias, from the opera Ariodante, is generally known as Dopo Notte. It is one of the most rejoiceful pieces of music I know. The text gives the feeling clearly :

Dopo notte atra e funesta, splende in ciel più vago il sole e di gioia empie la terra

(After a black, doom-laden night, the sun shines brighter in the sky and fills the earth with joy.)

This aria was written for a singer called Carestini, who was not far behind Farinelli in terms of fame. (That's his portrait at the top of the post). I decided to find something out about him and was astounded to learn that he was from a place called Filottrano (population 9,449 in 2004). Filottrano is about 25 kilometers from Ancona, a place I have lived in and which I have been going back to all of my life. And yet, I had never heard Carestini mentioned. It seemed to me that since Filottrano can't have that many famous people, the main square must be named after him. But it turns out it isn't. There is no road named after him in the town. I may be wrong but I have searched hard and I have not found one single street in Italy named after one of its famous castrati. "Not one" is, I think, putting it accurately, because I found that half a street had been named after a castrato. In Andria, Farinelli's birthplace, there is a via Carlo e Riccardo Broschi. Riccardo, who he shares the street with, was his brother, a composer and the person most people think was responsible for having Carlo operated on (he had a very promising voice and the family was in financial straits).

I am wondering why there is such reluctance to name streets after these people. When I walk around towns and read the names of the thoroughfares it often occurs to me some of the people in our addresses haven't really done that much to be remembered.  Is it embarrassment about the practice that brings this about ? Or are mayors wary of the inauguration ceremony in which they would have to cut a ribbon with scissors. Perhaps they think it would bring bad luck. (I can think of one politician at least who would be terrified at having a road named after a castrato in his home town). Perhaps we will have to wait for a woman mayor in Filottrano before we have a via Carestini. But I remember that I once wrote something here where I argued against naming streets after famous people. So my suggestion is the following: use some of the words from the wonderful aria written for him, call it via Splendilsole (The-sun-is-shining Road).

At this point, some of you who do not know the aria might like to hear it. There are versions on YouTube which have a much clearer sound, but the one I have chosen, sung by Vivica Genaux, is my personal favourite and I am very grateful to the person who recorded this because the aria, for reasons I can't understand, has not been included on any of her CDs. I have never heard anyone sing it with such ease and accuracy, and her ornamentations in the repeat, the da capo, are amazing. (Anyone who can sing this is outstanding, but most singers have a slight hesitation just before they take on the trickier bits which reminds me of the way horses sometimes hold back a second before jumping a fence in show jumping).
Just so that you can hear what her voice sounds like when you can really hear it, here she is singing Sta nell'Ircana from Alcina.

And finally another aria by Handel which has given other people Handelitis. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing As with rosy steps from Theodora, an oratorio which contains what Handel considered to be his best chorus (better than the Hallelujah Chorus). This clip is from a Glyndebourne production which is wonderful from every point of view.

Some final notes: nowadays castrati arias are sung both by women and by men (countertenors) with a equivalent singing range. Both approaches have their supporters.

Vivica Genaux has recorded a CD entitled Arias for Farinelli which contains music composed specifically to show off his vocal abilities.

Philippe Jaroussky, a French countertenor, has recorded a CD entitled Carestini, the story of a castrato. You can see a trailer for the album here.

For the film Farinelli,  an interesting attempt was made to reproduce the possible sound of his voice by merging the sound of a soprano and a countertenor. You can hear a piece of a Handel aria given this treatment here.

But now I must stop before I get a relapse.