Music from the Carpathian Mountains

This CD, which I picked up this morning to listen to while I was working, is quite curious. On the cover it is called, "Pan Pipe Songs and Dances From Transylvania (The Land of Dracula) and Other Mysterious Regions," but in iTunes it is called "Greetings from Hungaria Part 1 - Traditionals." I don't where the country of "Hungaria" is, and the liner notes say:

Transylvania is legendary as the home of the vampire Count Dracula, based on the exploits of a Romanian noble, Vlad the Impaler. But the mythical ghouls have been the least of the problems endured by this Eastern European region, which was invaded by barbarian tribes, Hungarians, Mongols, Turks, Hapsburgs, and Soviets.

The region known as Transylvania sweeps southeastward from the present-day Hungarian border to central Romania. It is bounded on three sides by mountains. The first record of its mane [sic], which means "beyond the forest," appears in documents from the 12th century. Because it is a fertile area and was crossed by important trade routes, rulers of many lands wanted to control Transylvania.

I don't know as much as I'd like to about the history of this region, but the music sounds very much like Hungarian folk music, or at least it would if there were only the hurdy-gurdies, fiddles, hammer dulcimers, and vocals without the bagpipes. The track titles are in Hungarian:

1. Szigetközi Dudanóták (Pipe Tunes of Szigetkoz) [2:15]
2. Zörög a Cidrus (The Citruswood Is Whispering) [1:32]
3. Bonchidai (Slow Lad's Dance) [3:21]
4. Eleki Román Táncdallamok (Dance Tunes of Elek) [3:21]
5. Dráva Menti Horváth Népdalok (Folk Songs of Drava Valley) [3:19]
6. Széki Keserves (Lament of Szek) [2:09]
7. Szépkenyerúszentmártoni Köszöntó (Greeting Song) [1:52]
8. Amerikás Dal (Hungarian Song from the American Emigration) [3:42]
9. Lassú Csárdás és Bertóké Verbunk (Slow Csardas and Bertok's Dance) [2:46]
10. Udvarhelyszéki Dalok (Songs of Transylvania) [3:57]
11. Széki Verbunk (Szek Dance) [1:30]
12. Bánat, Bánat, de Bánatos Vagyok (Sorrow, Sorrow, I Am Sorrowful) [1:53]
13. Lónal Keserves (Lament of Lona) [3:19]
14. észak-mezóségi Tánczene (Dance Music of Northern Transylvania) [3:42]
15. En Az úton (On My Way) [2:01]
16. Székelyföldi Táncok (Dances of Szekely) [3:04]
17. Azért Vagyok Lenvirág (I Am a Flax Flower) [0:24]

In spite of its incredibly silly title, the music is fabulous, like Hungarian folk music.

Snuff Bottles

I've always found snuff bottles to be curious little objects. The artistry in some of them is quite impressive, but I never really took the time to learn much about them. This article has some good general information about them. Excerpt:

Chinese snuff bottles were only made in the Qing Dynasty, which started in 1644 and ended in 1911, and contrary to what some people think, they were used only for holding powdered tobacco, usually with some herbs and spices in it, which was inhaled through the nose. They were never used for opium; that’s a totally different thing.

They actually started in the imperial court. For the first hundred years of their existence, pretty much throughout the 18th century, tobacco was exceedingly expensive in China, so taking snuff was a habit. It was definitely something for the upper crust of the imperial family and the influential minority of China. It wasn’t until the 19th century that you see a diffusion to the general population.

I own two Chinese snuff bottles myself. One is layered and carved glass, given to me as a gift from a friend. The second is an inexpensive, porcelain, recently created (and therefore not genuine) bottle in the form of Tang Dynasty tea scholar Lu Yu (陆羽).

Fire

A few months ago there was a rash of arsons in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle, very near where I work. The worst of the fires consumed four businesses entirely and damaged the theater next door. I like the mural itself, but some of the press coverage of it was very poorly conceptualized.

"The symbolism is clear: Just as the bird refuses to succumb to the fire licking at its feathers, so do the people of Greenwood refuse to be torn down."
- Seattle Times

The immolation of the phoenix is essential. It must succumb to the fire in order to initiate its own regeneration. This is probably just sloppy writing, but this kind of garbling of symbolism annoys me.

"One of the most significant images was a phoenix rising from flames, perhaps a sign of the community rebuilding after the fire."
- Kiro TV

Perhaps?!?!

Side note: Many years ago I found the burned ash and wreckage of a Chinese restaurant that had burned to the ground, ironically named "The Phoenix."

Subconscious?

When I was preparing for the construction crew to come in and work on my house last month I had to shuffle a bunch of objects around for safety reasons, and while the siding and walls were being worked on and pounded on I had to take all of the art off of the walls. After that phase was completed I put things more or less back where they had been, although I switched a few paintings around. About a week later I looked at the corner of the dining room as shown in the photo above and was struck by the fact that the three prominent pieces of art all featured pretty much the same color scheme, with very similar shades of blue and rosy reddish-orange. The tea cabinet that Lu Yu is sitting on has similiar colors also.

The consistency was entirely unintentional. I definitely didn't notice it when I put things there. The fact that the three individuals pictured are Lu Yu, Saint Cecilia and Marcel Duchamp also reveals a great deal about me within a small, concentrated area of my house.

Ceramic statue of Lu Yu, Tang Dynasty writer of 茶經 (Cha Jing, loosely translated as the "Classic of Tea").



Borderline kitsch print of a painting of Saint Cecilia, the Patron Saint of Music. (The painting is not distorted the way the photo is.)



Painting/Collage of Marcel Duchamp, by Max Estenger. The small bit of text says, "le style, c'est l'homme."

The 5 Edible Bats of Good Fortune

Last weekend I bought some Ling Gok (Trapa bicornis), also called "water caltrops," "devil pods," and ten thousand other names. I've never seen them available in the store before, but I believe that they are part of the commonly consumed foods for Lunar New Year. I like that the seed is lucky because it looks like a bat, which is lucky because its name (fú, 蝠​) is very similar to the word for good fortune (fú​, 福). I bought seven of them, and I don't intend to eat them because they're too awesome looking. They feel nice in my hand and make a nice dry rattling sound. I gave two of them away, so now I have five, but I just remembered that bats are usually in groups of five anyway, so it was fortuitous.

Water Caltrops with Butterfly

by Australian poet Jan Owen

from the May 2000 issue of Quadrant Magazine

"Things answer our gaze": Bachelard

The caltrops are too stale to boil with salt.
Posed on a Chinese plate, dreaming of flight,
they are black grotesques of primitive art,
bat fetish, owl mask, shaman horns.

Real wings are frayed red gold: the butterfly
was snagged on the balcony stucco yesterday.
I set it down on the same plate to die.
Already its tongue was a slack watch-spring

and its legs intending something feeble and fine
like a Chekhov heroine…

Peking Opera costumes

These two costumes were on display at the Peking Opera performance I attended earlier this month, which was partly a new year celebration, in spite of not being held very close to Lunar New Year. But it was also an opportunity to hear Wu Rujun, who was at the beginning of a tour. Up close the silk and embroidery were quite fabulous. The closeup of the dragon is the sleeve of the red costume.

The concert itself was performed without the elaborate costumes since it was not an actual staged opera, but it was great. The performance/celebration was held in the enormous ballroom of a restaurant on the bay at sunset, and the light was terrible for taking photographs, so these are not great.

Tea Business

I'm working on a tea business idea which I think will be quite good. I'm not ready to reveal too much about it yet, but I'm trying to get all of my ducks in a row. I've built the small network of social networking pieces and parts of the website already. At times I wish that I had a business partner, or maybe even two, but I don't see that happening any time soon.