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laragazza-dalcuore-infranto-blog · 9 months ago

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Pomeriggio di pioggia a casa e l'unica cosa che senti/vedi in tv o sui social è Sanremo quindi cosa ti viene in mente:

"PERCHÉ NON PROVARE A MIXARE LE CANZONI!"

È venuto fuori qualcosa tipo:

"MAH...COSA HO CREATO" e "MA È BELLISSIMO!!!"

Mi sveglio ed è passata solo un’ora

Non mi addormenterò

Ancora otto lune nere e tu la nona

Madre figlia,luna nuova,sorella amica mia Io ti do la mia parola

Ahia ia ia ia ia iai

Mi chiamano con tutti i nomi

Tutti quelli che mi hanno dato

Ma nel profondo sono libera,orgogliosa e canto

(Sinceramente tua & Mariposa)

C’è una guerra di cuscini

Ma cuscini un po’ pesanti

Se la guerra è dei bambini

La colpa è di tutti quanti

Con linee immaginarie bombardate un ospedale

Per un pezzo di terra o per un pezzo di pane

Non c’è mai pace

Ma il prato è verde,più verde,più verde

Sempre più verde(sempre più verde)

Il cielo è blu,blu,blu

Molto più blu (ancora più blu)

(Onda alta & Casa mia)

Ma di svegliarmi con accanto qualcuno

Per me l’amore è come un proiettile

Lo sai che sei un proiettile nel cuore però avevo il giubbotto

E lo sai,cercarti è un po’ come aspettare ad un semaforo rotto

(Click boom & Un ragazzo una ragazza)

Cosa siamo noi

Solo diamanti grezzi

Cadono in mille pezzi

Ma siamo fragili

Come la neve

Come due crepe

(Diamanti grezzi & Fragili)

Cosa ci fai qui

Non vorrai mica deludermi

Hai sciolto le catene che abbiamo stretto insieme

Per tenerci lontani

Non mi piace niente ma tu mi togli il respiro

Apnea

(Ti muovi & Apnea)

Affogo in una lacrima perché il mio destino è autodistruttivo

Copri le lacrime segreti da tenere,non farti scoprire

Lo sai che a casa non devon sapere,cosa dovrai dire

(Autodistruttivo & La rabbia non mi basta)

Nun less pnzat maij

Ca all’inizij ra storij er gia a fin ra storij p nuij

O ciel c sta uardann

E quant chiov e pcchè

Se dispiaciut p me e p te

Solo una stupida canzone per riuscire a riportarti da me

Soltanto un’ultima canzone per riuscire a ricordarmi di te

('I l' me,tu p' te' & Tu no)

Io sono pazza di me,di me

E voglio gridarlo ancora

Non ho bisogno di chi mi perdona io,faccio da sola,da sola

E sono pazza di me

Prima di te non c’era niente di buono

Come se

Tu fossi l’unica luce a dare un senso

E questa vita con te

È un capolavoro

(Pazza & Capolavoro)

Io che da sola

Non so stare

Ad occhi chiusi

Sopra la follia

Perché in giro da sola non resto

Anche la più bella rosa diventa appassita

Va bene,ti aspetto,ma non tutta la vita

(Fino a qui & Ma no tutta la vita)

La mia collana non ha perle di saggezza

A me hanno dato le perline colorate

Per le bimbe incasinate con i traumi

Da snodare piano piano con l’età

Eppure sto una pasqua guarda zero drammi

Tu non guardare indietro mai e vai uh uh

Non guardare indietro mai e vai uh uh

(La noia & Vai)

Tu che non mi ami

E io ancora che ti chiamo

Per dirti

Finiscimi

Fammi sentire quanto sono pessimo

Ma tu già lo sai

Che io non sarò mai

Un porto sicuro

In un mare calmo

Mi hai lasciato con l’amore in bocca

(Finiscimi & L'amaro in bocca)

Lasciarmi cadere nel vuoto per sentirmi vivo

Anche solo per un attimo

Rincorrere ancora quel brivido

Sarà fantastico

Morire ancora per te

Vorrei guardare il passato con te

Addosso al muro col proiettore

Viverlo insieme un minuto anche tre

Scappare per un po’ da Roma Nord

(Il cielo non ci vuole & Tutto qui)

Parliamone da soli in una notte di prigione

Con gli occhi spalancati e le labbra di silicone

Dammi un po’ di te,un pezzo dei Blur,un locale da spaccare

(Fammi vergognare)

Non paragonarmi a una bitch così

Non era abbastanza noi soli sulla jeep

Ma non sono bravo a rincorrere

5 cellulari nella tuta gold

Baby non richiamerò

(Governo punk & Tuta Gold)

E non sai come vorrei farne a meno

E lo sa solo Dio

Chi è più pazzo di me

Sotto questo mantello di cielo

E allora piove da quel buco sulle teste,

Sì,ma non fa niente.

Tanto si riparte:

Non so nemmeno dove.

(Pazzo di te & Ricominciamo tutto)

Ma abbracciami abbracciami che è normale

Stringerti forte è spettacolare

Come l’amore il primo giorno d’estate

Come i dischi belli che non scordi più

Come l’istante che ti cambia per sempre

Ma in fondo resti ancora e ancora

Io e te fermiamo il mondo quando siamo insieme

Anche se dura un secondo come le comete

Griderò,griderò il tuo nome fino a perdere la voce

Sotto la pioggia sotto la neve

Sospesi in aria come due altalene

(Spettacolare & Due altalene)

-la ragazza dal cuore nero♡

#saremo 2024 #canzoni #testi #creare #creatvity #pensare #pomeriggio #noia #pioggia

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sunburnacoustic · 2 years ago

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Muse: The band who fell to earth

Music journalist Simon Price talks to Muse ahead of their 2004 Glastonbury headline set, for The Independent. Sunday, 20 June, 2004. From the archives.

Good news! It's been a while since a group arrived fully formed from outer space. But here they are, primed and ready to storm Glastonbury, phase-shifters set to stun. Simon Price hits the road to Rome with neo-prog-rockers Muse, to reflect on the plenitude of old buildings, onrushing stardom and the place of guitar overload in the music of J S Bach.

Rome is a city where the present tarantellas chaotically with the ancient past, a surreal, anachronistic jumble of 20th-century, Renaissance and first-century architecture. Turn one corner and you're in La Dolce Vita, another and you're in Caravaggio, another and you're in Gladiator.

In the heatlamp-intense glare of the afternoon sun, Muse do not especially resemble intrepid, Icarus-like rock visionaries whose musical ambition knows no restraint. If anything, in their brightly coloured Diesel shirts and three-quarter-length trousers, they look like anonymous, carefree Inter-railers seeing the sights.

The locals, however, are not fooled. As Matt Bellamy (vocals, guitar, piano), Chris Wolstenholme (bass) and Dom Howard (drums) laze by the Fontana di Trevi, where Anita Ekberg frolicked so iconically, or stroll down the Spanish Steps (until they are shooed away by a rather camp sailors' parade), they are regularly accosted by thrilled Italians asking for photos and autographs.

Bellamy, Wolstenholme and Howard all arrived in the sleepy Devon resort of Teignmouth from other parts of England. Instant outsiders, they bonded, and spent their teens getting into mild mischief, sneaking into the Single Parents Club in Winterbourne on Mondays and Tuesdays, hanging around in Poole drinking cider and playing football, and getting their heads kicked in for having long hair. "We were 14," Bellamy recalls, "and Howard was getting beaten up by 25-year-old men. It was that kind of place." Music was mainly a means to an end. Bellamy, whose father, George, played guitar in the Sixties instrumental group The Tornadoes studied the clarinet from the age of nine and had dreams of becoming a serious jazz musician. That all changed at the age of 13, when he played a Ray Charles blues piece on the piano at a talent contest. "I somehow pulled a girl, and I realised that music was a way to get female attention."

The three future Musos all joined various bands. "Dom's band was the cool one," Bellamy concedes. "They'd rent out a leisure centre, and all the kids would go to their gigs, smoke cannabis and so on." Things became a little more serious when the trio formed their own band. After working through names like Carnage Mayhem, Gothic Plague, Fixed Penalty and Rocket Baby Dolls, and frustratingly finding themselves obliged to play cover versions, they wisely settled on Muse.

With the invaluable help of the techno wizard Tom Kirk - the band's unofficial fourth member who drove them to London for their first gig in the capital, designs their live visuals and keeps a video diary of all they do - Muse were ready for take-off.

After attracting much attention at the 1998 In The City seminar in Manchester, the trio were invited to play similar showcases in New York and Los Angeles, winning record deals with Madonna's Maverick label in the States and Mushroom in the UK.

Their debut EP, Muscle Museum, and album Showbiz, produced by John Leckie(who also produced Radiohead's The Bends), won them a following from the kind of angsty teens who were already listening to bands like Placebo and the Manics, but sceptics dismissed them as a bunch of whiny sub-Radiohead wannabes. I should know. I was one of those sceptics.

For me, it all began to change with the release of "Plug In Baby", a single which sounded like a hotwired hybrid of Air's "Sexy Boy" and JS Bach's Toccata and Fugue, and the second album, the awkwardly titled Origin of Symmetry, in which they perfected a baroque'n'roll sound which combined operatic vocals with quasi-classical keyboards, Hendrix-like guitar overload, and at some points, church organs.

Muse were burning the punk rulebook. They were fearlessly resurrecting the banished ghosts of prog rock, and making music which was unashamedly pompous, histrionic and skyscrapingly ambitious. It was, in their phrase, hyper music.

At first I couldn't handle it. Slowly, I learned to love it. The clincher was their undeniably exciting live show, as encapsulated by their extraordinary appearance on this year's Brit Awards with which, to the minds of many viewers, they stole the show from that night's big winners, The Darkness. I ask if they have been aware of the way in which perceptions towards them have changed.

Howard is impish and smiley; Wolstenholme is the strong silent type; Bellamy is thoughtful and intense. Invariably, it is he who answers first.

"In the beginning," he says in the cool of the dressing room of the Stadio Centrale Del Tennis, "it was because we were young, and people thought we were just following in the footsteps of other bands." (He's right, of course. And some of those bands have been less than gracious about it. At this year's NME Awards, Thom Yorke - accepting the gong for Best Video - sneered: "We were up against some stiff competition there... what a shame Muse didn't win!")

Bellamy adds: "I think we've always been seen as an alternative band by which I mean that we're a band that has never really had its time. We've always been outside of all those. When nu-metal was big, we used to be seen in the same bracket as Coldplay, Radiohead, Travis. Now we're seen as quite rockin' - or maybe to the retro scene. What we've become alternative to has changed."

Muse now play with the assurance of a band who know that their pyrotechnics, both aural and visual, can win over pretty much any crowd. "We played a metal festival in Portugal the other day, and we were pretty nervous because the line-up was Korn, Static X, Linkin Park, and we were the only band who weren't pure metal. But we ended up going down really well. We can just about get away with playing to a metal audience without getting bottled off."

They've recently enjoyed playing to smaller, 500- to 1,800-seat venues in the United States, where the absence of the regimentation which their full visual extravaganza necessitates allowed them to play a more spontaneous, improvised set. But Muse aren't the sort of band who fetishise dingy, smoky club gigs - they're in their element playing to the masses.

Next Sunday, Muse headline the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival. I put it to them that it's a special challenge, since they will be playing to a crowd who aren't there to see them, and indeed who bought their tickets before the line-up was announced. There's a certain pressure to unify and to entertain.

Wolstenholme is sceptical. "Sometimes it's easy to big-up certain festivals, like Glastonbury and Reading, because they were the ones we went to when we were kids. But when you've played loads of other European festivals, you look at it just like any other. But at the same time," he ponders, "it is Glastonbury..."

"Sometimes it's enjoyable," says Howard, "when you know people haven't seen you before. We do know that there will be a lot of people who aren't there to see us..." "Unless it rains," says Bellamy, "in which case they'll all go home except 4,000 Muse fans standing around in their wellies."

Ludicrous. Preposterous. Ridiculous. Absurd. Flick through any random pile of Muse press cuttings, and these words will crop up time and again. Can the band, I wonder, see where this sort of appraisal is coming from? "I think I could," Bellamy admits, "until The Darkness came along. And we had to let them take over. There was a bit of Queen in what we did, a bit of pompous rock, but now they've come along and shown people what that really is like." Listening to The Origin of Symmetry, and it's even more grandiose successor Absolution, I imagine Muse in the studio having debates on whether they can really get away with so many excessive pomp-rock flourishes.

"You'll often turn around," says Howard, addressing Bellamy, "and go: 'We can't get away with this!' And I'll go: 'Of course we can!'" I get the impression that Yes We Can invariably wins... "Definitely," confirms Wolstenholme. "There have been times when we listen to what we've done, and we've forgotten what we set out to do in the first place. And those usually are the best tracks on the album. Like 'Butterflies And Hurricanes', with those 48-track backing vocals..." "We had so many different scene changes," remembers Bellamy. "At one point there were bongos! It sounded like that percussion troupe Stomp. It sounded like that."

Yesterday, I tell them, I watched Ronald Reagan's funeral on CNN in my hotel room. The church organist played a crashing, portentous chord which reminded me of something I'd heard recently, and which made me laugh when I remembered what it was: the final note of "Megalomania" by Muse. "I can see why people are amused by it," Bellamy smiles. "It's music you can't listen to every day. If someone put it on in the background of a party, everyone would go: 'Fucking hell, turn it off!' Our music is definitely not for all occasions."

Muse's latest video, for "Sing For Absolution", is another example of the Yes We Can spirit. Most bands would baulk at a treatment which had them blasting into space on a futuristic shuttle, crashing through a meteor storm, and come skidding to Earth which, in a Planet Of The Apes-like twist, turns out to be in ruins. Muse, however, thought...

"Yeah, why not! Exactly!" Howard says. "We thought: 'Let's fly some spaceships around!'" "Something happened in the early Nineties," theorises Bellamy, "where bands started taking themselves very seriously... No, 'seriously' isn't the right word, but being very anti-everything."

There's always been an idea that "alternativeness" is about sullen refusal, about what you say "No" to. It dates right back to The Clash refusing to play Top Of The Pops. "We do say 'No' to a whole lot of stuff - teenage magazines, certain TV shows we try to shy away from... but the chance to wear a space suit? We're well up for that."

There's a famous Smiths story about Johnny Marr presenting Morrissey with what he considered to be his finest piece of music. Morrissey took it away, and came back with the lyric: "Some girls are bigger than others/ Some girls' mothers are bigger than other girls' mothers." Marr reportedly wept. When Muse have created a similarly epic piece of music, does Bellamy feel an obligation to match it with lyrics of sufficient solemnity and import? "That can be dangerous sometimes when music is written by one person and lyrics by another. But when I write something epic, I feel I have to match it, sure." Lyrically, Muse have improved noticeably since Showbiz. Gone are the vague abstractions and, while they're never completely specific either, their songs now express a similar pre-apocalyptic dread to Joy Division and The Specials in their era, or Tricky and (yes) Radiohead in theirs. "I think I'm trying to write something that genuinely means something and has a purpose," Bellamy says, "whereas in the past maybe it was vague lines strung together, abstractly. You had to read it a line at a time, and the lines never matched up.

"I've never been that confident writing lyrics," he confesses. "I've always had to do it behind the mask of a melody. I wish I could write lyrics like Tom Waits, where it's full-on stories... But as you get older, you become more open to singing things you would have said no to. I wouldn't sing lyrics like 'You've got to be the best' when I was 17 or 18, because I would have thought it wasn't very cool, and a bit cheesy to sing that hook. But you get towards your mid-twenties..." Once upon a time, Muse were typical tour-bus shut-ins. No more.

"I think something happened about two or three years ago," says Wolstenholme, "where we realised we'd been to so many cities of the world, and never really seen any of them. People come up to you and say: 'Oh, you've been there, what's it like?' and you can't tell them anything." Apart from "nice air-conditioning". "Exactly. So we've been making more of an effort to get out there and take it all in."

"Now we're playing larger venues, though, it's more difficult," Bellamy adds. "Smaller venues tend to be in the town, so you step outside and you're there. Larger venues tend to be out-of-town, so you step outside and you're in... the car park. Before you know it, you've been in five car parks in five countries. So we did a bit of wine-tasting in France, went to a temple in Kyoto in Japan, did a bit of beach surfing in Australia."

"We're just trying to turn the whole thing into a bit of a holiday," grins Howard.

"I had food last night," says Bellamy, "that actually brought me to tears (mass laughter). Home-made pasta with tomatoes. It was so simple, so perfect, so intense that I started to well up! It was so fucking good compared to England. In England, tomatoes just taste of water. And these tasted of pure tomato. I was starving at the time, obviously..."

The Stadio Centrale Del Tennis is part of the vast sporting complex built on the banks of the Tiber as a monument to Mussolini's vanity. On the main piazza, a towering obelisk bears the dictator's surname, with floor tiles spelling out "DUCE DUCE DUCE", and huge blocks of stone carrying the inscription "Fascista". In Germany or Russia, they'd have torn down such an uncomfortable reminder. Not here.

But then, almost all of Rome's great monuments were built to flatter someone, whether Pope, emperor, God or gods. I ask Muse what they make of it all. "It sounds a silly thing to say," says Howard, "but everything's very old. We went to the Colosseum, but couldn't get inside 'cos the queue was so big. And I tried to go to the Vatican but they wouldn't let me in because I had shorts on. They were quite long shorts," he sulks, "they weren't Eighties running shorts... It's a shame, because I really wanted to see the Sistine Chapel."

It took Michelangelo many years to complete his great fresco. The intention was to inspire a sense of religious awe in the viewer. Can Muse identify with that kind of endeavour, to create something magnificent? I betray my question with a giveaway chuckle.

"You can always tell when journalists are trying to make you say something embarrassing," smiles Bellamy, "because they give it away by laughing." Howard is more willing to bite. "I do look at the Colosseum and think how many people and how much talent and how many years did it take to make that. I don't think people will be saying that about us in hundreds of years' time." You're so modest.

"In two thousand years' time," says Bellamy, "maybe The Beatles. But not Muse." But what about the idea of creating something purely for the glory of someone else, be they human or divine? Can you understand that? Bellamy, whose musical heroes include Debussy, Bach, Berlioz, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Liszt, Reich and Glass, thinks about this one.

"Most great composers," he agrees, "were originally making music for God. And painters. They weren't making it for money in those days, because most of them were already part of a relative upper-class. It wasn't as if you could achieve fame and fortune by doing it. Maybe by the days of Chopin, but I'm talking before that. And I think that enabled them to do something that was out of the ordinary. When someone's got that belief that they are actually in touch with God, I'm sure that brings out things which they would not have thought possible. In architecture, music and the arts, there's definitely an intelligence in the past which has gone missing. We think we're advanced now, but we've actually slipped behind."

One of the stand-out tracks on Absolution is titled "Thoughts Of A Dying Atheist". Did any members of Muse have religious upbringings? Bellamy: "No." Howard: "I got christened, but... y'know..." Wolstenholme: "No." So, will you die an atheist? "I don't know," says Bellamy. "I think it's impossible to. At the last moment you'd be going 'Please!'" If Bellamy doesn't believe in God - yet - then some of his other beliefs may raise eyebrows. He's an advocate of the theories of the writer Zechariah Sitchin, who believes that humans are the result of genetic experiments by visiting aliens.

"It's a logical explanation," Bellamy gamely maintains, untroubled by the possibility that I might be trying to stitch him up and paint him as a fruitcake.

"I think it carries weight. Evolution theory is the most widely renowned anti-religion, anti-creationist argument, but there is a loophole in it, the missing link between humans and apes, the lack of fossils. Evolution normally takes millions of years, but we seemed to advance in a very short period of time." He's in full flow now.

"In Sumerian times they calculated there were 12 planets, counting the sun and the moon - and the 12th planet is on an elliptical orbit, and every time it comes close to the earth, every 3,600 years, Biblical-level events happen. Sitchin takes it a step further, suggesting it's a self-sufficient geothermal planet - essentially a comet - with aliens on it, who experimented with chimpanzees to make us. Which explains the higher levels of thought, objectivity and so on. Our DNA is a mixture of alien and ape." Bellamy is an obsessive character. When he gets into something, he really gets into it. His current fixation is playing poker. He carries a pack of cards everywhere, and would dearly love to be on Channel 4's Late Night Poker.

"I go to a semi-legal poker club on Clerkenwell Road in London. They've found a loophole in the law where as long as you put all your money behind the counter and use chips, it's OK. I only play for small stakes, for fun. It's not really like gambling, it's not just chance: it's more advanced than just sticking your money on a roulette table. There is an element of strategy."

This, however, is about as vice-packed as things get. By rock musician standards, Muse are unusually polite, reserved young men. I only see Bellamy snap once, while he's enjoying a strawberry milkshake outside a pavement café. A corpulent, rude American woman takes an unsolicited photo of my hairdo, with a pig-like laugh, to Bellamy's disgust. "We're gonna take a picture of your arse!" he calls after her as she waddles away. They're not very rock'n'roll, as rock'n'rollers go.

"We should be dressed up like you, shouldn't we?" he jokes, eyeing my black plastic spikes. I know you went through a phase, I say. (Bellamy once sported a huge Judder Man hairdo himself.) "It comes and goes... We had a phase where we had a go," he admits, "at the full-on rock'n'roll life. It lasted about a year, then we got jaded." Nowadays the groupies are a thing of the past. Bellamy and Howard's girlfriends are here, as is Wolstenholme's wife (with whom he has three children).

"Sometimes you have the odd week where you're looking for parties, but the rest of the time you're taking it easy, relaxing on a beach." On stage, however, it's a different story. Bellamy is a man possessed. At a recent show in Atlanta, he somehow slashed his face open with the end of his guitar, leaving a laceration on his top lip which needed five stitches and must have left him looking like a gore-movie version of Moog from Will O' The Wisp.

"In your everyday life you can be reserved, but I think you become more open, comfortable, confident, relaxed on stage. The more crazy part inside gets exposed and you don't have to hide it all." Headlining one of the nights of the oddly titled Cornetto Free Music Festival (it's actually €37 to get in), Muse's intensity and energy effortlessly enraptures 6,000 Italians who know every word of every song in a language they do not understand. When he isn't pulling rock-god poses with his guitar, Bellamy leaps, Oz-like, behind a metal keyboard-pulpit known as "The Dalek", fronted by LEDs which light up every time he hits a note. It's brilliant, and it comes as little surprise to learn that Muse once considered incorporating a vampire act into the show.

Winding down backstage, and accepting with bemusement a visit from the Eighties pomp-rockers Marillion ("Who are they?" they whisper to me), Muse tell me what the future holds in store. I heard a rumour that they want to take their music into a rock-disco direction... "I think it's something we tried with 'Bliss'," says Bellamy. "I don't think we'll suddenly change genre. We may incorporate a bit of funk in there, maybe even samba... Another thing I'd like to do is take pieces of classical music, like Prokofiev, or the music from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I don't mean sample it, I mean a piece of music which goes in and out of that." Yes, he is serious. Yes, I asked. In the more immediate future, both Howard and Bellamy have started to take helicopter lessons.

"It all depends on how many hours you can do a year to maintain your licence. I've only had one lesson so far. I've always wanted to go in a helicopter, and only recently did we get to do it when we were in..." "Australia?" ventures Howard.

"No, it was the Grand Canyon. I've always been interested in flying anyway. It's the safest form of air transport." Yeah? "People think it would just drop like a stone if the engine failed, but it would just glide slowly down. The blades keep turning - the up-force keeps them spinning." Bellamy, it must be said, has something of a daredevil streak. When he isn't piloting choppers or swimming with sharks, he's being an amateur rocketeer.

"I've got a paraglider at home. It's a 50cc engine you put on your back, with a propeller on it." His eyes sparkle as he describes it. "You've got this enormous parachute, and you run down a hill to get you off the ground, then you switch the engine on. And you can stay in the air, for hours and hours and hours..." Few bands dare to fly as high as Muse. If you see them overhead, give them a wave.

#Muse band #Muse interviews #Matt Bellamy #Dom Howard #Chris Wolstenholme #Simon Price #Price is a good music journalist! I finished half of this rn but he does good interviews #music journalism #Glastonbury 2004 #muse #muse band

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tea-kitten · 3 months ago

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@pangur-and-grim DDDD': I cannot roast the boy! He is a precious baby sweetie and I'll start by saying healthy, happy, and the cat you needed are always the most important things you should be looking for.

I scoured your blog for photos to judge because I have been hungrily shoveling all your updates into my face but I'm not in a position I can make demonstratives or draw arrows on his photos or anything, so sorry! I shall try to be descriptive and use pictures of my own cats as demonstratives.

HEAD: The ideal shape of a Devon's head should fit neatly onto an equilateral triangle drawn from eartip to eartip to chin, with ears set more toward the sides of the head and a nice wide "landing strip" between them. Belphie looks a bit like my very first devon, Jasmine, who had more upright ears than the breed standard aims for. His ears are nice and big though and they should stay that way, which is good!

Jasmine on her 17th birthday; probably a decent approximation of Belphie's adult head shape (note: Devons either age gracefully like queens or slowly morph into Gollum and there is no in-between, embrace the madness with them).

My parents' cat Jubilee is a good example of the ideal head. She was a retired show queen we were beyond lucky to provide a forever home for once her mothering days were done. MUZZLE: An important but hard to explain feature is the Devon Rex's "nose stop", the angled portion of the nose bridge. Where Pangur and many breeds like hers have long convex noses without stops and Persians are bred to have almost no nose bridge with a very severe stop, the Devon nose stop should be well-defined and ideally form a right angle from the brow ridge to the muzzle. The chin should be just about flush with the upper jaw. Belphie's got a bit of a weak nose stop and an overbite/weak chin that makes his nose look a little bit long for the standard. The nose stop is one of the most difficult features to get right, so this is a pretty common fault (Jasmine also had a weak nose stop). You'll see Devons with too sharp of a stop sometimes as well, which taken too far starts straying into brachy breathing problem territory. If I had to pick an incorrect muzzle, I'd go for the weak nose stop over a severe one every time!

On the left is my girl Ripley when she was a little under a year old, and on the right is my old boy Vitas (he'll be 14 next Saturday!) when he was about 3. Both of them have a decent stop just shy of that desired 90 degree angle; Ripley's jaw set is correct, while Vitas has a heckin puny chin under a proper-length muzzle. Belphie's chin is somewhere between theirs but his nose stop is quite shallow.

BODY: Cats of course come in one of 3 basic shapes- square, round, and triangular. Pangur is triangular and so are Siamese, Cornish Rexes, etc. Cats like the British Shorthair and Persian are round. Devons are very much in the square category and Belphie fits that to a T. Good straight back, skull is boxy when viewed from the side, good square hips, and his forelegs seem to be properly straight and under him. Bulldoggish elbows that stick out from the body can turn into arthritis in senior or overweight cats. Devons are not large, with females often ranging from 6-9lbs and males ranging from 8-11lbs. My mom's cat Lacey is tiny and is a super-fit 5.5lbs. Jasmine was a healthy weight around 9-10lbs and Vi is right around 11 at his current age. Ripley weighs 6.5-7lbs. COAT: That magical mystery box element that takes 1-2 years to grow in! There is no actual standard length for the breed and I've seen a couple of medium-haired cats, but most Devons are short-haired. A breeding queen will often have a much shorter coat than the same queen will grow after she has been spayed. Curls can be wavy or poodly, as long as there is curl. Texture can be cottony/fleecy or silky. Because they are missing a coat of fur, certain areas will nearly always be bald or sparsely furred, such as the top of the head, the neck, and the underbelly. Judges aren't supposed to deduct points from a kitten for having a sparse coat since most Devons molt at about 3 months, but they will definitely favor a kitten WITH hair over one without (>.>). They also aren't supposed to fault an adult for a sparse belly and neck, but they will still favor a cat with better coverage (again, >.>). The whiskers are also affected by the gene that causes the curl, so they are often brittle and prone to curling and breaking. Whiskers that curl up near the eyes should be trimmed short just for health reasons. You probably won't know exactly how Belphie's coat will look until he's around 2 years old, but here's Ripley at 5 months vs Ripley at 2 years old.

You can see her belly is still naked at 2. At 7 years, I can assure you it is still naked. Jasmine and Vitas have much closer to full body coverage.

I hope this was informative and I love Belphie, especially all his many faces and all the wonderful art! Belphie content is holding me over until I bring my own new kitten Fable home in the fall.

Belphie looks so handsome today

#pangur and grim

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youviralart · 3 months ago

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Mostra del Cinema di Venezia 28 agosto – 7 settembre 2024 CARISSA Una nuova vita. Drammatico, Sudafrica 2024. Un film di Devon Delmar, Jason Jacobs. La storia di una donna in cerca di riscatto.

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princessofmistake · 4 months ago

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Carissimo Oscar, ho ricevuto la tua e rimpiango straordinariamente di aver perso la prima che dici di avermi mandato. Capisco, e purtroppo più dal tono stesso della lettera che dalla confessione che mi fai, il tuo dolore e la tua sfiducia. Ne capisco all'incirca la ragione e, credi, ne ho provato e ne provo un sincero dolore. Non ne conosco ancora le cause precise e occasionali che lo provocano, ma capisco, per te che sei un'anima nobile, che devon produrre una triste diminuzione di te stesso, al diritto che tu hai alla gioia e alla vita per ridurti a quello stato di sfiducia. lo non so di cosa si tratti, ti ripeto, ma credo che il miglior rimedio per te sarebbe di mandarti di qui, dal mio cuore che è gagliardo in questo momento, un soffio di vita, poiché tu sei creato, credimi, per la vita intensa e per la gioia. Noi (scusa il noi) abbiamo dei diritti diversi dagli altri, perché abbiamo dei bisogni diversi che ci mettono al disopra - bisogna dirlo e crederlo - della loro morale. Il tuo dovere è di non consumarti mai nel sacrificio. Il tuo dovere reale è di salvare il tuo sogno. La Bellezza ha anche dei doveri dolorosi: creano però i più belli sforzi dell'anima. Ogni ostacolo sormontato segna un accrescimento della nostra volontà, produce il rinnovamento necessario e progressivo della nostra aspirazione. Abbi il culto sacro (io lo dico per te... e per me) per tutto ciò che può esaltare ed eccitare la tua intelligenza. Cerca di provocarli, di perpetrarli, questi stimoli fecondi, perché soli possono spingere l'intelligenza al suo massimo potere creatore. Per quei lì noi dobbiamo combattere. Possiamo noi racchiuderli nella cerchia della loro morale angusta? Affermati e sormontati sempre. L'uomo che dalla sua energia non sa continuamente sprigionare nuovi desideri e quasi nuovi individui destinati per affermarsi sempre a abbattere tutto quel che è di vecchio e di putrido restato, non è un uomo, è un borghese, uno speziale, quel che vuoi. Tu soffri, hai ragione, ma il tuo dolore non può forse divenire per te uno sprone perché tu riesca a rinnovarti ancora e a portare il tuo sogno più in alto ancora, più forte nel desiderio? Avresti potuto in questo mese venire a Venezia; però decidi, non ti esaurire, abituati a mettere i tuoi bisogni estetici al disopra dei doveri sugli uomini. Se vuoi fuggire da Livorno, io posso fornirti finché posso, ma non so se è il caso. Sarebbe per me una gioia. A ogni modo rispondimi. Da Venezia ho ricevuto gli insegnamenti più preziosi nella vita; da Venezia sembra di uscirmene adesso come accresciuto dopo un lavoro. Venezia, la testa di Medusa dagli infiniti serpenti azzurri occhio glauco immenso in cui l'anima si perde e si esalta tra le infini....

Le lettere inviate da Modigliani a Ghiglia tra il 1901 e il 1903

#amedeo modigliani #Amedeo Modigliani #lettere #lettera #citazioni #citazione

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pearlsoflongago · 5 months ago

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The Bees

Of Honey, Flowers, and Bees

Least Bee

Least Bee that brew – A Honey’s Weight The Summer multiply – Content Her smallest fraction help The Amber Quantity –

—Emily Dickinson

Bee-Master

I have known honey from the Syrian hills Stored in cool jars; the wild acacia there On the rough terrace where the locust shrills Tosses her spindrift on the ringing air. Narcissus bares his nectarous perianth In white and golden tabard to the sun, And while the workers rob the amaranth Or scarlet windflower low among the stone, Intent upon their crops, The Syrian queens mate in the high hot day Rapt visionaries of creative fray; Soaring from fecund ecstasy alone, And, through the blazing ether, drops Like a small thunderbolt the vindicated drone. But this is the bee-master's reckoning In England. Walk among the hives and hear. Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep. For winter's big with summer in her womb, And when you plant your rose-trees, plant them deep, Having regard to bushes all aflame, And see the dusky promise of their bloom In small red shoots, and let each redolent name- Tuscany, Crested Cabbage, Cottage Maid- Load with full June November's dank repose, See the kind cattle drowsing in the shade, And hear the bee about his amorous trade Brown in the gipsy crimson of the rose. In February, if the days be clear, The waking bee, still drowsy on the wing, Will sense the opening of another year And blunder out to seek another spring. Crashing through winter sunlight's pallid gold His clumsiness sets catkins on the willow Ashake like lambs' tails in the early fold, Dusting with pollen all his brown and yellow, But when the rimy afternoon turns cold And undern squalls buffet the chilly fellow, He'll seek the hive's warm waxen welcoming And set about the chambers' classic mould. And then, pell-mell, his harvest follows swift, Blossom and borage, lime and balm and clover, On Downs the thyme, on cliffs the scantling thrift, Everywhere bees go racing with the hours, For every bee becomes a drunken lover, Standing upon his head to sup the flowers, All over England, from Northumbrian coasts, To the wild sea-pink blown on Devon rocks. Over the merry southern gardens, over The grey-green bean-fields, round the Sussex oasts, Through the frilled spires of cottage hollyhocks, Go the big brown fat bees, and blunder in Where dusty spears of sunlight cleave the barn, And seek the sun again, and storm the whin, And in the warm meridian solitude Hum in the heather round the moorland tarn, Look, too, when summer hatches out the brood, In tardy May or early June, And the young queens are strong in the cocoon, Watch, if the days be warm, The flitting of the swarm. Follow, for if beyond your sight they stray Your bees are lost, and you must take your way Homeward disconsolate, but if you be at hand Then you may take your bees on strangers' land. Have your skep ready, drowse them with, your smoke, Whether they cluster on the handy bough Or in the difficult hedge, be nimble now, For bees are captious folk And quick to turn against the lubber's touch, But if you shake them to their wicker hutch Firmly, and turn towards the hive your skep, Into the hive the clustered thousands stream, Mounting the little slatted sloping step, A ready colony, queen, workers, drones, Patient to build again the waxen thrones For younger queens, and all the chambered cells For lesser brood, and all the immemorial scheme. And still they labour, though the hand of man Inscrutable and ravaging descend, Pillaging in their citadels, Defeating wantonly their provident plan, Making a havoc of their patient hoard; Still start afresh, not knowing to what end, Not knowing to what ultimate reward, Or what new ruin of the garnered hive The senseless god in man will send. Still their blind stupid industry will strive, Constructing for destruction pitiably, That still their unintelligible lord May reap his wealth from their calamity.

—Vita Sackville-West

Honey Harvest

Late in March, when the days are growing longer And sight of early green Tells of the coming spring and suns grow stronger, Round the pale willow-catkins there are seen The year's first honey-bees Stealing the nectar: and bee-masters know This for the first sign of the honey-flow.

Then in the dark hillsides the Cherry-trees Gleam white with loads of blossom where the gleams Of piled snow lately hung, and richer streams The honey. Now, if chilly April days Delay the Apple-blossom, and the May's First week come in with sudden summer weather, The Apple and the Hawthorn bloom together, And all day long the plundering hordes go round And every overweighted blossom nods. But from that gathered essence they compound Honey more sweet than nectar of the gods.

Those blossoms fall ere June, warm June that brings The small white Clover. Field by scented field, Round farms like islands in the rolling weald, It spreads thick-flowering or in wildness springs Short-stemmed upon the naked downs, to yield A richer store of honey than the Rose, The Pink, the Honeysuckle. Thence there flows Nectar of clearest amber, redolent Of every flowery scent That the warm wind upgathers as he goes.

In mid-July be ready for the noise Of million bees in old Lime-avenues, As though hot noon had found a droning voice To ease her soul. Here for those busy crews Green leaves and pale-stemmed clusters of green strong flowers Build heavy-perfumed, cool, green-twilight bowers Whence, load by load, through the long summer days They fill their glassy cells With dark green honey, clear as chrysoprase, Which housewives shun; but the bee-master tells This brand is more delicious than all else.

In August-time, if moors are near at hand, Be wise and in the evening-twilight load Your hives upon a cart, and take the road By night: that, ere the early dawn shall spring And all the hills turn rosy with the Ling, Each waking hive may stand Established in its new-appointed land Without harm taken, and the earliest flights Set out at once to loot the heathery heights.

That vintage of the Heather yields so dense And glutinous a syrup that it foils Him who would spare the comb and drain from thence Its dark, full-flavoured spoils: For he must squeeze to wreck the beautiful Frail edifice. Not otherwise he sacks Those many-chambered palaces of wax.

Then let a choice of every kind be made, And, labelled, set upon your storehouse racks — Of Hawthorn-honey that of almond smacks: The luscious Lime-tree-honey, green as jade: Pale Willow-honey, hived by the first rover: That delicate honey culled From Apple-blossom, that of sunlight tastes: And sunlight-coloured honey of the Clover. Then, when the late year wastes, When night falls early and the noon is dulled And the last warm days are over, Unlock the store and to your table bring Essence of every blossom of the spring. And if, when wind has never ceased to blow All night, you wake to roofs and trees becalmed In level wastes of snow, Bring out the Lime-tree-honey, the embalmed Soul of a lost July, or Heather-spiced Brown-gleaming comb wherein sleeps crystallised All the hot perfume of the heathery slope. And, tasting and remembering, live in hope.

—Martin Armstrong

Yellow Roses and Bees, Pink Roses and Wasps, unidentified artist, formerly attributed to Zhao Chang, Qing Dynasty, courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

#literature #poetry #classic #dark academia #classic academia #qing #bees #vita sackville west #emily dickinson

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momento-hashbrowni · 6 months ago

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Propers of Tuesday Feria and Commemoration of St. Boniface

Now for the commemoration:

St. Boniface! What can I say about him? A Benedictine monk turned bishop, the man who chopped down Donar's sacred tree during worship*, Apostle to the Germans, and Martyr at the hands of the Germans. He sowed the seeds of Christendom for the central Germans, though sadly not enough took heed of him before he was martyred.

He was born Wynfreth some time in the late 600s, though the specific date is unknown (I know Wikipedia says it was circa 675, but other sources say it's simply unknown). He attended a Benedictine monastery in what is now Exeter, Devon. In 716, he had the opportunity to become Abbot, but declined and went to the European mainland to proselytize the Germanic peoples.

In 717, he would go to Rome and be named Boniface by Pope Gregory II, then appointed missionary bishop of of Germania.

* This is a bit misleading on my part, given he didn't fell it on his own. He began chopping and then came a gust of wind strong enough to knock it over (but no report of people getting knocked over, interestingly enough). This miraclulous event, along with the fact that he was not struck down by their gods, amazed the pagan Germans of Hesse, and they converted. The wood of the tree went into the building of a chapel dedicated to Saint Peter in 724. The site is now home to a massive Catholic church in the Romanesque-Gothic style, built in the High to Late Medieval period.

I think the thing that amazes me the most is that people converted with that. It makes sense, seeing nature itself aid a man in felling a god's tree, and for that god to do nothing when you believe him to be rather active in mortal affairs. I think my reason for amazement is just because I imagine nowadays people wouldn't care about any obvious miracle, so I struggle to picture what that must've looked like. The felling of Donar's tree was likely a far safer action than I at first thought, given Frankish settlement nearby providing safety--or vengeance--should anything go awry, which likely contributes to this lack of violent reaction characteristic of other Germans such as the Saxons.

He was martyred in Frisia in 754. He'd converted a crowd of locals and had summoned them for confirmation some time later, but instead was met by bandits and was killed at their hands for any valuables he might have. He'd ordered his armed companions to stand down. A quote from Vita Bonifatii Auctore Willibaldo Presbytero: "Cease fighting. Lay down your arms, for we are told in Scripture not to render evil for evil but to overcome evil by good." The bandits found nothing that they valued.

He is patron to Fulda, Germania, England, and Devon as of 2019.

St. Boniface, Apostle of the Germans, pray for the Church, especially for German Catholics.

#catholic #daily readings #gospel #traditional catholic

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christophe76460 · 6 months ago

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Frères, nous désirons que vous connaissiez la vérité au sujet de ceux qui sont morts, afin que vous ne soyez pas tristes comme les autres, ceux qui n’ont pas d’espérance. Nous croyons que Jésus est mort et qu’il s’est relevé de la mort; de même, nous croyons aussi que Dieu relèvera avec Jésus ceux qui seront morts en croyant en lui.

Voici en effet ce que nous déclarons d’après un enseignement du Seigneur : ceux d’entre nous qui seront encore en vie quand le Seigneur viendra, ne seront pas avantagés par rapport à ceux qui seront morts. On entendra un cri de commandement, la voix de l’archange et le son de la trompette de Dieu, et le Seigneur lui-même descendra du ciel. Ceux qui seront morts en croyant au Christ se relèveront les premiers; ensuite, nous qui serons encore en vie à ce moment-là, nous serons enlevés avec eux au travers des nuages pour rencontrer le Seigneur dans les airs. Et ainsi nous serons toujours avec le Seigneur. Réconfortez-vous donc les uns les autres par ces paroles.

Vous n’avez pas besoin, frères, qu’on vous écrive au sujet des temps et des moments où tout cela arrivera. Car vous savez très bien vous-mêmes que le jour du Seigneur viendra de façon aussi imprévisible qu’un voleur pendant la nuit. Quand les gens diront : "Tout est en paix, en sécurité", c’est alors que, tout à coup, la ruine s’abattra sur eux, comme les douleurs de l’accouchement sur une femme enceinte. Personne ne pourra y échapper.

Mais vous, frères, vous n’êtes pas en pleine obscurité pour que ce jour vous surprenne comme un voleur. Vous tous, en effet, vous dépendez de la lumière, vous appartenez au jour. Nous ne dépendons ni de la nuit ni de l’obscurité. Ainsi, ne dormons pas comme les autres; mais restons éveillés, sobres. Les dormeurs, c’est la nuit qu’ils dorment, et les buveurs, c’est la nuit qu’ils s’enivrent. Mais nous, qui appartenons au jour, nous devons être sobres. Prenons la foi et l’amour comme cuirasse, et l’espérance du salut comme casque. En effet, Dieu ne nous a pas destinés à subir sa colère, mais à posséder le salut par notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ. Le Christ est mort pour nous afin de nous faire vivre avec lui, que nous soyons vivants ou morts quand il viendra.

Ainsi, encouragez-vous et fortifiez-vous dans la foi les uns les autres, comme vous le faites déjà. (1Thessaloniciens 4.13-5.11)

SERVIR EN ATTENDANT

Jésus-Christ va revenir. C’est l’enseignement clair de tout le Nouveau Testament. Jésus l’a annoncé lui-même, les apôtres le disent sans ambages dans leurs prédications et leurs lettres et le livre de l’Apocalypse est tout entier dédié à cet événement à venir. Cela constitue de tous temps l’assurance et l’espérance des chrétiens. Notre vie ne se limite pas aux quelques années ici-bas. Nous avons été sauvés pour l’éternité. L’Histoire s’achèvera avec le retour visible et physique du Seigneur Jésus-Christ qui viendra établir son règne de justice et de paix.

L’apôtre Paul entre dans plusieurs détails de cela dans ses lettres aux chrétiens de Thessalonique, une ville en Macédoine où il venait d’implanter une église chrétienne (voir Act 17). Voici quelques notes pour accompagner ce texte.

L’ATTENTE DU CHRETIEN FACE A LA MORT , 4.13-18

Il y a un contraste énorme entre chrétiens et non croyants. Espérance au lieu de désespoir, car au-delà du sommeil (:13, cimetière = lieu du sommeil) il y aura un réveil. Il y a donc une vraie consolation entre chrétiens, :18 dont le monde ne sait rien. (Sur un monument funéraire on peut lire ceci : Mors mortis morti mortem nisi morte dedisset, aeternae vitae janua clausa foret. “A moins que la mort de la mort ait donné la mort à la mort par la mort, la porte de la vie éternelle serait fermée”). Jésus est mort pour que nous n’ayons plus qu’à nous endormir pour nous réveiller en la présence de Dieu, :14, litt. “Ainsi, ceux qui dorment par Jésus, Dieu les amène avec lui.” Il n’y a donc pas de terreur : ceux qui meurent en Christ reviendront avec Christ.

Comment ? Une révélation particulière à Paul ? Cf. Mt 24.31. Ou une parole de Jésus comme en Act 20.35 ? Une question d’ordre. D’abord les chrétiens endormis, puis nous, les vivants (mais ici seulement des chrétiens, = Ap 20.6 ? Jn 5.28,29 indique deux résurrections).

La trompette sonnera : 1Cor 15.51-53 et Ap 11.15-18. Est-ce la dernière trompette d’Ap 10.7 ?

Enlevé : Tout de suite après la résurrection, au même instant. Christ descend, et les ressuscités avec ceux qui viennent d’être transformés vont à sa rencontre dans les airs. (Le latin rapiemur a donné rapture en anglais = enlèvement.) Le verbe dénote un événement brutal, soudain, ce n’est pas l’ascension. Ap 12.5 (Act 8.39; 2Cor 12.2,4; Mt 13.19; Jn 10.12,28,29; Ju 23). Où ? Dans les airs. Si ceci se compare à une expression semblable en Act 28.15, alors probablement lors du retour de Christ = Ap 19.11ss. Mais alors, comment expliquer les noces de l’Agneau en 19.6-8 qui précèdent le retour en gloire ? Si ceci se compare mieux à Mt 25.6 (= même expression), Jésus ne met pas ses pieds sur terre, et dans ce cas, ceci n’est donc pas l’événement d’Ap 19.11ss. Les enlevés accompagnent le Christ chez lui, sans doute pour les noces de l’Agneau, Ap 19.6-8. Dans ce cas, l’enlèvement aurait lieu au milieu de ce qu’on appelle parfois la Grande Tribulation, juste avant que n’éclate la colère de Dieu, Ap 15.1; 16.1, cf. 1Th 1.10; 5.9.

De toute façon, il s’agit d’être réuni avec Jésus, 2Th 2.1.

VEILLER , 5.1-11

Le moment, 1-3. Soudainement, cf. Mc 13.32, comme un voleur dans la nuit, Mt 24.43; 2P 3.10. Mais notez la situation particulière de ces jours : paix et sécurité, cf. Jér 6.14; Ez 13.10, et cf. aussi Luc 17.26-30. Le retour de Jésus se fait de manière complètement inattendue … pour les hommes de ce temps.

Enfants de la lumière, :4-11. Voici les gens qui ne seront pas surpris. Pourquoi ? Ils ne connaissent ni le jour, ni l’heure, mais ils discernent les temps, ils veillent. Une distinction radicale entre les deux groupes : lumière, jour, veiller, sobres / ténèbres, nuit, dormir, s’enivrer. Ce sont deux attitudes de vie opposées : modération, maîtrise de soi, cf. 1Cor 7.29-31 et jouissance à fond, sans frein. Cf. Eph 5.8-16 sur la même opposition.

S’armer comme un soldat, cf. Eph 6.13-18, Es 59.17. (Le livre apocryphe de la Sagesse 5.17-20 : “Pour armure, il prendra son ardeur jalouse, il armera la création pour repousser ses ennemis; pour cuirasse il revêtira la justice, il mettra pour casque un jugement irrévocable, il prendra pour bouclier la sainteté invincible; de sa colère inexorable il fera une épée tranchante, et l’univers ira au combat avec lui contre les insensés.”) Ici, l’armure se résume aux 3 vertus de la foi, l’amour et l’espérance. Nous devrions avoir l’attitude des vierges sages de Mt 25.1-13.

La réalité de la colère de Dieu. Le salut concerne le passé (sauvé de) et le futur (sauvé pour). Le non chrétien observe la venue de cette colère avec inquiétude, et se raccroche à la moindre raison d’espérer (l’antichrist en fera son succès). Le chrétien attend avec lucidité et calme, Luc 21.25-28. Il entrera dans la vie par le Christ qui est mort pour lui. Il peut donc encourager les autres et les édifier sur la base de ces certitudes.

* * * *

Il n’est pas fou celui qui perd ce qu’il ne peut garder, afin de gagner ce qu’il ne peut perdre. (Jim Elliot)

* * * *

http://www.croiretcomprendre.be/

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