#how did i become so familiar with schubert

[bluedoes]

I have realized that I am so deep in my studies that when someone just casually mentions a fairly popular voice piece i’m like “oh yeah I know exactly what that is”.  My choir director talked about how she was turning pages for Schubert’s Erlkoning and the pianists left pinky got stuck in her sweater and immediately i was like  “ OH NO you must have been moving up and down the piano with her” because I automatically remembered what Erlkoning sounds like.  Who am I. When did I get like this. 

[struwwelzeter]

Things I need to ask Richard Kruspe about.

(Because @theelliottsmiths send me a thing)

Sorry, but I am gonna make you suffer with me.

What do you think of Slash? And don’t give me the “everyone can do what they want” crap, I want the judgemental opinionated guitarist-who-won’t-compromise version please, I know you got it in you. Joe Bonamassa?! How about Guthrie Govan? Would it be ok if we dissed Yngwie a little, as a treat?! Can we talk about all the guitarists you like please? I just need to know.

Can we talk about Steve Albini? What are your thoughts regarding producers and authorship and his ethos? You must be a fan but it seems your working mode is on complete other ends of the spectrum and it’s confusing to me.

How do you feel about the myth building around the electric guitar as representing an entire genre and it’s iconography vs. it being a tool for you?

You don’t seem like a Metal guy, so how is your relationship to black metal, the church burnings and Varg Virkenes memes?! Would it be a better genre without the vocals?

What about classical? Can we listen to Itzhak Perlman playing Sarasate’s Carmen fantasy and talk about sound emulation without an amp and effects because surely you understand how insane that is what he does. How long can you keep up with Matthias Ia Eklunds indian rhythms exercises? My guess is longer than the average person and shorter than you think is acceptable.

How do you feel about production vs songwriting and how much each influences how much you like a song? Because you once said you liked BMTH’s Doomed which I can understand from a writing perspective but it’s made to sound unlistenable, sorry. If you listen to a new song and take it apart mentally (don’t pretend that you don’t), what do you take apart first?

If you were forced to arrange Schubert songs for Rammstein tomorrow, how would you go about it? How can I force you to arrange Schubert songs for Rammstein tomorrow? If forcing doesn’t work, how about bribery? Please?

Are you ever listening to non western music? Does it inspire or riddle you? Can I show you this research project where they are trying to replicate how music might have sounded in assyrian times because it’s awesome and I think you’ll like the idea.

Please show me the electronic music you like, it’s a jungle out there and I need help.

How have your listening habits changed over the years? How much can you still just be a fan without over analyzing it?

Do you miss it? Do you relate to your fans who just find comfort in the sound, and does that even occur to you?

How do you reconcile chasing the (sound) dragon day and night, when we end up listening to your stuff on broken ear buds, tiny bluetooth speakers and with horrible compression on youtube?! Don’t give me the digital ruined it all crap, you listened to the sex pistols on a run down casette tape and a shitty transistor radio and it still got to you, I want the real answer about satisfying yourself. So how do you reconcile it?

Do you miss seeing concerts as a regular crowd person who gets elbows shoved into your ribs? My guess is not that much but aren’t you scared you’ve lost touch a bit? (Sorry, please don’t be mad, I just. Need to know.) You saw Nirvana, right?! How was it?!!!! Do you understand how insane that is, no you don’t. How was seeing all those bands you never could before when you initially came to the west? It wouldn’t be surprising if it was slightly disappointing, it always is, isn’t it. Killing your idols sucks.

Appearantly there is a theory that your music taste stops evolving after 30 - I think it’s bullshit. Discuss.

What’s the first piece of music you remember loving?

Who’s the next stadium band? Will there be any more stadium bands? I understand the dissappointmemt about rockmusic not really producing new things, but what do you say to those of us that are younger and broke who’s closest thing to seeing AC/DC in their hayday will be Airbourne? Is it really necessary to invent something new when the old still speaks to us so loudly? Nevermind Greta van Fleet, it’s not the same, and the Pitchfork review was funny (albeit uncalled for).

I know you said it’s about not being rebellious anymore, but is any genre still? Nobody cares about what you listen to anymore. We aren’t fed music through establishment controlled radio channels anymore, everyone listens to whatever the fuck they want on spotify, so how could it be? When you say Hip Hop’s rebellion is just about the life style and not the music, yes, but wasn’t rock the same once upon a time, because it was jever just the music it was about people trying to doctate how we should live? Isn’t it maybe true in general, that music has become an unsuitable tool for rebellion because we have overcome the barriers surrounding it? Boring, I agree, but is it really down to a genre?

In that context: how do you value live music vs. the pure idea represented in a studio recording? Might going back underground be the best thing that could happen to the genre? Considering the beginning rise in analogue synthesizer building and analogue effect again, can you imagine the guitar (+ effects) going through another resurgance in a few years when noone want’s to listen to overprocessed stuff pieced together in Ableton anymore? Isn’t it already happening? *gestures at Gamechangers plasma pedals* Might advanced (analogue) sounddesign be the hope for refreshment for this instrument? Anyway, just give it a bit of time, it will come back (I promise).

Building on your expereinces with the press, describe the kind of music journalism you would like to read and that would be fair to the artists. Is there a natural conflict between the reader and the artist’s wants and need? Does there have to be?

You once said that there is such nice production in Lana Del Reys music, and I don’t disagree, but I still need you to elaborate on that.

How do you value record packaging? Do you see it as part of the Gesamtkunstwerk like videos and the stage? Not quite? Let me change your mind. Do you know that there are actually so many things we could still do with that noone has ever done before? Even digitally? Why does noone do pop up installations in gatefold LPs?! Interactive ways to explore a digital packaging? What do you think of Third Man Records (provided you’re familiar?)

Oh. Speaking of, your judgemental thoughts on Jack White please. What did you think of it Might Get Loud?

I need to talk to you about how Shine A Light changed concerts Films and how Jonas was right because he took the same idea and just pushed it.

Given your love of movies I take it you know who Jóhann Jóhannsson and Max Richter are - thoughts please. Can we agree that some of the modern classic minimalist composers and acts like Front Line Assembly are essentially doing the exact same thing with a different image and (not even that) different instruments or is that just in my head? I do not think it is but I fail at making people see it. Help.

I need to tell you about that time in London when I shopped at the same supermarket as Keith Flint because apparently he had some business in the neighborhood, and he once knocked pasta out of my hands by accident and I only afterwards realised it was him, and then I need you to be sad about his death with me. No context, I just feel like you’ll understand.

[suddenlysackler]

Afterglow (Nice to Meet You Series)

Charlie Barber x Reader

Nice to Meet You: a series of one shots based off of this post. Previous installments can be found here:

Adam Sackler

TW: Lil bit of angst and cynicism at the beginning, mentions of divorce, breakups, anxiety, depression, mention of alcohol consumption

A/N: This is my first piece that I’ve posted in awhile, I’m so sorry for the content drought! This series is kind of sporadic atm (kind of a result of life) but I miss you all so very much. Here’s to a normal content schedule some day 💓 Thank you for reading!

...

Timing always tends to be a funny thing, you supposed.

You weren’t sure if you were an “everything happens for a reason” sort of person person, a person who believed in fate. Who believed in soulmates. You used to be that way six years ago, before the reality of life and relationships and loss and grief and disappointment and all of the wonderful bad things had gotten to you. Had snatched up who you were, chewed that essence up, and spit it right back out. 

So here you were, one year removed from when everything essentially blew up in your face, leaving you to rebuild.

And here Charlie was, coming off one of the worst years of his life, knowing almost exactly how you felt.

The cynic in you is saying that it’s just too cliché, the two of you being so broken and finding each other like this. 

The small voice in the back of your mind that’s still clinging to the dreamer you once were? It’s telling you that the two of you were meant to find each other and, yeah, you roll your eyes every time the thought crosses your mind. However, with each passing day, you become more and more convinced that it was true.

How embarrassing. 

It’s one of those rare September days that happen before the seasons change, when it feels more like mid October than the last few days of summer. Your cheeks are burning from the wind that whips your hair everywhere, a pleasant cold that you’d longed for over the summer months. The hot coffee in your hand threatens to spill from it’s cup and you take tentative sips when you absolutely have to stop at crosswalks and wait for cars to go by before darting out again.

Naturally, you were running late to the Saturday morning meeting of people on the New York theater scene planning for what the industry calls red bucket season. In the aftermath of all of the loss and grief and spiraling thoughts last fall you had finally said yes to the constant begging of your coworkers in the marketing department at Schubert and started to become more heavily involved with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids. The overwhelming joy that came with the annual Flea Market in the Schubert Ally last September had given you hope to last all the way through to red bucket season, which carried you into the spring and helped you to feel like you were doing something productive with your time other than sleep, eat, work, and cry.

You’d met people from different companies in the theater world, met so many lovely actors and musicians and dressers and heads of house and developed a net to busy yourself, to affirm your sense of self worth, to get a drink with on a Sunday afternoon when the ghost light was finally turned on after the matinee crowd had finally cleared the stage door and the last member of the orchestra had said goodnight.

Taking a deep breath and glancing at your watch only to see that you were fifteen minutes late, you swallow and push your way through the doors, cheeks heating up even more if at all possible. There isn’t anyone you know staring back at you when all twenty something people turn to see who had arrived late and interrupted the meeting’s organizer. You cringe internally as you call out a simple apology and slip into the first vacant seat that catches your eye.

Enter Charlie Barber.

His head whipped back when everyone else’s had. He had looked you up and down, tried to see if you were anyone he knew like everyone else in the room. He couldn’t see you, didn’t really see you until you plopped down next to him, wind blown and flustered and absolutely breathtaking. 

Post divorce finalization, Charlie had decided that he wasn’t going to go looking for someone else. He didn’t need someone to come in and pick up all the pieces or any of that bullshit. He wasn’t looking for a savior to fix it all —grief was something to handle on your own in his eyes. 

As you lean over and whisper another apology to him specifically, as if you had inconvenienced him personally by sweeping into the room late and choosing to sit next to him and draw attention to him too, Charlie feels like he’s been hit by a truck. The simple apology rings like a crescendo through his head and chest and he feels it in his bones. He rushes out his acknowledgement, tells you it’s okay, but he feels like his mouth has turned into molasses.  

About halfway through the presentation, he leans over and nudges you, pointing out a typo in the slide presentation. It’s a bold move, all things considered — you did know the woman running the meeting, she was your boss and someone you considered to be a close acquaintance. You’d mentioned as much when Charlie had turned to you during some dumb partner exercise she had made you all do to get to know each other.

The stifled laughter that bubbles past your lips rivals any top forty hit that played in the background when Charlie got his coffee that morning, much earlier than you, in the coffee shop three blocks from the auditorium you were now sitting in. Suddenly, he finds himself obsessing over how it would sound uninhibited by the social circumstances. He wants to make you laugh over and over again. 

It’s chance that the two of you are assigned to help run the first red bucket training session of the season before the first performance of a long running musical that you had never seen nor cared to have seen three days later. It’s close to dinner time and you’ve had a long day at the office. Charlie’s had a long day too, a long few days thinking about when he’d see you again. How well the two of you had gotten on, how your hands had brushed over each other at the stupid little food spread during your break on Saturday. 

He thinks about what he should wear, what you’d be wearing, if you’d want to run across the street afterwards and split a pie at the local pizza joint that all of the tourists frequented before shows, wanting to get an “authentic” slice but not wanting to stray to far from the familiarity of the theater district and Times Square in all of it’s grubby, overrated glory.

Charlie doesn’t assume he’d even crossed your mind since you parted ways Saturday. He figures you’re busy, that you aren’t looking for anything because you’re just fine on your own or maybe you’re with somebody else. He doesn’t chance snooping on your social media to break the lovely reverie dancing in his head as he falls asleep Saturday, Sunday, and Monday evening. The one where he gets to start over, gets to start a relationship that’s based in equal footing and rationality rather than fear and chaotic emotions and limelight. 

Little does he know that you’ve been thinking about him too, your mind reeling with the same possibilities for yourself. It scared you more than anything that you’d even begun to entertain those types of thoughts.

You knew he’d just come off of an ugly divorce. Hell, you knew who he was when you had plopped down next to him and caught a glimpse of his furrowed brow and broad shouldered stature. You hadn’t expected someone as busy as him, as important as him to be here with the rest of you, all minor players in the theater world for the most part. You certainly hadn’t expected to enjoy your time with him and dance almost the whole way home because you were so excited that you’d been given the opportunity to see him again. 

Was it worth asking him to hang out after the meeting? Would he laugh in your face? Turn you down politely and tell you he’d see you at your next assigned training session? Would he ignore it and walk out to meet someone else and kiss them under the lights of the marquees? 

You spent the whole meeting wondering how you would ask him, if you would even ask him. You worked on autopilot, completely preoccupied with stealing glances across the room at Charlie, joking with Charlie during breaks, brushing Charlie’s hand when you passed him paper...Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.

“Nice work tonight.” A baritone voice pulls you from your thoughts and you glance up to see the man himself, eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiles down at you while the cast filters back stage.

You start to clean things up, trying to busy yourself so you don’t put your foot in your mouth. “You too, Charlie.” You hum, mentally kicking yourself because wow were you lame. You could have said anything else and you just echoed his words instead? Your chances were slipping right through your fingers.

He picks at lint on his sweater that isn’t even there, kicks some invisible object as he watches you. “How come I’ve never seen you around before last weekend? Charlotte told me you’ve been with Schubert for awhile now and both of my shows have been in Schubert buildings. So’s my third.”

“You were talking to Charlotte about me?” You ask, head snapping up with a shit eating grin. He was talking about you with other people?

Charlie’s cheeks go bright red and his hand comes up to rub the back of his neck, a nervous habit of his. He stumbles over his words, tries to come up with any other explanation to hide the truth of why he had asked Charlotte about you. Before he could say anything else, you swallow your nerves, then stand up straighter. 

“Because maybe I’ve been talking to her about you.” You shrug — you hadn’t really. Hell, you don’t even know why the words came out of your mouth. 

His eyes sparkle a bit as he tilts his head. “Maybe?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

The man standing across from you grabs an armful of infographics and slips them into the box that was meant to go to the head of house, to have on hand for people interested in donating. “Charlotte mentioned you liked pizza.” He says and, of course, it couldn’t have been true, you didn’t know Charlotte that well, but you appreciated the effort.

You smile and take a step forward, looking him up and down shyly. “Maybe I do.”

Charlie snorts, rolls his eyes, then nudges you playfully for good measure as he prays that he’s reading the room correctly. “Well maybe you’d want to get some with me?”

You half hear the question. He’s so handsome and you wonder if he knows it. If he knows he’s had you weak at the knees since the minute you’d made eye contact with him Saturday. “Maybe I’d like that.” You say, eyes round and full of wonder.

He smiles, putting his hands in his pockets. “It’s a date then.”

“You want to call it a date?” Butterflies are now running rampant in your stomach.

“Maybe.”

You’re both grinning from ear to ear now, faces hot and hands sweaty and shaking. “If you’re calling it a date, then yeah. I’d like that a lot.”

So Charlie takes you across the street and you each eat half a pizza, laughing over cheap wine and talking about how snooty actors could be. How demanding the stage door was. Your respective backgrounds in theater, his early success, your acceptance of the fact that you wouldn’t make it big and it was better to just settle into marketing and still be in the industry. Job security and such. 

He takes your hand outside of the restaurant as you lead him toward the local bakery that sells cookies fresh from the oven.

You intertwine your fingers with his while you stand in line for hot chocolate as dusk turns to night in Central Park.

He kisses you after wiping a bit of chocolate from the corner of your mouth on the Brooklyn bound A train a half hour later. And again on your stoop when you finally arrive home. 

He kisses you another time after he gives you his number and then once more when he realizes he’s only a ten minute walk from your apartment.

After heading upstairs, showering, doing some dirty dishes, and then plopping onto your bed, you smile when you see three texts from Charlie on your phone’s lock screen. Was it cliché to say that he had swooped in and fixed everything? Yeah and he didn’t fix anything really. He’d kissed you a few times and held your hand, sure, and he seemed like he wanted more. You wanted more too, but that didn’t mean that you were healed.

All you did know was that the hopeless romantic in you was louder than they had been for the better part of two years and you couldn’t stop smiling and wondering if it was coincidence that you had plopped down next to Charlie Barber during the meeting. Was it coincidence that the barista had taken longer with your latte that morning or was it fate telling you to take a deep breath and hold on tight because in a matter of minutes, you’d be meeting someone special.

[glitchcrows]

Through the Heavens' Grand Plan [A GO Fic]

Okay. This fic I'm finally going to publish here? It.... it's been sitting inside a Google Doc for the better part of a month. I've fought with myself over the endless what-if's but now, I suppose it's time to let it be seen, to be read by any who want.

That said, I want to give thanks to a few people who gave me hope and the encouragement in the process: @single-man-tear, you get top billing for providing, nudging the ideas while I was on an exhausting road trip. @softangelofsoho, you beautiful, wonderful PDX Dandy, thank you for your support and dealing with me babbling. For to my @codename-nightmare-pet , you really have lit up my world when it's been so hard at times lately. I love you and am so grateful for you. Lastly and certainly NOT least, thank you to @drawlight .... Your support amidst me reading, devouring your own work really got me thinking that hey, maybe I can do this.

Thank you to each of you and thanks to the ineffable boys and their creators themselves for this.

-----

Through the Heavens' Grand Plan

The gramophone was old, almost a hundred, if not a bit more than that. It stayed hidden from the public view and more in the quiet confines of what would be considered to be the living quarters within the angel's business. Crowley enjoyed switching up the record choices or changed the album to fit his needs. One did not anticipate to hear Mama Cass singing "Don't Stop Me Now," but surprises often found themselves in the bookshop when Crowley wanted to be mischievous. 

Aziraphale tolerated it at best, but Crowley also knew there were records that he wasn't allowed to mess up. One in particular the demon knew fully well he wasn't EVER to temper with at any given time. Beethoven's 9th Symphony, 1947, Bruno Walter as the conductor. Beethoven was someone that Aziraphale had admired for ever so long, had possibly tried to even be a guardian angel towards.

Aziraphale pulled the record from its sleeve once afternoon when taking his extended lunch break and started the gramophone, moving the record to the fourth movement as he took a seat next to the device, sandwich in hand, tea in tow.

The strings came to life, the familiar musical strains plucking at his own heartstrings, the faint hiss of the old record there. Aziraphale began to eat his lunch, foot tapping in time with the masterpiece....

---

"Was die Mode streng geteilt;

Alle Menschen werden Brüder!"

(What convention strictly divided;

All people become brothers!)

-Winter 1822-

"Please, Crowley. This isn't me asking you to make Goethe popular. This is me, your...." A hesitation to say 'friend' there, considering their discussions with one another could continue to have raised eyebrows from both Heaven and Hell. Crowley gave an unamused look towards the hesitancy. "Say it, angel. Friends, unless you feel acquaintances wouldn't go amiss. My side wants him, you realise. He's the perfect one for the pits. He and Wolfgang would get along swimmingly." Aziraphale felt disgust by the insinuation, the idea of it all. Ludwig von Beethoven, in Hell. 

A small whimper.

"Please, Crowley. I.... I...." the angel stammered, Crowley's lips curling into a smirk. "Say it, angel. Say it." Aziraphale felt himself hesitating more but knew how much this was to him. Hell didn't deserve him, God knew that. "I'm begging you. Please. Please let me have him. You can have Brahms, Schubert, Schumann. Let me have Beethoven. Please..."

Crowley's smirk never left his face.

Anything for his angel.

---

"und der Cherub steht vor Gott..."

(And the cherub stands before God.)

---

-Spring 1823-

"Let me help him, your Majesty. Let me work with him. One last piece. One magnum opus. Let me be his guiding force. If....if you'll let me. I won't let you down."

The archangels watched Aziraphale standing in the heavenly courts. Uriel and Gabriel eyed him suspiciously about the idea of interference while Michael sat there, looking as though the idea wasn't completely a stupid waste. God contemplated long enough before giving a blessing, warning Aziraphale to keep a low profile, to do right.

"Thank you, Lord. I promise I won't let you down."

---

Ludwig was difficult, he soon learned. Old age and bitterness did not make for good work between the pair when he was annoyed, angry. That said, the pair were able to bond over fond thoughts of delicious schnitzel, apfelstrudel, sacher torte, often indulging in the sweets when they had made some progress. 

People had wondered who the incomer was, often having Ludwig shout that it wasn't any of their damn business, to be frank.

Yes, he was aging and dying, but Aziraphale refused to let him go without finishing. He recalled how well that had gone for the other side and the Requiem Mass for Mozart. 

"Herr Fell?" Beethoven had said between bites of their strudel purchase on a particularly long day. "Why me? Why pick me?" Aziraphale's fork hesitated to place another piece into his mouth. Oh, there were so many reasons, the angel knew, but he supposed the composer deserved a chance to be remembered for all time wasn't all a bad idea either. Grabbing a piece and an ink quill, he scribbled his response:

"Everyone deserves a second chance. Including you, Herr Beethoven."

Beethoven's eyes misted with wet tears.

---

"Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?"

(Do you sense the creator, world?)

-May 1824-

Aziraphale sat where Ludwig wouldn't see him, opting to be practically invisible until he felt a hand to his shoulder. A small yelp was followed by a pointed look when it became apparent the tapper was Crowley. "Easy, angel. Who'd you think I was? The guillotine squad?" Aziraphale squinted. "Clever remark, honestly. Did you think that up on the spot?" came his snippy reply as Crowley took a seat next to him. "Testy, testy! Take it easy...." Aziraphale seemed unconvinced. "Really now, angel. I'm here to see how good this magnum opus is. Word is that it's going to blow minds."

Aziraphale gave a sigh.

"Uh... that it's going to be his crowning achievement," Crowley corrected. "Yes... I do believe you're right," he whispered as the lights dimmed and the symphony began. 

An angel and demon both found tears that night by the end of it all.

---

"Such' ihn über'm Sternenzelt!

Über Sternen muß er wohnen."

(Seek him above the starry canopy!

Above stars must He dwell.)

"Aziraphale? ..... Aziraphale!"

He was being shaken and soon was snapping back to the present by Crowley. The record scratched at the edge, giving indication that the number was over. "You've been crying. Is everything all right, angel?" he asked in genuine concern for his angel, friend. Az moved a hand and felt the wetness to his eyes. 

"Aziraphale? What in the bonny, bloody blue blazes- -" Crowley began to growl before taking note of what the record was. The demon blinked, realising that perhaps, in this moment, tenderness was warranted. "Oh, Aziraphale." The angel gently began nodding his head. "I....couldn't help myself. Would....would you like to hear it? With me?" 

Crowley gave a wistful smile, sitting on the empty space on the loveseat as Aziraphale started the section all over again, settling in the hold of his demon.

And again, many, many years later, an angel and his demon bonded over their love for Beethoven.

[lindsay36ho]

Lowell Liebermann’s Personal Demons

In this exclusive digital encounter with the praised and enigmatic composer Lowell Liebermann on his premiere recording as a solo pianist on the Steinway & Sons label, Piano Street’s Patrick Jovell meets the pianist behind the composer and the composer behind the pianist.

Clearly, Liebermann’s latest album release is in a way an attempt to measure a time span and it’s not only a 60-year celebration but a very personal way to – and by means of the piano – let us follow the composer’s ways into his musical universe. The album contains music “he wish he wrote” and also offers music that he actually has written. Liebermann follows Stravinsky’s dictum; “my music is about the notes themselves and nothing more”, but it still leaves us with the question about the communicating qualities of the composer’s music.

Click the album cover to listen to the complete album. This feature is available for Gold members of pianostreet.com Play album >>

Personal Demons – album content: Liebermann: Gargoyles, Op. 29 Kabeláč: 8 Preludes, Op. 30 Liszt: Totentanz, S525/R188 Liebermann: 4 Apparitions, Op. 17 Schubert: 13 Variations on a theme by Anselm Hüttenbrenner in A Minor, D. 576 Busoni: Fantasia contrappuntistica Liebermann: Nocturne No. 10, Op. 99

Piano Street: Thank you for letting us talk to you about your latest recording “Personal Demons”. Your album contains composers rooted in tradition yet with a strong urge to develop contemporary concepts. They are all solitaires, I wouldn’t say misfits, but persevering despite a lack of understanding in their times. Schubert, one of many working in the total shadow of the great LvB, Busoni, the omni genius without a homeland, Kabelac, rejected by the Czech communist regime and Abbé Liszt, exploring inner, spiritual development and thus new harmonic territories – away from the extravagant superstar showmanship of his early years. In a way the mentioned composers carry personal demons too (Busoni “cannibalizing” on Bach for example) and suggest that this is a way how music can develop through time. Lowell, you are a pianist and have therefore played vast amounts of music. If you were to extend your list of fascinations – not necessarily demons – which would these be and why?

LL: You are right that the composers on this album are all, in one way or another, outliers, and that is part of their attraction. There are certainly other composers, more mainstream, who have had an even greater influence on my development as a musician. It was Bach who first made me fall in love with music. I was actually first exposed to Bach’s music through “Switched On Bach,” the synthesized versions by Wendy Carlos that have held up remarkably well, I think. But perhaps the most profound influence on my musical growth was Beethoven. My first composition teacher at Juilliard, David Diamond, had me follow a Beethovenian model of keeping sketchbooks and rigorously working out musical materials. And my piano teacher, Jacob Lateiner, was a Beethoven specialist. It was through working on the Beethoven Sonatas with him that I first fully appreciated the interconnectedness of every element of those scores: that the articulations, dynamics, etc, were inseparable from the musical content and development, and not to be altered at a performer’s whimsy. And then there is Ravel, who set a standard of musical perfection that is something to strive for.

Liszt’s Totentanz

PS: Let’s turn to the macabre part on your album and Liszt’s Totentanz, a work he re-wrote as a solo piece from originally being composed for piano with orchestra. The work is variations on the gregorian chant Dires Irae (the Day of Wrath), a theme used by many a composer. For instance, it appears in Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody where it merges with the original theme. You also wrote a Variations on a theme by Paganini for piano and orchestra along with three piano concertos. What do you win or lose when composing for piano with orchestra compared to piano solo?

LL: Of course, when composing with orchestra one gains all the orchestral colors and an enormous amount of creative flexibility that comes with all those added instruments. And I think there is also a special dynamic in the dialogue between a solo piano and orchestra that creates a unique kind of musical tension that also opens up all kinds of possibilities.

PS: What did Liszt gain in the solo version?

LL: Going from the orchestral version of Totentanz to the solo piano version is a very special case, I think. I think the piece gains a certain kind of austerity in the piano solo version that is entirely appropriate and beneficial. At this point, I prefer the solo version. Liszt made a cut in the coda in the solo version which takes some getting used to one is familiar with the orchestral version. Several pianists have reinstated this cut, transcribing those few measures themselves. I can understand the impulse to do so, but I prefer to leave the work it as Liszt saw fit.

Performing own compositions

PS: It’s a joyous favor being able to talk to a composer who is also the performer and history has given us so much amazing music from creators with this combination of function and skill. On the album you give us two of your own works; the immensely popular Gargoyles Op. 29 and your chosen 10th Nocturne Op. 99 (out of eleven, first Nocturne composed in 1987). This poses the question about person vs. persona. When performing your own repertoire, which works do you choose and – to add an even more pathologic dimension – are you interpreting the work or are you performing/projecting yourself?

LL: The composing and performing are two very different functions that require different focus and utilize different parts of one’s brain and psyche. There is a real danger in performing one’s own works that one thinks one knows them better than one in fact does. The kind of learning that you need to do as a performer is much different from the knowledge and memory you have of a piece from having written it. A very high percentage of the memory needed for performance is muscle memory rather than intellectual memory. And so, when learning one of my own pieces for performance, I have to forget that I wrote it, and approach it as if it had been written by someone else. And that includes studying all the dynamic and expressive markings anew, because one can forget one’s own intentions and get sloppy. And this also brings up what I think is a bit of a cliché, that a composer’s music is a direct reflection of their personality, or a reflection their emotional life at the time of writing the piece. This is simply not true. A composer can write a tragic piece at the happiest point in their life and vice versa. It is often more like acting via music rather than writing an autobiography in music.

A desirable pianistic style

PS: You are one of the few contemporary composers who can out the big names and take place in traditional pianist recital programs worldwide. What makes your music so desirable for pianists? Would you mind if I ask for a pianistic self-analysis?

LL: I’ve always felt that it is important for me, as a composer, to keep in contact with the act of performance. It informs my writing in so many ways, even just experiencing the sheer physical joy of playing certain things. I think keeping awareness of the fact that music is an act of communication in real time is very important, and it is easy to lose track of that when one has one’s head buried in the notes. One aspect of my music that, perhaps, has helped its popularity is that, no matter what is going on harmonically, my music is almost always melodically based. My music mixes tonality (usually not in a traditionally functional sense, though), atonality, octatonic or other synthetic scales, etc., basically anything that I feel fits the material at hand. Some critics have called my music neo-romantic (a label I disagree with) and I think what most of them are reacting to is the fact that it is melodically based. It’s just an element of music that I find has to be there to keep my own interest.

Composing for flute

PS: Melodic quality must be a key for any composer but after a look in your works list we very often see works for or/and including the flute. What is your story with this instrument?

LL: My very first commission for flute was a Sonata for Flute and Piano, which was commissioned by the Spoleto Chamber Music Festival for Paula Robison and Jean-Yves Thibaudet back in the late 80s. That piece “took off” in a really big way and started to be played all over the world. One flautist who included it in his repertoire was James Galway, who asked if I would orchestrate it for him so he could perform it with orchestra. I told him I would much rather just write a new Concerto for him, and that led to the commission for my Flute Concerto. Things escalated from there, and there were further commissions from him and other flautists: a Flute and Harp Concerto, a Piccolo Concerto, Flute Trios, etc. The flute community as a whole is one of the most enthusiastic groups of instrumentalists out there, who are constantly on the lookout for new pieces and perform them frequently. They share information and share new pieces. Flute works have indeed become an important part of my catalogue but, contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, I do not play the flute myself.

The post-pandemic period

PS: We wish to congratulate you on your 60th birthday which took place on February 22! In terms of time spans and trajectories and in reference to composers in retrospective, will you now enter a new compositional period?

LL: I think those questions of composer’s “periods” are best left to musicologists after a composer has died, and I’m not intending to do that for a while! What I can say is that, although I don’t know what period I will be entering, I do feel that there will be some sort of tectonic shift in my composition, not so much because of this particular anniversary, but because of the circumstances we have all been living through. At the beginning of the present pandemic, all of my commissions were put on hold, which enabled me to focus on my piano playing and this new recording “Personal Demons”. But this has meant that I have not actually written anything new for the better part of a year, the longest amount of time I have ever spent without finishing a composition. Now that there are flickers of light at the end of the tunnel, the commissions are being rekindled, and I do now have to start writing again. But I think the time away from writing will have a natural effect of reassessment. How that will manifest itself, I can’t really tell until I do start writing again, which should be any day now…

from Piano Street’s Classical Piano News https://www.pianostreet.com/blog/articles/lowell-liebermanns-personal-demons-11052/

[aion-rsa]

The Question Bounces Through Time In New DC Series

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Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz take The Question back to Hub City, then back to the Old West, then to the Depression...

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Denys Cowan is a living legend. He pencilled the original run of The Question with Dennis O’Neill, laying the groundwork for that character to become a fan favorite for three decades. He co-founded Milestone Media and gave the world Static and Hardware and all the other characters that make you shout in delight when they show up on Young Justice. Hell, he even drew the album art for Joe Biden’s favorite Wu Tang record.

Bill Sienkiewicz is also a living legend. He just dropped an art retrospective covering a portion of his work as the primary artist on books like Elektra: Assassin and New Mutants and Stray Toasters. But beyond his work as the primary artist on all-time classics, he’s also one of the most gifted inkers to ever work in comics, simultaneously immediately recognizable working over someone else’s pencils and yet also subtle, enhancing what the penciller laid on the page without overshadowing it. So one would assume that when the two got back together to work on The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage, the new Black Label comic they collaborated on with Jeff Lemire, they would immediately know they were onto something special.

“Issue four, Page 25 [I’d] be like you know what, I got it,” says Cowan in an interview. “Yeah. I think by, you know, I think middle of page of issue four, I'll figure out what I'm doing,” agrees Sienkiewicz. 

Announced at San Diego Comic Con, The Deaths of Vic Sage has been in the works for some time now. Cowan, the preeminent Question artist, and Sienkiewicz, who painted many covers for the original series and has been inking a lot of Cowan’s DC work in recent memory, were specifically requested by Lemire for the project. “Working with Jeff Lemire is. like, sheer joy anyway,” Cowan says. “[The Question is] one of my favorite characters, but it could have been anything and we probably would have had to take a hard look at it, because Jeff's brilliant.” 

Reading the comic they put out is like putting on a comfortable old sweatshirt. The first issue hits all the classic notes from the original - Hub City is still a dense, gross, crooked dumpster fire. Vic Sage is the crusading, just-barely-not-reckless television journalist burning it all down around him. Richard Dragon microdoses LSD. Myra Fermin is the lone good person in all of Hub City’s government. Lemire, Cowan, Sienkiewicz, colorist Chris Sotomayor and letterer Willie Schubert take those familiar elements and update them with modern tools, and the output is spectacular. The book shines, especially and almost literally in digital, with clarity and colors that couldn’t have been done with the tools and techniques of ‘80s books. 

And then, as is shown on the cover of the second issue, the story takes a hard left back into the 1870s and turns into something that has definitively not been done with the Question before. Fortunately, The Question’s costume is fairly straightforward and iconic. “Vic Sage looks like Vic Sage in all the different time periods,” Cowan says. “It wasn’t that big of a challenge making him look like himself. You had to do things with the Western stuff, his hair’s a little longer, he has sideburns as opposed to the more clean cut look...but basically he’s who he’s been always.” 

And the pair teased another time jump later in the series. “We’re exploring different time periods in his life,” Cowan says. “You go from the present day, to the Old West, to the 30s, back to the present day.” Sienkiewicz replies “I’m doing the Western job right now, and I’m having a blast on it...the 30s is another great time,” completely understating the fact that this duo drawing hard boiled crime noir is likely to send the comics internet into religious ecstasy. 

What makes Cowan and Sienkiewicz’s uncertainty about their work until it’s finished even funnier is the fact that this duo has been making the impossible happen for years now. Cowan’s original inker on the seminal Question run was Rick Magyar, who did lovely work using shadow and shading to fill in the character of Hub City, especially. Sienkiewicz did iconic covers for the original book, and when the book was brought back for a “final issue” as a Blackest Night tie-in, and from there they’ve been churning out hit after hit at DC. And most of these books...their existence is patently ridiculous. Working together on an anniversary issue of Green Arrow makes sense, especially when they’re folded into a story where Andrea Sorrentino is the main artist. They made Deathstroke #11 critically acclaimed and visually magnificent. But Convergence: Detective Comics is a nostalgia grab crossover tie in that was elevated by the quality of the creative team (a factor that, in hindsight, was present on a great many Convergence minis). 

And Hong Kong Phooey/Black Lightning was another inexplicable Hanna Barbara/DC crossover book made inexplicably good because Cowan and Sienkiewicz took Bryan E. Hill’s blaxploitation martial arts script and made it varyingly scream, sing and hum. “I think with Hong Kong Phooey we were both like, ‘Really? You’re going to do that?’” Sienkiewicz says. “Sure, why not. And then when I got the pages at the end of the day, it’s just a lot of fun.” 

Ultimately, the collaboration works because the two artists are professionals. As fun as these books are, Sienkiewicz says, “the whole thing about collaborating is sort of trying to walk in the penciler’s shoes for a bit, see how he or she views the world and what they’re trying to say. And it’s my job, even though I know my style can be a little overwhelming.” 

“We’re both professional enough to know that it’s probably going to work out,” Cowan says. 

Based on the first issue of The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage, it worked out.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Feature Jim Dandy

Nov 20, 2019

DC Entertainment

Jeff Lemire

Bill Sienkiewicz. Denys Cowan

from Books https://ift.tt/2O2PRD4

[thousandmaths]

A Variation on a Theme of Schubert Calculus III

This post is the last in a three-part sequence (1 2 3) that represents the last day of Maria Gillespie’s lecture series at the Equivariant Combinatorics conference at the CRM.

In this post we will be discussing geometry; in case you’re not hip with math kid sp34k, this means that it will not be elementary. A somewhat more broad-viewed treatment is given by Gillespie herself on her blog Mathematical Gemstones.

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A Variation on the Grassmannian

Something that must have bothered the experts reading along is that we seem to be very far from doing any Schubert calculus. This post aims to correct this; I say “aims” because we will not quite completely fill in the analogy.

The traditional Schubert calculus story works with the Grassmannian, the space of all $k$-subspaces of an $n$-dimensional vector space. In this variant, we will work with something called the orthogonal Grassmannian, which has the same relationship to the orthogonal group that the ordinary Grassmannian has to the general linear group. This is a rather vague thing to say, but rather than try to say it better, we will approach the definition from another definition.

We will assume that $n$ is odd for the remainder of this post. There is a very good reason for this, which is not at all easy to explain. Suffice it to say that the odd case is “Type B-like” and the even case is “Type D-like”; therefore we expect there to be a qualitative difference between the two, and there is.

As another seemingly-arbitrary-but-not convention, it is convenient to consider a bilinear form such that the standard flag becomes orthogonal, namely $E_i^\perp = E_{n-i}$. Such a form is given by $\langle a,b\rangle = \sum_{i=1}^{n} a_i b_{n-i}$. (Note that this is a symmetric bilinear form, not an inner product!). Just as flags in general define the cellular decomposition of the Grassmannian (e.g. the Schubert varieties), the cellular decomposition of the orthogonal Grassmannian is given by orthogonal flags.

For mysterious algebra reasons*, the orthogonal Grassmannian can be defined without reference to the orthogonal group in the following way: it is the collection of all isotropic $k$-dimensional subspaces of $\Bbb C^n$, i.e. the subspaces for which any $\langle v,w\rangle =0$ for all $v,w$ in the subspace. This may strike you as exceedingly unlikely, but the fact that $\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle$ is not an inner product permits the possibility for nontrivial isotropic subspaces; the one we’ve chosen here admits a rich collection.

This is about all we want to say in general. In order to connect this to the shifted partitions, we need to restrict to the case where $k=(n-1)/2$; this is an integer because $n$ is odd. For the rest of this post, we make this choice of $k$, and in particular we note that $k+(k+1)=n$.

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A Variation on a Naming Convention

Shifted partitions allow us a combinatorial way to understand the points of the orthogonal Grassmannian; we already knew there was some linear-algebraic way to do it using orthogonal flags, but because of our choice of $k$ we will be able to do better. This parallels the way that partitions allow us a combinatorial way to understand the naming convention of the usual Grassmannian.

You’ll recall that the points on the Grassmannian are named by the RREF matrices of size $k\times n$. The same will also be true for points in the orthogonal Grassmannian, but there will be considerably fewer valid choices.

Defining things in general is fairly tedious, so let’s do do an example: consider the shifted partition $\lambda = (3,1)$.

We will not use $\lambda$ directly, but instead use its associated partition $\Lambda=(4,3,1)$, which is constructed as follows:

Just as in the Grassmannian case, the associated partition determines the shape of the matrices:

$$\begin{bmatrix} ~&~&~&~&~&~&~&1&* \\\ ~&~&~&~&~&1&*&~&*  \\\ ~&~&1&*&*&~&*&~&* \\\ 1&*&~&*&*&~&*&~&* \end{bmatrix}.$$

Notice that, as usual, if the pivot columns are removed, the shape of the non-starred entries is precisely the partition $(4,3,1)$. Moreover, we can determine the locations of the pivot columns by putting them immediately before the column where there start being $*$s on the next higher row.

This is familiar from the Grassmannian situation; in fact the only thing that is different (besides that for some reason we’re writing the rows in the opposite order) is that not every partition can be realized as an associated partition.

However, this is not the only restriction on our names. The fact that the space needs to be isotropic imposes an additional condition: any two rows be orthogonal according to that bilinear form we were using in the previous section. The interested reader may check that

$$\begin{bmatrix} ~&~&~&~&~&~&~&1&\ell \\\ ~&~&~&~&~&1&j&~&k  \\\ ~&~&1&f&g&~&h&~&i \\\ 1&a&~&b&c&~&d&~&e \end{bmatrix}$$

must therefore satisfy the conditions

$$ a+\ell=0 \qquad k+b=0 \qquad i+cg+d = 0 $$ $$j+f=0 \qquad 2h+g^2=0 \qquad 2e+c^2 = 0 $$

[ Remember that our form reads row in the correct order, and the other in reverse order. ]

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A Variation on the Rest of the Story

We can define Schubert cells and varieties (for our special values of $n$ and $k$) in much the same way that it is usually done— which is rather different than the way that we did it in Escobar’s sequence.

$$ C_\lambda = \Big\{ V\in\text{OG}(n,k): \dim(V\cap E_{n+1+i-\Lambda_i})=i \text{ for all } 1\leq i\leq n \Big\} $$

$$ X_\lambda = \overline{C_\lambda} = \Big\{ V\in\text{OG}(n,k): \dim(V\cap E_{n+1+i-\Lambda_i})\geq i \text{ for all } 1\leq i\leq n \Big\} $$

Note that in both of these we use $\Lambda$, not $\lambda$. On her blog post, Gillespie gives a more combinatorial description of these varieties, which is unfortunately somewhat more involved. 

It is also possible to write down the cohomology ring of the orthogonal Grassmannian: it is isomorphic to $\Bbb Z[p_1,p_3,p_5,\dots]/(p_\lambda: \lambda\not\leq \rho_{n+1})$, where $p_i$ is the power symmetric function and $\rho_{n+1}$ is the Weyl vector $(n, n-1,\dots, 2, 1)$. This is of course a shifted partition, and the usual partial order $\leq$ on partitions restricts to a partial order on shifted partitions.

And.... this is where she left off.

Depending on how well you know the story, you may feel a bit blueballed right now: there is supposed to be a climax, a theorem of the type

Theorem?. The cohomology classes of the Schubert varieties form a basis of the cohomology ring for the orthogonal Grassmannian, and multiplication of these basis elements corresponds to intersection of the varieties.

One may certainly hope that such a thing is true, and one should expect that something of the sort is true. But it is also certainly believable that the statement I’ve suggested above may need some substantial modification to deal with the peculiarities of the orthogonal situation.

[ Previous ] [ Post 3 ]

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[ * actually for completely mundane algebra reasons, but reasons that would, for instance, involve saying the words “parabolic subgroup” which I have no interest in doing. ]

[theloniousbach]

“Clara, Robert, and Felix: Three Magical Years in the Lives of Felix Mendelssohn and the Schumanns,” Midsummer’s Music At The Clearing, Ellison Bay, WI, 6 July 2019

Piano trios are very connected to vacations on the Great Lakes, so I am pleased that our early July vacations to Door County have coincided with the seemingly annual concert of that format sponsored by Midsummer’s Music.  Last year we saw works by Schubert, Haydn, and Raff rather on a whim, deciding once we got here.  Thanks to being on the mailing list, we knew the program and could select this afternoon program at the folk school landscape architect Jens Jensen built in Door County.

That meant I played the works several times ahead of the concert so that we could anticipate favorite parts.  There was a chronological focus last year lacked, spanning as it did from Classical to late Romantic as all three works this year were composed between 1845-1847.  And all three composers knew and collaborated with one another.

Since the Mendelssohn #2 in C Minor is the work that triggered this fascination thanks to a family rehearsal with a history of science colleague who also is a skilled violinist, his cellist brother, and a friend on piano on another vacation, that time to the Traverse City, Michigan, area, I knew that would be the highlight.  It was and, at the musician’s request due to its intensity, it was the after intermission work.  

The original program had Robert Schumann’s in D Minor last.  That too would make sense as it too has a triumphant ending and great power.  It led us nicely to intermission, just as it could have led us out the door.  I also got a strong dose particularly in the second movement of what I treasure about chamber music generally and trios in particular—the conversational interplay of the instruments.  Of course, there was plenty of that in all 12 movements throughout the program.  I also like the sonorities of the cello and this third movement had a mournfulness that it led.

I experienced the intended order as that’s how I put together my Spotify playlist, so I got to have it both ways.

Clara Schumann’s work in G Minor is justly among her most regarded compositions.  The almost verbose spoken performance notes by the organization’s Executive Director James Berkenstock Itcalled attention to the second movement, the unlikely mash up of a scherzo but at the tempo of a minuet.  Listening for it, I put in my notes that it was at once stately and playful.  I also like the third movement’s somberness.

I will return to the recordings of this work as I was just settling in to my vantage point, so I was less aware of the piano’s intricacies.  I have to imagine that a pianist of Clara’s caliber would have given herself and others some serious fun.  But I was less attuned to the individual parts in this first work.

Sitting with a clear sight line for the cello and the piano keyboard (but also the sheet music albeit at 15 feet), I spent much of the R. Schumann and Mendelssohn intrigued with the shape of the piano lines (arpeggios vs. chords vs. melodic lines with at least a sense of the squiggles for the violin and cello to cue what I was hearing).  So, by then, I was noticing what the piano was doing.

And what the piano and the strings were doing, particularly with the Mendelssohn, were revealing familiar magic.  This is on the very short list of piano trios I know pretty well, whose intricacies I can frequently anticipate.  So I was delighted to hear and watch those parts unfold, to see how the drama happened, and above all to observe the lines from each instrument interweave.

The notes and comments drew attention to the distinctive theme that emerges perhaps a third of the way in the final movement noting that it evokes Bach’s setting of the chorale “I Present Myself Before Your Throne” with the further suggestion that near the end Mendelssohn offers his own setting.  I don’t know the chorale but I do recall (accurately I hope) that Kevin heard just a whiff of a Jewish melody in there at that point, a klezmer-y minor mode.  No matter what, it’s a highlight of the work.  I noted appreciatively the cello as at the start of the finale and the light touch of the presto in movement three.  But I generally wrote little as I was smiling in delight.

Jeannie Yu is the “new” pianist, joining David Perry and Walter Preucil whom we saw last year on violin and cello.

Once again, these musicians and this organization provide a strong series (the program for the year is rich and bears study as curation for other music to explore) that I am glad is becoming a Door County habit.

[itsworn]

Cackling Nitro Cars Hit Escondido, Barona, and Bakersfield!

Cackle cars coat the eyes, ears, noses, and throats with liquid horsepower.

Nobody is ambivalent about nitromethane. Upon initial exposure to an idling fuel motor, bystanders either sprint away from the sudden assault on eyes, ears, noses, and throats or rush like moths toward the rumble and smell spewing from flaming weedburners and zoomies. Thanks to a curious, noncompetitive activity called cackling, clouds of the stuff are hanging over more places than at any time since drag racing’s golden age a half-century ago—no dragstrip necessary. While supertracks are pricing too many young, impressionable prospects out of the national events that hooked their fathers and granddads, cackling brings tears of joy to the masses at nostalgia meets, neighborhood car shows, and even the SEMA Show. Admission ranges from cheap to free. Even small people can get right up close. Accessibility and proximity depend on how long one can hold one’s breath. (Gas masks are cheating.)

Nitroholics never get enough of the magic juice, though some addicts were seriously tested three times last fall in California. HOT ROD witnessed fuel cars rolling through downtown Escondido one night, push-started on Barona Drag Strip the next day, then cackling and racing at Famoso Raceway three weeks later. Though only one event involved actual competition, this much pop hadn’t gone up in flames in a single month since three rival organizations staged the United Drag Racers Association “Winner” Nationals, American Hot Rod Association Winter (two words) Nationals, and NHRA Winternationals on successive weekends in the mid-1960s. Many of the same drivers, car owners, engine builders, and a legendary announcer who made those Lions, Bee-Line, and Pomona meets so memorable were back on the scene, acting more like rowdy kids than septuagenarians and octogenarians.

This was especially evident at Barona, whose small crowd was top-heavy with heroes. At times, there were more autograph-signers in tents than fans in the ’stands (e.g., grand marshal Bruce Crower, Gary Beck, Jim Brissette, Gary Densham, Larry Dixon Sr., Mendy Fry, Marvin Graham, Red Greth, Rich Guasco, Tom Jobe, Tommy Ivo, Roland Leong, Don Long, Dode Martin, Ed McCulloch, Tom McEwen, Bob Muravez/Floyd Lippencott Jr., Bill Shrewsberry, Joe Schubeck, and Richard Tharp). Retiring announcer Jon “Thunder Lungs” Lundberg, 80, picked the Escondido-Barona double feature as his swan song and miraculously worked night and day without once losing the “Voice of Drag Racing.”

The oldest and youngest of the events were connected by much more than old heroes, old race cars, and old-fashioned loads of 98-percent pop. The newcomer, Steve Gibbs’ inaugural Nitro Revival, owed its existence to the controversial 25th edition that saw him resign his familiar official’s role as the 2016 event opened rather than be forced to enforce the cackling restrictions suddenly ordered by organization headquarters. Shortly thereafter, NHRA’s longtime competition director ended a 48-year relationship by rejecting a consultation contract that “was almost an agreement to stay out of the way,” Gibbs told HRM. “The reunion had become increasingly under the control and operation of the mothership. That all led to what happened in 2016. People came out of there mad, so Ron Johnson and I decided to do something else. Some guys made the choice to go to one, and not the other. A few did both. I didn’t strong-arm anybody.

“You know, the first Cacklefest was an afterthought,” Gibbs continued. “It wasn’t on the 2000 schedule. Greg and I could come up with different things. Everything didn’t have to have the blessing of the mothership. We told the guys that we’d try it if we had time. We pushed off eight cars that Saturday night. It touched a nerve. People started looking for their old cars or building new ones just to cackle. Since then, almost 250 different cars have push-started at some meet or show. Greg and I created a set of rules for them, requiring protective apparel, keeping things reasonable, and fun. I understand NHRA’s concerns, but I think it got to the point where if something might happen, you can’t do it. There’s always an element of risk, and if you can’t try to manage that, then you’re in the wrong business. You don’t want anything to go wrong, but at the same time, it’s motorsports.”

Again this year, Escondido’s Nitro Night and Barona’s Nitro Revival will run back to back on September 28–29, 2018, followed three weeks later by NHRA’s October 19–21 California Hot Rod Reunion. “The reunion was the center of the universe for this group of people for quite a while,” said the guy largely responsible for it. “Now, I’m not sure where that center is, but there needs to be one.”

One thing is for sure: Nostalgia drag racing and the cackle cars it spawned are giving nitroholics everywhere a second golden age of eye, ear, nose, and throat irritation, with no end in sight through that low-hanging, sweet-smelling cloud.

Unlike Civil War reenactors or Renaissance Fair goers, authentic hardware is operated by many of the very same drivers, tuners, and crewpersons who used it in the 1950s and especially the 1960s. Not many 81-year-olds are fit enough to wiggle into—and out of, with some help—a slingshot’s confines, but “TV” Tommy Ivo leaps at opportunities to whack the throttle of Ron Johnson’s reproduction “Barnstormer.” The long-lost original was among fewer than a dozen slingshots built by Rod Pepmuller at the short-lived Ivo Chassis Company.

All kinds of wheeled contraptions come together on Escondido’s Grand Avenue, in turn attracting kids of all ages to a welcoming downtown.

The quantity, quality, and variety of area cruisers far exceed a first-timer’s expectations. Beyond the split-window and Hertz Shelby is Grand Avenue, along which spectators were setting up chairs before noon.

As the supply of surviving slingshots dried up and prices shot up, Ron Johnson—onetime Minnesota Dragways publicist, action photographer, and partner in the Big Wheel fueler—made cloning acceptable by faithfully reincarnating not one, not two, but three of his all-time-favorite 1960s slingshots. Behind the scenes, he’s been instrumental in bringing cackle cars to Escondido and, for the first time this year, to Barona Drag Strip a day later. He was also a two-time cancer victim and one tough hombre, checking out of hospice long enough to enjoy both events. Ten days after hugging Gloria (Mrs. Steve) Gibbs on Grand Avenue, Johnson passed away at home.

Reproducing a particular, personal-favorite car is so commonplace that two clones now exist of the same Surfers’ slingshot, albeit in early versus late iterations. In the course of acquiring period-correct parts to recreate the earliest version, builder Bob Higginson and sole-surviving Surfer Tom Jobe unknowingly obtained what Hilborn identified as the company’s first four-port injector. Jobe reproduced the distinctive scoop. Beyond, sit Ron Johnson’s clones of the Schubert & Herbert Chevy fueler and Ivo’s Barnstormer.

Ironically, the king of making flames for fun is a retired fireman. Bill Pitts (left) decided to make a 392 Chrysler functional to liven up the MagiCar’s static display at early California Hot Rod Reunions. Event directors Steve Gibbs and Greg Sharp invited Pitts to idle the car in the background while announcers read the names of racers and friends who died in the past 12 months. More owners built motors and, boys being boys, lobbied to put their high-gear drivelines to use. Thus did an unscheduled, one-time exhibition accidentally invent the now-trademarked Cacklefest.

Even from behind a restaurant’s glass storefront, side-by-side fuel motors will rattle eardrums. Sarah Beaubara loves her hometown’s annual Nitro Night, but the twins seem undecided.

History’s hottest traditional hot rods are invited to play in the street with dragsters once each year. The Sacramento-based Burkholder brothers hung onto and revived a Chrysler-powered Fiat remembered as one of the north state’s fastest AA/Fuel Altereds.

Canadian Wendy Williams hauled her late father’s famous Top Gasser the length of the West Coast in his original, canvas-topped trailer. Amazingly, the 392 is the same bullet last run by Jack Williams. In the distance are the tower and concession stand. Named for the Barona Band of Mission Indians that owns the reservation property outside Lakeside (San Diego County), eighth-mile Barona Drag Strip was carved out of surrounding hills in layers.

Steve Gibbs, ex-NHRA racemaster turned independent cacklemaster, directed the first commercial gathering of real drag cars at a real dragstrip where no real drag racing occurred. He foresees a profitable future for the Nitro Revival concept here, and possibly at interested venues elsewhere.

With entrants not only allowed but encouraged to push-start or light off fuel motors at will, there wasn’t much quiet time for catching up with old pals. Rich Guasco (left) and Tom McEwen have been shouting over blown fuel motors for six decades.

The newly formed Cacklecar Owners Alliance came up with a new/old twist for Barona’s grand finale, recreating the side-by-side, on-track push-downs that heightened the drama of match-race duels between Chris Karamesines and Tommy Ivo.

As Ron Johnson looked on from the golf cart beside daughter Connie, son Kol Johnson and friend Mark McCormick pulled Ron’s two hobby cars to the line for a side-by-side exhibition launch that closed the single-day Barona program to applause.

Three weeks later at the California Hot Rod Reunion in Bako, on-track practice was offered for drivers of cackle cars and push vehicles, some of whom had never met their respective match. The customized F-100 has just fired the Syndicate Scuderia gas dragster with Wendy Williams aboard.

Unlike either of the single-day, noncompetitive San Diego County shows three weeks prior, Bakersfield’s reunion delivered three full days of for-real fuel racing. Adam Sorokin in the mouse-motored Champion Speed Shop streamliner dropped a close semifinal match to eventual runner-up Jim Murphy, the newly crowned NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series points champ.

John Hertzig’s Fiat-bodied AA/Fuel Altered demonstrated why a class that NHRA dropped four decades ago not only survives but thrives. By the time photographer Dave Kommel turned to shoot his first downtrack frame, the front tire was already smoking from abuse. Rookie pilot Kurt Cruise somehow kept the shiny side up by repeatedly whacking the throttle—until the right-front wheel and suspension mercifully snapped off, angling the “Awful-Awful” into the right-side wall and a long, grinding halt.

The look on little Crew Young’s mug suggests that nitromethane flows through the veins of father and son. Daddy Jim Young came from Wisconsin to defeat the world’s best modern slingshots and set Top Speed for the breed at 261.78.

Nostalgia Funny Cars ain’t what they used to be just a few short years ago, but there are still a lot of them. More than 30 shooting for 16 spots included Brad Thompson’s swoopy, droopy 1969 Camaro facsimile, which fell in round 2. Photographer Dave Kommel had a clear shot of the front end until the driver’s fiancée, Jana Treur, got in the way, dang it.

The post Cackling Nitro Cars Hit Escondido, Barona, and Bakersfield! appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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[lareinedumondejeb]

I rode my horse Pancanal throughout the countryside outside of Managua, Nicaragua, land of fuming volcanoes.

When I asked for advice on writing my cover letter for tenure-track job applications, I was told to address what I had done in the 16 years between receiving my Bachelor’s degree and going back to school for a Master’s in psychology. My draft letter had not done so… it was pointed out that departments want to know something about me beyond my academic records (papers published, courses taught). It was kindly not pointed out that 16 unexplained years could have been spent in prison, in a hippie commune, in a mental institution… insert anything an active imagination can come up with.

Much of my time in Spain was spent on a horse. Even when I was working as a full-time teacher, I would get up at 4:30 am on Saturday to ride out once a week. (Hipodromo de la Zarzuela, Madrid)

Unless they did some serious stalking, an admissions committee probably would not come up with the truth, so even though that paragraph about what happened in the interim felt weird, I have included it, in some form, in all my letters. It pretty much states what happened: I lived abroad for 16 years, most of them in Spain, but also in Mexico, Panama, and Nicaragua. I trained and rode race horses. I worked for an equine magazine. I taught at a bilingual British/Spanish school.

My first class, Preparatory (aka kindergarten) at St. Michael’s School (2005)

That doesn’t really mean anything… oh a reader could guess that I may know something about horses, children, and Spanish, but how much, and what that knowledge looks like, is not revealed. More importantly, much of who I am that resulted from that time abroad is only tangentially related, if at all, to these broad descriptions.

For example, my love of lieder began when I tried to play music for my horses at the track in Madrid (I was an amateur owner). The little radio I had would only play a classical station without static. Of course, I was already familiar with classical music; my parents had plenty, my grandfather loved it (I still remember his music collection), and I had played in an excellent high school band that performed, among other things, lots of Tchaikovsky, including the 1812 Overture, Wagner, Dvorak, etc. And I had already developed a certain fascination with Requiems. But I knew nothing of lieder.

At the track, I only listened. I didn’t understand the German, and my budget did not extend to purchasing CDs with lyrics in German and English. That would come later, when I had more money, and when I ran into Schubert’s Erlkönig–one of my favorites encountered on classical radio–writ into the story of Richard Power’s Time of Our Singing.  I had read Power’s Goldbug Variations years before (thanks to a wonderful used book store in Madrid); it’s full of Bach, and led to my enduring addiction to the his Goldberg Variations.  The Time of Our Singing happened to me much later, when I was already the mother of two small children; it revived my love of lieder and led to a huge collection of CDs.

You can go from the backstretch of a racetrack to Hugo Wolf.

I had gone to Spain with plans to stay a year and then return to the States. I wanted to do premed. I was not very forthright about this to the people in Spain. I arrived, and refused to make long-term commitments. But I ended up staying. You see, riding and training racehorses is fun. It’s challenging, physically and mentally, especially at first. During the first year, I was so exhausted (muscles work a lot harder when you are a novice) I had no time to be bored. I watched and learned. I rode with many trainers. I ended up with  my own horses, my own stable, and took the starting gate test to get my amateur jockey license and the trainers’ exam to get my amateur training license. I followed vets and farriers around. I learned to perform lameness checks and identify many unsoundnesses from the saddle and from the ground, I learned to draw blood, run a line, how long it takes to drip one liter, or five.  I learned to count time, and calculate whether I was going to gallop a two minute mile, or make it in 1:40. To make a few extra pesetas, I translated, magazine articles, documents such as training contracts. I made some sad attempts at writing novels. I listened to classical radio.

I read many books. And since Spanish libraries were poor, and most books were expensive, I read primarily classics. I read many of them twice. I’ve probably read every Penguin classic ever published (unless there are some that don’t get sold in Spain and except for Tom Jones. I just couldn’t finish Tom Jones.) Wordsworth classics were a bit less cheap, so I’ve probably only read 3/4 of the ones that don’t overlap with Penquin.

I’ve still got most of the classics I bought and read during my years at the racetrack (1993-1997).

Of course, I also read a lot of Spanish novels, because I could borrow them. And I have always had a language rule: If it was written in Spanish, I only read it in Spanish; if it was written in English, I only read it in English. If it was written in Portuguese, French or Italian, I prefer to read it in Spanish (that includes Kundera, who wrote in French). If it was written in German or Russian, I prefer to read it in English. Tolstoy added a lot of French in, so, just to be safe, I’ve read Anna Karenina and War and Peace** in both English and Spanish. I prefer Anna Karenina in Spanish, but War and Peace in English (with the French in French), but of course there are so many translations, that may matter more than the language per se.  There are a lot of authors I’ve only read in Spanish; clearly all those who wrote in Spanish (except Garcia Marquez, since my grandparents gave me One Hundred Years of Solitude when I in my early teens), but also Proust, Houellebecq, Anais Nin, Saramago, Stendhal…

**to give credit where it is due, I had already read War and Peace (and The Magic Mountain, Narcissus and Goldmund, The Woman in White, Women in Love, and many more) at my mother’s urging, years before. My grandparents had fed me a constant drip of classics from the time I could read. I did not arrive at this point having read only Anne McCaffrey, Ursula K. le Guin, Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, David Eddings, and the like; but I mainly read genre fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy.

I was an accidental scholar, those years at the racetrack, because for the most part, I could only afford classics.  I read at least one book a week. Add in the fact that almost all my speaking was done in Spanish, whereas about 2/3 of my reading was done in English… I listened to classical music that was for the most part instrumental or, if vocal, in German or Latin and occasionally French or Italian; except the tangos. I listened to a lot of tangos.

This is probably not an unusual account for an American expat on a shoestring budget. One of the great things about just leaving your home country and forging your way, where no one knows much at all about you, except that you’re a Yankee, and probably stark raving mad, is that you start out with a blank slate. You learn about people from the ground up (especially at a racetrack). I had graduated from Georgetown University. It took two and a half years before the horse-owning, propertied side of my racetrack acquaintances realized I’d even gone to college (sooner or later it becomes impossible to avoid a direct question).

My first ride on Kamsia at the Hipodromo de las Americas, which was exactly two miles from our flat in Polanco (Mexico DF). I took a taxi there and jogged back every morning.

Eventually, and inevitably, I left the full-time racetrack life (although I continued to gallop whenever I could). I moved to Mexico City with my then husband; there I renewed my flute playing, watched every single film that came out in the 18 months we were there (there were seven theatres within walking distance of our flat in Polanco), visited every gallery and museum and exhibition… during this time, my friend Amy got married, and when I saw our mutual friend Stephanie there, she asked how my writing was going. Wow. For the last several years, I had forgotten to do more than keep detailed records of horse exercise and feed regimes, and my own intake of wine, films, and books.

lienzo charro de la villa

Above: a charreada in Mexico, DF.

I started writing again. I read a lot more books, because I had more money. I began to collect CDs.

In 1999 we moved to Panama and lived there for over three years. Both my sons were born there. Compared to Mexico City, there was little to do… but I made good friends and became a member of the best book club. Instead of reading the same book every month, we had a huge collection, and we read what we wanted. The rule was, you had to read at least one book each meeting, but I usually read 3-4. That was when I became very conversant with contemporary literary fiction. I’d read books I never would have considered had I not heard other members describe them in flattering–or better yet, controversial–terms.

In Panama I began to think about going back to university. I took a class at Universidad Católica Santa María La Antigua with the name of Bioethics, which I thought would mean medicine, but it really meant the environment.. The professor was Dutch. The class was in Spanish. My term paper was on Radical Ecology. I really had no idea of what radical ecology meant before that class.

I began writing novels in Panama, and I continued to do so when we moved to Nicaragua in 2002. In fact, writing was pretty much all I did in Nicaragua, other than being a mother, riding my horse, and having an expat social life. I met Enrique Bolaños, then the President of Nicaragua, but I didn’t recognize him. We had a conversation, and I walked away, and then I was told who he was and that I was an idiot (hahaha). To be fair, I am pretty sure that whoever introduced us mumbled his name 😉

I still read–but primarily nonfiction. For some reason, I do not like to read fiction when I am writing the first draft of a novel. I wrote three novels during the 15 months we were in Managua. And I had Readerville, the best online writer and reader site that ever lived and died.

In 2003, we returned to Spain, originally planning to stay about six months before moving to Bahrain. Ended up getting a divorce and staying in Spain, where I obtained a CELTA certificate, and then was hired by St. Michael’s school, where I taught 4-6 year olds for 1.5 years, and then secondary and baccalaureate for three years.

Directing a bilingual production of Evita was one of the most challenging and entertaining things I did at St. Michaels’.

Teaching at St Michael’s was fun, especially once I was moved to the older kids and given the top level students for English. My first class of second year baccalaureate students (aka seniors) was tiny but wonderful. Later classes were also great; challenging, but rewarding. Many of my students have become friends and are still in touch; I made great friends on the staff. I helped direct three musicals; I was one of three teachers who took the entire (junior year level) class to Italy.

I preferred older kids, but one of my favorite classes was a group of (secondary) first-years (equivalent to 7th grade).

I also continued writing books the entire time I was teaching. Most years, I completed nanowrimo. I read up on how to sell books (get an agent), and attempted to get an agent. I sent around 10 queries, and got discouraged. Since then, I have occasionally sent a flurry of queries. The only positive result was the response from Trafalgar Square Books, and they told me that although they loved my manuscript, it wasn’t the right thing for a newbie writer, and would I like to write another book, about myself or someone else. That’s where the Cowboy Dressage book came from, thanks to an old friendship with the Beth-Halachmys. And that wasn’t until I was in grad school.

St. Michael’s was a fantastic place to work. This was a staff party, but we also had wine for brunch when it was someone’s birthday. In Spain, the birthday person treats everyone else (to drinks, at a bar, or to breakfast, at work)

By the time I was working at St. Michael’s, I had determined to come back to the States to go to grad school… I thought probably philosophy, since that had been my hobby and passion since my senior year in high school. When my youngest finished first grade (by which time he could read and write in Spanish as well as English), we moved back to California. It was hard to go… I had a permanent contract at the school, and many good friends. But, I was bored, intellectually. I felt like I lacked mental discipline. I had things to say in philosophy, and I did not know how to say them (in a way that would result in a publication). So we moved to Arcata, CA., and I ended up doing psychology, which is not as good for discussion as philosophy is, but you can do empirical research, and statistics. I love designing studies and analyzing data (collecting it, not so much, but that’s a necessary step).

And now I am about to finish my PhD in psychology, with more experience than most, precisely because there is a hole in my cv.  I have acquired, accidentally, it seems, refined tastes in music, or so they say, including a giant CD collection. I have read more than is probably good for me, and think of everything in the context of fiction. Curiously enough, I have ended up studying fiction quite fortuitously; I set out to study moral cognition (narrative moral agency in particular), and stumbled upon my advisor’s short description on the OU psych department page: it had morality and fiction in the same tiny paragraph, and I thought, hmm, that sounds interesting.

Many many times I have wanted to say (and I have sometimes said it) that fiction has expressed a concept far better, many times. That Tolstoy and Trollope and DH Lawrence could tell you more about what motivates human behavior than any textbook or research article. That awe can be found listening to Brahms Requiem.  That teaching preschool is an excellent way to learn developmental psychology. That racing horses shows you that time perception is relative. That language shapes thought, just try doing philosophy in another language (so yeah, I’ve got an answer to that question).

Sometimes I am astounded by the ignorance of educated–if by this we mean, PhD–people when it comes to literature, history, and music. Of course, they have spent their time in other ways. But this ignorance is often combined with a disdain for the popular–genre fiction, music–and distrust of the rural–horses, ranches, racetracks. And that’s interesting indeed.

Sometimes there is a lot going on in a gap decade and a half.

coda:

It’s been over eight years since we returned to the states. I have not yet reached the point where I will have lived half of my adult life in the USA. Arcata was wonderful (I could see the Pacific from my back porch and had redwoods in my yard), and Norman has been a good place to live, but I really miss living abroad. I miss capital cities. I miss diversity of language, skin, culture, thought. I miss culture, public transport, and the smell of an underground train in steam coming up through a grate on a cold day. It’s been great this semester, hanging out with others at the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing, not least because we are a diversity of discipline, thought, language, and culture (but mainly because we talk philosophy).

I had a phone interview (that didn’t progress to more) with St. John’s University (Queens). The main question seemed to be, could I live in NYC? And my hesitation about the position was undoubtedly evident, but it wasn’t because I couldn’t live in the city (besides, both Belmont and Aqueduct are within 6 miles of the university). Oh there are downsides (where could I keep a horse?) but… oh the culture! When I was in Boston last May, I wanted to wallow in it, in trains and sidewalks and people and the anonymity of the city. I can adapt anywhere, but there is more in a city.

For many reasons, I would like to stay in the States, but I do miss life as an expat, and ever since last November, I have been contemplating the possibility of relocating. Perhaps not permanently, not yet, but at least for a few years.

In my fairy tale life, I would live in a horse ranch, in the country, but close enough to a major university to be on the faculty–conduct research with a light teaching load.  AND I would have enough  money to fly to Paris, Madrid, Vienna, Mexico City, anywhere I wished, whenever I had the time. But that’s an unlikely scenario. Right now, I’d settle for a nice post doc someplace outside of the Bible Belt.

such is life, per Goethe and Schubert:

but also, perhaps:

That gap in my cv When I asked for advice on writing my cover letter for tenure-track job applications, I was told to address what I had done in the 16 years between receiving my Bachelor's degree and going back to school for a Master's in psychology.

[sueboohscorner]

#The Flash Season 2 Episode 1 "Mixed Signals" Recap and Review

The episode starts with a jerk buying an apartment that looks like it belongs on Arrow. He gets thrashed around the elevator by a program called Kilgore and dies. A guy in a hoodie with glowing purple eyes leaves the scene.

Barry pulls a Tom Cruise in his apartment, makes breakfast, and then watches tv the way the rest of us all do, but at 1000 times the speed. I missed adorkable Barry, so yay!

Iris comes in and talks about going through the wedding binder. Barry’s already done it.

Barry shows up to the elevator crime scene with Joe and Captain Singh. The man has been identified as Kurt Weaver, a billionaire.

Cisco shows up, throws his badge around like it isn’t plastic, and then checks out the elevator. It was hacked.

At S.T.A.R labs, while the computer is decrypting the code, Cisco shows Barry the new suit. He even gives him an instruction manual.

With that in mind, Barry invites Iris to dinner, having canceled training and then he leaves. Random question, does Iris still have a job? She used to be a reporter, but we haven’t really seen her outside of S.T.A.R. labs and the apartment, so did she quit? Theories are appreciated.

After Barry leaves, Caitlin walks in and Caitlin tells that she and Ronnie went into couple’s therapy when they started working together. Iris brushes it off and then the breach alarm goes off. Caitlin almost changes, but manages to contain it.

The girls and Wally are there with guns when Cisco walks in and tells them not to shoot. It’s just Gypsy. She’s here for a date that Cisco has to postpone.

There is an Asian guy in his car listening to Top 40 on the radio. It gets hacked and the car starts speeding down the road. Iris gets an alert and tells both Wally and Barry to go, but Barry says he can handle it. Poor Wally doesn’t do much this week, and something’s off about his hair.

Barry gets to the car and realizes that the driver isn’t in control. Iris tells him to go left and there’s a runoff that they can stop the car at. Barry decides to go right because he thinks the street’s empty. What he doesn’t know is that construction started on it three months earlier. He has to deconstruct the car in seconds so that the guy skids to a stop.

Barry apologizes for not listening while Cisco mourns the car. Iris gets off the phone with Joe and tells the team that the guy’s name is Tim Kwan and Joe is going to talk to him. After they figure out that the code is the same from the elevator, Caitlin recognizes that it looks like an organic virus.  The hacker is a meta. The names start to sound familiar to Cisco, from tech magazines he used to collect.

Barry and Iris talk in the hallway and Iris brings up couple’s therapy, which she’s scheduled for them in 30 minutes. This is a bad idea for several reasons. One, they do not need therapy. They need to talk, but it’s not as bad as therapy. Two, there are things about their relationship that they cannot talk about with a normal therapist, like the fact that Barry is the Flash. Three, girl you gotta give him some time to process. All these things aside though, these scenes were completely hilarious, so all is forgiven.

In the actual therapist’s office, there is an outed Oliver magazine, which is a great Easter egg to last week.

The therapist comes in and Barry’s super uncomfortable. Really, they both are and they start going into a list of all the funerals they’ve been to in the past few years, which shouldn’t be funny but it is.

Cisco and Caitlin are looking through Cisco’s tech magazines when Gypsy walks in. They find a picture of Weaver, Kwan, and two other people in the magazine.

The meta guy, who was in the picture, runs into Joe at the police station. Joe doesn’t think anything of it and goes to talk to Kwan. The meta activates a grenade robot in the armory. Joe sees it and distress signals Barry, who is ecstatic at getting out of therapy.

Cisco says it’s the same code as before and he found a connection between the victims. Four years ago, they all created an app called Kilgore and sold it to a big tech guy. Joe recognizes the mystery guy in the photo, Ramsey Deacon. Iris sends Joe and Wally to protect Sheila Agnani, the other person in the picture. 

Barry apologizes about therapy and Iris tells them that they have another appointment for the same day because apparently this therapist has no one else to see.

Cisco can’t figure out the code because it keeps changing. Caitlin compares it to the mutations of an organic virus. Gypsy walks in and is ticked because obviously and Cisco has to cancel. Caitlin, who has become the relationship whisperer tells Cisco exactly how much trouble he’s in and freaks him out.

Back in therapy, we get to the real problem, which is Iris being mad at Barry for leaving. I have seen a lot of Iris hate about this, but she’s human y’all. Let up.

Joe and Wally are in a car outside of Agnani’s house, which Wally has bugged. Kwan shows up and warns her, says they never should have screwed him over and then he appears. Agnani refuses to apologize and Deacon hacks her insulin pump and takes Kwan.  Wally stabilizes her.

Caitlin and Cisco talk which makes Cisco realizes he needs to talk with Gypsy. Apparently, Earth 19 has a holiday called 111 day, which is super cheesy and sounds a lot like Valentine’s Day and they’ve missed it. She didn’t tell Cisco because she was embarrassed. They talk about how they need to communicate more.

Iris and Barry talk about what it was like when he was gone and how being married means that they share themselves completely.

Kwan is livestreaming a confession, which Cisco is able to trace. He gives Barry the antibodies that Caitlin and him made and Barry and Wally go save Kwan from being pulled apart.

Barry’s new suit is super teched up and so Deacon can hack it. He Ironmans Wally, and then all kinds of things happen, like blowing up into a raft and destroying comms.

The most important is the Babel Protocol, which is a self-destruct sequence and a Batman Easter Egg. Iris tells Barry to lightning himself and he does, going unconscious.

Deacon shoots at Kwan because he’s tired. Barry stops it and injects Deacon. Wally wakes up.

Cisco and Gypsy finally have their date and it’s wonderful. Apparently Earth 19 doesn't have Santa.

Barry and Joe talk to Deacon in prison. He didn’t get his powers from the particle accelerator.

Now for the dun dun dun. The woman walks in on the Thinker finishing Schubert’s eighth symphony. They wanted him in Iron Heights and there are 11 others. He obviously doesn’t get his hands dirty.

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode, despite a couple lingering questions. 8/10