Attracted to the light

And people ask me why I realate to Snoopy........:-)



I have a couple of root consoles minimized in my taskbar, an enterprise manager who is apparently angry at me and keeps loosing connection to all cluster db's and a documentation of 1000 pages which I really DO NOT enjoy reading.

But it feels good......why it feels good is a mix of a multitude of reasons, and I have lately been so obligated to write and write and write that I now find it difficult to write for pleasure...pathetic for me ......shame on me.....well its not just that. I have also developed what I can now recognise as a reluctancy of expressing my inner thoughts out into the void.

The void.....difficult to define but felt nonetheless.

My body and my apparent actions are here but my mind wanders and this seldom...no ....almost never happens to me , at least not to an extent that is difficult for me to focus. I'm out of balance yes, but the good kind. Is there a good kind? Hell yeah there's a good kind (kind of exhausting though because I have to keep up 3 personas together all the time)

Its actually quite quiet right now here, completely different than this morning when it was chaos....not the organised one but the other kind...the hectic one.

So my mind easily drifts .....

I am still the same person who was a few weeks before yet I feel quite different.....out of balance (yes I repeat myself) but good.....I talk and interact, produce but still a part of my mind is outside of all this, sometimes observing sometimes in a completely different place, with someone else.

Life is quite unexpected. And it has been said by my betters in much more eloquent ways how difficult it is to open up your closed and guarded self and allow someone to step over it but who is the judge who will tell you when to do it? Answer : Noone, not even you.

You just do it, and as that great kid says to Liam Neeson in Love actually, 'Let's go get the shit kicked out of us by love'.

You take a chance and as you grow up the chances become less and less and your own willingness to take them becomes less as well. You reach a point when it just does not even move you, not a tiny bit. And you think, ok that's it for me, I m out of the game because I don't want to play the game , no more interesting 'contestants' and the ones I thought were interesting or equal were delusions probably and at best, have not left a bitterness behind.

Yet, as life would have it, because life is, afterall, not entirely stupid (quite the opposite I would say), you get a sudden kick which tells you, get up, wake up, this is your Life calling, come and re-join the ranks, the Game goes ever on and on.

I still hope, so I still cry at La Traviata. As for Tosca, well that is now for me absolutely exclusive.

My young heart, you are still here, still beating, as sung at Musetta's waltz (that's La Boheme). (Gioventù mia – tu non sei morta – My youth - you are not dead - Quanto m'en vo)

My heart you are still able to feel and get hurt. God, what a relief, I though you were gone.

Particles of dust, dancing in a sunbeam.....

P.S. I feel alive.......and for that I am grateful and happy.

P.S.2. I am listening to Nessun Dorma , the instrumental version. My spine has chills and my eyes water......

P.S.3. The human race is filled with passion. repeat: THE HUMAN RACE IS FILLED WITH PASSION. Do not let that passion fade because of the ones that have been too weak, or afraid, or liars simply to face it.

P.S.4 I am like a butterfly attracted to a bright light

P.S5. Listening to Enigma A posteriori - Private Lounge Remix - Invisible Love the Boca Junior Remix

Turandot

One of the operas by my beloved Giacomo Puccini and probably one of the underestimated operas in the history of the 'sport', Turandot, his final masterpiece with the aria 'Nessun Dorma', after which the composer died and the opera was left to be delivered to its end by Franco Alfano, who, in contreverse to Puccini's legacy, gave the opera a 'happy ending' with the supposed 'lovers' staying together in the end.
Turandot, a princess of China, denies marrying anyone unless he answers 3 riddles, by pain of death. Many royal descendants found death for not finding the corect answers, but then comes our hero, a young prince, who finds his long lost dying royal father
accompanied by a girl, Liou, who has loved him (the prince) all her life and willingly gives her life up to keep his secret, his name , from Turandot and subsequently save him from death. Our prince answers the 3 riddles (Hope, Blood and Turandot being the answers) and offers to the princess a chance to escape marriage if by morning she discovers his name. Turandot tortures Liou who commits suicide after a uniquely beautiful aria where she sings of Love and its beauty (in the original performance the Great Arturo Toscanini in La Scala laid down his batton and stepped down as the curtain lowered slowly - the composer died here "Qui finisce l'opera, perché a questo punto il maestro è morto" - I was fortunate to see the original programme in the stairs of La Scala only a few months back ).

In the end Turandot discovers love and when she discovers the Prince's name she procclaims to the world that his name is 'Love' thus saving him from death. In the great performance in the Theater of Herod Atticus the director understood and tried to honour the Master's legacy....Turandot after procclaiming the PRince's name removes her wig thus revealing her true hair, silver as that of a very old woman. Turandot dies after being relieved of the pain of her defiance of love, she finds love and dies because so many years have passed since her youth. A trully magnificent performance and what a setting for that performance to be delivered.

Nessun Dorma.......forever.....one final big cheer for the composer.

Phantom of the Opera - Sarah Brightman & Michael Crawford

Phantom of the Opera- Sarah Brightman and Steve Harley

Turandot , Nessun Dorma (Puccini) - Sarah Brightman(Live)

So , its been more than a week since my last post, but its Xmas, that is only to be expected:)

I was fortunate enough to do a thing I love doing any day of any month of any year, but *especially* during Xmas. Go to the opera.

And not once but twice....well not the same opera....:)

I got to see Puccini's Madama Butterfly at the Greek National Opera and also Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Athens Concert Hall.

Both operas are to me precious, but for different reasons.

I love Italian opera. I really do. I know of many people who think of the opera as a really tiring and boring form of music or entertainment. But to me, the italian operas, Puccini, Verdi, are a rare form of pleasure.

Whenever I hear 'Nessun Dorma', the last aria Puccini ever composed, whenever I hear Violetta singing 'Amami Alfredo' in La Traviata, or Museta's Waltz in "La Boheme" , whenever I hear 'Vissi d'Arte' in Tosca ( I lived for my art, I lived for love ) , and finnaly whenever I hear Butterfly saying goodbye to her son before she dies in 'Tu? tu? Piccolo Iddio!' I feel the power of the music in my very soul.

Puccini was a great composer, a magician for me, who could with his librettos transform a few notes into emotions so powerful that you cannot stop yourself from weeping , not because of the tragedy of the lives of his heroes and heroines but also because all these people who had to die in these plays sung about how much they loved, adored , cherished life.

The same applies for Verdi, however his heroes were less helpless. Puccini's heroines are helpless, hit by the cruelty of life and humans, so fragile and yet so bright, a source of light and love, like a butterfly, that is destroyed when touched, her wings broken forever, unable to fly anymore. But her beauty is so utterly irresistible that men just have to take it, have it even for a moment and then destroy it.

To me that is the most tragic thing in his operas.

I lived for my art, I lived for love.

As for Mozart's Magic Flute, I have to say that as far as the music goes its not one of my favorites.

But......a big but.....the Magic Flute is a multilevel opera. Has a story that is so complex that once or twice is not enough to start to comprehend it.

Its probably the first opera parents take their kids, its fun and Xmas spirit. With Papageno and Papagena and the Prince Tamino and the Princess Pamina and Queen of the Night.

However this is not what this opera is about. Mozart wrote it just after the French Revolution and just before he died. Haydn had introduced him to FreeMasonry and its full of the ideals (the autonomy of the individual, self-determination, appalling sexism), the ideals (power, wisdom, beauty), and the symbols (aprons, hammers, compasses, a pyramid with an all-seeing eye) of the Masons.

The Magic Flute and the masons are something I shall write about in another topic when I'm more concentrated, now I'm just scratching the surface.

However there are many things to dig up in the masonic and tectonic tradition, in secret societies, in works of art like Da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks (National Gallery in London and the Louvre) and the the myths concerning Christianity , the Holy Family and Mary Magdalene.

I know my friends are sick and tired of me always talking about this stuff but I am fascinated!

There's more I have to write in this post but since I have to get back to work I'll just write a few of my favourite lyrics:

Vissi d'Arte :

Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore,
I lived for my art, I lived for love,
non feci mai male ad anima viva!
I never did harm to a living soul!
Con man furtiva
With a secret hand
quante miserie conobbi aiutai.
I relieved as many misfortunes as I knew of.
Sempre con fe sincera
Always with true faith
la mia preghiera my prayer ai santi tabernacoli sali.
rose to the holy shrines.
Sempre con fe sincera
Always with true faith
diedi fiori agl’altar.
I gave flowers to the altar.
Nell’ora del dolore
In the hour of grief
perche, perche, Signore,
why, why, o Lord,
perche me ne rimuneri cosi?
why do you reward me thus?
Diedi gioielli della Madonna al manto,
I gave jewels for the Madonna’s mantle,
e diedi il canto agli astri, al ciel,
and I gave my song to the stars, to heaven,
che ne ridean piu belli.
which smiled with more beauty.
Nell’ora del dolor
In the hour of grief
perche, perche, Signor,
why, why, o Lord,
ah, perche me ne rimuneri cosi?
ah, why do you reward me thus?

Tu? tu? Piccolo Iddio! :

Butterfly

You? you? you? you? you? you? you?
Tu? tu? tu? tu? tu? tu? tu?
(anxiously but
with great feeling)
My little God! Love, my love,
piccolo Iddio! Amore, amore mio,
my Lily flower of rosebud.
fior di giglio e di rosa.
(taking her son's head in her hands
and drawing him close to her)

Although you must never know it,
Non saperlo mai per te,
it is for you alone, for your innocent eyes that,
pei tuoi puri occhi,
(in a whisper)
Butterfly dies...
muor Butterfly...
because then you may
perché tu possa andar
travel beyond oceans
di là dal mare
and when you have grown up,
senza che ti rimorda
you will never feel remorse knowing
ai di maturi,
that your mother abandoned you.
il materno abbandono.
(with exaltation)

Oh, you who came down to me from
O a me, sceso dal trono
Heaven's highest throne,
dell'alto Paradiso,
look for the last time upon your Mother's face,
guarda ben fiso, fiso di tua
look closely at her face, closely,
madre la faccia!
so that some trace will remain, look carefully!
che ten resti una traccia, guarda ben!
Farewell my beloved! goodbye little love!
Amore, addio! addio! piccolo amor!
(in a faint voice)
Go and play, play!
Va, gioca, gioca!

P.S. Φριιιιιιιιζ!!! Φριζ λέω!!! Πουτ δε κοτ ντάουν σλόουλυ!!!!!!

(για να ευθυμήσουμε και λίγο)