Let Us Now Praise Alfred Deller

What is it about them; why do have such an effect on people? Well, consider the words of one of the best countertenors singing today:

"There's always this fascination about the countertenor voice. But I've never really understood what that is, because I'm doing it every day – it's my voice. Yet when we sing, people cry and we get love letters. You get used to that." He turns to Jaroussky. "But I experienced, for the first time, what other people feel when I heard your recording Opium. I got goosebumps. For the first time in my life – I'm serious, Philippe – I thought, 'A-ha! This is why people are so fascinated by our voices.'"

The speaker is Andreas Scholl, and the Jaroussky he is talking to is Philippe Jaroussky, eleven years his junior and an absolute knockout as a singer.

And the countertenor voice? Well, it’s something of a mystery: most people believe that it’s produced as a kind of falsetto, but it turns out that, in the lower register, some notes can be produced naturally in what’s known as “chest voice.” (Full disclosure—I have only the dimmest idea of what this is, and a better blogger would look it up and report it to you. And why don’t I know more than the fact that singers feel that, when singing in “head voice,” they’re using their heads as resonance chambers? Mainly because there’s still a lot we don’t know, though apparently the whole physiology of singing has increased a lot over the last twenty years. So singers, while the rest of us are busy getting off to work and raising the children, spend lots of hours debating whether countertenors are male sopranos, male altos, or falsettoists. Oh, and by the way, you really, really, don’t want to get into the debate, so if you meet a high-voiced male singer at a party—rare, but it might happen—don’t call him a countertenor, or anything else. Otherwise, you’ll be lectured to for the rest of the night about vocal production.)

At any rate, there’s no question that the countertenor is a particularly lovely voice. But the mystery is that we have it at all, since but for one man, Alfred Deller, we might not have it at all.

Deller, born in 1912, championed the countertenor voice, and was instrumental in championing what has come to be called “historically informed performance” practice. And that would be? Well, it goes from using the “correct” instrument of the time (a harpsichord, not a piano; a theorbo, not a guitar) to correct tuning (our modern tuning is much higher than early music, and anybody who has played a cello tuned half a step lower—I think you can guess whom I mean—knows that the instrument responds wonderfully) to proper articulation and performance technique. Supposedly, all this leads to hearing music the way that the composer would have wanted / would have heard it.

So Deller was out there when nobody else was, and at a time when men were singing like women? I’ve always wondered about the beard that Deller wore all his life, even at that point when facial hair was tantamount to declaring yourself a Communist. And there’s that famous quote of the French woman who said: "Monsieur, vous êtes eunuque"—to which Deller replied, "I think you mean 'unique,' madam."

So Deller took what was once a dying tradition, and kept it going. But he did more—he knew an amazing number of the best composers in Britain at the time; Benjamin Britten wrote the part of Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for him.

But the best thing? Deller was also instrumental in championing Baroque opera, which previously nobody had done much about. So everybody knew a Handel aria or two—think of the famous Largo that you learned on the piano, also known as “Ombra mai fu”—but nobody had heard the full opera (in this case, Serse, of 1738). But soon, we were hearing them again, as well as a lot of other music. And so, more and more male singers began to consider becoming countertenors, instead of tenors.

That’s what happened to Jaroussky—he started out life as a tenor, and then, out of curiosity, his voice teacher asked him what his falsetto (damn, what did I just say?) sounded like. And he turned out to be nimbler and more beautiful in that range of his voice.

It may be simple numbers, but I suspect not. Because as you can hear in the two clips below, the countertenor voice has really…well, improved. With Deller, and his son Mark, also a countertenor, the tone is a bit thin, reedy, and forced. But with Jaroussky and Scholl? Well, here’s what one person had to say, in the comment section of the Purcell clip below:

As a countertenor myself, I have a deep respect and appreciation for Deller. That being said, I'm glad that we've moved to a fuller, richer tone. I've never been all that enamoured of his singing. Still, we've got so many good countertenors today, and we couldn't have done it without pioneers like Deller.

I think that’s just. But I’ll say, as well, that Deller’s recordings of English folksongs have a magical quality that other singers—such as Scholl—may not have. It may simply be the long, long tradition that Deller inherited. Or it may be that the listener knows—that’s Deller, not a superb but still German modern countertenor. My vote?

There’s something about the sparseness, the simplicity of Deller’s voice that makes it ideal for folksong. Short of being, very late at night, on the English moors and hearing the song sung though the windows of a candlelit cottage—you couldn’t hear it better!

A Stranger in Several Worlds

I wanted to bring you Handel, that’s what I wanted to do—but could I? In our technical world, shouldn’t it have been possible to run over to YouTube, knock on Joyce DiDonato ’s door, and ask her to sing Piangero la sorte mia, from Giulio Cesare?

So I tried that, and got the following message:

500 Internal Server Error

Sorry, something went wrong.

 A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation.

If you see them, show them this information:

AB38WEMsl82BNwFlnjAjN_pSfOuzgzsjh-uXy0c70ARLtmFIagYeFkcKKttC

ALP2h396ZpWP8XoSMkcQ9JGv70FtwSE5jLFTu0SCmDkn4NxfaBz_ZAk0SOmQ

CbZxXa1qKY3oqivKmBYPBY1-BHQ3uEBkBD_PQbMDVw2igi8a_D445LlPl5FS

NBV_hUh6mxXpv8CUIgKG2PaQ9-W8CeGWQB6jUQ6Af6hf6jl144HmIxOfUIay

7sKJxVlvoRMPDsXcqqzFTn1s6nk082qRs1PSbLhWd0IEUogPlHQ5lsUPQfku

jBQgskIc4PhRrS5ojflfavNV4FfT_NFQSUFO0fI5u0ykmWYomVrb_7PkefQD

In fact, that was only the beginning of the message, which went on with twenty lines or so of gibberish that only a team of highly trained monkeys could understand. And speaking of the team of HTM’s—aren’t we being just a bit facetious, over there are Google / YouTube? Granted, a “500 Internal Server Error” is nothing more than a passing cloud in my day, but what if it hadn’t been? What if I had needed, seriously needed, Piangero? There are times you do, you know…..

And it’s no use telling you that Piangero is a knockout of an aria, since what are words, next to the wrenching sadness of the aria? Suffice it to say that Cleopatra—yup, that’s our girl—has lost both a major battle against Tolomeo and has also lost her man, Cesare, as well. And the music is something only a manic-depressive—and a rapid cycler as well—could write. The middle section is as wild as the two outer sections are vein-cuttingly tragic. And DiDonato, who is singing over the top of her game, just nails it.

But it wasn’t to be, Dear Reader, or was it? Because in looking up the lyrics for Piangero via Google, I saw a link for a YouTube clip of DiDonato singing the aria. Would it work if I clicked it?

Cautionary note—following a long tradition, this is undoubtedly bootlegged video from a New York performance, and thank God for it. Yes, the camera bobs up and down and about—at times decapitating DiDonato, at times losing her altogether. But if you can’t stand it, close your eyes and bask. Oh, and if you’d like to know what she’s singing, well—here are the words:

Why then, in one day,
I am deprived of magnificence and glory?

Oh, cruel fate!
Caesar, my beloved idol is probably dead, Cornelia and Sextus are defenceless
and cannot give me assistance. O God! There is no hope left in my life.

I will bemoan my fate
so cruel and brutal
As long as there is breath left in my body. And when I am dead
and become a ghost, I will haunt
the tyrant night and day.

)

And so the Gods who rule over bloggers relented, and let me bring you the clip above. Or who knows—the highly trained monkeys may have come through at last.

Because, for much of the morning, DiDonato declined to sing—sending error messages instead. In fact, everybody at YouTube was spending the morning on the golf course, since I was getting error messages all over the place.

I wasn’t supposed, you see, to bring you Handel, since there was another composer who needed a boost up. And though I’ll listen to the fabulous countertenor Philippe Jaroussky any day, why did I have to listen to him sing works by a guy named Reynaldo Hahn?

Or rather, who was Reynaldo Hahn? Really, if Jaroussky is singing him, shouldn’t I have heard of him? But there he was, the only clickable thing on YouTube this morning. So it was time to check him out, as can you by clicking the clip below.

)

Wow, what a find! And what’s the dope on Hahn?

Well, we can start with what Proust said: “everything I have ever done has always been thanks to Reynaldo.”

True, they were lovers for two years between 1894 and 1896 and then lifelong friends, but it’s still a tribute.

And, in addition to being a fine composer, Hahn—a Venezuelan who later became a French citizen and served in World War I—was a conductor of, especially, Mozart. Oh, and according to Wikipedia, Hahn had “a special gift of attracting important people to his side.”

Nice!

And he must have had the gift from an early age, because he was able to enter the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten, even though the Conservatoire frowned on child prodigies, and had refused as a child the great Franz Liszt. In the course of his 72 years, Hahn became, in the words of Wikipedia, a “composer, conductor, music critic, diarist, theatre director, and salon singer.”

Lastly, and tantalizingly, here’s what Wikipedia had to say about Hahn:

By the age of nineteen in 1894, Hahn had written many songs about love; however, his worldly sophistication masked shyness about his own personal feelings. He had close intimate friendships with women, and they were clearly fond of the gallant and charming young composer. Cléopatre-Diane de Mérode, a famous beauty of le beau monde and three years older than Hahn, inspired him to write: "I worship her as a great and perfect work of art". Despite this tribute to her, he reportedly loved her only at a distance his whole life. The famed courtesan Liane de Pougy referred to Hahn in her diary as the "sweetness in her life." Though close friends, their relationship ended when de Pougy married. Hahn famously told her: "Goodbye Lianon. I hate married people." Hahn was a closeted homosexual, even though in his personal letters he was frequently critical of homosexuals and homosexuality.

Is it that last sentence, with the information that he was a “closeted” homosexual (even in Paris, at that date could there have been anything else?), which makes me hear such sadness, such wistfulness in the song? Consider—he was Venezuelan, but living in another country. He was a gay man living in—well, another country. He drops his close friends when they marry. And he seems to have lived a life hidden even until the present day. I’ve heard of all the people Wikipedia lists as having been friends with Hahn, but Hahn?

A dark horse, indeed….

Ritorna, Ritorna

It hit yesterday, not Tuesday. On Tuesday, I had been remarkably buoyant about the government shutdown; yesterday, I was completely in the dumps.

Nor has it been a particularly good week for anyone who cares about the arts, especially music. The Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra lost its conductor, who had taken the orchestra to Europe in his first season, and where they were received with raves. Carnegie Hall shut down, due to a strike by stagehands, one of whom makes more than $140,000. Lastly—and this one really hurts— New York City Opera closed down. No—not temporarily, for good.

I lived only briefly in New York City—perhaps two months—and I don’t recall ever going to City Opera. But I knew the story, here told in Slate magazine:

Many of my friends were culture vultures, and culture, high culture, nosebleed high, was being made here. … The Metropolitan Opera, across Lincoln Center's plaza, was stupid. It was stodgy. It was fat, old people with fat, old money. At the New York State Theater you saw hot guys in full leather gabbing about Bev's Violetta in La traviata, or Samuel Ramey's naked chest in Boito's Mefistofeles. You met your friends there at intermission, sometimes a dozen of them. There were no cellphones, so you talked to people. Opera was high art that sometimes dickered with the dirt, but it had to remain high. It was where kings and the common people mixed, under the eyes of Phoebus Apollo, god of light and music.

It was also where young singers got their break; here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

During its nearly 70 year history, the NYCO has helped launch the careers of many great opera singers including Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Plácido Domingo, Maralin Niska, Carol Vaness, José Carreras, Shirley Verrett, Tatiana Troyanos, Jerry Hadley, Catherine Malfitano, Samuel Ramey, and Gianna Rolandi. Sills later served as the company's director from 1979–1989.[4] More recent acclaimed American singers who have called NYCO home include David Daniels, Mark Delavan, Mary Dunleavy, Lauren Flanigan, Elizabeth Futral, Bejun Mehta, Robert Brubaker and Carl Tanner.

It was also a company that took risks. Let the Met put on as many La Bohemes as they needed to make rich bored businessmen remember their first loves at Yale—City Opera caused talk and suspicion, championed new and American works, wasn’t afraid to get scrappy. In 1991, in the very worst of the plague years, how did Violetta die in La traviata? How else—of AIDS, of course.

Or consider the last opera that City Opera put on—typically, it was a new opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage, a British composer about Anna Nicole Smith. Take a look—it’s about as far away from traditional opera as you can get….

It was always an opera house that was just getting by—but it was also an opera house for people who were just getting by. Which meant that a guy who was working in a record store, and living in a cockroach-infested studio apartment as he dreamed of making it on Broadway or writing the great American novel could go and watch stuff like this. (Warning, it starts off boring, but wow—does it heat up!)

OK—time to come clean: opera is an art form that, like ballet, inherently appeals to gay men. Is it the theatricality, or the artificiality, or the long and arcane history? Who knows, but if you hear two men arguing about who was better, Callas or Tebaldi—you can be sure. There’s probably a boa along with the jeans in their closet.

So what happened? That old devil—mismanagement. The old City Opera was in City Center. Then they moved to Lincoln Center, which was too expensive, and didn’t feel right. The Met—after all—was 60 feet away. And then the management decided they wouldn’t have a home, but use varying stages around the city.

It didn’t seem to work. As well, the opera had run deficits for years, as their new manager, George Steel, eventually realized. And then, they needed to raise 7 million bucks, and only got to one or two million, improbably through a Kickstarter campaign.

“Vienna spends more on its opera house than the US does on ALL of its arts funding,” went a line that was often repeated forty years ago when I was in high school. If it wasn’t literally true, it was metaphorically true. And when we do spend on the arts, we want to get something back, to make it pay. Mozart is good for the brain—all right, we’ll plunk down 18 bucks for a Mozart CD to play to baby.

But I think other cultures do it better, and smarter. I think of a story that—I believe—Frances Mayes wrote about. It was of an American soldier just after World War II had concluded. He thought he really should go to the opera, just to experience a taste of Italy before he returned home. He had, after all, spent the war seeing death, torture, carnage, deprivation, ruins, bombed-out buildings and shell-shocked, homeless civilians walking like zombies through the devastated cities. So he went to the opera…

…and had never seen anything so beautiful, or heard anything so magical. At the end of three hours of magic, he sat in his chair and wept.

And the Italians?

They quietly walked past him, each one of them stopping to place a hand gently on top of the young man’s head.

City Opera, ritorna, ritorna!

Cara sposa, amante cara,

Dove sei?

Deh! Ritorna a' pianti miei!

Del vostro Erebo sull'ara,

Colla face dello sdegno

Io vi sfido, o spiriti rei

Beloved spouse, dearest heart,

Where art thou?

Woe! Return to him who weeps!

O guilty spirits from thy Erebus beneath the furrows,

My face one of complete contempt,

I defy thee!

Buxtehude and Body Parts

I have just spent the last hour plus listening to something that I have always wondered would happen. How would it feel, having spent large parts of my life listening to a LOT of music, suddenly to come upon something amazing, astonishing, and especially—new.

We listen so often to the same pieces that we forget—there’s a lot of surprisingly good music out there. And the piece that today brought tears to my eyes, it was so lovely, was Dietrich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri.

OK—if you go to Lutheran churches with any regularity, you’ll hear Buxtehude: he was a famous organist in his time, and his works for organ are still played. And yes, I knew that Buxtehude had taught Bach, who actually walked a couple hundred miles for the privilege of doing so. And yes, I remembered that Buxtehude had this deal going—he was going to give up his church position to Bach, if Bach married Buxtehude’s daughter.

Well apparently the daughter was no stunner—Bach and two other guys (one of whom was named Georg Friedrich Handel) turned the same deal down. Did she have a harelip? Did she snore loudly? We’ll never know—the mystery of Buxtehude’s daughter….

What I didn’t know was that Buxtehude wrote the first Lutheran Oratorio, although somebody had to, so why not he? But Membra is hardly just a musical curiousity: it’s both highly original and in parts ravishingly beautiful (check out the final “amen” for original, and the whole second clip for ravishing).

OK—text first. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

Membra Jesu Nostri (English: The Limbs of our Jesus), BuxWV 75, is a cycle of seven cantatas composed by Dieterich Buxtehude in 1680, and dedicated to Gustaf Düben. The full Latin title Membra Jesu nostri patientis sanctissima translates to "The most holy limbs of our suffering Jesus". This work is known as the first Lutheran oratorio. The main text are stanzas from the Medieval hymn Salve mundi salutare – also known as the Rhythmica oratio – a poem formerly ascribed to Bernard of Clairvaux, but now thought more likely to have been written by Medieval poet Arnulf of Leuven (died 1250). It is divided into seven parts, each addressed to a different part of Christ's crucified body: feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and head. In each part, biblical words referring to the limbs frame verses of the poem.

And the structure? Well, each section devoted to each body part is a cantata, which starts with an instrumental opening, a concerto for (mostly) five voices, three arias for a combination of voices (mostly one or three) and then a repeat of the concerto.

Please refer to this Wikipedia article for the text.

A Great Concerto Grosso

All right—let’s get the players straight. In the clip below, you have three groups of people. On the left will be a baroque flute and violin—and they’re the soloists. Next up are the cello and the harpsichord. The cello is playing at times the basso continuo, which for any less complicated composer / thinker than Bach, would be simple chords that provided the harmonic structure. But here Bach has the cello constantly shifting back and forth from the traditional role to one of almost soloist status. The cellist who doesn’t itch to play these parts is dead.

The continuo, by the way, is often left unspecified by baroque composers—whatever bass instrument came along could be used. Nor was the part frequently written out; like jazz musicians today, there was a complicated notation of numbers denoting notes based on the bass note. Sounds complicated? Initially it is, but after a bit, it starts to feel natural. Here, by the way, is what it looks like….

The other part of the basso continuo is the harpsichord, or really, any other keyboard or strummed instrument (The theorbo makes a really good one). And in this concerto, the Brandenburg 5, the harpsichord is given what some have called the first modern cadenza. It’s the long, showy solo at the end of the first movement. The cadenza, designed to showcase the virtuosity of the soloist, is also meant to fool around with the main themes of the movement—it’s all a showy rehash.

And this cadenza is spectacular—I’ve heard knowledgeable folk argue that it shouldn’t be played on the harpsichord at all. It’s so far ahead of its time, the thinking goes, that the piano is better suited to bring out all the nuances. Bach was writing for an instrument that didn’t exist. (Don’t please, argue this point with anyone connected to what is now being called HIP—historically informed performance.)

OK—you have on the left two soloists; in the center is the harpsichord and the cellist, who are both soloists and basso continuo; so who’s on the right? Well, it’s a little group called the ripieno—yes, computer, there are words you don’t know—who join in and form an “orchestral” backdrop. In this case, you have a violin, viola, and bass.

Bach wrote this concerto in 1719, and dedicated it to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Here, should you ever need an example of a dedication that goes from fulsome straight into brownnose, is the dedication:

As I had the good fortune a few years ago to be heard by Your Royal Highness, at Your Highness's commands, and as I noticed then that Your Highness took some pleasure in the little talents which Heaven has given me for Music, and as in taking Leave of Your Royal Highness, Your Highness deigned to honour me with the command to send Your Highness some pieces of my Composition: I have in accordance with Your Highness's most gracious orders taken the liberty of rendering my most humble duty to Your Royal Highness with the present Concertos, which I have adapted to several instruments; begging Your Highness most humbly not to judge their imperfection with the rigor of that discriminating and sensitive taste, which everyone knows Him to have for musical works, but rather to take into benign Consideration the profound respect and the most humble obedience which I thus attempt to show Him.[3][4]

All right—be fair. It was the style of the time.

And it also has to be said—this is a terrific piece of music. Yes, it may be a warhorse, a piece that is played so often it stops sounding new. Then, the curious thing happens—people shun the work because it seems trite, or overplayed. And then, of course, you go years without sitting down to listen to it again. And then when you hear it, you’re amazed—what were you doing all this time, listening to perfectly good though obscure music but neglecting a masterpiece?

Well, fortunately we have YouTube, which spies on me and then makes suggestions (I know, I should be upset and I’m not…). So when they suggested that I listen to the Croatian Baroque Ensemble playing the Brandenburg 5^th, I thought, ‘why not?’  Nor was I disappointed—they’re a knockout.    

I may have shot myself in the musical foot, by starting out with Bach—what else do you play after that?

Well, Corelli came to mind, and he wrote, in the good Baroque manner, a set of twelve of the little guys, written in the 1690’s but published in 1714—almost exactly at the time of Bach’s Brandenburgs. And they are as clean and fresh three hundred year later as the day Corelli wrote them. One of them gets trotted out regularly at Christmas—it even bears the name “Christmas Concerto.” The name was given by Corelli himself: Fatto per la notte di Natale ("Made for the night of Christmas").

It’s serenic—all right, not a word, but you know what I mean—music punctuated by gleeful, almost manic, sections. And check the guy playing what looks like a weird guitar or lute; that’s a theorbo.

Handel wrote two sets of concerti grossi—and composed them in 1739. Yes, they’re conventional—there’s nothing as thought-out as Bach, nor really as fresh as Corelli. But still, Handel on an off day is still Handel.

After the baroque era, everybody went off to compose other things, until, in the twentieth century, the form was rediscovered. Ernest Bloch composed one in 1925 in Cleveland Ohio. To me, it’s bombastic and unpleasant music; but interesting to listen to. Stravinsky, more notably, composed Dumbarton Oaks in 1937—and the main theme of the first movement is a direct reference to the Third Brandenburg Concerto. Lastly, Vaughan Williams composed a concerto grosso in 1950. Here they all are….

A Saturday Rescued by Music

Time to tell the truth—this blogger took the day off.

It started when I heard the remarkable countertenor, David Daniels, a year ago singing via CD a concert of art songs. And it ended today, when I spent four and a half hours listening to one gorgeous aria after another, all presented by the Metropolitan Opera, coming to me via live feed from New York.

The Saturday afternoon live broadcast from the Met on radio is a thing of the past. So I was happy to pluck down the fifty bucks to get Mr. Fernández and me to a movie house, where we heard four and a half hours of stellar singing, saw Renée Fleming interview the singers, and most, heard what may be the most beautiful Baroque opera ever written.

Readers, I have failed you. Listeners, I give you this, from a blogger still soaring on what may be the most beautiful Baroque opera ever written, Guilio Cesare, by Handel.

Going Native?

CNN reports that the battle is over, and that the digital natives have won over the immigrants.

Which is to say that if you remember a time when you grabbed a piece of paper, put a black oily sheet of flimsier paper under it, then put another sheet under that and inserted around a roller—you’re an immigrant. If you cannot imagine creating a document without the program Word, you are a native.

A simpler test presented itself a few months ago. I learned to type on—well, a typewriter. What else would I have used? And so I continued to insert two spaces after a period.

That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?

Wrong.

Anybody learning keyboarding now knows that it’s one space, not two. And if you do do two spaces after terminal punctuation, a couple things will happen:

• the formatting will be completely screwed up if you publish electronically
• publishing houses may not accept your manuscript

It takes a lot of time—in a 250 page manuscript—to painstakingly delete spaces….

OK—so there are people out there whose experience of the world is solely digital. Is it a bad thing?

I think so.

Percy Tannenbaum of the University of California at Berkeley has written: “Among life’s more embarrassing moments have been countless occasions when I am engaged in conversation in a room while a TV set is on, and I cannot for the life of me stop from periodically glancing over to the screen. This occurs not only during dull conversations but during reasonably interesting ones just as well.”

That’s from an article in Scientific American titled “Television Addiction is no Mere Metaphor.” Who doesn’t know the feeling? You’re in somebody’s house, and there’s the TV, to which they are oblivious. You are fighting the urge to go and turn it off, considering the possibility of asking your host to turn it off, and watching helplessly and—you hope—surreptiously.

“Your blood pressure is a little high,” my doctor once said.

“Well, I’ve just seen three rapes, five murders, eight fights, and two high speed chases,” I said.

He was alarmed—where had I been?

“In your waiting room, in front of the TV….”

Which hooks you, by the way, by something called the “orienting response.” Imagine, you are in the jungle, millennia ago, hunting for food. Everything is either still or at least rhythmic—the swaying of trees, the breeze stirring the branches. Suddenly, there’s an unexpected movement—something out of place. An animal has moved, breaking a twig in the process. You turn, you shoot the arrow.

Dinner.

Great—very nice in the jungle. But in the living room?

Because TV is filled with those quick, unexpected movements. Part of the addiction is that we haven’t evolved fast enough not to be hooked by the jumping movements on the screen.

And an addiction it is. I read somewhere that even when promised a substantial amount of money—I think it was a thousand pounds—the great majority of British households could not forego telly for a year.

The article went on to say that the cathode ray tube—the CRT which was prevalent before the LCD—actually stimulates the right side of the brain. Which is, for most of us, non-linear, non-logical, more concerned with emotions than with logic.

Before I post this, I will check and—I hope—weed out typos and grammatical errors. If I printed the document, however, I am sure that I would find many errors that I had overlooked. I’m reading, or editing, with a different part of my brain.

It’s one of the reasons you explode, when the boss sends you a nasty email. Also the reason you say, “dammit, I’m not taking that shit!” and send back a more inflammatory response.

It’s the reason guys get hooked on Internet porn. And probably the reason so many smart guys—David Petraeus does come to mind—do such incredibly dumb things. He didn’t think anybody could trace his email? Of course not—he was thinking in front of a computer, not in a quiet, disconnected corner.

Saying which, I am writing on a computer. I will cruise the Internet, which allows me to tell you what CNN is saying or what the Scientific American published in 2003. I will play Sudoku and Rummikub—both on my iPad. I may well watch TV after dinner with Raf.

Further confession—I can be smug about not watching TV, or needing it much. But when the Internet is down?

Augh!

I also have taken a 40-minute walk by the sea, and heard—yes digitally—the Carmelite Vespers of Handel. I’ve slept alone in a forest. I’ve held a book.

I worry about kids who haven’t….

Strategy Time!

OK—time for confession. I spent hours yesterday trying to figure out what a blocker corporation was.

Even asked Mr. Fernández, who for once wasn’t quite certain.

And this guy—besides always having the answer (and always the correct one, damn him!)—has an MBA.

Right. So a reasonably intelligent guy (that’s me) and a very intelligent guy (that’s you-know-who) with an MBA can’t figure out the basis for Mitt Romney paying 15, not 35% on his millions.

Or is it 2%?

Well, just googled it again, and guess what?

Can’t get my head around it.

I did learn some interesting facts. Seems that there are two things. Tax evasion is illegal and very, very bad. There is something, however, called tax avoidance and that is legal and very, very good! (Especially for the rich…)

See?

And it appears that blocker corporations are legal. So, I thought, what about me? Can I set up a little blocker corporation? I’m living down here in the Caribbean. Easy enough to run up to Grand Cayman, file some papers, then head for the beach! Supposed to be nice up there.

I think you know the answer.

No.

You gotta have mega bucks to do this scheme. And for little pubic hairs (can’t say the word in Spanish—it’s obscene…) like me?

Sorry. Find another playground.

Well, well. What to do?

Clean the bathroom, I decided. For Carmen was coming to dinner, and it seemed like a thing to do. Can’t have a dirty bathroom if ladies are coming to dinner.

Right, did that. Then dawdled around the rest of the house. Got it half clean when Carmen, ever punctual, showed up.

So we sat, ate dinner, and talked death.

Well, she’s a lady who knows a thing or two about death. Both of her parents AND her lover died virtually in her arms. 

Parents died at home, and were, in good traditional fashion, waked at home as well. Yup, just like the famous (in Puerto Rico at least) painting by Oller. Have a look….

 
And of course, she prayed the rosary. Still does, though Carmen is only culturally Catholic. Which is to say that she (probably) disagrees with 80% of the dogma but gets comfort from praying the rosary.

Who am I to criticize?

She believes, for example, that a green butterfly appearing in the house portends the death of someone close to her. Well, I thought, she’s not alone. Japanese also think so. And I was forming that thought, or rather that sentence (we were speaking Spanish) when Carmen went on to say…

“…it’s such an honor, a privilege, to be present when someone you love dies….”

And then, the heavy mirror hanging over the buffet moved rhythmically back and forth three times.

And no, there was no wind.

Also, not one but I saw it.

Not surprising, really. She’s here and there, that mother of mine. She gets around. No smoke detector, so she grabbed the mirror. 

Well, I did the dishes, Raf and Carmen went off to see a play. Got up and did the morning trot. And began wondering.

How to get through the week? There’s a nest of vipers gathering in Tampa, and what to do? Turn off the iPad / television / newspaper completely, and clean the house?

Music, I decided. And then began thinking of music about music. And that led, inexorably, to Handel. 

Well, it’s a strategy. Not a bad one. So I went to YouTube, and snatched the clip below.

But for stronger souls, click on the link below, and see if you can understand Mitt’s money….

Just don’t tell me until after next week….

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/easy-street/explainer-romney-tax-documents-part-i