Three interests meme - tagged
Dec. 20th, 2020 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anna_wingA rather late response to oursin, who tagged me with Art Nouveau, Gladys Mitchell and jazz
Jazz is easiest, because I am neither a connoisseur nor even a particular aficionado. I just like the sound, the rhythms and the scales that jazz uses, and I like the way it fits in with a lot of other musical traditions that use improvisation. I discovered Klezmer when a family friend took me to a bar mitzvah in New York in the 1980s, and went on from there. Ethiopianjazz is an entire genre on its own, and jazz improvisation suits Myanmar classical music, for instance, which relies heavily on improvisation upon a canon of songs (the Mahagita), and a lot of Thai and Indonesian music as well. Though the attempt to marry a gamelan orchestra and some moody, miserabilist Jan Garbarek-style clarinet failed miserably for the clarinet, which was there merely for visual interest, since a gamelan orchestra at full volume has something like the decibel level of a 747 taking off...
Gladys Mitchell is one of the UK Golden Age Queens of Crime, once spoken of in the same breath and Christie and Sayers. Her sleuth was an older woman, but utterly unlike Miss Marple except in her tendency to come across corpses: Mrs (later Dame Adela) Bradley, three times married (fate of her husbands unknown), distinguished academic psychologist and consultant to the Home Office, possible witch, mother of an equally distinguished barrister in the criminal Bar, crack shot, expert martial artist and billiards player, ruthless, brilliant and terrifying, prone to sinister cackles and able to persuade a suspect to confess merely by smiling at him in a meaningful way. She was played by the late, great Diana Rigg in a TV adaption, "The Mrs Bradley Mysteries", in a fabulous array of 1920s hats, bags, shoes and frocks. The gorgeous Dame Diana did not fit the physical description of Mrs Bradley (who was usually described as "yellow-skinned", "shrivelled" and "saurian"), but caught her mother-velociraptor character perfectly. Mrs Bradley is the kind of older lady that I aspire to eventually live to be.
Art Nouveau - I like its ahistorical quality, and its mixture of Eastern and Western stylistic influence, and the way that different countries produced their own styles, using its principles but influenced by their own local traditions (the Eastern European versions in Russia and Hungary were particularly interesting, as were the Scandinavian "Dragon" styles...). It produced the most beautiful jewellery, furniture and architecture in the world. Many people know of Hector Guimard, but I actually prefer the furniture of Eugene Gaillard, some of which I was able to have copied (for somewhat less than the quarter of a million or so US dollars the originals would have cost...). I also like the way that the art nouveau encouraged the creation of the gesamtkunstwerk, especially in interiors and fashion. When I visit museums, there is usually something there that I would happily take home with me, but the Horta Museum in Brussels is the first where I wanted the whole building and everything in it....
oursin, who tagged me with Art Nouveau, Gladys Mitchell and jazzJazz is easiest, because I am neither a connoisseur nor even a particular aficionado. I just like the sound, the rhythms and the scales that jazz uses, and I like the way it fits in with a lot of other musical traditions that use improvisation. I discovered Klezmer when a family friend took me to a bar mitzvah in New York in the 1980s, and went on from there. Ethiopianjazz is an entire genre on its own, and jazz improvisation suits Myanmar classical music, for instance, which relies heavily on improvisation upon a canon of songs (the Mahagita), and a lot of Thai and Indonesian music as well. Though the attempt to marry a gamelan orchestra and some moody, miserabilist Jan Garbarek-style clarinet failed miserably for the clarinet, which was there merely for visual interest, since a gamelan orchestra at full volume has something like the decibel level of a 747 taking off...
Gladys Mitchell is one of the UK Golden Age Queens of Crime, once spoken of in the same breath and Christie and Sayers. Her sleuth was an older woman, but utterly unlike Miss Marple except in her tendency to come across corpses: Mrs (later Dame Adela) Bradley, three times married (fate of her husbands unknown), distinguished academic psychologist and consultant to the Home Office, possible witch, mother of an equally distinguished barrister in the criminal Bar, crack shot, expert martial artist and billiards player, ruthless, brilliant and terrifying, prone to sinister cackles and able to persuade a suspect to confess merely by smiling at him in a meaningful way. She was played by the late, great Diana Rigg in a TV adaption, "The Mrs Bradley Mysteries", in a fabulous array of 1920s hats, bags, shoes and frocks. The gorgeous Dame Diana did not fit the physical description of Mrs Bradley (who was usually described as "yellow-skinned", "shrivelled" and "saurian"), but caught her mother-velociraptor character perfectly. Mrs Bradley is the kind of older lady that I aspire to eventually live to be.
Art Nouveau - I like its ahistorical quality, and its mixture of Eastern and Western stylistic influence, and the way that different countries produced their own styles, using its principles but influenced by their own local traditions (the Eastern European versions in Russia and Hungary were particularly interesting, as were the Scandinavian "Dragon" styles...). It produced the most beautiful jewellery, furniture and architecture in the world. Many people know of Hector Guimard, but I actually prefer the furniture of Eugene Gaillard, some of which I was able to have copied (for somewhat less than the quarter of a million or so US dollars the originals would have cost...). I also like the way that the art nouveau encouraged the creation of the gesamtkunstwerk, especially in interiors and fashion. When I visit museums, there is usually something there that I would happily take home with me, but the Horta Museum in Brussels is the first where I wanted the whole building and everything in it....
no subject
Date: 2020-12-20 08:23 pm (UTC)She probably ate them. I think one could, if pushed, make a case for subtext hints that she is, in fact, a well-disguised reptilian alien. Does not the 'saurian' give it away? One of her sidekicks, I recall, referred to her as 'Mrs Croc'.