Friday, October 2, 2020

Three Beautiful Things 10/01/20: New Computer Soon, Finishing *Jazz*, *R & G Are Dead* BONUS A Limerick by Stu

 1. The computer I'm using right now to write this is physically falling apart. I've been (over)deliberating for the last several weeks about what to purchase to replace it. I decided I'd like to try something different and (finally) today I ordered a MacBook Air. It will arrive on Monday. 

2. I began by watching the last four episodes of Ken Burns' Jazz and then I went back to the beginning of the series and today I finished watching episodes 5 and 6, thus completing my viewing. Now, I'll go back to doing what I did before watching Jazz: I'll keep looking for documentary presentations on individual jazz musicians and watching them, hoping that these films explore the nature of the music as much (or more) than the musicians' personal lives. The rhythms, imaginative improvisation, expression of emotion, the nature of each musician's sound, whether vocal or instrumental, comprise what matters most to me about jazz music and Ken Burns' series taught me a lot and left me with a lot of questions to explore.

3. I rounded out this day and evening by watching the first half an hour or so of the movie version of Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.  I first saw this play performed at the New Vic Theater back in 1975 and then I played the role of Polonius in a Brit Theater production of the play in Eugene at the old Lord Leebrick Theater at 5th and Charnelton in the fall of 1995. It was really fun, both to watch Tim Roth and Gary Oldman in the lead roles, and to remember how our production of the play recovered from a terrible accident in rehearsal and became, by the end, a rip roaring crowd pleaser, a lot of fun.


Here's a limerick by Stu:


Could it be that they all sound the same?  
Which gives rise to call Limericks lame? 
Perhaps change from this mode, 
To a Sonnet or Ode? 
Or an Epic with some fancy name?

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