Proms, Bugs, & Beaches

You never know, but at this point I'm feeling pretty confident that I'll never stopped being amazed by the rapid passage of time since it's now 3(!) weekends since I went to that Proms showing (please don't mind that I haven't responded to your LJ comments: LJ has gone cookie weird for me and isn't letting me!). Every time I think about the rapidity of time I think about a particular Stephen King short story I still have in a university course reader somewhere (that somewhere is easily narrowed to The Basement but that's it for now).

Since it's been 3 weekends this means what I might want to say about The Proms has been pretty boiled down (i.e. you'll get the core of what I can actually remember at this point).

I can cheat on the first thing I mention since I actually noted down what it was at the time since it was so striking: the Peterloo Overture newly arranged for choir with lyrics by Tim Rice(!). This was the second piece played (the first was also a premier called Velocity by a young composer who was there in the audience) and the reason I noted down the name of the piece was so I could look up the lyrics because they were so jaw-droppingly flagellating I'd wanted to look at them in the raw after the fact. Sadly, since it was a premier, the lyrics don't really seem to be up anywhere. For the theme of the Overture they also turn out to be (from what I remember) very, very strange.

They boiled down (in what I now recall) to "Oh, we used to have such an amazing Empire and now we totally don't but can we find a way to be great again... but this time in a small way, in a true way, in a caring way that's how we should all really want to be."

It was definitely not what I was expecting to hear the start of the (to me) Rah Rah Rah Proms. And yet, it fit: lamenting what was lost (especially something has disturbing as The British Empire) to hope for something else (a non-Empire... a place that is intensely local and made of care) makes sense to this new British context.

The other boil down piece I came away from was the end of the Proms when they had gotten to the straight up Rah Rah (Rule Britannia and Pomp and Circumstance). All through the show they'd periodically show clips from other places where the Proms were being aired as "Proms in the Park"... specifically this was happening in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and... across the street from the Royal Albert in London. But, by the time they were playing those pieces Ireland, Wales, Scotland were... gone. They'd only show clips from what was going on in London and I couldn't imagine what was going on through their heads thinking that isn't the omission of those 3 other places going to just strangely scream out (and, actually, my Scottish Mum turned to me at one point near the end and said "they seem to have lost Scotland..." to which I'd said "they've lost everywhere except London").

In light of the Referendum (which at that point was still upcoming) I'd thought his was an incredibly strange choice but then the reveal on what was going on came in an offhand comment by the commentator that the Proms for the other areas continue on other channels if you care to tune in an follow them. So clearly if I wasn't in a movie theatre in Toronto I'd be able to click into Radio 2 and start hearing Flower of Scotland instead of Rule Britannia instead(!).

This is a familiar experience from my childhood where I also grew up with things like 'Scottish Television' where you get just enough of feeling like you have your own little world to feel comfortable (and, maybe, comfortable enough that when you come down to voting if you'll stay or if you'll go you'll feel comfortable enough to stay. On that note, as a strange aside, I had a dream this past week that featured the Union Jack without the bit of it that represents the Saltire Cross. It was pretty striking [and surprising: I also don't think I'll ever stop being amazed at what my brain comes up with to show me in a dream state]).

* * *

Nothing so highfalutin (or at least pretending to be highfalutin) for me since then: last weekend I paid a nickel to go watch Bugs Bunny cartoons at the 100th anniversary of a local theatre (probably the first and last time I'll drink alcohol in a theatre while watching cartoons) and today I was walking the shore straight down from here pickin' trash as part of a Shore Clean-up.

Last weekend the most notable thing to me was the fact that the kids in the audience really, really took to Wile E. Coyote cartoons. I didn't notice because the start was all about the Daffy (my favourite) and Bugs... but by the time the Wile E. had started up so had the uproarious kid laughter. It makes sense since Wile E. mostly drops the verbal (completely drops it when not dealing with Bugs) and the thing the kids seemed to think most funny around Wile E... when he got splatted by catapults in various ways. That got them all roaring. :)

Today the most striking thing was that we were assigned to groups of 3 and magically my group turned out to be someone who started out calling himself a Librarian but then clarified that, actually, he's really a database admin, a programmer and me (a database admin). I really liked the programmer (she noted nearer the end that she specifically works in GIS) but was a bit flummoxed by the "librarian" who complained that what we were doing was "boring" and all I could think was, dude, really, what were you expecting (though he clarified that what he was expecting was Bigger Garbage... personally I was super pleased that there was mostly only little garbage. In fact, my main take away from today would have been: holy cow people... stop the cigarette butt madness. Another fantastic reason to try and kill the tobacco industry dead since I pretty much never see anyone snub a cigarette manually and then chuck it: it's all about tossing it into the world, which I wish at the very least it wasn't!).