It's the meme of the moment

2020-03-29T16:51:41Z

Last time I travelled abroad: mid-January, to Denmark to speak at a conference on public space in Roman Britain (LJ / DW).

Last time I slept in a hotel: on the same trip to Denmark. It was the Scandic Aarhus City and it was very nice.

Last time I flew in a plane: same trip again! I flew with Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) from Manchester to Aarhus, via Copenhagen on the way there and direct on the way back. They seemed very good and had nice onboard food.

Last time I took a train: would you believe, to and from Manchester airport for the same trip.

Last time I took public transport: Wednesday 11 March. I walked to work that day, precisely to avoid it for coronavirus-related reasons, but caught the bus home as a) it was at a quieter time of day and b) I wanted to go to the supermarket on the way home, and the bus stops right outside it but my walking route takes me a different way.

Last time I had a house guest: New Year's Eve / Day. My friend kantti and her husband stayed over for dinner, silly games and champagne.

Last time I got my hair cut: er, when I was about 15? Unless you count the occasional very minor trims which I get either my sister or lady_lugosi1313 to do for me.

Last time I went to the movies: mid-November, to see the premiere screening of a film-of-an-opera which my colleague had acted as research consultant for (LJ / DW).

Last time I went to the theatre: 8 March, to see Robert Lloyd Parry doing Lost Hearts and A Warning to the Curious. It was the last weekend when doing that sort of thing seemed OK. He had a full house, actually. I have seen him do A Warning to the Curious before, but not Lost Hearts. It's one of my favourite M.R. James stories, and it was so good!

Last time I went to a concert: hmmm... There may be something I've forgotten, but judging from what I've recorded here there are two potential answers, depending on what you count: 1) live music from an Icelandic band called amiina accompanying a screening of Fantômas in April 2019 (LJ / DW) or 2) a performance of Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore when I was in Vienna at a conference with a colleague in September 2014 (LJ / DW).

Last time I went to an art museum: May 2019 during our DracSoc holiday to Germany, when I spent a whole day on the Museum Island in Berlin, split between the Altes Museum, Neues Museum and the Pergamon Museum. Since I never posted any pictures of their holdings here at the time, I will put one up now, though it's hard to choose what since the Altes Museum in particular was so full of amazing stuff. Probably the most exciting, though, was this famous tondo of the emperor Septimius Severus and his family, which is the only such painted ancient imperial portrait to survive:

Last time I sat down in a restaurant: 8 March, before the M.R. James performance the same evening, when I met up with cosmolinguist and HickeyWriter at Mod Pizza in Leeds city centre beforehand.

Last time I went to a party: 20 July 2019, when I went to my friend Bavage's Moon Party to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing.

Last time I played a board game: arguably today, when I played Story Cubes over Skype with Eloise and Christophe. This is a game consisting of nine dice with pictures on each side, which you have to roll and then tell a story based on the nine pictures which come up, and I realised that we could play it remotely if Eloise rolled the dice and I wrote down what she said they showed. It was kind of chaotic, especially when Christophe joined in, but fun and a nice way to get some contact with them. If that game doesn't count because it doesn't strictly have a board, then New Year's Eve when I played Augustus with kantti and her husband.

I thought filling all that in might make me a bit sad, but actually no - it was a nice way of reliving good memories. Here's to the days when we can do all this stuff without a care once again.

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20. The Fires of Olympus or, on Sticking it to the Man (2019), dir. Tim Benjamin

2020-02-22T20:38:55Z

I've got a chum coming round to watch films tomorrow afternoon, so I'd better get on top of my write-up back-log first.

This one was a filmed version of this opera, produced by the Radius Opera company, which I went to see primarily because my colleague Emma Stafford provided the composer with her expertise in Greek mythology when he was writing it, but also because I had heard that the music was very Handelian, which I like, and which turned out to be entirely true. The film was premiered at the University of Leeds, which made it easy for me to go to, and indeed Emma, the young man who had played Hephaestus, the music director and the composer all took part in a Q&A led by one of the academics from the School of Music before the film itself began:

I am not actually 100% sure who the director of the film, as opposed to the opera, was, but Tim Benjamin was the composer, so it seems only fair to credit him in the title of my post. It should be said anyway that the film is far from just a film of an ordinary theatrical performance of an opera. It was fully re-staged and re-shot, with a prelude sequence and cameras moving around the characters in a way you couldn't do when also trying to perform for a theatre audience. Indeed, Emma herself featured in the prelude sequence as a refugee after a disaster hearing stories from a mysterious stranger about what had happened on Olympus a few years ago...

The main story is basically the tale of the brothers Prometheus and Epimetheus, and their rather inept attempts to steal fire from Zeus. They appear early on as quasi-Occupy Wall Street or Extinction Rebellion-style activists who have sneaked into Zeus' palace and are looking for ways to cause chaos. While there, they discover his Fire, kept in a jar - to Zeus, just a pretty toy, but they quickly realise its potential value if taken from him. Before long, however, Prometheus is captured and tortured by Hephaestus, who is basically the head of Olympus' secret police with a Naziesque military coat and knee-high leather boots to match

For me, the most enjoyable character was Zeus. He was a big, bearded thundering baritone, playing an authoritarian leader who understands exactly how to manipulate his people. He had a repeated refrain which articulated this perfectly, basically expressing his pleasure at Prometheus and Epimetheus' activism on the grounds that it will give him an excuse to crack down, which it went like this:

A crisis! An opportunity to demonstrate authority,
To reassure the people, and exercise control.
To talk about community, and praise the role of family,
Be firm, be fair, show strength to the prole.

I went round singing that to myself for several days afterwards. :-)

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In this strange complex of time and space anything can happen

It's the meme of the moment

20. The Fires of Olympus or, on Sticking it to the Man (2019), dir. Tim Benjamin