Sent by Reader Alison, this is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Enjoy this seasonally appropriate exploration of editing.
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Photo Memory of the Week
Posted: 2025 Feb 27
"I am smiling."
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Blog Memory of the Week
Quote of the Week
The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning, but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.
The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun, and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.
It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. (paragraph breaks added)
Source: Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton
Music of the Week
Poetry of the Week
Never Again Would Birds' Song be The Same
- Robert FrostHe would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.Posted: 2025 Feb 27
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Thanks Isabel, and those tags/keywords are right on – Laughing Frequently, indeed!
Marion – Quite brilliant, I think, from the concept to the writing to the video and musical execution.
That’s hilarious!
Thanks, Isabel.
Tom
Tom – I thought the musicians and singers in the crowd would like it.
I admire the ingenuity that can pounce on a common small niggle and turn it into an art form. Thanks for the fun and for the inspiration, Isabel. Singing this Christmas carol will never again be (the) sane — I mean, same!
Laurna – IKR? The artistry at all levels in this piece is astounding IMO. I do wonder how he chose his YouTube name (Ramses the Pigeon). I’m thinking there’s a story there . . .
Yup, just what we talked about. Our choir director usually directs us not to breathe where the commas are in order to make the music flow. Thus, I ignore all punctuation in singing. Choirs can get away with this by what’s known as “stagger breathing”, in which each person silently breathes in places other singers are not breathing. And no one seems the least bit interested in the detailed meaning of the lyrics, just the overall sentiment of the song. Which is good, given how some songs are written, as we lamented on Friday. Thanks for the video!
Judith – Well, when it’s not a legal contract, the overall sentiment would seem to be sufficient. 🙂 Interesting to think about choir management, which has not been in my line at all, from either side.
The interesting thing about choirs (chorales, even orchestras — musicians in general, perhaps) is trying to get them to act as a single living entity. Singers, horn players, etc., have to breathe as one. Apparently, even their heartbeats tend to coordinate.
The project work you used to do, Isabel, required people to think as one (for the duration of the project, at least). Musical rendering requires people to live and breathe as one (for a few minutes). They may have radically different politics and/or morals, but for those moments of performance, there can be no individualism.
Jim T
Jim T – Ah. An interesting connection to something I do understand. 🙂 Thanks.
And when this happens, there is flow — the “hive” mind in a good sense. Some of the peak experiences in my whole life have been singing in a choir of 60 voices — a capella.
As for horn players, the better they can SING through their instruments the better.
Barbara – 🙂 I did not know you had sung in a choir, a capella or otherwise.
Isabel – my nomination for the editor’s anthem.
John – Noted. Awards ceremony to be held post-COVID.