Let's All Meet Up in the Year 2000

There's a long-standing tradition among a group of my friends to have a big party once a year and exchange music mixes (originally on CD, but now on all kinds of media).  My theme for this year's mix was simply songs I liked a lot in the last year or so, though the theme also could have been polyglot, with at least four languages represented.  Anyway, this is it:

1.            c’est Moi—Rupa & the April Fishes

2.            My Night With The Prostitute From Marseille—Beirut

3.            Last Night—Gudrun Gut

4.            Demain tu te maries—Biyouna

5.            culpa de la luna—Rupa & the April Fishes

6.            Le Noir—Nicole Renaud

7.            Tashweesh (Interference)—The Kronos Quartet

8.            Talibán Del Amor (El Remolón Remix)—Dead Menems

9.            Sixteen, Fifteen, Fourteen—PJ Harvey

10.          VCR—the xx

11.          Dog Days Are Over—Florence & the Machine

12.          Cumbietón Rutero—Axel K Soundsystem

13.          Daylight And The Sun—Antony & the Johnsons

14.          Skeletons—Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I got silentq's mix, haven't listened to it yet but it looks great :-)

Edgar was such a champ at the vet's office today.  I thought he'd be far more stressed out, but he took everything in stride.  He also cracked everybody up by taking his own rabies vaccination certificate and putting it in the carrier to bring home.  That's our paper collecting boy!  Vet agreed with me that he's certainly starting the early stages of adrenal gland disease, so he got some Lupron today and another tiny little deslorelin implant will be winging its way from Australia shortly.  I'm glad that the vet and I are on the same page regarding surgery vs medication for adrenal gland disease.  Surgery may give a slightly longer life span, but it carries so many attendant risks, plus when the right adrenal gland is the one affected it sometimes can't be removed anyway because it wraps around the vena cava.  The implant procedure has minuscule risk associated with it, no recovery period and immediate benefit.  So it really seems to me to be the way to go.
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It seems to be the thing to be doing, so my 2009 in a handful of points:

• started 2009 with my foot still in pretty wretched shape, but by Feb or March the alcohol injections finally killed off that nerve in the ball of my foot, and slowly I've come to be able to count on my feet to be there for me once again.  I still have some resculpting to do (that's really how it feels, like I am rebuilding the way my ankles and feet work) and I'm still not 100 percent pain free but I'm optimistic that to a large degree I can change what nature and nurture dealt me and have strong functional feet again.
• lost a fair amount of weight but more importantly gained a lot of strength in my legs and core.  I feel I have a lot more power in my movements now, whether it's dance or yoga or just daily activity.  I like this and I am determined to keep it.  It's hard work but it's rewarding.  On a related note, with the exception of the last two weeks or so, I've been happy with the diet I've created for myself--not diet in the sense of weight loss program, but diet in the sense of well rounded nutrition, food that tastes good and sustains me. 
  
• Danced in a variety of different venues, and in the process have been sounding out what is important to me as a dancer in terms of my goals and ideals.  Definitely a work in progress, some lessons are not always so pleasant, but it's part of being an artist.
• Lost my ferret Ianto, but that was tempered by being so glad that we were able to give him a good loving home in the evening of his life.  He was such a sweet fellow, with his little Ianto prancing walk.  And his loss meant that we were in the right place at the right time to give a home to Edgar, who is quite the endearing character and brings us much joy.  Little Sisiutl has stayed a constant, deepening her bonds with me and welcoming the new guy along with us.
• Got a Zipcar membership and started driving regularly again, for the first time since 1995 or so.  It's been very freeing and liberating, and nowhere near as scary as I thought it would be.  I've enjoyed driving a variety of different cars through Zipcar, and I've equally enjoyed not having the responsibility of car ownership.
  
• Took the kind of plunge I'd been promising myself I would do for *years* and applied for a new job which represented a step up in my career--and got it!  The whole process went so smoothly it was like a dream, and clearly meant to be.  I'm very happy in the new job, while grateful for all that I learned in the old job.  Executive Assistant may not seem like a glamorous or important sort of career, but trust me, all your companies, non-profits, universities, etc would fall down without talented and intelligent people providing structural support.
• Held Raks Spooki IV--I can't believe it has now happened four times!  I made a leap of faith that the market was still there even in this economy and moved to a larger theatre, and my faith was pretty justified.  Lots of thoughts for how to run next year's!  As always, the variety of creativity and talent on display in the show was humbling to me as the organizer.  I'm very proud to be able to put on this show.
• Bought an iPod Classic, which seems like a small thing, but I am loving it so it bears mentioning.
• Set in motion the process of renting regular studio space in a quiet place, something I have been deeply craving for a long time.  The studio is part of a small artists' community and I am excited about the synergy of that as well.
  

For 2010, I essentially just want to keep on track with the things I've been doing well.  I need to be a little better with keeping up with foot exercises.  I am really looking forward to utilizing that studio time.  We will have our tenth wedding anniversary in 2010.  I want to get out to more concerts, live music of any style that strikes my eclectic fancy.  I definitely want to travel outside of the Boston area for dance workshops more often.  I want to keep learning more about mixology, and get brave enough to start making drinks up, drinks that actually taste good.  In the end, perhaps none of those things are individually that important, but in sum they equal the process of building my life onward and upwards, improving what I can and accommodating what I can't.

Happy New Year, everybody!  May the triumphs and joys of the past year continue to sustain you, and may those you have lost live on as beautiful memories within.
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M and I bought tickets to the December 11 Lexington performance of the Boston Camerata's A Mediterranean Christmas--so if anybody else is interested in going, you could have our company :-) We bought the expensive tickets, so we'll be in that section, but within the sections it's general admission. The show is in collaboration with Karim Nagi most famously of Turbo Tabla but also more relevantly in this case of the SHARQ Arabic Music Ensemble. From the website:

The Christmas narrative retold using songs, chants, and instrumental pieces from the countries of the Mediterranean basin: Spain, Italy, and southern France in Europe, but also north Africa and the Holy Land. Works are drawn from medieval manuscripts and more recent folklore and oral traditions. With voices, early instruments of Europe and the Middle East, as well as songs and texts in Spanish, Provençal, Italian, Galician, Turkish and Arabic.
Directed by Joel Cohen.

I saw a few pieces from this a couple of years ago and it was quite beautiful music (Kambriel, that was at the concert for Lebanon that we went to).
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this is my new favorite musician:



(isn't it amazing how flexible his toes are?)
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A real update coming soon, really, but in the meanwhile...


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I saw Koko Taylor a few times when I lived in Chicago. She was truly a force of nature, and her music helped me through some tough times. Sometimes I was the woman those shoes fit. I'm saddened to know she's gone, but she brought a lot of light and power to this world when she was in it.



I don't know how many times I've heard it, but the intro to I'm A Woman makes the hairs on my neck stand up every time (starts around 3:50).

Poking around on eMusic last night, I found an album called Blonde dans la Casbah by an Algerian singer named Biyouna--I am in love with this woman and her music!  She's like the Algerian Eartha Kitt, with a French Balkan Gypsy tropicalia blues tango band backing her up, singing in both Arabic and French.  I would think she would appeal to fans of Eartha Kitt, Etta James, Jane Birken, Diamanda Galas, the band Beirut, Serge Gainesbourg and French singer-songwriters in general.  I am going to have to look up her movies, I can't imagine the magnificence this woman must have on screen!  (I feel like Camile Paglia raving about Brazilian divas, but there you go)



French lyrics
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I'd never noticed this before, but Netflix's recommendations for me in the music/musical category are somewhat humorous.  Apparently I would like the Dresden Dolls because I enjoyed The Third Man, Rashomon and Invader Zim.  I would like Manu Chao because I enjoyed When We Were Kings, Ghost Dog and Ghengis Blues.  I would like Nick Cave because I enjoyed The Passion of Joan of Arc, My Best Fiend and Burden of Dreams.  I would like Portishead because I enjoyed The City of Lost Children, Nosferatu and Yojimbo.  Apparently I have predictable taste in music if one knows that I am a Herzog and Kurosawa fan.  PJ Harvey was also recommended on the basis of films by those two directors.

Last night I watched Diary of a Lost Girl, directed by G.W. Pabst and starring Louise Brooks.  It was moving and complex--not so much in the plot itself, which was pretty potboiler, but in the work the actors did in portraying their characters silently.  Those actors were able to convey so, so much in a simple expression.  Similarly, the filmwork was beautiful and in places surprisingly modern.  Strong social commentary, again in places surprisingly modern.  I often admire silent films as works of art but I don't usually identify deeply with them--Diary of a Lost Girl was a major exception.  I dreamed about poor Thymiane last night.  Louise Brooks was so luminously tragic yet ultimately a force to be reckoned with.  Based on her wikipedia entry, I imagine this film had high personal emotional resonance for her.  Highly recommended.
 

Nick Cave is writing a rock opera of Faust for an Icelandic theatre group.  I expect that will be extra special.

I finally caved in, ha ha, and bought a copy of Dig, Lazarus, Dig!  And I am pleasantly surprised to find that I quite like it, at least on first listen.  It's very garage, glam and no wave influenced, in a roots homage kind of way that suits me fine.  I like that the music is more freewheeling than the last few albums, while not quite as freewheeling as say Grinderman.  There's also a lot of interesting detail going on in the music that keeps a few tracks from sounding too proggy, a line they otherwise could have crossed.  But what I really like most of all is that Nick is finally embracing all aspects of his voice again.  Once he started singing lessons, he really turned his back on his former style of singing and became very constrained.  He says so himself in interviews.  On D,L,D! it sounds like he's come to realize there's a time when a lack of technique is entirely appropriate.  This album sounds far more like Nick Cave to me than anything since maybe The Boatman's Call.  Not that I haven't liked some of that material, but it's been on an "okay let's see where he's going with this" basis.  D,L,D! sounds like he knows where he's going.

Saw Coraline in 3D this weekend and loved it, apart from one subplot that made me feel like I was watching Coraline play a video game rather than doing something important towards moving the plot along, as the subplot did in the book.  I refer to the way the ghost children were handled.  But I could forgive that, given how stunning the film was overall.  According to Neil Gaiman's blog the movie will be leaving the 3D theatres in the US by Friday to accomodate a Jonas Brothers movie, so if you wanted to see it in 3D, you'd better do it soon.  And do stay until the very end, for something very pretty :-)
 
There is a rather awful oil smell permeating our office as work is being done on the heating system.  Bleargh.
 

The Grammys were by and large enormously dull, but M.I.A. was feminist rock and roll out there in the most awesome maternity outfit ever!  *love her* and here's hoping for a happy baby for her soon!