A short review of something I sang recently

By mieladmin / On / In ASROSICR

Arlene Kim:

It’s been a long time since I’ve sung a national anthem in a big crowd—possibly even a couple decades. Not being a follower of sports, I don’t go to many games, and there aren’t a lot of other events that involve the singing of anthems—which is too bad really because it’s sort of spectacular to sing something along with thousands of others. That’s exactly what I did just a few days ago in London. My husband and I were visiting with his parents there, and they took us to my first football match (soccer, to my fellow Americans) at Wembley Stadium, an international friendly between England and the Republic of Ireland.  I wanted to feel like a true fan, so in addition to brushing up on a few football facts, donning red for England, and drinking my share of beer, I looked up the British National Anthem and memorized the words to “God Save the Queen.” I’d forgotten that it’s the same tune I learned years ago in grade school—Americans will recognize it as “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” I hadn’t thought about those classroom days for I don’t know how long—it seemed like we were always singing something together in big groups then, our chorus of chirping wobbly but gleeful and loud. That was before we all grew up and broke off into our own private orbits, told to be unique, to stand out, to be an original, to be different from everyone else. (If you grew up to be a writer, you got double and treble doses of that message). But Wednesday night at Wembley, I rebelled. I was merely one of so many and many, all dressed alike, all sitting in the same section, all with the same hopes for the next 90 minutes, all singing along to the same tune. It was marvelous to be so invisible and yet still feel accepted and embraced, to feel that I belonged.

Wembley_EnglvIrel_2013-05-29

P.S.
The video of the singing crowd at Wembley isn’t from the night I went—I was too caught up in the moment then to think of recording—but I wanted to give you a sense of what it was like.

P.P.S.
Only the first verse of “God Save the Queen” is usually sung (though several times throughout the game). But, I love the bit in the second verse about confounding politics and frustrating knavish tricks!

P.P.P.S
It’s interesting that on the official website of the British Monarchy, they don’t include that second verse.


P.P.P.S.
I have been known to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” (the national anthem of the United States) at full volume while driving by myself at night. I always wondered why I liked to do that. It’s only now that I think maybe it’s because it helped me feel not so alone even while I was enjoying being alone.

 

A short review of something I watched recently

By mieladmin / On / In ASROSICR

Laressa Dickey:
All This Can Happen

I came across this while watching 20 or so dance film trailers for the Cinedans Festival in Amsterdam this year and watched it without knowing any credits. What I loved was the obviously precise cutting of the movement of the thing. I love that it asks, what is dance? What is the poem? What is imagination? What is it to be a repeating industrial body? What is it then, to get up and go out among the trees and grass, be followed by cats, be suspended in a photograph of the span of a jump, feel the rhythm of your own heels falling back to earth, watch cities implode, touch and not touch all the potential pain in the universe. To go out and to be led by the body into the imagination.

I particularly liked these phrases: “dispatch dangerous letters,” and “I believe it actually did happen.”  But perhaps the one I would etch on my tombstone would be: “…and though I seem to be no more than delicate and dreamy, I am a solid technician.”

Trailer for “All This Can Happen”
Published on Jan 27, 2013 | Screened at Cinedans, Amsterdam, 2013
Directors Siobhan Davies & David Hinton |
choreography Siobhan Davies |
UK | 2012 | 50′

If you would like to review something for this series of short reviews of something people have [verb]ed lately, please get in touch!

A short review of something I did recently

By mieladmin / On / In ASROSICR

Éireann Lorsung (MIEL editor):

Last Thursday (not yesterday; a week ago), I left the house. For a whole hour or so, alone. Incredible how much better that made me feel. Despite the rough drizzle of rain, being outside, among people, near the canal, walking through the air was thrilling. A boy kicking cans off a bridge into the street, the orange sign of the second-hand shop lit up. The cars with their lights on. Even the grayness of the day, which from inside the house had felt unbearable any longer, suddenly took on dimension and depth and the fog was more an embrace than a rebuff.

Crack
Crack, by Amaury Henderick

I have to recommend leaving the house as a possible remedy for what ails you. If leaving the house is something you can do (and especially if you can do it but haven’t for a while), perhaps it will be for you the tonic it was for me.