Sinister: your back pages

[Youn J. Noh]

Someone should have told me that all I needed to do to get Peter Miller's
references was to read Vogue.  And it's not even a current issue.  The one
with Penelope Cruz on the cover from spring break cos the only
justification for buying these is being stuck on a plane.  Talk about
guilty pleasures.  Fashion photography is truly stunning sometimes.  Like
when W first came out, I remember this two-page add with a woman striding
across a room of mirrors at odd angles wearing a rose colored gown.  It
was splendid!  I wish I had saved it.  Actually, I don't know much more
than I did before about Capt. Corelli.  And what I said gives the false
impression that Peter Miller's references are easy to get.  But everyone
knows the contrary is true.  No, please don't bother to explain.

Listen to this excerpt from an article about Renee Fleming: "Music is
erotic for the listener - and for the singer, according to Fleming: 'My
real taste, my real sensibility, lies with music that I feel is sexy.'
The quality she finds most sensual is 'pulling'.  Think of taffy or
isometrics or a suspension bridge.  The sung lines stretch, to the
breaking point; the soprano's voice must sound inhumanly clear,
shimmering, strong, and yet vulnerable.  The phrases - especially in
Strauss or in Rachmaninoff - are elongated over harmonies whose resolution
is postponed, the dissonances lovingly retained rather than rejected."

Gosh, what amazing writing, esp. that last sentence!  And what a lovely,
complex thing to describe!  (There's something reckless about how Alasdair 
C deliberately writes hard vocal parts.  Stuart's falsetto seems to come
so naturally.  And others write for 'glamorous microphone dames'.)

I don't have any evidence that Ferdinand said "'Love' is a sign."  It
seems like something he could have said.  But when Robert sings "Love is a
sign", he must be using the word 'love' (rather then just mentioning it).
So then how is love a sign? 

If love is a sign, then what we mean by the word 'love' must bear an
arbitrary relation to whatever it stands for.  In other words, love must
be an abstraction, established by convention, that lumps together things
like green and violet blue waterlilies, snow cuffs...



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