Ghost Quartet (Green-Wood Cemetery, 7/28/25)
Jul. 6th, 2025 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Ghost Quartet is a band: Dave Malloy on keyboard, Brent Arnold on cello, Gelsey Bell and Brittain Ashford on various instruments, and everyone providing vocals. Ghost Quartet is a song cycle, a concert album performed semi-staged, a mash-up of "Snow White, Rose Red," The One Thousand and One Nights, the Noh play Matsukaze, "Cruel Sister", "The Fall of the House of Usher", the front page photo of a fatal train accident, and a grab bag of Twilight Zone episodes. The ghost of Thelonious Monk is sometimes invoked, but does not appear; whisky is often invoked, and, if you see the show live, will most certainly appear. "I'm confused/And more than a little frightened," says (one incarnation of) the (more-or-less) protagonist. "It's okay, my dear," her sister/lover/mother/daughter/deuteragonist reassures her, "this is a circular story."
Once upon a time two sisters fell in love with an astronomer who lived in a tree. He seduced Rose, the younger, then stole her work ("for a prestigious astronomy journal"), and then abandoned her for her sister, Pearl. Rose asked a bear to maul the astronomer in revenge, but the bear first demanded a pot of honey, a piece of stardust, a secret baptism, and a photograph of a ghost. (The music is a direct quote of the list of spell ingredients from Into the Woods.) Rose searches for all these ingredients through multiple lifetimes; and that's the plot.
Except it is much less comprehensible than that. The songs are nested in each other like Scheherazade's stories; you can follow from one song to the next, but retracing the connections in memory is impossible; this is less a narrative than a maze. Surreal timelines crash together in atonal cacophany; one moment Dave Malloy, or a nameless astronomer played by Dave Malloy, or Dave Malloy playing Dave Malloy is trying to solve epistemology and another moment the entire house of Usher, or all the actors, are telling you about their favorite whiskies. The climax is a subway accident we have glimpsed before, in aftermath, in full, circling around it, a trauma and a terror that cannot be faced directly; the crash is the fall of a house is the failure to act is the failure to look is the failure to look away.
There are two recordings available. Ghost Quartet, recorded in a studio, has cleaner audio, but Live at the McKitterick includes more of the interstitial scenes and feels more like the performance.
In Greenwood Cemetery, there were three slightly raised stages separated by batches of folding chairs, one for Dave Malloy, one for Brent Arnold, and one for Gelsey Bell and Brittain Ashford, with a flat patch of grass in the center across which they sang to each other, and into which they sometimes moved; you could sit in the chairs, or on cushions in front of the first row, or with cheaper tickets you could sit in the grass on the very low hills above the staging area, among the monuments and gravestones, and, presumably, among more ghosts. The show started a little before sunset; I saw a hawk fly over, and I could hear birds singing along when the humans sang a capella. It was in the middle of Brooklyn, so even after dark I couldn't see stars; but fireflies sparked everywhere.
7/6/2025 Loop Road and Laurel Canyon
Jul. 6th, 2025 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I was tired this morning for no good reason that I can see so I didn't get out to the bench, but I did hang out at the Blue Gum picnic tables for a while. It was such a beautiful day!
The Pitt Fic: Those We Carry With Us (Abbot/Robby, NC-17)
Jul. 6th, 2025 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Pitt (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jack Abbot/Michael "Robby" Robinavitch
Characters: Jack Abbot (The Pitt), Michael "Robby" Robinavitch
Additional Tags: Pre-Season/Series 01, COVID-19 Pandemic, COVID-19 Lockdown, Grief/Mourning, First Kiss, First Time, Porn, adamson's death, creative uses of stethoscopes
Summary:
Gifting someone a stethoscope at a milestone was very traditional, he knew, but some traditions should be observed. They kept you anchored to something greater than yourself. And this one was just...warm. Jack always thought of the people who'd given him his steths—Colonel Jacquemin, who'd gifted him his first Littmann when he finished residency, or Lizzie, who'd given him his current Littmann III when Adamson hired him as an attending. It was a reminder of the people who loved you, believed in you, helped you along the way, a physical token of those you carried with you.
Sure, maybe it wasn't exactly Jack's place to give one to Robby, more properly the domain of family or mentors. If Adamson had lived to retire, he would've gifted Robby a steth to celebrate his promotion, Jack was sure. Robby's family was gone, so that wasn't an option, and Jack would be damned if Robby's elevation to one of the highest posts in their field would go uncelebrated.
7/4/2025 Inspiration Trail // EBR Botanic Garden
Jul. 4th, 2025 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
No MacGillivray's. I didn't stay as long as usual, less than three hours, and as always I didn't want to go home, so I parked the EBR Botantic Garden and sat on the bench at the top of the garden for forty minutes or so. My list there was a bit different, as the garden is sheltered and has a creek through it. The Swainson's Thrushes were singing and the American Robins were rushing around presumably feeding families. Right across a lawn from me there was almost certainly a Black-headed Grosbeak nest from all the adult activity. I even heard a Western Bluebird! I haven't had one on Inspiration Trail in some time. ( The list: )
I should do that more often. I drove home the long way, all the way through Tilden and down Spruce, avoiding possible roadblocks.
Wax's summer vacation, the only time we can do renovation tasks
Jul. 4th, 2025 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
We also oiled the hinge of the bathroom door - the one modern, new door in the house - which has been squeaking for years (unlike all the other doors, which are from 1950 and work flawlessly). And then we glued the aluminum threshold down over the tile floor at that door - it was already loose when the contractors left because the initial adhesive they had used wasn't in contact with the front face of the cement under the tiles, because the tile sticks out a few mm proud of the subfloor. I scraped a layer of gummy glue off the back of the threshold (glue which had never stuck to the tile and instead became impregnated with dust and dirt), then applied some construction adhesive. It's extremely stinky upstairs now as it dries, even with the windows open.
But anyway, all that didn't even take all day. We've done a bunch of laundry and sat on the sofa cuddling cats in between. Can't believe it took us five years.
7/3/2025 Loop Road and Laurel Canyon
Jul. 3rd, 2025 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
No Common Ravens! It was very strange. They are always around and vocal.
a loaded god complex, cock it and pull it
Jul. 1st, 2025 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Today was my Monday, and tomorrow is my Friday at work. I could get used to a 2 day work week!
*
the extroverts were right
Jul. 1st, 2025 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
And he said close enough and gave me the student ticket rate.
6/30/2025 Tilden Nature Area
Jun. 30th, 2025 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The Orange-crowned Warblers have gone silent, as they seem to do later in the breeding season, but the Wilson's Warblers are still singing as are the Swainson's Thrushes.
waiting for the moment to turn
Jun. 30th, 2025 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
✭ 13 Batfamily
✭ 2 Percy Jackson crossovers
✭
I'm not sure why I went looking for PJO crossovers but I'm kind of glad I did?
Anyway, I took today and Thursday off and I'm looking forward to this 2 day work week. *g*
✭