Split personality. Liking the arts, especially opera, and hockey and Los Toros. I know, I know THAT one is non pc currently. But I can't help it saw some in Spain and got hooked, but good.
But on the other hand right now opera and hockey are in the forefront!
Why is that, when I dream in glorious prose and stunning colors,
with oh so delectable but wild details of all sorts...;-), I always wake up just before A big moment.
Always.
And why can I not write those dreams into edge-on-seat, nail biting, mesmerizing stories?
I am not asking for THE novel of a life time.
Just the power to write as fancifully as the dreams. Write to spell bind.
To grab readers, let them travel with me into wondrous worlds.
Worlds, where love is writ large, and not only platonic :-)!
Where revenge IS sweet!
But forgiving comes easy!
Where history mingles with science and the result's 'out of this world' (LoL)
Where phantasy and reality come together, 'sending' the readers into orbits of delight.
Alas, that kind of realization must be.. a figment of MY dreams.
Into which others are unable to enter but which I enjoy immensly while dreaming.
Of which - big sigh - little remains with me, after waking!
Siegmund Freud might have been starved for material for his interpretation of dreams had I been a patient.
Or perhaps not, he did say:
"What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult".
But he also said:
"Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy"
Just stumbled across this article by Andrew Patner quoted below in its entirety.
And it came as rather a shock. Following the debacle at New York City Opera. After the news of drastic cutting of artsfunding at state and federal levels. AGMA flexes its muscles! Because it can! Because it wants to force issues, which may or may not really be urgent at this time. Will Anthony Freud be successful in negotiating after his official start at Lyric opera Chicago? I simply am baffled. WHY? Just let them sing!
When everyone (including government) tries cutting back drastically on spending.
When people tighten their purse strings just to survive!
It does seem to me any one still being employed should be content, when so many are facing lay offs, have been down sized, outpaced their unemployment payments.
Why?
Another sign of these times. Another "big brother" action "Its all for your own good'!
Singers' Union alleges lockout threat by Lyric.
Says it could picket Grant Park free concert next month BY ANDREW PATNER Contract negotiations between Lyric Opera of Chicago and its three major unions normally take place in relative quiet until a season curtain is about to go up.
But with more than seven weeks until Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann is set to launch Lyric’s annual gala evening Octoer 1, the executive director of the national union that represents the company’s principal singers, chorus members, dancers, non-singing actors, and production staff claims Lyric has threatened its members with a lockout later this month.
The Thursday statement from Alan Gordon of the New York-based American Guild of Musical Artists, an AFL-CIO affiliate, also said “the fall season [is] in peril” and that “members should be prepared to picket” the free September 10 “Stars of Lyric Opera in Grant Park” concert.
AGMA’s last four-year concert expired April 30. Union members had authorized a strike in 2007 but a contract was signed shortly before opening night.
Lyric representatives had not previously seen the statement until informed of it by the Sun-Times. The company’s chief spokeswoman responded: “Lyric Opera is in contract talks with AGMA right now. It has always been the company’s policy not to negotiate in the press and so we have no further comment to make at this time.”
Gordon, a controversial figure currently locked in a bitter dispute with the increasingly shrinking New York City Opera, states that his union and the company differ on the number of work weeks, wage cuts, benefits, and health and safety provisions.
The union is also proposing a one-year status quo contract so that a longer agreement could be negotiated with incoming general director-designate Anthony Freud, who takes up his job on opening night, rather than retiring longtime chief William Mason, Gordon wrote.
He says Lyric has threatened an August 22 lockout if a contract is not signed, a claim that Lyric would not confirm.
“We would not be making these public statements if our members’ livelihood was not being threatened with a lockout,” Gordon said.
AGMA’s national president, James Odom, a tenor in the Lyric Chorus, said, “I’ve never seen this type of intransigence. We, too, prefer to keep negotiations at the table, but when faced with an overt threat of a lockout -- particularly just having gone through an actual lockout of our union with [the] Joffrey [Ballet] here -- we can’t just do nothing.”
Gordon also sent a letter to principal artists engaged for the upcoming season -- naming Renée Fleming (now also a member of Lyric’s management and a vice president of its board), Matthew Polenzani, Catherine Malfitano, and David Cangelosi -- saying, “If Lyric locks out AGMA members, you MAY NOT work for Lyric, you may not cross an AGMA picket line and you may not perform on opening night or thereafter until there is a negotiated collective- bargaining agreement in effect.”
Similar hardball tactics have enmeshed Gordon in a series of Federal labor complaints and counter-complaints with City Opera in New York, whose perilous financial and presenting situation is a far cry from Lyric’s strong fiscal health, ticket sales, and ownership of its own theatre.
The Lyric Opera Orchestra and its union, the Chicago Federation of Musicians, have a separate contract with the company that runs through the 2011-12 season. Civic Opera House stagehands are members of IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, and are also not involved in the current negotiations"
I am quoting from a recent article in the Chicago Tribune about the appointment of Anthony Freud to be Lyric Opera's new General Director for 5 years:
"His five-year contract beginsOct. 1 and extends through the 2015-16 season. He will serve as general director designate effective immediately. No salary terms were made public".
“I’m both honored and thrilled” by this appointment,” Freud said. “One of the things that excites me the most is the opportunity to get to know both the company and the city. I’m proud of the work I’ve done in both Cardiff (home of the Welsh National Opera) and Houston but I emphatically don’t believe in a generic opera company serving a generic city. Ultimately an opera company has to identify how it can do the best possible job for its audience and its city, taking its own characteristics into account.”
Now why does that sound so familiar?
I DO recall his speeches when he first came here!
Since he was so thrilled, then, to be chosen as HGO's General Director and CEO (an expanded title which his predecessor did not have) that he just last fall signed an extension to stay at HGO five more years, I do find interesting the coincidences of dates and years:
October 2010,
5 years,
2015!
Hmm. Lucky numbers for Mr. Freud, perhaps?
"It had seemed unlikely that Freud would risk the bad feelings of jumping ship from Houston Grand Opera, especially sincein October 2010, HGO had announced with great ballyhoo its pride in Freud’s extending his contract to stay with HGO though July 2015. One might well wonder: What does such a contract mean in the opera world?"
(all Italics are mine)
But I remind my readers that contracts in the world of sports are equally not worth the paper written on :-)!
"A Death In Vienna" is novel of the crime genre written by a bona fide British psychoanalyst-by-profession author.
So I was not at all surprised to find the book populated by notable names of psychoanalysis and psychiatry, albeit in very minor roles, such as Freud, Jung, Adler..etc.
But in the end it is detective novel. The wits and analytical reasoning, mostly based on the early, then still very controversial, findings of Prof. Freud, by the protagonist, Dr. Liebermann, saved the day for a more pedestrian detective - even though smothered in whipped cream, Apfelstrudel and other Viennese pastries (very prevalent throughout the novel :-)!) to distract from the facts. Hmm..or rather mhh.. sweets and sex do seem to go hand in hand, at least in this Vienna .. just saying!
After all where else does one call one's sweetheart ( there - sweet again) "My Dumpling", and other Kosenamen(pet name) based on culinary treats!
And accompanied by deliciously named coffees of the sort that one only finds in Vienna cafes and the Hotel Imperial lounge which is the venue for many meetings between the Dr. and his father. Even that may hint at analysis..father and son with conflicting ideas?
A bit of antisemitism thrown in-vide Mayor Lueger and cohorts, the protagonist is a Jewish Doctor.
A bit of political mud racking and cover ups -a public figure abuses governess with assist of his own wife -do make for a rather up-to-date feeling.
And the famous General Hospital of Vienna (est. 1697) where 'orthodox' medicine is performed (in the book) and the NEW fangled ideas of Freud and ilk are very much distrusted!
The Narrenturm at the AKH, built to house mad inmates, not too long ago was still used as housing for nurses and technicians in training at the Hospital-all rooms are round ;-)! well it does NOT actually feature in the novel but I thought it kinda appropriate ;-) to include the picture of it here!
It is actually well written, elegantly conveys the feel of that OLD Vienna, under the Emperor Franz-Joseph, on the brink of a new science.
But nostalgia for a fin-de-siecle life of a literature, a culture of
multi-ethnic influences which molded Vienna and Austria in history all comes together in the hands of this author. All in all, recommended reading on a hot summer day.
Other books by Author Frank Tallis are : "Vienna Blood" and "Fatal Lie".
