If Music be the Food of Love...

On the MotCO iPod today, ‘Sacrificium’, the new long player from everybody’s favourite mezzo-soprano, Cecilia Bartoli.

Dedicated to the (arguably thankfully) lost ‘art’ of the castrati, young fellows with their family jewels lopped off before their voices broke to preserve and enhance their vocal purity, Bartoli's latest project presents a dozen arias from obscure Baroque-era composers, including such non-household names as Nicola Porpora, Francesco Araia, Antonio Caldara and Leonardo Vinci.

For all the obscurity of the pieces (11 of which are world premiere recordings), the thing’s a tour de force. Each aria is an explosion of emotion, virtuosic music of coloratura verve and passion. It's also sumptuously packaged with a 108 page hardcover book telling everything you need to know about castration.

I like to contrast this with the similarly sublime music of a chap who plainly has not has his nads snipped off, Mr Josh Todd of the popular beat combo Buckcherry.

As he puts matters in a sensitive paean to his lady-love:

Hey, you're a crazy bitch,
But you fuck so good, I'm on top of it
When I dream I'm doing you all night
Scratches all down my back to keep me right on

I can’t decide which I like better.

Light Relief

Well after that Dan Brown book I needed some light relief. So I took up my old copy of The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness by Erich Fromm.


It's a thumping good read, and old Erich tackles some pretty big themes. In a world in which violence in every form seems to be increasing, Fromm ponders the whole nature/nurture thing and asks: what is there in the conditions of human existence to lead man to the orgies of destruction and violence in which he has indulged?

Well I'll tell him. As any trip down the main drag after dark will show one with eyes to see, the vast mass of folk are, in the main, filthy drunken animals fit only for senseless violence and joyless couplings in doorways.

Still. Keeps honest jobbing lawyers in claret and pies.

Noetic Science

Dan Brown all finished. There's 4 hours of my life I'll never get back.

To be fair, while it won't win any prizes, was ok for a bit of escapist tosh. But to my mind the plot rang a bit hollow from an early stage. Nothing to do with all the wonky symbology, tanks of liquid oxygen and charging about in awe-inspiring buildings, no no. Bit more fundamental than that.

You see, it seems to me that the whole silly hoopla could have been avoided if those Masonic chappies had simply exercised a bit of due diligence. Before admitting a 6 foot 4, heavily tattooed, steroid freak eunuch into the holy of holies, a swift CRB check, couple of references, the game's up, pal.

After all, I have to go through all that crap if I want to drive the neighbour's kids to a football match.

Secret society entrusted with hidden knowledge of earth-shattering power? Wouldn't trust 'em to run a whelk stall.

Public Displays of Affection

Dear God...

On my morning commute, engrossed in chapter 3 of my new Dan Brown novel (you know what? I'm pretty sure the shaven tattooed loony is that rich bloke's son whom he abandoned in some Turkish oubliette... more to follow) when my attention is diverted by them.

Always the same. Sucking each other's faces off. Like industrial suction pumps. Tongues and slobber. In a crowded carriage. At 8.30 am. Oh sweet Jesus.... he's fondling her arse, now...

OK. I'm sure you spent the night pleasuring one another to the bounds of human capability, and beyond. I just bet you wild, licentious young things got up to stuff that meat and potatoes guys like me could not even begin to imagine. But I implore you, keep it in the boudoir. Weary workers en route to the slave pits do not need to be subjected to this.

And they ming. They always ming.

More Literary Criticism

Just started trying to re-read Paradise Lost

It kicks off rather well, I think:

"Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of EDEN, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of OREB, or of SINAI, didst inspire
That Shepherd..."

But, Jesus wept, does it go on. And on and on. With barely a full stop to be found.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers, I'm buying the new Dan Brown.

Weak Bibliophile Joke

If you can't find the book you're looking for, you're probably shopping at the....

Industrial Relations

I'm all for this postal strike.

The relief postie came early, limited the delivery to letters that were actually addressed to MotCO Towers and appears reasonably content in carrying out his job of work.