Les Misérables

If every human every night let the spectacle of theatre capture himself or herself, the world would slowly become a better place as quickly as the gowned and suited strolled away from the theatre. I would also hope that the first change would be the appearance of theatre's audience. The seats would be equally filled with the faces of tattered trousers and torn jumpers . For the theatre is the marriage of music, language, and expression and moves the richest and poorest of souls. In essence, theatre becomes the Word that touches the mind, soul, and body of all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odrZ6NtPR2M

One day more.

The beginning of dreams, of hopes, of transformation. Each day, each dawn awakes a new beginning.

One day more.

The iron chain of loneliness, poverty, and pain slowly breaks its victims body with its clench and rust.

One day more.

The musical Les Misérables invites the viewer to be lost in the conflicts of humans and the tragedy they live. Les Misérables is literally translated “the miserable,” “the destitute,” or “the wretched” and is a story of individuals who seem to never break free from the iron chain that destined them from birth. But carved deeply into this story, through all the Hard Times, is a seed of freedom that can be found in understanding one’s own self, “the deep pulsation of this world,” and the power of their decisive actions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt-IBJpEMzA&feature=related

One day more.
Another day, another destiny.
This never-ending road to Cavalry.

Les Misérables begins in France in the year 1815 with the release of Jean Valjean from prison. Shortly after prison, Valjean steals a bishop’s tableware, who had graciously opened his house to him. Caught by the authorities and brought back to the bishop’s house for conviction, the bishop declares to the authorities that the silverware was a gift and Valjean had left the prize peaces, the two silver candlesticks. Wrongly freed from this betrayal, Valjean sees his evil self in the bishop's grace . From that moment, Valjean gives his life to Grace and becomes her giver.

Tomorrow will be far away
Tomorrow is the judgment day.
Tomorrow we’ll discover what our God in heaven has in stored.

The story now enters Paris during the 1832 uprising where many of the main characters bind themselves to the oaths and dreams of a better nation symbolized in a flag worth fighting for. Each man and each woman chooses to “not be slaves again,” and takes up arms and sacrifice themselves. A common voice “of the people, by the people, and for the people” formed through theory triggers an action, a chance to change. They died the second night… dreaming of a better nation beyond the barricade.

One day to a new beginning
Raise the flag of freedom high.
Every man will be a king.

The story of people--the people of the gutter, the people of the inn, the people of the brothel, the people of the factory, the people of the prison, the people of childhood, and the people of a new nation. A story with shredded threads of grace and unforgiveness, love and hate, and harmony and disagreement ties the hand of the viewer. Tears of war, of death, of broken dreams, and the lack of change hold the viewer wishing he or her could help, change, or mend the lives of those in need. Yet, their hands are tied. Though death visits many of the characters, it is not the end. For the end is not today, but only what tomorrow brings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odrZ6NtPR2M

One day more.
Another day, another destiny.
This never-ending road to Cavalry.

“The never-ending road to Calvary.” There is something about this line. Through the miserable moments of Les Misérables it seemed improbable that anything would change. Yet, there are glimpses of a better reality seen through the unconditional love and grace represented through Valjean and his actions. This love then transcends and becomes reseeded in the pure, childish romance of Marias and Cossette (the life’s work of Valjean). Through the everyday (the never-ending), there is love. Love of money, love of war, love of power, but ultimately, the audience’s hearts silently blossomed at the fulfillment of love within these two lovers with a love that can cut the shredded threads from each of our hands.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzCSb6OnkZA&feature=related

Do you hear the people sing?
Lost in the valley of the night.
It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light.
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

This musical, inspired from the novel by Victor Hugo, might seem dated. Not because of the historical content and political context, but because of the religious and didactic morals of the piece. Historically, this work uses religion as a source of hope (escape), but we post-modern humans are well aware. There is no author and there is no God. Hugo was a simple idealist who threaded is works with an optimistic moral and ideology to keep him and his readers sane. But beyond this resignification, post-modern, philosophical, literary, ideological argument, this three-hour performance grabs each ear and whispers "you have the opportunity to change this world." But why should the audience care about the prostitutes, the poor, the rich, the lonely, the loved, the lame, and the norm-all?

If one seat in the 1200 seats of the Queen’s Theatre did not feel the shredded threads cut, see the painting of a new reality, taste an opportunity to love, touch the bursting of human emotion then... then my theory in the beginning of this rant is rubbish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCYr8TWAGn0&feature=related

They will put away the sword.
The chain will be broke and all men [women] will have their reward!
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade, is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that you bring when tomorrow comes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4924xJl38E&feature=fvw

33 random bits from conversations.

Stereotypes hold some truth in them. That is why I like them. They are signifiers that express a small portion of the signified. Below are some moments I have had in England and my travels. I hope you laugh because most of these moments have brought much laughter, but also, interesting dialogue.

1. The theme song for the film Team America is sung regularly with all my international friends.

2. Every event here in England somehow includes the pubs. You go to the pub after class, sports events, meetings, and mass. Even AA goes to the pub after their meetings.

3. It is embarrassing to tell a practicing French catholic that your church back home uses grape juice for the “blood of Christ.” Not only do they believe in the transformation of the wine used in communion, but they also come from a culture that does not like to eat dinner without it. Wine is very important in that culture in multiple ways and so I feel stupid when I try to explain why we Puritans do not use wine and there is not reason.

4. Tea in the morning.

5. Tea in the afternoon.

6. Tea after a solid night out. I love teatime.

7. England is the most watched country in the world. There are more surveillance cameras in just London than any other country in the world.

8. They are sweets. Not candy.

9. Paris is truly an amazing city.

10. Why doesn’t every city have double-decker buses? It’s really pretty smart. Twice the space, half the length.

11. Penguin mild chocolate biscuits are little pieces of pure joy.

12. Every girl from Essex wants to attend the party in your pants.

13. England does not have cell phones. They have mobile phones used for ringing people.

14. The other night I told three girls (who are my age) the purpose and uses of a douche bag.

15. I am constantly reminding the English of the special letter we sent them in 1776. And then I tell them we’ll bomb them if they make fun of me.

16. The French are always on strike or about to go on strike.

17. A very small percentage of convicted felons are sentenced to life in prison in England.

18. I have fulfilled a Frenchman’s dream by saying Budweiser in an American accent.

19. The English hate their country.

20. The world that I have encountered really does like President Obama.

21. Peanut butter and hummus is very American.

22. Nobles still exist. And they own castles!

23. Nothing is too crude, mean and/or sarcastic to the French.

24. French girls are modest and classy. English girls are not.

25. The BBC is partially owned by the British government.

26. I feel ignorant and close-minded because I do not know at least two different languages.

27. Guinness is truly different and better in Ireland.

28. Switzerland does not have a national language but has four different regions that have their own language.

29. The French know how to do dinner. The traditional dinner can last up to four hours and with 6 courses.

30. Some people call me America.

31. The English do not like Newcastle. The town, the drink, and the accent.

32. They say aluminum differently here.

33. Everyone already assumes I am ignorant and uneducated. They also assume I have terrible geography. All of this because of my citizenship. They are mostly right.

the muse in music

One of the best examples of the joy, power, and talent of music was captured in a small Irish pub in Doolin, Ireland. The band, which consisted of three people, controlled the hearts and emotions of all the men and women who were enjoying pints in the pub. The musicians through the stomping of the floor, the smooth vibrations of the Bodhran Drum, and the strings of the fiddle called the room to smile, shout, and drink another stout. Beyond this experience, I have listed some of the bands and songs that have been my close companion the last two months.


The Hazards of Love album by The Decemberists has truly been a wonderful friend. The Decemberists in general are just my favorite.


White America by Eminem.
I never would've dreamed in a million years I'd see,
So many motherfuckin' people who feel like me, who share the same views
And the same exact beliefs, it's like a fuckin' army marchin' in back of me, so many lives I touch, so much anger aimed, in no particular direction, just sprays and sprays, and straight through your radio waves it plays and plays, 'till it stays stuck in your head for days and days…


A little song the English sing when a special someone is saving the Queen, which means drinking your entire alcoholic beverage to remove the pence, which was strategically place in your drink, from your glass.
Get it down you zulu warrier
Get it down you zulu chief, chief, chief, chief, chief, chief, chief, chief.

Get it down you zulu house wife
Get it down you zulu wife, wife, wife, wife, wife, wife, wife, wife....

Why was he born so beautiful, why was he born at t'all t'all t'all
He's no fucking use to anyone, he's no fucking use at t'all t'all t'all
He should be publicly pissed on, he should be fucking shot.
BANG BANG BANG
He should be tied to a urinal and left there to fester and rot.


Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust album by Sigur Rós is a “Buzz in [my] Ears as [I] Play Endlessly.”


Noah and the Whale is such a fun sounding group with clear lyrics that speak of the pain and joys of daily life.
Two Atoms and a Molecule by Noah and the Whale
Last night, I had a dream
We were inseparably entwined
Like a piece of rope made out of two pieces of vine
Held together, holding each other
With no one else in mind
Like two atoms in a molecule
Inseparably combined

But then I woke from the dream
To realise I was alone
A tragic event, I must admit
But let's not be overblown
I'm gonna try to ride a love song
Just a sad, pathetic moan
And maybe I just need change
Maybe I just need a new cologne

But now I look at love
Like being stabbed in the heart
You torture each other from day to day
And then one day you part
Most of the time it's misery
But there's some joy at the start
And for that, I'd say it's worth it
Just as you play the shortest sharp on me

And if love is just a game
Then how come it's no fun?
If love is just a game
How come I've never won?
I guess maybe it's possible I might be playing it wrong
And that's why every time I roll the dice
I always come undone


The Mountain Goats


The Hold Steady is still a great band to listen to while writing a paper.


I got a feelin by Black Eyed Peas

Love Among the Ruins by Robert Browning

Part 6:
But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All mountains topped with temples, all the glades’
Collonnades,
All the causeys, bridgesm aqueducts—and then,
All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.

Part 7:
In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and north,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky,
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
Gold, of course
Oh heart! Oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth’s returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best

The Word (Language and Expression)

Below are quite a few quotes that I have heard, read, and/or have been taught that have stimulated my world, and participation in it. Though these quotes may seem small, unimportant, and/or difficult to understand, they are important blocks in the structure of my education and the way I have chosen to live or have found myself living. Feel free to read the greater works from which these quotes come from.

• …for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

~Final sentence from Middlemarch by George Eliot.

• I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on the particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

~The Narrator speaking in Middlemarch by George Eliot.

• Following his eyes, she saw that we was gazing at a star.‘In my pain an trouble, lookin up yonder, -wi’ it shinin’on me –I ha’ seen more clear, and ha’ made it my dying prayer that aw th’ world may on’y coom toogether more, an get a better unnerstan’in o’one another, than when I were in’t my weak seln.’
  

~Excerpt from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times.

• Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have makes us who we are.

~Stated by an unknown author.

• With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.

~Quote from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

• One equal temper of heroic hears,
• Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
• To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

~Lines from Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

• Part of the reason why the Roman Catholic Church ‘gained power’ in Europe is because of its role in the infrastructure of the general territories left by the Roman Empire. Meaning, with the collapse of the Roman Empire there were no systems in place to take care of the peoples and kingdoms. The Church was the only organized system that could hold these duties without the complete collapse of a civilization in the Medieval period.

~Lecture notes from my Medieval History course.

• The origins of monasticism are to be sought in Egypt in the second half of the third century. This veneration for ascetics and belief in their special powers (when one had mastered his or her own body and the lusts of the flesh) may have had its roots in earlier and pre-Christian traditions in Egyptian society.

~Quoted from Early Medieval Europe by Roger Collins.

• This work is owing to the Noble Idea’s and Fancy of Sig. Cæƒar Ripa, an Italian, who applied himself with indeƒatigable Study to make a Collection of the Figures of the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and to produce others of his own and other celebrated Authors in this Science: Theƒe Images are the Repreƒentatives of our notions; they properly belong to Painters, who by Colours and Shadowing, have invented the admirable Secret to give Body to our Thoughts, thereby to render them viƒible.

~Sentence from the Preface of Iconologia: or, Moral Emblems by Cæƒar Ripa.

• Blessings be with them and eternal praise, Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares, The poets - who on earth have made us heirs of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.

~Quote from William Wordsworth's monument in Westminster Abbey.

• A book must be an ax for the frozen sea inside.

~Quote from Oskar Pollack.

• But Jonson also makes it clear that in the House of Fame, heroism is a secondary virtue: heroes are glorified not by their deeds alone, but by the enduring and transforming power of poetry. Every hero has his poet, and the building is inspired by Chaucer. Heroism is the royal consort; but the highest virtue is that of the specific king, not a warrior, but a classical scholar and poet.

~The Illusion of Power by Stephen Orgel who describes Ben Jonson’s House of Fame.

• Ceremonies in the Renaissance period, which include marriages, funerals, dances, masques, architectures, religious, royal, and peace celebrations, created a precedent and that is why ceremonies then and now are important.

~Lecture notes from Spectacles of State course.

• Structures are frames for symbols, signs; words to signify the purpose of the event. The message.

~Lecture notes from Spectacles of State course.

• It’s literature…there is something latent in it.

~Spoken by 19th Century Course Convener Sarah Woods.

• ‘Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,’ cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. ‘That’s it! You are never to fancy.’ ‘Fact, fact, fact!’ said the gentleman. And ‘Fact, fact, fact!’ repeated Thomas Grandgrind. The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was very young, and she looked as if she were frightened by the matter of fact prospect the world afforded.

~Excerpt from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times.

• Theory gives value to something. The Liberal Arts were the highest arts during the Renaissance. What made them important was the theory behind the practice. The Renaissance valued theory more than practice.

~Lecture notes from Spectacles of State course.

The Divine Image

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
All pray in their distress,
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is God our Father dear;
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is man, His child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart;
Pity, a human face;
And Love, the human form divine:
And Peace the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine:
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew.
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.

A poem from the Songs of Innocents by William Blake