From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #119 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Sunday, May 28 2000 Volume 02 : Number 119 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: b/willow writing ["Hilary L. Hertzoff" ] Re: b/willow writing [meredith ] Re: b/season finale ["David S. Bratman" ] m/Scelsi ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/willow writing ["Berni Phillips" ] Re: b/willow writing (well, not so much) [Robert Stacy Subject: Re: b/willow writing On Fri, 26 May 2000, meredith wrote: > Hi! > > Hilary added: > > >Oh, lovely. I recognized it as Greek but I didn't have a close enough > >look to see what she was writing. > > I always did Latin myself, so I'm lucky to have even recognized it as > Greek. :) > > My sister elaborated a bit on the rest of the hymn (assuming that is what > it was, she didn't tape it so she can't go back and check): > > >I saw the phrase "lissomai se," and that's in the Hymn, > >plus I think I caught the first word, "poikilothron'"--and it was > >definitely Greek, not magical nonsense. If that's it, it translates as, > >"Immortal Aphrodite of the elaborate throne, wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, > >I beseech thee: trouble not my soul, O lady, with the pain and anguish of > >love." > > Perfect, isn't it? > > I've got a translation of both the Greek and the French from my other list. Shall I post it? Hilary Hilary L. Hertzoff From here to there, Mamaroneck Public Library a bunny goes where a bunny must. Mamaroneck, NY hhertzof@wlsmail.wls.lib.ny.us Little Bunny on the Move hhertzof@panix.com by Peter McCarty ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 17:48:08 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: b/willow writing Hi! Hilary offered: >I've got a translation of both the Greek and the French from my other >list. Shall I post it? Ooh, yes, please! I just watched "Restless" again, as I taped it for a friend who had a Severe Relationship Crisis (tm) involving her VCR, NYPD Blue, and a clueless girlfriend this past Tuesday night. A few things jumped out at me: - -- In Xander's dream, Buffy calls him "big brother". Does this mean she is going to turn out to be "little sister" somehow? - -- I had the captioning turned on, since they decided to start mowing the lawn outside just as I started recording. During the scene where Xander visited Kurtz (I mean Snyder), when he says "I'm trying to get away. There's something I can't fight", the captioning said, "I'm in my prime. This is prime time." Very odd. I know the Captioning Institute gets shooting scripts to work from, so any changes that are made during production won't be reflected in the captioning. Usually the differences are minor, but this is pretty big -- a completely different line. - -- At the end of Xander's dream, his father (or so we are led to assume) rants something about "the line ends here with us, and there's nothing you can do to stop it." That, combined with a few other lines across the other dreams (including the declamation of Tara's that Buffy recalls at the very end) makes me wonder: is Buffy the Last Slayer? She's certainly survived to an older age than all the other Slayers, hasn't she? One could assume that the rules are different now, but nobody (including the Watcher's Council) knows exactly how, because this hasn't happened before. I may be off-base, but I'm thinking the major arc of next season is going to involve this very question. What happens to a Slayer who survives to see her 20th birthday? Does she become something else entirely ("little sister", perhaps)? But in the end, it all comes down to the cheese. American cheese, pre-sliced and individually wrapped. The horror, the horror! +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 19:58:51 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/season finale On Wed, 24 May 2000, meredith wrote: > Giles' song was a stitch. And Anya! "Quiet, or you'll miss the humorous > conclusion!" That beat out her steering the ice-cream truck by "gesturing > emphatically" as my favorite Anya moment of the week. :) I guess Anya in people's dreams is even more Anya-like than in "reality". She's a stitch. > >And then, of course, there's the key character in all the dreams, whose > >increasing importance even when offstage has been noticable for a while > >now. And no, I don't mean the cheese guy. > > Tara, you mean? Or am I being dense again? Yep. I was trying to be coy to avoid spoilers. I finally watched _Angel_ last night. Angel's final confrontation with Lindsay reminded me strangely of the death of Gaznak in Dunsany's "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth," if only because of the key scene of the chopping off of a hand in battle. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 20:23:08 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: m/Scelsi Yes, Giacinto Scelsi. I don't know who else on this list has had the experience of having Don play them recordings of Scelsi's string quartets, but they are truly the most intractable avant-garde music I've ever heard. They sounded exactly, and I mean exactly, like bees buzzing around in a jar. Another Scelsi work that came my way via Don's tapes sounded exactly like a huge traffic jam full of cars honking their horns randomly for 15 minutes. So I was a little surprised, not to say apprehensive, when I discovered that the San Francisco Symphony concert I'd be going to this week included a work by Scelsi, "Konx-Om-Pax". MTT (who told amusing anecdotes before the performance about meeting Scelsi) had conducted the first ever US performance of a Scelsi orchestral work a couple years ago, and while he frankly admitted he didn't always understand the music, he found it moving and affecting. To my surprise, so did I. This is, more than anything else I've heard, the most effective piece of what Don calls "Soundscape" that has come to my attention. No melody of any kind, just a lot of long held notes, and highly dissonant, but it flowed, it had internal integrity and a pleasing shape. (Three short movements, each based on a single note, with expansions into nearby dissonances - quarter-note chords, that sort of thing.) When the SFS played something by Dutilleux a few months ago, I found that while I did not like it at all, it was at least interesting and I could tell that it was good of its kind and not just random noodling. This went farther, and I actually felt I was appreciating it. And no, it didn't sound like bees at all. This is partly because the dissonant notes were mostly coming from brass rather than strings, and most importantly because the irksome random quality of the quartets was lacking. What followed seemed to bear a relationship to what came before. Because of its long-breathed quality and pauses between notes, it sounded more like Feldman, or perhaps Ingram Marshall. And afterwards, we heard Beethoven's Ninth. A little too smooth in the opening movements, but the Ode to Joy - usually the killer in this work - sounded better than usual, especially due to very good work from the chorus, who outnumbered the orchestra, and a dynamite solo bass, Denis Sedov. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 22:20:29 -0700 From: "Berni Phillips" Subject: Re: b/willow writing >From: meredith >-- In Xander's dream, Buffy calls him "big brother". Does this mean she is >going to turn out to be "little sister" somehow? I thought that Xander looked very crestfallen when Buffy called him "big brother." To me, this was Xander having it really thrown in his face that Buffy views him as a brother, not as boyfriend material. I think he's still carrying a torch for Buffy, and his subconscious (which I think this is where this particular line came from) is aware that Buffy is never going to see him like that. It's interesting to try to figure out which parts of the dream are "real" dreams and which parts are influenced by the primeval slayer. Berni ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 03:33:50 -0400 From: Robert Stacy Subject: Re: b/willow writing (well, not so much) Berni Phillips wrote: > > >From: meredith > > >-- In Xander's dream, Buffy calls him "big brother". Does this mean she is > >going to turn out to be "little sister" somehow? > > I thought that Xander looked very crestfallen when Buffy called him "big > brother." > To me, this was Xander having it really thrown in his face that Buffy views > him as a brother, not as boyfriend material. I think he's still carrying a > torch for Buffy, and his subconscious (which I think this is where this > particular line came from) is aware that Buffy is never going to see him > like that. > > It's interesting to try to figure out which parts of the dream are "real" > dreams and which parts are influenced by the primeval slayer. When Buffy delivered that "big brother" sobriquet, meredith, my mind automatically echoed the inferred "little sister." Xander's deadpan "Brother" response surely keys into Berni's observation. (As an aside, anyone else get a delicious chill up their back when the female vocal on the music soundtrack swelled up immediately after that line, while Giles and Spike playfully swung?) I found the whole Xander sequence intriguing (not taking anything away from the other characters', of course). I haven't timed them, but, subjectively, it seemed the longest of the four. With at least three references to "catching up," or others in the immediate group (the two women, specifically--both previous foci of Xander's affections) being "way ahead of" him. And for Xander, all roads led back to his parents' basement. "I got other stuff going on." He's "going places." Methinks he doth protest too much. (And, no, I didn't find Anya's "Do you know where you're going?" at all heavy-handed in the context. What the hell, I'm easy.) I expect to see a big a shake-up in Xander's view of himself, and how he approaches his life, in the next season. The "soldier-guy," =Apocolypse Now= reverence isn't cutting it any more. (Remember, he picked up his soldier chops in "Halloween" precisely because he was =pretending= at being one when Ethan Raine's spell hit; it began with Xander's choice/wish fulfillment originally.) We've seen him act courageously ("The Zeppo"), and provide heartfelt support precisely when most needed ("The Freshman") . . . But he's stuck. And he knows it--or at least, his unconscious knows it, and gave him the word unambiguously in his dream. I'm very interested to see how he acts on the message. I thought the badly dubbed French was purely intentional, myself-- especially after the Joyce sequence in which some of her dialog was delivered without her lips visibly moving. Nicely evoked the sense of dream. I haven't seen all the fourth-season episodes, and only the second half of "Hush," but for me, this is the best one of the season, hands down. There was so much wonderful stuff to sift through while it passed on first viewing, and I hated to see it end. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #119 *****************************