Knick knack, Packanack

Excellent rehearsal of the as-yet-not-world-renowned k a rl h e nn i ng Ensemble tonight. Kurosawa’s Scarecrow sounds lovely, as does the flute duet, Neither do I condemn thee. We rehearse the Tiny Wild Avocadoes this Tuesday.

The composer was asked about:

1. The Scarecrow. The fact is that at the time, I believed I was simply exulting in the phonemic play, in the phrase “Kurosawa’s Scarecrow.” But not long after I coined the phrase, or at the least, formed that title, I watched for the second time The Seven Samurai. And my wondering eyes saw a scene in which an armored scarecrow was raised to draw fire from the attacking bandits. Of course, I had seen the movie a few years earlier for the first time, and I cannot, therefore, discount the possibility that the image, the idea, lodged somewhere in the Henning brain. (So many odd things do there lodge.) There the question rests.

2. Packanack Lake. It isn't as if the lake really meant that much to me, ever. There was a time in my life when I lived nearby, although I saw the lake more frequently reading the map than I did with my eyes. For our present purposes, there are two emotional notions. The first is that, bodies of water have always meant something to me, and this was one near to which I long resided, but which I did not know. I knew of it (savoir) but it was not familiar to me (connaître). The second is that the lake was part of my life, insofar as it was any part, at a curious in-between period in my experience...I had been graduated from high school, it was my ambition to go to college to study music, but I had no understanding of how I might do so, and I was simply working odd jobs. It was a kind of twilight in my life, but neither can I deny that the twilight is a romantic, suggestive, hopeful hour.

(That part of the world was never really home, was not to be mine.)

Watching for only the second time the episode “Requiem” of The Avengers. One of the changes which is crystallized in the introduction of the character of Mother is, Tara is borderline cruelly kept out of the loop, in a way which would have been unthinkable with Mrs. Peel, so that Tara is not really Steed’s colleague in the same way. Likewise, there is an element of girlish crush and jealousy on the part of Tara. To be clear, I am glad that the series continued, and I enjoy the Tara King episodes on their own merits. I suppose this is just a longhand acknowledgement that criticism of the post-Diana-Rigg Avengers is not hidebound fussiness.