Saturday, September 12, 2009

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…Classic Arts Showcase plays all night on my TV because I cannot sleep in a silent and dark room. A thin stream of green light comes from the TV which labors for me hour after midnight hour, but at least it is a hint of day light to come.. Doctors will tell you the last thing you need is light and music when your body is trying to sleep. Doctors, as they so often are, are wrong. A gentle, comforting blanket of music and an occasional soft spoken documentary delivered by an intellectual, who knows when to shut up, is enough to keep me from fingering my covers. The all night PBS program features music videos, orchestras, and opera. I cannot abide just any old opera. I am a Puccini person just like millions of others and require a melody to justify all the wailing and rending of garments.. Opera often wakes me up, I’ll admit. The women are always metaphorically tied to the railroad tracks and bleating for help. In empty castles, they clutch at the men in their lives who are forever abandoning them, as they are taken away to be executed, or who are simply getting out while the getting is good.. They beat their breast over the loss of love from men who turn their backs on them. They hang onto waistcoats and plead for mercy from departing men, as they drag them along the floor in their dusty gowns. Almost every woman in every opera is in dire need of male succor. It is dismaying to hear them keening, even through the pillow in which I bury my head when they come screeching to life. There is one opera where the diva actually seems to be yodeling and she never stops until I hallucinate that I have jumped out of bed and slapped her silly. One of my late day TV favorites is a rerun of a sitcom in which a character describes opera as “fat women screaming.” That pretty much sums it up.. 11:29:38 AM    comment []