The Fredösphere

I've been a good boy today.  First I ate stewed spinach for breakfast.  Then I visited my proctologist for a regular exam.   Next, I vacuumed my driveway.  Finally, I listened to Peter Maxwell Davies' Into the Labyrinth.  This music is one experiment in a long struggle to unlock music from the prison of tempo.  The resulting music is never exactly either fast or slow; merely nervous or enervated.

By the way, Davies' Sinfonietta Accademica, written in the same year of 1983, and on the same disk, is radically different in temperament.  It's anything but academic, and dares to frolic a bit.  This is the Davies I'll be spending more time with.

The wifeösphere has begun to exercise her long-atrophied movie selection muscles and, on the advice of a friend, sat us down in front of The Three Faces of Eve.  It's the classic multiple personality disorder case study, and since Alistair Cook tells us from the beginning that everything is true, we must believe it.  It perfectly illustrates the Freudian model of mental disorders springing from childhood trauma.  It's somewhat sad to watch the psychiatrist yakking away in their regular "therapy" sessions, while he waits for the right combination of circumstances to trigger the moment of redemptive self-revelation.  In fact, the film depicts the patient clearly predicting, perhaps even controling, the timing of the cure; the psychiatrist's role is partial at best.  The surprise at the end -- a flashback to the moment of trauma -- is funny and horrible, all at the same time.  (Well, I suppose I should say it is funny if you happen to be me.)  A simple good-bye kiss has never seemed so sinister.

In other movie news, Chanticleer is featured on the soundtrack of Nacho Libre, of all things.

Here's a bit of miscellaneous weirdness:  in my first attempt to type "vacuum" in the first paragraph above, I spelled it "facuum."  I guess my latent Germanness, several generations removed, has found a way to express itself.  Perhaps the notorious experiment of Emperor Frederick II was not so wrongheaded after all.