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Exactly 222 Years Ago Today, Beethoven Premiered His 1st Symphony - IMRANâą
(Enjoy the story & my words, image source unknown)
Yesterday I posted about ABBA's creating a song, Voulez-Vous, 43 years ago. Well, just a few countries over, exactly 222 years ago today, on April 2, 1800, the musical legend and genius Ludwig van Beethoven premiered his 1st Symphony in C Major, at the Vienna Burgtheater.
He was 29 then, and also performed on the piano at the premiere. While some of his other pieces of music are more dramatic and recognized by the masses, his first one was also notable for changing many of the practices of the time.
© 2022 IMRANâą
#Beethoven #classic #classicalmusic #history #trivia #music #IMRAN #TodayInHistory #Vienna #Europe #Austria #innovation #thoughtleadership #legendary ABBA The Concert: A Tribute to ABBA
Nikon D80. 105mm f/2.8G IF ED AF-S VR Micro Nikkor. f/3.2. ISO 320. Shutter 1/160 hand held. AWB. Manual Exposure, Manual Focus.
Adobe Photoshop CS3 image size reduction.
This a perfect model I say, slow but had to wait a while till he starts his engine. Real slow.
Have a good day, you all.
Camera: Nikon D700. Exposure: (1/640). Aperture: f/1.8. Focal Length: 50 mm. ISP Speed 320. Manual Exposure. Manual Focus. Sharpness set to maximum.
Adobe Photoshop CS3. Black and White Layer. Set it to Luminosity and then adjusted the Red, Blue and Yellow. A new layer of Radial Blur set to a 100%. Layer masked, removed the Radial Blur from the left side.
Location: Male' International Airport Entrance.
Listening to Tabloid Junkie by Michael Jackson
17. Today in History - pick a day in the month, any day, find what happened on that day in History (anywhere, anytime) post a photo representing that event, may or may not use PP, each to their own. Must include an explanation about the event.
Tuesday, July 19, 1814 - the death of Matthew Flinders, the first explorer to circumnavigate Australia.
I have always wanted to do something on Matthew Flinders not only because of the great Australian Explorer he was and a nautical one to boot, but because it has been a journey that I too have undertaken. We were both born of an adventurous spirit and we both have circumnavigated "Terra Australis", Flinders being the first. Read on if you like; it might be a bit long.
Matthew Flinders - Born: 16 March 1774 in Donington, Lincolnshire, England. Died: 19 July 1814 (aged 40) London, England.
Flinders and George Bass did much sea exploration around Australia, adding to the knowledge of the coastline, and producing accurate maps. As well as being the first to circumnavigate Australia, Flinders, together with Bass, was the first to prove that Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania, was an island and not connected to the mainland. Australia was previously known as New Holland, and after Captain Cook claimed the continent for England in 1770, the entire eastern half became known as New South Wales. Flinders was the one who first proposed the name "Terra Australis", which became "Australia", the name adopted in 1824.
Flinders' work had come to the attention of many of the scientists of the day, in particular the influential Sir Joseph Banks, to whom Flinders dedicated his Observations on the Coasts of Van Diemen's Land, on Bass's Strait etc. Banks used his influence with Earl Spencer to convince the Admiralty of the importance of an expedition to chart the coastline of New Holland. As a result, in January 1801, Flinders was given command of the Investigator, a 334-ton sloop, and promoted to commander the following month.
The Investigator set sail for New Holland on 18 July 1801. Attached to the expedition was the botanist Robert Brown, botanical artist Ferdinand Bauer and landscape artist William Westall. Due to the scientific nature of the expedition, Flinders was issued with a French passport, despite England and France then being at war.
Aboard the Investigator Flinders reached and named Cape Leeuwin on 6 December 1801, and proceeded to make a survey along the southern coast of the Australian mainland.
On 8 April 1802, while sailing east, Flinders sighted the GĂ©ographe, a French corvette commanded by the explorer Nicolas Baudin, who was on a similar expedition for his government. Both men of science, Flinders and Baudin met and exchanged details of their discoveries, Flinders named the bay Encounter Bay.
Proceeding along the coast Flinders explored Port Phillip (now the site of Melbourne), which unbeknownst to him had been discovered only 10 weeks earlier by John Murray aboard the Lady Nelson. Flinders scaled Arthur's Seat, the highest point near the shores of the southernmost parts of the bay, where the ship had entered through The Heads. From there he saw a vast view of the surrounding land and bays. Flinders reported back to Governor King that the land had "a pleasing and, in many parts, a fertile appearance". He stated on 1 May, "I left the ship's name on a scroll of paper, deposited in a small pile of stones upon the top of the peak". Here, Flinders was drawing upon a British tradition of constructing a stone cairn to mark a historical location. The Matthew Flinders Cairn, which was later enlarged, is located on the upper slopes of Arthurs Seat a short distance below Chapman's Point.
With stores running low, Flinders proceeded to Sydney, arriving on 9 May 1802.
Having hastily prepared the ship, Flinders set sail again on 22 July 1802, heading north and surveying the coast of Queensland. From there he passed through the Torres Strait, and explored the Gulf of Carpentaria. During this time, the ship was discovered to be badly leaking, and despite careening, they were unable to effect the necessary repairs. Reluctantly, Flinders returned to Sydney, though via the western coast, completing the circumnavigation of the continent. On the way, Flinders jettisoned two wrought iron anchors, which were found by divers in 1973 at Middle Island, Recherche Archipelago in Western Australia. The best bower anchor is on display at the South Australian Maritime Museum while the stream anchor can be seen at the National Museum of Australia.
Arriving in Sydney on 9 June 1803, the Investigator was subsequently judged to be unseaworthy and condemned.
Unable to find another vessel suitable to continue his exploration, Flinders set sail for England as a passenger aboard HMS Porpoise. However the ship was wrecked on Wreck Reefs, part of the Great Barrier Reef, approximately 700 miles (1127 km) north of Sydney. Flinders navigated the ship's cutter across open sea back to Sydney, and arranged for the rescue of the remaining marooned crew. Flinders then took command of the 29-ton schooner Cumberland in order to return to England, but the poor condition of the vessel forced him to put in at French-controlled Isle de France (now known as Mauritius) for repairs on 17 December 1803.
Flinders was detained by the French, on the island of Mauritius. He was kept prisoner until 1810 on the grounds that he was a spy. He was finally released to return to England, but his health began to fail and he died young, on 19 July 1814. (Some accounts say Flinders died on 15 July 1814) Before his death he completed a book on his travels called 'A Voyage to Terra Australis', and died on the day that his book was published.
I do not own this image. It is provided for media use by the Lego Group (www.lego.com/en-us/AboutUs/), and I am using it in an article for BellaOnline (todayinhistory.bellaonline.com).
From 1989 - record cold temperature - so early. Wasn't even winter yet - Hence the need to use the glowing edges filter with photo shop!
Well now, settle back in, because today we celebrate a mixed up story. Jean Genet. He didnât just come out of nowhere, he came out of orphanages, reform schools, prison yards, and borrowed rooms where the wallpaper knew more secrets than the neighbors ever would. France tried to erase him early on, but Genet took that erasure and turned it into ink. He wrote like a man carving his name into a cell wall, slow and deliberate, knowing the guards would read it later. He had a way of crowning the uncrowned. Thieves, traitors, hustlers, sailors leaning on the rail at dawn, Genet looked at them and saw ceremony. Not the kind with flags and brass bands, but the kind that happens when two people recognize each other in the dark. His novels and plays donât clean anyone up. They make dirt sacred, make shame glow. Thatâs why they still feel dangerous. Genet didnât want justice; he wanted intensity. He wanted to go all the way to the edge and lean out just far enough to describe the view.
Somewhere along the road, Genet crossed paths with Alberto Giacometti, another man obsessed with the human figure, but for different reasons. Genet wrote The Studio of Alberto Giacometti like it was a love letter slipped under a locked door. He didnât talk about sculpture the way art critics do, measuring angles and influences. He talked about Giacometti the way you talk about a man youâve watched wrestle with ghosts. Those long, thin figures, Genet saw them as survivors, scraped down to their essence, like prisoners whoâve lost everything except the fact that theyâre still standing. In Giacomettiâs studio, Genet found a mirror of his own work. Both men were stripping life to the bone, refusing decoration, refusing lies. Genet said Giacometti wasnât trying to make people beautiful he was trying to make them real. A body reduced until it could no longer pretend. Thatâs Genet all over. Whether heâs writing about a murderer, a lover, or a statue frozen in dust and light, heâs asking the same question: whatâs left when you take everything else away?
So when you read Genet, or stand in front of a Giacometti figure, donât expect comfort. Expect recognition. Expect that quiet moment when you realize the distance between saint and criminal, flesh and spirit, art and life, itâs thinner than you were told.
Now, we canât pass through this tell without mentioning the poems, the ones that made polite society reach for the volume knob and twist it hard to the right.
Genetâs poems are soaked in sex the way a back alley is soaked in rain and cigarette smoke. Sex for him wasnât decoration, and it sure wasnât romance-card stuff. It was power, danger, worship, humiliation, glory, all tangled together like bodies in the dark where you canât quite tell whose hand is whose. These poems donât flirt. They stare you down. They say: this is what desire looks like when it refuses to behave. A lot of poets use sex as metaphor. Genet used metaphor as sex. Every touch, every look, every act becomes a ritual, almost religious. And thatâs the real scandal, not the flesh, but the holiness. He wrote erotic poems the way medieval monks wrote about God, except Genetâs God wore boots, smelled of sweat, and might rob you blind before morning. In his lines, lust isnât the opposite of purity; it is purity, stripped of excuses. Youâve got to remember the time he was writing in, too. To write openly as a gay man, to center desire that society had already labeled criminal, was itself an act of rebellion. Genet didnât argue for acceptance. He didnât ask for tolerance. He doubled down. He made outlaw desire ceremonial, almost royal. In these poems, the body becomes a flag raised in enemy territory.
Thereâs also tenderness there, even when itâs buried under provocation. A kind of aching devotion. Genet knew that sex exposes people faster than confession ever could. In those moments, masks fall off, hierarchies wobble, and the truth slips out. Thatâs what he was after, not shock for shockâs sake, but revelation. The moment when desire tells you who you really are, and maybe who you canât escape being. So if those poems make you uncomfortable, thatâs part of the program. Genet believed discomfort was honest. Heâd probably say if youâre blushing, youâre paying attention.
â
Le Condamné à Mort
SUR MON COU sans armure et sans haine, mon cou
Que ma main plus légÚre et grave qu'une veuve
Effleure sous mon col, sans que ton cour s'Ă©meuve, Laisse tes dents poser leur sourire de loup
O viens mon beau soleil, ĂŽ viens ma nuit d'Espagne, Arrive dans mes yeux qui seront morts demain.
Arrive, ouvre ma porte, apporte-moi ta main,
MĂšne-moi loin d'ici battre notre campagne.
Le ciel peut s'Ă©veiller, les Ă©toiles fleurir,
Ni les fleurs soupirer, et de prés l'herbe noire
Accueillir la rosĂ©e oĂč le matin va boire,
Le clocher peut sonner : moi seul je vais mourir.
O viens mon ciel de rose, ĂŽ ma corbeille blonde!
Visite dans sa nuit ton condamné à mort.
Arrache-toi la chair, tue, escalade, mords,
Mais viens! Pose ta joue contre ma tĂȘte ronde.
Nous n'avions pas fini de nous parler d'amour.
Nous n'avions pas fini de fumer nos gitanes.
On peut se demander pourquoi les Cours condamnent
Un assassin si beau qu'il fair pĂąlir le jour.
Amour viens sur ma bouche! Amour ouvre tes portes!
Traverse les couloirs, descends, marche léger,
Vole dans l'escalier plus souple qu'un berger,
Plus soutenu par l'air qu'un vol de feuilles mortes.
O traverse les murs; s'il le faut marche au bord
Des toits, des océans; couvre-toi de lumiÚre,
Use de la menace, use de la priĂšre,
Mais viens, Î ma frégate, une heure avant ma mort.
//Jean Genet, 1942
â
LET YOUR TEETH sink their wolfish grin
Into my tender and defenseless neck whose back
My hand lighter and more solemn than a widow
Strokes under my collar without your heart being moved.
O come my handsome sun,
O come my Spanish night,
Come into my eyes that will be dead tomorrow.
Come, open my door, give me your hand,
Lead me far from here to wander our countryside.
Let the sky awaken, the stars blossom,
Let the flowers sigh, the bells sound,
And the black grass greet the dew that morning will drink
In the fields: as for me I'm going to die.
O come my rosy sky,
O come my blond basket!
Come visit in his night your man sentenced to death.
Rip your flesh, kill, climb, bite,
But come! Come put your cheek against my round head.
We hadn't finished speaking of love
We hadn't even finished smoking our cigarettes.
It's a wonder how the courts could sentence
A murderer so fair that he makes day grow pale.
Love, come to my mouth! Love, open your door!
Walk through the halls, come down, walk softly,
Fly down the stairs, more agile than a shepherd,
Sustained in the air better than a flight of dead leaves.
O go through the walls; if need be, walk along the edge
Of the roofs, of oceans; cover yourself with light,
Use threats, use prayer,
But come, O my frigate, one hour before my death.
//Jean Genet, 1942
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From 1845 - 525 turkeys walking through the streets the day before Thanksgiving - a day where turkey the meal o_O`
Today we celebrate a man who played the trumpet like it was murmuring secrets it wasnât sure it should tell. Thatâs the beautiful Chet Baker.
Chet Baker came out of the West Coast, but his sound didnât belong to any coast. It drifted. Like cigarette smoke in a cheap motel room, or a love letter folded one too many times. He had a horn that didnât shout or testify, it confessed. Real quiet-like. You leaned in, and by the time you realized what was happening, the song had already moved into your bones. They said he looked like a movie star, and maybe that was part of the trouble. Folks hear that trumpet and think itâs all moonlight and convertibles, but underneath thereâs a lot of gravel road. Baker sang the way some people talk when theyâre alone. No armor. No tricks. Just a voice hanging there, asking if anyoneâs listening. His sweet soft sugar-cotton candy voice takes you back and forth from the moon in an endless loop. Have you ever listened to his Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow version of âA Taste of Honeyâ? if thats not a cosmic orgasm I donât know what is.
In jazz, everybodyâs running races -faster, higher, louder. Baker? He walked. Sometimes he barely got there at all, but the space between the notes told you more than the notes ever could. Miles Davis knew that. Lester Young knew that. When you play less, you say more. Thatâs an old law, older than electricity. Bakerâs life went every which way, like a radio signal fading in and out as you cross state lines. Fame came early, wisdom came late, and peace came when it felt like it. That trumpet carried the weight of it all. Every cracked note, every soft landing, every fall you donât see coming until youâre already on the ground.
You see, Chet Baker had struggles the way some people have shadows, they followed him everywhere, even at noon. He wrestled with addiction for most of his life, and it wasnât the romantic kind people like to dress up after the fact. It took things from him. Time. Trust. Chances. Even his ability to play the horn the way he once had. There were arrests, long disappearances, years where the music barely survived the man. Heâd fall off the map, then show up again somewhere in Europe, battered but still blowing, still singing like the truth hadnât let him go. And that voice by the later years, it wasnât smooth anymore. It was weathered. Worn down. But sometimes wear tells you more than polish ever could. When Baker sang then, it sounded like someone who knew exactly what things cost. As for the end thereâs a lot of noise around it, and not all of itâs honest.
Chet Baker died in 1988 in Amsterdam after falling from a hotel window. The official ruling was accidental. People have argued about it ever since, because people like their stories tied up neat, with a bow and a moral. But life doesnât usually work that way, and neither did Baker.
So when you hear Chet Baker play, donât listen for perfection. Listen for truth. Listen for the sound of a man standing in the doorway, half in the light, half in the dark, blowing a melody that knows it wonât last forever but plays it anyway.
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Today we celebrate torment. Or maybe itâs redemption. Depends how you look at it. And when you start talking torment and redemption, thereâs one guy who keeps walking out of the shadows; Fyodor Dostoevsky. You know, the Russian writer with the sad eyes and a soul heavier than a snowstorm over Siberia.
His father was a military doctor, strict as a sermon, temper like a kicked mule. When Dostoevsky was a kid, his mother died of tuberculosis, and not long after, his father got himself murdered by his own peasants. They say they poured vodka down his throat till he stopped breathing. Thatâll mess with your head for sure.
They say Dostoevsky wrote about crime and punishment, but he wasnât just talking about the law. He was talking about the kind of punishment that happens inside your head, the kind you canât escape no matter how far you run. Like Raskolnikov, he thought he could outsmart God⊠turns out, God doesnât take that bet. His first big hit was Poor Folk, about, well, poor folks. The critics called him the next Gogol, and for about five minutes, everything was looking rosy.
He joined a little book club, the Petrashevsky Circle, a bunch of idealists talking socialism, serfdom, and freedom. The czar didnât like that. Locked them up, lined them up, and told them they were gonna die. Dostoevsky was standing there, blindfold on, waiting for the bullets when a messenger galloped in, said, âHold your fire.â Turns out the czar was just making a point. They sent him to Siberia instead. Four years in a labor camp, shoveling snow and breaking rocks, no books allowed except the Bible. Thatâs where he learned what suffering really meant. Thatâll change a manâs handwriting, let me tell you. He went in idealistic came out with his eyes wide open to every shade of sin and salvation.
He wrote about gamblers, murderers, drunks, dreamers. People who were cracked but still shining inside. He knew that down in the cellar of the human soul, thereâs a little light that never goes out, even when you think it has. Notes from Underground. Crime and Punishment. The Idiot. The Brothers Karamazov. These werenât just books, they were confessions.
You read Dostoevsky, you start thinking about the kind of guilt you canât wash off with soap. But heâs not all doom and gloom⊠nah, heâs like the blues. Hurts to listen, but it heals you somehow. He said beauty would save the world. Thatâs a nice thought coming from a guy who spent half his life in the gutter. But maybe thatâs where beauty starts, down there in the mud, looking up.
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