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Showing posts with the label Male voice choirsinging

INTERNET PAWN

As we are all well aware, the Internet is stacked high with pornography - you simply can’t avoid it, no matter how hard you try. Who hasn’t been startled by images of a mustachioed Dane being attended to by a young extrovert sporting only undergarments and a shaggy perm after inadvertently appending an “n” instead of a “t” on the end a Google search for “vintage port”? How many of us have been confronted by a hangarful of large-chested exhibitionists during research into “large mistakes”, due to our mistaken employment of the ambiguous search term “big boobs”? Erotica is big business, but there’s also a lot of free stuff around if you put in the hours looking for it. Apparently. Another rapidly growing area is that of the Internet Sage. In common with the filthmongers, they are in the business of selling fantasies. I often wonder if my blog would be rewarding me financially if visitors were greeted by a picture of me looking wise next to a tree or something, my visionary gaze clap...

FELIZ NATAL TO ALL MY READERS!

Show is dragging me away from the computer and stacking furniture against the door for the festive season, so I hope you both have a good holiday, and here is a beautiful piece of Christmas music, which I and my male voice choir are battering into a rough-hewn masterpiece on Wednesday evenings - goosebumps optional.

THOSE LAZY COMPOSERS

The highlight of my week is Wednesday, not only because I have no English classes to teach, but because it’s rehearsal night for my male voice choir. Twenty-five men, strong and true, plus me, participating in a sublime act of collective solidarity. To me, singing in a choir is the apotheosis of democratic principles. Nobody is more important than anybody else in a choral ensemble – age, social class, economic conditions, sexual orientation, status – all are rendered meaningless. The prince and the pauper can stand toe to toe and neither must give ground, they are absolute equals, the differences between them becoming indistinguishable (except that the prince probably wears dandy threads and the pauper rags, and the pauper’s bodily odours probably aren’t anything to write a poem about when contrasted with the prince’s fragrant Old Spice.) One thing troubles me, however. This week we have been given seven days to complete the unenviable task of memorising two stretches of Germ...