Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Anthropomorphic captions almost always lie about the animals they purport to describe!
This juvenile Australian Wood Duck was simply preening, as birds do.
This behaviour has precisely nothing to do with egregious self-regard.
However, the “water as mirror” circumstance does lead me to one of my favourite pianists, delivering a sublime rendition – coughers, notwithstanding – of Claude Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau.
Comments closedIf the featured image’s swan had nested at this location a couple of decades earlier, he/she (black swans share nesting/parenting duties) would have almost been “living next door to Alan”.
Alan Bond – criminal/America’s Cup “hero” – is no more, but “his” Victoria Avenue mansion recently sold for multiple millions, and is part of the featured image’s “millionaire’s row”.
This post is best read after first seeing the immediately preceding one.
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Oblivion is a 1982 composition by Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992), Nuevo tango’s pre-eminent composer and bandoneon virtuoso.
Perhaps his most uncanny piece, it has survived/endured countless covers.
Some of its finest interpreters are not Argentinian, and although one of this post’s two very different versions does feature a “squeezebox”, it is not a bandoneon.
Comments closedHumans may find Lead Belly’s wise advice rather easier to sing than to adopt, but a well-loved local “street cat” exemplifies the notion… most especially when the sun has suitably warmed her favourite footstep.
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Greenhood orchids are currently blooming in Perth’s Kings Park.
Not all of them have green “hoods”!
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The world’s most extensive tropical coastal wilderness is that of the Kimberley, in northern Western Australia.
Its landscapes are epic.
So are the skyscapes; Kimberley thunderheads can dwarf Everest.
Comments closedThelonious Monk (1917-1982) is one of my favourite composers.
Ruby, My Dear has always been one of my favourite Monk ballads.
Among living pianists, Fred Hersch has, I think, proved the most consistently rewarding interpreter of Monk.
Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard Brian Landrus; I have heard literally thousands of Monk “covers”, but none lovelier than the one which concludes Brian’s new album.
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Photo (copyright Doug Spencer) taken just a few days before today’s winter solstice, in one of my favourite southwest Australian places.
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It is a great pleasure to encounter a non-gloating, happy person – one who appears comfortable in their own skin, who requires “no particular reason” to be happy, who radiates contentment, is fully alive, and not “on guard”.
Such encounters do not require a common language, nor any words to be spoken.
Typically, no commercial transaction is involved, no contest, no “big event”…
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A perfectly peaceful, spacious scene?
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