Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Now that the days are growing longer again, ol’ Robbo’s evening commute currently begins right around sunset. Heading west nor’west from the office to Port Swiller Manor, I get the full glory of dusk across my windshield.
Know one of the things I’ve always loved seeing at this time of day? The contrails of jets heading west. There’s something about the rosy glow of the vapor trail and the (occasional) twinkle of the plane itself, set against the profound blue depth of the sky, that moves me. I can’t really explain it, except that there is some combination of the aesthetic, historickal, musical and religious connotations that strikes home.
Yes, I include “musickal”. There’s a recitative from Purcell’s King Arthur that I always associate with this time of day.
Cold Genius:
Great Love, I know thee now:
Eldest of the gods art thou.
Heav’n and earth by thee were made.
Human nature is thy creature,
Ev’rywhere thou art obey’d.
And lest you draw the wrong, Niles Crane-like, conclusions, I may point out that when I articulated the idea to a young Randy-Mack gel long ago while we were driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway, the only thing that stopped her from jumping me then and there was the fact that she was a good Catholic girl and I was semi-hemi-demi-seeing her friend. It’s a long story.
But those records are sealed.
On the other hand, in messing about researching this post, I stumbled across the following YooToob clip of the Passacaille from the same King Arthur, about which was made a movie of which I had not heard, England, My England – The Story of Henry Purcell. Not Netflix-worthy, apparently, but available at the devil’s website.
Enjoy teh sample:
I may cough up the readies to see the whole thing.
4 comments
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February 20, 2014 at 2:40 pm
NOVA Curmudgeon
Those feelings you have looking up in the sky is your inner self saying “damn glad I’m down here and not up there in that plane.”
February 20, 2014 at 8:18 pm
Robbo
Naw, when my own two feet are planted solidly on terra firma, I can appreciate the full glory of flight without getting sweaty palms.
Actually, I sometimes find myself trying to calculate how far off the plane is, although I’m not sure I could do that with just its estimated altitude and teh angle at which I see it. My best guess is that one can probably see the plane itself, or at least the sun reflecting off it, at a maximum of around 20-25 miles on the hypotenuse, assuming it’s cruising five or six miles up. I then try to drop a perpendicular and figure out where, exactly, it is on the map. Usually, I have to break off these musings quite suddenly in order to avoid rear-ending the car in front of me.
February 27, 2014 at 10:17 pm
tubbs
Many thanks for this Purcell link.
I am in Heaven….
February 27, 2014 at 10:24 pm
tubbs
and Murray Melvin as Shitsbury! – wonderful casting.