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.

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