Something/Someone Old

My Something Old today is one of my favorite shallow mildly satirical Beatles songs. I literally couldn't find a really good video of this; in every damned video it seems like somebody had one speaker/channel entirely turned off. You can barely hear George Harrison's guitar. I even tried videos where people covered the song--in search of good audio quality-- and concluded that most people have a hard time rocking as hard as Paul McCartney, which is kind of sad, given that Paul McCartney is not exactly Steve Tyler, is he? On the other hand, Paul actually could rock hard when he wanted to; it's just that most of the time he preferred singing silly love songs.

What's often ignored these days is the fact that they were kind of both mocking the Beach Boys and showing that they could do the Beach Boys style as well or better than the Beach Boys could. I mean, check out the refrain!

CORRECTION! Orlbucfan, a better Beatles scholar than I, let me know that in fact the Beatles admired Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys very much for their harmonies, so I guess what I always assumed was teasing or mild mockery was actually the sincerest form of flattery! Thanks for the correction, and it's always nice to know that people were being positive toward each other.

Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC
Didn't get to bed last night
On the way the paper bag was on my knee
Man, I had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the USSR
You don't know how lucky you are, boy
Back in the USSR, yeah
Been away so long I hardly knew the place
Gee, it's good to be back home
Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case
Honey disconnect the phone
I'm back in the USSR
You don't know how lucky you are, boy
Back in the US
Back in the US
Back in the USSR

Well the Leningrad girls really knock me out
They leave the west behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my my my my my my my my my mind
Oh, come on
Hu hey hu, hey, ah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
I'm back in the USSR
You don't know how lucky you are, boys
Back in the USSR
Well the Leningrad girls really knock me out
They leave the west behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my my my my my my my my my mind
Oh, show me round your snow peaked
Mountain way down south
Take me to your daddy's farm
Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out
Come and keep your comrade warm
I'm back in the USSR
Hey, you don't know how lucky you are, boy
Back in the USSR
Oh, let me tell you honey

Now you might think that this song occurred to me because of the ongoing national obsession with Russia, but actually it's because I'm creating a persona for the Society for Creative Anachronism, and my persona is from Byzantium. Thus, I'm researching ancient Byzantine garb. I had no idea how many different types of garb there were, and in particular, I had no idea how many Russians there were in Byzantium! The Russian garb is so beautiful I'm almost reconsidering my initial idea for a persona and going full-on Russian:

My initial idea had nothing to do with Russia. She is a Latinate Byzantine girl of the upper classes (so I can be educated--in fact, she will be a scholar), somewhere between 800 and 1160. I'm picking moments of cultural renaissance and moments when women had more rights and powers, which puts me in the middle Byzantine period. Hilariously, it turns out that this middle period of Byzantine history is called the Macedonian Renaissance. So it turns out I am a Putin puppet by way of Macedonia. This whole SCA persona is part of a nefarious plot. You heard it here first!

Anyway, after looking at about 10,000 pictures of gorgeous medieval Russian clothing, I found myself humming "Oh, the Leningrad girls really knock me out...they leave the West behind....Bow bow bow bow..."

Something New

My Something New this week is a new OT style I'm going to launch in coming weeks. (I was going to put this as an announcement up top, and then it occurred to me that it is Something New). I'm not getting rid of Something Old, Something New. I'm just going to alternate it with a different OT, so that one week you'll get SOSN, and the next you'll get something that I'm calling

I will be using this OT to pull some basic ideas out of the customary frames we see them through, hopefully breaking or at least making visible some of the assumptions that underlie the way we think and talk about our world. I will also be talking about the creation of temporary and semi-permanent autonomous zones. Really this is where I will be assembling the bits and pieces of my thought into what I hope will eventually become some kind of coherent mosaic, maybe even a political philosophy, though that may be too grandiose a hope.

At least I hope it will make how I see the world a bit clearer.

Something Borrowed

Continuing with the Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul theme

It turns out that the Turks got the name for their city from (ahem) the Greeks!

There had been a city there for a long time, because its position is so beneficial: geographically, it is the gateway between Asia and Europe, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

The city had been called Byzantium for around 1000 years before Emperor Constantine decided to name it after himself (I guess the self-aggrandizing colonialist urge is old).

Constantine's name sticks for about 1100 years, until the city fell to the Turks in 1453. Here's where it gets funny. The Turks, newly arrived, get their name from the place from the Greek city slang "eis tin polin," or "in the city." This eventually becomes the word "Istanbul."

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=149...

So the Turks borrowed the name for the capital of Turkey from the Greeks.

Frankly, I'm both amused and stunned.

Something Blue

I found out something pretty amazing about the color blue: it wasn't particularly popular in Western European painting until the 12th century!

This comes from the research of French historian Michel Pastoureau:

Pastoureau’s book on blue starts off by mentioning how neglected this color was among the ancient Greeks and Romans, who rarely wrote about it or made use of it. He even delves into the question of whether or not ancient peoples could even see blue! This neglect continued through the early Middle Ages until the twelfth-century. “Then suddenly,” writes Pastoureau, “in just a few decades, everything changes – blue is ‘discovered’ and attains a prominent place in painting, heraldry, and clothing.”

The first part of this ‘blue revolution’ was how this color was used to represent the clothing of the Virgin Mary. The scene of Mary mourning Jesus’ crucifixion was a popular one in the Middle Ages, and once artists started depicting her cloak in a vibrant blue, it soon became the standard.

http://www.medievalists.net/2018/02/color-middle-ages/

I hear that the blue revolution was spurred by Europe's discovery of imported lapis lazuli, and the blue pigment, ultramarine, that could be created from it:

Sometimes called “true blue,” ultramarine is made from the semiprecious gemstone lapis lazuli, which for centuries could only be found in a single mountain range in Afghanistan. Egyptian traders began importing the stone as early as 6,000 years ago, using it to adorn jewelry and headdresses. Yet they never figured out how to make a vibrant pigment from it. Riddled with minerals such as calcite, pyrite, augite, and mica, lapis loses its potency when it is ground up, turning from a bright blue to a dull gray.

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-a-brief-history-of-blue

It wasn't until some inventive 13th-century painter created a laborious, but effective, process to keep the blue of lapis blue from gemstone to palette that blue took Western Europe by storm:

At the beginning of the 13th century, an improved method came into use, described by Cennino Cennini in the 15th century. This process consisted of mixing the ground material with melted wax, resins, and oils, wrapping the resulting mass in a cloth, and then kneading it in a dilute lye solution. The blue particles collect at the bottom of the pot, while the impurities and colorless crystals remain. This process was performed at least three times, with each successive extraction generating a lower quality material. The final extraction, consisting largely of colorless material as well as a few blue particles, brings forth ultramarine ash which is prized as a glaze for its pale blue transparency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarine

The laborious nature of the process, in addition to the fact that lapis for many centuries only came from one mountain range in Afghanistan, made blue the most expensive and difficult color to create for many centuries.

The 15th century artist Cennino Cennini wrote in his painters' handbook: "Ultramarine blue is a glorious, lovely and absolutely perfect pigment beyond all the pigments. It would not be possible to say anything about or do anything to it which would not make it more so."

I didn't know there was a time before blue (in painting, at least).

How are you all today?