Wednesday, August 20, 2008

...you can't take the emo out of the girl

Hello and hooray for Poetry Day!!

My confused and skewered emotional state can only be helped by the words of Shakespeare, and one of my very favorite sonnets by the man himself. There is a distinct possibility that poetry may send me even further over the edge, but we'll stay away from the Edna St. Vincent Millay and the Theodore Roethke just in case...

Here is a sonnet that makes my heart happy, and I hope will brighten your days a little as well. Rufus Wainwright wrote an incredible musical setting for the words, and if you get the chance to hear it (I have it, come find me), do. You will not be sorry. I think I love it mostly for his incredibly gentle use of the banjo in the instrumentation. I know it sounds weird but it works. Just ask Sufjan Stevens.

However, I digress. With this post I also include a link to a news story that covers our Midnight Masquerade. If you would like to see the costumes, the masks, the quivering girls and me at 12:30, looking sweaty and kind of crazy, then you will want to check it out.

http://www.citytv.com/calgary/yourcity_60185.aspx

Sonnet 29

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

-William Shakespeare





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