Thanks to Masha... 8)

1. Rhythm is a fundamental ingredient of music: without rhythm music would be no more than pleasant, rhythm makes it hypnotic and sensuous. Listeners surrender to rhythmical music easily, it is a kind of enchantment.
2. Concept of rhythm lies in heart-beating, our first sensation of pulse is our mother's heartbeat in the womb. But only humans, unlike other mammals, like to dance or play the castanets. So it would be natural to suppose that the key moment was when homo sapience started to walk upright on their feet. Thus was established basic beat with two feet, which people could speed up or slow down.
3. In music rhythm has an Italian name - 'tempo' (andante, allegro, largo, presto).
4. Swing - a genre of music which appeared in the US in the early 1930s. Swing is based on a strong drum-and-beat section, the main line in swing 'looses' itself from the rhythm of the pulse as melody unfolds. 

My short-story. 8)

 ‘Flower Power’, ‘Maker love, not war!’ and ‘Give peace a chance’. These slogans are still well-known, though they were advanced by hippies in the 60s. But do hippies exist nowadays? They do, though most of the people tend to think that their epoch was over at least thirty years ago. I was lucky to meet them.

I first read the word ‘hippy’ in a dog-eared magazine dated 1974. The article told about dreamy young people, who believed in peace and universal fellowship, who sought enlightenment, who rebelled against Vietnam War and put flowers into barrels of policemen’s guns. Who left America for India, their ‘Land of Promise’. Who met tragic and premature end there. I was about ten years old, and that article astounded me beyond words. I was eager to meet those mysterious people. And I did one day.

I spent in ‘system’ (that’s how hippies call themselves) about a year, and it was an outstanding, though a rather nutty period. Once I took part in the festival called Rainbow and spent three months in a row away in forests near Pskov, walking barefoot, gathering blueberry, carrying on philosophical conversations and watching shooting stars at night. Another time I lived stone-broke for two weeks in St.-Petersburg. I hitchhiked from Moscow to the Crimea, from the Crimea to the Ukraine, Moldova, Byelorussia and then back again to Moscow. I wore heaps of bracelets and clinking beads, Hindu clothes and torn jeans – the very gear that old article described. But it was not clothes that mattered. I experienced incomparable sense of freedom – no rules to follow, no tasks to fulfill, no problems to worry about, only never-ending travels, and friendship, and music. Of course, I was very young, and this one-year-long riot could have been merely a game, I assume. But still, I don’t regret anything. 

My debt

You won't take my rabbit!

The Metropolitan Museum

Artist: Bartolomeo Montagna (Bartolomeo Cincani)

Tiltle: Saint Justina of Padua

Date: 1490s

Medium: Oil on wood

Size: Overall, with added strips, 19 1/2 x 15 1/8 in. (49.5 x 38.4 cm); painted surface 19 1/8 x 14 3/4 in. (48.6 x 37.5 cm)

Country of Origin: Italy

Current Location: The Metropolitan Museum

I've always been interested in history, and the Renaissance is the latest passion of mine. It is quite unnecessary to say that the painting of this epoch creates a profound impression, and this picture is no exception, it does impress me. Any images of Catholic saints, unlike Orthodox icons, seem to be rather carnal than spiritual. And St. Justine is a very beautiful girl (at least, according to the tastes of those times – and mine). She has an aristocratic bearing, delicate features and golden hair. Her dress and jewelry are painted in a very detailed manner, every pearl in her necklace, every piece of embroidery is seen, and the green fabric looks as if we could touch it. St. Justine is depicted as bright and full of live young Venetian. Isn’t it an alluring image? I doubt whether it put pious thoughts into somebody’s minds, but I can easily imagine knights and noblemen, who could have fallen in love with such a beautiful saint… Dreams apart, this picture is one of the most tempting ones I’ve ever seen.

Glogster: Autobiography

Glogster: Breakfast at Tiffany's

1. Have you read the book? Have you seen the movie?
2. Which of them do you like most?
3. Do you agree that Audrey Hepburn was a miscast for the part of Holly?

Click!