Category Archive: RELIGION
A Plague o’ Both Your Houses!
We are sped, and sick of you both: so bent out of shape with hate and ancient enmities… Israel We know the Jews can claim to be the first in Zion, a 3000 year-old legacy, and that whilst it was under Muslim rule since the 7th century, such others are more or less interlopers (Jerusalem gets 700 odd mentions in the Old Testament, none in the Qur’an), although for centuries the Holy Lands have been recognised as multi-faith. (There’s no particular reason to criticise President Trump’s incendiary move to locate the US Embassy in Jerusalem – being nice, polite and diplomatic doesn’t sizzle any…
Continue Reading →Paradise on 10£ a Day
April 27, 1667 – John Milton assigned the copyright to Paradise Lost for 10£. Half then, half later: he should have made it 5£ plus a percentage. And did those pounds in ancient time make up for all of his striving, and his sight? Speculation as to why Milton wrote Satan in such a sexy way – he is close to the star of the show – and yet convicted him of an impious war on heaven on the mother of all monarchs, God herself – Milton, a congenital republican – leads nowhere, and so we just take the time…
Continue Reading →The Book of Mormon
Eugene O’Neill Theater, 230 West 49th Street, New York, 3 April 2018 – TVC, being fans of Big Love, were naturally drawn to this sly musical blend of Americana and wacko cult. Joseph Smith would not approve, and frankly, anyone with the gift of real faith, of any sort, would smell blasphemy here. Yet this show is tight, hilarious and brilliantly conceived, staged and performed. From the prologue where we learn that Jesus, after the disportation, buzzed over to the States and handed a golden book of plates to the Mormons, through an intricate opening number where freshmen Elders ring doorbells to…
Continue Reading →Will be Damned
Portrait by Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl (1815)
Arthur Schopenhauer (born 22 February 1788) “Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways – is nothing.” Arthur lived in shadowlands; His hated mother washed her hands Of him, and his suicidal Dad’s Echo – so he read Upanishads And Kant, forming a new world-view As bleak as stout, and yet he grew Into determined…
Continue Reading →Valentine’s Day
"The Morning of St Valentine" by John Callcott Horsley
TVC will, as usual, celebrate St. Valentine’s day with a fancy dinner and a private viewing of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Unlike the poor sainted martyr, the idea on his day is to lose one’s heart, not head. Here’s a little from Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto that featured so sweetly in “Picnic” to enliven the day…
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