Anitra's Dance

Video Find of the Day

Naming babies can be a nightmare for some people. When my daughter was getting ready to be born my then-wife and the mother-to-be Kate and I didn't know her gender so we worked at finding both a boy's name and a girl's name we could agree on. If Elizabeth had been born a boy civil war may have ensued. We were never able to agree on a name for a boy. We only agreed on Elizabeth because it represented a compromise between Lisa (one of my top ten choices) and Beth (one of Kate's top ten choices). We agreed to let the girl choose which way she wanted to go with it as she got older. As it happened, Kate won that one.

Anitra, my current squeeze, was similarly a naming battleground when she was getting born. Her Father of Danish ancestry wanted her to have a Danish name. Her Mother, fearing "Olga", "Oluffa", "Hellfried", or "Hildeborg", not that there's anything wrong with any of those names, convinced Dad that Henrik Ibsen was Scandinavian enough (Anitra may correct me later, but as I recall the story she told him Ibsen was Danish rather than Norwegian) and that therefore the name "Anitra" (of a character in his play Peer Gynt) was Scandinavian enough. In spite of the fact that Ibsen just made it up to sound like a plausible name for a Bedouin woman to a Norwegian audience that wouldn't know Bedouin from Urdu.

Some of my wake selections have autobiographical import. The one I posted yesterday was a weak reference to time spent in Mexico as a child. This one, #16, is a clear, unmistakable, reference to the woman of my last ten and a half years. Of course we must also credit Edvard Grieg for providing the composition, glass for providing the raw materials, Crystal Harmony for playing the glass, and vitnetonline for posting it on YouTube.

Crystal Harmony Grieg Classical Collection - Anitra's Dance

Rodrigo Y Gabriela

Video Find of the Day

Personal wake selection #7 in the current ordering. I hope these people appreciate that I want to be dead to them. It's not everybody I want to be dead to.

Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero are from Mexico City, Mexico but have recently been based in Dublin. Diablo Rojo is about a wild ride on a Copenhagen roller coaster called the Red Devil.

Rodrigo Y Gabriela's Video 'For Diablo Rojo'

Dylan & Yankovic

Video Find of the Day

#13 of my wake selections is Subterranean Homesick Blues which was a big hit when I was 16 and may have contributed to my decision not to kill myself that year, or the next. It's always a big help, when contemplating suicide, to feel that you may not be so alien after all. This video is an excerpt from the beginning of a 1967 documentary called Don't Look Back. The bald guy to our left is Allen Ginsberg. He's talking to Bob Neuwirth, who doesn't really step into the scene until the end.

Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues



Not among my wake selections, but still highly... interesting... is Weird Al Yankovic's version of the song and video, in which every line is a palindrome. I don't think that's Ginsberg and Neuwirth in this one, but I could be wrong.

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Bob

No Regrets

Video Find of the Day

This is #17 in my sequence of 20 tracks to which Anitra has promised to subject victims who attend my wake (hopefully far in the future.) I probably will rearrange the list by the time I kick the bucket, but I can't imagine ever dropping this one. It's key.

Edith Piaf - Non je ne regrette rien

Besame Mucho

Video Find of the Day

I first heard Besame Mucho in Mexico when I lived there in 1961-62. There was a hugely popular version that was played everywhere at that time. Ordinarily hearing the same song over and over again would kill it for me. I have an extremely low tolerance for repetition. But I couldn't get enough of this one. I've been rooting through the many YouTube versions and found two I like.

Besame Mucho
[Kiss Me A Lot]
by Consuelo Velázquez [pictured]

Besame… besame mucho,
[Kiss me… kiss me a lot,]
como si fuera esta noche
[as if tonight was going]
la última vez.
[to be the last time.]

Besame… besame mucho,
[Kiss me...kiss me a lot,]
que tengo miedo perderte,
[I am afraid to lose you,]
perderte después.
[to lose you in the end.]

[1st two verses repeat.]

Quiero tenerte muy cerca,
[I want to have you very close,]
mirarme en tus ojos
[to look myself in your eyes]
verte junto a mi,
[see you next to me,]
piensa que tal vez mañana
[think that perhaps tomorrow]
yo ya estaré lejos,
[I will be far,]
muy lejos de aquí.
[far away from here.]

[1st two verses repeat.]

Here's a good clean vocal version by Dutch-Egyptian singer Laura Fygi. The car in the video has awfully familiar styling for me.



The version I heard in Mexico had a long instrumental bit that resembled this one by Ray Conniff and His Orchestra.

My Wake

I have assigned a number of special jobs to my Anitra. She is charged with all of our petty thefts, while I take responsibility for the grand larcenies. She pays for the cable, while I pay for the food. Also, when I die, it's her job to guilt all the people who pretended to be my friends into letting themselves be subjected to a wake of my design. The main feature of this wake, which I plan to call "Awake," will be an audio program consisting of about 20 musical selections of my choosing. Here are three of those selections near the beginning.