Song of the Week: This is Halloween

It's not opera (not even remotely close), but I love this song. It's funny, weird, catchy, and it's about my favorite holiday. And Germany does October right, all chilly days, orange and gold and red leaves, general sense of eerieness, I'll even let slide the fact that they don't really celebrate Halloween here. It's quite all right; I've got my Halloween playlist, a couple classic films (Hocus Pocus, anyone?), cathedral candles and a stack of ghostly mysteries to read. In this apartment, it's All Halloween, All October.

And I'm much better from the flu, but it was a vicious little bug this year.

Story Thursday: "Not mine," she said

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

--E.A. Poe
(Obviously not mine; I can't write poetry, let alone something so creepily gorgeous as this.)

(Photo from Pear Tree

Wednesday Visuals

Fall is a-coming on, and I'm thrilled. Woolly sweaters! Mugs of tea! Fires in the fireplace (well, ideally-I don't have a fireplace)! Pumpkins! Falling leaves!* Eerily beautiful music to play on gorgeous cold days! Have some Jonas Kaufmann singing Schubert's Winterreise and get in the spirit of the season.

(All photos from Pear Tree.)

31 Days of Halloween: Day 31

By the fabulous Pika la Cynique.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYBODY!!!!

31 Days of Halloween: Day 30

As a small child, I was terrified of the Bogeyman. Convinced as I was that one wrong move could strand me in a world of cabinet-dwelling dolls, this should come as no surprise. Don't get me wrong, I loved me a good scary story. I just couldn't handle it once the lights were out.

When I was around six, I saw an absolutely terrifying animated version of "The Nutcracker" in which the Mouse King's minions were children who stayed up too late and so were turned into mice by a 30-foot tall magician who dragged them kicking and screaming out of their windows and then threw them into the gutter. I didn't sleep for months after that one. Instead, I would lie curled up in bed, unable to sleep, convinced that if I looked out the window, I would see this evil bad man coming to steal me away and turn me into a mouse. And yet for some reason, this movie never put me off of Tchaikovsky's music, which was a staple to my childhood experience.

Thanks to Google, I now know that this film of horror is Nutcracker Fantasy, made by the Japanese, and that I was not the only child to have been traumatized by it. Seriously, who starts a kid's movie like this?!

31 Days of Halloween: Day 24

Seriously, I want to be married to the man who came up with this. When I have my own house, I will absolutely do something like this. If, you know, I ever again live in a country that celebrates Halloween.

31 Days of Halloween: Day 23

Let's talk Halloween costumes.

I don't get to dress up this year, which is a tragedy. Normally I go all out at Halloween: this is me last year, just come from work (where we were required to dress up) with pink hair and funky tights. Spraying my hair pink was the funnest thing ever, although I was scrubbing the bathroom walls for weeks afterward, and they still retain a pale pink tint. Such is the sacrifice we make to look cool on Halloween.

This year, due to Germany's lack of Halloween Spirit, I won't be dressing up, but that hasn't stopped me from thinking about it. So here are my top costume pics:

Mata Hari-Actually, I could only do this one at home, because here I'd freeze to death in a matter of minutes.

Tosca, post-jump-The really morbid side to me thinks that it would be a pretty easy costume, actually: early Napoleonic dress, dark wig, copious amounts of fake blood, and zombie make-up. Possibly also a knife and a letter. If you wanted to be really creepy, have Cavaradossi right there with her. Copious amounts of fake blood, zombie make-up...Nobody would get the actual characters, but the idea would be very clear.

Wonder Woman-again, this was would be a California-only costume, lest I catch some horrific death blargh or die of hypothermia.

Turandot-this would be along the Mata Hari theme, although a lot warmer. Really cool head jewelry, heavy Chinese-style dress, appropriate bitchface...I think I could handle being Turandot for one night.

But I have to say that my favorite idea is Undead Tosca and Cavaradossi. That would be the best couples' costume ever.

What are you going to be for Halloween? Or what would you LIKE to be?

31 Days of Halloween: Day 15

Geeze, you'd think that I'd have more to say these days. Unfortunately, that's not the case. I've been frantically trying to get my book ready to start pitching to agents, and so have been basically sitting on my butt, staring at the computer screen, willing words of genius to come to me. It's...not going as well as I hoped. But I shall persevere. I am nothing if not stubborn.

Part of the problem is that there is no Halloween spirit here: Germany doesn't celebrate Halloween. It's seen as a novelty holiday, much as the U.S. looks the Day of the Dead: cool but not really necessary. So there are no decorations, no haunted houses and, perhaps saddest, no pumpkin patches or bonfires to make one think of ghosts and spooks and things that go bump in the night. And so, in the mood of spooks and creepiness, I am listening to Lizst's Faust Symphony and looking at pictures of jack o'lanterns on Google.

31 Days of Halloween: Day 9

In the spirit of discussing music both new and old, I present one of my favorite modern composers. Danny Elfman is, in my humble view, a modern musical genius. Yes, he does movie soundtracks, but they're always spot-on for the movie they're in. Whenever I see a movie and hear that Elfman did the soundtrack, I know that we're in good hands-musically, at least.

I first discovered Elfman back in late high school, when a friend realized I'd never seen The Nightmare Before Christmas and made me watch the whole thing. The story was okay, but I loved the music. It was funny and quirky and eerie, and I bought the soundtrack. It's lived on my iPod for years now.

My next Elfman foray was Edward Scissorhands, which I can't listen to too much, as it makes me sad. From there, it was Sleepy Hollow, which my friend, Ella, made me watch ("It's totally your kind of movie, so be quiet!") at Halloween a few years ago. I ended up using that film's soundtrack as the soundtrack I used while writing my first book.

There are many other soundtracks by Elfman that I like, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride and Alice in Wonderland. If I'm in the mood for something eerie, Elfman is my go-to composer.

In the spirit of October, This is Halloween. So much love.

31 Days of Halloween: Day 3

It's not opera, but one of the funniest pieces of "creepy" music (and by "creepy" I mean "awesome") I associate with the season is from Disney's Hocus Pocus. This was one of my favorite movies as a child, and I still give it a watch every October. The story is completely ridiculous, but the music always thrilled me, from the opening titles to the grand finale. I love it so much that two or three years ago, I went on a weekend-long online search for the soundtrack, and succeeded in downloading a copy that someone, somewhere, had managed to get their hands on. As far as I know, a soundtrack for this movie was never released.

Here is Better Midler being Awesome.

31 days of Halloween: Days 1 and 2

In honor of it being October, my favorite month of the year and my favorite season, I'm going to do a daily Halloween challenge: music and opera that are scary. There's so much of it that I'm really looking forward to finding more.

Since I have a guest this week, this weekend's offerings are going to be a little typical of the season. Today I give you something silly, to set the mood: