Reset

[Joan Marie]

I'm starting a new thread I'm calling Reset

Here you can share something beautiful and random. You decide what that is.

I'm going to start with the dance sequence from Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion. Enjoy.
btw- Mira Sorvino (Romy in blue) was trained in ballet and it shows. The other two do their best. It's lovely.

[Joan Marie]

Speaking of dance...

here is a masterpiece of editing. not to mention the source material.

[Thelder]

This is what it sounds like when an angel delivers a message:

[Joan Marie]

The Unthanks sing the Magpie song.
These witches be divining by Magpie.

Worth it. especially if you need to kill an earworm.

[Joan Marie]

This is my new favourite thing





Margaret Mary O'Hara is the sister of Catherine O'Hara. Margaret Mary only ever recorded one album called Miss America in the 80s. She's got a real cult following because it was genius - I've only just discovered her.

[Joan Marie]

Found this really beautiful review/analysis of Margaret Mary O'Hara's album Miss America:

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ma ... s-america/

From the review:

She is an improviser who stacks words and melody in real time to try to approximate a feeling only to immediately question the results, like a sculptor meticulously pressing clay into the shape of a face then wondering why they had ever thought it might appear human. Navigating an unimaginative record industry was small fry for O’Hara, who was then a 38-year-old singer devoted to conceiving a form of expression that transcended physical bounds and conventional relationships. She went in search of pure, unmediated sensation and dared others to experience it with her.
...

It remains her only full-length album. O’Hara’s disinterest in pursuing success is in keeping with how she expresses longing on Miss America: desire is open-ended and without objects on songs called “To Cry About” and “My Friends Have”; a strange force that mangles her country-tinged balladry. While achieving transcendence through music wasn’t novel at the dawn of pop, let alone 1988, the way in which O’Hara sang about needing to escape the physical confines of her body to do so is just one of the qualities that gives Miss America its contemporary resonance. There is comfort and power in hearing ideas around the confines of gender and physical limitations being echoed back across a 30-year divide.

I find this energy really inspiring, like some kind of portal out of the distorted "reality" we all endure.

[Thelder]

Viktoriya Yermolyeva is a classically trained pianist from Ukraine. She is best known for her amazing piano arrangements of rock songs like “Sweet Child O' Mine” by Guns N' Roses, “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, “God Is Dead?” by Black Sabbath, and “Carry On My Wayward Son” by Kansas, which she performs on her Youtube channel: vkgoeswild, with some of her videos like “Sweet Child O' Mine” having received over 10 million views.

I recently purchased her album Happiness is not the point, which contains the following hauntingly beautiful song called “Westerwald.”

[Thelder]

John Rutter's Requiem is (in my opinion) one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and the following performance of it by MonteverdiChor Würzburg is by far the best of the many performances that I have heard, despite the poor audio quality and the fact that people sitting near the microphone cough throughout much of the performance.

Every year, I hold a memorial service for a friend who passed away, and I always play the following three movements during the service. I like to imagine that this is what she heard as angels welcomed her to her new home.

[Thelder]

"Arirang" is a Korean folk song with deep meaning for the Korean people and has been a source of comfort in troubled times. This version, "Arirang Alone" by Korean singer So Hyang, has brought comfort and hope to many people of all nationalities in these troubled times:

[Thelder]

I just discovered this beautiful performance by So Hyang. I was not able to find this particular performance with subtitles, but So Hyang's performances are so heartfelt that the lyrics aren't usually necessary.