R.B. Lemberg's Blog, page 46

Slavic music mini-series #4: songs of the fantastic from The Mill

Feeling rather lousy today, so instead of talking, let me introduce a Russian folk-rock group Melnica ('the Mill'). Love these guys; they're relatively new. Their first album, The Road of Dreams,  was released in 2003. The singer-songwriter is Helavisa (Natalia O'Shea,  nee Nikolaeva). She's a linguist/celtologist with a Ph.D in comparative Indo-European linguistics). She writes and composes the songs for the group, and plays the Celtic harp. Almost all of these songs, if not all of them, are songs of the fantastic.

I love 'the Road of Dreams' because it's an almost-perfect mapping onto many of my secondary world archetypes, including the immortal (or quasi-immortal) Siblings.  Posting two videos of the same song. One a studio recording with a cobbled-together video, and another from a live performance. 
 
On the Road of Dreams
Pour some more wine,
my crowned brother,
Look - the full moon is rising.
The drunken silver moisture is rippling in the glass,one sip - and it's time for us
to leave in a whirlwind on the Road of Dreams.

like blood on the red edge of the blade -it's for you and for me , the two swords, for us who becameghosts of the wind forever. So let's drink some more - there's still time till the morning,and before us the road is so long;you are my immortal brother, and I am your sister,and the wind is fresh, and the night is dark,We chose our path - the Road of Dreams.  On the Road of Dreams - the quiet clang of horseshoes, the fog cloaks our shoulders,the rime on our foreheads became a crown.We became the blades of rain, the shadows of the clouds, we became lighter than a feather in a hawk's wing. So let's drink some more, my young king,A  harsh fate is ours:not happiness, not love,not pity and not pain,Only the moon, only the snowstorm, and the Road of Dreams winding before us. On the Road of Dreams - past the world of men - why should we care about Adam and Eve,why should we care how people live on this earth?Only you, my brother-mage, will never find your queen,and I will never find my king. So that I could forget that my blood here is colder than ice,I beg you - pour some more wine;Look - the farewell star glimmers in the bottom [of the glass],I'll drain my cup
and with an easy heart, start on the Road of Dreams. 

a tiny sale

Sold a Jewish magic realism poem to inkscrawl. It's a short prose poem, titled "If I had reb Yoel's violin."

I have one more poem to send somewhere, but I'm not sure where. Does anybody know if Abyss and Apex hired a new poetry editor, and if so, who is it?

Slavic music mini-series #3: King and Jester

 A Russian horrorpunk group Korol' i Shut (King and Jester) put out their first album, "Hit by a stone on the head", in 1996. The makeup of the group changes, but the two core members are Gorshok (the guy on the right) and Kniaz' (the guy on the left). Gorshok means 'pot' (the cooking kind) and Kniaz' means Prince; these nicknames are based on their last names, Gorshenev and Kniazev. They're well known for their lyrics: each song is a strashilka ('scary tale'), i.e. adark-fantasy/horrorish folktale written by Kniaz'. Many of these scary tales are humorous, or have humorous elements.

I love them. Some of you will think I'm weird, but I freaking love them. Well, actually after posting a few of these videos I don't think you'll have much respect left for me, but whatever. 

I love Gorshok's energy. 

Two songs today: "The cursed old house" and a bonus, "The Jack and the Queen".

(in the video, when they are sitting around the fire, this references a folk tradition of telling folk-horror stories or strashilki during hikes).



The Cursed Old House

In an overgrown park
there stands an ancient house
The windows are boarded up
and darkness reigns inside

but immediately a terrible voice came from the dark mist,
the voice from the mist:

"It pains me to look at the bright world,
I do best in darkness,
For many, many years
I dream only of food,
It's too tight for me here,
and I dream of breaking free soon,
I'll gnaw through my dilapidated old house,
this cursed old house."

There was an old man who died,
he was blind and evil,
nobody remembered about him
after that one cold, cold winter;

the neighbors wouldn't
bury him then -
just took up some old wooden boards,
decided to board up
the door and the windows.

"It pains me to look at the bright world,
I do best in darkness,
For many, many years
I dream only of food,
It's too tight for me here,
and I dream of breaking free soon,
I'll gnaw through my dilapidated old house,
this cursed old house."

and so the villagers all
avoid that place,
and superstitious people say:
"Ghosts live here!" 
And the bonus track! I originally thought I'd post "Two Thieves and a Coin," but I couldn't find a good enough video, so I'm posting "The Jack and the Queen" instead. In this concert video you can see the incredible energy Gorshok brings to all these performances. The girl playing the violin is Masha Nefedova.
    

The Jack and the Queen

A smiling hunk walked through the park at night
He met a soothsayer sitting by a quiet pond.
How many days have I left? Tell me, how will I die?”

The cards fell upon the snow,
and the old woman said to him
through shrill laughter:

“The poor Jack is covered in blood,
and above him the horrible Queen
with a knife in her hand!”

Rubbing his hands together, the hunk exclaimed:
“What are you trying to tell me? I don’t get it!”
The knife glistened in the dark,
there came the sound of laughter:
“Right here, right now,
misfortune will find you!”

The body fell upon the snow:
and the old woman said to him
through shrill laughter:
“The poor Jack is covered in blood,
and above him the horrible Queen
with a knife in her hand!”

The witch squinted at the body
and disappeared in an unknown direction!

Three random things

1. The new Schecherezade's Bequest is out, with work by  aliseadae  ,  sevenravens  ,  alexa_seidel  ,  shweta_narayan  , and others. Yay! 

2. alankria has an important post on Women and Heroes, which deals with women's attitudes towards childbirth, and representation issues.

3. I thought of going to World Fantasy Convention this year, since it is in Sand Diego and, health permitting, I would get to see Shweta, whom I haven't seen in person in a very long time; I also wanted to go to a large con. However, WFC memberships are sold out at this point. I am on the waiting list, but if at some point you have a spare WFC membership, please let me know, so I can buy it from you.

Slavic music mini-series #2: The Wintering of Beasts

The first installment of my Slavic music mini-series featured a relatively accessible, catchy Ukrainian rock song.

And now for something completely different.

Konstantin Arbenin is a Russian poet. Or rather, a POET. His music is so-so - it is there to support his amazing lyrics, but doesn't do much to enhance them, in my humble opinion. In this, he continues the Soviet bard tradition, which I hope to revisit later. Arbenin, and his group "The Wintering of Beasts" (Zimovje Zverej), has a cult following. This is one of the groups Anton Gorodetsky from Night Watch listens to on his mini-disc player. Arbenin composed many songs of the fantastic, including a song based on Lukjanenko's SF novel Rough Draft.

This song is not fantastic per se, it is a song about St. Petersburg (Admiralty, the sphinxes) and what it means to be a writer. Note that he does things with the language here that I will not be able to faithfully translate, because English just doesn't swing this way, and because in my translations I am usually trying to stay faithful to the original rather than rewrite it as a poem of my own.



ETA, Oh god, I really cannot translate this, it's too multilayered and too culture-specific, EEP. Nevertheless.

Gin and Tonic

He was jealous of the rain
and covered with his jean jacket
her June-colored locks,
 clutching the umbrella to the elbow.

The day waited patiently for darkness,
life began in the middle, 
and the stores yawned with their unbridled mouths.
  But instead of  stars, they were protectedby two benevolent spirits  - Gin and Tonic ,and it seemed that the world would drown in them, barely touching the ground.
 And it seemed to me it seemed to me 
that white envy is not a sin, that black envy isn't smoke,  And I could not write, That night I could not write,
I was getting used to being the "great silent"*                         (* this reference is to silent film; I suspect there's an English equivalent, which I do not know)
 He was jealous of the gods and sheltered her under the bridge from the sky while pigeons begged for bread and would kill themselves for a shotglass. 
 And the flesh swaying, and the soul once moreborne in a storm's dance from the inability to stay to the inability to tame; 
 The evening of long cigarettes
molted in municipal colors
he scared the sphinxes by  answering
every trick question.
  It isn't just for fun that bloodin the veins goes against the flow. 
Here it is - the moment of braking - collapse of unity - and again - the solid ground. 

And it seemed to me ...
The great wave retreated melting its sugar in the haze,
With inspiration, he felt jealous
of poetry, of Dovlatov, of Ordynka -But instead of rhymes, he was followedby two young sphinxes: Gin and Tonic,and the air was stubborn and subtle,
having absorbed the diffused dawn.
  

Sale thing

I sold a magic realism flash piece, "Giant," to Not One of Us.
It's a weird mix of fiction and memoir, and it will appear in the next issue of NOoU, coming out in October.
Thanks to  sovay , who told me to send them something!

Slavic music mini-series

 This is a mini-series of Slavic music clips with translations that I will be posting here. I think I'll post one a day for a week, and see what happens. Please note that Slavic music is very diverse (within specific countries too), and my tastes are eclectic. While some of the music I showcase will have fantastic elements, some will not. If you like what I'm doing, please leave me a few words to encourage me to keep going; I am easily discouraged.

We start with a relatively accessible [and recent ] love song, "I want to be with you," by a Ukrainian rock group "Elza's Ocean" (Okean El'zi), who formed in 1994 in my own city. English wikipedia page here.

The lyrics are simple, and sound better in Ukrainian than in my translation.*

"I yearn for you / like nobody ever before / I look at you and cannot say a word. I miss you so much, like a caged bird misses freedom. I wait and do not know what is truth in your eyes. 
Refrain: I want to be with you /  like a newborn yearns for its mother, I want to be with you like the earth yearns for the sky. All the desires in the world, all I own I would give up / just to say your name every morning."

I love this clip, too.

*This will be true for each translation I post :) They are actually singing "I want to you", which is not something you can say in English.

Question about music

 Would you be interested if I did a mini-series of some of my favorite Slavic music clips with [partial or full] translations? You should expect not to like many of them, though, because may be quite different from what you might used to (also, my taste in this stuff is weird) :)

Happy happy happy

Some time ago, I might have mentioned reading/betaing an amazing post-apocalyptic SF story with a midwife protagonist. People, the author of that story is  paper_birch  , and the story just SOLD TO STRANGE HORIZONS.

I cannot be more excited about this. It goes live in December, and I cannot wait to share it with you.

*dances*

Grinning like an idiot

Yesterday I got word that my epic poem "In the Third Cycle" won the Rannu competition in the poetry category. *beams*

For those of you who read any of my scrappy Wind Hoarder and/or Journeymaker poems, the cycle features these characters, and one another.

Yes, I  will get 500CAN for a secondary-world epic poem about a love triangle, with at least one gay character. I think I win a little.

This is a no-strings-attached prize that involves money cake, toys, and funding for ST, but no publication. The piece is very long (179 lines), and currently on submission; I cannot wait to share it with you!

Thank you  shweta_narayan  ,  emily_jiang  ,  dormouse_in_tea  , pgdudda , and samhenderson , who betaed this piece back in January. (am I forgetting anyone?)

YIPPEE :)