Monday, February 17, 2025

Devil Fox Trombone Opera Summary Mayhem

Yesterday, while I was "blogging" about the fox and its relationship, if any, to the devil, I happened to be listening to an opera called DER FREISCHUTZ, forgive the missing umlaut. And I'll tell you why! Why I was listening to an opera, not why to forgive the missing umlaut. So, I had read an obituary in the New York Times about the singer Edith Mathis, and as I often say, without joking, I get all my ideas about what to read and listen to from the obituaries. If you're not dead, don't bother me! Well! This opera really snagged my attention and I started looking into it. I noticed that there was a fox in the summary! And also, the devil! But none of that is what I decided to tell you. So, while I was looking up more stuff about this opera, I found a "web" site called Interlude. I won't "link" to it, because I can just tell from sad experience it will be a wasteland of zombie "links" one day and then when I'm 78, Lord willing, I'll have to go back and replace the "link." So you can look it up for yourself or trust me when I tell you that it mentions "quiet string tremolos and low trombones, an instrument traditionally associated with devilish doings." So! That reminded me of my famous novel SOUR BLUEBERRIES, which used to be on the "internet" - that's just how good it was! "Internet" good! - until I read that the platform I was using had also decided it was okay to host actual, real-life Nazis. So I was like, "No thanks." Later, somebody told me that the platform had entertained sudden misgivings about hosting Nazis, which I hope is true. But who knows in our hilarious modern times? Anyway, I can quote SOUR BLUEBERRIES here because it doesn't exist anywhere else and never will. And here I go! "Anyway, in today’s meeting I kept talking about trombones for some reason. I saw everybody’s eyes glazing over but I couldn’t stop." Of course, SOUR BLUEBERRIES was a work of fiction (wink, wink!) but that detail came from an ADVENTURE TIME: FIONNA AND CAKE meeting I had. And one of the myriad boring things I was claiming to know was that trombones had been considered the devil's instrument! But I couldn't find any evidence to back that up at the time. I'm not saying I tried. But it seemed like something I might have "learned" in college, when I was a music major, which I'm not sure is a thing I have ever admitted here.