THE LITTLE SPARROW

It is not hard to picture the tiny tragic frame of Edith Piaf filling the cafes of Paris with music--like a ghost in a black dress she poured her heart into the words and her warbling voice will forever be associated with the glitz, glamour and hopeful spirit of 1940s France.

From: http://lyricstranslate.com

comme moi

Peut-être bien qu'ailleurs,
Une femme a le cœur
Eperdu de bonheur
Comme moi...
Et que d'un geste heureux
Elle soulève un peu
Le rideau de soie bleue,
Comme moi...
Pour regarder en bas
Son amour qui viendra
La prendre dans ses bras,
Comme moi...
Elle attend son amour,
Les yeux de son amour,
Les bras de son amour,
Comme moi...

Peut-être bien aussi,
Qu'à l'instant, elle vit,
Le meilleur de sa vie,
Comme moi...
Et qu'en fermant les yeux,
Elle abandonne un peu
Sa main dans ses cheveux,
Comme moi...
Peut-être qu'à son cœur,
Elle épingle une fleur
Et puis regarde l'heure,
Comme moi...
Et pense à son amour,
Aux yeux de son amour,
Aux bras de son amour,
Comme moi...

Peut-être bien encore
Qu'elle entendra plus fort
Son cœur battre et qu'alors,
Comme moi...
Elle voudra crier
En entendant monter
Un pas dans l'escalier,
Comme moi...
Comme moi dans l'instant
Où mon cœur en suspens
Se retient un moment,
Contre toi...
Et puis meure, mon amour,
Dans tes yeux, mon amour,
Dans tes bras mon amour

Mon amour...

From: http://lyricstranslate.com

Like me

Maybe someplace else
There’s a woman
With a heart overwhelmed by joy
Like me
And with a blissful gesture she lifts
The blue silk curtain
Like me
Looks down
Her love will come along
And take her in his arms
Like me
She’s waiting for her lover
The eyes of her lover
The arms of her lover
Like me

Maybe also
At this moment she has
The best time of her life
Like me
And closing her eyes she gets lost
Her hand in her hair
Like me
Maybe she pins
A flower to her chest
And then looks at the clock
Like me
She thinks of her lover
Of her lover’s eyes
Of her lover’s arms
Like me

And maybe even
She will hear
Her heart beating faster and then
Like me
She will want to cry
When hearing a footstep on the stairs
Like me
Like me for a moment
Where my heart
Holds on to you in suspense
And then to die my love
In your eyes, my love
In your arms, my love
My love

MAHLER'S SYMPHONY No. 5

During the sweltering summer months of 1901 - 02 Gustav Mahler wrote one of his most famous pieces, the magnificent Symphony No. 5. Conductor Herbert van Carajan said that when one hears Mahler's Fifth, “you forget that time has passed. A great performance of the Fifth is a transforming experience. The fantastic finale almost forces you to hold your breath.” In its entirety, a performance can last over 70 minutes and certainly the most famous movement is the oft-performed Adagietto. The soaring movement, so beloved in recent years, is better understood when considering the mood of Mahler himself during the creation. He had reached the peak of his professional career, purchased a grand villa, and was presiding over the Vienna Court Opera, one of the most prestigious positions in the musical world-- it seemed he lacked nothing until he met the alluring and vibrant young debutante, Alma Schindler. She was 22 years to his 41, gregarious vivacity to his introverted genius.

In Adagietto, Mahler had composed a musical declaration of love. He sent it to Alma as a wordless proposal. She understood. It needed no text to make its meaning clear. The beginning melody is swollen with endless longing, the middle a story of their courtship, and concludes with a profound feeling of contentment. By the following summer they were married. A composer herself, Mahler's work often communicated the state of their sometimes tumultuous marriage; it seems the music spoke to her as clearly than words. She was his muse.

I first heard Mahler's Adagietto as a young girl. My mother watched the screen breathlessly as the waif-thin Ekaterina Gordeeva stepped onto a dark, pale blue ice rink and the audience held their collective breath. Her white boots looked too large, her bones too frail to hold her upright. She sailed onto the ice and the audience broke their silence, erupting into refrained applause. To the ghostly strains of Mahler's Adagietto she performed a tribute to her late husband and figure skating partner, Sergei Grinkov, for the first time stepping onto the ice-rink without him. Every movement she made was filled with pain and desperation, I wondered how she had the strength to inhale. Time passed. Wounds heal but the scars never fade.

Fifteen years later. The ice-dancing finals at the Winter Olympics in February 2010. A young Canadian couple step onto the ice, full of youth and energy. To those who remember it's impossible not to see the resemblance to the legendary, tragic Soviet couple who'd captured two gold medals in Olympics long past. It is only apparent when the music begins, the familiar strains of Mahler's Adagietto and the same choreography, this is the widow's performance, but at last performed by two. A century has not tarnished Mahler's exquisite love letter to Alma, the magic is not lost on modern audiences.

CHUNGKING EXPRESS

"We may not know each other, but we could be friends some day."

If memories could be canned, I wish they'd last for 10,000 years.

“Where do you want to go?” she asks him. “Wherever you want to take me.

LA BELLE ET LA BETE

Sometimes beauty heard music and voices in the lonely palace, but she never saw a single soul.

"Enjoy your meal," the beast said. "Everything in this house is yours." Every night, the Beast proposed marriage to Beauty, but she refused him again and again.

Beauty's tears fell on his terrible face, still his beautiful eyes looked at her.

Only after she kissed him did he turn back into the handsome prince he was.

Film stills: John Cocteau, 1946

Drew Barrymore by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue 2009

THE ARISTOCRAT

The King of Dogs

An ancient breed, the Afghan Hound is described in such lofty terms as dignified, courageous, majestic, and elegant. It is no wonder the first Miss Germany, Susanne Erichsen, could often be found proudly parading her beautiful pets down the famous Ku'damm in Berlin. Poodles may symbolize Fifth Avenue chic to some, but the most informed aesthete knows the height of luxury is glimpsed in the timeless beauty of a dashing, windswept Afghan Hound.

winter days are for feasting

high in the sunlit silence

from

the sputtering gliding of the wright brothers to

charles lindbergh's glorious voyage over the sea to

the magnificent battle to sail to the moon

americans dominate the field of flight,

with bombastic determination to achieve the impossible

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

- John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Armoured cars sail the sky

They're pink at dawn

If I lived forever, you just wouldn't be

So beautiful, as the sun

When it shines all over the world

We're pilots watching the stars

The world pre-occupied

We're pilots watching the stars

Who do we think we are?

Ice and clouds, shimmer outside

Rain just falls, at magic hour

It's just the sound of you and me

Time twitching

Murmurs of our friendly machine

We're pilots watching the stars

The world pre-occupied

We're pilots watching the stars

Who do we think we are?

There's just the sound

Of you and me

(golfrapp - pilots)