text:
Vilmos Csanyi
Fiction, Hungarian Fiction Week, In Translation, Prose
THE SCENT OF PERFECTION
In which the Book is introduced to the reader, some sacred texts are discussed, and there begins the story of St Teresa, the girl from Ávila
Dear Reader! It is only right that for the arduous and time-consuming activity of reading you should have a reliable guide to enlighten you concerning the backdrop to the events and perhaps point out some of the more important details in the hope of bringing you closer to the story. This significant person is myself, the Book, the one you are now reading. Of course I have at my disposal many other works in which you, too, would find references, information, and useful answers to any questions that might arise as you read, but I shall spare you the additional burden of these. I found it difficult to persuade myself to come to your aid: I am old, a cantankerous and sceptical, ancient Book. But the story of this saintly half-Jewish young woman who lived over four hundred years ago has kindled my curiosity. In her time, too, as invariably in later times, the Jews were persecuted. And in those days women were perhaps even less valued than they are today. Let them bear many children, let them work, let them pray, but above all let them not stick their noses into the important business of men, such as religion, philosophy or politics. Teresa was one of the first to rebel against this culture that oppressed women and, successfully hoodwinking the powerful men of her time, to achieve her goals. She was liberated in her thinking, managed to have a clear relationship to the concept of God, and despite the ruthlessly hierarchical nature of the society of her time organized her small monastic communities on the basis of genuine equality.
I have little time to lose. The many weird machines of the electronic age are breathing down my neck and soon only in museums will a few copies of my brethren remain. Yet it was books that made mankind great.
Many thousands of years ago, when the various systems of writings were invented, writing as such was not regarded as text with its own, independent meaning and value, but merely as an aggregation of decipherable symbols referring to important events or objects arranged according to some principle. The Phoenicians tied small clay tablets to the large pottery urns in which they transported wheat, oil or wine, and the symbols written on these indicated what the urns contained. These were not informative texts, instructions for use, or explanations, merely minute symbols that made it easier to transport and store the hundreds of urns. Later these markings developed into texts, at first simple and eventually more complex expressions of ideas.
In the Middle Ages the Bible was not translated into the various vernaculars because that would merely have confused ordinary folk: the Bible should be read in Latin, the language of the church and of knowledge; anyone who did not know Latin was obviously unsuited to the reading of Scripture. Indeed, the role and social purpose of the Church was precisely to mediate between that text born of divine inspiration and simple men.
The invention and rapid spread of printing brought about changes during just those decades when Teresa lived. Books appeared by the hundred and it was no longer the privilege of the rich to purchase them. In addition to the Holy Writ and theological disputations, worldly works, too, came into being. This is the age of the chivalric romance so ironically critiqued by Cervantes in the times after Teresa's death. The burgeoning democracy of reading transformed society. Knowledge in the form of writing and the rich fabric of allegory reached the masses and everyone could revel to their heart's content in the glories of interpretation.
This child of Ávila found herself in a rapidly changing world. America had been discovered, the Arabs had been run out of Spain, a Christian Europe had come into being. In Italy the Renaissance was on its way out, the Reformation had begun, to be followed by the Counter-Reformation. In fact the only still point of the Christian world was Spain. Gold from America and the wealth that it brought did for a time create stability in this country re-conquered from the Arabs, and in these parts they did not, to be sure, much like change.
St Teresa of Ávila was a strong, wilful woman. After her death her enormous popularity led to this humble, handsome, splendid Spanish virgin from a noble family being transmuted by church dignitaries and bureaucrats into a plaster saint.
Many in the modern world have studied the story of her life and it has become clear that it is only her beauty and genius that are beyond dispute, in every other respect her story can be interpreted in a variety of ways. This Book that you are reading – I – am not a learned work such as many noteworthy scholars have devoted to her, but a free interpretation, a fiction, which none the less attempts to take into consideration the nature of the writings that have shaped the allegorical tales, and re-interprets the memory of Teresa.
Finally I must insist that while I can exist only through the tale of Teresa, it is my belief that my existence, too, is a contribution to Teresa's life.
One night, already a Carmelite nun, she was tossing and turning in her bed but somehow sleep would not come…
After Mother died, my aunt Doña Elvira de Cepeda's dear sons began to frequent our house. On one occasion Father became very agitated because he said I had dressed too alluringly and all eyes were on me; he forbade the boys from ever coming again, much to my unhappiness. We led such a gay life in the day room, chatting, singing, playing a variety of parlour games. At six in the evening Juana would appear with a huge dish of cakes and biscuits and orange juice and we would have a bite to eat. Then, to everyone's sorrow, Juana would come again at nine, this time empty-handed, and stop in the doorway making a long face. The company would fall silent and the taking of farewells would begin. And so would end another joy-filled day.
It took much persuading for father to allow my favourite cousin, Pedro, to be my regular escort, which he was delighted to be. Soon we fell in love. The physical joy lasted no more than three months. But how wonderful and exciting it was! Pedro was a fine young man in his prime, upstanding, spirited, strong, yet always gentle with me. Never shall I forget his embraces and kisses. I always prepared carefully for our evening rendezvous, anointing my arms and neck with almond oil, sprinkling my hair with rosewater, and taking care to adorn myself in my finest jewellery. Some afternoons we would go for a ride – chaperoned, naturally. When we first embraced one night, still in all innocence, already he was speaking of our becoming man and wife, and it seemed that small, soft world of entwined arms inhabited only by two bodies longing for one another would remain just like that until the end of time. He caressed me, embraced me, held me close, and I explored his face with my lips and gently drew his own luscious lips between my teeth. How far away seems the outside world at such times! Ávila disappears, father and family disappear, everything seems perfect, time stands still, and you think that this truly is eternity. In the evenings I could barely contain myself as I waited for Father to go to bed. He would fuss about endlessly with his papers and it was often very late by the time he kissed me goodnight as I lay in bed in my nightdress, and once the dear man finally went to bed and closed the door to his room, I would spring out of bed at once and put on my clothes again. In the kitchen I found Juana, who was willing to let me out by the back gate. She made me swear, every single time, that I would preserve my virtue, and at four in the morning, when the bell of St Andrew's church first tolled, I was by the gate ready to be let back in. For two whole months I struggled heroically and ineffectually to preserve my virtue. We both suffered terribly: he desired me and I him. Just twenty days before the end we sat on the bench beneath the myrtle bushes in his garden. He embraced me, kissed and caressed me, and we spoke of how when we were married we would have a great big house and many children and make Juana our housekeeper, then we just clasped each other tight and pressed our cheeks together in silence. Stroking my hand, he took it gently into his, and led it to his hose. I almost cried out as I came to his naked manhood and he folded my hand around it. I experienced the strange creature – I don't know what else to call it – reaching out of there; it was his, yet had a life of its own. It was covered in silky, soft skin, but hard like the muscles of a man's arm. It seemed to be independent, trembling in my hand, throbbing, arching upwards, as if wanting to get closer to me. At its root it was covered in silken hairs and I wanted it to be mine, to somehow take it into myself. I forgot every warning about my virtue as my whole body was flooded by a strange joy and longing; I wanted to dissolve in it. He laid me down on the bench, hitched up my skirt, knelt down by me and kissed me there. I could feel myself becoming all moist and at first I thought I had wet myself, but it was only desire trickling out of me. He bent over me and I could feel that long, strange body sliding into me. There was a momentary stab of pain, then an inundation of pleasure.
We lay one on top of the other for a long time, and slowly I realized what we had done. Gone was my virginity, my virtue that Juana had for so long been so concerned about. I gave a shudder. Father! Pedro noticed, bent close to my ear, and whispered sweet words: it would all be fine, we would be married by the autumn. I believed him and was happy. When the bell tolled, I gave him a kiss and ran home. Juana let me in, took one look at me and said angrily: Doña Teresa, what have you done? I just stared at her in astonishment. Then she began to weep and embraced me.
"There will real trouble if he doesn't marry you. Don Alonso will do away with me too."
We wept together for a while and then I ran off to my room. For the next twenty nights I went over to him every single night; he would be waiting for me by the gate and covered me with passionate kisses.
I was fearful that someone would find out, because the family and visitors now often remarked on the joy that radiated from my countenance. Once father also overheard a chance remark, gave me an inquiring look that frightened me to death, but he turned away and left the room. This left me drenched in perspiration and anxiety had replaced my joy, but I was quite unable to bring our liaison to an end, even though by then I was spending the best part of the day in a most fretful state. I prayed to God that Father should not find out.
By the age of sixteen Teresa had grown into a fine-looking, well-educated woman, at gatherings attracting everyone's attention as a superlative conversationalist and a somewhat flirtatious but spellbinding personality. In the Spanish society of that time a woman of the nobility had three kinds of "honour". Her virginity, which she preserved for the sanctity of her marriage, her social status, of which the bedrock was provided by her descent (and subsequently her husband), and lastly her Catholic faith and conduct, which was assured by her membership of the Church, by taking part in the obligatory ceremonies, and the unqualified acceptance of every single tenet of the religion.
The first honour she lost quickly, the second she lacked, though she was not to discover this until later, and to the third she clung until the end of her life – as regards its outward manifestations, though inwardly she saw many things quite otherwise.
And then it all ended terribly badly. On the final morning, as I crept back through our gate, I found Father. Never had I seen him so sombre and sunken in gloom. I couldn't bear to look him in the eye and my tears came streaming down.
"Come to my room, my dear, " he said quietly and tersely, turning on his heel and entering the house. I was sobbing; Juana embraced me but I shook her off. Evil asp in my bosom: I was sure it was she who had betrayed me. Slowly, I set off after Father. I can still recall every step I took. The big, oaken door standing ajar, the wide corridor, the silk Persian carpets on the walls. I paused by each one: perhaps there would be a miracle and suddenly everything would be back to normal; but nothing changed in the unrelenting silence. By the time I came to Father's room I was no longer crying; somehow I had managed to pull myself together. What I had done had happened to others a million times, it is no sin against God to enjoy the caresses of our lover, all I had done was take a down-payment a few months in advance…
Father was sitting in the tall armchair, stiff, pale, and infinitely sad. He no longer looked angry, just pained and broken.
"My dear!" he said. He never called me 'my dear': it was always my darling girl, my angel, my sweet little Teresa. "In this house you have experienced nothing but what is good, you have encountered only people who have lived respectable, virtuous lives. But you have betrayed us and you have ruined your own life for ever."
Well, Don Alonso was no angel himself. Teresa's mother, Don Alonso's second wife, Beatriz de Ahumada – a distant relative (fourth cousin) of his first wife and the child of a rich peasant family – was not yet fourteen but already a fabled beauty. She caught Alonso's eye on one his trips, he instantly fell in love with her – and knocked her up. When the pregnancy became obvious, Alonso wasted no time in announcing their wedding. Unfortunately Beatriz' mother was unaware of the pregnancy and turned to the local priest for help, as she had a particular loathing for Jews and had no intention of allowing one into the family. The priest managed to unearth a rule that banned the marrying of a deceased wife's relatives and annulled the nuptials as well as excommunicating both parties. The situation was ultimately resolved through a member of a distant branch of Don Alonso's family, a bishop who had, by the by, collected substantial sums for the king's crusades. From him, in return for appropriate recompense, it was possible to purchase the approval of the Roman Catholic Church for the prohibited marriage, in the form of a dispensation. The document cost Alonso a small fortune, but luckily once the child was on its way the mother-in-law also relented somewhat. Of course the bureaucracy in Rome took its time and there was concern that baby Fernando would arrive before the dispensation, so Beatriz had to hide in the tiny village of Gottarendura until the wedding. Ultimately everything turned out fine; this was the village where Beatriz gave birth to all her children.
"But father, I am innocent, and Pedro will marry me, we can have the wedding in the autumn, he adores me!" I protested.
"I love you so much that I always believe everything you say, but as far as this marriage is concerned, you are being a silly goose, my dear! The Cepedas will never accept any more Jews into their family. We all swore, my brothers and I, that our children would never marry in. He won't marry you because his family won't let him. He knew that, of course."
I thought the earth would swallow me up.
"How can I be a Jew? I am a staunch Catholic, I'm there at St Andrew's every Sunday for mass. A Jew! Father, that's impossible!"
"This is a family secret, my dear, that I have not told you before because I didn't want the burden of this knowledge to frighten you and make you withdrawn. Perhaps it would have been better to enlighten you."
"How can we be Jews? We go to church, we all confess, we take communion. You are a noble, a Christian, aren't you?"
"Sit down, Teresa," he said, pointing to the smaller armchair. "Let's begin at the beginning. We are conversos, converts to Christianity. My father – your grandfather – Juan Sánchez, was forced to abandon the faith of his fathers. Had he not bowed to Christianity, he would have been confined to the ghetto or sent into exile, as were many tens of thousands of his people. Grandfather was born here, lived here, and thought this was his home, and he sacrificed his faith for this illusory homeland. It was never accepted that we had truly abandoned our Jewish faith; the conversos are under constant surveillance and the slightest inkling that we might stumble in our faith sends people scurrying to the Inquisition."
"But surely someone who has become a zealous Catholic is let be?"
"Come now! One of grandfather's neighbours was also a converso, an affluent merchant. One Christmas they bought a hock of smoked ham, like everyone else, saying 'Let's not stand out!' But the family did not want to eat it and because the merchant's wife was unhappy about throwing it away, she gave it to a poor family with many children that lived some distance away. They accepted it gladly but then began to wonder, and asked the butcher how many hams the merchant's family had bought. Just the one, like most people, came the answer. So: they buy it, then don't eat it, and we get a gift because their ancient faith forbids them from eating it! They immediately reported them to the Inquisition. The merchant and his wife were taken away, imprisoned, tortured, and their lives were ruined. Such is the world we live in, Teresa!"
"But you, Father, surely they haven't harmed you?"
"They have indeed. When I was about ten, we lived in Toledo with your grandfather, Juan Sánchez. For various reasons the general atmosphere suddenly became charged against the conversos, and they were accused of spilling the blood of Christian children and other stupid slanders. The Inquisition rounded up several hundred people of Jewish descent, your grandfather among them. Those who would not donate to religious causes, swelling the pockets of the Inquisition, were tortured and then made to wear a long yellow outfit, the sambenito, which had red flames and devils painted on it, and they were chased through the city's streets, where the enraged Christians pelted the unfortunates with the remains of exhumed heretics and rotting corpses of animals, as well as rocks and stones. In the square they were all tied to stakes, bundled up in straw, and one by one the city luminaries set fire to them."
"They were burnt alive?"
"Of course, alive, to the rabble's vast amusement."
"And grandfather?"
"He had enough money and was willing to 'confess' that he had sinned but had repented and would return to the 'true' faith, never again disobeying Christian precepts."
"And they believed him?"
"My dear, they were keen on money. If you have enough money to save your life, that's a good example for others in the same boat, encouraging them to sacrifice their fortunes to save their own and their families' lives."
"And these were allowed to go free?"
"Yes, but they were forced to take part in penitential processions, on seven successive Fridays, wearing a sambenitillo, canary-yellow garb that is shorter than the sambenito: only knee-length and with black crosses on it. Along the winding streets of Toledo they would have to pass, stopping at every church to bear witness that their new-found conversion was genuine. The rabble by the roadside jeered and spat abuse at them and pelted them with rotten fruit, parts of animal corpses, and of course rocks and stones."
"And you had to watch this horror too?"
"No, my angel, I didn't watch it; I took part in it. Every male in the family above the age of three had to march alongside the grown-ups dressed in yellow, so my older brother and I did, too. The more tender-hearted priests sometimes allowed us to go to the end of the procession, so that by the time we came to those who were hurling things the rocks and stones had been used up. But they still got us, now and then, of course. There's a mark here, on my shoulder. The most dreadful thing was when they let us go home after it was all over. We ripped the vile yellow clothes off one another and huddled together sobbing, sometimes until daybreak. And the following day we all had to do our daily tasks wearing our usual clothing. The merchant sold his wares to those who had humiliated and tortured him the previous day."
Relations in those days were indeed complicated. The communities were made up of Moors, Jews and Christians and did try to get along peacefully. But this rarely worked out: sometimes the Moors pursued the Jews and Christians, sometimes the Christians harassed the Jews and Moors. The Jews didn't harass anyone, which was of course typical of them and in any event was not the right thing to do.
The persecution of the Jews came in waves. There was a peak, for example, in the early fourteenth century in the wake of the great plague, which was obviously caused by the Jews themselves. King Pedro I of Castile, however, later showed himself to be decidedly philosemitic, which certainly angered the nobility. Many Jews converted to Christianity in the hope of being left in peace: these were the conversos, the new Christians. When at the end of the Middle Ages the Moors were successfully driven out of Andalusia and Granada, Isabella of Castile and the king of Andalusia, Ferdinand, agreed after protracted negotiations to marry in 1469. At first they did not specially target the Jewish and converso communities, but once they had consolidated their power, they thought that the most important tool of unification would be zealous anti-Semitism. The rulers dreamt of a unified Spanish state and reckoned that the only barrier to this was the unruly Jewish people, whom the peasants already despised from the bottom of their hearts. At that time this manifested itself not in the form of racial hatred but simply as religious mania. A faith of which the ancient God, the Lord, the son of God, Jesus, the mother of God, Mary, the foster-father of God, Joseph, and its most important saints, the Apostles, were all of them Jews, will obviously strive to keep away from their religion those Jews who have the gall to claim ownership of the part of Holy Writ called the Old Testament by any means at their disposal. The two rulers magnanimously imagined that if they succeeded in getting every Jew to convert to Christianity and remain true to the new faith, in a few generations a unified culture would evolve and the Jews would finally disappear, to the gratification of all.
Of course they also had their way with the Moors, who were likewise forced to abandon their faith and were deprived of their assets and often of their children, too. These Morescos became servants and slaves. Hundreds of thousands of them were rounded up and transported to the coasts of Africa, where of course in the Islamic communities they counted as Christians and ended up at the very bottom of the social ladder. These events reached their climax in the years after Teresa's death.
In the last quarter of the fourteenth century inflation and high prices again led to a new round of Jewish persecution, which was sparked by such distinguished clerics as the orator Fernand Martinez. Because of anti-Semitism Jews converted to Christianity in their tens of thousands, and the Jewish community thus shrank by half. Anti-Jewish feeling now turned towards the conversos, although according to the Church's official view the Christians of old and the conversos should have been treated alike, and they were indeed accepted by the upper classes; none the less they remained tainted with suspicion as far as the lower levels of society were concerned. The simplest solution appeared to be to expel those who clung to their Jewish faith, as they might have a bad influence on the conversos and tried to lure them back to the faith of their ancestors. A royal decree to this effect was issued in 1482, but its implementation did not prove entirely successful.
At first the conversos were not banned from pursuing occupations not permitted to Jews, for example, tax-collecting, state office, running pharmacies, medical practice, tailoring, operating slaughterhouses, joining monastic orders, and so forth. But the conversos were ambitious and thanks to their better education occupied many such important positions. So now there came decrees that forbade not only Jews but also conversos from pursuing such careers. Even worse, many conversos, as in all likelihood Teresa's grandfather, too, practised their Jewish religion in secret. For this of course the Jews were held responsible, as they were clearly systematically luring the conversos back to their faith of old. Isabella and Ferdinand therefore turned to more efficacious methods. The Papal Inquisition had already been at work in Europe: it was originally established to eradicate heretical sects on the orders of Pope Gregory IX in 1231, but what the Spanish rulers had in mind was an organization under their own control, and in 1478 they set up the Spanish Inquisition, which of course had at its disposal techniques that were more up-to-date. Only one or two technical innovations remained to be developed, such as the Spanish boot. It is thought that between 1481 and 1530 eight thousand cases were heard and it is likely that more than two thousand executions were carried out. The main concern of the Spanish Inquisition was to make the conversos see the light and since there were many well-off citizens among them it turned out that taking the conversos to court also had considerable financial benefits. If someone was caught, he would be tortured – purely for educative purposes, naturally – he would implicate another person under suspicion who was well-off, who in turn could also be charged, and the latter, too, would end up having to pay handsomely.
The higher echelons of the aristocracy did not especially favour the persecution of the Jews and not infrequently they would intervene with the authorities on behalf of their converso friends. On the other hand in the countryside it was easy to fan the flames of hatred of the Jews among the peasantry. One or two impassioned preachers, such as the above-mentioned Fernand Martinez, attributed every economic ill and meteorological calamity to the work of the Jews and arranged their own little pogroms independently of the Inquisition. The powers that be tried to suppress these and channel the whole business into the somewhat languid but at least supervised waters of the local bureaucracy.
Juan Sánchez was a successful merchant in Toledo. His first wife was the daughter of a well-known banking family, but had died giving birth to their third child. His second wife, Ines de Cepeda, was not quite as high-born as the first, but was still the daughter of a well-regarded Christian merchant. In 1485 Toledo witnessed a wave of appalling anti-Semitism and the conversos were accused of conspiring against both the kingdom and the Inquisition. A large number of citizens were rounded up and many were sentenced to death. Sánchez too was taken away but he was prepared to confess and return to the one and only redeeming faith. According to contemporary accounts this cost a colossal amount of money and of all the accused who were released it was he who paid the most. The Church took him back into its embrace and punished him with the penance that Don Alonso had described.
This is still a far cry from the well thought-out and extremely efficient Jew-exterminating Nazi machine of the twentieth century; compared with this the Inquisition was merely a primitive, rickety bureaucratic hodge-podge – though it at least operated to the greater glory of the Church!
Juan Sánchez, having completed his penance, quickly left Toledo and moved with his family to Ávila, where the people seemed at the time to be more tolerant. To be on the safe side, he changed his name and took the family name of his second wife also. In 1500, for a hefty sum, he secured his patent of nobility and was officially declared a hidalgo.
But being a converso was a very risky business even in Teresa's time.
"Father, you are a Don, so how can you be a converso?"
"My dear, your grandfather's second wife – your grandmother – was a Cepeda. Though the Cepedas are not from the high aristocracy, they were a well-known Christian family. Your grandfather ensured that after the horrific events his sons should be certified members of the nobility. You can see our patent of nobility in that frame on the wall."
Let's pause here for a moment. I, the Book, need not be as indulgent as this concerned parent.
Two important points have emerged. First, the better-off conversos tried to marry into well-known Christian families of more modest means, offers that the latter, because of their financial situation, were rarely in a position to refuse; the case of Juan Sánchez was by no means unique. In this way the children of such unions would be only half-conversos, and if they also married cleverly in their turn, the grandchildren would be only quarter-conversos, and so on. The fact that the doña, the wife, came from the nobility did not of course turn a señor into a hidalgo, but in return for appropriate sums of money the state was not averse to "rebranding". If someone could bring to the special courts witnesses to testify that for the previous three generations his family had been Christian, he could obtain a patent as proof that he did not have to pay taxes and was free to apply for any position. He could even, for example, become a tax-collector. Many thought that Juan Sánchez regarded the securing of this document as a business investment, because a tax-collector he did in fact become. The state had not, of course, thought this matter through and soon brought forward legislation to the effect that a patent of nobility obtained in this manner could not be passed down from father to son and the latter would again have to go to court if they wished to remain noble in adulthood. The taps regulating the flow of money have to be used frequently, otherwise they rust up.
In 1519 the four Cepeda brothers, Teresa's father among them, refused to pay any taxes, claiming that, as nobility, they were exempt. A court case was brought against them, but they decided to lodge a challenge to it in the little village of Hortigosa de Rioalmar, not far from Ávila but still within its jurisdiction, where one of them had bought a small property some time earlier and the prosecutor in charge, Francisco de Pajares, happened to be Pedro Cepeda's brother-in-law. Witness after witness testified that the brothers came from a Christian family of hidalgos going back at least three generations. Four of the witnesses for the state, who had earlier testified against the Cepedas, suddenly withdrew their incriminatory testimony. Later it turned out that the prosecutor himself had paid them off on the brothers' behalf, but this fact had no effect on the final outcome. It was a complex case because the state tried, in the interests of the treasury, to prove that the counter-petitioners were not nobility, as many still recalled Juan Sánchez' calvary in Toledo. But the carefully chosen small town, the reliable network of family and friends, and substantial sums of money ensured the result the brothers sought: on 16 November 1520, their patent was finally issued, though the captious prosecutor managed to attach to it a codicil restricting its validity to the region around Ávila. Don Alonso's framed document showed traces of some changes: the word "codicil" had been scratched out and the first two words of "restricted to the Ávila region" now read "especially in". We are none of us perfect.
"Well, now you know my views. After your beloved mother's death you had the run of this house. No one will suspect anything if from tomorrow you will continue your studies in the Augustinian Sisters' convent of Our Lady and make every effort to put all that has happened out of your mind. In a year or two we shall find you a suitable husband. You have a substantial dowry, you can still make a very good marriage."
"But Father! I don't want to be a nun!"
"I don't want you to become one either, Teresa. You are going there in order to study and get over this damaging relationship. This is my wish and paternal command. Gather your things; you can take María with you as your servant, and I shall be sure to visit you often."
Doña Teresa de Ahumada (Spanish custom permitted girls to take their mother's family name) withdrew to a convent in 1528, still with painful wounds in her heart. It is said that her lover tried to contact her many times but despite the convent's relatively easy-going regime, Teresa was supervised closely and they could not meet or even exchange letters. There ensued a harrowing, lonely period in Teresa's life, suitable for reflection.
For the first three nights I slept not a wink; I was tossing and turning all night and even now I often cry myself to sleep. I was fortunate that Father generously purchased a cell for my sole use. At first they wanted to put me in a dormitory with twenty others of my kind. I would have died. Poor Father, he loves me so much that he believes I'm innocent – most likely he wants to believe I'm innocent. He is making plans for my marriage, which should be the next one after my older sister's. But the very thought of this chills me to the marrow. Father is rich, he is likely find me someone who is to his taste, from a family willing to accept the daughter of a well-to-do converso. This does, however, limit the choice considerably. I have never heard anyone mention that we are Jews, but Ávila is a gossipy town and I assume everyone knows. Now I understand why those that I knew to be conversos were always kind and friendly.
Oh, this is terrible!
The Christian husband that Father will spend a deal of money securing will discover on his wedding night that he has been sold faulty goods and howl with rage, perhaps even beat me, for having deceived him and besmirched his honour; if he is stupid enough he might even broadcast it to all and sundry… No, this cannot be! In this country it is dreadful enough to be a wife and spend your life cooking, washing, weaving, spinning, bearing one child after another, under some despot of a revolting, tyrannical husband. That's not a world I want to live in! But even if by some chance the unfortunate fellow should prove tolerable, behind my back everyone would whisper that I was a Jew and I would be welcome only among my own kind.
No! I don't want a husband! Poor Father! I know he really wants the best for me and I do love him dearly, but no, not even for him am I prepared to ruin my life.
In those early days I had a recurring dream that there would be a sharp knock on the gate: the sisters would open it hurriedly, and my lover would come charging in on a splendid black steed. I would hurry to him, let him sweep me up and plant me before him in the saddle; raising his feathered hat to the sisters, we would turn around, and away we would gallop, out of this prison, towards freedom and a life of unalloyed joy. But he did not come. Once, when I caught sight of a letter that had just been delivered, the sisters glanced furtively in my direction and quickly hid it. My beloved had obviously written to me. How beautiful his hands were, with those long fingers. How velvety their touch.
I pray to God to at least grant me peace. There are opportunities enough, as we pray together nine times a day. Of course, this does not fulfill me; though I mumble along with the others, I can pray truly only when I am alone and even then only before I fall asleep.
It was the custom among the upper classes in Spain to send their adolescent daughters to a convent in order to shield them from temptation. Here they could fill their days with their devotions, singing and, naturally, such studies as were appropriate for the gentler sex: theology, grammar, a certain amount of mathematics, music, and knitting and embroidering. Latin was of course out of the question, there was no point teaching it to women: nor could they study the Holy Writ, as they would not have understood it. The Bible is for educated males, only the Protestants entertained the absurd notion that everyone should read it. Once the girls found a suitable match they could leave the convent, though in general a family was able to provide only one of their daughters with an adequate dowry. For much smaller sums, however, it was possible to ensure they remained in the convent for ever. Not infrequently they knew their fate in advance and were permanently consigned there from the age of four or five. There was no shortage of work in a convent for those not affluent enough to be spared hard labour, someone like Teresa, for example.
This convent is a dreadful place; I can't bear the confined space, the iron discipline, the feeling of being shut in, even though I often think of becoming a nun. I had erred but my confessors did not make a big thing of it; if I were accepted into some order – preferably not this one, because I don't like this one at all – even my Jewishness could disappear. I observe the religion's precepts at all times and I find joy in prayer. Just not here, in these military barracks. Though I quickly got on good terms with my fellow inmates and we saw eye to eye on many matters, I did not share my sad history with them and let them think I too was waiting for a husband. Only to my dear friend Juana Suárez have I explained why I want to be a nun – but not in these barracks. She told me many stories about the Carmelites, who are profoundly religious yet much more open, with rules not so strict that visits from the convent to the city are out of the question. Perhaps that's where I should go. I mentioned this to Father, but his face clouded over and he said: that's no convent for a Jew, my dear. I will get you a proper husband, one worthy of you. Poor Father, with those memories of Toledo! I will have to find some way out; it's a matter of life or death.
Teresa endured nineteen months in the convent. She was unable to come to terms with it: she fell ill and had fainting fits, and finally her father took her to his sister's to recover. On the way they stopped briefly at the house of her dear uncle Pedro in Hortigosa, where during her visit she read to the elderly gentleman from works of theology. One in particular caught her attention: the sermons of St Jerome. St Jerome (347-419) was an outstanding linguist and historian who knew Greek, Hebrew and Latin; he was the scholar who modernized the old Latin Bible, the Vetus Latina. Based on the Greek texts he made numerous emendations to the text, and his version became known as the Vulgate and was widely used by the church from the seventh century onwards. Jerome was an unusual man of great learning, who in his youth lived the life of a hedonistic Roman but later converted to Christianity and became an ascetic. He left behind many volumes of writings and commentaries. He was a man with a quick temper, and the ironic tone of his passionate disputations gave rise to numerous theological debates. He had a particularly powerful effect on his female students. He spent twenty years working in a monastery in Bethlehem, and there is a well-known story from this time about a lion that one day happened to wander into the monastery's courtyard, resulting in everyone fleeing in terror, except for Jerome. The lion proffered its paw to the holy man, who saw that an enormous thorn was lodged in it. Jerome removed the thorn and the lion followed him around faithfully for a long time afterward. There are numerous paintings that depict this scene.
I spent many days reading St Jerome's sermons and I have been profoundly agitated ever since. Despite receiving absolution in the convent I am now certain I have committed a mortal sin. Had I died in the interim, I would surely have gone to Hell for all eternity. What have I done! And I had also lied to Father, compounding my sin. There can be no forgiveness. I had been possessed by Satan when I yielded to those caresses and let myself be carried away by those honeyed words. Somehow I must atone for this heinous sin. I will join the Carmelites, come what may. There I can lead a life of virtue and regain my peace of mind. Father is against it, I know, but he is in thrall to Toledo. It is I alone who must decide, and I have decided: I will take the veil despite my father's wishes. I pray God will forgive this further act of disobedience.
On 2 November 1535, Teresa ran away from home and defying her father's express will entered the Carmelite Cloister of the Incarnation in Ávila. She became a postulant and a year later made final profession of her solemn vows. Though her father was most unhappy, he eventually reconciled himself to her decision and supported her with a generous annual allowance.
VILMOS CSÁNYI is a world-renowned biologist, biochemist and ethologist and university teacher. He is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Science. His main field of research is human and animal behavior, and questions of biological and cultural evolution. He is also the author of numerous literary novels.
About the Translator:
PETER SHERWOOD studied Hungarian and linguistics in the University of London before being appointed, in 1972, to a lectureship in Hungarian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (now part of University College London). He taught there until 2007. From 2008 until his retirement in 2014 he was László Birinyi, Sr., Distinguished Professor of Hungarian Language and Culture in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has reviewed regularly for The Times Literary Supplement (London) as well as the e-journal Hungarian Cultural Studies (Pittsburgh) and other scholarly journals. In addition to book-length publications, he has translated from a wide range of genres, including shorter prose which has appeared online in Asymptote, Words Without Borders, The Missing Slate and B O D Y. He lives in London.
PrevPreviousSandor Jaszberenyi
NextEva Peterfy-NovakNext


text:
"""
.. _sdc_base :

Automatic selection of the appropriate SDC method
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If the dataset metadata indicate tha more than one field map acquisition is
``IntendedFor`` (see BIDS Specification section 8.9) the following priority will
be used:

  1. :ref:`sdc_pepolar` (or **blip-up/blip-down**)

  2. :ref:`sdc_direct_b0`

  3. :ref:`sdc_phasediff`

  4. :ref:`sdc_fieldmapless`

Table of behavior (fieldmap use-cases):

=============== =========== ============= ===============
Fieldmaps found ``use_syn`` ``force_syn``     Action
=============== =========== ============= ===============
True            *           True          Fieldmaps + SyN
True            *           False         Fieldmaps
False           *           True          SyN
False           True        False         SyN
False           False       False         HMC only
=============== =========== ============= ===============

"""

from nipype.pipeline import engine as pe
from nipype.interfaces import utility as niu
from nipype import logging

from niworkflows.engine.workflows import LiterateWorkflow as Workflow
from niworkflows.interfaces.utility import KeySelect

# Fieldmap workflows
from .pepolar import init_pepolar_unwarp_wf
from .syn import init_syn_sdc_wf
from .unwarp import init_sdc_unwarp_wf

LOGGER = logging.getLogger('nipype.workflow')
FMAP_PRIORITY = {
    'epi': 0,
    'fieldmap': 1,
    'phasediff': 2,
    'syn': 3
}
DEFAULT_MEMORY_MIN_GB = 0.01

def init_sdc_wf(fmaps, bold_meta, omp_nthreads=1,
                debug=False, fmap_bspline=False, fmap_demean=True):
    """
    This workflow implements the heuristics to choose a
    :abbr:`SDC (susceptibility distortion correction)` strategy.
    When no field map information is present within the BIDS inputs,
    the EXPERIMENTAL "fieldmap-less SyN" can be performed, using
    the ``--use-syn`` argument. When ``--force-syn`` is specified,
    then the "fieldmap-less SyN" is always executed and reported
    despite of other fieldmaps available with higher priority.
    In the latter case (some sort of fieldmap(s) is available and
    ``--force-syn`` is requested), then the :abbr:`SDC (susceptibility
    distortion correction)` method applied is that with the
    highest priority.

    .. workflow::
        :graph2use: orig
        :simple_form: yes

        from fmriprep.workflows.fieldmap import init_sdc_wf
        wf = init_sdc_wf(
            fmaps=[{
                'suffix': 'phasediff',
                'phasediff': 'sub-03/ses-2/fmap/sub-03_ses-2_run-1_phasediff.nii.gz',
                'magnitude1': 'sub-03/ses-2/fmap/sub-03_ses-2_run-1_magnitude1.nii.gz',
                'magnitude2': 'sub-03/ses-2/fmap/sub-03_ses-2_run-1_magnitude2.nii.gz',
            }],
            bold_meta={
                'RepetitionTime': 2.0,
                'SliceTiming': [0.0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9],
                'PhaseEncodingDirection': 'j',
            },
        )

    **Parameters**

        fmaps : list of pybids dicts
            A list of dictionaries with the available fieldmaps
            (and their metadata using the key ``'metadata'`` for the
            case of *epi* fieldmaps)
        bold_meta : dict
            BIDS metadata dictionary corresponding to the BOLD run
        omp_nthreads : int
            Maximum number of threads an individual process may use
        fmap_bspline : bool
            **Experimental**: Fit B-Spline field using least-squares
        fmap_demean : bool
            Demean voxel-shift map during unwarp
        debug : bool
            Enable debugging outputs

    **Inputs**
        bold_ref
            A BOLD reference calculated at a previous stage
        bold_ref_brain
            Same as above, but brain-masked
        bold_mask
            Brain mask for the BOLD run
        t1_brain
            T1w image, brain-masked, for the fieldmap-less SyN method
        std2anat_xfm
            List of standard-to-T1w transforms generated during spatial
            normalization (only for the fieldmap-less SyN method).
        template : str
            Name of template from which prior knowledge will be mapped
            into the subject's T1w reference
            (only for the fieldmap-less SyN method)
        templates : str
            Name of templates that index the ``std2anat_xfm`` input list
            (only for the fieldmap-less SyN method).

    **Outputs**
        bold_ref
            An unwarped BOLD reference
        bold_mask
            The corresponding new mask after unwarping
        bold_ref_brain
            Brain-extracted, unwarped BOLD reference
        out_warp
            The deformation field to unwarp the susceptibility distortions
        syn_bold_ref
            If ``--force-syn``, an unwarped BOLD reference with this
            method (for reporting purposes)

    """

    # TODO: To be removed (filter out unsupported fieldmaps):
    fmaps = [fmap for fmap in fmaps if fmap['suffix'] in FMAP_PRIORITY]

    workflow = Workflow(name='sdc_wf' if fmaps else 'sdc_bypass_wf')
    inputnode = pe.Node(niu.IdentityInterface(
        fields=['bold_ref', 'bold_ref_brain', 'bold_mask',
                't1_brain', 'std2anat_xfm', 'template', 'templates']),
        name='inputnode')

    outputnode = pe.Node(niu.IdentityInterface(
        fields=['bold_ref', 'bold_mask', 'bold_ref_brain',
                'out_warp', 'syn_bold_ref', 'method']),
        name='outputnode')

    # No fieldmaps - forward inputs to outputs
    if not fmaps:
        outputnode.inputs.method = 'None'
        workflow.connect([
            (inputnode, outputnode, [('bold_ref', 'bold_ref'),
                                     ('bold_mask', 'bold_mask'),
                                     ('bold_ref_brain', 'bold_ref_brain')]),
        ])
        return workflow

    workflow.__postdesc__ = """\
Based on the estimated susceptibility distortion, an
unwarped BOLD reference was calculated for a more accurate
co-registration with the anatomical reference.
"""

    # In case there are multiple fieldmaps prefer EPI
    fmaps.sort(key=lambda fmap: FMAP_PRIORITY[fmap['suffix']])
    fmap = fmaps[0]

    # PEPOLAR path
    if fmap['suffix'] == 'epi':
        outputnode.inputs.method = 'PEB/PEPOLAR (phase-encoding based / PE-POLARity)'
        # Get EPI polarities and their metadata
        epi_fmaps = [(fmap_['epi'], fmap_['metadata']["PhaseEncodingDirection"])
                     for fmap_ in fmaps if fmap_['suffix'] == 'epi']
        sdc_unwarp_wf = init_pepolar_unwarp_wf(
            bold_meta=bold_meta,
            epi_fmaps=epi_fmaps,
            omp_nthreads=omp_nthreads,
            name='pepolar_unwarp_wf')

        workflow.connect([
            (inputnode, sdc_unwarp_wf, [
                ('bold_ref', 'inputnode.in_reference'),
                ('bold_mask', 'inputnode.in_mask'),
                ('bold_ref_brain', 'inputnode.in_reference_brain')]),
        ])

    # FIELDMAP path
    if fmap['suffix'] in ['fieldmap', 'phasediff']:
        outputnode.inputs.method = 'FMB (%s-based)' % fmap['suffix']
        # Import specific workflows here, so we don't break everything with one
        # unused workflow.
        if fmap['suffix'] == 'fieldmap':
            from .fmap import init_fmap_wf
            fmap_estimator_wf = init_fmap_wf(
                omp_nthreads=omp_nthreads,
                fmap_bspline=fmap_bspline)
            # set inputs
            fmap_estimator_wf.inputs.inputnode.fieldmap = fmap['fieldmap']
            fmap_estimator_wf.inputs.inputnode.magnitude = fmap['magnitude']

        if fmap['suffix'] == 'phasediff':
            from .phdiff import init_phdiff_wf
            fmap_estimator_wf = init_phdiff_wf(omp_nthreads=omp_nthreads)
            # set inputs
            fmap_estimator_wf.inputs.inputnode.phasediff = fmap['phasediff']
            fmap_estimator_wf.inputs.inputnode.magnitude = [
                fmap_ for key, fmap_ in sorted(fmap.items())
                if key.startswith("magnitude")
            ]

        sdc_unwarp_wf = init_sdc_unwarp_wf(
            omp_nthreads=omp_nthreads,
            fmap_demean=fmap_demean,
            debug=debug,
            name='sdc_unwarp_wf')
        sdc_unwarp_wf.inputs.inputnode.metadata = bold_meta

        workflow.connect([
            (inputnode, sdc_unwarp_wf, [
                ('bold_ref', 'inputnode.in_reference'),
                ('bold_ref_brain', 'inputnode.in_reference_brain'),
                ('bold_mask', 'inputnode.in_mask')]),
            (fmap_estimator_wf, sdc_unwarp_wf, [
                ('outputnode.fmap', 'inputnode.fmap'),
                ('outputnode.fmap_ref', 'inputnode.fmap_ref'),
                ('outputnode.fmap_mask', 'inputnode.fmap_mask')]),
        ])

    # FIELDMAP-less path
    if any(fm['suffix'] == 'syn' for fm in fmaps):
        # Select template
        sdc_select_std = pe.Node(KeySelect(
            fields=['std2anat_xfm']),
            name='sdc_select_std', run_without_submitting=True)

        syn_sdc_wf = init_syn_sdc_wf(
            bold_pe=bold_meta.get('PhaseEncodingDirection', None),
            omp_nthreads=omp_nthreads)

        workflow.connect([
            (inputnode, sdc_select_std, [
                ('template', 'key'),
                ('templates', 'keys'),
                ('std2anat_xfm', 'std2anat_xfm')]),
            (sdc_select_std, syn_sdc_wf, [
                ('std2anat_xfm', 'inputnode.std2anat_xfm')]),
            (inputnode, syn_sdc_wf, [
                ('t1_brain', 'inputnode.t1_brain'),
                ('bold_ref', 'inputnode.bold_ref'),
                ('bold_ref_brain', 'inputnode.bold_ref_brain'),
                ('template', 'inputnode.template')]),
        ])

        # XXX Eliminate branch when forcing isn't an option
        if fmap['suffix'] == 'syn':  # No fieldmaps, but --use-syn
            outputnode.inputs.method = 'FLB ("fieldmap-less", SyN-based)'
            sdc_unwarp_wf = syn_sdc_wf
        else:  # --force-syn was called when other fieldmap was present
            sdc_unwarp_wf.__desc__ = None
            workflow.connect([
                (syn_sdc_wf, outputnode, [
                    ('outputnode.out_reference', 'syn_bold_ref')]),
            ])

    workflow.connect([
        (sdc_unwarp_wf, outputnode, [
            ('outputnode.out_warp', 'out_warp'),
            ('outputnode.out_reference', 'bold_ref'),
            ('outputnode.out_reference_brain', 'bold_ref_brain'),
            ('outputnode.out_mask', 'bold_mask')]),
    ])

    return workflow

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Quikr set to buy real estate portal CommonFloor.com
According to sources, Quikr and CommonFloor.com are at an advanced stage of discussion and the stock-and-cash deal is expected to be completed soon.
Ravi Teja Sharma
Updated: December 01, 2015, 12:18 IST
FILE PHOTO: According to sources, Quikr and CommonFloor.com are at an advanced stage of discussion and the stock-and-cash deal is expected to be completed soon.
NEW DELHI: In the first large consolidation deal in the online property selling space, Quikr Homes, the real estate vertical of digital classifieds platform Quikr, will merge with seven-year-old real estate portal CommonFloor.com in a $200-million full equity swap deal, said two people with knowledge of the development. The deal that has been in the works for the last six months will see the three founders of CommonFloor-.com—Sumit Jain, Vikas Malpani and Lalit Mangal—get one board seat.
The three have also negotiated a two-year lock-in clause during which time they will remain with the portal and continue to grow it, said one of the persons quoted above, asking not to be named. "The merger is likely to conclude within a fortnight," he said. Both brands will continue to exist and operate in their own spaces and the promoters will continue to do what they have been doing within the company, said the second person. "With the merger, the two plan to leverage on each other's strengths.
While CommonFloor.com will leverage the traffic, brand and reach of Quikr in tier-II, tier-III cities, Quikr will leverage on the property portals expertise to sell. It's a complementary thing," said the person. When contacted, one of the promoters, Sumit Jain, declined to comment.
A spokesperson for Quikr too declined to comment. The deal is structured in a way that the founders and investors of CommonFloor. com get Quikr equity. "It's a full equity deal. The promoters are not taking any cash out. None of the investors are cashing out at this stage. It's a full equity swap deal, a pure merger, which will make the combined entity the largest player in the online market," said the first person.
Exit for the promoters of CommonFloor. com in the merged entity will eventually come from going public, he said. The online real estate market has been growing over the last few years, and in a slow market many builders have realized this channel as an additional way to sell their property. CommonFloor.com had started operations in 2007 and is one of the better performing players among a slew of new age property portals that have sprung up in the last few years. Some of them have raised large sums of money from venture funds.
In 2014, four different companies including PropTiger, Housing.com and CommonFloor. com raised over Rs 1,000 crore in funding. CommonFloor.com raised $30 million from Google Capital in January this year. Other investors in CommonFloor include Accel Partners and Tiger Global.
Earlier this year, Rupert Murdochled News Corp acquired 25% stake in PropTiger.com for $30 million and later upped its stake to 30%. At this point in time, there is at least one more consolidation attempt being worked on in this space, between IndiaHomes and IndiaProperty.
Quikr
COMMONFLOOR

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Jabu
Sleep Heavy
Get To You
Fool If
BLACKESTCD016
Blackest Ever Black presents "Sleep Heavy", the debut album of broken-hearted, downtempo R&B/street-soul and supremely atmospheric, introspective electronics from Jabu: a trio comprised of vocalist / lyricists Alex Rendall and Jasmine Butt, and producer Amos Childs. The group was born out of Bristol's Young Echo collective: an ecosystem unto itself which has birthed and nurtured a number of other notable soundsystem-rooted projects and artists to date including Kahn & Neek, Sam Kidel, Ishan Sound, Ossia, Asda, chester giles (the title Sleep Heavy comes from a giles poem) and Killing Sound (Childs with Kidel and Vessel).Jabu's previous 7" singles, though arresting, barely hinted at the level of accomplishment and emotional heft that Sleep Heavy delivers.
It's a future Bristol classic with a universal resonance, with songs that are highly personal but deeply relatable, and tripped-out, time-dissolving sound design that both haunts and consoles. It is, first and foremost, a meditation on grief, on loss, making sense of separation and death; but it also looks forward to what might come after the aftermath: healing, acceptance, the chance to begin again.Childs is one of the most gifted producers of his generation and his work here, grounded in hip-hop but floating free, is a thing of sustained wonder: crepuscular, melancholic – funereal, at times – subtly psychedelic and heavily dubwise, but always concise and purposeful. Stitched together from deep-dug and beautifully repurposed samples, it draws on influences from US R&B to Japanese art-pop minimalism – Mariah to Mariah Carey, if you will – and a rich seam of underground UK soul, boogie, DIY/post-punk, library music and lovers rock; refining and reconstituting these inputs into powerfully immersive, emotionally ambiguous soundscapes as eloquent and engaging as they are understated and bottomlessly mysterious.
1:Let Me Know
2:Tomb
3:Get
4:Fool If
5:Bones
6:On
7:Searc
8:Wounds
9:Which Way
10:Lay You Down
11:Give Listen:
Amateur Childbirth
Your Afterlife Is Cancelled
My Throat = Abyss Of Tar
Alive With Desire
Iridescent Effigy To Hades
BLACKEST059
*** REDUCED ***
This is Amateur Childbirth's Christian Rock album. The previous LP from Ivan Matthew David's solo project, 2015's Pripyat, concerned itself with the blighted belief systems of UFO worshippers, Your Afterlife Is Cancelled expands this compelling solo project's field of enquiry to look at a wider array of "religious anomalies" – cults, for want of a better word. Each song is about a different such anomaly.To call Hicks' vision apocalyptic would be to underplay its cruelty. The Bible's rampant sadism pales in comparison. This is a world where faith – in a god or gods, in astrology, morality, or any meaning whatsoever – is merely a prelude to punishment.
His lyrics are vivid glossaries of pain, abjection and indignity; the songs' protagonists swim in blood, piss, shit and ejaculate. Eschatology and scatology are indivisible here. Drugs are rampantly abused, albeit to little benefit. There are scalpel-flashes of humour in David's wordplay, rhyming and dour Brisbane diction – but this offers scant consolation for the songs' embattled subjects, who wait, in vein, for salvation, while crows peck out their eyes, blood pours from their ears, and psoriasis ravages their skin.These words, for all their pessimism and body-horror, are cradled in minimalist, folk-rock arrangements that are quite dazzling in their beauty and grievously earned simplicity: Hicks' monochord strum embellished with subtle violin, synthesizer and percussion shading. Amateur Childbirth's caustic end-times worldview inevitably prompts comparisons with Current 93, but also a wider (non-)tradition of caustic and disturbed loner psych that includes Simon Finn, Patrik Fitzgerald, Robyn Hitchcock, Peter Jefferies and Roy Harper.Your Afterlife Is Cancelled is a depressive tour de force from one of the most crushingly eloquent voices in the Australian underground.
1:My Throat = Abyss Of Tar
2:Emissary Of Light
3:Alive With Desire
4:Portents To Beauty
5:Iridescent Effigy To Hades
6:In Greenland, Alone
7:Lithium Hangover / Ordinary Morphine
8:High Calvinism
9:All Doomed
Carla Dal Forno
You Know What It's Like
What You Gonna Do Now?
Fast Moving Cars
"You Know What It's Like" is an album for inbetween days, and occupies inbetween states: plain-speaking pop, disorientated by dub. Psychedelic folk delivered with (post-)punk economy. Drifting in space while still tethered to the ground. Astral tones blurred with earth sounds: wood, bone, breath, skin, dirt. Ending and beginning, dying and becoming. Longing for adventure and an unquiet life. Struggling to get out of bed. This is Carla dal Forno's debut solo album, following time in cult Melbourne group Mole House and an earlier association with Blackest Ever Black as a member of F ingers and Tarcar. Her voice is an extraordinary instrument: both disarmingly conversational and glacially detached. It has something of the bedsit urbanity of Anna Domino, Marine Girls, Antena, or Helen Johnstone - stoned and deadpan - but it can also summon a gothic intensity that Nico or Kendra Smith would approve of. This voice is the perfect embodiment of dal Forno's emotionally ambiguous songs: their lyrics rooted in the everyday, observing and exposing a series of uncomfortable truths. This voice asks difficult questions of singer, subject, and sung-to. And of course there are no simple answers. Singles "Fast Moving Cars" and "What You Gonna Do Now?" weigh up claustrophobia against loneliness, inertia against acceleration, doubling down versus taking off; the title track acknowledges the provisional nature of love and 'real' intimacy, then decides to brave it anyway. By the time we arrive at the startlingly sparse "The Same Reply", the impermanence of all things is something that can no longer be tolerated, and the sense of dejection is absolute. The vocal-led pieces are interspersed with richly evocative instrumentals, like Eno's "Another Green World" reimagined in shades of brown and blue. Smothered in tape-hiss and reverb, the seasick synthesizer miniatures "Italian Cinema" and "Dragon Breath" channel the twilit DIY whimsy of Flaming Tunes and Call Back The Giants. "DB Rip"'s drum machine and bassline are pure Chicago house, but then its dark choral drones nod to Dalis Car's dreams of blood-spattered Cornwall stone. "Dry The Rain" drinks from a stream of eldritch, home-brewed moon musick that runs through Coil, In Gowan Ring, Third Ear Band, even the Raincoats' Odyshape, and into the woods.
1:Italian Cinema
2:Fast Moving Cars
3:DB Rip
4:What You Gonna Do Now?
5:Dry In The Rain
6:You Know What It's Like
7:Dragon Breath
8:The Same Reply
Af Ursin
Aura Legato
Blackest Ever Black presents a new vinyl edition, and the first CD edition, of Af Ursin's 2005 masterpiece 'Aura Legato'. Af Ursin is the alter ego of Finnish autodidact composer / improviser Timo van Luijk. His work is rooted in the use of acoustic instruments (wind, percussion, strings), but his special sensitivity to the timbral qualities of each instrument, and his deft blurring of them, results in a sound-world that is mysterious, amorphous and hallucinatory, full of suggestive shadows, creaks and whispers. Informed by years of intensive listening to various types of free music, exploratory drug use and especially the "irregular organic forms" of the Belgian countryside where he resides, van Luijk's process begins always with pure improvisation: music played in an intuitive, sensual way, without the employment of conscious technique. He performs and overdubs each instrumental component himself, and out of this process micro-structures and loose arrangements emerge: the piece becomes an improvised composition. Over time he has evolved his own richly poetic musical language, full of allusions to drone, acid folk, classical, Musique concrète and jazz, but beholden to none. 'Aura Legato' is one of van Luijk's darker and more acutely psychedelic offerings: a work of profound interiority, but one that also conjures images of old Europe and fin-de-siècle decadence – dabblings in Thelema, the fog of the opium-den – and has earned comparisons to Third Ear Band, Nurse With Wound, Mirror and HNAS. Fully remastered and housed in die-cut sleeve with gold detailing and individually hand-glued labels.
1. Rêverie En Mineur
2. Capsule Détachée
3. Tableau Fluide
4. Aphanes
Tarquin Manek
Tarquin Magnet
A unique synthesis of time-dilating folk-jazz romanticism, brittle chamber dub and plasmic post-techno electronics, "Tarquin Magnet" is Australian artist Tarquin Manek's first full solo release on Blackest Ever Black, but by no means his first contribution to the label: he is one half of Tarcar (with Carla dal Forno) and a member of F ingers (with dal Forno and Sam Karmel), while his track "Not Missing You" features on the BEB compilation "I Can't Give You The Life You Want". Manek has been busy elsewhere, too: he released "Th Duo", an LP made under his LST alias, on Another Dark Age earlier this year. The disturbed and enchanted environments of "Tarquin Magnet" are the result of improvisation, domestic field recording and fastidious editing; for all its rough textures and strange juxtapositions, this is masterfully mixed and arranged music, its deep spatial dynamics and higher dub logic powerfully apparent.
1. Sassafras Gesundheit
2. Fortunes Past
3. Fortunes Begun
4. Perfect Scorn
5. Blackest Frypan
Watering Hole
1 Sep '14
'Dark Pool' is the new studio album from Black Rain, the project's first in 18 years. Produced in New York City by Stuart Argabright, Black Rain's founder and figurehead, 'Dark Pool' is a work of hard-edged sonic fiction rooted in cyberpunk's quintessential neo-noir cityscape / dataspace but projecting into a farther future of biotechnological advancement and alienation. Partly inspired by the writings of Philip K. Dick protégé K.W. Jeter (particularly 1996's 'Edge Of Human', which picked up where Ridley Scott's Blade Runner left off), and Paolo Bacigalupi's 2009 novel The Windup Girl, a vision of 23rd century Thailand plagued by genetic and economic terrorism, 'Dark Pool''s humid dystopia is also acutely Ballardian in its vision of manmade and natural worlds encroaching upon each other: a vivid psychogeography of half-submerged high-rises and hidden jungle laboratories.
Stuart Argabright first landed in New York in 1978. By day, he worked as a landscape gardener for the upscale likes of Rock Hudson and Bob Dylan, while at night involving himself in all manner of subcultural activity. He co-founded seminal no wave minimalists Ike Yard (whose early 1980s work has been cited as an influence by the likes of Kode9, Young Echo and Silent Servant), collaborated with the late Rammellzee in futurist hip-hop outfit Death Comet Crew and as Dominatrix scored a bona fide club hit with the downtown electro classic 'The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight' (1984).
In 2013 Black Rain released an EP of live recordings, 'Protoplasm', on BEB. Three of the EP's four tracks appear here on 'Dark Pool' in radically revised and expanded form: the stuttering ribofunk of 'Endourban' is now anchored by ominous string pads faintly redolent of Argabright's labelmates Raime, while 'Data River' revisits the accelerated beat-stream of 'Black Rain''s 1996 album Nanarchy, and the low-slung 'Protoplasm' has evolved into a sprawling, syncopated techno epic - the sound of red dawn rising on an illegal replicant rave. A further seven new productions feature. 'Burst', its title perhaps a nod to Sogo Ishii's 1982 biker gang saga Burst City, harks back to the scrap-metal-banging brutalism of 'Black Rain' mk.1; 'Xibalba Road Metamorph', the album's angry, anguished centrepiece, externalises the sadness and self-loathing of Jeter's oppressed post-human workforce. 'Night In New Chiang Saen' reimagines dub as the viral product of one of AgriGen's morally suspect scientific initiatives in The Windup Girl, before 'Who Will Save The Tiger?' calls upon spidery, Metalheadz-esque breakbeats and wailing guitar drones to summon a 23rd century Ark. Vocals (on 'Profusion' and 'Profusion II') from Zoe Zanias (Keluar), and a brief spoken intervention from Sean Young (who of course played Rachel in Blade Runner) are simply the most audible manifestations of a dejected feminine presence that haunts the entire album. For all its textual references, 'Dark Pool' is a visceral and straight-talking affair: its bodyhammer rhythms and brooding sound design require no explanation for their impact to be felt.
1. Dark Pool
2. Profusion I
3. Watering Hole
4. Endourban
5. Burst
6. Xibalba Road Metamorph
7. Data River
8. Night In New Chiang Saen
9. Protoplasm
10. Profusion II: Fallofthehouseofagodofbiomechanics
11. Who Will Save The Tiger?
Officer!
Dead Unique
Elephant Flowers
26 May '14
Blackest Ever Black presents to you 'Dead Unique', an album by Officer! recorded in 1995 but - outrageously, inexplicably - never before released into the public domain. This then is not a reissue or a revival; it's a new record that just happens to have been maturing in the cask for, oh, a little shy of 20 years. It also happens to be a lost classic of English art-rock, and the crowning achievement in the career of its mercurial creator, Mick Hobbs. Londoner Hobbs' roots are in the fecund RIO scene of the late '70s and early 1980s, initially as guitarist in The Work (alongside Bill Gilonis, Rick Wilson and Henry Cow's Tim Hodgkinson), and subsequent related groupings The Lowest Note, The Lo Yo Yo, and The Momes. Over the course of the decade he became closely associated with This Heat and their Cold Storage studio in Brixton, working with the likes of Flaming Tunes, Family Fodder, Catherine Jauniaux and Zeena Parkins, to name but a few. Officer! - the project that this incorrigible collaborator and connector calls his own - surfaced in 1982 with a cassette tape entitled 'Eight New Songs By Mick Hobbs'. It marked the blossoming of a singular writer and improvisor, with a gift for plangent melody, ingenious arrangement and lyrics at once caustic and courtly, playful and profound (two songs from this tape, 'Life At The Water's Edge' and 'Dogface', have been remastered for a limited edition 7" release on Blackest Ever Black later this year). The Cold Storage-recorded 'Ossification' LP arrived a year later, followed by 'Cough' (1985) and 'Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes' (1988). Megaphone Records, responsible for 'Ossification''s recent 30th anniversary reissue, rightly describe it as "one of the most unusual, pleasurable and character-filled 'pop' records anyone has heard… a timeless anomaly in the history of recorded music."
By the start of the 1990s Hobbs had joined Jad Fair's Half Japanese (he continues to play in that group as well as Strobe Talbot, a trio with Fair and Benb Gallaher). In the early months of '95, Half Japanese were in Baltimore to record their 'Hot' LP; Hobbs stayed on to cut the bulk of the songs that comprise Officer!'s 'Dead Unique' - songs drawn from a rich store of material written and refined in the seven years since the band's last outing - with a talented assemblage of local and visiting musicians. Returning to the UK, Hobbs brought the tracks to producer Julia Brightly to mix at her 16-track home studio in Bethnal Green; by the end of the summer, 'Dead Unique' had taken shape. And then? Nothing. For reasons that no one, least of all Hobbs, can remember, 'Dead Unique' was shelved, all but forgotten about until 2012, when Blackest Ever Black chanced upon it while trawling the Officer! archive maintained for Hobbs by Andrew Jacques. Finally, rightfully, on May 26th, 2014, the album will be made available to all for the very first time - on double-vinyl and CD.
A complex but thrillingly immediate avant-pop song cycle that charms and confounds at every turn, Dead Unique will give immense pleasure not only to Officer!'s existing cult following, but to anyone with an appreciation of piquant, idiosyncratic songcraft – fans of Kevin Ayers, Flaming Tunes, Art Bears, Woo, Dislocation Dance, R. Stevie Moore, Robert Wyatt, Cleaners From Venus, Lol Coxhill or The Monochrome Set should especially pay attention. It touches upon ragged-raw rock 'n roll, sumptuous chamber music, pastoral folk, blowsy prog-jazz and paranoid dub-space, effortlessly shifting from skronking abstraction to rousing harmonic refrain and back again. 'Dead Unique' is also the culmination of Hobbs' lifelong collaborative impulse: his visionary ability to bring musicians together, galvanise them and wrestle coherence out of the collective free play of ideas, arriving at something far more than the sum of its parts. The tension between composition and improvisation is key to the LP's power, with Hobbs abetted by an extraordinary supporting cast that includes Tim Hodgkinson (bass clarinet), Pleasant Livers' Fred Collins (vocals), Legendary Pink Dots' Patrick Q (violin), filmmaker/animator Martha Colburn (vocal), Gilles Rieder (drums), Jad Fair (vocals) and Jason Willett (bass, keyboards, trumpet). Special mention must go to John Dierker, whose superbly expressive clarinet and saxophone parts are a fixture throughout, and to Joey Stack, who takes lead vocals on 'Good' and the show-stopping 'Elephant Flowers'. Nonetheless it is the voice of Hobbs – as principal writer, performer and protagonist of these songs – that resonates most powerfully. Blurring the roles of storyteller, poet and prankster, he turns memorable line after memorable line, booby-trapping them with mischievous puns, fleet-footed literary allusions, sudden digressions and shifts of register, nonsense rhymes and other wordplay. But his acute wit and flair for the absurd is moored by a deep romantic sensibility, and though it delights in the minutiae of the human comedy, 'Dead Unique' ultimately addresses its biggest themes: love, loss, commitment, independence, the mutability and inconstancy of all things.
1. Nest
2. Elephant Flowers
3. It Goes Up / Revenge
4. Go Back
5. Cows Hum In The Fields
6. Shrug / Good
7. Biteman
8. Nardis
9. Someone At The Door
10. Stewed Fruit
11. All I Got
13. Bugs In Amber
14. Guess
15. The Pony Was Contented
16. Lilac And Orange
17. Clint
Barnett & Coloccia
So, How Much Do You Know About Me?
Retrieval is the debut collaborative album from Faith Coloccia and Alex Barnett. Artist and composer Coloccia was a founding member of Everlovely Lightningheart, and is perhaps best known as one half of Mamiffer. She has contributed to recordings by House Of Low Culture, Boris and William Fowler Collins among others, and collaborations with Circle and Daniel Menche are forthcoming. Alex Barnett played in Oakeater but since 2009 has been active primarily as a solo artist, with releases on Catholic Tapes, DRAFT, Nihilist and others. Following an initial exchange of ideas, the bulk of Retrieval was recorded over three intensive days at Otic Sound in Vancouver, with Coloccia contributing treated vocals, tape-manipulated acoustic recordings and AM radio sounds, and Barnett adding an array of synth instruments to create further loops, drum sounds and other rhythmic elements.They then reconvened at AVAST! studio in Seattle for a final session of mixing and editing with engineer/producer Randall Dunn. The resulting LP is about time and place, synthesis and environment. It's an invitation into the woods, to find that which reveals itself only to the lost. A grave, deeply introspective work, pastoral in essence but cosmic in scope. Opening with the stately, medievalist sequences of 'Harbor', Retrieval's narrative takes in subdued techno abstraction ('Hallway'), chrondritic psychedelia ('So, How Much Do You Know About Me?'), saw mill gear-grind ('Repeating Pit') and eldritch noise invocations ('Retrieval', 'Bird's Eye'). Throughout, it invigorates without consoling.
1. Harbor
2. Switch
3. So, How Much Do You Know About Me?
4. Hallway
5. Repeating Pit
6. Retrieval
7. Birds Eye
Dalhous
An Ambassador For Laing
He Was Human And Belonged With Humans
The Physical Body
The Cruel Practice Of Art
6 May '13
'An Ambassador For Laing' is the debut album by Dalhous. Arriving in the wake of their recent 10", Mitchell Heisman, it's due to be released by Blackest Ever Black in May 2013. The Edinburgh-based duo of Marc Dall and Alex Ander work with intricately stacked percussion, dubwise bass and a rich harmonic tapestry of processed voices, keys, harp, vibraphone, guitar, woodwind, strings and synthesiser - every sound re-sampled to the nth degree then subjected to subtle automation and rigorously fine-tuned over a period of many months. From the mesmerised pastoral drift of 'Anger Sees Red' and 'Dwelling By The Meadow' to agitated arabesques like 'The Physical Body' and the self-titled 'Dalhous', the resulting pieces explore dreamlike but treacherous terrain. Eleven questions in a world of blue
CD:
1. He Was Human And Belonged With Humans
2. The Physical Body
3. Anger Sees Red
4. Bolder And Lighter Than The Beat From A Wing
5. Who's Here, You're Here, I'm Here…
6. Dalhous
7. The Cruel Practice Of Art
8. Dwelling By The Meadow
9. Eros, Love And Lies
10. A White, White Day
11. Dreamers Of Decadence
LP:
A1. He Was Human And Belonged With Humans
A2. The Physical Body
A3. Anger Sees Red
A4. Who's Here, You're Here, I'm Here…
A5. Dalhous
B1. The Cruel Practice Of Art
B2. Eros, Love And Lies
B3. A White, White Day
B4. Dreamers Of Decadence


"Hoosiers" Legend in Town to Promote Another Legend | WTCA FM 106.1 and AM 1050 The Best, Music, News and Sports 03/28/11 Bobby Plump, the man who hit "the shot" that propelled Milan High School to sports immortality with a state championship in 1954 and would later become the subject of the movie "Hoosiers" was at Martin's Supermarket in Plymouth Thursday to promote the legendary drink "Chocola".
Plump will be touring the area promoting Chocola in Warsaw and South Bend over the next few days. After cementing his place in history with a 14 foot jump shot at the buzzer that insured tiny Milan High School's state title over Muncie Central in 1954, Plump went on to play at Butler University and had successful careers in both professional basketball and business.
He admits that this is a very exciting time of the year for him.
"I think it's exciting for all of us in Indiana this time of year," he said. "We've got the high school state tournament but what about Butler University? How exciting is that? What a great story that is. They've been a great story for the last 15 years but they've really gotten people's attention the last two.
Plump also has an idea for the Bulldogs to push it over the top.
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