Yeah, I know. I'm easy to amuse.

Still remember when I first heard her voice. I was 14 at the time. Back then I had no idea what an octave range in a human voice means, much less 4 or 5 of them packed into one throat. I only knew her glissandi made my skin crawl ... in a good way.

Think of her commercialized and/or fake Peruvian folk songs what you will (I know I do) but there is something to her self-styled highly artificial stage persona that fits right into the development from Hollywood's pre-color-movie star cult  to the fastlane idol hype of today.

Who she really was (she died in 2008)? We'll probably never know. Some say she was born in 1922 , other sources state 1927 or even 1929. She claimed to have been a direct descendant of the last Inca king Atahualpa (killed by the Spanish Conquistadores in the 16th century) and had a willing Peruvian ambassador at hand to back her up on that. She was married at the age of 14 in Lima, other sources say she was married after she moved to New York at the age of 20. Rumours had it, she never went anywhere near Peru before her first concert tour there and was, in fact, little ol' Amy Camus (her name spelled backwards) from Brooklyn, New York. She disappeared in the 50ties without a trace, only to re-emerge in the 1970ties with a new record that showcased her voice in contemporary musical arrangements. Very eery! She was beautiful and childish and proud and self-destructive and pigheaded and reckless and ... fascinating. 

Yma Sumac (for reference: Wiki, a fan site, another one and her official site)  
here singing Pachamama from Secret of the Incas, 1954

And no, this is not a flute nor a violin, it's her voice ... and bad sound quality. Pout.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-6eKroZeIg&fmt=18

Well, I don't know. But Michelle Svenson obviously does.

"An SEP," he said, "is something that we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That's what SEP means. Somebody Else's Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye."  

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Blogs are wordy arrows aiming (Pffff!) at an SEP hoping to make it visible to others. Totally futile. Because all arrows together end up creating an insanely disorienting forrest of arrows pointing in all possible directions (and then some).

So, my SEP of the day? Just heard that two of my latest translations are hitting the stores. So? I'm happy. And I'm waiting for my sample copies. So I can craddle my newborn paper babies and cuddle the covers. Like an insanely proud parent unit. Which from you're perspective? Is an SEP. Totally. Nobody here speaks German, and the likelyhood of any of you stumbling across it? Next to none. Still. Me? With my SEP? Happy. Very! And because the me that is happy is talkative my SEP turns into a YP - Your problem - because I'm spamming your blog feed. Uaaahahahahahahhlalalalalalalalalalalala....

Original title: Visions of Paradise

Title says it all.

Lately - and oddly -, whenever I open the newspaper (or in my case start my morning "news surf") I've been catching myself "waiting for the other shoe to drop" . I think it's "disappointment prevention". You know, whincing before the fist hits you. Comes from bad experience or cowardice (the variety you're, or rather I was born with).  Given all my enchantment with and hopes for the new US-president, it seems weird that I'm scanning the news with that niggle at the back of my head.

And then I remembered:

"It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

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But there's always one exception to the rule, right? Right? I'll go with "right". Now, I need a hammer to chase (and smash) "the niggle" before it wiggles away into another part of my brain. Hammer . . . Now, where did I leave that hammer . . . Weren't lessons in power all about learning where to hold the hammer? Arrrrrrgh . . .