October 16, 2004

• Midnight in the
  Garden
  continued

  Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum, page 176: Here, too, you entered through a little garden… Amparo drew me aside as we went in.  “I’ve figured it out,” she said.  “That tapir at the lecture talked about the Aryan age, remember?  And this one talks about the decline of the West.  Blut und Boden, blood and earth.  It’s pure Nazism.” “It’s not that simple, darling.  This is a different continent.”…. If the outside was seedy, the inside was a blaze of violent colors.  It was a quadrangular hall, with one area set aside for the dancing of the cavalos.  The altar was at the far end, protected by a railing, against which stood the platform for the drums, the atabaques.  The ritual space was still empty….

  “Atabaque – a large tom-tom
  that is used in
  Afro-Brazilian
  religious celebrations”

  – The
  Sounds of Samba
  at Yale

   
  

  Atabaque

  
  

  “Of African origin, and made of jacarandá wood in a
  conical shape. A calfskin head covers the top of the drum. It is used a lot in
  capoeria and candomblé and umbanda rituals all over Brazil. There are three
  kinds of atabaques: Rum, Rumpi, and Lê. Rum has the deepest sound and is a solo
  drum; Rumpi has a medium sound, and Lê is the highest. These three hold the
  beat.”

  Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom….

  — Cole Porter, “Night and Day“

  Finnegans Wake 419: Your feats end enormous,     your volumes immense, (May the Graces I hoped for     sing your Ondtship song sense!), Your genus its worldwide,     your spacest sublime! But, Holy Saltmartin,     why can’t you beat time? In the name of the former     and of the latter     and of their holocaust. Allmen.

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