Sleeping Muse and Falling Rocket

  So, Hendrix added an extra eighth note to the intro when he covered Dylan's All Along the Watchtower. I mean WTF?

 The baby in Madonna's song about teenage pregnancy would now be 37 years old.

  Respiration. Aspiration. Inspiration. Desperation. Exasperation. Conspiracy. Spirit. The spires of a church.

 According to Rosa Raisa, first singer of Turandot, neither Puccini nor Toscanini pronounced the final 'T.'

 The line is: "I k now a bank where the wild thyme blows, W here oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine..." 30 years later, in the middle of the night, it occurs to me that I might have said "Quite o'er-canopied" rather than "over-c anopied...' And now I can't sleep!

 "What's the use of a story without pictures or conversation?"

 Reading Mark Dauer's post about Bassani also brought to mind that amazing translator of Italian literature William Weaver. In addition to Bassani, Weaver gave English-readers Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Primo Levi, Roberto Calasso (The Ruin of Kasch), Alberto Moravia, Italo Svevo, writing by Verdi and by Pasolini, and so much more! What Constance Garnett was to Russian, Weaver was to Italian. Grazie!

Robert De Niro's first wife, Diahnne Abbott is cousins with singer Gregory Abbott.