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[MalignD at elvis.com]

>That said, I regret to admit not recognizing the
>Python ...

Of course you recognize it, Snake.

A helpful analogy, I think, is between great authors.
Take James Joyce
and Vladimir Nabokov. Both are considered masters of
language, (in fact,
those two are probably the greatest authors of the 20th
century) but
each, for whatever reason, has their own style which,
for them was the
_vehicle that best allowed them to put their thoughts
to paper_. Joyce
pioneered the stream of consciousness, while Nabokov
was much more
eclectic, though his finished prose was always polished
until it could
nearly blind. 

What the hell does this have to do with programming
then? Well, I think
that like the different writing styles, each language
is a vehicle, and
programmers gravitate toward the one that best (to cop
a phrase from the
Python camp) "fits their brain". 

In a technical sense, Ronconi's production is
astonishing. Anyone who remembers his promenade Orlando
Furioso, with its simultaneous performance of multiple
scenes, will know he has a genius for theatrical
motion. Here, the stage is in constant revolution. Live
action is synchronised with video images. Furniture
passes across the stage as if on a conveyor belt. And
there are endless levels of reality so that Humbert
Humbert is shadowed by a Nabokovian narrator and there
are two Lolitas on stage: an Americanspeaking nymphet,
and another representing both her Italian voice and her
sadder, older self.

The result is like an encounter between Proust and
Monty Python. The Proustian element stems from the
adoption of the novel's form of a confessional memory.
And Python comes to mind because Margherita Palli's
designs are influenced by the animations of Terry
Gilliam.

At best, the Proustian and Pythonesque elements
magically combine, as when the hand of the adult
Humbert reaches out to touch the projected image of his
first love, the 13yearold Annabel, whose premature
death provoked his tragic obsession.

Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found
Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and
affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been
his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd
little parti-colored squares and triangles; and this
arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable
Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which
were of one precise shade - owing I suppose to his
keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade,
his shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various
times - this same arm of his, I say, looked for all the
world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt.
Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first
awoke, I could hardly tell it from the quilt, they so
blended their hues together; and it was only by the
sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that
Queequeg was hugging me. 

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