Well, Christmas has passed, but I choose to believe that the Christmas season lasts until Epiphany, so we’re going to keep the good times rolling with a look back at some pieces from this recently-expired Christmas week:
It’s Christmas! It’s Christmas! And it’s a Thursday, so yours portly is TBT’ing to a classic of yesterchristmas.
Back in 2019, I wrote this piece about Napoleon. It took off because it gained some traction on WhatFinger News, which came along after Matthew Drudge inexplicably went woke. The name of this alternative news aggregator always strikes me as vaguely inappropriate, but they ran my link and it got tons of views at a time when I was getting discouraged with the blog (a perennial issue, it seems—perseverance is a virtue for a reason).
Napoleon is a complex and intriguing figure. Whatever his personal and professional attributes, he indelibly changed Europe and the world. It’s hard for us to understand today, fixated as we are on the failed Austrian painter with the Charlie Chaplin mustache, but Napoleon’s impact was still being discussed actively in the early twentieth century. He totally upended the gameboard of Europe—for good or for ill—and the fear and/or hope of another Napoleon endured for quite awhile.
YouTube philosopher Agora made a great video linking the two figures—and warning about why those links miss some key differences:
The important thing to remember, however, is that humanity’s conception of “greatness” is false. Remember, Christ Was Born today as a simple baby in the most humble of circumstances—literally bedding down in a feeding trough for barnyard animals. He Died a humiliating Death on the Cross. He Rose from the dead and Conquered Death, and Will Return again!
Way back in 2019 I wrote a post entitled “Napoleonic Christmas“; it took off thanks to being featured on a conservative news aggregator that, at the time, was presenting itself as an alternative to The Drudge Report, which inexplicably but notably turned hard to the Left after the 2016 election, in which it played an important role in getting GEOTUS Donaldus Magnus elected.
Napoleon has always fascinated me. Indeed, I wrote an entire tone poem about the enigmatic figure:
I don’t think Napoleon was a good guy, but he was great, in the sense that he was—much like Trump—sui generis, a man unto himself, and a man for the historical moment in which he found himself.
At Christmas, however, the Greatest Man Is a little Baby in a manger. The Son of God Humbled Himself to become like us. No Napoleon or Trump (the latter of which I like very much, and who I believe has God’s Hand of Protection over him) could ever do that—or would.
Sometimes, though, for inexplicable reasons, one of my musical compositions—which usually clock views in the single digits, or maybe in the 20s-30s—will take off and get a (relatively) large amount of engagement. That still might only translate to a 100 views or so, but it’s always fun when it happens.
So this week, I’m looking at some “sleeper hits” in this installment of YouTube Roundup.
On Friday, 2 February 2024 I released Firefly Dance, my latest collection of original digital compositions. It’s a fun album, and I’m pleased with how it came out in the end.
You can purchase and/or stream Firefly Dance through the following services:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3UxmwDp <—That’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I get money if you get buy something through that link, at no cost to you, etc., etc.
Of course, if you’ve been reading the blog regularly, I’ve been posting sneak peeks of the album since late November. So for the next few Sundays, I’ll be featuring past installments of Open Mic Adventures that highlight the tracks:
“Open Mic Adventures LXVII: ‘Ode Napoléon’” – “Ode Napoléon“ opens Firefly Dance. It’s a tone poem depicting the rise and fall Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France. It’s composed for piano, right-hand organ, small choir, and drums, but works well as an electronic instrumental composition.
My YouTube channel continues to grow, albeit a bit more slowly. At the time of writing, I have seventy-seven (77) subscribers.
Regardless of the rate of growth, I am having a blast with the format. There’s still so much I need to learn, but it’s fun putting these videos together. It’s also been a great outlet for my composing, and I’ve gotten into something of a schedule: LEGO- and LEGO-adjacent build videos on Mondays, and compositions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Late last year I started working on a longer work about Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. I’d seen Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (2023), and while the film is riddled with inaccuracies, I still found it immensely enjoyable and fascinating. I also find Napoleon fascinating as an historical figure, as did the leading philosophers of the nineteenth century. How could his shadow not loom large on European and world history?
So I set about composing “Ode Napoléon“—one of the longer works I’ve composed in some time.
Somehow, I’d never reblogged this classic TPP post until this summer, when I did a retrospective look back at TPP’s Greatest Hits; “Napoleonic Christmas” came in as “Track III” on that list. This post got picked up by a conservative news aggregator back in 2019, which caused its views to skyrocket.
I have always possessed a certain fascination with France and the French, and Napoleon is easily the most fascinating Frenchman of all. That’s somewhat ironic considering he was a Corsican, from an island that belonged to an Italian city-state until said city-state needed to settle some debts with France and handed over the island in lieu of payment. The Bonaparte family was from a line of minor Italian nobility, and were fiercely in favor of Corsican independence.
Funny how that works: an Italian from a nationalistic Corsican family became the greatest political and military figure in modern French history. We can never know what might become of a life.
As I’ve learned more about Napoleon, I disagree more with Andrew Roberts’s assessment of Napoleon in the linked video. While Napoleon may have been responding to declarations of war by going on the offensive, he also had clear designs to stretch his influence all the way to India. Indeed, he sought to emulate his hero, Alexander the Great. The French also mercilessly plundered the cultural and artistic heritage of Italy in the process.
Regardless, Napoleon is a fascinating and complicated figure, and if he doesn’t earn our admiration, he certainly earned our grudging respect.
After MAGAWeek2023 and my extended time out of town, I’ve decided to take this week to rerun some classic hits from the extensive TPP back catalog. Most of the posts are those with very high view counts, though I am presenting them in no particular order. TBT will proceed as usual, and regular posts will resume Saturday, 15 July 2023.
Music: 
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The Portly Politico 