Abundance

I'm getting more birthday today as flying from New Zealand to Singapore has given me an extra four hours. Noi provided a magnificent birthday cake along with a fabulous pot of hot, milky tea on arrival at the Mansion, so, this being in addition to breakfast at the hotel and two meals on the plane, it can be safely said that I am replete if not surfeited.

And even more so when it comes to reading, listening and watching. I watched the Dylan sort-of bio-pic I'm Not There on the flight back, which added to Frost/Nixon on the way over means I've actually watched 2 reasonably current movies, some sort of record for me. I'm Not There struck me as a bit pretentious, in a good way. It was trying hard to be original and say interesting things, and Cate Blanchett was outstanding as Dylan in England, stretched, vulnerable, edgy, hurt and angry. Oddly it's been a Dylanesque sort of day. There were a few adverts up in Auckland for a new Dylan album to be released today and these prompted me to get hold of Chronicles, Volume One which I'd spotted a nice edition of in a bookshop there. (In two bookshops in Singapore the single copies were both a bit ragged.) In fact, Ferd and Miruna cunningly insisted on buying me the book having discovered it was my birthday coming up, for which great thanks. I read most of it on the plane, completing it up to the section on the recording of Oh Mercy. Superlatives fail me with regard to just what a great book it is. Essential reading for all sentient beings. Then I got home to find that Noi bought for me the DVD of Dylan's early sixties appearances at the Newport Folk Festival, The Other Side of the Mirror. (She also cunningly bought the DVDs of Springsteen with the Sessions Band Live In Dublin and Arctic Monkeys At The Apollo. Yowza!) Karen also has given me a couple of books expanding my list of immediate reading in a most tasty fashion.

There were so many excellent suggestions for imperative reading on the course that my head was sent (wonderfully) spinning. And I'm pleased to say I got quite a bit of reading done in New Zealand. The Conrad went down very well and I'm left only the last bit of Typhoon (an old favourite) to finish from the selection. I particularly enjoyed Falk, A Reminiscence and Tomorrow. I also made enjoyable progress on the early part of the Mailer. It was intriguing to get a sense of Mailer moving beyond the limited perfection of the short stories he was crafting on the war with the wonderfully crazy angry ambition characteristic of his middle period fuelling material like The Man Who Studied Yoga.

Also got some good listening done on the flight back, and on Queen Street in Auckland where there were quite a few buskers, including one who did a wonderful version of Paul Simon's arrangement of Scarborough Fair. I listened again to the new Springsteen album today with a lot more appreciation than the first time, but I do need to hear it over something better than the headphones provided by Singapore Airlines. Sounding even better were three late Haydn symphonies (88 - 90) courtesy of Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic and a very tasty selection of Messiaen piano pieces done by a guy called Armand (?) I think. Lucidly beautiful. Oh, and I sampled a little bit of a Naxos selection of Blake's poetry on which one of the readers had a brilliantly appropriate cockney accent.

And who said life was dull? Not in this house.