Taking Steps

Spent the week feeling slightly depressed at having to carry around a new smart phone which does a million and two things I'm not interested in. However, always one to make the best of things I found some small solace in getting the thing to count my steps each day. The results as follows: Monday - 9,313; Tuesday - 10,752; Wednesday - 12,422; Thursday - 10,208; Friday - 12,748. Who says I don't get around much? Not bad for an old geezer, eh?

What's In A Word?

Found myself commenting in class this morning on a particularly Singaporean use of the word elderly. The term is used frequently as a noun here, as in, I was talking to an elderly, or, The elderlies suffer from short term memory loss. I'd say the usage of the word in this sense qualifies as educated Singaporean English - as opposed to being an uneducated error. I've noticed that even when 'corrected' or informed of the Standard English usage most students are resistant to bothering to take care over its use.

It's interesting to speculate as to how the local usage came about. I can see three contributory factors. The 'correct' use as an uncountable noun - as in, In a civilised society the elderly are treated with respect and cared for - is likely to have influenced the adoption of the word as a countable noun, and I'd guess would have been the most important factor involved. Then there's the slight clumsiness of needing to say, The elderly people were crossing the road. Substituting elderlies seems so much pithier. And finally I think there's a good chance that the perfectly acceptable countable noun elder is involved in all this - perhaps as a kind of mishearing, or possibly because it feels a bit prissy to say, The elders were crossing the road.

All this reminded me of the current POTUS's noticeable habit of using modifiers as nouns. The other day we got, If we had bi-partisan in his puzzling reflections on the failure of Trumpcare (or Ryancare, not sure which) to make it into law. I presume he was expressing a desire for bi-partisan support, though it's difficult to tell where this president's thoughts are leading him, if anywhere. 

Oh, and I should confess that I might have forgotten the linguistic excitement of the morning were it not for the fact that a colleague described me, with grammatical accuracy and, sadly, a bitter regard for the truth, as a lean and elderly figure, later in the day. Ouch.

Reductionism

Am going through agony at the moment trying to decide which of the Bobster's songs to include in my talk on His Bobness due in early May. The time's so short I reckon I can only fit in comments on 3 or 4 at most. So which is it to be?

Like A Rolling Stone, or the first verse at least, makes the impossibly cruel cut since I'm intending to use it to illustrate the necessity of hearing Dylan's lyrics sung (by Dylan, preferably) to experience of the totality of the 'text', if that word makes sense here. But as for the two (or just maybe three) others? I change my mind everyday.

Today it's Isis (partly because I can illustrate it with the storming live version that featured in Reynaldo & Clara) (but, doh!!!, that misses the first verse.) And Everything Is Broken for almost late period minimalism and a great 'list' song (but I'm conflicted as to which version to use, and it's not exactly really late so it hardly does justice to the magnificent run of albums starting from Time Out Of Mind and continuing to this day) (and what about the early protest songs?) (and what about the foolishly neglected 'born again' songs?) (and, and, and?)

This is impossible. But sort of fun.

Purely Visual

I'm quite a fan of the McCafe section that can sometimes be found in your common or garden neighbourhood McDonalds. The big cappuccino (needed spell-check for that one!) tastes pretty good to me and they do a delightfully unhealthy brownie. In fact, all the eatables look good, both on the shelves and in the big pictures behind the counters.

But here's the thing. All the big pictures have got this gnomic observation written somewhere, quite unobtrusively, on them: Visuals are for illustration purposes only. Now I'm profoundly puzzled as to what this means and why it is so carefully recorded on every picture. It seems to me utterly tautological. What else can a visual be for except as an illustration of sorts?

I assume it's some kind of legal disclaimer. Let's face it, nothing goes on behind those golden arches that isn't in the corporation's rule book. But what exactly is it disclaiming? Is it a kind of apology for any food item that doesn't look exactly like the picture depicts it, in case any one sues on the grounds that their sad ordinary brownie doesn't look like the super-brownie emblazoned above?

The odd thing is that the food is all on display. And looks good. Well, to my tired old eyes it does. This all goes to illustrate something; I just don't know what that something is.

Farce Then Tragedy

Watched a few things on youtube earlier this evening related to the fiasco that passes for politics in the U.S. of A. at this point in history. The idea that history replays itself moving from tragedy to farce came to mind. And with that reminiscence came the troubling thought that we may eventually have the dubious privilege of being able to watch the process in reverse.

The Needful

I'd intended to hit the gym on Friday evening, but I somehow contrived to tweak a muscle in my left side, at the top of the leg, round the back, taking the ablution at Friday Prayers and decided it would be foolhardy to risk damaging whatever had been damaged further by overdoing it. In fact, completing prayers on Friday and Saturday was a bit of a trial, but the difficulty seemed to have disappeared by afternoon prayers today, so I decided to put in an appearance on the elliptical trainer just now.

Disappointingly my numbers fell well below those of just a week ago which seems to go to show just how steeply whatever fitness I've got goes into decline the moment I stop doing the needful. On the other hand, there's an element of inspiration involved here in the realisation that if I don't stay reasonably active I'm probably facing major deterioration at a rapid rate. Having no real choice is an excellent way to focus the mind.

Not So Funny

It's odd how very clever people can go wrong in the theatre in terms of their grasp of what will work on stage and what won't. I came across a striking example of this in Marjorie Garber's excellent Shakespeare Above All, her magisterial run-down on all the plays. What's particularly striking about this is that she so often has an excellent sense of the plays as theatre, yet she writes this, apropos the sequence involving Hermia raging against Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream: Surely the scene would be even more comical if the difference between the two women were slight or non-existent.

Nope. Completely wrong. The laughter, and it's big and lots of it if you get the scene right, comes from the simple and obvious fact that Lysander now sees his beloved as being unattractively short and the shorter the actress is, the better. It's impossible for the actress playing Hermia to look suitably outraged in the sequence if she doesn't have an understandable sense of vulnerability over being vertically challenged, in some sense.

There's a temptation putting something on stage of adding extra layers, partly because it's the clever thing to do. In most cases keeping it at the level of the obvious is the better option - especially so with Shakespeare who clearly knew very well exactly what would work and saw no point in being clever for its own sake.

Changing For The Better

Came across an excellent piece In praise of cliché by Stig Abell at the website for the TLS today, his response to the recent terror attack in London. It chimes oddly with my own mild encomium for cliché in yesterday's post. It's only in the last couple of weeks that I've been visiting the website of a publication that for quite a number of years, back in the 70s and 80s, I used to purchase on a weekly basis. When I checked out the website some time back I'd been sorely disappointed and never bothered to include it in my list of Freebie Material on the Web that Needs to be Checked Out on a Regular Basis. It now makes the list - which could be a bit of a problem as there's just too much good stuff out there. Oh well, I'll just have to cope.

Having to cope with the problem of having too much interesting stuff to deal with is what my younger self signally failed to do. Even at this distance of years I'm still vaguely aware of the guilt engendered by having a pile of issues of the Times Literary Supplement of which quite a number remained unread. Wonder what I did with them all?

By the way, I assume it's since the very able Mr Abell took over the editorship of this hoary old publication that the improvement in its website came about, though I might be wrong. I first noticed the chap as a regular contributor to the Press Review on Sky News when he was the editor of The Sun and was astonished that any editor of that publication could be so reasonable and intelligent. Sometimes, against all the odds, the world seems to mildly improve.

Unwelcome News

Enjoyed a jolly evening yesterday in the company of David & Shirley, who are passing through to attend the wedding of David's son in Australia. An opportunity, among other things, to catch up with news from my old stomping grounds in Rawmarsh. Sadly, inevitably, some of the news was not good. Hearing of the death of one old colleague in particular came as a bit of a shock, for the old colleague was not exactly old in the usual sense. The problem is that I've reached that stage of life in which such news is becoming routine. 

Mind you, the latest news regarding Osman's chemotherapy here on this island sounds very promising indeed. As Peter reminded me the other day at work, when telling me some more bad news about one of our current colleagues: we need to count our blessings. Utterly clichéd because it's so entirely true and sane.

Safe Spaces

Disheartened to read in a recent issue of Philosophy Now of an attempt by the student union at Bristol University to prevent Sir Roger Scruton from speaking there on the grounds that his offensive views on gay marriage (offensive, that is, to those who support the idea) render gay students less safe (due to their sheer offensiveness. I think that's the way the argument goes.) It seems this is known as no-platforming, a ghastly neologism for a spectacularly dumb idea.

Astonishing. If I were a gay student supporting the concept of gay marriage, or a straight student supporting the concept, or an asexual student supporting the concept, I surely would want to listen to such an accomplished speaker and thinker to hear his arguments and engage with him to show where he is going wrong and creating the offence I might be feeling. I might even be humble enough to accept the idea I might learn something from him, even if it's only learning exactly what his perspective is. Who knows, I might even find I'm no longer quite so offended. Sometimes those whom we regard as being in the wrong can be in the wrong in interesting and illuminating ways. Isn't this the kind of civilised dialogue and exchange of ideas that universities were created for?

It worries me that in seeking to keep students safe we may render them safe from actually learning anything.

In Delay

In delay there lies no plenty, says Shakespeare's great song in Twelfth Night. That seems so obviously true as to be axiomatic, but finding a sense of plenitude in delay is possible, and extremely useful. Think of how much richer life might be if we could actually enjoy being stuck in a traffic jam. I haven't quite reached the stage of living that wisdom, but I'm getting there.

Last night, for example, when I saw the tailback of red lights snaking down from the peak of the bridge at Tuas, to within range of the Malaysian customs, did I rage and curse? Only sort of, Gentle Reader, and that was on the inside. To the casual observer, not that there were any, I would have appeared not shaken and only mildly stirred.

(In truth, I made an instant estimate that we might affect entry to this far place in two hours and was highly gratified in managing to get through in just fifty-five minutes. So that helped considerably in the lowering of temperature.) It's good to be put the test once in a while (as long as it is only once, that is.)

Shorn

Now briefly at Mak's house in Melaka. Arrived yesterday evening, early enough to venture into Alor Gajah for a teh tarik and burger and get a good night's rest ahead of the term beginning. Noi was plying the clippers this morning to ensure I'm suitably shorn for the rigours ahead - and she also cut Mak's hair as well.

We were trying to figure out when we bought the Remington clippers Noi traditionally uses. Sometime in the last millennium, I suspect. It's a long time since I paid for a haircut so the clippers have definitely paid for themselves. For a cheapskate like myself this is a big deal, you know!

Overwhelmed

Got carried away reading Jonathan Bate's Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life yesterday and finished it this morning. Left with a feeling of mild depression. Good to find out more about Hughes post-1963, but can't escape the sense that his was a life underpinned by dreadful suffering - of himself and others.
 
I can't see myself wanting to read anything other than the wonderful poetry of Hughes and Sylvia Plath (and their often wonderful prose also) in future. I feel like I know too much about stuff I shouldn't.
 
Bate is a lot more sensitive in his treatment of the material than I'd expected from reading Janet Malcolm's demolition piece in the NYRB last year (I think it was), but I've just glanced at what she wrote again and, despite the many good things I can think of to say about Bate's book I can see her point. An inability to do real justice to the writer and those around him is built into the whole biographical process. But if all this secures Hughes's place as a great poet then I suppose it's gruesomely necessary.
 
One thing about myself as a reader that hit me very strongly reading the biography was just how much I love Hughes's work for children and in what high regard I hold it. Bate hardly seems to take books like What is the Truth? Under the North Star and Season Songs seriously. For me, they represent something close to pure delight and, in that simple sense, real vision.

I suppose that's why the biographical aspect of the whole Hughes/Plath phantasmagoria gives me a headache. There's something essentially cheerful and life-affirming about TH that it misses. Mind you, it could well be that I'm just one of the infantile adults that Hughes joked he wrote Season Songs for.

Found Out

Following a very hot Wednesday we've experienced a very wet Thursday and Friday. Not that it has rained throughout either day, but both have featured fierce storms with attendant thunder & lightning in the afternoon. Towards the end of yesterday's storm we realised that the house had sprung a leak or two, as a result of which we called our contractor Ah Seng today. His man did a bit of patching up in the morning which was found to be inadequate by today's storm. The upshot is we need a new roof and soon. We're targeting June, when we'll next be here.

Separate Lives

I was vaguely hoping to get to the end of Boswell's Life of Johnson whilst we are here in KL. However, this is almost certainly not going to be the case. I'm within sight of the ending - about a quarter of the total left - but there's no real momentum to my reading. Basically each page is more of the same, which is enjoyable in its way, but other than the inevitable deterioration of the great man's health (and that of others, with quite a number of friends and companions off to meet their Maker in recent pages) it's obvious that there'll be little new under the sun.

Indeed, it's the curiously circular, repetitive nature of the writing that exerts an unusual kind of narrative hold as once again either Boswell, or Johnson, or both, obsess about whether abstaining from wine is a good thing, whether they should really be hobnobbing with dreadful Whigs & Infidels and the like, why subordination according to birth is essential to a healthy society and why women sleeping around is infinitely worse than their husbands doing the same thing (amongst any number of other weird and wonderful concerns.) I suppose, though, there are other elements of narrative, or rather gaps in the narrative, that have a kind of intrigue about them: Exactly what is it that Mrs B. has got against the Doctor and will she ever forgive him? Is the biographer or his subject the more prone to the Black Dog, a shared species of suffering that clearly contributes to their odd sense of closeness? Just how outrageous does Johnson's behaviour have to get before someone decides to stick one on him?

So there is, I suppose, a kind of narrative pleasure to be derived from the text even as one has grown thoroughly accustomed to it. But this is not enough to keep this reader desperate for more. So for respite I've been dipping into Bate's Unauthorised Life of Ted Hughes. And here comes an odd synchronicity, of the sort that the great Yorkshire Bard would have enjoyed. It seems that the subject of the essay that Hughes was blocked on when he had the now famous dream of the man-fox was Samuel Johnson. Interestingly Bate reckons that TH was an admirer of the great lexicographer, despite not being able to get writing about him. I think I know why. Whatever else Johnson did he certainly lived.

Still Napping

Out of all my many talents (real or imagined) my ability to fall asleep in almost any location or situation is one of those I prize highest. Further proof of my considerable ability in this domain has emerged over the last couple of days in which I managed to start yawning whilst driving to KL despite extensive napping in the twenty-four hours prior to the journey, contrived to fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow when I finally took to my bed here, achieved a great many hours more than the prescribed eight after doing so, only waking briefly for the azan, then fell asleep listening to Brahms's mighty 4th Symphony in the early afternoon, and, finally, nodded again after an elegant sufficiency of late afternoon tea and curry puffs.

I suppose there's an element of catching up on lost kip in all this, but I can't honestly say I felt in desperate need of more than I've been getting for the last few weeks. I think it's all down to the fact that I enjoy sleeping so much and have never risen to the guilt felt by some folks on dozing their lives away.

Also it's mightily hot here, which lends a certain inevitability to the notion of a siesta or two or three to pass a highly satisfactory afternoon.

Caught Napping

We're off north in an hour or so and the Missus has announced that driving duties will devolve to myself. With this in mind I've been endeavouring, over the last twenty-four hours, to ensure I get enough sleep to ensure a reasonable degree of alertness all the way to KL. I'm happy to say I've been deeply successful in this regard. Time in oblivion is time well spent, I reckon.

Dark Places

It's been a long, long time since I've watched anything at the Victoria Theatre. We found ourselves there yesterday and the interior was unrecognisable. It all looked a bit rundown the last time I sat in the stalls. Now it's as plush as The Esplanade.

We were there for Pangdemonium's production of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman. I had high expectations and wasn't let down. The play was brilliantly crafted and the players performed with an equivalent brilliance. Each time I see Adrian Pang on stage he seems to get better. I mean he's always top notch but the range he's capable of just seems limitless. In broad terms, I can't imagine a West End or Broadway production could have been any better than what we saw last night.

The only slight reservation I had about the piece was the length. It ran at almost three hours by my watch. The interval came after a full two hours, though I must say the first act was so gripping that it really didn't seem that long. But I thought the last half hour felt a few minutes over-stretched. McDonagh seems to me to milk the self-referencing a bit further than needed. The stuff about 'fashionable down-beat endings' seemed more than a little superficial after the raw power of the material dealing with child abuse.

I suppose that's where the uncertainty might come in as to whether this is truly great drama, for all its many virtues. Does the play as a whole convince that it's doing justice to its awful material? It takes crazy tactless risks - and I think that's part of the reason it succeeds.

In Praise Of The Fridge Magnet - 3

 

There are certain matters with regard to which there can be no dispute. Well, not in this particular household, that is.

Busy Doing Not Very Much

It's been a day of splendid inaction, for the most part. But I did navigate enough pages in the Boswell to get around the halfway mark. I'm hoping to complete the whole in the vacation week ahead, especially since I've been accumulating quite a number of exciting tomes to read, assisted by a visit to the Kinokuniya main branch earlier today. (It's shrinking, by the by, but I was still able to finally get hold of Bate's biography of Ted Hughes, which I suspect is what I'll move onto when the Life of Johnson is finally put to one side.)

Got my ears working fairly hard, though, giving them a workout on Takemitsu's music for Ran and, inevitably in the light of yesterday's post, his gorgeous I Hear the Water Dreaming, which I downloaded this morning. Didn't realise the second piece featured so much guitar. Also listened to some Tim Bowness solo and with No-Man, and Eliza Carthy solo and with the Imagined Village.

All very jolly really, in a highly relaxed sort of way.

Still Moaning

Just read this from this date from my journal of 15 years ago:

The SSO in fine form tonight. Their audience quite dreadful. Lots of students in attendance for some reason. Extremely limited attention spans, especially for the second half of the concert, which happened to be wonderful. Great piece by Toru Takemitsu: I Hear The Water Dreaming. Textures to drown in. Why is it so hard for people to just do nothing & listen?

 

So I was as much of an old curmudgeon then as I am now. But a curmudgeon with a pretty good point to make, I reckon. (By the way, I remember vividly the opening of the great composer's piece and just how noisy the idiots around me became as soon as they realised the music wasn't conventionally 'pretty' in the manner I reckon they expected. And I feel just as annoyed now as I was then.)

Getting Away From It All

Obsessively listening when I get a chance, which has been rare indeed in the last few fun-packed days, to the current incarnation of King Crimson as captured live on the memorably titled, Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind. I can't quite believe I'm saying this, but it's even better than Live in Toronto.

(Question: Can you ever have enough live Crimso? Answer: No.)

And when I've not been listening I've been running through whole segments in my monkey mind. (Actually starting humming bits of Sailor's Tale to myself at work. Fortunately I was alone.)

All Smiles

Rule of Life #176: Never trust a publication in which everyone in the pictures is smiling.

Nothing In Mind

Just enjoyed a bit of a neck-rub from the Missus before retiring to my bed. Puts it all in perspective.

Missing The Obvious

When I first read Boswell's Life of Johnson it never occurred to me that the oddities of Johnson's behaviour were anything other than the quirks of a great man and of no special interest. Since then on more than one occasion I've come across the diagnosis/thesis that he was bi-polar and that understanding this helps explain him.

Reading the Life now this seems to be obviously the case. Indeed, Boswell is clearly aware of the problem, or, rather, of some kind of problem associated with a kind of melancholia that he can't quite describe or put a name to.

The strange thing is that far from reducing Johnson in stature an awareness - perhaps in a somewhat simplified form - of the syndrome he's dealing with serves to enhance one's sense of his greatness. To have achieved so much, to have lived such a life, to have been so fundamentally sane despite his affliction is astonishing. And there's something deeply moving about Boswell's concerned awareness for his friend's extraordinary suffering.

For all our advances in understanding of the psychological problems that so many people courageously deal with, I'm not sure we see these with greater clarity or insight than the mighty biographer and his mightier subject.

Tightening Up

I suppose it's been in reaction to my reading of Ms Kay and Ms Tempest that I found myself reaching for that most patriarchal, often inflexible and studiously correct of versifiers John Milton today. (Yet this most canonical of dead white males was an outrageous Radical in his own time, I happily remind myself.)

I thought I'd reread the Nativity Ode, and I'm glad I did. I'm also happy to have prefaced my reading by listening to a most illuminating lecture on Milton's first great poem in English available on youtube via those good people at Yale.

And I realise that for all the contrasts between the great Puritan Poet and his modern (non-)equivalents there's one striking similarity. To get the real Milton you need to read him out loud, loudly.

Loosening Up

Passing my desk the other day Aloysius noticed New York poet Sarah Kay's No Matter The Wreckage lying thereon. It seems a friend had been recommending her work to him and he was struck by the coincidence. As I explained to him, my having the collection is actually a sort of random accident. When I was off-loading the Kinokuniya book vouchers I got at last year's Literature Seminar at the bookshop's main branch I happened to come across a few copies of the collection, in a rather handsome, nicely illustrated paperback and, as is my usual practice, I thought I'd pay a few dues to the world of poetry by buying the book on spec.
 
I'm glad I did. It's not my usual thing, I suppose, owing much to the world of Poetry Slams and Ted Talks - as I gathered from the extensive credits and acknowledgements. I'm guessing the writer is a bit of a celebrity in that world, which isn't really my world. In fact, I'm guessing that's where Aloysius's friend had made the acquaintance of the writer. But she's a very talented poet with a distinctive voice.
 
The distinctive feature of this school of writing (if that's what it is - I'm using the term in the sloppiest way possible) is the strong sense of the voice as a public one in performance, even when the material is seemingly of the most private kind. The rhythms of the verse are entirely colloquial, loose to the point of outright clumsiness on occasion, especially when a longer line is adopted. For someone like myself, essentially educated in the tradition of poetry as essentially finely hewn, it's a bit of an ask (as they say) to take these new formless forms on board. But, hey, even an old dinosaur can learn a new dance. (These days I can even find some small joy in mixed metaphors.)

Lifted

The Missus has gone off to Melaka for the weekend leaving me a bit at a loose end - but with enough work on the table to tie a couple of knots, so don't worry for me.

Thought I'd fill the void this evening by popping out to see our students making music and dance around the campus in a sort of talent show type evening. The thing is that we've got enough talent to keep several venues at once ticking over.

I knew I was going to be entertained but I didn't quite expect to be as wowed as I was by the acts I got to see. Lots of highlights, too many to list, including the rawest, smokingest version of I Heard It Through The Grapevine I've ever heard live and, trust me, I've heard a few versions. Mr Gaye would have been proud.

Bad News, Good News

Caught a stunning story the other day on Sky News about the exploitation of child labour in connection with the mining of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was enough to make anyone who uses devices reliant on funky little batteries (that's basically all of us) feel very, very guilty indeed. I used to wonder how the Victorian middle classes felt when they read about the appalling lives of the little kids used to help sweep their chimneys and now I know. Really bad. But it's difficult to see this as just bad news, terrible as it is.

The fact it's in the news, due to excellent reporting, seems to me to offer some hope. There's a good chance that companies like Apple will need to take real action regarding their tainted suppliers to do something about the dreadful conditions in which cobalt is mined in order to limit the damage to their precious reputations - and they've got real power. (And, who knows, there may be people of real integrity working for them.)

So this news may do some little good. Let's not forget, the scandal attendant upon the abuse of the little sweeps meant that, eventually, it was no longer possible to abuse children in that manner in England. Shining a light on this darkness may have something of the same effect.

Still Keeping Still

The turning of the month is a good time to look back at my resolution for the year, which is no longer quite the new year it once was. And here's the thing: I seem to have gone beyond gracious acceptance of the need to be still into a positive relishing of such moments, sometimes minutes (though never quite hours.) Quite a triumph, eh?

Unfortunately, not really. The truth is that I've enjoyed a reasonably sedate time on the work front. Of course, I'm using 'sedate' in a relative sense. In my line of work you're always busy, sadly, but as long as you're not frantically so it doesn't seem too bad. And that's the way it's been.

It's not going to last though, and that's when the real test of my embracing of stillness begins. Soon, I'm afraid.