Looking Out

Got lost poorly in my thoughts earlier this evening. Found myself considering, in no great depth, the nature of evil, human evil, that is. The subject deserves more than the kind of shallowness I could manage. But it did occur to me that there's something essentially dull about it, a kind of nasty predictability. Not much in the way of imagination.

I suppose that's why horror movies eventually fail to horrify. Halloweens always end in disappointment. 

On the other hand, goodness grows in fascination, I suppose, in part, because of its sheer unlikeliness. Something genuinely worth looking out for.

Looking In

Was glancing through my journal of this date fifteen years ago and came across this very odd bit of self-communing:

Reflected today on some of the motivating factors behind my feelings about work-related issues. Did not like what I saw but realised that was why it was important to look. I thought I had achieved some distance on this. But I haven't. These issues seem related in some sense to the money issues above. I don't know quite how but they both seem related to unsurfaced anxieties. I think I'm open to exploring these pressures, if that's the right word, in an open-ended way - but there's another part of me that says be stoical. Take the pressure and allow it to release grace of a kind. Rise above this. This is nothing compared to the real anxieties that beset some folk. And that's so obviously true. I can forget these hardly existent problems quite easily, naturally. But is there some underlying trouble that I'm closing my eyes to, which it would be fruitful, profitable to live with, walk among, become conversant with?

I suppose I'd better say why I found this so odd. Two reasons. The first is that I have no idea at all what 'work-related issues' were on my mind all those years ago. These days such 'issues' simply don't exist, at least not in the oddly intense way they appear to have been affecting my (somewhat) younger self. (Though the concerns about the green stuff being hinted at have not exactly disappeared, I must say.) The second is that I seem to have abandoned the peculiarly introverted style of the passage above a long time ago to the extent that I hardly recognise it as something I was once capable of.

I'm all for reflection, but sometimes you can gaze too deeply inwards.

Sensible Decision-making

Still feeling considerably under the weather, I had a big decision to make this afternoon. Would it be an act of complete stupidity to get to the gym and do my bit in the pursuit of a minimum of physical fitness, or would be it a sign of some kind of recovery? In the event I went along and endured forty minutes on the elliptical whotsit. Then later we hosted a birthday bash for Fifi (twenty-one years old - good grief!) at the very pleasant Spize at the Temasek Club. Still not entirely sure of the degree of heroic stupidity involved in my actions of the afternoon. Got a feeling I'll know tomorrow, though.

A Human Face

Our little household found itself short of the Internet service promised by its well-paid providers, one Singtel, last week. The problem manifested itself on Wednesday and plagued us for some forty-eight hours. Eventually I resorted to phoning said providers and found myself chastising some unfortunate young lady at the other end of the line who was attempting the impossible: to sound reasonable in defending the service providers from an indefensible position and genuinely trying to provide us some help. I don't want to go into the gory details of how a major flagship company associated with all that's good about this Far Place gets into indefensible territory, but let's just say it can't really be wise to offer people a contract for a service and then tell them that the infrastructure that supports the service isn't up to par, such that those needing the service have to accept they made a bad choice and need to make fundamental changes regarding the service at higher cost.

For some reason I can't quite grasp it seems it's unthinkable to suggest that one might receive a refund to compensate for the periods for which one wasn't provided the service paid for. An excellent way to do business, I'm sure.

But strangely enough I didn't intend to write this little post to rant about the inadequacies of Singtel. Rather I just wanted to say how genuinely impressed I was with the young lady who handled my call on Thursday and even more so regarding the guy who came round and tried to restore our service on Friday. It took him a good three hours to deal with the problem and he was unrelenting in his attempts to figure out what parts of the cabling involved were giving a problem as well as being pleasantly chatty throughout. I'm guessing that neither of these minor figures are regarded as indispensable to the company they work for - the lady in some call centre not even located on the island, and the gentleman painfully clear in his explanation of just how dispensable he and other technicians are seen as being to their employers - but from our perspective they somehow managed to put a reasonable face on, and give a human voice to, a company that really doesn't seem to possess either.

Business As Usual

Strange how a thing can grow in one's consciousness over time. A few years back I encountered for the first time the notion of someone having become addicted to prescription pain-killers. This wasn't something that was ever heard of in my childhood or teenage years. I suppose it happened then, but it didn't make the news. I'm guessing I first came across the idea in relation to the problems of some celebrity or other. I know I found it puzzling at first but then saw a kind of grim logic being involved.

Then about a year ago I came across the term opioid, in relation to the notion of opioid addiction. I was vaguely aware that the problem was connected somehow to prescribed pain-killers but didn't quite grasp the nature of the connection. Now I know, following recent revelations concerning the number of deaths per day in the US as a result of overdoses of various opioids. And as a result of a particularly well-researched article in the on-line edition of the New Yorker I'm also now disturbingly aware of just how the whole problem/crisis/epidemic began.

The idea that we can blame a particular drugs company for all this somehow manages to be astonishing and all too predictable at one and the same time. Is there no end to human greed and folly?

(The answer is no, in case you're wondering.)

Not Soon Enough

Feeling tired and ill, ill and tired. One state blends into another. Two faces of the same coin, an ugly one of little to no value. Suppose I'll feel better eventually, and hoping eventually comes soon.

Playtime

Planning for potential drama performances for 2018 gathered pace today. Felt just as excited as I did when I started doing this sort of thing some time in the last century. Sort of childish in the best of ways. In fact, I've been reading quite a few plays lately since discovering the Connections series published by Bloomsbury in collaboration with the National Theatre. Some wonderfully edgy stuff in the volume for 2014, but maybe a bit too edgy for this Far Place. Still it's always fun to imagine just how far we might be able to push the envelope.

The Year In View

Finally got hold of a desk diary for 2018.  I am entirely reliant on the kind that gives you a week on a single view to organise that part of my life that requires organisation. The next task is to fill in the broad outlines of the year to get some sense of how to make the impossible work. This is daunting, but routine. Worryingly it only seems like last week that I was doing the same thing for my 2017 diary. Who knows where the time goes? sang Sandy Denny, beautifully and wisely - sadly not staying for an answer.

It's Life!

Noi showed me a short video earlier of a snake loose in Bukit Batok. It was a big fellow - looked like a python. Some rather skilful, and brave, guys were apprehending the snake, finally getting it into a sack. Bit sad, I suppose, but I'm hopeful the creature was released afterward into the wild to resume its snakey existence. (Don't really want to think of other possible 'endings' for this little tale.) As we were chatting about the local wild life Noi was telling me that one of her friends spotted a wild boar the other week.

All this made me feel unaccountably cheerful. Isn't it splendid to be forced to realise the world revolves around more than just our daft species? (Though, again, it's perhaps best to avoid darker thoughts of the miserable manner in which we exercise our custodianship of the planet and the life thereon.)

It put me in mind of something John mentioned when we were chatting on the phone the other evening. He was telling me about his next door neighbour who's not so well now but who used to spend his evening smoking outside the house (one of the reasons for his not-so-well state, I'm afraid) waiting for the foxes around the area to put in an appearance as they came scavenging around the houses. A great way to spend the time, I reckon - the observing of the rascally foxes, that is, not the self-harm.

It occurs to me that I've never seen a fox close up. The loss is mine.

When I was a little lad, living up Haughton Green, around six years old, the neighbours had a shed in their little back garden in which they kept rabbits. Sadly they were in cages, but it didn't seem sad to me at the time, they were such lovely creatures to hold and stroke. There were also a couple of ferrets in the shed, kept in a kind of box. They stunk. I suppose the neighbour used to go ferreting with them (a 'sport' I won't explain, involving as it does Nature red in tooth and claw.) Deeply inhumane, but maybe the ferrets didn't mind it too much? Better than a world in which kids never get to see them at all, except on film.

Accomplished, Sort Of

Finished Omeros today. Tremendous power in the elegiac closing sections, partly as a result of having learnt so much, with such depth, about St Lucia and its residents; the poem accumulates somehow. I'll never look at fishermen in the same way; not that I used to look at them in any real way - which is, in some tiny sense, what the poem is about.
 
And since I finished The Master and his Emissary last weekend, I'm finally able to think about what I'll be reading as we approach the end of the year. I suspect it'll be something from my shelves. I suspect it'll involve segments of The Master and his Emissary and something from my Collected Poems 1948 - 1984 of Walcott. When one's reading experience has been this rich it's difficult to put it to one side. These days I find myself needing to try and live up to the writers I admire by giving them the attention they deserve - but somehow always feeling myself failing in this regard. It's a sort of happy failure though.

An Infection

I've now got the final two books of Omeros left before I will have completed my second reading of Walcott's beguiling epic in verse. This time round I think I've seen, or, rather, felt more clearly than the first the main concern of the poem: the burden of History, the weight of injustice upon the dispossessed. In the middle books of the poem this is outlined with hypnotic, distressing power; they demand to be read slowly, not so much to savour as to suffocate.

In some ways the poem is feverish in its impact. The first time I read it I grasped some of its hallucinatory brilliance, but wasn't really made ill. This time round I've succumbed.

Can we be infected by a work of art?

Grub, Plenty Of

It's been a week of our version of fine dining: Christmas dinner, for which we went vegetarian (don't ask); Deepavali nosh with various buddies; a hall outing involving a rather jolly buffet; and today Noi left me a resplendent bowl of mee goreng, cooked ahead of her driving up north to see Mak over the weekend. All very wonderful; all a bit much. Looking forward to easing up and giving my digestive system a rest.

Further reminders of a fortunately privileged existence.

Good News, Sort Of

Found myself reading a number of stories in the press in the last two or three days dealing with the mistreatment of women by the film producer Harvey Weinstein and, stemming from those revelations, further articles outlining the kind of abusive behaviour various individual women have detailed to illustrate just how pervasive such behaviour is in circles beyond those immediately surrounding the Hollywood casting couch. It's all been very depressing to read, so how much, much more horrendous in its effects must it be to have been on the receiving end. There's much darkness there.

So it was sort of refreshing to read a sort of good news story today. This concerned the library in Auckland - one of my favourite cities - which has just solved the mystery of why some of its books had gone missing and then turned up in some very odd corners. It turns out that rough sleepers in the city were to blame, though not actually being blameworthy in any way. They seem to have been protecting the books, in their fashion, since the books were so important to them as things to read and they didn't want to take them out with them where the books would be vulnerable. The library officials have shown exemplary concern for these hugely important customers. For once I felt sort of good after reading something in the news (though the figures given for the numbers of homeless and rough sleepers in this lovely city gave those positive thoughts something of a melancholy cast.)

Something New Under The Sun

So there I was thinking that I'd reached the point at which nothing could excite me quite as much as getting to see Pink Floyd performing Atom Heart Mother live with choir and brass section as a callow fourteen-year-old. Then I find out in a single day that there's a new live Crimson album featuring the double quartet version of the Greatest Band in the Known Universe with excerpts from Lizard (Dawn Song; Last Skirmish; Prince Rupert's Lament) and Islands featured amongst much else and the first novel in the second trilogy set in Philip Pullman's worlds of His Dark Materials is published this Thursday. The new trilogy is entitled The Book of Dust and the novel itself, La Belle Sauvage, and I love both titles. I feel like I'm fourteen again - and, in truth, I'm probably just as callow.

Not So Fiery

Found myself thinking of a wonderfully lugubrious chorus from the mighty Dan's (Steely, that is) first album, Can't Buy A Thrill: There's fire in the hole / And nothing left to burn. As I inelegantly fell apart towards the end of my statutory 40 minutes of torture in the gym it struck me what whatever fire had been lit in the hole had long since been extinguished.

Not Going Backwards

Just got off the phone after chatting with John, though in truth 'chatting' is not exactly the most accurate word to describe the delivery of his standard litany of woes about the state of his health and the health of pretty much everyone he knows, and the faults of the UK's NHS, I've come to expect. Fortunately this was the standard version, concluded with his observation, we're not going backwards, so I felt some considerable relief at how reasonably positive he was, once the account was complete. There's been improvement in Maureen's vision, she's going to be involved in some further version of rehab, and John is happily suing the doctor who messed up on the treatment of his leg, which gives him something to which he can look forward. (Of course, there was a lot, lot more than this, but I'll save you the details. Especially the gory ones.)

I'm becoming increasingly aware of just how often concerns about health feature in my conversations with my contemporaries and those of a slightly older generation. Far from being bothered about people moaning about such matters I generally take a keen interest, knowing that I face my fair share of such concerns - if not now, then most likely in the future. It's more interesting than talking about the weather - especially the highly predictable version of the weather in this Far Place.

Going Back

This afternoon I found myself wandering around the premises of the first school in which I taught in this Far Place. The premises are no longer the premises of the original school but belong to another school now. Indeed, the premises to which that school relocated are now being 'up-graded' in routine local fashion, so the school has relocated for the meantime to the premises of a school which no longer exists. So wherever you go back to you know you can never go back.

Bodying Forth

Now in the last sixty pages of McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary. It continues to delight, illuminate and, occasionally, astonish. Now thinking about the link between modernity and what McGilchrist describes (rightly, I think) as a kind of assault on embodied being. The notion explains a lot about our collective madness regarding our bodies and what we do with them, in the developed world that is.

Awesomeness

In my teenage years I'd occasionally watch Masterclass programmes on the telly. These involved great musicians hearing really gifted students play and giving them instruction. Most of what was played and said went way over my head, but even a distinctly ungifted kid like myself got some benefit from being exposed to the very, very best dealing in considerable detail with what they were the very, very best at. At the least I got to understand just how jaw-droppingly talented these people were and how deep and detailed the art they helped create was, even if I didn't really understand most of what was being said.

Today I attended a real live Masterclass over at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory. It featured the beyond jaw-droppingly talented concert pianist Stephen Hough (wow! in real life and close up!) and three averagely jaw-droppingly talented young pianists - two studying at the university and one being my school's very own Jonah. Things have changed a bit for me, but not that much. It was all still miles over my head, but these days I've got enough concentration to hang on every note, and hang on I did through three wonderful performances. Following each of which the masterly Mr Hough took what we'd heard wonderfully to pieces, showing each performer how they could be even better. We're talking about excellence in every dimension on a staggering level here.

Sometimes, only very occasionally fortunately, students tell me I am awesome in some way. This is very nice of them, but inaccurate in the extreme. What I enjoyed this afternoon really deserved the label. And then some.

Faking It?

Was thinking earlier this evening of one of my rare encounters with a visual artist. It happened in Todmorden of all places and I was in the unlikely company of Tony and Ann. I think it took place just before I came to Singapore, around 1987, and it was all entirely accidental. We were just wandering around of a weekend, exploring the area, when we caught sight of the artist's shop, a small one, not anything like a gallery, and popped in just out of curiosity. The guy's name was Bohuslav Barlow, and his work was quite impressive in a spooky kind of way. We were able to see a fair amount of it in a restaurant in the area, some time after meeting Mr Barlow, as they'd put on a display of some of his pieces for sale there. The canvases were way too big and expensive for the likes of me, but I bought a book entitled Visual Alchemy at the shop with some rather fetching illustrations. Chatting with the artist was interesting in a sort of professional kind of way. He didn't try too hard to sell us anything, and said little or nothing about matters of 'inspiration' and the like, but was forthcoming about his art classes and what it was like trying to earn a living in that part of the country.
 
For some reason all this came back to my mind earlier this evening and I suddenly realised I might well find something on the WWW about the guy and, hey presto, I found his website almost right away - after figuring out how to spell his first name. The thing that really stood out in mind about our meeting related more to Tony than the artist himself, oddly enough. Tony seemed convinced that the work we saw (which included a few of the paintings featured on the website) was a kind of con. It wasn't that he thought he couldn't paint, and do so very well - I don't think anyone with eyes would dispute that. No, what bothered Tony was the choice of subject matter. He was convinced that it was contrived to appeal to folk who liked stuff that was a bit spooky, a bit occult, a bit surreal.

But he really couldn't deal with what I thought was an obvious rejoinder to all this: what did it matter if it was all a bit of a fiddle if you were able to respond to the pictures with enjoyment - and possibly a touch of dread - and wanted to put one or two on your walls to keep doing so? I suppose this simplicity of outlook lies behind my enjoyment of the kind of modern art that bothers so many. As long as I like it I don't care what it means or whether I'm being tricked. Sometimes you can try a bit too hard to guarantee your money's worth, you know.

(Should just say for clarification's sake that BB's work is so obviously not 'faked' in any sense that I did wonder just a little about Tony's sanity. But that's what being an engineer does to you, I suppose.)

From Afar

I've found a simple remedy for all those days on which I realise I feel overly cheerful. Reading any of the news relating to the negotiations over Brexit instantly restores sobriety, quickly succeeded by a refreshing melancholy. Mind you, I enjoy the happy distance of self-imposed exile which helps keep the whole fiasco in some sort of proportion.

Real Learning

Apropos of my comments from yesterday on just how slow my reading is these days, I must say that I tend to forget just how much on-line reading I do, and thoroughly enjoy. Today, for example, I took multi-tasking to a whole new level by reading most of an excellent interview with master drummer/percussionist Pat Mastelotto over at Anil Prasad's Innerviews whilst assisting the Missus in her shopping at the supermarket in Clementi Mall.

I must admit when I first came across Pat as a player in the double-trio version of King Crimson, teamed with Bill Bruford, I completely underestimated his contribution, thinking that Bruf just didn't need anyone else alongside him. Intriguingly Pat admits to feeling something of the same during that period, a mark of his amazing groundedness and appreciation of others. Indeed, the whole interview is a pleasure to read in terms of his insights and powerful good sense. Imagine a stellar musician saying this: 

If you go back to when Crimson stopped in 1997, I figured we’d get right back together in a year or so. So, I immediately went out and took as many music classes as I could. My weaknesses became super-apparent in King Crimson. They surfaced more than when I would play within the needs of a pop record. Now, the needs were greater. I always had things in my imagination that I couldn’t play and that's why I embraced technology. I felt it was either compromise on my vision or find a way to strengthen my playing. I met Cenk Eroglu and went to Turkey a few times and that was eye opening. I found local teachers and took djembe, tabla, kanjira, piano, voice, tap, and Middle Eastern music classes. I had a night school schedule. I took a weekend class at North Texas State University. Ed Soph, who was the Professor of Drum Set at North Texas State, is one of the best in the world and he said “I see a lot of your fundamental problems. You would really benefit from a summer camp we do with four teachers including Gary Chaffee.” So I did that. Gary opened a lot of doors for me. I also practiced a lot.

A role model for those who think they have some kind of talent and want to develop it.

Taking My Time

I'm a little embarrassed to note that my current reading bears a striking resemblance to the same current reading of a couple of months ago. And I still have a good quarter of Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary to tackle, that being, I suppose, the centrepiece of it all. The problem here is that there's no problem at all in being so engrossed in the book that I find myself proceeding with an almost deliberate slowness in order to try and grasp the totality of the argument, when the argument is so various in its implications that it's just impossible to do so. I'm now up to the chapter dealing with the Enlightenment and McGilchrist's reading of the period in the light of his ideas about the development of left hemisphere dominance. Every example is a telling one, and makes me think of others, but I can't help but consider in addition my own counter-examples, which I then realise can be assimilated into the general thesis.

I'm similarly proceeding with epic slowness through Derek Walcott's modern epic Omeros, and continuing to cross-reference to Robert Hamner's very useful guide to the poem, Epic of the Dispossessed. I now find myself reading both texts twice in relation to each Book of the poem. Thus, now in Book 5, I originally read Hamner's chapter on this in its entirety, then the Book itself, and am now rereading Hamner on each chapter before reading the actual chapter. This slowing down allows me to be able to relish the poem through the intensity it necessarily brings to the (re)reading of each chapter and is proving especially helpful in this particular segment of the poem in which Walcott's references and geography are particularly wide-ranging (with a chapter centred on Lisbon, then London, then Dublin...)

On top of this I'm having a good time reading Ian Bostridge's book on Schubert's Winterreise in a similar 'bitty' fashion. I play each song and follow with Bostridge's translation, then read the pertinent chapter. After that, it's back to the song. Then I play through all the songs 'covered' so far, following the lyrics and glancing back over Bostridge's thoughts, usually reading the whole of the relevant chapter again. Sort of. It's beguiling to do so.

I don't think I've ever read three (I suppose four) books quite as slowly as this. I keep thinking I really need to be reading a novel as well (the last one was Roth's The Plot Against America) but I fear that would derail me completely. I'm hoping to finish a couple of the books in the next two weeks or so, but I can't say I'll be terribly upset if I not-so-miserably fail.

Simply Magic

Not quite sure why it took me most of a lifetime to finally make up my mind to sit and listen to Mozart's The Magic Flute from start to finish. That's what I did this morning and I'm extremely glad I did. The opera transported me to a very special place of the imagination, the one where all contraries seem to be resolved, at least while the music lasts.

The work is all archetypes; it speaks of things known perfectly well, which yet seem strangely new and original. One simple, but not so simple, example: the sequence in which Papageno and Papagena sing of their intention to marry and have children is wonderfully juxtaposed to the final induction of Tamino and Pamina into the Masonic mysteries; the splendid earthiness of the former grounds the splendid spirituality of the latter in a supremely wise balance. It's all so obvious you feel like you have already been told, or somehow experienced, the tale.

And the tunes!! Sublime.

Power Cut

I was some nine minutes into my standard workout in the gym earlier this evening when all the lights suddenly went out. I remained magnificently calm and continued pedalling. Since I was the only person in the gym at the time, there was no one else around to perform a quick fix by attending to the fuse box, so I completed the remainder of my stint in the dark, illuminated only by the lights from the digital readout on the elliptical trainer. The machine seems to be battery-powered or something, so I didn't need to stop, and the air-conditioning mercifully continued to function. Essentially, I suppose, it was business as usual except for the possibility that someone might turn up and wonder why I had chosen to pedal in the dark.

Funnily enough the sudden lack of energy on the part of the lights matched my own general sense of not being entirely with it this evening. Far from the loss of the lighting helping me into a focused performance of the personal best variety, my lack of the necessary vim resulted in something close to a personal worst. All I can say in self-defence is that I kept going, which is all any of us can reasonably do when the dark is gathering.

Ill Will

Confession time: I felt a wholly reprehensible - but highly enjoyable - sense of malicious glee over Mrs May's discomfiture during her catastrophic speech at the Conservative Party Conference. Now I'm not known for my support for any of the egregious Tories, current or past, but to actively enjoy one of them having the worst of times is a bit odd, even for me. And I don't have any special dislike for the lady in question (which is not exactly the case regarding her female forerunner.) So why react in this way?

Actually I was genuinely puzzled initially, then I realised my reaction was fuelled by a sort of twisted sense of revengeful justice. These creeps have done everything in their power - and they have lots of power in the media and other places - to cast as much mud, and other even more unpleasant substances, at Mr Corbyn. The lady in question was not exactly behind the door in joining in, was she? Whilst I'm not exactly a fan of Jeremy, I recognise the genuineness and integrity of the man, and it was a delight to contemplate the astonishing ascent of his fortunes as so-called 'strong and stable leadership' has come crashing down.

A good reminder, methinks, for us all to never believe in our own publicity.

Pay Attention!

As children we learn we must pay attention. A big part of growing up is finding out what's worth paying attention to.

Some people never grow up.

On Being Entitled

Young people are often accused of having too strong a sense of entitlement. Is the accusation fair? As with all generalisations, yes and no and somewhere in between. Some youngsters certainly appear to believe that the world should revolve around them and react unfavourably when it unaccountably fails to do so. Some have sussed out that the world is happily indifferent to them and their needs and they need to make their own way through it without complaining overmuch about the damage it inadvertently does to them. Most fall somewhere within these extremes. And, I suspect, it has been ever so, though I think there might be a reasonable case for saying that in some parts of the world, essentially the fortunately prosperous bits, the pendulum may have swung in the direction of greater numbers of those who consider themselves the centre of all things. I can't think of much of a remedy for this except patient and occasionally strident reminders that to such types that this is not the case. Mind you, simple reality will provide plenty of these.

However I do think that there's one aspect of what one might characterise as the business of entitlement that's very obviously of deep personal value. I'm pretty sure that most of us can recognise our own slightly crazy sense of just how entitled we are if we turn the accusation on ourselves. A salutary exercise and, as you rightly surmise, I speak from embarrassed and embarrassing experience.

Of course, you're entitled to your own opinion on all this. And I'm entitled to tell you when you're wrong. Hah!

Hard Listening

Listening is hard when talk seems to go nowhere. But sometimes listening is all you can do.

Something Unfinished

I'll be on my way soon to pick up young Jordan, Tony's lad, who's back in Singapore. I think he's on his way to India in a day or two or three, but he moves in mysterious ways, so we'll wait and see where he's off to next, and when. Noi, I'm afraid, is temporarily incapacitated so won't be joining me as I wend my way across to Joo Chiat, where the young man is at the moment. It's unusual for her to be ill in any way, but, as I said, this looks like a temporary thing and I'm hoping she'll be back in form by this evening.

It was Jordan who very generously mailed me a copy of The Master and his Emissary, a book that has dominated my thinking for a few weeks now. I rather think he's expecting we'll be discussing Dr McGilchrist's key work and its ideas which I know excited him also, and I'm nothing loath to do so, but it's going to be a bit embarrassing to have tell him I still haven't finished the book.

I'm now well into Part 2, and thoroughly enjoying the move into a version of cultural history connected tellingly to Part 1's ideas about the functioning of the two hemispheres of the brain, but McGilchrist provides a dense read at times and I need to go slowly. Even then I'm aware I'll definitely have to read it all again, and probably soon, to get a handle on how it all fits together. But I suppose that's part of why the ideas come across as so telling: there's no dumbing down here, almost the reverse.