Stretching The Imagination

Read Part 3 of Wide Sargasso Sea today - the 'madwoman in the attic' segment. I think I've read it as a whole some five or six times previously, and dipped into it in the classroom many more times than that. It loses none of its hallucinatory power on a rereading; in fact, it gains in intensity.

I can't think of any other treatment of 'madness' in a novel that comes close to being so convincing and so frightening and so destabilising. The moment when we realise Antoinette's seeming account of the fire in which she will perish is not (yet) literal but the conclusion of the premonitory dream that has haunted her since childhood, and she's about to enact that vision in what seems a triumphant manner, is possibly the most stunning moment in a text that at times seems like nothing so much as an assault on the reader's sensibilities.

On the back page of the edition I'm reading it quotes someone as saying the novel is one of the works of genius of the twentieth century. That's not hyperbole by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, stretching our imaginations to make room for the victimised and dispossessed and their pain is what Rhys is so disturbingly good at.

Only Temporary

Noi showed me some video earlier today of one of the big waves generated through the earthquake that hit Sulawesi, Indonesia late on Friday. When she read out the magnitude of the quake, 7.5, it was awfully easy to imagine the scale of the casualties likely to have been inflicted. Following the recent deaths on Lombok this all seems particularly cruel, but there's nothing inherently malicious, of course, with regard to the indifferent power of the natural world.

Whatever sense of security any of us possesses can only be illusory and temporary - fearfully so.

The Possible

Had vaguely wondered about popping down to The Esplanade for the SSO concert this evening. They were doing Mahler 5, so it was a tempting prospect and the Missus was going out to do some exercise with one of her friends, leaving me at a bit of a loose end. But then I found out that the Visual Arts students were putting together their annual Gallery Night, and that decided it. A fine time guaranteed, on the doorstep.

And so it proved to be. I really can't quite explain why I find looking at the work of eighteen-year-old sort-of-artists an uplifting experience. But it is. As I remarked to a few of the ones familiar to me from drama, I inevitably will see at least one piece from each contributor - and usually it's more - that I find not just striking, but positively haunting. Even now, more than two hours later, I can visualise those pieces as I sit writing - which is quite something for someone with as poor a visual memory as mine.

And as I further remarked, I have a powerful sense that if any of them stuck at their work, as more than just a hobby, though, come to think of it, a hobby would be enough, I think they'd develop in ways they do not suspect of themselves. As ever I come away with a feeling I've just witnessed something deliciously mysterious about what we are capable of when we connect with transcendent possibilities.

Spinning

Bought my work diary today for 2019, which was a relief as it's becoming increasingly difficult to find the week-to-a-view type that forty years of use have habituated me to, to the point I can't cope without. But wasn't it just the other day I got hold of my diary for 2018? No, of course it wasn't. The whirligig of time spins ever faster, I'm afraid. Just hope I don't fall off.

A Corking Good Egg

For reasons I don't quite understand I found myself reading Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude today, without quite meaning to. I think it had something to do with the fact that I'd been telling someone how teaching Long Day's Journey had been one of the highlights of my career and I felt some kind of need to re-visit the only great writer I can think of who can be quite spectacularly bad at times, Strange Interlude being one of those times. The basic gimmick of the play, to represent what the characters are thinking along with the spoken dialogue, in the form of interspersed chunks of stream of consciousness, doesn't work at all even on the page - and I've no idea what went on in the theatre. It doesn't work because O'Neill can't do stream of consciousness. The thoughts sound much like the dialogue, except a bit more revelatory and, therefore, more embarrassing. (I kept thinking of just how good Joyce is at convincing the reader that his characters really are thinking, which is a bit unfair on the dramatist, but there you go.)

Anyway, I managed the first two acts, but I'm not sure I can be bothered to keep going - not at the moment, at least. But having said all that, there was one aspect of O'Neill's dialogue I found engrossing, but not in any proper dramatic or literary sense. The colloquialisms associated with a couple of the characters seemed to be straight out of the pages of P.G. Wodehouse. Did the Yanks really refer to each other as good eggs in the early twentieth century? And did they actually say that a girl was a corker? I hope so. And wouldn't the world be a better place if we could bring these gems back? Never such innocence again.

Easily Influenced

Now listening with much enjoyment to some music I downloaded the other day by Malcolm Arnold. The selection mixes three of the symphonies with a number of other compositions, like the English Dances and other bits and pieces. A lot of zestfully tuneful bits but plenty of other more introspective moments.

This is the first music I've purchased this year having made a minor vow, now majorly broken, not to buy anything new until I'd done justice to what I already owned, especially the 'classical' stuff. But I don't feel too bad about betraying myself since I did last out for almost three quarters of the year without dipping into my pockets, and I think I've discovered a composer who deserves one more fan. It will be to my benefit not his, I'm sure.

Actually I blame the chap who maintains the excellent and dangerously informative On An Overgrown Path. I often come away from reading his entries with a keen desire to listen to whatever it is he's got an enthusiasm for since it's invariably exactly on my wavelength. To be honest, I've always been a bit embarrassed about my susceptibility to the enthusiasms of others. It speaks to a certain immaturity, I must confess. But, then, I've gained so much from following blindly in directions that others point that I can't be over regretful. I pretty much made myself like Messiaen since people I suspected knew what they were talking about said I should, and it turned out they were right.

A Useful Comparison

I was on the elliptical trainer in the gym just now, and sort of wishing I wasn't, when I suddenly thought: Well this is a lot better than marking Paper 2 essays. The fifteen minutes of my stint left after that didn't seem anything like as torturous somehow.

Someone Lost

Was reminded of the sad death of footballer Gary Speed today by a particularly striking article in the Sports Section of the online Guardian. Not the sort of thing you could have imagined being published thirty, possibly even fifteen years ago - and certainly not in the sports pages. So some progress has been made with regard to our understanding of what it is to suffer from depression. But still not enough. Possibly there never will be given the mysteriousness of the condition. I count myself lucky not to really be able to grasp it myself since I suppose that's evidence of having the good luck never to have visited for any length of time that awful place.

Something Lost

Just now I finished marking and, for no particular reason, put the telly on and glanced at the films showing. There were two of the more recent Star Wars movies on two different channels and I flipped them between for fifteen minutes or so before getting bored. It occurred to me that I'd enjoyed the original films enough to actually go to the cinema to watch them. There would be zero chance of that nowadays.

Yet the sequences I saw were visually very well done, and there nothing wrong with the acting. In fact, the younger performers struck me as being very good. So it was something of a puzzle to account for my complete lack of interest. All I can say is that it was, for some reason, impossible for me to enter their galaxy - and it felt like my loss, somehow.

But the corollary of all this was a certain relief that I didn't find myself with a new and highly productive way of wasting time.

Not A Good Place

I've discovered a way of almost effortlessly inducing in myself a kind of hapless melancholy, a sense that the wheels are coming off and there's not much that can be done to get the wagon back on the road and running. The secret is to read anything in the news related to Brexit. And if a deeper sense of depression is required it's easy to scroll down to the comments section of anything related to the topic on-line and get a taste of the frenzied disagreements amongst my fellow Brits in relation to the matter.

How did we get to this place?

A Question Of Balance

Got to the gym this evening. Enjoyed feeling mildly virtuous after and then immediately undid all the good work by feasting immoderately on an exceptionally powerful bowl of oxtail soup as patented & prepared by the Missus. Funnily enough felt highly satisfied at the outcome.

In Full View

A sort of postscript to yesterday's post: today discovered a performance of Bhakti by the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Haven't watched it all yet, but excited to discover I can listen now with some visual info as to how all those sweet sounds are generated. This is all very gosh-inducing indeed.

A Good Listen

Carried out a bit of an experiment in the early hours of yesterday, related to a sort of new way of listening to music. It was just after the Dawn Prayer, for which I'd woken early. I found myself wide awake, but intended to go back to bed, except that my bed was actually just a mattress on the floor. Noi was sleeping on the actual bed, but I've avoided that particular bed in Melaka since January when I had severe back problems which I thought might have been the result of prolonged lying on the very soft and yielding mattress on it. Next to where I was sleeping was my trusty iPod, on which I'd been listening appreciatively to Ghosts, a very fine mid-career album by The Strawbs.

It suddenly seemed a good idea to put on a very different kind of music. I've enjoyed listening to Jonathan Harvey's somewhat avante garde Bhakti before, but never felt all that familiar or even entirely comfortable with its demands, never really felt equal to its challenges. So I lay down and in the utter quiet of the not-quite-morning surrendered to its spell (using the ear-buds, so as not to disturb the Missus.) And found myself enchanted, completely at one with a sound world that had seemed a bit beyond my capacities on my last listen.

I suppose I'd half-expected that I'd be lulled asleep by the piece before I began to listen, but I found myself hyper-aware. Every segment seemed to me somehow urgently necessary, yet there was no sense at all of my understanding Harvey's work. He didn't repeat anything that I could grasp in the full span of the piece, yet it felt unified. I didn't feel anything in the way of an emotional reaction, except a sort of rapt pleasure at the beauty of it all, even at its most discordant.

It all felt vaguely meditative, in its way, though I wonder how much my awareness of Harvey's interest in Buddhist modes of thought made me think-feel like that. Really there wasn't much thought involved, that would have got in the way. Occasionally I seemed to search for words to capture what was happening (I suppose I was contemplating writing this entry, if I got as far as contemplation) but the words quickly fell away: gorgeous, rapture, sculptural... no, nothing worked, or came close.

Nor does this.

Kampung Talk

Extract from the dialogue at breakfast this morning: Why is that chicken in the durian tree? The question, sadly, did not get an answer, but I suppose it didn't really require one.

A Small Emergency

Now in Melaka, whence we drove yesterday afternoon, for a kenduri & prayers for Mak. Lots of children around, which means lots of noise, most of it joyous, all of it raucous.

At one point in the late afternoon, with the main proceedings over, a frog found its way into the living room, and halfway up a wall. This filled Amni, Afnan & Maya, the three kids who happened to be around at the time, with a mixture of panic and excitement. They seemed to think it was Uncle Brian's job to remove the offending creature, but I honestly didn't see this task as coming under the specifications of any of my roles. Fortunately one of their bibiks (the maids) had the wherewithal to know how a broom and dustpan could be used to good effect in the emergency. Within two minutes of the removal of our uninvited guest the kids had devised some sort of jumping game in which one became a frog and the other two its screaming victims. 

Not sure what the visiting frog made of all this. Don't think it was terribly impressed with us all.

The Big Picture

About to embark on Occidental Mythology, the third in Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God series. Much as I've enjoyed the first two volumes I get a sense the enterprise is somewhat dated. This volume was first published in 1964, and the terminology employed at times sounds that of an earlier age - most notably of course in the broad 'Oriental-Occidental' contrast. I'm particularly interested to see how the good professor treats Islam since a later chunk of the text deals with the faith. I noticed, on glancing at the references for that segment, that it looks like he's drawing almost exclusively on the work of what we'd now regard as scholars of an Orientalist cast. Mustn't pre-judge though.

To be honest the sheer imaginative sweep of the series, with Campbell's obvious enthusiasm for all of the thought-worlds he deals with, means it's difficult to take major exception to the work. I love the sense of the unfolding of the human story as a genuinely shared experience. covering vast sweeps of time. Just wish it wasn't quite so brutal at times - and so brutally stupid, so often. But, hey, nobody said history wasn't a nightmare from which we're striving to wake (or something along those lines.)

Keeping Smiling

My friend Osman left us to be gathered into eternity in the early hours of the morning. The last time I saw him was the only time he wasn't able to smile at all. I can't think of anyone I've known who laughed and smiled quite so readily, so effortlessly. I was looking of some pictures of us taken when we went to Morocco and Spain and he illuminates all of them. I shall miss him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Crimson Moment - 4

In March 1970 I thought King Crimson were the coolest thing on the planet. Came across a video today of their appearance on TOTP in that month that proves I was right.

(Actually I remember how excited I was that they were actually going to appear and feeling mildly disappointed that they were so obviously miming. Now I don't mind. It sort of adds to the charm of the whole thing.)

(And I still think they're the coolest thing on the planet btw. I've never really grown up.)

A Ready Reply

Not quite sure why, but I'm frequently asked How's it going?, and usually feel stuck for an answer. Today one sprang readily to my lips, and I think it's perfect in its own little way: I'm struggling to cope with the unbearable lightness of being. This seems to me to possess two outstanding qualities: it sounds great and it means almost nothing. Job done, I reckon.

A Moment Of Illumination

At 2.10 pm today I felt utterly miserable. I'd gone down early to a lecture theatre in which I was to give a briefing about an hour or so later, intending to set up my laptop for the accompanying slide show. When I opened the laptop I was puzzled by the blankness of the screen. I'd not shut it down before setting off, thinking that this would speed up the process of preparation. And now, for no good reason, there was nothing to prepare. This had never happened before and I seriously wondered whether the hard disk had crashed or something. (I have no understanding of what that actually means, but I know it's bad, and this looked bad.)

Since I was due to teach for an hour at 2.20 I couldn't hang around and be miserable, so I went off to the classroom to be miserable instead. Fortunately, teaching the bracingly miserable Wide Sargasso Sea helped take my mind off my worries, until I wound up five minutes early to rush down to the lecture theatre to see if the screen had lit up. It hadn't.

Some colleagues began arriving for the briefing and I sort of threw myself on their mercy, pitifully explaining my dilemma and darkest fears. Partly to my mild irritation, but mainly to my huge delight, they didn't take it at all seriously and suggested I simply pressed the button that turns the laptop on for some twenty seconds in order to switch it off (the lights on the side indicated it was on despite the complete lack of action on screen) and then switch it on again. I was gratified when pressing the button actually did succeed in switching the thing off and more than gratified when switching it on again actually switched it on for real: yes, something came up on the screen and the misery and attendant panic were officially over.

So why am I recalling those feelings now? Dear Reader, there is little to match the overwhelming relief of realising that one's darkest fears of not being able to function in any meaningful way in one's place of work have simply evaporated. And I am enjoying the echoes of that relief even as I peer at the screen that caused me so much anxiety just this afternoon.

Coping

We got back to our usual Far Place late last night and so were able to visit Osman at the National University Hospital this afternoon. He's not doing too well. It looks like he caught some respiratory infection whilst in Makkah since he's coughing intermittently, and since he's weak already with the spreading of his cancer it's going to be difficult fighting off the virus.

Fortunately he was not short of visitors and was getting lots of practical attention, like having his back, neck & legs massaged which seemed to help him cope, at least for a while. And just coping in that extremity was deeply heroic.

Not Beyond Belief

Now in Melaka. Having a blessedly quiet time. Viewed some of the commentary on the latest from the White House, post Bob Woodward's book and the anonymous op-ed in the NYT that has inflamed DT. I'd like to say it's difficult to believe but the problem is it isn't.

Dark Matters

I was somewhat taken aback by the final pages of Joseph Campbell's Oriental Mythology. After some interesting stuff about Japanese mythological thought and the practice of Shinto he takes a sudden diversion into various atrocities committed by the Chinese communists in Nepal, post-Second World War. They made for very uncomfortable reading and I'm not entirely sure what they had to do with notions of shared mythological tropes.

After closing the volume I decided it was time to treat myself to my first purchase of a book for 2018, this coming in the form of Art Spiegelman's Maus, which I've been intending to get hold of for the longest time. We took Zahira to the Kinokuniya at KLCC after our arrival here to buy some suitable tomes for her to read, so I grabbed a copy of the Complete Maus, incorporating both volumes I and II, and I read it in just a couple of days. Distinctly unputdownable, but inevitably a dark read, dealing as it does with the writer's parents' experience of the Holocaust and his own efforts to deal with this personal history.

Spiegelman's father, Vladek, is a quite extraordinary character. In many ways he's the ultimately difficult, grumpy old man as Artie tries to cope with him in the final years of his life, and attempts to get from him the story of himself and Anja and their imprisonment in and survival of Auschwitz. And in many ways he's the typical survivor, yet you're always aware that surviving had more to do with simple, inexplicable luck than anything else. Indeed, it seems extraordinary that the much more fragile Anja also made it through - only to commit suicide years later, something that is never dealt with in any kind of direct way in the narrative.

It's the particularity of their story that makes the graphic novel work. Yes, it's a Holocaust narrative, but it's a reminder that every individual's experience of that greater, dark narrative was distinct to themselves. And, of course, most of those narratives terminated tragically early.

Now Listening

Jardin de Al-Andalus, a very fetching compilation of Arab Andalusian music on Eduardio Paniagua's Pneuma label, is merrily burbling away on our newly restored B & O CD player. We've been without such sweet sounds in Maison KL since the early part of the year, when the aforementioned player decided not to bother anymore, for reasons of its own. (Possibly related to age: it was purchased back in 2004 and I don't think even B & O players are necessarily built to last in our disposable age.)

The first thing I played on it, after returning it to its rightful place, was a CD of 4 Tone Poems by Arnold Bax. They sounded as good as ever, confirmation that, when all is said and done, music is best (with food a close second.)

Not So Easy

Saddened to hear that Osman has been admitted to hospital and put in an isolation unit. We followed his progress on the Haj keenly, through updates from Rohana, and were thankful he completed the pilgrimage, against the odds. In fact, in a couple of the pictures taken after completing all the stages he looked much better than I'd expected, given the rigours of the experience. But Rohana had noted that it had been far from easy for him.

In the last few days, since his return from Saudi Arabia, he's been feeling steadily weaker. I'm guessing he's likely to have picked up an infection over there and, given his condition, fighting this is not going to be easy. Our plan is to visit him when we get back at the weekend, though I'm hoping that with the treatment he's getting he might just be released by then. But even expressing such hope seems too glib, somehow. We are left, as is so often the case, with prayer.

At Ease

Got out and about this afternoon to KLCC, largely in an effort to keep our houseguest entertained. Fortunately she's very good at entertaining herself. My own attempts at engagement are somewhat restricted by the ease with which I am able to fall asleep at almost any time of day at all. I put this down to the strain of work in recent weeks, but it could equally be due to good, old-fashioned laziness.

In Residence

Now ensconced in Maison KL with Noi and Zahira after an eventful journey north. We managed to forget the keys to our house and considered turning back at the Immigration on the Malaysian side before we remembered that sister-in-law Rozaidah holds the spare key. So we stopped off briefly at Melaka, whence we'll be returning on Friday. Arrived to find a lawyers' letter threatening us over non-payment of some bills to Astro, which is puzzling to say the least after all the trouble we went to finding their offices in Melaka earlier in the year especially to arrange for payments of bills which had failed due to a problem with one of my credit cards. And doubly puzzling considering we haven't received any letters from them telling us we owed them some money. No doubt it will be fun settling this. I love dealing with faceless bureaucracy. (Oddly enough the people you meet in offices when you're trying to sort out problems are invariably helpful and obliging.)

Anyway, we're hoping to get a few relaxing hours in whilst we are here, as well as finding ways of entertaining our houseguest.

A Bit Special

Another fine morning, this time helping deliver some of the Qurban meat from Darul Arqam to some folks around North Bridge Road. We had niece Zahira with us to assist, and she'll be coming with us to KL tomorrow. What with meeting up with my cousin Paul this evening, having been gladly surprised to discover he's briefly visiting these shores, and attending the wedding of Raihan's son yesterday evening in a rather plush setting at the Airport Hotel up at Changi, we seem to be enjoying an unusually eventful start to September.

Actually it's all slotted into place rather well, considering the potential conflicts of 'time-tabling' all this. I remember telling Raihan & Khadijah that I didn't think I'd be able to make it to the wedding when we bumped into them at Geylang Serai during the fasting month. We have much to be thankful for, as I pontificated to Zahira in the course of the morning's visits, as wise old uncles tend to do.

Perfectly Ordinary

Had a fine morning at Jurong Regional Library. Got down to the vicinity in which the library is located quite early and enjoyed a cuppa at Ya Kun before meeting our guys to set up for the performance. Then enjoyed watching the busy-ness of the library enact itself in what I would imagine to be the highly satisfactory routine of an ordinary Saturday morning. Lots of kids around, most with parents; a fair number of old folks, men mainly, ensconcing themselves amongst the periodicals, which I assume they can't afford to buy to read at home. Or maybe they are just there for the company?

I suppose our performance was part of the routine. The library seem keen to get schools in to use their very handy Programme Zone to put up various items. It was heartening to be working alongside the staff & kids from Kent Ridge Secondary - and I think they found the experience rewarding.

So there we were, creating something happily communal, really for no better reason than the simple, ordinary, deep pleasure of sharing it. A perfect morning, all told.