Caring

I struggled to finish Foucault's Madness and Civilisation, feeling by the end that despite its many moments of illumination I was falling short of all the book had to offer (which was plenty.) I think I grasped the central thesis, though, which was illuminating in itself. The problem for me lay in some of the detail inherent at the conceptual level, which was demanding and strangely abundant for what is, after all, quite a short work.

Having said all that, the idea that the pride that we might feel over what we consider the more humane treatment of the 'mad' (whatever that means, and Foucault is mind-bendingly good regarding whatever that means) in contrast to how they were treated in a less 'enlightened' age is entirely delusional, comes through loud and clear and painfully provocatively.

But it cannot match the pain engendered through watching Trapped In Care, a documentary aired this evening by Sky News. I caught a 15-minute snippet just now, focusing on the treatment of the intellectually disabled and autistic in various 'care facilities' in the UK. Initially I was struck by the odd coincidence of viewing this just after reading Foucault, though I hasten to add that the poor souls featured in the documentary are not mad in any reasonable sense of the word. (If there is a reasonable sense. (See M. Foucault.))

When pain in the abstract becomes pain in real human beings, it becomes more than food for thought.

Getting Radical

It's rare I feel any sort of keenness to watch a movie, but I'd love a chance to watch Mike Leigh's Peterloo. Mind you, any Mike Leigh movie is more than acceptable in this household. (Surprisingly the Missus loved Secrets and Lies, a sign of her unerring good taste.) I doubt very much the great director's account of the massacre that happened in the city of my birth will make it to these shores, but his brilliant account of Turner's life turned up on one of the Starhub channels to which we have access, so there's some hope there.

The Peterloo massacre mildly haunted my teenage years - I used to hang out in the Central Library near the site - and has, if anything, grown in significance in my mind. I'm firmly on the side of the tradition of Radical Dissent in historical terms and recent events in the nation of my birth have confirmed this essential sympathy all the more. There's a well-argued opinion piece in everyone's favourite sort-of-left-of-centre publication on-line going by the unwieldy but worthy title: Peterloo shaped modern Britain, as much as any king or queen did that pretty much says it all for me. Nice to see the great E.P. Thompson getting name-checked in there. Hope he's still read in the academies. He should be.

The Basics

We have a new improved system for booking venues at work on-line. So it's now a lot more difficult than it used to be. Case in point: I spent several hours sorting out classrooms for a course yesterday and today when previously it took me five minutes to sort out the rooms by sending a single email.

I've also been struggling to secure a venue for something dramatic we're planning for next year - in July actually. Given the fact that we have venues specifically designed for the performing arts this might seem odd, especially when I tell you that the problems have been caused by a key venue already having been booked for an 'event' that has nothing artistic about it whatsoever. Ironically it is booked during a period of time that has traditionally been set aside for drama, that being the case for the last twelve years at least, and possibly beyond that.

Anyway, there's no point in complaining, though it's fun to do so. The actual point of all this is to convey a simple truth about the kind of stuff you see on stage at all levels below that of the well-funded professional variety: it gets up there through sheer stubborn-headedness, not head-in-the-clouds-ness. The struggle comes with the territory; it's inherent in the experience; it's the very nature of the beast. The art lies in making it look easy.

Stirring Stuff

It's been a long time since we got ourselves to the concert hall. Fortunately it looks like our current engagements allow us the room to get there once again next Saturday when the SSO will be doing the business with a couple of Debussy favourites. I've had a couple of stirring encounters with La Mer live, as it were, but have never had the chance to listen to Jeux in that context, so it looks like I'll be able to set right that omission.

I've been even more inspired to make sure I attend by an excellent piece on The Velvet Revolution of Claude Debussy by Alex Ross in The New Yorker. When you hear people talk of the impossibility of writing about music in any meaningful way, direct them to anything by Mr Ross. In this particular article the bit about the first five bars of Prélude à l'aprés-midi d'un Faune nails that falsehood for good.

Lesson Learnt

Found myself being led round Mediacorps' big headquarters down the road yesterday on what is termed a 'learning journey' in these parts. Had quite a good time all in all, and learnt that those video helmet things, which they put on your head, complete with headphones, so that you're stuck in the immersive world created, are definitely not for me. I suspected such in advance but gave one a try for three minutes, which was three minutes too many.

It struck me that this might be related to the general difficulty I have in watching movies and the like. Part of me wants the freedom to put the world to one side now and again so that I don't get overly involved. You can do that with a novel easily, no matter how engrossing it is.

In Real Time

Just been watching the news out of the US and noticed an odd disconnect. A few minutes ago the big news channels were announcing the arrest of someone in connection with all those bombs that have been sent to various big cheeses. Sounds like the Feds have got their man. Good. Hope people over there are a bit more safe now.

But here's the odd thing. CNN announce the news from their reporter in the studio around 22.56. I switch over to Fox to see if they're saying the same thing, but they're showing a group of talking heads obviously not aware of any major development in the story being discussed. Fox then cut to some adverts ahead of their 23.00 news broadcast but as the voice is saying what they are going to continue with said voice, that of a lady, finishes with And CNN, oh - or something like that. I guess someone at Fox has been watching CNN and heard the news. I cut to CNN while Fox are running their ads and all sorts of stuff about the arrest, largely conjectural but sounding pretty well-informed is airing.

I cut back to Fox as their 23.00 broadcast begins, seemingly happily oblivious to the breaking story.  But I've got to say that their anchors look oddly stressed. Anyway, around 23.06 Fox suddenly announce the news, confirmed by the Department of Justice with the guys on screen sort of looking surprised, but not all that surprised, if you see what I mean.

Must say, I'm glad I'm not a reporter. It's all a bit too fast-moving for me. If the Fox guys were pretending not to know something that the rest of the US was well aware of,, and had been for a good 10 minutes or so, does that qualify as 'fake' news?

Not So Dramatic

Lots of young people live out their romantic dramas these days in the form of exchanged text messages. I know this because I've seen attempts to represent such dramatic exchanges in tv programmes, especially the Malay dramas that Noi watches. To be honest, I don't watch much else in the way of drama on the telly because I'm not much of a viewer, but I'm assuming that what goes on in the world of Malay tv drama reflects the kinds of programme watched in other parts of the world.

It's fascinating to watch dramatists and directors trying to solve the inherent problem of representing on screen a fundamentally un-dramatic activity - sitting down exchanging text messages - and somehow making it dramatic. The default solution is to cut between the characters in their different locations, showing the actual message floating mysteriously on screen as the messages arrive. (Which wonderfully, surrealistically breaks the standard verisimilitude of the 'realist' representation of life in process in the tv frame.) Music plays continuously, in the absence of the usual dialogue, and the characters emote like crazy in a kind of restrained dumb-show, sort of staying within the convention of reasonably naturalistic acting. In the moments of highest tension/emotion/revelation a character might expostulate to themselves in a kind of soliloquy, wholly inappropriate to the usual stylistic conventions of the on-going drama. I often think it would be handy to give them a cat or goldfish or something to address. The ladies might find a stuffed toy a viable audience.

I suppose the more folk become addicted to their ridiculous devices and live their lives through them, the more we're likely to be treated to attempts to improve on the standard model above. I must say, I'm looking forward to the possible developments. Who would have thought that handphones would end up provoking an entirely new dramatic sub-genre all of their very own?

Waxing Poetical

There are moments, quite a number actually, when I find myself wishing cyberspace had never been invented. (Was it invented, or just discovered? I don't even know the answer to that simple question.) But then I recall the pleasures afforded by being able to access particular websites, and my irritation fades. A bit.

Thank goodness for Carol Rumens's Poem of the Week page at The Grauniad on-line. The last three weeks have been particularly terrific. And the pages have the only Comments sections I know of that are actually edifying to read.

A Bit Crazy

Quick thought on a slow reading of Foucault's Madness and Civilisation: You don't have to be mad to understand Monsieur Foucault at his most perplexing - which is most of the time - but it helps. Hah!

Not Well

Actually I'm perfectly well health-wise, I'm happy to say, despite the misleading title of this post. But things have not exactly been going well, even though they've not been going badly, if you see what I mean. The last few days have not been a period of grace; they've been a time of things not quite working, not quite fitting, not flowing, as it were.

So what to do? Keep going. Lower expectations. Don't ask for too much. Indeed, don't ask. Accept. Count blessings. This too will pass. And will come again.

More to Do

11.54
Happy to report that marking for the day is done. But not exactly looking forward to the long drive back from one home to another. There's a lot to be said for staying put, but we're not in any position to say it.

23.24
And now happier still to report we're back in one piece, which is all that really matters, isn't it?

Done

13.30
It's amazing how much better life looks when one's marking for the day has been completed.

22.43
With the day almost done, it's good to record that most of it was spent actually living.

Getting Down To It

We're off to KL later this evening, intending to beat the Friday jam by travelling through the night. Fortunately Fuad is coming along with us and he doesn't mind driving in the early hours, so I'm hoping to get some much needed zzzzzzs in the car. But I can't say I'm looking forward to feeling tired tomorrow, as I undoubtedly will, with marking to do. However, arranging to fix the Maison KL roof is an over-riding priority, so the trip must go ahead.

I suppose this is a classic First World problem - i.e., hardly a problem at all in the great scheme of things, a problem of being fortunate enough to own a house and having more than one place in which to live. Actually, I seem beset by problems at the moment, which turn out not to be problems at all when you really get down to it.

Mixed Feelings

Feeling ridiculously pleased with myself for getting to the gym for the second time this week, and feeling similarly pleased with the part of myself that comprises my body for not breaking down (yet) as a result. Also feeling tired in the extreme as a result of my efforts in the gym and sort of waiting for the inevitable collapse likely to follow. But also feeling I wasn't firing on all cylinders today, feeling like I wasn't quite all there somehow in an irritable sort of fashion. Oh, and not to forget, feeling extremely full after munching a number of mini-shepherd's-pies, courtesy of the lady of the house - and feeling very grateful indeed for those highlights of the day.

Not Exactly Seasonal

Attended a Christmas dinner this evening. Yes, really. Felt uncomfortably cold throughout due to the severity of the air-conditioning.

Sometimes life here is possessed of a surreal quality.

A Crimson Moment - 5

We all need discipline. But sometimes the need for Indiscipline is greater.

Necessary Information

It's difficult to deal with the reality of the cruelty of which we are capable. It's easy to understand our collective ability to forget what you might think would be, or should be, unforgettable. It's easy to assume someone, somewhere will remember, and fail to make ourselves the effort necessary in remembering.

We need to be horrified by articles like Thomas Laqueur's painful essay in the recent on-line London Review of Books, Lynched for Drinking from a White Man's Well, and we need to remember it.

Very Cosy Indeed

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quite a number of our erstwhile companions on the Haj joined us for tea and goodies this afternoon. A more than jolly time was enjoyed by all. Indeed, I think the word cosy might well be applied to the occasion. It strikes me that an ample supply of cakes and associated goodies, homemade, of course, helps considerably in ensuring a sense of cosiness, as does lashings of tea and laughter. Cramming folk into a relatively confined apartment also helps.

Not So Cosy

Went for a bit of a walk earlier this evening. I'd been intending to get myself to the gym if the aches & pains in my side had eased, but they hadn't, so I didn't. But I didn't feel just circling the track again, so I asked Noi if she fancied a bit of a wander. Unfortunately she was busy preparing some goodies for some guests tomorrow (more of which to follow soon) so I took off round Medway Park on my own.

The Park in question is a little housing estate just up the road, but sheltered from the main road by plenty of trees and thick vegetation. The houses are all the colonial types that the army bods used way back when, the all-white kind, and I suppose the folks now in them are all substantially well-heeled. It's very quiet round there. I didn't pass anyone walking at all in my 45 minutes or so on the estate, though a couple of cars went by. In fact, I wondered whether a few of the houses were in use at all, but I saw only one with a For Lease sign outside, so in the case of the very quiet places I suppose it was simply a matter of the owners being out.

Everywhere looked well looked after, but I was struck by the fact that I didn't see a single place that looked to me like a nice place to live. There was a general lack of cosiness, for want of a better word, an absence of snugness, for want of another - though I must say I like both those terms. They capture what it is I would look for in a home. Of course, the tropics by definition don't offer the snug cosiness of a cottage on a crisply, cold Autumn evening; but that doesn't preclude the possibility of an apartment or house having a sense of being suitably lived in as opposed to just occupied. I suppose it's up to the residents to live warmly & well.

Something To Consider

On a young lady's t-shirt, seen earlier this evening at IMM: Injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere. The young lady in question looked around 13-years-old. I wondered if she grasped the import of these fine words or whether it was just a fashion statement. Either way, it made for interesting reading.

All In The Mind

On World Mental Health Day 2018 it's been good to see some of the major problems we face in this area getting a decent airing in the media. The recent report in The Lancet outlining a mental health crisis in every country in the world makes salutary reading. In an oddly coincidental way I happen to be reading Foucault's Madness and Civilisation at this time and, whilst I don't entirely buy Monsieur's F's thesis, there's a frequency of stabbing insight in the work that makes it a rightly distressing read. The notion that we're dealing with colossal human suffering doesn't bear thinking about which is why we must think about it.

Relaxing

I’ve just finished Merrill’s 1988 sequence The Inner Room in the chunky Collected Poems and find myself making progress of a twofold nature: I’m around the two-thirds mark of the volume, which means I’m not likely to give up now having come so far; and I found myself, finally, grasping and enjoying whole poems, not just bits here and there. In fact, of the five sections JM divides The Inner Room into, there were two I found highly accessible: the Play in One Act, The Image Maker, that comprises Part 2, and the Prose of Departure of Part 4 with its strange blend of prose and haiku – I assume modelled on Basho (?). Plus I found myself at home in a number of the individual poems in the other three sections. Maybe even the most demanding poets loosen up a bit as they move into old age, feel a bit more relaxed about speaking directly – though he was only 62 when the sequence was published, hardly in his dotage.

Cut Off

The mindbogglingly dull saga of our attempts to convince Singtel, our Internet service provider, to continue to provide a service continues. Or rather it doesn't. Having been reassured by three customer service officers that they would not cut off our service before arranging an appointment to connect us to their wonderfully speedy fibre connection (or whatever it is) they duly, unceremoniously cut us off today. Oh hum.

I can't quite face the infinitely tedious process of ringing them today to find out why they've done this - knowing that the customer service officer on the other end of the line won't be able to explain this anyway - so I'll most likely do that tomorrow. And probably tomorrow and tomorrow. (Quite a nice phrase for a particularly bleak tragedy, I reckon.)

You may be wondering how I'm getting on-line to post this. I can't go into details, but let me just say that my ramblings from this Far Place may well reduce in number in the near future. So some good might come of the situation, eh? Hah!

At A Loose End

The plan had been to get myself to the gym this evening. This was officially kiboshed this morning as I was marking my fifth script of the day and suddenly knew I'd strained a muscle in my back. Who knew that marking could be physically hazardous? (Well, I did, actually, but the knowledge doesn't assist in avoiding the wear and tear induced by the over-intensity of it all.)

By way of a substitute for my abandoned workout I went out earlier to complete 10 laps of the track, brisk-walking style. It helped loosen me up, I suppose, but it didn't feel quite so purposeful somehow. And I didn't have Noi to accompany me, as I did the last time we did a few circuits, as she has popped across to Melaka for the weekend. I had the oddest sense that I was just doing something as a way to pass the time - this being particularly odd since usually time is such a precious commodity for me.

Then it occurred to me that doing a few rounds of the track was a pretty sane way of wasting time compared to other ways that might involve actually doing damage to oneself. So I'm now feeling a bit more cheerful about my evening, but still a bit lost, a bit too loose for complete comfort.

Making Demands

Have discovered the worst background music ever written: the Beethoven piano sonatas. Fail to give them your full attention and they're just irritation scrawled on the air. Not so much a way of breaking the silence as assaulting it.

Unfinished

Just got to the end of Joseph Campbell's Occidental Mythology. As I suspected, it turned out to be a fascinating read, packed with telling insights and illuminating observations. I had no idea, for example, of the extent of veneration of the Prophet's daughter, Fatima, in the Shi'a community - well, in certain Shi'a sects, I should say. But I'm also uneasily aware of the prof's tendency to draw his subjects with the broadest of brush strokes on occasion. Just before the paragraphs on Fatima he observes: Generally in Islam the spiritual character of women is rated very low. I can guess where he gets this idea from but it bears no relation to the Islam I know from close contact. And, I hasten to add, I could pick out similar doubtful generalisations from segments on Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity.

But it's the broad thesis of The Masks of God that deserves attention, and the final twenty or so pages of the Occidental volume feature a helpful summary of that thesis. Unfortunately, I can't say I genuinely followed all the twists and turns outlined in those pages, so I'm committing myself to another read of the summary before moving on to the final volume. I've got a feeling I'm going to end up doubting those ideas, but sometimes you need clarity on how exactly you disagree with someone's ideas to be sure you are really paying them the attention and respect they deserve.

A Numbers Game

I've just been doing some basic Mathematics - with the aid of a calculator, of course. Initially I was working out the maximum heart rate to reach when exercising, advisable for someone of my age. It varies according to different formulae, but seems to be around 171 bpm to 164 bpm. When I'm on the elliptical trainer it's a bit difficult to be sure of the accuracy of any reading for the heart rate as the readings can vary very suddenly and sometimes are obviously incorrect. You get the reading for heart rate when clutching a couple of the bars that protrude from the control panel, and it really doesn't seem a terribly accurate process. On some visits I really have had no idea what my heart was doing, but tonight I got some fairly consistent readings indicating I was hitting a maximum of around 158, which would seem to be about right.
 
I've also been figuring out the average number of trips to the gym I've managed per week this year. I suppose my target is 3 a week, but I've only managed that in 10 out of 40 weeks so far. And there have been inevitably a number of weeks with no visits at all, when we've been in Malaysia or when I've been injured. The average number of visits actually works out at 1.65. Which is not bad, I suppose. But not good.
 
I'm keenly aware of my best performance over 45 minutes on the trainer, that being the standard duration of my work-outs. I managed to burn up 590 cals on my stint on 14 May, the last visit before Ramadhan and haven't come close since. (I measure performance in terms of calories burnt since this is the least variable bit of all the variables involved, if you see what I mean.)

So what's the point of all these numbers? Frankly, none really. Working out in the gym is just mind-bogglingly boring compared to actually getting out for a run and, I suppose, the numbers serve as a distraction. And, in an odd kind of way, as a motivational tool. For all my scepticism about them, they are somehow real, and when you can't trust what your body says, they seem reliable, even when they're not. And if they help me find a reason for getting some exercise done then that's fine by me.

A Firm Foundation

Lucky me: the Missus spent a good half an hour or so earlier this evening ministering to my poor feet. I won't trouble you with the exact nature of the ministrations, but suffice to say that they left the nether parts in question feeling positively fresh, if not young again.

Sam Beckett is very good on feet, especially when they're stuck in boots. One only has to think of Estragon in Godot, of course, but they pop up all over the place - I seem to remember Belacqua moaning about how his are ruined in a couple of the early short stories. I sometimes feel that way about mine, particularly when they start to cramp up, but at this point in time I feel almost reconciled to them.

One of the many joys of living in a tropical climate, by the by, is not having to wear socks, or shoes for that matter, too much of the time. Free your feet and your mind will follow, say I (since I can't recall anyone else ever making this pithy observation.)

A Brush With Magic

Played the recording I've got on CD of the original radio broadcast of Under Milk Wood last night. It's the first time I've listened to it in years, though funnily enough I've played the other goodies in the collection (4 CDs worth) fairly regularly. For some reason I thought I was so familiar with the play that I wouldn't get too much out of listening again.

I was wrong, and deeply so. I was as enchanted by it this time round as I was when Jack Connelly played it for his English class when I was seventeen.

More Than A Little Absurd

We find ourselves still valiantly attempting to convince the mighty Starhub to actually give us an appointment to connect us to their very fine new way of providing customers with a super-fast connection to the Internet rather than completely disconnecting our Broadband service, which will be very complicated - the potential disconnection, that is - as all sorts of bits and pieces are bundled together in our current arrangement in ways I don't understand but have happily paid for over a period of several years. It isn't that we want to discontinue our current service, you understand; our service providers have simply decided not to provide that service anymore and given us no choice but to hook up to the new, better service, which we'd gladly do if they'd let us, but they are seemingly reluctant to let us. Today is the date on which a very nice letter they sent us tells us our current service will be discontinued unless we arrange an appointment. Yesterday we, yet again, rang a customer service officer who, yet again, assured us that she would ring us telling us of exactly where we stood on the issue of getting connected and expressed sympathy for our travails of the past few months. She didn't ring. They never do.

In composing this post I'm reminded of the Ghost's potent lines in Shakespeare's great tragedy: 

.. I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up they soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine ...

Well, if I outlined the full story of our efforts so far it would actually occupy a longer running time than Hamlet, I suspect. But it would lack something of the dramatic, and possibly the tragic resonance of the play. But it would make a first-rate Absurdist drama. I'm just longing for some kind of resolution, but I suspect I'll be denied such for some time to come.