Good Guys

The saga of our difficult relations with Singtel continues. We thought they'd cut off our services. Indeed, a young lady speaking on their behalf seemed to think the same thing, but it turned out we'd lost our broadband simply because it seems they simply don't know how to maintain its supply. That was some time ago. And we've lost our connections more than once since then. In fact, this time round we've been without an Internet connection for about three weeks.

Each time we talk to a customer service officer about this on the phone they ask why we haven't switched to fibre and we say we'd like to but you don't seem to want to allow us to do so. Then they go silent. Each time a hard-working technician comes round to try and restore our various connections they ask the same thing and we give the same reply. They usually look puzzled, but sort of knowingly so, as if familiar with the strange workings of the Singtel bureaucracy, or whoever's bureaucracy it is that is reluctant to allow us to be connected despite our desire to pay to be so. 

We've had three such technicians round already this week, and we're due another tomorrow morning. But here's the thing. It's impossible to get annoyed with the guys who come round, or the people we speak to on the phone, because they are so obviously doing their best to help us and are genuinely sympathetic. There's a kind of sincerely unaffected courtesy about these 'ordinary' workers that gives one hope that the inhuman systems we create might sometimes work to the good of people. But it's a faint hope, at best, and probably illusory. 

A Fresh Start

Surprised myself by finishing the Collected Poems of James Merrill before the year's end. Can't say I enjoyed all of its 869 pages, finding quite a few almost entirely baffling, but it was rare to read a poem without at least a few striking phrases to admire and often there was a good deal more than that. As is so often the case on these readings of a Complete or Collected, I generally found myself enjoying the later poems more than the early stuff. Indeed, the last two poems in the collection, both written in the year of JM's death, were probably the two I'd pick out as 'favourites', at least for now.

The slight irritation I suffered in making my way through the whole volume came when I fancied reading a good chunk of someone else at moments and realised this wouldn't be wise. I've been longing to give Thom Gunn's Collected a go, and I'm happy to say I'll be doing just that from tomorrow.

Hardly Matters Of Life And Death

I've been feeling somewhat weighed down by various trivial matters in the last few days - trivial, yes, but still needing to be resolved. When I tell you that one such matter has involved an improbable amount of admin work to settle the finances for the various English courses we have to run for overseas scholars new to the school from this time last year through to October 2018, you'll perhaps be able to guess at the sheer remorselessly plodding dullness of it all. And I can guarantee a sequence of interrogatory emails to follow once the paperwork reaches those who task it is to submit it to scrutiny and spot the gaps - which I'm sure are there.

It's at times like this that I desperately need to remember my own worthily wise advice to colleagues beset with troubles of their own to keep a perspective and disengage. I'm actually better at doing this now than I used to be. The problem is, though, that I'm still not particularly good at doing what I know is the obviously sensible thing.

Matters Of Life And Death

We've just been watching 6X7, the Malay drama centred around a funeral company. Focusing on the day to day dealings of such a company sounds an unlikely premise, but it works extraordinarily well. The simple pieties, typical of this kind of Suria production, with which it deals become powerfully moving at times due, I suppose, to the honesty in how it deals with the simple, painful reality of death and how ordinary people deal with it. Remarkably the series manages to avoid the usual melodramatic tropes, even when the deaths involved have a quality of the unexpected, I suppose because death is so ordinary.

In The Moment, Again

I really should be reading Descartes's Meditations. An old Everyman edition of his writing primarily featuring A Discourse on Method is my main designated reading of the moment, and I read said Discourse quite happily a couple of weeks ago, assuming I would race through the Meditations, having become familiar with them long ago in my first year at university. But I've found reading them again extremely laborious, to the point of wondering whether I'd read them in a highly edited version back in 1974, or skipped all the troublesome bits in youthful impetuousness.

Anyway, it's not difficult to distract me from reading our French friend, and James Shapiro managed to do so effortlessly through his wonderful 1599 - A Year in the Life of Shakespeare. I first read this in its year of publication in paperback, 2006, and knew then that I'd go back to it one day - specifically if I were to be teaching any of the four plays Shapiro features: Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and, best of all, Hamlet. Since Hamlet is on the cards for one of my classes next year I felt I had to pick it up again and remind myself of Shapiro's very convincing thesis on the likely revisions of the great play. 

In fact, pretty everything Shapiro suggests regarding the Bard's output in 1599 is intuitively convincing. The notion that the lived experience of the social and political ups and downs of the period is central to Shakespeare's dramas, rather than the conventional notion of the influence of literary 'sources', just feels so right that you begin to take for granted that Shapiro's hunches and suppositions are spot on.

And what an astonishing run of plays it was. Each one brilliant in its way, and entirely individual.

Apocalypse Now

Watched a documentary on the opioid epidemic in the US that aired on BBC World today. Wished I hadn't. It ended with the simple caption: America is losing the war on drugs, and that was the obvious conclusion to be drawn. A few days ago I'd read a powerful essay entitled Opioid Nation in the NYRB that was equally despairing, but somehow the reality of the suffering involved was more haunting in encountering the pain of the various victims interviewed in the documentary.

There's something apocalyptic about the scale of the problem - such that the word 'problem' seems entirely inadequate in this context.

Living In The Moment

It's been a good day for my body. I went to see my back doctor this morning and he found me to be in full working order with good mobility. This was an improvement on my previous visit when he had noted signs of wear and tear. I seem to have staved off the inevitable degeneration of my lower back, at least for the time being, and that's more than good enough for me.

And then, without really meaning to, I achieved the personal best at the gym that's been eluding me for so long. Again, it's gently thrilling to think my old frame is in better nick than it was a year ago. I'm happily not thinking too far ahead, but just enjoying the moment, a kind of celebration of my almost complete lack of depth.

Not So Easy

Why is it that it's never actually possible to register a warranty for a product on-line despite the apparent simplicity of being able to do so? Case in point: I've just made a valiant effort to register the warranty for the water pump we recently purchased for Maison KL. I got all the way to the final segment I needed to complete which involved the details of the tax invoice for the product. Noi came back from KL with the warranty registration card and the invoice for purchasing the pump, but no tax invoice, since she wasn't given any; this means I can't fill in the last box so I can't register the product.

Is it cynical of me to wonder whether this final step is put there to make it extremely difficult for customers to actually complete the registration for their promised warranty? Could a business be so calculating?

I think I know the answer to the above.

Complete

Noi arrived home earlier this evening thus making the world a simpler, warmer, richer place.

Not Entirely Natural

I've been feeling particularly virtuous lately on account of upping my consumption of fruit. There is a problem though. All the fruit I buy comes, for reasons I don't understand, in plastic containers. I'm guessing this is the kind of plastic that doesn't do the environment any good at all. So here am I, striving for personal health whilst damaging the health of the planet. Somehow this doesn't add up.

Run Down

I've been doing my Man of the People bit since Noi took the car to KL, using public transport to get around this Far Place. Must say, I've thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Using the MRT is a breeze, at least at the times of day I've made use of the system.

Must say though, the bright shining modernity of the bits of the island I've been around gets a tad monotonous. I like the worn-down areas, those with a sense of having seen better days, and there's not too many such spots around these days. I suppose it's a case of looking for somewhere I can identify with.

Something Positive

As I was approaching the end of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness I was wondering whether Arundhati Roy would be able to tie the whole superb enterprise together. It seemed to me that providing the reader a convincing, satisfying ending would be evidence that she has done more than write magnificent polemic - though that's a key attribute of the text. In the event I think the conclusion of the novel is one of its strongest aspects, and reminded me of what I have come to see as a fundamental strength of The God of Small Things.

Without giving too much away, the powerful, unlikely warmth of the ending is what took this reader by happy surprise. I was reminded in an odd way of Dickens and the so-called sentimentality of his novels. That aspect of Dickens is seen by some - usually academics - as so easy to criticise, yet seems to me central to his genius. I think the same is true of Roy.

Standing Still

Came away from the gym earlier this evening feeling mildly pleased with myself for posting decent numbers. Indeed, I realised that if I'd really pushed it for the last four minutes or so I would have equalled my previous best, and I had the sense that I could have pushed it harder than I did. Actually I had something else on my mind which acted as a minor distraction throughout.

But I could only feel mildly pleased given the fact that it's taken almost six months to get back to the level of fitness I'd achieved around the middle of the year. I suppose there's something to be said for standing still. A kind of wisdom to be engendered in holding one's ground and not needing to advance.

Inimitable

Thoroughly enjoying Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, but finding it immensely disturbing. Couldn't quite pin down what made it so, then realised it's something to do with the blazing indignation of the text in terms of the social wrongs with which it deals (though 'deals' seems too mild a word for what Ms Roy is up to.)

Normally I'm highly inclined to distrust moral/political/social indignation - especially when I'm feeling it myself. It's rare that a writer convinces in this territory. The parallel that springs to my mind regarding the special quality of indignation involved in this novel is, oddly I suppose, with Dickens - the kind of generous, humanely ferocious indignation Orwell identified in the Inimitable. Roy seems to me to echo that, without imitation.

By the by, I think she'd make a very bad model for a younger writer to imitate. My mother would have called her a one-off. A quite astonishing, wonderful one.

Uneasy Viewing

Before getting back from work I decided not to watch anything related to Brexit. Got home and watched non-stop. It holds all the fascination of a complete disaster in excruciatingly slow motion.

Funnily enough there were some politicos talking various kinds of sense. Unfortunately they weren't actually listening to each other.

No End In Sight

Had a somewhat unexpectedly busy day and arrived home a bit frazzled. Proceeded to watch coverage of the latest on the mess known as Brexit on BBC World and Sky News, not quite simultaneously, though it sometimes felt that way. This was not a good way to get unfrazzled, I can tell you.

I suppose someone somewhere understands why all this is happening, but I've yet to meet him or her.

The End In Sight

As far as I can remember I've been reading James Merrill's Collected Poems since the beginning of the year and I've now completed all the main books of poems published during his life. But there's still some way to go to get to the end of the Collected. I've just embarked on a longish segment entitled The Yellow Pages. As far as I can figure this comprises poems he left out of the earlier published books but then decided were worthy of publication in a volume of their own duly published in 1974. Then there's a quite a hefty group of JM's translations of other writers, before a final substantial section of poems he never bothered to publish but that his current editors decided needed to be acknowledged as Previously Uncollected Poems. Even with a cursory glance ahead it's clear that even his less substantial stuff is, well, substantial.

So I have to ask myself again, has it been worth spending all this effort on a writer who is sometimes maddeningly opaque? (Or possibly is actually reasonably clear, but so clever he keeps going over my head.) My answer is, again, that I'm not really sure, but something is making me go on and that's enough. And I'd now supplement that with the observation that the more I read, the more I get, the more frequent become the rewards.

A Good Start

Recently embarked on a reading of Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. A brilliantly transgressive text. And funny. And sad. And that's just the first sixty pages.

Complicity?

Just been watching a programme about the murder of the little American girl JonBenet Ramsey from more than twenty years ago. The story was horribly fascinating in ‘murder-mystery’ fashion back in the last century, and it’s lost none of that fascination. Tonight’s programme ended with the father railing that his daughter’s killing was not a form of entertainment, as he believed it had been treated as being over the years, and it was painful to watch. Because it’s necessary to question one’s motives in watching this kind of thing, especially those that relate to the ways in which one entertains oneself.

A Rare Opportunity

15.05
Now getting fired up for a performance this evening of Steve's Reich's Drumming by the Colin Currie Group. I'd not heard of this ensemble until last week at the Esplanade when I picked up a flyer for the concert, but they sound like the business to me. Let's face it, opportunities to hear Reich performed live in this part of the world come few and far between, and I'm pleased to take this one.

23.16
Magical concert. Reich may sound good in recordings but you've got to experience the music live to feel the sound as you need to. And when it's delivered by players of this calibre, then you're taken to another place.

I vaguely wondered in advance of the concert if the hypnotic qualities of Reich's work might have a narcotic effect in the concert hall. In the event, I've never felt more alert. And watching the performers move around the stage to their various instruments, movements effected with great care and a kind of stillness, gave the longer pieces played - Drumming especially - a kind of ritualised, dramatic quality.

A Perplexing Question

Late in the afternoon I was asked by a younger colleague, a much younger colleague if truth be told, Where do you get your energy from?

I was entirely stumped for an answer, the closest I could get being something along the lines of not being aware I had any energy at all. But that didn't sound even slightly elegant, and I like to keep a conversation humming along.

I suppose my inability to frame any kind of coherently suitable reply is linked to the fact that whatever I've got that keeps me moving and occasionally grooving doesn't seem to me to be energy in any real sense. I can't think of a word in English that captures the stubborn keep-going-ness that keeps me going. Just haven't the energy to think of one.

Sound And Visions

Had the happy thought today that some music is so innately visual it doesn't require a video to make you see it. Of course, Messiaen is the prime example of a composer who is obviously seeing what his music is saying. And for much of his work we are in the extraordinarily privileged position of being able to read his account of what, if we're lucky, we might just be able to construct in the mind's eye.

Was listening to La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ earlier and came across this, from Messiaen's notes on the fifth section of the First Septenary: The phrase is soft and tender in the male voices, louder and more emphatic when sung by the whole choir. Modal colours evolve: gold and violet, red and bluish-purple, blue-grey studded with gold and deep blue, green and orange, blue and gold, yellow and violet streaked with white. The solo cello sings of the simple clarity of everlasting light. The solo piano introduces the blue American robin, and the rock thrush (a mountain bird with bright orange and slate-blue livery) is heard amongst the ensemble of soloists. The movement concludes with the choir humming red and gold harmonies, a lush carpet of sound, a distant pianissimo, over which, in the night, there ascends on the piano the first strophe of the nightingale's song.

Blimey. Difficult to believe that any music could live up to that. But, of course, the Maestro's does.

Sound And Vision

I've never really come to terms with music videos. It's an odd thing to say, I know, since they've been around for so long, but when I try and think of ones that seem to me entirely successful in marrying image and sound I can only manage a very short list. Maybe some by Bowie - especially the more recent - and possibly Peter Gabriel - but those seem somewhat dated. Having said that, I'd be the first to admit that there are probably hundreds of good ones I don't know about simply because I don't watch all that much television, or view these things on-line.

Curiously enough I think I'd rate the stuff done by Prince as my favourites in this genre. I say 'curiously' not so much in relation to the music (of which any visitor to this Far Place would know I'm an unashamed fanboy of the first order) but in relation to the silly hyperbolic playing up of Prince's image as whatever His Purple Highness seemed to see himself as at any given time. What wins me over to the videos is the outright goofiness of so many of them in this respect, the idea that this is all mickey-taking on at least one important level, though engagingly serious on others.

Today, for example, I found myself goofing off in a spare moment to the brilliant Musicology, and enjoying the visuals as much as the groove. I love the irony in Prince's playing of the diva role to his younger fan-struck self, and the wonderfully rhythmic editing so perfectly in synch to the track. There really is a kind of education to be had here.

Slightly Melancholic

Noi has gone off to KL for some two and a half weeks to see to the work we're getting done to repair the roof of our house there. She's being accompanied by no fewer than four nieces, one thankfully of senior years, so she'll have her hands full. In stark contrast I find myself at something of a loose end. There's still plenty going on at work of course, hence my remaining here, but this place has felt more than a little bit empty today.

I took myself off to the gym this afternoon hoping for some improvement on my previous visit. That took place last Sunday, just before we took Fifi for her birthday dinner, and was strangely unimpressive. I say 'strangely' as I felt in pretty good nick before hitting the pedals on the elliptical trainer and I thought I would post good numbers. In the event I struggled through the last five minutes, knowing that if I pushed myself at all I'd be close to throwing up. Today saw a slight improvement - I felt okay over the final stretch, though I can't say I set the world alight over my designated forty-five minutes.

It's a melancholy, lonely truth that once you hit a certain age the kind of progress that might have been taken for granted is no longer automatic. And it feels that bit lonelier, that bit more melancholy, when there's no Missus around to complain to regarding that necessary truth.

Compulsion

Read Han Kang's short novel The Vegetarian over the weekend. Think this won the Booker International Award, or something like that. Actually it was Runima who passed me a copy, and I'm glad she did. My first ever Korean novel.

It starts off strange and gets steadily stranger - always a good sign. Han Kang is the kind of writer who seems to feel things with great intensity, as if she's missing a layer of protection against the world, I'm tempted to say a layer of skin, but hesitate to use such a trite image given her novel's deployment of a brilliantly original sequence of images of the body as the site of conflict. (Though the nods towards Kafka - think The Hunger Artist - suggest something less than original, but wonderfully allusive.) 

Very assured shifts of perspective also. It's a crafty novel, but hides its craftiness beneath the urgency of a compelling surface. I suppose many readers will see it as a novel of feminist protest, given the strikingly passive-aggressive figure at its centre, and the ways in which she is objectified by various males, but I think that's to underestimate the depth of its existential concerns.

A Jolly Good Time

Wonderful concert last night. I was in the right mood for a bit of Debussy and the SSO sounded sensationally good to me, especially in Jeux which has always seemed to get away from me in the past. It helped that Maestro Lan Shui provided an amusing introduction to the balletic aspects of the piece complete with musical illustrations before we were given the whole. Yes, it panders to the audience a wee bit, but if you can't have a bit of fun before playing Games when can you? (See what I did there?)

Noi and I managed to attend the pre-concert talk in the library upstairs in the Esplanade, not realising that it was to be delivered by my colleague Yi Fang. I think she was a little nonplussed to spot me in the audience. To my delight it featured an interview with Ye Xiaogang, the composer of Mount Emei, which was being premiered in Singapore by the SSO. He couldn't say all that much in the 10 or so minutes Yi Fang got to ask him questions, but what he said was down to earth and intriguing at the same time in terms of biographical detail - for example, talking about his experiences as a young man in the period of the Cultural Revolution. I'd never heard of the guy before, which doesn't say much for my knowledge of contemporary music I'm afraid, but it seems he's a really big cheese on the Chinese scene, and rightly so if Mount Emei is anything to go by. Lovely to listen to, highly accessible yet in an idiom that might fairly be termed modern, with glittering parts for the soloists - a violinist and an insanely gifted lady percussionist.

I also managed to purchase a couple of CDs featuring the SSO doing the business with lots of Debussy in the concert interval. These hit the turntable this morning, making for the best of starts to a thrillingly lazy day.

Goofing Off

Got a lot done today. And none of it was work. Well, some of the reading was vaguely work-related, but when was reading Shakespeare work in any real sense?

Just back from the concert hall, actually. Sort of the antithesis of work. More anon.

Hidden Treasure

Was luxuriating in a bit of Vaughan Williams earlier this evening. Well, quite a lot of VW, actually, the 'bit' being The Sea Symphony. Oddly it's the one of the magical nine I play least, yet I always find myself wondering why I don't air it more often when I do give it a spin. This time I found myself enjoying Whitman's poetry just in itself, as I was reading it from the accompanying booklet. I tend to blow hot and cold over his verse, but this time I think I grasped why VW felt compelled to set these particular words.

Then I decided to play through the Arnold Conducts Arnold set I downloaded a little while back and, do you know, for a moment there was a genuine contender for the title of My Favourite English Composer. In general I find much to admire and enjoy in Malcolm Arnold's oeuvre as represented in the pieces involved. He's a wonderful melodist and superb technician, but before this evening I'd not that crawling of the skin that RVW regularly evokes. Then tonight I found myself utterly spellbound by the slow movement of his Concerto for 2 Pianos. In fact, it's entirely bewildering to me that the concerto isn't regularly programmed by orchestras across the world. It's wonderfully accessible and would surely become an audience favourite anywhere. Yet I don't recall seeing it as part of a programme ever. 

How many treasures remain hidden. What an adventure it is seeking them out.

Impossible Choices

It's either Joyce or Conrad. And it's either Wordsworth or Keats. Agonising choices. Whichever way, not doing something that is really, really, really somehow necessary to do.